Barry's Blog: The Christian Life

In recent days Steve Jobs' Apple Computer and Walt Disney Company, the parent company of ABC, have entered into a partnership where episodes airing on ABC the evening before can be downloaded through Apple's iTunes Music Store for $1.99. Talking about opening a Pandora's box in the media business! Already ABC affiliate stations have been clamoring that they were not given an opportunity for financial participation in the new distribution agreement.  This marriage between the two companies is seen by many media observers as being a significant step in dismantling the decades-old system for distribution of TV programming to viewing audiences. Now, TiVo Inc. has announced plans to let users of its popular digital video recorders to download any TV show stored on their TiVo boxes onto iPods.

With technology "blurring" the lines across all forms of media, we should not be surprised at its impact upon worship and the sacred in our fast paced culture. An article in The New York Times caught my eye in late August. It reported how Kyle Lewis, 25, when he missed going to church one Sunday, still didn't miss the sermon. Mr. Lewis, who regularly attends services at a church in Alexandria, Virginia, listened to the sermon while he was at the gym, through a recording he had downloaded to his iPod. Instead of listening to the rock music his gym offered, he heard his pastor's message!

The homepage of Rev. Mark Batterson of the National Community Church, theaterchurch.com, is his entrée into "podcasting," or "godcasting," as Rev. Batterson prefers to call it. "I can't possibly have a conversation with everyone each Sunday. But this builds toward a digital discipleship," he said. "We're orthodox in belief, but unorthodox in practice."

Just as Christian organizations embraced radio and television, podcasting has quickly caught on with religious groups. Despite the variety of religious podcasts, Christian programs make up by far the largest segment of the category. The Rev. Tim Hohm, a Protestant minister from El Sobrante, Calif., makes two 15-minute podcasts a week about family and work issues. He said an average of 6,000 people downloaded the program from the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa.

One of the most popular religious podcasts, Catholic Insider (catholicinsider.com), already exceeds 10,000 listeners for each program. The founder is the Rev. Roderick Vonhögen, 37, a priest from the Netherlands, who heard about podcasting from one of his parishioners and has become an avid fan of Adam Curry, one of podcasting's founders. "I don't force people to take my view," he said, to which he attributes his popularity. Listeners have gone along on walks in Rome, through the airport in Düsseldorf, Germany, and across the city square in his hometown of Amersfoort while Father Vonhögen enthusiastically talks about pop culture and religion, and can sometimes be heard eating French fries or gelato while he is talking. "Podcasting for us has been a resurrection of radio," Father Vonhögen said. "It's the connection to a new generation."

As I read of this new "media" world making inroads into our frenetic culture, moving us towards a new-fangled "digital discipleship," I must confess, I'm a little bothered. True, amidst our hectic schedules of work and leisure, it is "convenient" to have church services when we want to attend (I'm as guilty as anyone on this). Yet, when was the last time you or I picked up a hymnal to sing a song in church? I wonder,  amidst all the technological advances, could we be depriving ourselves of something? Can we be "orthodox" in belief, yet "unorthodox" in practice? Is it possible for me to live well in our world of "sight and sound," but without others? Could such technology have a downside in terms of how we relate, or don't relate, to others? Could it contribute to making our faith a solitary, private enterprise? And when we get our religion "on the fly," what are we saying about worship? About community? Still pondering…

For FinishingWell,

Barry

Article in the August 25th issue of The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/technology/29godcast.html

Yes, I know the last blog dealt with Lewis' film opening tomorrow. And I was ready to move on, but having just completed a fresh reading of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I'm convinced that this little classic has a lot to tell us about worship and the spiritual life. Actually, much more to tell us than the myriad of books dealing with slick marketing and self-help books that seem to dominate the evangelical subculture. In a USA Today article last week, "Is That Lion the King of Kings?" the question was raised as to whether Lewis' film should be understood as a "rip-roaring piece of fantasy--or a fairy tale suffused with Christian imagery?" The answer appears to be both, and Disney is doing its best to market the movie on two tracks, as a cross between The Lord of the Rings and The Passion of the Christ. And all indications suggest that they will succeed. In a Big Way.

But it is clear that, while Lewis set out to write a children's book that would be remarkably exciting and adventurous, he also had a distinct purpose for his writing. He wrote: "I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past certain inhibitions which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ?...I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices, almost as if it were something medical...But  supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could." (From "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said") Has Lewis here not put his finger on one of the great challenges of our day, to have a fresh and vital approach to worship, stripped of the veneer of religiosity? What would it look like to recapture the essence of Lewis' approach in our own day?

As G. K. Chesterton had earlier "baptized" Lewis' imagination through his writings when Lewis was an adolescent, so too he wanted to "sneak past watchful dragons" in his Narnia series to prepare children for the Christian story. But if one reads the book, or sees the film, I'm convinced they will see that Narnia has much to say about our lives, the things we deeply cherish, the things that we desire, and the things that make the thing called life so enchanting and exhilerating! So as we watch the movie with our children, grandchildren, or friends, here are a few things for us to consider:

The Wardrobe...
I mentioned this in the last blog, but the Wardrobe introduces a concept which frequently occurs in all of the Narnia books: "The inside is bigger than the outside." While from the outside, the Wardrobe the Pevensie children enter to get to Narnia looks rather ordinary, it actually leads them to this other, mysterious world. Lewis hated "reductionistic" thinking in which all reality is reduced to the "visible, tangible." The Wardrobe serves as the vehicle for this unseen, spiritual, though real, world. But here's the kicker. The children can't always get into Narnia through the Wardrobe. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Lewis was challenging our thinking in terms of how we view God.

The Great Lion... 
There has been much press of late about Lewis' letter denouncing any kind of "cartoon" Aslan. But if Disney has done their job well (trailers of the film suggest they have), Lewis may have been quite pleased with this Aslan-on-the-big-screen. Make no mistake about it, the Aslan of Narnia is a flesh-and-blood lion, and he awakens fear in the children as much as delight. Mr. Beaver reminds Lucy that while Aslan "isn't safe, he is good." Peter will later admit, "I'm longing to see him...even if I do feel frightened when it comes to the point." A lot of our feel-good, "Jesus is my buddy" worship, could use a dose of Aslan...

Sin and Evil...
While the modern world tends to see evil as mysterious and interesting, and good as bland and boring, in Narnia, they are reversed. The Wicked White Witch is cruel and colorless, while it is Aslan who is mysterious and exciting. His golden face is full of life, while her starched face is monotonous in its cruelty, hatred, and obsession with power. Lewis, building on his understanding of Saint Augustine, is intimating to us that sin and evil have no existence of their own, but are only the parasites of good.  

Sacrifice and Salvation... 
While Aslan's death and resurrection are pivotal events in the book, and invite comparison with the Biblical narrative, Lewis avoided making a precise parallel to the Bible. A key aspect of the story is that sin deserves death. When the children understand that Edmund has become a traitor, and therefore deserves death, Lucy asks whether Aslan can save him.  Aslan responds, "All shall be done...But it may be harder than you think." She doesn't realize the price Aslan will have to pay. Later, Aslan gives us the meaning of his own death, when he says that if the Witch could have looked into the darkness before time, she would have known that "when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards..." I'll leave you to ponder that one on your own...

Father Christmas... 
In Narnia, there is no competition between Santa Claus and the celebration of Jesus' birth. Father Christmas is portrayed by Lewis as subservient to Aslan, and his presence heralds the coming of Christmas, something the Witch had always kept from happening. And Father Christmas brings gifts, but they are to be understood as tools, not simply toys. The children will need them in their struggle with the Wicked Witch and her evil forces. Lewis is suggesting to us that the gifts and blessings given to us should never be squandered or held back, but put to good use. Once a gift is given, it cannot be taken away, although it can be misused or ignored. For "once a king or queen in Narnia, always a king or queen." Now that is a different take on Christmas, wouldn't you say?

 
-Barry Morrow

Last Christmas well-known recording artist James Taylor released a Christmas CD that was only available through Hallmark Gift Stores. Some of you may have heard this remarkable CD, which has some of the most well known carols of the Christmas season. One of those carols that continues to powerfully move me is titled, In the Bleak Mid-Winter, a well-known hymn from the British Christmas tradition. The hymn is based on a traditional Celtic folk song, but  is an original composition.

What many people do not realize is that the melody to the hymn was composed by Gustav Holst (1874-1934), perhaps best know for his orchestral masterpiece, The Planets. Holst's melody, Cranham (named after the town in which it was written), was set to a poem written by English poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), In the Bleak Mid-Winter was first published in The English Hymnal in 1906, and has always been one of Holst's most popular compositions. The beauty and simplicity of the folk song greatly inspired Holst, May the hymn's lyrics serve as a personal meditation for each of us at this Christmastime.

    "In the bleak mid-winter,
     The frosty wind did moan.
     The earth stood hard as iron,
     Water like a stone.
     Snow on snow had fallen,
     Snow on snow on snow.
     In the bleak mid-winter,
     Oh, so long ago.

    Angels and archangels,
    They have gathered there.
    Cherubim and seraphim,
    Rising in the air.

    But only his mother,
    In her maiden bliss,
    Worshipped the Beloved,
    With a mother's kiss.

    Heaven cannot hold Him,
    Or can earth sustain,
    Heaven and earth shall fall away,
    When He comes to reign.

     What then can I give Him,
     Empty as I am.
     If I were a shepherd,
     I would bring a lamb.
     If I were a wise man,
     Oh, I would do my part.
     What then can I give Him,
     I must give my heart." 

