I generally post fully formed thoughts (or long mulled-over thoughts) here, but I thought I'd post this new thought because I think there may be significant implications and I'd love other people who are way smarter than me to be able to toy around with potential implications. And since I'm at a busy stage in my life, maybe I'll do some more of these Pascalesque Pensées (in terms of short thoughts, not in terms of the same quality as Pascal). 

THOUGHT: A Big Crunch would lead to a big bang before all matter was absorbed into the singularity. If one wants to argue that all matter in the universe is required in order to initiate a new big bang, then they would have to deal with the insane teleological implication that there is exactly enough matter in the universe to trigger a big bang, and no less would do (though more might). 

Yet, if one wants to avoid the teleological implications of the latter position, then most of the time when a big crunch happens, the singularity is triggered with less matter than the original big bang - leaving some matter stranded from the old big bang. Given ~infinite playthroughs, it seems like more and more matter might be stranded outside the big crunch force until eventually a new singularity capable of a big bang could not be formed. 

I recently got my third tattoo and wanted to share the theology behind it as I did with my other two. If you're interested in reading about my other tattoos, check out the following links.

Theology of a Tattoo
​Theology of a TatTwo

I have gotten all my tattoos from the same shop, and I have never regretted it. The artist who has done all of my tattoos has crafted imagery that fit my request. I've always sent him like 3-5 pictures of different concepts I want to blend together and then give him the free reign to use his artistic abilities to create a new image. For this tattoo I gave him three concepts I wanted him to blend together, which I'll discuss below. 

No King But Christ: Framing the central image is the phrase, "No King But Christ." If you've followed my podcast for any length of time, you'll know that I have become very averse to the consequentialist/realist ethic espoused by (or lived out by despite denial) most conservative Evangelical Christians, and really, most people in general. Everyone wants to get their politician in office, and whoever promises to provide the greatest chance of us getting our way we will bow down to, excuse any offense, and essentially worship. "No King But Christ" is a declaration that Jesus is Lord, which means Caesar (or the President) is not. 

Anarcho-Christian: The central image is a tweaking of the Anarcho-Christian symbol (the "A" for anarchism and the fish representing Christianity). Since I proclaim No King But Christ and since I believe governmental powers always exert themselves in ways which are antithetical to the Kingdom of God and the reign of King Jesus, I consider myself a Christian Anarchist in the vein of Jaques Ellul or Vernard Ellers. And I find a lot of inspiration from Anarchic sorts of voices - those who prophetically critique institutions - such as Soren Kierkegaard and Leo Tolstoy. Being an Anarcho Christian is really just another way to say "No King But Christ," but it goes beyond merely saying it and it puts the phrase into application. I will not serve two masters and compromise morality gain power through the violent arm of the state. 

Alpha & Omega: I asked the artist to take the Anarcho-Christian symbol and merge it somehow with the Omega sign. I thought it would be a cool insertion of double imagery here that the "A" for "anarchism" would also be the "A" for "Alpha," and the head of the fish being the "Omega." In this imagery is captured the eternality of the Kingship of Jesus.

One of the most famous scientists in the last century was astronomer Carl Sagan. While Sagan was a brilliant scientist in his own right, a large part of his popularity comes from his profound ability to disseminate scientific thinking and scientific concepts to the non-scientific masses. His willingness to step down out of his ivory tower and tend to the well-being of the general population has made him a staple resource in many lives outside of the scientific community. Sagan's condescension to the lay people may have a variety of explanations, but I personally think that one of the biggest reasons Sagan cared for the masses was because he was more than a scientist. He was an artist. A poet, to be more precise. Sagan could see beauty in the universe and in the story of humanity. His fascination and love for science and for beauty allowed him to communicate convincingly large scientific concepts to the general population. 

Perhaps Sagan's most famous observation was that we humans are essentially stardust. Sagan said, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” How beautiful is this observation? To imagine that this bright, powerful object we rely on every day of our lives, the sun, is actually the very type of being from which every molecule in our body has been sourced - it's absolutely mind-blowing and beautiful. We are all made of star-stuff. Every human you have ever met was once a piece of a burning, shining star. ​

Sagan's origin story may resonate within us as a story of great beauty, but origins are only ever one part of the story. Knowing where you've been or where you've come from can be wonderful, fascinating, and beautiful, but only in so far as it informs our journey at present, as we humans, unlike the stars, move. We are not static beings either in space or in time, but are rather time travelers creating and moving into new futures.

