Know Why You're Here

“I have food to eat that you do not know about. . . . My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” John 4:32–34

Jesus ate obedience.

Few things are more energizing than to know why we are here and do it.

— John Piper (@JohnPiper) October 5, 2024

Little Things Filling Up Little Souls

"The reason that is so is because the human soul was made to see Christ, to know Christ, to love Christ, to enjoy Christ, and to be enlarged by the greatness of the glory of Christ. Without this, our souls shrink. And little souls make little lusts have great power. The soul, as it were, contracts or expands to encompass the magnitude or minuteness of its treasure. The human soul was made to see and savor the glory of Christ. Nothing else is big enough to enlarge the soul as God intended and make little lusts lose their power....Inside and outside the church, modern culture is drowning in a sea of triviality, pettiness, banality, and silliness....Therefore, the deepest cure to our pitiful addictions is to be staggered by the infinite, everlasting, unchanging, all-satisfying glory of Christ." (John Piper)

A Telescope Of The Glory Of God

"We are not called to be microscopes, but telescopes. Christians are not called to be con-men who magnify their product out of all proportion to reality, when they know the competitor's product is far superior. There is nothing and nobody superior to God. And so the calling of those who love God is to make his greatness begin to look as great as it really is. The whole duty of the Christian can be summed up in this: feel, think, and act in a way that will make God look as great as he really is. Be a telescope for the world of the infinite starry wealth of the glory of God." (John Piper)

The Quest Over

"A Christian is a person who, by the sovereign grace of God, has found this treasure hidden in the field, and with life-controlling joy has sold everything he has to buy that field (Matthew 13:44). Meaning, 'Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple' (Luke 14:33). 'Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me' (Matthew 10:37). Jesus has become the supreme treasure of our life. Our quest for the greatest and the longest satisfaction of our souls is over. And this affects everything we do. It humbles us, breaks us, satisfies us, frees us, overflows from us." (John Piper)

The Aimless, Meandering Christian

Because of fallen human nature, the nature of the culture in which we live, and other factors involved, it's important to frequently remind people what work needs done in religious contexts: missions, evangelism, apologetics, theology, philosophy, the sciences, the paranormal, Bible translation, etc. I've often cited the example of patristics. There's a steady stream of patristic documents being published in English for the first time, and many that have already been published for a long time haven't been studied or discussed much. Evangelicals can repeatedly come across patristic issues in various contexts - claims about the canon of scripture, claims about the authorship of the gospels, etc. - yet have little or no concern about researching those subjects or disseminating whatever valuable information they come across. Similarly, I've often discussed the need for Christians to do more work on the paranormal. And many other examples could be cited, some of which I've discussed in the past. What parents, pastors, friends, and other people in positions of influence - all of us - should be doing is reminding people from time to time what work needs done. Mention parts of the world where missionaries need to go, languages into which the Bible still needs to be translated, philosophical issues that need studied further, Biblical passages whose historicity needs studied and discussed further, and so on. And model the sort of work that needs done by doing it yourself and talking to other people about the work you're doing.

I often hear people, including professing Christians, commenting on how "bored" they are or expect to be in retirement, how they "can't find anything to do". They'll even go back to working a job that doesn't have much significance or retire later than usual. And the people who are finding things to do are typically doing things that don't have much value. It's commonplace to hear people talk about how concerned they are about the state of the culture and the world, then, five minutes later, refer to how they're going to spend the rest of the day watching movies, gardening, etc. They rarely or never refer to anything they're doing in contexts like the ones I've referred to in the paragraph above, and what they do refer to doing in such contexts tends to be of a lower rather than higher nature.

You ought to have specific objectives in mind to advance the kingdom of God in substantial ways. Aim for accomplishments "worthy of the calling with which you have been called" (Ephesians 4:1) and run hard after them.

"Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim" (1 Corinthians 9:24-26)

"In a corruption of sound doctrine so extreme, in a pollution of the sacraments so nefarious, in a condition of the Church so deplorable, those who maintain that we ought not to have felt so strongly, would have been satisfied with nothing less than a perfidious tolerance, by which we should have betrayed the worship of God, the glory of Christ, the salvation of men, the entire administration of the sacraments, and the government of the Church. There is something specious in the name of moderation, and tolerance is a quality which has a fair appearance, and seems worthy of praise; but the rule which we must observe at all hazards is, never to endure patiently that the sacred name of God should be assailed with impious blasphemy — that his eternal truth should be suppressed by the devil’s lies — that Christ should be insulted, his holy mysteries polluted, unhappy souls cruelly murdered, and the Church left to writhe in extremity under the effect of a deadly wound. This would be not meekness, but indifference about things to which all others ought to be postponed." (John Calvin)

Grieving atheists

@AtheistRepublicWhat is the best thing to say to an atheist who is grieving the loss of a loved one?  

