Introduction to March 2013’s Issue of
The Panhandling Philosopher
Written by Dan McDonald
I have decided to try something new
this month on my blog site. I will be
writing a series of hopefully brief articles that connect in some way or another
to the modern issue of self-identity.
My goal in creating my blog site, “The
Panhandling Philosopher” has been to discuss Christian issues simultaneously
with a largely non-Christian or not deeply Christian culture; and with others
within an extremely diverse and varied Christian community. I hope to address these issues respectfully
in a way which will help us to think about these issues and discuss them from
our various backgrounds.
This month’s articles related to
issues of self-identity are in keeping with this goal. In the past year, I happened to watch through
Netflix a French movie entitled “Don’t Look Back.” This movie had a profound impact on how I
have come to think about issues of self-identity. Before I watched the movie I sort of treated
all these countless discussions of self-identity as meaningless psycho-babble
that got us nowhere in understanding life.
But “Don’t Look Back” changed that for me. It was a powerful movie showing in its main
character’s dilemma how an unsettled self-identity leaves men and women
floundering without a clue as to their purpose in life. I went from thinking discussions about
self-identity were mere “psycho-babble” to realizing that unless we have a
sense of who we are and how we were meant to relate to others in our human
life, then we will likely flounder purposely in lives of desperation and
meaninglessness. So my first article
will be a movie review on the French movie, “Don’t Look Back.”
I will hopefully present an article
every few days and three have been pretty well worked on, and need only
finalized and put forth on the blog site.
A second forthcoming article will be a book review of a book by French
actress, Sophie Marceau who was one of the lead actresses in the movie “Don’t
Look Back.” Her book Telling Lies
is not a classic, but it is a well written paperback which I think does a
pretty decent job of presenting how modern men and women approach life. The Christian sometimes simply needs to be
reminded how men and women, who are not Christian, tend to think about life in
our modern times. I read Marceau’s work and
discovered that even though Sophie Marceau is clearly not Christian in her
thinking, that she is clearly a human being with serious thoughts and
considerations about life. I discussed
how she viewed life within her book with a friend, who is not a Christian,
although he has thought about Christianity and was raised to be one; and he pointed
out to me that her approach was pretty much the approach of every one he knew. So the more I thought about her approach to
life, the more I realized that my own approach to life as a human being has
more in common with Sophie Marceau’s viewpoint in Telling Lies than I
had at first imagined. Every human being
is born into this world with their senses, their growing life of experiences,
and their ability to contemplate and consider everything that comes to make an
impression upon them in human life.
Sophie Marceau’s book with some help from a friend who pointed this out
to me, has reminded me how we human beings discover life through our senses, experiences,
and contemplations. This is true for
every human being.
In the third article, which is not
quite ready but should be in a few days, I will present a conscious turning
from the book written by Sophie Marceau to the book and perspective described
wonderfully in book title written by Twentieth Century Orthodox Rabbi and
philosopher, Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Heschel wrote several books setting forth an Orthodox Jewish
worldview. One that I have read, or at
least read most of, is given a title which summarizes so much the Biblical
worldview. The title of Heschel’s work
is God in Search of Man. My work
will not be a review of his work, but I will blatantly steal his title to
describe the understood differing vantage point from anything that I or Sophie
Marceau or anyone from solely a human perspective could ever write. We look to the
Bible because what Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Heschel understood is something the
Christian faith has also understood. We
look to the Bible as a book which is written from a different vantage point. The Bible, as Heschel eloquently expresses is written because
God is in search of man, more than man has ever been in search of God. The Bible’s vantage point is therefore
different than other books of writing.
All the rest of us write based on what we have been brought to sense, consider,
and comprehend. The Bible was written because God is overseeing its writing because he seeks us.
It is written therefore from a wholly different vantage point for us to consider
and investigate.
At this point I am contemplating at
least two articles on the Bible’s creation story found in the opening chapters
of Genesis. The first one will be an
attempt to understand what the Bible is trying to do with the creation
account. Is it meant to be a revelation
of how God created the heavens and earth?