It is here that Sagan and other naturalists run aground in their ability to poetically depict the beauty of the cosmos. For it is one thing to envision myself as having once been a shining star, while wholly another to envision that this beautiful "life of the mind" (as Arendt depicted so magnificently) will once again return to being a thoughtless ball of burning gas, beautiful, no doubt, but without anyone to observe or enjoy said beauty. Perhaps even worse, though certainly no better, my molecules are likely to eventually become motionless particles, inert in all ways, as the universe suffers its eventual fate of heat death. To have been a shining star is beautiful and inspiring, but to become a shining star again - or thoughtless particles of immobility - is despairing. As you can see, then, a glowing origin story is nothing without the promise of a bright future. 

If any conversation is to be meaningful, then, we must understand the concept of purpose. This is something I have written at length about elsewhere, so I won't go into an extensive discussion of it here. But it is something we need to touch on at least a bit in order for us to advance the conversation I have in mind for this article. 

To have purpose, there must be three things: a purposer, an instrument, and a goal. Take an ax, for example. An ax has someone who made it and uses it for a particular goal, to chop down a tree, let's say. There have likely been thousands upon thousands of rocks over the eons which have been shaped like an ax head, but it wasn't until a sentient being came along and purposed that ax shaped object for a particular goal that the instrument took on having any purpose. For any object to be an instrument it has to have a mind who purposes it unto a particular goal. Purposers transform objects into instruments.

Over the millennia, axes have been tweaked and honed to perfection by sentient purposers. You can find various axes which are all created for various, specified purposes. But an ax which has been created for the specific purpose of chopping down a tree may, over time, become dull to the extreme point that the blade has become more flat than pointed. Perhaps the blade rusts, the ax head falls off, or the handle snaps. An ax can become less and less ax-like over time. At some point we may decide that the ax isn't even an ax at all anymore,  determined in large part by its ability or inability to function as it was originally purposed to function by some purposer. Sagan's origin story has nothing to say to us here at this point because there is no creator and no purposer on naturalism. There is no purposing of instruments unto goals, but rather cause and effect. You and I, while being composed of "star-stuff," have no purpose towards which we move or can hope in Sagan's system.

On Christianity, however, there is a creator and purposer who has endowed us with a goal towards which humanity functions. We have purpose, then, assuming that we continue to resemble the "ax" enough to have some semblance of hope of pursuing the purpose for which we were created. 

That is, perhaps the big question though, isn't it? For the Christian story talks not only of a purposer who endowed humanity with purpose, but a humanity which has marred the image in which it was created. We have sinned. All of us. Does Christianity, then, offer us any more hope of a purposeful future than Sagan's naturalism? 

In order to address this quandary, we have to first look at the concept of sin - the marring of our purpose and our being. How we view sin will significantly impact how we understand our purpose and restoration. Many people seem to view sin as a SOME-THING. Sin is this stain or burden that we take on or add to our being, like a cancerous tumor. And like a tumor which threatens our lives, sin must be excised from our beings. Rooted out. 

I don't much like this view of sin, and rather ascribe to a view that many of the early church theologians held. I view sin as a deterioration or an absence of being. If we stick with our analogy of the ax, perhaps we could say that sin would be like rust which eats away at the material being of the ax and thus diminishes its original functionality, or even its very existence if the rust would eat the whole of the ax head away. 

In Carl Sagan's world, we might say sin is akin to a black hole. It sucks all matter - all being - around it, into a singularity, creating this apparent black hole in space which prevents even the light within its reach from escaping. It creates this void of apparent nothingness. It is being collapsing in on itself. The analogy isn't perfect, as a black hole contains a lot of mass, which isn't really "nothing," but it is mass that is unobservable and unable to be manipulated by that which is outside of it. It is a mass unable to be seen, wielded, or purposed, and rather, devours anything which comes in contact with it. 

