Poor Turkey.  Unless you've been ignoring the news lately, you are undoubtedly aware of the horrific terrorist attack that occurred at the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul yesterday. In every way, it is tragic:  dozens of lost lives, sense of individual security further undermined, increased mistrust among the peoples of the region, further disagreement about what religion is about, and more.
     For me, the attack hits home in a particularly poignant way.  A few short days ago, my wife and I were at this airport, transferring from a flight from Tirana, Albania, to our flight back to the U.S.  Although we were not at the entrance of the airport, where the attacks occurred, we would surely have been affected by it, as its aura of pain and terror would have rippled across the entire facility.
     So, some might say, God was gracious to you.  He undoubtedly was.  But was God not gracious to the those who lost their lives?  Was God only compassionate and merciful to me and the others who escaped the attack?  At a time like this, can we always say, "But for the grace of God, there go I"?
     Not easily, I hope.  God's grace is far more than chronological circumstance or physical protection.  God is not a slot machine, nor can we measure his goodness by how our lives are going.  God's grace is ubiquitous, comprehensive, and full.  It spans the universe, it penetrates every sector of the cosmos.  We cannot see it, we cannot really understand it. We can only believe it's there, expressing and empowering and loving, manifesting and making known a creator's care in a bent and broken world.
     And that's the point:  infinite grace caught in a finite world.  We marvel, we question, we wonder.  Yet we can do nothing else, really, but believe.

     After traveling for a couple of weeks, I am back to blogging, resuming my quest to share something of value and meaning to anyone who should stumble upon my meditations.  Where did I go?  Not the mountains.  My wife and I visited Eastern Europe, specifically, Romania and Albania.
     Why these countries?  As we discussed our summer plans, we thought:  why not go to regions to which most Westerners do not go?
     Although I have much to share about the trip, I begin with a night I spent talking with a group of gypsies in southern Romania.  In many ways, gypsies are modern day lepers. Despised by most people, relegated to the margins of conventional society, and desperately poor, today's gypsies pursue a life of difficulty and hardship.  As I talked (aided by a missionary friend as translator; I had learned some of the rudiments and words of the Romanian language, but certainly not enough to be fluent!), I realized that although my missionary friend had asked me to tell them how I came to embrace Christianity and Jesus, my story was a very Western one.  My story is one of living and learning in a relatively privileged white society, possessed with a freedom to pursue individual and corporate cultural hopes and political dreams which most gypsies will never have.  What can Jesus say to them?
     Simply, I soon realized, this:  ultimately, we all want to live meaningful lives. Ultimately, we all want to understand why we are here.  Ultimately, we all want to find reconciliation with our realities.  Whether we seek our answers in the affluent West or an impoverished (financially) culture in Eastern Europe is not nearly as important as that we grasp that, given our finitude and the immense existential and metaphysical mysteries in which we all move, we will not find our meaning unless we admit that we can never be our own god.  We must be, as Jesus put it so well, "born again" to really know what is real and true.  Like it or not, wherever and whoever we are, we must accept the notion of faith, a rational and thoughtful and faith, to find what life is most about.
     As I told the group, we all have a story.  We all have story of us and God.  So I ask you, what's yours?

     As I wrap up this week of blogging, I write, once again, on the notion of human flourishing.  We all want it, but I doubt that every one of us experiences it regularly.  We live in a wonderful but bent and broken world.
     Yet we rightly strive for justice, to ensure that all people have opportunity to flourish. Easy to say, but so very hard to do.  And depending on the political and cultural circumstances, it may look very different from one part of the world to the next.
     One of the speakers at the justice conference I attended made the observation that, ideally, humans ought to be creatures who pursue and experience flourishing as much as they pursue and experience vulnerability.  It seems an odd dichotomy, but set against humanity's place in a metaphysical universe, it actually makes good sense.
     If we are to posit that we live in an intentional universe, a universe created by a being whose ultimate purpose is to ensure that every creature it makes flourishes, then we must also posit that we are in turn dependent upon this being for our life and being.  We are made to be everything we can be, yet we are also made to recognize that we are creatures of inadequacy and limits.  We did not produce ourselves, and we cannot know or do any and everything we wish.  We live in the grip of physical forces much greater than we.  This would be true whether God existed or not.
     The beauty of the Christian message is that in the person of Jesus Christ the creator God lived in humanity's world, experiencing flourishing and vulnerability like everyone else who has ever lived.  For thirty-three years, God lived as a human being, flourishing, yet as vulnerable as we to forces beyond his control.
     So it is that in Jesus we see a model for how we can best live, how we can best flourish.  We take hold of our human majesty and greatness, yes, but we also take hold of our human dependency and vulnerability.  We act, yet we believe; we flourish, yet we walk in faith.  We pursue what's obvious, and we pursue what's true.  We live as we are meant to live, flourishing and becoming all that we can be even while we journey ever more deeply into the reason why we desire to do so.
     Indeed:  a pointless universe has no call to do either one.
     I'll be traveling for the next couple of weeks, and will not be posting for a bit.  I look forward to reconnecting upon my return.  I hope to have much to tell.  Thanks for reading!