That's a tricky question, and there's more than one way to broach the answer:

i) Is this one atheist taking to another atheist, or a Christian talking to an atheist?

ii) Are the Christian and the atheist on friendly terms?

iii) Is the atheist expecting a word of comfort from the Christian?

iv) There's the danger that the atheist will view the Christian as exploiting the situation. But there are ways to guide the discussion. 

v) It depends on the mood the atheist is in. 

vi) What if atheism has no comforting answer to give in that situation? What if there's no comfort answer to give the atheist? What if the honest answer will be hopeless and depressing? Are you forbidden to give a frank answer if that's depressing and despairing? If you're not allowed to give an atheist honest atheist answers to existential questions, what does that say about atheism when it comes to the issues in life that ultimately matter? 

vii) Instead of attempting to encourage the atheist, supposed a Christian begins with questions. Sometimes it's more effective to asking probing, leading questions rather than spoonfeed him the right answers. That enables him to think it through for himself. Asked him how he feels about the situation. What did the person mean to him? How is his death a personal loss? 

From there the conversation might gravitate to what, if anything, makes the life of the dearly departed important. Was his life important because it was important to decedent or important to others? 

What, if anything, makes human lives important? What if the dearly departed never existed? What difference would that ultimately make? Are we just dandelion puffs blown by the wind? Most never germinate, and those that do merely produce a new generation of dandelion puffs, swaying in the breeze on a dry grassy, forgettable hillside? Repetition for repetition's sake. 

viii) Depending on how the conversation goes, a Christian can ask the atheist if there's a point of unresolvable tension between how the bereaved misses and values his lost loved one and the intrinsic significance of his lost loved one if atheism is true. And if there's a point of unresolvable tension, what gives? Should we cling to the nihilistic consequences  of atheism, or cling to the significance of human lives? If both can't be true, which outlook should take precedence? What's our staring-point? 

If naturalistic evolution is true, then we cherish certain experiences, not because they have intrinsic value, but because natural selection brainwashed us to project illusory value on things with no inherent value inasmuch as that confers a survival advantage on the species. We're the product of mindless, amoral psychological conditioning. 

ix) A standard atheist response is that they continue to live in our hearts and memories. But that's a cheat. They no longer consciously participate in life and love and memory. Your fond memories can't be a substitute for their personal experience. They're gone. 

x) I'm not suggesting Christians always have happy answers. Unless you're a universalist, some stories have bad endings. There is, though, a fundamental difference between hope for some and hope for none. 

In addition, a world of universal oblivion, where all choices good or ill are erased at high tide, is far worse than a moral universe in which some choices have enduring consequences. 

The Death of Ivan Ilych

One of the supreme works of Christian fiction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfIM-L6TzHo&t=690s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c6ODLAgGoE

"Death is what gives life meaning"

@SecularOutpost

Death is what gives life meaning.

The fact that life can be lost is what makes life meaningful.

It’s the risk of loss of one’s own life that gives the other things meaning.

https://twitter.com/SecularOutpost/status/1236376219597168640

1. You can file this under: if you want a shallow answer to an existential question, ask an atheist.  

Atheists face a dilemma of their own making. How do they play the losing hand they dealt themselves? Some of them are more forthright about the consequences. By contrast, Jeff's strategy is to make a virtue of necessity.  

Why I'm still a Christian

I mentioned a while back that there's an overemphasis on Christian conversion testimonies. Why these can be edifying to read, what's more useful is to read follow-up testimonies of why someone is still a Christian after 50 years, give or take. Recently I ran that question by some Christian thinkers who are approaching the end of their pilgrimage. The answers for interesting but off-the-record. Then one of them asked me how I'd answer my own question. So, for what it's worth, here's the question and my own answer:

Q. Have you written anything about why you're a Christian at this stage of life? As you know, there's a testimonial genre about how people became Christian in their teens/twenties or how they personally embraced the faith they were raised in at that time of life, but that's frozen in the past. At that age their reasons will be thinner. Over a lifetime, the reasons may evolve or change or be augmented or replaced with deeper reasons. Approaching the end of life, a Christian thinker has thicker reasons for his faith, due to all the life-experience under his belt, study, reflection, and interaction with others. 