These two different views of sin, then, influence the solution we propose to our problem of purpose. If sin is something we take on or add to our being, then sin is something which must be extracted from our being. Certain forms of asceticism are a natural response to this sort of view. We want to prevent adding any more sin to our beings or we want to starve the sin out of us. But if sin is rather an absence of being, then the best solution available (or at least a viable one) would be the infusion of something - sin's antithesis - into our being. This would be akin to a bone marrow transplant rather than the excising of a tumor. 

Sin is a black hole. Like a black hole devours all mass with which it comes in contact, so does sin devour all being with which it comes in contact. Yet we know that the unstoppable inward force of black holes can be defeated. It may take billions and billions of years, but if a black hole consumes enough mass into itself - if all of the universe would contract into a singularity - it could explode outward in its instability and form the universe anew, just as it did the very first time. 

Just as the universe's answer to entropy and all-consuming singularities may be to enact a big crunch and begin anew, so it is with the solution to sin - a solution we Christians term, the "atonement." The crucifixion of Jesus, the Son of God, the Creator of the universe, was the blackest hole of sin there had ever been. Humans were confronted with true, ultimate, and infinite being, and doing what black holes of sin do, they devoured this being. Yet we know that when a black hole consumes all the mass in the universe, it can explode outward into a new creation. So it was with the consumption of the Son of God. But rather than remaining consumed, Jesus brought the singularity of sin to critical mass on the cross. By loving those who hated him and by submitting to the will of his Father against his own desire to avoid cross, Jesus destroyed the pull of sin's massive force and made a new creation possible. 

I am not here denying that the atonement doesn't have some/many other facets to it, but certainly the example of Jesus's life of true being is one facet. Many in my circles get hung up on the idea of example as inert (which may be why so many of our lives are not very exemplary). Example is a seemingly inert demonstration which doesn't do or enact anything. Yet when Jesus healed, what were his words but examples? He said "take up your bed and walk," and the man actually took up his bed and walked. The audible phrase "rise and walk" has no correspondence with actually rising and walking. The audible is an inert, analogical demonstration of the physical physical reality Jesus proclaimed. There was no interaction of a physical healer physically dealing with the physical man's physical condition. Yet despite Jesus's words being a mere analogical display, the man got up and walked. The example of words has no power, until it does. Until it's uttered by the one from whom all being flows. And uttered not as a command for nonbeing to depart (for how can the nonexistent do anything?), but rather, as a proclamation of true being and true reality. 

Likewise, the cross as an example is not just some visual and inert exemplar. Rather, it is a declaration of what the world - of what humanity truly is in the created intent of God's good world. While there is helpful imagery in seeing sin as being blotted out or washed away, I think it is also appropriate to view the cross as an event which filled the void that sin had created. For if sin were to be washed away, then all of me would be washed away with it, for sin pervades every part of my being. But if sin is an emptiness... The void... The expanse between me and God... Then the solution is to be filled. This is exactly what Jesus did with his example on the cross, and it is what he continues to do now with the power of his Spirit in us, which ministers to us and testifies to the being of Christ which can now fill us. 

The cross is less a command for sin to depart and more a proclamation of true being and true reality to come forth. I love the imagery depicted in Ezekiel 47 of rivers flowing forth and bringing life with them. Just as being flowed out of Jesus when a hemorrhaging woman touched his garment, so did power flow forth from the cross when being was emptied so it could flow into all of creation. Through this emptying and filling, we have the promise that as the new creation expands outward to form the new Kingdom, that we will be more and more filled with being until we are ultimately connected to God for all eternity. 

