Ordained by God?  The thirteenth chapter of Romans tells us that, believe it or not, governments are ordained by God.  Huh?  While most people cite Adolf Hitler as the prime example of the seeming foolishness of this contention, I will mention instead the steady increase in authoritarian regimes in Latin America.  From the standpoint of one who has been raised in one of the freest societies in the world, I find this development alarming.  Sure, as some citizens of these countries with whom I talk about this say, these "strongmen" are restoring order.  And sure, as these people add, such men may inspire the nation to new heights of paheights of patriotism.  But at what price?

       The bigger question, however, is this:  what is God thinking?  If he is sovereign--and I believe he is (even while I underscore that this is a very loaded term)--how we do understand such things?

     The short answer is that I do not know.  I do not pretend to understand how divine sovereignty and human choice come together.  No one should.  The much longer--and impossibly difficult to grasp and comprehend--answer is that in the face of such anomaly, we have two choices.  One, we can dismiss any thought of God and go on, our vision the product of our own efforts and imagination.  Two, we can continue to believe in God and go on, our vision rather the work of trust, a trust born of unremitting belief in the ultimate goodness of God.                                             

     Is this easy?  Absolutely not.  Is it rational?  Absolutely.  Ultimately, all Latin American strongmen aside, God will prevail.

     Until the Enlightenment, Western Europe believed that it found truth by listening to the communications of God.  Supernatural revelation, the wisdom of the divine, they believed, was the path to truth, the way to discern the boundaries of light and darkness in the human adventure.
     After the Enlightenment, however, truth became the product of human reason.  Imbued with the "smile of reason," Western Europe set out to create another version of truth.  Their own.

     We live in the Enlightenment's shadows, we all share in its legacy.  And we are grateful for its commitment to restore the role of reason in human affairs.  After all, we are reasoning beings.
     On the other hand, something has been lost:  mystery.  Not the mystery of not knowing everything, but rather the mystery of why we are here.  Reason will tell us how we came to be here, but it will not tell us why we are here.  And our truth will only tell us what we ourselves can decide is true.  It will not tell us why.
     So does the biblical writer observe, "Without revelation [communication from God], we lose our way" (Proverbs 29:18).  We rightly exalt and employ reason.  Yet we should also realize that reason will only tell us so much.  At the end of the day, we still want to know why.
     We want to see reality as it really is.  We want, whether we know it or not, revelation.

     Tomorrow, January 27, is the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  Fluent in all genres of classical music, Mozart, though he sadly died at the tender age of 34, produced an array of musical expression that most musicologists agree is unmatched.  As a contemporary said of him, "He was like an angel sent to us for a season, only to return to heaven again."  Most of us can only stand mute and marvel at Mozart's immense ability.  How could one person write works of such extraordinary beauty?

     Rightly do we weep and swoon at the beauty of Mozart's compositions; they are works of unsurpassed wonder.  Yet rightly do we marvel equally at God, the personal infinite God who made and fashioned this artist--with all his prodigious talents--and enabled him to be and become who and what he is.
      As he does for all of us, we who are gifted beyond measure, we who are made to create, to create with astonishment and joy.
     Enjoy and appreciate the people--all people--whom God has made.
     Thanks, God, for giving us Mozart.

     How amused I was to read recently that some of the Apple Corporation's largest shareholders wrote the company a letter in which they urged it to begin thinking about how addictive their smartphones are.  Consider the greater good, they encouraged.
     Smartphones addictive?  What a novel thought!  (Not really.)


     One day later, another group of shareholders wrote the corporation.  Don't fret about smartphone addiction, they counseled.  Consider the greater good:  shareholder value.
     This rather begs the question:  what is the genuinely greater good here?  Is it monetary value or is it cultural sanity?  "The love of money," Paul counseled Timothy, "is the root of all evil."  Indeed, it is.  We all like the price of our stocks to be high.  Yet we ought to like even more a culture in which accumulating wealth is the last thing we need to think about.
     What do you prefer?  Wealth or addiction?