A. There's why I became a Christian and then there's why I'm still a Christian. I've been a Christian for 44 years. I became a Christian at 16.

I grew up in a moderately Christian home. My father was intellectual, but agnostic and aloof. My mother was a P.K., pious, but religiously rootless when I was growing up. My grandmother, who lived in town until I started junior high, was the most devout. I adored her, but she wasn't intellectual, so her faith wasn't a reason for me to believe . My Aunt Grace was the best educated Christian I knew at that time, but she was more scholarly than analytical. And we didn't see her that often. My uncle Fred, who was Dean of Education at Anderson U, was a closet apostate. 

I never attended a fundamentalist church. We attended mainline denominations. No doctrinal preaching.

When I came of age around 13, I began to think about death. Not because I expected to die anytime soon, but I was beginning to think about what I'd do with the rest of my life as an adult. And since I was mortal, it made sense to mentally begin at the end and work back from there. At the time I was an atheist. However, it seemed to me that if we pass into oblivion when we die, then life is unimportant. It made me feel alienated from the world.

At that age I didn't have a philosophically astute argument for my intuition, but over the years I've definitely firmed up my view that atheism is a euphemism for moral and existential nihilism. Indeed, one of my pastimes is to collect atheists who admit that.

That didn't make me a Christian, but it did mean I've never been able to consider atheism as a viable fallback option. At one end, my Christianity begins with atheism. That's the backstop. That's just not a tenable alternative. 

I became a Christian at 16 simply by reading the Bible, beginning with Matthew. That was it. Apologetics came later. I backed into apologetics, not to answer my own questions, but to advise others.

As a new Christian it became quickly apparent that I could ask questions the people I knew couldn't answer, so I'd have to find my own answers.

Although I'm cerebral, I'm naturally an intellectual drifter. I coasted through public school on raw talent. I was never studious. 

Partly because I found public school boring. For instance, I was probably mathematically gifted, but they didn't know what to do with gifted students. They just taught techniques for solving problems, whereas I ignored the textbook and toyed with equations until they balanced out in my head. The teacher didn't approve.

Some guys excel academically because they have a competitive streak. I don't. I always thought living to beat the competition was a stupid goal in life. Until I became a Christian, I was an intellectually lazy, indifferent student. It took a sense of Christian duty to galvanize my abilities.

Theologically, I'm primarily interested in exegetical and philosophical theology. Intellectual challenges to Christianity have never been the chink in my armor. I've read all the best atheists. 

In addition, I've invested a great amount of  time in evidence for Christianity as well as evidence refuting naturalism, including neglected lines of evidence. 

As you know, Christian faith has several components. One is belief or conviction, grounded in evidence. My faith is pretty invulnerable in that respect, although I'm only human, so I don't claim to be indestructible.

Where I'm vulnerable is the emotional problem of evil. The way to harm me is through harming those I care about. My three closest, most devout relatives suffered the most. 

I think some Christians lose their faith, not because they cease to believe in God's existence, but God's benevolence. They feel God betrayed them or betrayed those they loved. If you doubt God's goodness, then his existence is secondary. 

However, I'm a presuppositional Christian and an existential Christian. I think God is the source of meaning, math, modality, morality, and logic, as well as creation. On that front alone, naturalism is not an option.

In addition, I've never been a truth for truth's sake, follow the evidence wherever it leads thinker. That bifurcates the good and the true. But both are necessary. Without truth, goodness is illusory; without goodness, truth is worthless. 

Watching what happened to my closest relatives was emotionally damaging to my faith, but damaged faith is worth clinging to. We can't live without hope.

So between the positive evidence for Christianity, as well as the evidence for the falsity of naturalism, I remain a Christian. Atheism is repellent, and the other religious offerings aren't serious rivals. 

I should add that I've had a number of uncanny experiences over the years (as well as witnessing like phenomena with some of my relatives), so it's not confined to abstract public evidence. 