Carl Sagan may have been right in that the material from which we are composed likely did come from the very being of a star. But on Sagan's worldview, we are all also mortals, whose beings will eventually become less than we now are. C.S. Lewis, on the other hand, tells us that, "There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal." Lewis could agree with Sagan, that the material which composes our persons once composed a star. But that would be nothing to Lewis in comparison to the fact that the composition of the star was the breath of God, and that God's breath - his Spirit - composes us now, and promises us an eternal future of being not less than, but more than we now are. We are all immortal beings. Our destination is eternity - an eternity connected to and filled by the ultimate being, the creator and giver of life and purpose. ​

But in my weak attempt to maintain a small yard here in Romania, I think I have stumbled onto an interesting cultural observation. For the past year Catalina and I have heard Romanians (especially the older ones) rave about how natural their food is. When we get cherries, radishes, or grapes from our friends and neighbors, they are sure to proudly tell us how these things are good because they don’t use anything artificial. That was all relatively meaningless to me. I’ve done enough damage to my body in the first 20 years of my life that I’m not too hopeful of making up for lost time. But I have nothing against eating all-natural stuff, so I just nod and thank them for the food, appreciative of their interaction and friendship. Plus, at least the food may be healthier for my kids. I can give them a jump start in life. Overall, however, the value of “all-natural” hasn’t really impacted me too much…until I went to do some yard work.

I walked into our local store a few weeks ago to buy some items, one of which was weed killer for the many weeds that have popped up in our walkway and driveway. The small store didn’t have any weed killer, so a few days later, I tried a bigger store. It also didn’t have any. After a few more attempts, I realized that the only plant products I could find were life-giving, all-natural fertilizers. But that just didn’t seem right. There had to be a place to buy dangerous, murderous, synthetic, weed-killing chemicals. I held up hope for the huge hardware store in Brasov. Think Home Depot – same colors, same items, and just as big. It has everything. But I'll bet you can guess one thing it doesn't have... it doesn’t have weed killer. The Romanians have taken this all-natural value too far! What am I supposed to do? Pluck the weeds by hand? 

While I hope this story gives you some insight into how Romanian culture is a little different than American culture, I also feel it provides a good analogy for this past month. We have found ourselves in several situations where “weeds” have grown. We have been criticized by some neighbors for the kinds of people we assist, we have been in the middle of a different spat several of our neighbors had, and we had our credit card stolen by an individual and used for thousands of dollar’s worth of purchases. Especially in regard to this last situation, we’ve had to ask how to handle the metaphorical weeds.

For as much as I hate yard work, and for as much as I just want to scorch anything that looks like a weed, I think the Romanian way is the right way here. In fact, I think Jesus advocates the Romanian way in Matthew 13. Jesus talks about the different types of ground the “seed” of the gospel message can fall on, and what that growth process looks like. He goes on to discuss how even after it looks like there is a good crop of wheat growing, there are still weeds (tares) which are practically indistinguishable from the wheat. Christ’s solution is to not worry about the weeds. They will be taken care of. We don’t need to destroy whole swaths of crop to remove the weeds. Rather, we must tend to the crop and allow the weeds to be dealt with at harvest time.

What a freeing thing to tell someone who hates yardwork. I’ll be honest with you, I hate looking at these “weeds” that are growing. I hate brushing up against their thorns and being stung. I hate knowing that the weeds get to suck life out of the crop around them. But then again, I’m no green-thumb. I can’t tell a wheat from a tare. But my master can. My job is to continue sowing the seed and tending the crop. I need to keep dumping that good old Romanian, all-natural fertilizer out and pray that I’ve mistakenly identified some of these weeds. God’s policy for me is not scorched-earth, but graced-earth. I’m not always sure how that plays out, but I can think of lots of ways it doesn’t play out – usually the ways towards which I am most naturally inclined to pursue. Please pray with us that God would give us patience and love to administer his grace to others. Pray that he gives us wisdom as we try to both proclaim and live the gospel. Please pray that the seed would fall on good ground, and that God would grow and strengthen his church. 

There is a famous Orwellian movie I hear referenced every once in awhile - Minority Report. The movie is basically about a future world in which technology enables leaders to know who will commit which crimes before they actually happen. They are able to essentially rid the world of crime (except the crimes of the aristocrats, of course) by locking up "criminals" before they actually commit their crimes. 

The movie is similar to another common ethical dilemma in which you are a time traveler who has the opportunity to kill Hitler while he's a child. Would it be moral to kill him before he actually committed his crime, even if you were as certain as you could be of what his future held? Can the ends justify the means? Can one be guilty and justly judged before they've committed a crime?