    For FinishingWell,

    Barry Morrow 

The great Russian novelist Tolstoy once remarked, "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." Unfortunately, his words often ring true in many of our lives, especially as we reflect on the past year, and ponder the year before us. While I am always reluctant to come up with "new year resolutions" (the phrase has become synonymous with what we try to keep for a few weeks, and then resort back to our old habits!), the beginning of a new year does provide a good time to take stock of our lives.  Because we humans have a deep-seated desire to grow and improve, I offer up these ruminations for your consideration. These thoughts are arranged around the themes of  intellectual, physical, vocational, and spiritual growth. I welcome your comments on these, so feel free to post your comments at the end of the blog.

Intellectual Growth - One of the greatest challenges for professional men is to grow and develop outside their vocational arena. Let's be honest. You could spend all your waking hours reading the literature and journals dealing exclusively with your job or vocation. So unless we make time for other reading and reflection, it simply won't happen. Why not take a look at some of the recommended books on the finishingwell website that might be of interest to you? Also, in recent years there has been a return among many business professionals to the classics, works by writers such as Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. Many classics, based upon a Judeo-Christian worldview, do not so much attempt to give us "quick and ready" answers to life, as to show us what it means to be human, and to deal with the universal moral struggles in our world.

Physical Well-being - One of the most interesting films I've seen recently was Morgan Spurlock's 2004 documentary, "Super Size Me." The film is essentially documenting an experiment conducted by Spurlock in which he would only eat McDonald's food, three times a day, for a month, with the caveats being that he would have to eat everything off the menu at least once, and that he would limit his exercise to the daily amount of exercise the "average" American gets. So, as he nears his walking limit each day in NYC, he would regularly have to take a taxi to get to his destination. Oh yes, and any time the MacDonald's restaurant asked him if he wanted the "Super Size," he had to take it! Needless to say, he gained a tremendous amount of weight over the thirty days, and by the end of the second week, his doctors were almost pleading with him to stop because his blood work and other tests showed how much damage he was doing to his body. While I don't imagine that many of us are fast-food addicts, "Super Size Me" does show the impact of fast-food eating on a culture married to convenience and "what's good."

A number of articles on our culture's challenge, or obssession with food, continually suggest that the key to sustained weight loss is to focus on living healthfully, and not just "weight loss." We need to learn to eat in a way that makes us feel well and gives us energy. For many of us, battles with food may serve to distract us from what is really going on beneath the surface--emotions that we may find difficult to handle, such as loneliness, unhappiness, sadness, or boredom. And when we combine better eating habits, along with proper sleep and exercise, we will find ourselves having greater energy, and functioning better all around. Concerning exercise, an article in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal cited studies suggesting that the biggest health benefis come from a small increase in activity: a nine-minute walk a day, or four hours of weekend golf both translate into dramatic reductions in risk for heart attacks and other health problems.

Job Satisfaction and Growth - Most of you who are reading this blog have reached a high degree of success and accomplishment in your work careers. And yet, I am convinced that no matter how much money you make, and what title you have in your company, you still have a deep desire to perform and succeed in even greater measure in the coming year. I am reminded of an article in a Harvard Business Review a few years ago which underscored the need for executives to continually be able to rekindle their passion for their work. Why? Because we know intuitively that work is about much more than the money. So my challenge to you might be, what are you really passionate about in your work? What do you do best? What might energize you in this coming year so that you can most effectively contribute to your organization? Part of maturity in our work lives involves coming to the realization that we do some things a whole lot better than others. Virgil, the ancient Roman poet, said it well: Non omnia possumus omnes ("Not all things can we all do").

Spiritual Growth - I've known many people through the years who start out with a New Year's resolution of reading through the Bible, but give up early on because they become bored or indifferent to what they are reading, or why they are reading! It is like they are trying to run a marathon but haven't done any training!  I believe we've made the Christian life much more complicated than it really is. I'm also convinced that some in the Chrlstian community are a bit like modern-day Pharisees, suggesting that if we don't spend X-amount of time every day reading the Scriptures, then we're not very committed!

All that to say that there is a real need for two things, I believe, in cultivating our spiritual lives. We need discipline in regularly exposing our minds and hearts to the Scriptures, which are written for our spiritual well-being (2 Timothy 3:16). Second, we also need creativity and freshness in our approach. I, too, struggle with discipline, and keeping my devotional reading fresh. But I have discovered over the years that a key ingredient to keeping the devotional life vibrant is to regularly vary my reading of the Scriptures, as well as to sometimes use other devotional tools to aid my spiritual walk. So I would encourage you to have a Bible reading plan that is realistic and achievable. Also, try to set apart a regular time of the day when you can read the Scriptures, undistracted, and spend time alone with God. Ask Him  to illumine your minds and hearts as you read, so that you might be shown how you can live your life worthily before Him that day, that we might pray as the psalmist prays, "Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in Your Word" (Psalm 119:18). We could do a lot worse...

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

A man who fell off his boat and spent about six hours in the ocean before being rescued by his own brother suggests the terrifying experience has served as a "wake-up call" that has given him a totally different perspective on life. Craig McCabe, a Newport Beach attorney, told reporters at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, California, "I was vascillation as to whether I was going to go back (to work) and make as much money as I could to support the yacht I wanted to fix up..."

The ordeal occurred on a Thursday in January when McCabe, piloting his yacht alone, was on his way around 4:00 a.m. from Marina del Rey to Newport Harbor for some repairs to his boat. He had been leaning over the boat's stern to see if the propellers had been entangled in a lobster trap-line when, as he was motoring through the morning fog around 8 a.m., a rogue wave smashed his 65-foot vessel, Heather (McCabe would later admit that he was mostly angry with himself for piloting his yacht alone - a cardinal violation of safe boating - for someone experienced in sailing). In the water, McCabe grabbed a trailing boat line but couldn't hang on. The rope broke one of his fingers and cut his face, leaving him bleeding. He was sure that sharks lurked nearby. About one-and-a-half miles from the Long Beach breakwater, he could barely keep afloat in the heavy jacket, jeans, and shoes that he wore, but didn't want to shed them in the 58-degree water. "I could see the shoreline," McCabe said, yet swimming to land was out of the question, as it was too far away. When a passing fishing boat failed to spot him, he began to lose hope. "Then things got desperate," said a tearful McCabe, flanked by his two adult daughters and doctors at the hospital. "I couldn't swim very far. The water was cold."

As he began to panic, McCabe spotted a buoy about a half-mile away, and decided to swim for it. As he headed toward the buoy, he spotted a blue balloon skipping along the surface in his direction, which he grabbed, and stuffed into his jacket for flotation. Within an hour the balloon had deflated, and being tired and cold, he began to shake, and started to slip under the sea between breaths. While McCabe tried to stay afloat, a friend returning to Catalina in the Catalina Express commuter boat spotted his vessel motoring toward the island. Authorites began scouring the 26-mile-wide channel with five boats, as well as three Coast Guard helicopters and a C-130 airplane.

By now, McCabe had been in the water for nearly six hours. As he swam up to the buoy, he faced some unexpected guests: five sea lions who were not willing to budge from their perch. "There was one male sea lion and he was very territorial...he had pretty good size teeth." At this point, hypothermia had dropped his body temperature into the 80's, doctors later said. Just before he gave up hope, McCabe heard a boat engine. His brother and several friends, on their way to Catalina to retrace his steps, spotted him in the water. A friend jumped in the water at 2:15 p.m. and pulled McCabe out. "We didn't say anything to each other," he said. "We just hugged. I was conscious but not in very good shape."

As McCabe fought back tears throughout his emotionally charged news conference, he admitted that he had been thinking twice about the yacht project ever since his niece had given him a book by C.S. Lewis on the Christian faith. Reading the book by Lewis had led him to read through the New Testament, McCabe admitted,  "for the first time in my life."

"It is a mistake for man to put his emphasis on the things of this world, because those things are going to be gone and not available to him if he dies, and he should put his stores in heaven," McCabe observed. "He should get his pride under control, his ego under control - a huge issue my entire life. I think I needed a wake-up call," McCabe confessed. 

What might be God's wake-up call in our own lives?

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

For Dan Gati, a 29-year-old lawyer in New York, the most exciting night of March Madness isn't the final game, or any game, for that matter. Rather, it comes in the days following the NCAA's announcement on CBS of the seedings for the Big Dance. That is when Mr. Gati presides over a "Calcutta" auction with a gathering of his friends in an Upper West Side apartment, with two or three more conferenced in on a speaker phone, and conducts an auction for each of the 64 teams in the tournament. The money that's collected will be distributed in the following weeks to the "owners" of the winning teams in each round of the tournament. The big winner last year was Mike Kestenbaum, a second-year M.B.A. student at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, who collected $1,871 - just over a quarter of the pot - when one of the teams he bought for $500 at the auction, the University of North Carolina, won the tournament.

In addition to participating in the New York pool, Mr. Kestenbaum runs a Calcutta with about 25 of his classmates. Last year, they held their auction at a Philadelphia bar, laptops aglow as groups of M.B.A. students furiously typed numbers into Excel spreadsheets during the bidding. "The Calcutta has appeal to students here who are investors and are getting ready to go into careers in banking and hedge funds, which require real knowledge and skill about valuation disciplines," says Kestenbaum, himself off to a hedge fund after he graduates. And some Calcuttas get really big. For the past decade, a 69-year-old lawyer in New York has run a Calcutta with a group of about 50 attorney friends. They gather at a bar on Long Island and run an auction similar to Mr. Gati's. The difference? This auction runs well into six figures, with the annual pot reaching between $150,000 and $200,000, the lawyer declares. The owner of the tournament winner gets 18% of the total. "If St. Johns, Notre Dame or Villanova are in the tournament, then the bids spike, it all goes up," the lawyer adds. "We've go a big Catholic contingent!"