Living for the moment

Arguing against atheism can pose a bit of a dilemma for a Christian philosopher or apologist. You're having to probe the consequences of a false position. A counterfactual critique. If atheism were true, these would be the consequences (per impossibile counterfactuals and reductio ad absurdum conditionals). If, however, atheism is false, then it's unnatural to have a consistently atheistic outlook. It takes an effort of the imagination to project yourself or immerse yourself into that mindset and take it seriously. To the extent, moreover, that atheism is depressing, there's a disincentive for atheists to take their own position as seriously as they ought. 

Some atheists honestly admit that they dread the prospect of personal oblivion when they die. But other atheists say, or at least feign, no fear of death. Indeed, some assert that the brevity of life and finality of death are what makes life precious. An unrepeatable opportunity. 

Of course, from a Christian standpoint, human beings don't face oblivion when they die. So a Christian apologist is having to explore the consequences of an unreal outcome. And it can be a challenge to fully enter into that artificial perspective. 

Some atheists maintain that our ultimate oblivion has no bearing on what makes life significant, important, or meaningful. What matters is what we do in-between. 

Let's take a comparison. Suppose a 20-year-old goes to the doctor for an unrelated ailment. After some routines diagnostics, he finds out that he has an inoperable brain aneurism. He feels normal. Feels healthy. But he could drop death tomorrow. He won't have a normal lifespan, and he's liable to die sooner rather than later. So that suddenly interjects into his outlook on life a combination of uncertainty and inevitability. He is fated to die young. He has a ticking timebomb in his head. It can detonate at any time, and it will explode. 

Or suppose he's diagnosed with a genetic defect which will become a degenerative illness, like MS, ALS, Parkinson's, or Huntington's disease. At the moment he's healthy and asymptomatic. He has several good years ahead of time.

But in both cases, a dire future casts a baleful shadow on the present. Even though he's healthy now, he knows that he's doomed, and his pitiless foreknowledge can't help but change his outlook on life. Unlike animals, humans psychologically occupy past and future as well as the present. What we think awaits us powerfully affects our capacity for happiness at present. Given a choice, we'd rather be miserable at present but with a happy future than be happy at present but with a miserable future. We'd trade a present good for a future good. And that's not irrational. That's because the present will soon be gone. We can't hold onto the present. It is constantly slipping away. But as long as we last, we will always have the future–for better or worse. When it comes to the value of life, we view the present as an backward extension of the future rather than the future as a forward extension of the present. 

Life under the sun

Maybe one way of looking at Ecclesiastes is that Solomon is painting a picture of fallen life in a fallen world, that is, life "under the sun".

Not only are human beings fallen, but the whole of creation is fallen. For example, Eccl 3:20 seems to reflect Gen 3:19. We're but dust returning to dust. We live fallen lives in a fallen world. Like nuclear radiation from Chernobyl, the fallout from the fall contaminates the whole world.

Likewise hebel could mean several different things among which is, of course, breath. The brevity of breath. God breathed life into us. We who are earthen vessels. Animated clay. But this "breath" of life - our lives - will expire as quickly as it's inspired. Breathe in, breathe out, and it's all over.

Ecclesiastes is a picture of humans "groaning" (as Paul would put it) along with the whole of creation. Groaning over how fleeting everything is. Groaning over how toilsome our labors are. Groaning over our cryptic, Sphinx-like world. Groaning over the futility of life. And so on and so forth.

This groaning arguably points to a longing in the human heart. A longing for eternity, which God himself has placed in our hearts (Eccl 3:11). A longing for life "under the sun" to end. A longing for something better that doesn't wear down or wear out but lasts forever. Something which this world can't fulfill. Only the world to come (eternity) can satisfy.

As an aside, I've always appreciated Ecclesiastes for its realism. It doesn't pull punches. It tells it like it is. It's the antidote to Hallmark card Christianity.

Living in the Bible

When we read the Bible, should we be able to find ourselves in the Bible? To use literary categories, there can be archetypal characters, archetypal plots, and and archetypical places. 

1. Characters

There are figures whose experience may parallel your own in certain respects. For instance, the hope, longing, elation, aggravation, depression, and despair of the Psalmists and Prophets. 

2. Plot

Likewise, there's the plot. The lifecycle is the elemental perennial human plot. Birth, childhood, coming of age, adulthood, parenthood (repeating the lifecycle), aging, death. 