Minority Report and time traveling assassins are all far-fetched sci-fi concepts, but the idea of preemptive justice is not far-fetched at all. As Americans, we've preemptively judged many nations through our military and many criminals through disproportionate sentencing. We drop bombs and we raise sentences based on what we know of our enemies. 

While we certainly preemptively judge on a national scale, we Americans often promote Minority Report justice on an individual scale. I mean, isn't that what self-defense usually is? If someone invades your home and you choose to confront them with a gun rather than lock your room and call the police, aren't you preparing to kill an aggressor based on the assumption that they're seeking your harm rather than your material goods? Even if one thinks the death penalty is a legitimate punishment for murder, how many cases of "self-defense" are cases in which one's life would have been taken? How many times is self-defense taking the life of someone who would have stolen or assaulted rather than killed?

I have to ask two questions, then. First, why are we so critical of Minority Report as being Orwellian when we do something similar in our promotion of self-defense on both a national and individual scale? Second, why do we hide our inhumanity behind self-defense? Many would be appalled at state execution for theft, assault, or rape, as many are even appalled at state execution for murder. Yet self-defense goes even further in that it is execution for a presumed crime. 

Self-Defense is passing the death sentence for a crime not yet committed.

Did Jesus only speak inerrantly? Was there anything about which he was mistaken? Was a perfect eyewitness for every event or could his perception ever be skewed? Did he ever get any of his math homework wrong? Did he know Bible verses perfectly the first time trying to recite them from memory, or did he have to work and try over and over again until he knew it? What does it mean to grow in wisdom and understanding if not that there is a point where we are less informed? Isn't being ill-informed sometimes/often the same thing as being errant?

When we speak of inerrancy of the Bible, we assume that it has to be so because God's words are inerrant. How is it that the written word of God must be inerrant while it seems the living word of God was certainly errant? Is it because Jesus's errant part was the human part (if you think we can dissect him like this)? Is Jesus's human nature any more prone to errancy than the non-divine human agents God inspired to write the Bible? How is it that the God-man indwelt by God's Spirit could speak errantly while the God-inspired, human authors of the Bible could write perfectly? Did God empower the human authors more than his own Son? Or does God only ensure that he speaks inerrantly for certain events - like the writing of scripture - and not for other events, like the incarnation of the redeemer?

The Bible is a complex document which can be confusing on a multitude of levels. But perhaps one of the ways in which it is most often confusing is in its bipolarity. Did Jesus come to bring judge the world (Jn. 9) or not judge it (Jn. 3)? Is Jesus the prince of peace (Is. 9) or did he come to bring not peace, but division (Lk. 12)? Or, as Proverbs 26 writes, are we or are we not supposed to answer a fool according to their folly? ​

Many point to these seeming discrepancies as evidence that the Bible is an erroneous and incoherent document which shouldn't be taken seriously. But such an assessment seems arrogant and dismissive, as one has to believe that the very same authors contradicted themselves so blatantly. Did the author of Proverbs 26 really write one statement only to pen its antithesis in the very next line? Maybe, but I think there is a better explanation. 

G.K. Chesterton, in his work "Orthodoxy," argues that one unique aspect of Christianity is its embracing of opposites. Christianity refuses to combine opposites into some dilution. True courage, for example, is the absolute desire to preserve one's life while simultaneously counting one's life as lost. Courage is not suicidal in seeking death, but it relinquishes one's life, nor is it cowardly, yet true courage desires to preserve life. Chesterton expounds on this idea of opposites or paradoxes in his chapter entitled "The Paradoxes of Christianity." Chesterton says, 