     What is human flourishing in the context of America's "original greatness"?  This is the question I posed yesterday as I shared some of my experience at an Ayn Rand Institute event held in Chicago recently. I also mentioned that several days before I attended the ARI event, I attended a conference on biblical justice.  Given Rand's materialist starting point and perspective, I cannot think of a much greater contrast:  the one committed to the fact of this world and this world only; the other dedicated to the fact of this world and a larger, eternal one in which it is contained.  Ironically, both perspectives desire human flourishing; both positions wish for people to discover their full potential; and both viewpoints aim to liberate people from the various strictures--personal, societal, and political--binding them.
     So, as I asked yesterday, who's right?  The short answer is both.  The much longer answer is that, given their starting points, only one can be correct.  Either the metaphysical exists, or it does not.  Either God is there, or he is not.  There's no middle ground.
     If I may, I draw a page from an editorial in the newest issue of The Christian Century. Discussing the tension between faith and reason (the tension ultimately separating the ARI and biblical justice), this editorial notes, "Whereas reason's ability to grasp the workings of the world is astonishing and mysterious; and whereas all forms of reasoning are embedded in assumptions about the world that cannot be proved by reason; and whereas reason is understood by many religious traditions as a gift of God to be exercised in coordination with faith . . . "
     This, I think, captures the heart of the issue.  Though I respect some of what the ARI is doing, I'm also loathe to divorce human action from any sensibility of the metaphysical. As the editorial (and many scientists of the mind) point out, we still do not know why matter, raw neuronal tissue, speaks.  We still do not know why matter, chemically manufactured synapses and connections, can reason.  Not that I'm trying to invoke a so-called "God of the gaps" to fill in what I cannot yet explain, but I feel compelled to state that to advocate for human flourishing is to recognize that we are creatures of great and open mystery, creatures whose flourishing demands a willingness to grant the possibility of the metaphysical.  We cannot explain our spiritual and immaterial inclinations, much less our sense of purpose, broadly speaking, without it.
     To therefore return to my original question, I conclude that we will not achieve full human flourishing and "American greatness" unless we enable not just economic and political freedom, but spiritual freedom and liberation as well.  Both positions (ARI and biblical insight) can learn from each other, but both positions must acknowledge that they would not even exist apart from the larger mysteries that necessarily surround us all.
     Given who we are, we will never flourish fully apart from thinking about, in some way, God.  Whatever America's (and any nation's) so-called "original greatness" was, it cannot be solely reductionist and material.  That is just not who we are.  It's not about money, it's not about affluence, it's not about comfort.  It's about our soul.

     Are you familiar with Ayn Rand?  Most famous for her novels Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, her fierce and unyielding advocacy of the unfettered free market, and her call for every human being to use his or her mind and reason to live the life for which he or she is most suited and capable, Rand has had her share of supporters and detractors. Nonetheless, over thirty years since her death in 1982, her ideas live on, her novels continuing to sell (in fact, Atlas Shrugged is the best selling book in the Ukraine), and an institute devoted to promoting her positions, the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), enlarges its reach and support with each passing year.
     So why do I mention Ayn Rand?  Last night, I was privileged to attend a celebratory and fund raising dinner for the ARI in Chicago.  We dined sumptuously, heard some intriguing speakers, and witnessed a lively auction which raised over $100,000 for the work of the
ARI.  Rand's worldview is decidedly materialist, that is, she brooked no thought of anything beyond this world, and believed that death is the absolute end.  For this reason, though I have enjoyed reading her novels and appreciate, to a point, her emphasis on the free market, I will likely never agree with her on her metaphysical starting points.
     This notwithstanding, what I found particularly striking about the evening was how speaker after speaker declared that America must return to the principles on which, from their standpoint, it was founded:  economic and personal freedom.  To execute this vision, the speakers proclaimed, we must educate the populace.  We must reach the youth, we must reach the elderly, we must reach the politicians.  We must do everything we can to spread Rand's ideas and restore America to its original greatness.
     How ironic, I thought, that this very same effort is being waged by some segments of the Christian community.  Many Christians, particularly those of a more fundamentalist orientation, issue call after call to Americans to help return the nation to the principles on which, as they see it, the nation was founded:  the Judeo-Christian worldview.  We must educate people, we are told, we must reach the youth, we must reach the elderly, we must reach the politicians.  We must do everything, the narrative goes, to persuade Americans to work together to restore the nation to its original greatness.
     Two visions of original greatness, two calls to restoration, yet two calls emanating from nearly opposite starting points.  How do we choose?
     It's complicated.  Tomorrow, I will bring in yet another perspective on this issue, one which I heard much about at a conference on biblical justice I attended last week.  We will have fun putting everything together.  Then, maybe then, we will be in a better position to legitimately choose how to respond to the "calls" to "restore" America to its "original greatness" (whatever that means!). 