Scripture picks up on this but deepens and extends it. We are born in this world, but on a journey through this world on the way out of this world. Although we live and die in this world, death is not the end. And ultimately, the saints will return to this world, a renewed world. 

3. Setting

This in turn shades into the setting or landscape of Scripture. Although biblical events happen in real time and space, there's an emblematic quality to certain localities in Scripture which readers have always sensed. In that respect, the landscape of Scripture can move on an allegorical plane for some readers. Where the lifecycle and the individual Christian pilgrimage is is overlaid on the symbolic setting of Bible history. 

We're born in exile. Some of us are on a quest to return to our ancestral home (Eden, heaven). With various obstacles in the way. But others are on a journey to hell. 

Consider some archetypal places in Scripture:

• Garden/river 

• Banishment/exile (e.g. expulsion from Eden; expulsion from Promised Land/Babylonian Exile)

• Captivity (Egypt; Babylon)

• Nomadism (Patriarchal narratives)

• Urbanism (Sodom, Jerusalem)

• Desert (Sinai)

• Promised Land 

• Lost

These have different symbolic connotations. And they can have parallels with our own lives at different times.

We aren't born in Eden, but some people have a fairly Edenic childhood. Yet they may suffer a dramatic downturn in their fortunes. 

The nomadism of the Patriarchs isn't the same thing as exile. It's a rootless existence, but it has freedom. And since they take their family with them, it's not lonely. There's an insecurity and lack of direction to it, but it's not inherently unpleasant.

Also, it can be cyclical, where wayfarers move back and forth within a certain range. Often seasonal. So it's not wide open. It has boundaries. 

The alternative to banishment is escape. The Israelites were delivered from bondage. The Babylonian exiles were released and repatriated, although some chose to stay behind. They had become assimilated. 

This stands in contrast to settling down. Having a particular place to call home. But cities have complex connotations. The new Jerusalem is utopian while Sodom, Gomorrah, and Babylon are dystopian. 

Cities can be psychologically claustrophobic. And ironically, many people feel lonely and alienated in cities, due to the anonymity and indifference to individuals. 

In the case of exile, you're not where you want to be. You feel shut out and cut off. It never feels like home. There's always the sense of being out of place. Not belonging. 

If the promised land is a homeland, the desert is a no man's land. Hellish. 

Our lives can parallel different kinds of archetypal space at different times of life, depending on our circumstances, where we live, and our psychological situation. 

This also plays on the sense of being lost (and alone) in the world. Lost in the crowd. So many who came before us. So many who come after us. Groping for meaning or going with the flow. 

Can we find our way out of the woods? Is the way forward or back? Do we know what we're looking for? Where is home? What is home? 

Suppose you're hopelessly lost, so you must rescued. That's the lost and found motif. You were found. 

Kinda like if you were abducted in your sleep. You wake up in the middle of nowhere. How do you get back? How do you retrace your steps?

Or take a war-torn area. A soldier leaves home to fight. When he returns, the village is burned to the ground. There is no home to go back to. That's gone. He can't go back to the life he had. 

Symbolic space and symbolic time pan into each other because both may symbolize a journey. Travel through time and space.  

A river is dynamic. That's emblematic of a journey downstream, to empty into the ocean (perhaps).

But even a dry canyon can symbolize a journey. Although it's static space, it has a trail in two directions. 

Our lives have a plot that in some respects will parallel the overarching plot of Scripture or the subplots of individual characters. Likewise, we live in places that may parallel emblematic places in Scripture. These all resonate at an allegorical or analogical level. Sometimes your life may feel rootless, sometimes exilic. Sometimes you may feel trapped. Sometimes you may feel lost. You can locate yourself in Scripture using the the landscape of Scripture as a symbolic map of the soul. 

Does God have a purpose in life?

On a theistic view, there is no objective purpose of *God’s* life: there is no ‘Super-God’ to give God purpose in God’s life. Poor God has to choose His own purpose in life. @RFupdates is simply pushing the problem back a step. https://t.co/kTrneRRGVM

— Secular Outpost (@SecularOutpost) October 27, 2019

@SecularOutpost

 On a theistic view, there is no objective purpose of God’s life: there is no ‘Super-God’ to give God purpose in God’s life. Poor God has to choose His own purpose in life. @RFupdates is simply pushing the problem back a step.