"[Christianity] separated the two ideas and then exaggerated them both. In one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before; in another way he was to be humbler than he had ever been before. In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners. All humility that had meant pessimism, that had meant man taking a vague or mean view of his whole destiny— all that was to go. We were to hear no more the wail of Ecclesiastes that humanity had no preeminence over the brute, or the awful cry of Homer that man was only the saddest of all the beasts of the field. Man was a statue of God walking about the garden. Man had pre-eminence over all the brutes; man was only sad because he was not a beast, but a broken god. The Greek had spoken of men creeping on the earth, as if clinging to it. Now Man was to tread on the earth as if to subdue it. Christianity thus held a thought of the dignity of man that could only be expressed in crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage. Yet at the same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness of man that could only be expressed in fasting and fantastic submission, in the grey ashes of St. Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard. When one came to think of one’s self, there was vista and void enough for any amount of bleak abnegation and bitter truth. There the realistic gentleman could let himself go— as long as he let himself go at himself. There was an open playground for the happy pessimist. Let him say anything against himself short of blaspheming the original aim of his being; let him call himself a fool and even a damned fool (though that is Calvinistic); but he must not say that fools are not worth saving. He must not say that a man, quâ man, can be valueless. Here again, in short, Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious." [For more on Chesterton, check out my summaries here]
​
Christians, then, ought not to be surprised that Christianity so often contains furious opposites and seeming paradoxes. That's really what the truest virtues are - furious opposites held in tandem, not in dilution

Right now our extended team (Team Romania + Team Odessa) is working through one of these Christian paradoxes - waiting or waltzing. Both of these themes can be found throughout the Bible. Abraham waited on God to provide him a son. Joseph waited on his vindication. Elijah waited for God's still, small voice. The world waited for a true messiah. But at the same time, the Bible is jam packed with a theme which depicts God's expectation that we move forward in faith. Abraham moved out from his homeland. David faced Goliath. And Peter stepped out of the boat onto the water. Sometimes faith is depicted as a discipline which refuses to move forward with one's own plan in patient expectance of God's movement in the world. At other times, faith is depicted as stepping out in action and trusting that God will bring about the ends which advance his Kingdom. Faith is patiently waiting back, and faith is expectantly waltzing forward. 

We have seen God do wonderful things in his timing since writing our last newsletter. He has miraculously granted all of the Odessa team Romanian visas when it looked like such a thing was going to be an impossibility. God has brought mama M to the last month of her schooling - the end of a very long road. God has provided funding through Romania for the Ukrainian housing which was supposed to run out in May - an expense we had anticipated covering. We know that God is faithful, not only because He tells us He is, but because He's shown us His faithfulness. But it's easy to see faithfulness in the past and rejoice, and another to anticipate faithfulness in the future and determine how to act now. In what areas does faith look like waiting on God to move, and in what areas does faith look like moving forward and trusting God to provide? 

Please pray for the teams here in Romania as we navigate a lot of unknowns. Pray that we would have wisdom in discerning where to wait and where to waltz. And ultimately, that whether we stay on the boat or step out onto the water, that God would help us to fix our eyes on Jesus, for he is the author, savior, perfecter, and object of our faith.
​​

I want to start by thinking of the simple act of lying. Let's say, a little white lie. Why would a tiny white lie be inherently deplorable? If I say that the sky is red when it is in fact blue at this moment, the world doesn’t stop spinning. I’m not struck dead. Nobody is harmed, so it seems. Making a false statement isn’t in itself destructive. Perhaps. But moral idealism takes a longer term outlook on our actions. Lying isn't deplorable because it destroys the world in the moment, but because of the tears it makes in the fabric of the universe which grow exponentially over time. Little lies might seem small, but little lies are like little termites - they eat through would. Termites eat through physical wood, whereas lies eat through ideological and eschatological woulds.

The world would be a rational place if we didn’t lie. The world would be a place where autonomy was valued if we didn’t lie to each other. The world would… fill in the gap. Lies, like termites, eat through would. They destroy the foundations and underpinnings of all that is valuable. 

In a lie, then, the good which one says they seek to accomplish is betrayed by the compromise of the ultimate - the compromise of the world that would be if one didn’t contribute to its destruction in the lie. When one lies, they often justify the lie by arguing they are seeking to accomplish the greatest good. But lying for the good is like trying to repair or hold up the house by taking bites out of the foundation. It’s counterproductive. It does the opposite of what one says they seek to do. Rather than uphold morality and value, lies - both big and small - destroy it.

