The lessons of wind and sea, mountains and valleys, rivers and desert, mirror primordial human feelings. From the sea the blessed child learns of constancy and continuity in the rolling waves and unsurpassed sameness. The deep wine blue mystery hides unfathomable life. The sharp salt breeze refreshes and pinches thoughts from the mind. Yet intermittent shoals break the sameness of the sea. They are elusive, hidden, scarcely revealing themselves in the spray that rises from conflict. Elsewhere craggy rocks rise and fall to the heartbeat of the waves. Water surges in and out, hiding then revealing the sandy shore that momentarily, again and again, waits in peace. Meanwhile the pillow dreams floating on the horizon lull one to passivity. Hence does the emptiness of the mind mirror the emptiness of the sea. Into such barrenness time brings the distant gray sky to bear. Soon the torrent engulfs all in its path, bringing the terror of change and movement. Then once again calm. The humid world of the sea casts fog all about, which envelops, hides, the path of the storm’s destruction.
Highlands rise abruptly from the shore to form shining seamarks for sailors far from home. Forbidding, elusive, distant home of the divine, blazing in the sunlight one minute, hidden from sight another. Storm clouds steal upon the high peaks, mesmerizing, stifling. Bone-chilling cold startles the ill-prepared traveler, who prays for the sun and the wind, which comes soon enough, razor-sharp, searing, eroding all but the hardiest forms of life that retreat to the cracks and crevices of the rocky summits. Life hangs on amid chaos. Mountain sides host a spectacle of descending waters, from drips and trickles of the coolest, clearest dew to the sum of waters, the raging torrent that tosses all things about in its path, a cascade the force and destiny of which is determined from above, rushing from the past to the future, and the sea. Rivers curve amid a mosaic of surrounding hills, lofty overlooks to the waters below. Moisture seeks the quickest descent. Its efficiency attracts the knowing traveler, who finds security in the thought that a river’s apparent randomness has a purposeful end. The 18th century thinker rDavid Hume criticized those who accept miracles in the New Testament with the argument that any argument from sensory evidence is stronger than hearsay argument not based on same level of sensory evidence. To paraphrase, he said that sensory evidence is stronger and therefore clearly more trustworthy than hearsay about miracles. It is a little odd to use such arguments against the New Testament. Paul noted that foolishness of God is greater than any human wisdom. And God uses weakness, foolishness (weakness of logic and thought) to accomplish his purposes and make known his strength. Some thinkers, such as one of my favorites, the American theologian and scientist Jeremy Belknap, played Hume's (and the American Deist Thomas Paine's) game, trying to conform the New Testament to standards of human science. Belknap published a book doing just this. But think of the Gospels itself. Jesus repeatedly challenges our basic ideas, received tradition, expectations, customs, and thoughts with his teaching, some of which could appear almost foolish. Clearly the Gospels cannot be read with logic and science but with feeling and intuition. And is this also not the way Elder Scripture, Natural Theology, must be read? At the same time, we are rational creatures. We do study, analyze, and think. Science and logic toward natural history is clearly justifiable. There has to be a balance—of faith and reason, credulity and incredulity, intuition and logic analysis, deduction and induction. The Gospels, Paul, the Old Testament, indeed any good book, even history, even science, has this duality. To assume it is one or the other, as Hume did, is wrong.
I often feel oppressed by time and worry over its passing and the passages of my family and my life. I seem to want to record or grasp hold of passing moments, perhaps to the exclusion of actually experiencing and savoring them. Each moment is a gift from God and should be savored—one doesn't know how many such moments one has in life, how many are remaining. On the other hand, I have also felt dissatisfied in various moments, like I cannot wait for them to pass to get to another time, another day, another week. I feel restless and often at a loss at to what to do. My books often seem to be a panacea for this restlessness, but in the act of writing them I am restless for the end of the book to come. What folly!
Why can't miracles, the supernatural, be true? If there is a God, if that God is active not passive, if that God has power and uses it, even the power to listen to prayers and respond, if God is the God of Creation, the maker, even the originator, of all things, if God is outside of time in the one moment and sees all things, knows all things, then why cannot such a God of creation of time, of knowledge, hence of power, cause the physical and material world, time and space, to alter according to His will? To us who live in time and space, living moment by moment in the material world, the normalcy and predictability of it, of the laws of nature, are expected and assumed by our observation and confirmation of the process of cause and effect. Cause and effect, time, the physical world, are all we know. But God and His ways are so different, so beyond our comprehension limited by time and space, that it requires singular arrogance to assume we know, and only what we know and observe, or hypothesize and predict, can exist, and eliminate all miracle or the supernatural.
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April 2018
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