This is Jeff Lowder's attempt to be clever and turn tables on the argument. But his arguments aren't improving with age. It's such a confused, and simplistic riposte. 

1. On the face of it, Jeff is laboring to mount an argument from analogy. Either the principle holds true in both cases or not at all. But what could that mean?

2. Human beings are contingent, needy creatures. Physically dependent on their environment. For instance, we can only survive and thrive within a very narrow temperature range.

In addition, we're social creatures with emotional needs. Including the need to touch and be touched by other human beings. 

Human beings are not self-contained units whose needs are internally supplied and satisfied. In the nature of the case we require things outside ourselves to provide for our emotional needs and personal fulfillment. 

3. How is that supposed to be comparable to God? A self-contained being who is complete in himself? An being who needs nothing outside himself to supplement himself? A timeless agent who has no unrealized potential. No longings. No impediments. 

4. To say humans need to have a purpose in life doesn't imply that God needs to have a purpose in life, as if God needs something to give his life direction or satisfaction from one day to the next. In classical theism, God isn't that kind of being. 

5. In addition, while the debate is typically framed in terms of what makes life "meaningful," there's more than one concept in play:

There's the question of what, if anything, makes an individual life important. That's distinct from personal fulfillment. Your life can be important even if you're unfulfilled or dissatisfied. 

Is life worthwhile? That's ambiguous. In one respect life is potentially worthwhile, but some people treat the gift of life as worthless because they have nothing adequate to live for. 

6. Is immortality a necessary condition for life to be important? 

7. What makes life fulfilling? What ought to make life fulfilling? If I lose everything I care about, is that fulfilling?

And if what I care about is merely the way my brain was wired by a mechanical process without wisdom or benevolence, is that meaningful? Or is that hollow and arbitrary? 

What makes anything good? Is it just an illusion we project onto an indifferent reality? 

The intellectual lifecycle

There's an interesting cycle in the intellectual life of some people. When they're teenagers, they have an existential outlook, as they ask the big meaning-of-life questions. And it's a natural time of life to begin thinking about that. Not coincidentally, that's when many people either convert to Christianity or else personally appropriate the Christian faith they were raised in.

But in their 20s and 30s they may shift away from that to more abstract intellectual pursuits like math, science, and philosophy. In the case of Christian men, there's often a focus on apologetics and theological debate. Christianity and atheism. Calvinism and freewill theism. Amillennialism and premillennialism. And so on and so forth. 

Yet when they hit middle age, that's a natural time to take stock of where they are in life. Reassess their goals. Recalibrate. 

Have they achieved their goals? Were their goals worth achieving? They set goals when they were younger, but with the benefit of hindsight, maybe their priorities seem less important now. 

Assuming they achieved their goals, what do they do next? Is that what gave them a sense of purpose? If so, what's left to live for? 

Or do they recognize that their goals were unrealistic? Or realize they they are running out of time to achieve their goals? They will have to scale back and lower their ambitions and expectations. 

So middle age can redirect them back to an existential focus. And if that doesn't do it, old age is apt to give them a more existential outlook, as they look back over their lives and consider if they led fulfilling, worthwhile lives, and what, if anything, lies ahead. At that point youth and old age come full circle. You might say that as teenagers they were existential philosophers. Then, in their prime they became analytic philosophers. Finally, as they hit the summit, with the downhill side ahead of them, they revert to being existential philosophers. BTW, I think women naturally have an existential orientation. 

Why write fiction?

I can't speak for other fiction writers, but speaking for myself:

i) I've seen or read countless stories in my lifetime. Most of them from movies or episodes in TV dramas. Former generations got stories from an oral culture, or novels and plays. But in modernity, film and television are the mass medium for stories–although there are literary types who primarily consume highbrow novels and plays. And for boys, comic books are another source. 