Or is there another purpose for which the creation account is
given? It is my understanding that our
age is generally scientific in a way that most generations reading this Book of
Genesis was not. That doesn’t mean that
the Book of Genesis has nothing to say to men of science. But it is one thing to understand that the
Book of Genesis addresses all of humanity in its search for understanding and
another to say that the Book of Genesis is the ideal book for scientifically
understanding how God created the heavens and earth. What other purpose might there be for God
telling us about his creation of the heavens and earth? Perhaps the creation account is in reality a
story about the creation that will help us not so much to understand how God
created the world as it will help us to understand who this God is who created
the world. Perhaps God really was in
search of mankind and he figured we needed to understand more about him than about how
he created the world. We can compare
that to when Christ said of Christians loving one another that by our loving
one another, men would understand that we were disciples or followers of
Christ. Biblically speaking when God
asked men, particularly Job and his friends to tell God how he created the
heavens and earth they fell silent. They
didn’t say, well we know how you created the heavens and the earth because we have Genesis. None of us do that. We know when God speaks out of the whirlwind
and tells us to explain the creation; then we are exeriencing what amounts to being an adult
version of “time out.” We don't get all cozy and comfortable when God asks us to give him a lecture on how he created the heavens and earth. But St. Paul
describes the creation as leaving all men without excuse who do not give thanks
to God. This is because part of the Biblical purpose of the creation has been to make manifest who God is. In the creation, God has
invested himself and put his stamp of divinity and ownership upon the
universe. We look at creation and we do
not understand how it was made, but implicitly we understand by whom it was
made. This is the Biblical teaching on creation, and I think it is also the emphasis of the Book of Genesis. So I write about the Bible’s
creation account as one who believes it was written by a God who is seeking men
and women, and this God believes that his telling us of his work of creation
will be a good way of introducing himself to us.
This writing on the creation will be
in two parts, to keep each part brief.
The second part will be written to show that the creation was created in
a progressive manner within a liturgical dialogue between God and his
creation. The world as it was first
created was darkness, formless, and void.
It was everything and yet absent of order, beauty, or life. What is this all about? Why did God create everything in such a way
that it could be described as darkness, disorder, empty, void, a veritable
chaos? This is a universe of stuff
existing apart from God’s Word, apart from a dialogue between God and his
creation. Then in six days God speaks to
creation, creation responds, and creation takes on shape, beauty, order, and
life. This creation described in Genesis
one is a creation that takes shape within the dynamic of God speaking to his
creation, and creation responding. This is
not creation by demand, by magic, or by brute power; but it is a creation
coming into shape through the dynamics of one who calls into relationship one
who then makes a response. That is the essential
story of God’s creation that is so easily forgotten. It has clearly been largely forgotten often
enough in the debates between evolutionists who so often wish to exclude God
from all things natural; and by creationists who imagine they are doing God a
disservice if they leave anything to nature in regards to nature actually giving any sort of a response to God’s
call. How different would the relationship
of science and theology be if we were to take seriously that the creation is
set forth as a liturgical relationship between God and his creation? God speaks, the earth responds, and God
evaluates the response. That is the
pattern of the creation account in every one of the six days of creation.
I have not yet begun to do what will
likely be the final consideration of this month’s offerings, the creation of
man and our fall into and by sin. What was God’s call to
man when God created man as male and female?
What happened when God’s call upon man was answered with man’s “no.” That is a story of the creation that has had
continuing consequences. It meant for
one thing the beginning of a retreat to that earlier state where all things exist but nothing
exists with light, order, beauty, or life.
What will man’s destiny be? Will our humanity be recovered and redeemed to hear God’s call and respond with faith? Or will our humanity disintegrate in a return to the nothingness from which we were hewn as we retrace backwards from the progress of the creation to that stuff of creation existing apart from the call of God in a hell of disorder, darkness, chaos,
and death?
I will present these articles to
encourage a consideration of the Bible’s message whether one approaches these
thoughts as a human being who is or is not Christian. I write as a Christian who believes that the
great issue of modern life is “What is the purpose for my being here?” If we are
wanderers who have wandered away from the original understanding that answered
that question, then I suspect that we will never find an answer unless there
is a God in the heavens who has been seeking us even before we began to think
about seeking him. Otherwise, each of us
will write our books and blogs about our experiences and none of us will ever understand why
we exist or what purpose there is in the lives we live. But when we are at our wits’ end and are
begging what seems to be an unknown God for an explanation, then I suspect we will discover that he was already engaging
us when we imagined that life was nothing more than emptiness and vanity.
We will also then understand that He has been determined throughout our existence to see that we
are fed, clothed, and understand that his one basic greatest command may be
summarized with a simple - - “Live, truly live.” That is ultimately what God’s
revelation aims to teach us all, that is how me might “live, truly live.”
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