     How do we measure morality?  When a few days ago I was scrolling through Facebook (something I do not do often), I came upon an intriguing dichotomy of moral positions.  One post featured a photo of two people celebrating at one of the Women's Marches held over the weekend, this one in Boise, Idaho.  "We will not stop," they said, "until there is justice for everyone."
     Hard to argue with this sentiment, yes?  The other post that caught my eye was that of a young mother with four children.  She described how happy she was that her youngest son had told her that he loves Jesus.
     I'm thrilled for this young mother.  What struck me as I compared these posts was that although each was celebrating justice--or the one who brings justice--yet in vastly different ways.  I'm willing to say that these two sets of people likely would not agree on what morality, justice, or God are.  Yet they both desire justice for all.
     One of our greatest challenges in our deeply polarized society is seeking common ground amidst ideological conflict.  We all believe things, we all want things.  We want a just world.  What we therefore need to do most is to find ways in which all sides of the political spectrum can work together to help the common good.
     Doesn't Jesus love us all?

     As my wife and I were driving through town the other day, she brought up the movie "Titanic."  Do you remember it?  It sold over two billion worth of tickets worldwide.  When director James Cameron received the Oscar for it, he proclaimed himself, "King of the world."

     My wife drew my attention to some of the final scenes of the movie.  As it became apparent that the massive ship would sink, drowning far too many people, the camera shifts to the ship's musicians.  Were they running to the lifeboats?  No.  They continued to play their music.  Rather like the proverbial Nero doing a dirge as Rome burned--but with much more presence of mind--these intrepid musicians keep playing.  They played Mozart, they played Bach.  They played music that they thought would move and comfort people, would help them deal with the end that now faced them.  They played for the greater good, not their own.
     In the end, these musicians went down with the ship.  Unlike Rose, the one on whom the movie focused, these bearers of mercy soon found themselves slipping into the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, never to be seen again.
     While they lived, however, they played.  They played for the living, they played for the dead.  They believed that even in its darkest hours, life had meaning.  Life will always have light.
     So God said, "Let there be light."

     Today, January 22, is, for many, a day of infamy.  It is on this day in 1973 that the United States Supreme Court upheld the right of a woman to have an abortion.  Women, the Court decreed, have an innate right to privacy and the freedom to choose what medical procedures they would undergo and which ones they would not.  A woman's body is her own.  She may do with it as she pleases.

     Although the total argument filled some sixty pages, I have described its essentials here.  Simply put, it has to do with a woman's right to choose.
     Them's fighting words, indeed.  This decision unleashed a cultural war in America that continues, unabated, to this day.  Repeatedly and vociferously, advocates on either sde of the argument have locked horns, be it on the street, in the legislative arena, in the courts to ensure victory for their cause.  It's been extremely polarizing.
     In the best of all possible worlds, we would not need abortion.  But we live in a broken world.  Things happen.  Yes, abortion is a tragic solution to a perennial problem.  No argument there.
     Abortions, however, do not happen in a vacuum.  They are culturally driven and conditioned.  Many abortion opponents seem to overlook this.  Many of the people who so strongly condemn abortion will in the same breath condemn and limit birth control; reject any legislation that calls for additional funds for pre-natal and post-natal care for the poor; limit government assistance for poor single mothers; look askance at any effort to enlarge the scope of sex education; fight against funding for health care for children; restrict women, forcibly, from obtaining the abortion that, as of this writing, remains their constitutional right; marginalize unwed mothers; look down on churches that are working to counsel women who are contemplating an abortion; and, in a particularly poignant point of misalignment, welcome and invite and promote the death penalty.
     You can't have it both ways.  If you oppose abortion, do so consistently.  Don't let Christian bubbles and tribal loyalties keep you from seeing the big picture.  God doesn't; why should you?

     Unless you enjoy reading detective stories, you probably have not heard of Harry Bosch.  Bosch is the lead character in a series of novels by the American author Michael Connelly, an intrepid detective who, despite his rebellious streak and character flaws, always solves the crimes to which he is assigned.
     At one point in an investigation, Bosch learns the identity of the person who killed his mother when, sadly, Bosch was only eight years old.  Although his mother was a prostitute, she loved Bosch deeply, and he her.  He never knew his father.  After obtaining this person's address, Bosch went to see what he could find.  Unfortunately, it turned out that this person had passed away.  He would never face earthly justice for his crime.
     Subsequently, Bosch tracked down the perpetrator's grave, staring at the name for a long time.  "You got away with it," he said, "you got away with it."  And he did.  Like Pol Pot, the murderous dictator of Cambodia in the early Seventies, who never stood trial, this person died without having to account for his crime.
     So it is for all those who commit crimes and are not apprehended in this life.  They die untouched, perhaps unknown, in every way forgotten.  If there is a God, however, a God who remembers everyone who lives and dies, these people do not die totally forgotten or unassailed.  They are remembered.  And if this God is holy, a God of love as well as a God of moral standard, these people will, one day, be asked to explain their lives.
     We do not know how this will happen, nor do we necessarily know its outcome.  But we know enough.  Because God is there, purpose, purpose in a world pervaded by good as well as purpose in a world damaged by evil, will prevail.