When you're exposed to so many stories, it makes you curious to try your own hand at the medium. If so many other people are storytellers, maybe you have a knack for it, too. Or maybe you don't. There's only one way to find out. 

ii) While it's enjoyable to read or see someone else's stories, especially if it's well-done, nevertheless, you're just a spectator. When you read their story or watch their movie, they make all the creative choice for you. Which is fine. But in addition to that, you may have a hankering to make your own creative choices rather than having it all decided by someone else. Up to a point it's fine to be the passive recipient, but there are times when you'd like to make your own creative decisions. Indeed, seeing them do it is a stimulus for you to give it a go. 

iii) Apropos (ii), sometimes, when I watch a movie or TV drama, it contains a promising idea, but after I've seen it I take it in a different direction in my imagination. I can play filmmaker in the private movie studio of my mind, and edit someone else's movie, or provide an alternate ending that's more to my liking. Maybe the film had a striking idea, an interesting dramatic premise, but I don't think it was developed to its full potential. It leaves me dissatisfied, but there's enough to it that I run with it. 

iv) In the real world, we must take reality as it comes to us–the good and the bad, interesting and boring, fulfilling and disappointing. In fiction we have the freedom to be selective. We can isolate the things we like, extend them, and reconnect them with other things we like. It's like designing your own world, where you're in control of all the variables. In the real world we have to rush when we'd rather linger and savor the moment–or, conversely, slog through the tedium to get to something enjoyable. But a fiction writer can linger over a scene he likes, as well as skipping over stuff that doesn't interest him.

Mind you, these need to be balanced. Consider the stereotype of the guy who spends all his leisure time playing video games. He needs more reality, not less. 

v) Fiction is a way to interpret experience. What makes life meaningful? What's important in life? Fiction is a sorting process. Because life is a gift, we have a duty to reflect on the value of life, not just take it for granted and fritter away the allotted time. Fiction is an effort to achieve understanding. There's experience in the raw, then there's the significance of what we experience. 

vi) Finally, when I'm out on a walk, sometimes a story idea just comes to me unbidden. I wasn't planning to write a story. I don't do it for any deeper reason than the fact that I suddenly have an idea for another story. 

Gated gardens

Someone reading my contributions to this blog might have a misimpression of my priorities. That's because a lot of what I post on is out of proportion to my personal priorities. Put another way, a lot of what I post on is not intrinsically important, but it's a practical necessity. 

Take a walled garden. What's the relationship of the wall to the garden? The garden is where we live and what we live for (figuratively speaking). 

But we live behind a wall because the wall is necessary to protect the garden from the encroachments of the wilderness–so that the wilderness doesn't reclaim the garden and return it to a wilderness. The wall is necessary to protect it from dangerous animals or animals that tear up the flowerbeds or trample down the flowers. The wall is necessary to protect the garden from human intruders or invaders. 

But this means a certain amount of time and effort must be put into maintaining the wall. The wall is not an end in itself, but just a means to an end. Yet without the wall, there is no garden.

The stuff I post on apologetics, as well as the culture war stuff, is mostly the wall, not the garden. But the garden can't  flourish without it. For me, the garden is family, friends, natural beauty, feminine beauty, music (mostly classical, mostly Christian), painting, church architecture, poetry (mostly Christian), literature, good movies, my fiction, my existential writings, and my Bible studies on the biblical symbolism of light.  

Now that oversimplifies things a tad. Apologetics requires a deep and accurate grasp of Christian theology. And everything I care about ties into Christianity. That's the lynchpin. Remove that and nothing else matters. But that's a kind of spinoff value of apologetics. 

Christianity has always had to maintain a wartime footing. Not only is that necessary for the survival of the Christian faith in a hostile world, but Christian values extend a protective dome over many unbelievers. Take the current secular assault on the young and the old, masculinity and femininity. Only Christianity stands in the way of the secular progressive onslaught. It's not just for our own benefit.

When the vandals are besieging the wall, it takes an inordinate amount of time away from what ultimately matters to maintain the structural integrity of the defensive perimeter. To keep the vandals from breaching the wall. But that's just a buffer zone. Unimportant in its own right. 

In the world to come we won't need fences and walls (figuratively speaking). In the world to come, we can just enjoy the garden. The whole world will be a garden. And although that's a metaphor, it's literally true that the world to come will have unspoiled natural beauty in abundance as well as landscape gardens. 

Worm food

Is open-mindedness a virtue?

@SecularOutpost

Theists: when you read something by an atheist (about God's non-existence), do you genuinely try to read with an open mind, or do you read it with an intention of finding ways to refute it?

John Mark N Reynolds

I don’t think one can ready any text or adequately without first trying to agree with it or see/feel the perspective of the writer as charitably as possible.

@SecularOutpost

Fellow atheists: when you read something by a theist (about God's existence), do you genuinely try to read with an open mind, or do you read it with an intention of finding ways to refute it?