By The Numbers: As you "finalize" your brackets before the action begins, here are a few telling statistics about how various seeds have fared since the NCAA men's tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. Interestingly, No. 6, No. 10, and No. 12 seeds ALL have better records than the seeds immediately above them; of the 21 national championships won since 1985, the No. 1 seeds have won the championship 12 times, No. 2 seeds since 1985, 4 times, No. 3 seeds since 1985, 2 times.

Another, and more significant, area of debate dealing with odds concerns the question of whether or not God exists. Arguably the most famous of the "wagers" ever made was penned by the French scientist, philosopher, and inventor, Blaise Pascal. During his brief life (he died at the age of 39), Pascal, who lived in the mid-seventeenth-century, left his mark on mathematics, physics, and religious discussion. He is generally credited with  the founding of probability theory, as well as the invention of a calculating machine in 1647, which served as a precursor to the modern day computer. In his classic work, Pensees (which can be loosely translated, "thoughts, meditations") his unfinished notes and essays  were collected by his sister after his death, and intended as a systematic and uncompromising defense of Christian belief. On the Wager as to whether God exists, Pascal wrote:

"Either God is or He is not. But to which view shall we be inclined? Reason cannot decide this question. Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of this infinite distance a coin is being spun which will come down heads or tails. How will you wager? Reason cannot make you choose either, reason cannot prove either wrong. Which will you choose then? Let us weigh up the gain and the loss involved in calling heads that God exists. Let us assess the two cases; if you win you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing...Do not hesitate then; wager that He does exist...."

Pascal suggests that in this life, there is no absolute proof available to the skeptic that there is a God. Nor is there any way of proving that there is not. Reason by itself cannot decide the issue. We live in a world that seems to many people to be profoundly ambiguous. Life does not speak clearly of its ultimate nature. There are some indications that a religious view of the world is true, while others would suggest that it is not. Pascal asks us each a very simple, yet profound, question about the Ultimate Issue - How will you wager?

Thomas V. Morris, in his excellent book, Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life, rightly observes that: "Pascal believed that each of us is either betting for God - betting that there is a God - or betting against God - betting that there is no God - by the way we are living right now. There is nothing equivalent to staying home from the track. Either we are living as if there is a God, praying, seeking to determine God's will, and trying to live in accordance with those determinations, or we are living as if there is no God...There is, according to Pascal, no middle ground. We already are making one bet or the other. Which is it? Which should it be? If we find that our answers to these two questions diverge, it is not too late to change our wager."

As you seek to finish well in life, where are you placing your wager?

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

The story is told of a young man who was writing a book about the people of Appalachia. As he made his way through a mountain valley, he noticed a large, old house with an old man sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair, with a cigar in his mouth. He thought to himself, "I ought to interview this old man to see what keeps him going, he's so old!" He sat down beside the old man and inquired, "Tell me, you men of Appalachia live to be so old, what's the secret?" The old man responded, "It's no secret to me!" The writer replied, "What do you mean?" To this the old man replied, "Well, I drink a quart of homemade whiskey every day, I smoke at least a half dozen cigars like these every day, and I chase women at night." With a look of astonishment, the young writer replied, "That's incredible! Just how old are you?" With a calmness in his voice, he said, "I'll be thirty-two this October..."

While most of us don't live life like this man from Appalachia, many of us lament the frantic pace of contemporary life as we seek that elusive thing called "Happiness." A new term has even been coined for our multi-tasking of various duties we juggle between work, family, and leisure: "time stacking."  Time stackers are people who juggle multiple tasks at once, a behavior that has become rampant among business professionals. In their book a few years ago, Time for Life: The Surprising Way Americans Use Their Time, professors Geoffrey Godbey and John Robinson, having studied the time-diaries of over 8,000 people over past decades, discovered that with the advent of current technology and communication comes the heightened expectation of how productive we should be. Yet the more we busy our lives seeking fulfillment and happiness, pursuing success in this life, strangely, we are often met with a certain disillusionment and hollowness.

Writing over four centuries ago, Blaise Pascal, the French scientist and philosopher who was mentioned in another recent  blog, left arguably his most profound legacy in his unfinished notes and essays collected and published after his death, known as the Pensees (loosely translated as "thoughts, meditations"). Pascal believed that, "If our condition were truly happy we should not need to divert ourselves from thinking about it..." (#30), He further observed: "I have often said that the sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room. A man wealthy enough for life's needs would never leave home to go to sea or besiege some fortress if he knew how to stay at home and enjoy it...the only good thing for men therefore is to be diverted from thinking of what they are, either by some occupation which takes their mind off it, or by some novel and aggreable passion, which keeps them busy, like gambling, hunting, some absorbing show, in short, by what is called diversion. That is why gaming and feminine society, war and high office, are so popular. It is not that they really bring happiness...what people want is not the peaceful life...That is why we prefer the hunt to the capture. That is why men are so fond of the hustle and the bustle..."

These ponderings of Pascal are some of the most powerful and relevant for our modern culture, which largely seeks validation by worldly achievement and success. Ironically, our culture has more leisure than any generation that has come before us, and yet, are we truly happy or content? We run around, harried and hassled, and complaining that we never have enough time, though in reality we really don't want to simplify our lives. In actuality, we want the very thing we complain about. We gripe about not having enough time to kick back, unwind, and reflect, but for most of us, such a thing would be unbearable! Why? Because we seek to be diverted from thinking about transcendent things. We crave diversions to keep us from genuine solitude.

Peter Kreeft, in his remarkable book, Christianity for Modern Pagans, writes: "If you are typically modern, your life is like a rich mansion with a terrifying hole right in the middle of the living room floor. So you paper over the hole with a very busy wallpaper pattern to distract yourself. You find a rhinoceros in the middle of your house. The rhinoceros is wretchedness and death. How in the world can you hide a rhinoceros? Easy: cover it with a million mice. Multiply diversions."

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

Most of us who have played golf would agree that there are many days when Mark Twain's famous quip is all too true: "Golf is a good walk spoiled." But as we prepare for the 2006 Masters at Augusta National, where the azaleas are in bloom and the weather is warming up, many are wondering who will be the favorite, especially when six holes have been altered in the past year to lengthen the course to a whopping 7,445 yards (155 yards longer than last year, 520 yards longer than in 1997). Even Nickaus and Palmer, longtime members of Augusta National, have captured pre-tournament headlines by complaining that the course is no longer the course they have known over the decades. Nicklaus, in an interview with Golf Digest that stunned everyone, including, it seems, the club, offered: "They've ruined it from a tournament standpoint."

Needless to say, Tiger seems to be the favorite, and by lengthening the course, and with his short game, most handicappers believe Augusta National has finally succeeded, not in Tiger-proofing the Masters, but in Tiger-sealing it, as only Tiger and a handful of long hitters are capable of winning. We'll see...BTW, you can watch every player play "Amen Corner Live" by webcast at the Tournament's official website, www.masters.org

But enough about the ongoing brouhaha surrounding this year's Masters Tournament. Here are a few interesting "Did You Knows?" about Alister MacKenzie, the golf course architect who designed Augusta National, taken from Geoff Shackelford's excellent article in the current Master's Preview issue (April 4th) of Sports Illustrated. The exquisite MacKenzie was born in 1870 in Yorkshire England, yet always considered himself a Scot. He was trained and first practiced medicine as a surgeon, but turned to being a full-time golf architect by 1920.  MacKenzie built Augusta National during the Depression, and was paid only $5,000, because his original fee of $10,000 was halved by Clifford Roberts to get the struggling project started. While MacKenzie claimed to have designed as many as 400 courses (the number is more like 150!), his legacy lives on at such courses as the swank Jockey Club in Argentina; Pasatiempo, a semipublic course in Santa Cruz, California (where his ashes were scattered after his death); and the #2 ranked course in Golf's World Top Ten, Cypress Point, down the beach from Pebble. But it is Augusta National, designed with his friend Bobby Jones in 1931, that defined his legacy, whose inspiration had been the understated, wide-open Old Course at St. Andrews. Unfortunately,  MacKenzie died of a heart attack on January 6th, 1934, less than four months before the first Masters was played.

While the history surrounding golf and the Masters is legendary, it goes without saying that the parallels between  golf and our human condition have been well documented, it seems, from time immemorial. The mutual joys and frustrations of the game are difficult, if not impossible, to answer. In many ways, golf is the least precise game in the world, as golfers are rarely able to determine with any precision exactly WHY they are playing well or poorly. In his best-selling book, A Good Walk Spoiled: Days and Nights on the PGA Tour, John Feinstein observes: "No one has the answers...Hard work can make you better but it won't always make you better. Sometimes, it will make you worse. Golf has no guarantees. And what makes it even more difficult, there are no excuses...No one ever gets a bad call in golf. No one strikes you out or tackles you or blocks your shot or hits a forehand so hard you can't get to it. The ball doesn't move and neither does the hole. You either get the ball into the hole quickly or not quickly enough. Period...There is no sport as solitary as golf. No sport humanizes you like golf."