     Ja Lama.  Who was he?  Ja Lama was a conqueror and adventurer who alternately terrorized and uplifted what is today southern Russia, northern China, and Mongolia.  Many Mongolians believe he helped their nation gain its independence from China and Russia in the early twentieth century.  On the other hand, Ja Lama was supremely cruel, inflicting unspeakable tortures on his enemies and those who disagreed with him, and ruled the lands he conquered with an iron hand.  He brooked no dissent.
     We might describe Ja Lama as a big fish in a small pond.  Outside of the region in which he roamed, few were aware of him.  Ambushed later in his life, alone and without help, he eventually endured the fate he imposed upon so many others:  he was executed, shot by a firing squad at the age of sixty. 
     And where is Ja Lama today?  I don't know for sure, but in an ironic twist, his skull is now on display at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, labelled simply, "No. 3394, head of a Mongolian."
     As the Bible often notes, though we are amazing and grand, ultimately we are dust--and one day to dust we shall return.
     And it's over.  Sic transit gloria.
     Ah, how we need the fact of God.

     As I was thinking about a class I'm currently teaching, I had occasion to re-read Plato's allegory of the Cave.  Set into his monumental Republic, his voluminous study of the meaning of justice and the nature of the state, the Cave is a study in the folly of perception.
     Perception is tricky.  On the one hand, it is all we have to measure and evaluate the world.  On the other hand, we do not perceive in a vacuum.  We perceive in our social and cultural context.
     Plato described a group of people who are living in a cave, a fire their only light.  All they can see are shadows, semblances of reality.  One day, however, some of these people venture into the daylight outside the cave.  And they see without shadows.  They see the world as it really it.
    We all live in caves.  We all live in caves of our own making.  And we often do not know we are.
    What can we do?  Although we will never see reality apart from who we are, we can nonetheless understand that, despite it all, reality exists.
     We can therefore pursue a much larger question:  why does reality exist?
     Outside of positing a reality out of which this reality has come, we will never know.  We're all living in a cave.
     

     "Freedom," the Who sang many years ago, "tastes of reality."  As many of you may know, today the U.S. remembers he birthday of civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr.  Central to the day is King's belief, a belief he shared with millions of others, that freedom, the ability to do what one chooses, when one chooses to do it is one of humanity's greatest privileges and blessings.  We all deserve to be free.
     Is freedom reality?  If being free is the ability to find oneself as oneself is in this world, then freedom is indeed reality.  It offers people opportunity to find what is most real and true about them, their lives, and the world in which they live them.  It is a path to ultimate discovery.
     Yet freedom is also, as many historians have pointed out, a release from bondage.  In King's case, he was calling out for the end of the bondage of the American black, urging the nation to let go of its belief that black people did not deserve the same freedoms that the rest of the country enjoyed.  That all people be free to pursue their dreams.

     For this is what God really wants.  He made us to be free, to free to choose, to be free to do.  To be free to live as we like.
     Freedom is wonderful, and freedom is intoxicating.  But freedom can be frightening.  We often do not know what to do with it.  We frequently do not know what its fullness really means.  
     Maybe that's why, as John records it in chapter eight of his gospel, Jesus told his audience that, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."  True freedom is to know the truth:  the truth of the presence of God.  King knew this well, and steadfastly centered his call for freedom in the greater fact of God.  He knew that freedom is only meaningful if it is grounded in something bigger than itself.  It's only real if it is centered in truth.
     As we remember King's birthday, we also remember that the freedom he preached is ultimately, as Gandhi observed in his notion of satyagraha, self-discovery in truth.  We are not free in an accidental universe without definition; we are free in a universe made real by truth itself.