Martin Gentles

I look to refute it. But I do the same with naturalistic arguments.

@SecularOutpost

I applaud your consistency.

1. The problem with this comment thread is how it takes a principle with some legitimacy, then overextends it. Open-mindedness can be, and often is, an epistemic virtue, but elevating this to a universal absolute is far too abstract. Part of rationality is having a filter to screen out certain ideas. Is it incumbent on me to read about Ramtha, Raëlians, Dianetics, Tarot cards, Hare Krishnas, or Aleister Crowley with an open mind? Can I not read it adequately unless I try to agree with those examples? 

Consistency is a virtue when treating like things alike. But every idea doesn't merit the same consideration. It's rationally and morally subversive to be in a chronic state of open-mindedness. That's a euphemism for indecision. 

2. Open-mindedness can be a virtue when you study an issue for the first time. But it's not a virtue to be perpetually open-minded. There ought to be a process of elimination. 

3. There's the danger of being prematurely closed-minded. However, even closed-minded people can change their mind. There are people who read the opposing position with the intention of finding ways to refute it, but end up being convinced by what they read. 

4. Suppose, for argument's sake, that atheism appears to be true. But even on that hypothetical, my impression might be mistaken. And if, in addition, I conclude that atheism leads to moral, existential, and/or epistemic nihilism, then I'd be justified in discounting atheism. Although I perceive it to be true, open-mindedness includes the possibility that I might be wrong. And when you combine that with the radically skeptical consequences of atheism for meaning, morality, and reason, a closed-minded attitude towards atheism is not only warranted but necessary.  

5. A Christian can be critical of bad arguments for Christianity. We can be open-minded in that respect. 

Life in the casino

I know next to nothing about Jeffrey Epstein. He's one of many celebrities I make a point of knowing as little as possible. They don't interest me. But like it or not, some figures are thrust into our awareness. And this is an occasion to make a few existential observations:

Many men have sordid fantasies, but due to his wealth and connections, he was able to act on his fantasies. And that was his undoing. Despite his relentless and spectacularly successful efforts to worm his way into the ranks for the glitterati, he wasn't quite high enough on the pecking order to be untouchable. 

Life is unpredictable. If, as a rakish and ruthlessly ambitious twenty-something, he foresaw that he'd die in a prison cell in his mid-sixties, would he make the same choices?

Perhaps he'd just take greater precautions to cover his tracks. Or maybe not. That's one of the dilemmas of atheist. If this life is all you've got, should you play it safe or maximize intensity?

Be that as it may, many people would make different choices along the way if they foresaw where their choices were leading them. As I've remarked before, that's a problem for freewill theism. We're often in a situation where we have to make choices with irreversible consequences without knowing the consequences in advance. And once we find out, the hard way, it may be too late to back out. We were in no position to give informed consent. 

And not just for degenerates like Epstein, who's hardly a sympathetic figure. Many good, conscientious people find themselves in the same predicament. In a fallen world, we're forced to gamble on the future without knowing how the deck was shuffled. Without seeing the other player's hand. So we often lose the bet. 

100 things to do before you die

Years ago there was a "reality" TV show about four young guys traveling the country. The premise was crossing off a list of 100 things to do before you die. It became a bestselling book.

That's actually a good question everyone should ask themselves. What do you want to do before you die? If you made a wish list of stuff  to do before you die, what would be on the list? 

The problem, though, is while it's an important question, the answers are only as good as the respondent's worldview. For instance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Buried_Life#The_Original_List

Having posed a good question, they have no good answers. It comes down to filler. They have nothing worthwhile to live for.

When I was a boy, back in the 60s, I remember watching an interview with Richard Basehart. He was a ubiquitous voice actor and character actor in film and TV. I knew him from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. 

He said something I'll never forget. I don't remember the exact words, but he had a pithy statement about his philosophy of life: it's just about beating the odds of your father's premature ejaculation. 

That was his worldview. That was his answer to the big meaning of life question.

At the time it was a shocking thing to say because back in those days people weren't normally that explicit on national television. It wouldn't have the same shock value today. At that age the statement might have passed over my head, but I happened to be watching the interview with my father, and his surprised reaction made it memorable. That's why it stuck in my mind. Whether I understood it at the time, it stayed with me.

It's a frank, unsparing view of human existence in a godless universe. Not the sort of slogan the Atheist Bus Campaign will run on.