And as few other sports, golf keeps track of every mistake. PGA tour player Billy Andrade, a friend to many MLB players, likes to tell them, "You can strike out your first three times up and still be a hero by hitting a homer your fourth time up. In golf, you make three errors and you're dead!" Or, as the legendary Sam Snead once chided Hall of Famer Ted Williams, "In golf, you have to play your foul balls."

In many ways, golf might even be considered a "spiritual" exercise. (You guys should get a lot of mileage out of this statement with your wives!) Why? Because it deflates our ego, and shows us how far we have to go. And while in many venues of life we may fool ourselves into thinking that we are really doing well, golf is not nearly as forgiving. In fact, golf may give us a glimpse of what we are really like, deep down in our souls:

"Most of us don't really know how well we're doing, in real life, and imagine we're doing not so bad. The world conspires to flatter us; only golf trusts us with a cruelly honest report on our performance. Only on the golf course is the feedback instantaneous and unrelenting...In the sound of the hit and the flight of the ball it tells us unflinchingly how we are doing, and we are rarely doing well."                                                                                                                                                                       - John Updike, "Moral Exercise," from Golf Dreams: Writings on Golf 

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

"Tell me: What came first, Easter or the egg?Crucifixion or daffodils? Three days in a tomb or four days in Paris? (returning Bank Holiday Monday).

When is a door not a door? When it is rolled away. When is a body not a body? When it is risen.
Question. Why was it the Savior rode on the cross? Answer. To get us to the other side.

Behold I stand. Behold I stand and what? Behold I stand at the door and...
knock knock."  -Steve Turner, Poem for Easter

"Oh, you're real, you're real! Oh, Aslan! cried Lucy and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses. "But what does it all mean?" asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer. "It means," said Aslan, "that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who has committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards." -C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 

"Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cell's dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acides rekindle, the Church will fall...Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping, transcendence, making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages: let us walk through the door... The stone is rolled back, not paper-mache', not a stone in a story, but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us the wide light of day." -from John Updike's, "Seven Stanzas at Easter."

"We want something else which can hardly be put into words - to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it...At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do no make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in."  -C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory."

"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep... Now if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith also is in vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God...and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins...If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most to be pitied." -The apostle Paul to the Corinthians, 1 Corithians 15: 3-6, 14-19

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."    - Mark Twain

 "If God lived on earth, people would break His windows."  - Yiddish proverb 

 
Jed Clampett: "Pearl, what d'ya think? Think I oughta move? Cousin Pearl: "Jed, how can ya even ask? Look around ya. You're eight miles from yore nearest neighbor. Yore overrun with skunks, possums, coyotes, bobcats. You use kerosene lamps fer light and you cook on a wood stove summer and winter. Yore drinkin' homemade moonshine and washin' with homemade lye soap. And yore bathroom is fifty feet from the house and you ask, 'Should I move?' Jed: "I reckon yore right. A man'd be a dang fool to leave all this!"               - The Beverly Hillbillies

 
"Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it." - George MacDonald

 
"To believe in the supernatural is not simply to believe that after living a successful, material, and fairly virtuous life here one will continue to exist in the best-possible substitute for this world, or that after living a starved and stunted life here one will be compensated with all the good things one has gone without: it is to believe that the supernatural is the greatest reality here and now."     - T. S. Eliot 

 
"Good men use the world to enjoy God, whereas bad men use God to enjoy the world."                    - Augustine

 
"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people." - G. K. Chesterton 

 
"It would be even worse to think of those who get what they pray for as a sort of court favorites, people who have influence with the throne. The refused prayer of Christ in Gethsemane is answer enough to that...Does God then forsake just those who serve Him best? Well, He who served Him best of all said, near His tortured death, 'Why hast Thou forsaken Me?' When God becomes man, that Man, of all others, is least comforted by God, at His greatest need. There is a mystery here which, even if I had the power, I might not have the courage to explore. Meanwhile, little people like you and me, if our prayers are sometimes granted, beyond all hope of probability, had better not draw hasty conclusions to our own advantage. If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the battle."   - C. S. Lewis, from "The Efficacy of Prayer," in The World's Last Night & Other Essays

 
"Not only do we only know God through Jesus Christ, but we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ; we only know life and death through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ we cannot know the meaning of our life or our death, of God or of ourselves. Thus without Scripture, whose only object is Christ, we know nothing, and can see nothing but obscurity and confusion in the nature of God and in nature itself." -  Blaise Pascal 

If you've looked at the best-seller displays in a bookstore recently, you've undoubtedly seen Rick Warren's book, The Purpose Driven Life.The book reached The New York Times bestseller list in January, 2003, and is now closing in on 25 million copies being sold, and will eclipse this number soon enough. Jim Dailey, executve editor of Decision magazine, a publication of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, sat down recently and interviewed Warren. I think you will find highlights from his interview with Warren to be challenging and inspiring. While some may quibble with Warren on various matters, no one can deny that he challenges us to think deeply about our lives: Are we living lives of purpose? Are we preparing ourselves for eternity? Will we finish well?

 
Q: Your book, The Purpose-Driven Life, is the best-selling hardcover non-fiction book in history. What do you think has made the book connect so passionately with people?

A: First, it deals with the most fundamental issue of life, and that is, "What on earth am I here for?" Everybody is interested in the question of existence, which is "Why am I alive?"; the question of intention, which is "What is my purpose?"; and the question of significance, which is "Does my life matter?"

Second, it is extremely simple. I worked very hard to make the message simple and understandable. I don't think there is a single thing new in the book that hasn't already been said in classic Christian books. It's just that each generation has to hear it again - that we are here for worship, evangelism, fellowship, discipleship, and ministry.

Third, the book is kind of the "anti-self-help book." The first line in the book reads, "It's not about you." It's funny that it is considered a self-help book. Try to name another self-help book that starts with "It's not about you." I think people are tired of self-centered, narcissistic culture. They are saying, "There's got to be something bigger than my own self-fulfillment in life." And, of course, there is. We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense.

 
Q: So you want to help Christians gain a fresh perspective on the big picture? 

A: Yes. People ask me, "What is the purpose of life?" And I respond, "In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity." We were made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body - but not the end of me...This is a warm-up act, the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity.

 
Q: How do you apply these big-picture kinds of principles to your life?

A: It takes both discipline and habit. Life is a series of problems: either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort, in making your life holy rather than making your life happy...This past year has been the greatest year of my life - but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth.

I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for. You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems. If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness, which is my problems, my issues, my pain. But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.

 
Q: Where do I start? 

A: Ask yourself, "Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes? When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, "God, if I don't get anything done today, I want to know You more and love You better." At the end of the day, if I've done that, the day was a success. On the other hand, if I get to the end of the day and I haven't gotten to know God better and love Him more, I just missed the first purpose of life, and I've wasted the day. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do. That's why we're called human beings, not human doings. 

 
For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow

 
If you benefit from the writings and resources on this website, you can now make secure online donations with any major credit card on the FinishingWell website. Please go to the "Donate" page on the website. Thank you!

The recent release of the controversial screen adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling fictional novel, The Da Vinci Code, has opened to staggering numbers worldwide. Since it's opening on May 19th, it has grossed some $146 million in the domestic market, and $319 million on foreign soil. And unless you have been abducted by aliens for months, or have been bidding your time in a cave away from television and media, it is hardly possible that you are unaware of the theological brouhaha that has been stirred by Brown's novel and, in recent days, Ron Howard's faithful screen adaptation.

While such an uproar might be surprising if the work was meant to be considered a work of pure fiction, the book begins with a page labeled "FACT," in which Brown claims, among other things, that "all descriptions of...documents...in this novel are accurate." While this gives the reader the false impression that the novel is based upon sound historical research, many scholars (not just Christians) have come out of the woodwork to show where Dan Brown is wrong.

While a complete summation of the book and film is beyond our scope (a cottage industry of books have spawned recently as theological correctives to Brown's novel), let's touch on some of the underlying tenets and conjectures of Brown. Much of the novel's claims are focused on the supposed "greatest cover-up in human history," that there was, centuries ago, an organization that kept secret certain truths about early Christianity, but which has been "hushed up" by the power-brokers of the Catholic Church. Some of these "secret truths" include: 1) that the early church never really considered Jesus Christ to be divine (but only a good man) until the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine, in the early fourth century (yet this is patently false, as our earliest New Testament documents of our Bible would suggest otherwise) ; 2) that the canonical Gospels of our Bible (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are not our earliest Gospels, but instead the suppressed Gnostic "gospels" (such as the Gospel of Philip or Mary) are our earliest and most authoritative sources, but that they were supressed by Constantine at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. Again, it is simply untrue that the Gnostic Gospels were suppressed prior to the formation of the New Testament canon - the "books" in our Bible. They just were not recognized as authoritative by the early church, but the lack of recognition is not the same as suppression.

A third conjecture of Brown's The Da Vinci Code is that Jesus was married - and to Mary Magdalene at that, and that their marriage produced children. Brown's hero Teabing argues that the early Church had to hush up such a notion that Jesus was married because "a child of Jesus would undermine the crucial notion of Christ's divinity and therefore the Christian Church." Even though, a priori, there is no reason why Jesus could not have been married, as Jesus did not teach that sex was defiling (indeed, He speaks of it as the means by which the man and woman become one flesh as God intended, see Mark 10), because the New Testament is completely silent on this issue, most Biblical scholars, even those of a liberal mindset, see this as a far-fetched idea.