     Edvard Munch, about whose famous painting, "The Scream," I've written in the past, came to my mind recently.  The impetus was an exhibit of Munch's work mounted by the Metropolitan Musuem of Art in New York City, "Between the Clock and the Bed."  Although I didn't attend the show, I obtained the book the Museum published about it.
     Many paintings stood out to me, but I write about just one here.  It is a portrait of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.  Perhaps most famous for his lauding of the "Ubermensch" (Overman or Superman), the person who breaks through the ordinary and mundane and rises above the "herd" to new heights of adventure, as well as his observation that, "God is dead," Nietzsche stirs a range of emotions in all who come across him.  Some people hate him, some people love him, some people feel sorry for him.
     Nonetheless, Nietzsche remains a compelling figure, and it is not surprising that Munch painted his portrait.  What I found particularly intriguing was that Munch, the person who painted "The Scream," chose to paint the person whose ideas directly contributed to the ethos of emptiness "The Scream" embodies, as if one is to see, in Nietzsche, the lost human being, screaming into the world he made.
     And make a world Nietzsche did:  a world without God.  It's a world of freedom yet a world of pain, an intense, joyful pain.  And that's Nietzsche's point:  better to step into the scary unknown than to lapse into the customary old.
     Probably so.  But sometimes the old, the world of God, is the most challenging world of all:  a world of faith.  Faith in the unseen, yes, but faith ultimately that in this unseen rests the worth and integrity of all that is.
     As Nietzsche well knew, meaning is lost without it.

    A few weeks ago, some tobacco companies placed a full page notice in leading American newspapers that stated, basically, smoking cigarettes can lead to death.  While this sounds highly considerate of the American consumer, the companies in fact only posted the notice because a court ordered them to do so.
     It is well known that tobacco companies had been aware for decades that smoking was harmful and addictive.  Yet they continued to market and sell cigarettes throughout the United States as well as all other corners of the world.  Despite this most recent notice, they still do.
     Although none of us is ethically consistent, I cannot help but wonder why these companies continued to sell a product which they knew was deadly to those who used it.  These companies are run by people, humans like us, people with families, people with hopes, people with dreams, people who, in other circumstances, might go out of their way to help another person.
     Ah, the human will and imagination:  so marvelous, yet so deadly, even to itself.
     Is this really how God wants us to be?

     Art is a powerful thing.  Besides moving us, our hearts, senses, and imaginations, it moves culture, potentially transforming a people, even a nation.  I thought anew about this when the other day I realized that roughly ten years had passed since the passing of the Russian born artist Boris Lurie.
     Lurie is most famous for developing what has come to be called NO!Art.  What's NO!Art?  It is art as social protest.  And not just conventional social protest.  As one who lost several family members to the Holcaust (Lurie was Jewish), Lurie used his art to express the utter horror of his wartime experiences.  He wished to communicate, in particularly and graphic form, the profound pain and suffering that marked this dark chapter in humanity's history.  Lurie didn't want people to forget.  He wanted to ensure that the memory of this blackness would remain with humanity to the end of its days.

     So we should remember.  Lurie's art helps us to look outside our historical moment.  It forces us to look beyond our frenetic pursuit of daily wants and needs.  His art urges us to grapple with the emptiness at the core of the human soul.  It causes us to ponder the darkness of a culture gone amuck.
     We need Lurie's art.  We need to remember.  We need to recognize our fallenness.  We cannot be fully human, human as magnificent, human as tragic, unless we do. 

     Tomorrow is Epiphany.  Far, far away from Palestine, thousands of miles, culturally, from the world of ancient Israel, ensconced in the mountains of Persia, assorted people studied sacred scriptures, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and more.  Day and night, they labored over the texts before them, looking for guidance from God as to what would come.

     And what would come?  God.  God would come to earth.  And when God comes, he would be, these scholars realized, human and divine.  Small wonder that they made the arduous journey over the Zagros Mountains, across the arid expanse of Arabia, and onto the international trade routes that coursed through the Levant.  Who would have imagined such a thing?
     Ah, some might say, indeed:  how is this possible?  How can this be?  It's nonsensical, illogical.
     On the one hand, I suppose it is.  Yet I do not know how else to explain why we are the way we are, why we are personal, why we have consciousness, why we have purpose and desire.  We do not prove we are worthwhile because we insist we are worthwhile:  a circular argument to be sure.  We rather affirm our dignity by establishing the fact of a purposeful world.
     And that we cannot do without God.