     Although I mentioned Ramadan yesterday, I was also aware that for many Westerners June 6 is special for an entirely different reason:  D-Day.  For those who lived through it, D-Day was the day on which the Allies made their decisive assault on the Third Reich, a day of immense carnage and pain that led, after many more months of deadly and sustained warfare, to the fall and collapse of Adolf's Hitler's ambitions of a 1,000 year Aryan empire.  It is a day that the West will never forget.
     Both of my parents contributed to the war effort.  My dad enlisted in the Army; my mother in the Marine Corps.  Happily for me, I suppose, Dad ended up serving stateside, and Mom worked at Cherry Point, North Carolina.  Though neither Mom nor Dad were what one might call "hawks" about war, they enlisted because they believed that, as Dad put it, "Hitler was a real menace."
     And he was.  While we could go on for some time debating the idea of a "just war" and whether we can rightly apply it to the West's response to Hitler, we would be hard pressed to argue that we are anything but thankful that things turned out the way they did.  On the other hand, it is exceedingly difficult to measure the net worth and effect of our actions; it is equally taxing to assess what we do today means in the counsel of God.  We see, we act; we act, we review; and we go on.  As Ecclesiastes puts it, "What has been is remote and exceedingly mysterious; who can understand it?"
     Moreover, what can we say about the millions of people who, because the millions of people who died in the war, were never born?  Though I consider my siblings and me highly fortunate our parents served where they did, I do not know whether, in this life, I will ever understand why I am here.  It's far too facile to say that it's the will of God, yet it is decidedly tenuous to attribute it to pure chance.  In the end, I am left with a profound mystery, a mystery that, rooted in the vexing tension between human will and the vision of God, I will carry for the rest of my life.

     Ramadan.  For the Muslim, it is a word that stirs up great joy and anticipation; for others, indifference, confusion, even revulsion.  Ramadan is one of the greatest events in the Muslim calendar.  Thirty days of fasting, culminating in the feast of Eid al Fitr, Ramadan is a time for every Muslim to take time to celebrate and reflect on his or her relationship with Allah and the world.  It's a season of hope, wonder, mourning, and contemplation, a slice of the year in which Muslims, like any people of faith, focus more intensely on why they live as they do.
     You may not agree with the tenets of Islam; you may not like the beliefs most Muslims hold; you may be uncomfortable with Islam in general; you may even be frightened of Islam.  Nonetheless, we all must respect and admire the Muslim who pursues Ramadan in a devout way.  For thirty days, he or she eats and drinks nothing from sunrise to sunset. Nothing.  I often wonder how many of us could do the same.  Though I have fasted for as long as five days, I always drank liquids.  Never did I do without water, even for a twelve hour period.  Consider as well the football player who celebrates Ramadan.  Practicing in the hottest time of the year, he forswears all liquid throughout what is often a grueling day.  Could any of us do that?  It would be very challenging.
     Broadly speaking, Ramadan is roughly akin to the Christian period of Lent and the Jewish Day of Atonement.  It reminds us that we live this life as a gift, that we spend our days in the aegis of a God of sovereign love, a God who has sacrificed, immensely, for us, a God who longs for communion with his human creation.  We live in the umbra of a beautiful (and often exasperating) wave of experience balancing what we see and what we cannot.  Ramadan helps us ponder whether we live for ourselves and our brethren only, or for the one in whom every human finds his or her life and being, the God in whose inscrutable vision all meaning is summed, the God by whom we find true forgiveness and genuinely abundant life?
     In this season of Ramadan 2016, pray for the Muslim.  Indeed, pray for all humanity. Pray that all people will find the full truth of God.

     Have you read Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz?  A paean to the millennial and religious, it tells the story of a person who, after being raised in a fundamentalist Christian home, ends up attending college at an institution whose values are nearly total opposite, Reed College in Oregon.  Once there, the main character (actually, the author; it is an autobiographical account), in an effort to fit in, abandons the faith of his childhood and enters into a life of cultural and philosophical fracture.  He soon earns a reputation as one of wildest and most debauched students on campus.
     As the story winds to its close, Miller realizes that maybe, just maybe, the God with whom he had been raised has merit after all.  Maybe, he decides, he can find something in God.  Subsequently, in an interesting twist, he commences to "confess" to those he knows at Reed that he has maligned God, that his behavior has not demonstrated who God really is.  God, he tells people, is far more than ritual and proscription.
     Though I read Blue Like Jazz many years ago, I thought about it again as I watched, recently, the movie made about it.  It seems that those who are raised in religious homes, particularly those of a fundamentalist ilk, and who spend their childhoods knowing little else, are often least equipped to deal with the world as it really is.  If Christianity is true, and I believe it is, it ought to be subjected and stand up to any and all scrutiny. Otherwise, why should we bother with it?  In my view, it is better that those who are inclined to make their convictions a matter of faith question everything about it, than accept it blindly.  Although some faith is fideism, faith at its best is thoroughly rational. It can be nothing else.  After all, what good is a religion which does not enable one to grapple meaningfully with everything that is in the world?