"Everybody loves a conspiracy,"  the saying goes. And it is not hard to see why this kind of work is having such an impact in our postmodern culture, where it is the power of the rhetoric, and not the accuracy of the reporting, that matters most. Robert Langdon, the hero of Brown's book, himself stresses that "every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of fatih - acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration...the problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors...those who understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical."  While it is true that sometimes the truths of the Bible are expressed in symbols and metaphors, the Gospel stories themselves are not simply allegories, or cleverly devised tales (see 2 Peter 1:16). Rather, they are ancient biographies written according to the literary and historical conventions of the time, and as such, are the reports of eyewitnesses to historical facts.

Joseph Loconte's excellent article, "Debunking the Debunkers," that appeared in The Wall Street Journal on the day The Da Vinci Code opened in theaters, provides a fitting response to those distressed by Dan Brown's novel. Loconte reminds us of C.S. Lewis, the former atheist-turned-Christian apologist, who not only exposed the fault lines of modern secular thought, but also likewise saw the weaknesses of the church with great clarity. There are few things more corruptible, Lewis observed, than religious belief and practice. "We must fully face the fact that when Christianity does not make a man very much better," he wrote a friend, "it makes him very much worse." Books and films of the ilk of TDC have a great appeal for people who are acutely aware of the historic shortcomings of the church, and Lewis was familiar with them as well. "If ever the book which I am not going to write is written," Lewis cautioned, "it must be the full confession by Christendom to Christendom's specific contribution to the sum of human cruelty."

And yet, as Loconte reminds us, "Lewis would insist that a confession of Christianity's sins does not absolve us of the obligation to think: conspiracy theories are no substitute for calm and clear arguments about matters of faith." In one of Lewis' many brilliant essays, "Fern Seeds and Elephants," he debunked the critics of his own day - those who held that the Gospels were the product of myth, legend, and outright deception. He began by drawing attention to what he called the "shattering immediacy" of the Gospel stories, the often brash realism of Jesus' encounters with ordinary, simple people. Likewise, Lewis would also probably point out that theories about great "cover-ups" presented in such novels as TDC ignore an "elephant-sized" fact - that there are also many people and events reported in the Bible that are, to be quite candid, embarassing to believers. Do you recall that the lineage of Jesus Christ includes Rahab, who was a prostitute? Or what are we to make of Israel's history which presents a rather unflattering portrayal of great King David, who was both an adulterer and a murderer? Why did the earliest Christians not excise these characters and events from their story?

As Loconte concludes, "Here is the real harm of these modern conspiracy theories: They may appeal to our emotions, but they violate our common sense. They reject reason, just as surely as they reject revelation. 'I do not wish to reduce the skeptical element in your minds,' Lewis explained. 'I am only suggesting that it need not be reserved exclusively for the New Testament and the Creeds. Try doubting something else.'

Sound advice for the skeptics as well as the faithful.

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

If you benefit from the writings and resources on this website, you can now make secure online donations with any major credit card on the FinishingWell website. Please go to the "Donate" page on the website. Thank you!

In Woody Allen's film, Love and Death, listen to the conversation between Allen's character, Boris, and Diane Keaton's character, Sonia, as Allen waxes philosophical about God's existence: Boris: "Sonia, what if there is no God?" Sonia: "Boris Demitrovich, are you joking?" Boris: "What if we're just a bunch of absurd people who are running around with no rhyme or reason?" Sonia: "But if there is no God, then life has no meaning. Why go on living? Why not just commit suicide?" Boris: "Well, let's not get hysterical; I could be wrong. I'd hate to blow by brains out and then read in the papers they'd found something."

One of the recurring themes in Love and Death is Boris' quest to receive some kind of sign from God: "If I could see a miracle, just one miracle. If I could see a burning bush, or the seas part, or my Uncle Sasha pick up a check." In Allen's Broadway Danny Rose, Allen's character tries to convince the cynical Tina about the importance of guilt. After all, his rabbi has told him that we are all "guilty in the eyes of God." Tina asks him, "Do you believe in God?" To which Danny replies, "No, but I feel guilty about it." To Allen, there is no convincing proof of God's existence. only uncertainly and wishful thinking, and in the end, humor to stave off the isolation of being alone - adrift in the cosmos.

While Allen and other filmakers often explore issues of God and faith, and whether He even exists, an article in the June 11th issue of The Sunday Times told of another story, that of a scientist who has come to believe in God. Francis Collins, the director of the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute, believes that there is a reasonable basis for belief in a Creator, and that scientific discoveries actually "bring men closer to God."

His book, The Language of God (to be published in September) will again renew the age-old debate concerning the relationship between science and faith. Collins believes that "one of the greatest tragedies of our time is the impression that has been created that science and religion have to be at war." Collins continues, "I don't see that as necessary at all and I think it is deeply disappointing that the shrill voices that occupy the extremes of this spectrum have dominated the stage for the past twenty years."

The fifty-six year old scientist offers that when he was part of the team in unravelling the human genome, it did not create a conflict in his mind between faith and his belief in God, but rather, it served as his "glimpse" into the workings of God: "When you make a breakthrough it is a moment of scientific exhilaration because you have been on this search and seem to have found it. But it is also a moment where I at least feel closeness to the Creator in the sense of having now perceived something that no human knew before but God knew all along. When you have for the first time in front of you this 3.1 billion-letter instruction book that conveys all kinds of information and all kinds of mystery about humankind, you can't survey that...without a sense of awe."

Collins was not always a believer in God. He describes himself as an atheist until the age of twenty-seven, when as a young doctor he was impressed by the strong faith of some of his most critical patients. " They had terrible diseases from which they were probably not going to escape, and yet instead of railing at God they seemed to lean on their faith as a source of great comfort and reassurance...That was interesting, puzzling, and unsettling."

When he visited a Methodist minister to discuss the matter, he was given a copy of C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, which argued that God's existence is at least a reasonable possibility. The book, as the Times article mentions, transformed his life: "It was an argument I was not prepared to hear. I was very happy with the idea that God didn't exist, and had no interest in me. And yet at the same time, I could not turn away." His "epiphany" came when he was hiking through the Cascade Mountains in Washington state: "It was a beautiful afternoon and suddenly the remarkable beauty of creation around me was so overwhelming, I felt, 'I cannot resist this another moment'."

Collins, of course, joins a great chorus of famous scientists whose practice of science actually deepened their faith in God. Isaac Newton, whose work dealing with the laws of gravity has shaped our understanding of the universe, declared: "This most beautiful system could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being." And Einstein, who believed the universe had a Creator, once declared, "I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details."

"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
 The moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
 What is man that you are mindful of him,
 The son of man that you care for him?

 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings,
  And crowned him with glory and honor.
 You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
 You put everything under his feet, all flocks and herds,
 And the beasts of the field, the birds of the air,
 And the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

 Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!"

 (Psalm 8: 3-9, a psalm of King David)

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow

If you benefit from the writings and resources on this website, you can now make secure online donations with any major credit card on the FinishingWell website. Please go to the "Donate" page on the website. Thank you! 

I think it was Tolstoy who observed, "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." If you are like me, change is not something one embraces so naturally. And while we are constantly confronted with "performance" in our culture (bonus incentives, performance reviews, an investment vehicle's year-to-date performance, etc.), there is another kind of "checkup" that is worth considering. I'm referring to  a "heart" checkup. A few years ago, best-sellling author Phillip Yancey wrote of a spiritual checkup that he scheduled, conducted in part with a silent retreat for a number of days (led by a spiritual director, no less). After the retreat, Yancey observed, "In those days of silence and solitude, I paid attention to what might need to change in order to keep my soul in shape. The more I listened, the longer the list grew." Of the list Yancey came up with, we'll here consider five of the takeaways he came up with, kind of a "spiritual action plan" for the next fifty years.

First, "Come to God with your own troubles, as well as the world's." Yancey confesses that he needed to find a better balance between the need for personal serenity and a proper concern about global hunger, injustice, and other issues. "I look at the example of Jesus, who surely cared about similar matters while on earth. As he said to the anxiety-prone, 'Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.'"

Second, "Question your doubts as much as your faith." Many people, particularly Christians, struggle with their doubts, sometimes about God's existence, His character, etc. Yet we need to remember that doubts are not such a bad thing. Frederick Buechner has observed that doubts are like "ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving!" Yancey admits that, "by personality, or perhaps my fundamentalist past, I brood on doubts and experience faith in occasional flashes. Isn't it about time for me to reverse the pattern?"

Third, "Do not attempt this journey alone. Find companions who see you as a pilgrim, even a straggler, and not as a guide." Yancey, like many Protestants, confesses that he suffers a serious case of Lone Ranger Christianity - trying to do it alone. Yet the Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, tells the story of the people of God, and even the epistles of the New Testament address communities of faith. Yancey observes, "We have little guidance on how to live as a follower alone because God never intended it." 

Fourth, "Allow the good - natural beauty, your health, encouraging words - to penetrate as deeply as the bad." As a writer, Yancey laments, "Why does it take seventeen encouraging letters from readers to overcome the effect of one that is caustic and critical? If I awoke every morning, and fell asleep each night, bathed in a sense of gratitude and not self-doubt, the in-between hours would doubtless take on a different cast."

Fifth, "For your own sake, simplify. Eliminate whatever distracts you from God." Needless to say, in a culture steeped in diversions (Pascal would say this is so we won't be reminded of our unhappiness!), this one is HUGE. Among the things Yancey mentions, he suggests that we adopt a "ruthless winnowing of mail, and giving catalogs, junk mail, and book (and video?) club notices no more time than it takes to toss them in the trash." His last sentence? "If I ever get the nerve, my television set should probably land there as well." But what in the world, might I ask, would we do with our leisure if we didn't have television?

Worth pondering,

Barry Morrow 

If you benefit from the writings and resources on this website, you can now make secure online donations with any major credit card on the FinishingWell website. Please go to the "Donate" page on the website. Thank you!

In last week's blog, we considered five takeaways that writer Philip Yancey came up with during a personal retreat that he conducted a few years ago. In reflecting on his silent retreat, Yancey remarked,"In those days of silence and solitude, I paid attention to what might need to change in order to keep my soul in shape. The more I listened, the longer the list grew." Here are the remaining observations he made, something of a "spiritual action plan" for Yancey, and ourselves, to ponder.

Sixth, "Find what Eric Liddell found: something that allows you to feel God's pleasure." In the film, Chariots of Fire, when the sprinter's sister worried that his participation in the Olympics might sidetrack his missionary career, you'll remember Liddell responded: "God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure." What makes me feel God's pleasure? What significant purpose was I made for? What do I truly have a passion for? I must identify it, and then run.

Seventh, "Always 'err,' as God does, on the side of freedom, mercy, and compassion." Yancey writes, "I continue to marvel at the humility of a sovereign God who descends to live inside us, His flawed creatures." Paul writes in the New Testament, "Quench not the Spirit," and in another place, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit." In so many words, the God of all power asks us not to hurt Him. Do I show that same humble, noncoercive attitude toward people of whom I disapprove? 

Eighth, "Don't be ashamed." Paul declared to the church in Rome, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel" (Romans 1:16). More often than not, many of us tend to speak in generalities when the subject of our Christian faith comes up in casual conversation. Amidst a culture where the Christian faith is increasingly marginalized, what does it look like in your own world  to be bold in your faith? When and where am I most prone to "be ashamed"?

Ninth, "Remember, those Christians who peeve you so much - God chose them too." I don't know about you, but I find it much easier to show grace and acceptance toward  people who make no claim to be a Christian, than hypocritical, often uptight, judgmental Christians. Of course, this makes me into a different kind of uptight, judgmental Christian! 

Tenth, "Forgive, daily, those who caused the wounds that keep you from wholeness." Yancey writes, "I find that our wounds are the very things God uses in His service. By harboring blame for those who caused them, I slow the act of redemption that can give the wounds worth and value, and ultimately healing." 

So which of these do I need to turn my attention to today?

 For FinishingWell,

 Barry Morrow 

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"We begin to notice, besides our particular sinful acts, our sinfulness; begin to be alarmed not only about what we do, but about what we are. This may sound rather difficult, so I will try to make it clear from my own case. When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected: I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself."

"Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in the cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. but the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding."

"In the same way the suddeness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light. Apparently the rats of resentment and vindictiveness are always there in the cellar of my soul."

"Now that cellar is out of reach of my conscious will. I can to some extent control my acts: I have no direct control over my temperament. And if (as I said before) what we are matters even more than what we do - if, indeed, what we do matters chiefly as evidence of what we are - then it follows that the change which I most need to undergo is a change that my own direct, voluntary efforts cannot bring about. And this applies to my good actions too. How many of them were done for the right motive? How many for fear of public opinion, or a desire to show off? How many from a sort of obstinacy or sense of superiority which, in different circumstances, might equally have led to some very bad act?"

"...After the first few steps in the Christian life we realise that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God."

                                                -C.S. Lewis, from the chapter, "Let's Pretend," in Mere Christianity 

One of the things I've come to realize about our ability as men to finish well in life is our need for genuine reflection. One of my favorite authors over the years who has helped me in this endeavor is the novelist  Frederick Buechner. The widely celibrated writer has penned over thirty-two novels and memoirs to date, and has been a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. But Buechner is not your typical writer. His "religious" writings do not seem religious. He has an almost irreverent edge in his writings, which I find attractive, despite his liberal-leaning theology. While he and his wife live on a hilltop in Vermont, in what he calls "fathomless obscurity," for many Christians he has become a celebrity. Buechner's most recent publication is titled, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, a collection of his sermons over the past fifty years. Earlier this year, he was honored at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and was interviewed by Bob Abernethy, anchor of the Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. Here are some of his observations from that interview, as well as an article out of The Washington Times.

Q: What do you see as the most important theme, the most important thread running through everything?

A: In various places, I think the phrase "listen to your life." Pay attention to what happens to you. Pay attention to who you see. Pay attention to what you say, what they say. Pay attention to what the day feels like. Observe. That wonderful phrase, "religious observances," means, among other things, just what it says. Observe relgiously. Observe deeply. Don't just get through your life, as all of us are inclined to do, on automatic pilot, not much noticing anything. 

Q: How do you keep your faith in spite of so much suffering in the world?

A: Well, it is in spite of it. You can't pretend it doesn't exist. You can't somehow theologize it away, as people have tried to do...This is the shadow side. There is the great remark of Tillich, "Doubt is not the opposite of faith. It is an element of faith."  How can I hold these things together? I have no formula for doing that. But my answer to myself is, don't give up hope. God is in all those things. The holier, "the More," transcends all of the wretchedness that goes on in the world.

Q: There's a lovely phrase you have used someplace comparing death next to life. What is it?

A: It's from a novel I wrote called GODRIC, told in the voice of an 11th-century English monk and mystic named Godric - at the end of his days, in words he speaks that I in a sense put into his mouth...he said as an old, old man who had lost almost everything, "What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was set next to life would scarely fill a cup." 

Q: Have you eveer been depressed or in despair?

A: Clinically depressed? No. John Updike says God saves His deepest silence for His saints. I've never believed there is no God but I've wondered if it can be true, considering all the wretched things in this world, that it is presided over by a loving and powerful God.

Q: What is your greatest regret? 

A: That I have not been braver, stronger and wiser. I regret that I've not been a saint. A saint is a life giver. To be in the presence of a saint is to be more aware of the richness and the depths of life...

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow

Due to the feedback from last week's blog on Frederick Buechner, it seemed fitting to share some of his musings on faith and life:

Bible - "There are some people who say we should read the Bible as literature. The advice has a pleasantly modern and reasonable ring to it...The trouble is it's not like any other book. To read the Bible as literature is like reading Moby Dick as a whaling manual or The Brothers Karamazov for its punctuation...And yet just because it is a book about both the sublime and the unspeakable, it is a book also about life the way it really is. It is a book about people who at one and the same time can be both believing and unbelieving, innocent and guilty, crusaders and crooks, full of hope and full of despair. In other words, it is a book about us. And it is also a book about God. If it is not about the God we believe in, then it is about the God we do not believe in. One way or another the story we find in the Bible is our own story."

Confession - "To confess your sins to God is not to tell him anything he doesn't already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the bridge."

 
Doubt - "Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don't have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving."

"There is little we can point to in our lives as deserving anything but God's wrath. Our best moments have been mostly grotesque parodies. Our best loves have been almost always blurred wtih selfishness and deceit. But there is something to which we can point. Not anything that we ever did or were, but something that was done for us by another. Not our own lives, but the life of one who died in our behalf and yet is still alive. This is our only glory and our only hope. And the sound that it makes is the sound of excitement and gladness and laughter that floats through the night air from a great banquet. It is what Christians mean by salvation, and we saw it first at Emmaus, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

Some forty-three years ago, on November 22, 1963, three remarkably famous men (but for very different reasons) died within hours of each other. These three men were the philosopher Aldous Huxley, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, and Oxford don and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. While the world watched in horror of Kennedy's assassination, the other two notable personalities quietly exited the world with little fanfare.

Historians to this day debate the Kennedy legacy. During his life he achieved tremendous worldwide popularity, and his life seemed to symbolize a mythical Camelot. It is interesting that while Kennedy's "New Frontier" saw the American space program as the needed answer to Sputnik, Huxley and Lewis had serious misgivings about the totalitarian effect of technological development. While George Orwell in his 1984 imagined a world characterized by totalitarian slavery, Huxley, in his most famous novel, Brave New World (1932), pictured a humanity that could be conditioned to mindlessly embrace slavery (Some argue that BNW grows more plausible each year). Lewis would echo a similar sentiment about the dark irony of technology, which while promising freedom, in the end takes it away, in his work, The Abolition of Man (1943).

Peter Kreeft, a philosophy professor at Boston College, penned an imaginary after-death dialog between these three men which he titled, Between Heaven and Hell. Kreeft's writing style is amusing, as the three men discuss various theological and philosophical perspectives. All three believed, in different ways, that death is not the end of human life. Kreeft presents these three as participating in The Great Conversation that continues to go on over many centuries, presenting Kennedy at a modern humanist, Huxley as an Eastern pantheist, and Lewis as a Christian theist.

The years have diminished Kennedy and Huxley, as Kennedy's habitual indiscretions have been well documented, and Huxley, toward the end of his life, retreated into drugs. He urged his followers, "Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma."

In contrast, Lewis believed in a muscular Christianity that inspired hope not only for this life, but for a life to come: "In Christ," he said, "a new kind of man appeared; and the new kind of life which began in Him is to be put into us." "God," he contended, "cannot give us peace and happiness apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." While Huxley and Kennedy would have given little serious consideration of Lewis' staunch Christian faith, it was Lewis, in his early thirties, who came "kicking and screaming" (his words) into God's kingdom, as he was confronted with the Truth of what he would term "mere" Christianity.

Walter Hooper, Lewis' literary secretary who has served as editor of the Lewis Estate since Lewis' death, is surely right when he observes in the Preface to Lewis' collection of essays, "Christian Reflections," that "the central premise of all Lewis' theological works - a premise implicit - is that all men are immortal. While this may strike the thoughtful christian as a fundamental tenet, the fact that men are immortal is news to many people today. The contemporary preoccupation with "individual rights" and "freedom" has deceived many to imagine we can invent our own theology in lieu of Lewis' orthodox belief in a real Heaven and Hell.

What kind of vision do we have of life? How should our vision impact the way we treat others? Is it possible to truly finish well in life without such a belief that we, and others, will live forever? 

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of those destinations...There are no ordinary people. You have never talked with a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendours."

-C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory"

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

Once upon a time there was a king who dearly loved a peasant maid. The king had a few options available to him. First, he could bring the maiden to live with him in his royal palace. But that wouldn't do, for finding herself suddenly surrounded by the splendor and pomp of the palace, she might easily begin to think too highly of herself. And since love desires no vanity, the king couldn't take that risk.

A second option for the king was to visit his beloved in all his pomp and glory to receive her obeisance and worship. She might be happy enough with this - who wouldn't be thrilled by such a visit? But because love desires unity, and as long as they maintained the distinction between king and subject, they could never experience unity.

A third way open to the monarch would be to disguise himself as a beggar (as fairy-tale kings sometimes do) before visitng her in her hovel. But the king would certainly be found out, for respectable young kings are not brought up to act like serfs. In this case, love would be frustrated by deceit and uncertainty.

No, there was only one way the king could achieve unity with his beloved and not threaten their relationship with vanity, separation or deceit. The king had to join the maiden in her humble station. There could be no play-acting, no disguise. It had to be the real thing. Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, wrote this parable to illustrate the Incarnation, God's becoming man. "Love does not alter the beloved," concluded Kierkegaard, "it alters itself."

Kierkegaard's story embodies God's logic in Christmas, our celebration of Jesus Christ, the Messiah's birth. Love was the motivation of the Incarnation ("God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son," John 3:16); Self-revelation was its purpose ("The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us," John 1:14); and unity was its goal ("Yet to all who received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God," John 1:12). Given those three things--love, self-revelation and unity--God's only option to reach out to His beloved humanity was to become one of us, even to the point of dying the lowest form of death we could die. That was no shame, no theatrical performance, but the real thing.

 "The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God."                                                                -C.S. Lewis 

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

The Oxford don C.S. Lewis, although he died on the same day as President John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley (November 22nd, 1963), continues to impact millions of people through his writings, and the award-winning movie Shadowlands, based on his life (starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger) has brought much acclaim his way. Lewis, a devout atheist until his early thirties, became a follower of Christ, and through his writings in subsequent years, was often referred to as the "apostle to the skeptics" for our contemporary world. Anthony Burgess, writing in The New York Times Book Review, said of Lewis: "C.S. Lewis is the ideal persuader for the half-convinced, for the good man who would like to be a Christian but finds his intellect getting in the way." Here are a few of his insightful thoughts about life and faith.

"The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in..." -"Is Christianity Hard or Easy?", Mere Christianity 

"The Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one...but the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a green house does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it."  - "The Practical Conclusion," Mere Christianity

"I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptation. It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, impatience, etc., don't get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard. The only  fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present with us: it is the very sign of His presence..." -Letter to a former pupil, 20 January, 1942, from Letters of C.S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper

"When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good. a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right...Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either." -"Morality and Psychoanalysis," Mere Christianity 

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. -"Hope," Mere Christianity 

"At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in." -"The Weight of Glory," in  The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses

For FinishingWell,

 Barry Morrow

-Why not forward this to someone who would enjoy Lewis' thoughts about faith! 

So what did Galileo, Plato, Einstein, and Edison have in common? The makers of the "underground" movie, "The Secret," say they all used a simple philosophy to achieve success in life, and they claim, it can work for everyone! At schools, community centers, and homes, people are flocking to see a film that promises revelations to change their lives. Mysteriously, albeit intentionally, it cannot be seen in theaters. Thanks to an ingenious viral video marketing campaign using a grassroots, word-of-mouth strategy and the Internet, its producers say that millions have already learned a secret that has existed, according to the tagline, "and travelled through the centuries to reach you." The film also suggests that there has been a conspiracy to keep this central principle hidden from the public (remind you of another film suggesting conspiracy theories?).

Today, the controversial self-help book (also a DVD), has hit No. 1 on USA Today's Bestselling Books list. Authored by Australian reality-TV producer Rhonda Byrne, the book has been touted on television by the likes of Oprah Winfrey (last week) and Larry King in two episodes of his Larry King Live Show last November. The premise of both the book and film is that the "Law of Attraction" holds the key to the universe, and ultimately, to our happiness. If we think positively, and focus on them intently, we become the magnet that pulls everything we want toward us. But if our thoughts are negative, the Law of Attraction suggests, then we will attract bad things into our lives.

Perhaps two of the most disturbing and controversial aspects of the book and film deal with the mind's power over health, and the use of ancient wisdom and magic to acquire material goods. With respect  to health, Michael Bernard Beckwith, founder of Agape International Spiritual Center, is quoted: "I've seen kidneys regenerated. I've seen cancer dissolved." Concerning ancient wisdom to acquire material goods, a kid in the film who wants a red BMX bicycle cuts out a picture in a catalog, concentrates real hard, and is rewarded with the spiffy two-wheeler!

In many ways, such thinking observed in The Secret may seem "new," but it is actually as old as the human race. For from our very origin, humanity has been faced with the temptation (as our ancestors were tested by the Tempter in the Garden, Genesis 3), to either live life autonomously, free from the benevolent hand of the Creator, or to live in obedience to His revealed will. When it comes down to it, there are only two choices: to conform our soul to reality, or to conform reality to our wishes.This Human Potential Movement, popularized in The Secret, seeks to gain the world at the expense of obedience to God and His revealed truth. C.S. Lewis made this important distinction in his work, The Abolition of Man;

"For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virture. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique..."

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

The great Russian writer Dostoevsky penned these famous words over one hundred years ago, "If there is no God, then all things are permitted." When he wrote these words, I doubt that he knew how far reaching their influence would be, for even to this day, the phrase captures the Great Divide between the house of Faith and the house of Unbelief. Filmmaker Woody Allen echoes Dostoevsky's sentiment in arguably his best film, Crimes and Misdemeanors, mimicking Dostoevsky's great novel, and raising such perennial questions as: can a man commit a heinous deed and live with himself? Is there such a thing as legitimate guilt? Is our world truly a moral universe, where we will be held accountable for our actions in this world? Do things really matter in this life?

These kinds of questions come to mind in the light of  the New Atheism that is rearing its ugly head in recent days, led by such notables as the Oxford scholar Richard Dawkins, the leading evangelist for the Church of Unbelief. Dawkins, whose book, The God Delusion, has been a bestseller on The New York Times, was interviewed in the November, 2006 issue of Wired Magazine, and his vitriolic disdain for Christianity is undeniable. In the article, "The Church of the Non-Believers,"  Dawkins, who serves at Oxford as the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, opines that "the big war is not between evolution and creationism, but between naturalism and supernaturalism...the 'sensible' (he pauses to indicate it should be in quotes) religious people are really on the side of fundamentalists, because they believe in supernaturalism. That puts me on the other side."

It is important to understand that this new vanguard of New Atheists does not have a problem with any specific Christian doctrine, but with religion in general. As Dawkins writes in The God Delusion, "As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers." Dawkins prides himself on mudding the water, choosing to see no apparent difference between religious fanaticism and a reasonable, defensible Christian theism.

I wonder, though, if these New Atheists (who are really not 'new') have thought deeply about the consequences of a Godless world. For without God, can there truly be any basis for morality? Without God, is there a reason for believing that somehow, someway, this life's shattered hopes, disappointments, and frustrations will be made right in another world? Do not our deepest and most noble thoughts and aspirations "argue" for a better world to come, where True Goodness has its way? Writer Frederick Buechner expresses so beautifully the dilemma of the atheist:

"A true atheist is one who is willing to face the full consequences of what it means to say there is no God. To say there is no God means among other things that there are no Absolute Standards...To be consistent with his creed, an atheist can say no more than that to beat a child to death is wrong with a small w. Wrong because it is cruel, ugly, inhuman, pointless, illegal, and makes the gorge rise. But what is apt to rise along with the gorge is the suspicion that it is wrong also with a capital W--the suspicion that the law that has been broken here is not just a human law but a law as immutable as the law of gravity...A true atheist takes man's freedom very seriously. With no God to point the way, man must find his own way. With no God to save the world, man must save his own world if it's going to be saved. He must save it from himself if nothing else. A true atheist does no dance on the grave of God."

I think Dostoevsky was right.

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

March Madness. In nineteen days, sixty-three college basketball games will be played, all with a view to crowning the men's national champion in Atlanta on Monday evening, April 2nd. Over the years we have even coined the word, "bracketology," to describe the art of choosing who we like in the tournament.  NCAAsports.com has free March Madness On Demand streaming video. Sportsfan.com and cbs.sportsline.com lets you create a paperless pool, so you can personalize your site with team logo while tracking online the different outcomes of NCAA games.

The numbers are staggering. Seventy-nine percent of workers participate in office pools. It is estimated that it will cost employers $237 million for every 13.5 minutes workers spend on the Internet tracking games, and it is estimated that a total of $1.2 billion will be lost in worker productivity during the tournament. And get this. An estimated $4 billion to $5 billion wil be wagered on the tournament this year - about a third on the Internet. And when the games are over, distractions could linger. Apple Computer is offering condensed versions of each game through its iTunes Music Store for $1.99.

Who is the favorite to cut down the nets in Atlanta on April 2nd? USA Today analyst Danny Sheridan has listed North Carolina and Florida as 3-1 favorites to win it all. The Badgers of Wisconsin are 10-1 odds, and the Yellow Jackets of Georgia Tech are 200-1 favs. He has Jackson State listed as a 50 sextillion-to-1 favorite to cut down the nets. "In case you don't know, sextillion is a 1 followed by 21 zeroes," Sheridan said. "Somebody actually called me and said I shouldn't be bringing sex into the NCAA tournament." Hmmm...

In many ways, life itself is One Big Gamble. Nothing we do that is of any importance carries with it a guarantee of success, nor is there anything we can do to assure even our own personal safety and well-being from day to day. Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and Christian apologist, was the Danny Sheridan of 17th century France, and was known for his famous Wager Theory on God's existence. Pascal wrote: "Either God is or He is not. But to which view shall we be inclined? Reason cannot decide this question. Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of this infinite distance, a coin is being spun which will come down heads or tails. How will you wager?"

Pascal believed that each of us is either betting for God,  that He exists, or betting against God,  that He does not exist, by the way we are living right now. To Pascal, there is no eqivalent to staying home from the track, or more apropos to March Madness, not placing our bets. There is no middle ground. In fact, we are already making one bet or the other. Which is it? Which should it be?

So what does the atheist "win" if he bets that there is no God, and he is right? Presumably, one "benefit" will be that he will never know that he was right. For if there is no God, there probably is no life beyond the grave, or existence of an individual's consciousness after death. True, he derives a certain freedom from his wager to do whatever he wishes. He can design his own lifestyle. But he is a person focused entirely on this world, since he believes it to be the only world there is.

For the Christian who bets on God, he will at least enjoy the satisfaction of finding out that he was right. And even if he were to "lose" the bet over whether there is a God, he would not be forced to face his error. For if there is no God and no existence beyond death, he could never have an experience beyond death that will disappoint. Atheism brings with it, at best, only a finite expectation, whereas Christian theism carries with it an infinite Expected Value. No disparity could possibly be greater. Therefore, says Pascal, a rational gambler will bet on God.

The Christian "wagerer" will conduct his or her life in such a way that he begins to gain a new measure of control over his passions, however imperfect that control may yet be. He will also have a transcendent and meaningful purpose for living, and a source of psychological comfort in this world of turnoil and pain. T.S. Eliot once observed, "I had rather walk, as I do, in daily terror of eternity, than feel that this was only a children's game in which all the contestants would get equally worthless prizes in the end." 

I think he was on to something...

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

A number of years ago, writer Philip Yancey alluded to the Southern novelist Walker Percy, who began his remarkable book, The Message in the Bottle, with a series of questions, six pages of questions in all, including the following: "Why does man feel so sad in the twentieth (or for us, the twenty-first) century? Why does man feel so bad in the very age when, more than in any other age, he has succeeded in satisfying his needs and making over the world for his own use?"

Percy continues, "Why is a man apt to feel bad in a good environment, say suburban Short Hills, New Jersey, on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon? Why is the same man apt to feel good in a very bad environment, say an old hotel on Key Largo during a hurricane?"

Yancey's article, following Percy's interrogative style, got me thinking about some of my own questions, many of which relate to faith, but others to just life in general. But all, without attempting any answers.

• Why do we, despite having more "time-saving" devices and technological advances than we could imagine, still lament that we are "too busy," and never have enough time? Why do we love diversion, entertainment, sports, and the "hustle-and-bustle" of life, but often dislike quiet and solitude? Why haven't things changed in the four hundred years since Pascal first made this observation?

• Why is it that  the more translations of the Bible we have, the less it is read?

• Why is it that only about 10 percent of the Bible (the Epistles) is written in a straightforward, didactic form, while the rest of the Bible relies more on indirect forms, such as poetry, history, and prophetic visions? Why are probably 90 percent of the sermons we hear preached in conservative, evangelical churches based on that 10 percent?

• Why do most of us look at financial wealth and prosperity as a blessing from the hand of God, while financial hardship or poverty is seen as a "testing" from God? Why does the Bible sometimes consider the former as a test, and the latter as a blessing?

• If Anna Karenina had had a cellphone on the train, would Tolstoy's novel have been 800 pages long?

• What in the world is the Book of Ecclesiastes doing in the Bible? Why do so few sermons get preached on Ecclesiastes? Why did Solomon, who displayed great wisdom in writing not only Ecclesiastes, but much of the Proverbs, spend the last years of his life breaking all the wisdom in the proverbs? 

• Why does a country like Sweden, with one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, also have a high suicide rate? Is there a connection? 

• What is the Song of Solomon doing in the Bible? Why is the Song of Solomon, alone of all Biblical books, interpreted allegorically when the Bible gives us little basis for an allegorical intent? How did a religion that includes a book like the Song of Solomon among its sacred writings ever get branded as an enemy of sex?

• If America is a "Christian" nation, how is it that the majority of its citizens cannot name the Ten Commandments, or the four Gospels?

• Why do sinners feels so attracted to Jesus, but so repulsed by the church?

• What did Jesus write on the ground when the woman caught in adultery (John 8) was brought before Him?

• Has anyone ever proposed an argument against a loving God that does not appear in some form in the Book of Job? Why is the Book of Job in the Bible? Why didn't God answer Job's questions? Why didn't Job seem to care?

• Why do so few Christians exhibit joy? Would a joyful person look more like Mother Teresa or Angelina Jolie?

• What did Aristotle mean when he observed, "Those who wish to succeed must ask the right preliminary questions."  (Metaphysics, II, (iii), i). What relevance does his question have for us?

• And one last question. If Jesus is the answer, then what's the question?

 For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

The story is told of Billy Graham, the aging evangelist now in his eighties and suffering from Parkinson's Disease, who a few years ago, was invited by the leaders of Charlotte, North Carolina, to a luncheon in his honor. Graham, Charlotte's favorite son, at first hesitated to accept the invitation because of his struggles with Parkinson's Disease, but then agreed after the Charlotte leaders told him, "We don't expect a major address. Just come and let us honor you." So he agreed.

After wonderful things were said about him, Dr. Graham stepped to the rostrum, looked at the crowd, and told them this story:

I'm reminded today of Albert Einstein, the great physicist who this month has been honored by Time Magazine as the Man of the Century. Einstein was once traveling from Princeton on a train when the conductor came down the aisle, punching the tickets of the passengers. When he came to Einstein, Einstein reached in his vest pocket. He couldn't find his ticket, so he reached in his trouseer pockets. It wasn't there, so he looked in his briefcase, but couldn't find it. Then he looked it the seat beside him, but still couldn't find it.

The conductor said, "Dr. Einstein, I know who you are. We all know who you are. I'm sure you bought a ticket. Don't worry about it."

Einstein nodded appreciatively, and the conductor continued down the aisle punching tickets. As he was ready to move on to the next car, he turned around and saw the great physicist down on his hands and knees looking under his seat for his ticket.

The conductor rushed back and said, "Dr. Einstein, Dr. Einstein, don't worry! I know who you are. No problem. You don't need a ticket. I'm sure you bought one."

Einstein looked at him and said, "Young man,  I too, know who I am. What I don't know is where I'm going."

Having told this story of Einstein, Graham continued: "See the suit I'm wearing? It's a brand new suit. My wife, my children, and my grandchildren are telling me I've gotten a little slovenly in my old age. I used to be a bit more fastidious. So I went out and bought a new suit for this luncheon and one more occasion...and do you know what that occasion is? This is the suit in which I'll be buried. But when you hear I'm dead, I don't want you to immediately think about the suit I'm wearing. I want you to remember this:

I not only know who I am...I also know where I'm going...."

 "Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." -Paul's words to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

"There are two tragedies in life. One is not getting what we want. The other is getting it." -Oscar Wilde

In Jonathan Clements' most recent column for The Wall Street Journal, "No Satisfaction: Why What You Have Is Never Enough," he tackles this age old problem of finding happiness. He observes that, "We may have life and liberty, but the pursuit of happiness isn't going so well. As a country, we are richer than ever. Yet surveys show that Americans are no happier that they were 30 years ago. The key problem: We aren't very good at figuring out what will make us happy."

We can all identify with the elusive pursuit of happiness. We invariably hanker for the fancier car, bigger stock portfolio, or fatter paychecks. And some of us have, or have friends, who have "cashed out," selling their businesses, and we admire them, thinking to ourselves, "If only that could be me." Yet, as we sometimes observe, some of the most miserable people in the world are those with the greatest net worth. And even in our own lives, when "having more" may initially boost our happiness, soon the glow of satisfaction fades, and we find ourselves yearning for something more.

Clements mentions two explanations, supposedly from the "experts," on why we keep striving after things. The first is that "we aren't built to be happy, but rather to survive and reproduce."  This is a kind of "evolutionary" take on our quest for happiness, and sees our pursuit of happiness as a biological "tease," a trick to jolly us along. Terry Burnham, a Boston money manager and co-author of "Mean Genes," suggests that the promise of happiness "is an incentive scheme for the benefit of our genes...it's a very