As just the tiniest of examples, let’s discuss another common hypothetical that comes up in regard to lying. It’s the infamous wife’s dress. Whenever the topic of lying arises, many commonly - only half jokingly - declare that lying can clearly be ok, because if a man’s wife asks if she looks fat in a particular dress, when she indeed does appear fat, the husband is pragmatically, if not also morally bound to affirm her with a compliment packaged in a lie. Wouldn’t it be mean to tell her she looked fat? Wouldn’t it be unloving? Perhaps. But I don’t think so.

If the husband gives his wife the truth, the wife may have hurt feelings. Maybe she resents the husband and punishes him by giving him the silent treatment or withholding sex for a time. There may certainly be consequences to the husband telling the truth, but notice that these are all the wife’s issues. Yes, the husband suffers, but it is the wife who is doing wrong relationally. The husband declared the truth and the wife is choosing a course of wrongful action towards him. This would be doubly malicious on the wife’s part because she asked for an answer to the question of her rotundity. Desiring to be told a lie isn’t any better than a lie itself, and the husband would have only been feeding into false perception had he not told the truth.

I know, I know. You think I’m crazy. But perhaps if we look at the ideal that lying undermines, you can see that a lie in this situation carries far worse consequences - consequences that the husband would actually become responsible for were he to lie. If the husband lies, he may buy himself some momentary comfort and relational ease, but what if his wife gaining weight has been causing him to become sexually less attracted to her? In avoiding the truth, he avoids a conversation that needs to be had. He avoids facing the truth that his sexual attraction is waning and he avoids working through that, which may mean dealing with his faulty expectations or problematic definitions of beauty. Stuffing all that would lead, at best, to diminished sexual intimacy and frequency, and at worst, seeking sexual fulfillment elsewhere.

If the wife is gaining weight the husband’s lie may also end up endangering her health. If a withholding of affirmation might actually be what the wife needs in order to recognize that her metabolism and body are changing - then a lie would avoid confronting the wife with information she needs to hear, though doesn’t want to - information that might spur her on to living a more healthy lifestyle which could prolong her life, increase her comfort, and heighten intimacy with her spouse.

Beyond the simple well-being of the wife, one also has to consider the way in which a lie undermines the dignity of the wife as a human. Psychologically or sociologically, treating one’s wife as if she can’t handle certain true information is paternalistic. While eating disorders and the like always need to be taken into account, being told the truth in a loving relationship ought to be a positive, relationship building event. To treat a woman as though she’s too frail to handle true information, especially information she asked for, should be something anyone who values the dignity and equality of women is against. Yet a lie in this situation denies exactly this. It patronizes women and fails to treat them as rational beings.

Beyond undermining the dignity of the wife as human, Immanuel Kant might point out that to lie to one’s wife about her appearance undermines her autonomy in that being given false information doesn't provide her with all the pertinent information she needs in order to make the best, rational choices - choices as simple as what dress to wear tonight, to much more weighty choices, like how to handle her health or how to work through tensions in her marital relationship. If a wife doesn’t know what her life partner truly thinks and she only has her self-deception to work with, then an honest second opinion on her appearance may be what is needed to make the most rational choice. 

A lie in this scenario, then, may provide a husband and wife with temporary comfort, but there are a whole host of relational and physical, short-term and long-term, small and significant consequences which result from a lie. Does that mean a husband should have no tact if his wife asks him how she looks in a dress, or should he just go around telling his wife he thinks she looks fat? Of course not. The truth is best told in the context of a strong and safe relationship and in ways that seek edification. It’s not in the purview of this article to get into all that, though, but please just know that it is a straw man if you’re going to act like I’m telling you that husbands should just call out their wives for being fat, or vice versa.

The point is that when we lie for some good that we hold in our minds, we actually end up only propping up fleeting and secondary things - momentary comfort and self perception. In the case of the wife’s dress, for example, this may be the good of our wife’s self-image or the continuation of immediate comfort and ease in our relationship. However, the purchasing of this short-term "good" involves simultaneously undermining deep, meaningful, relational structures like autonomy, physical well-being, relational intimacy, sexual intimacy, sexual fidelity, trust, and I’m sure a few others I’m missing. Lies often seem to work for good, which is why everyone always brings up Kant's famous lying to a murderer at the door, a Nazi looking for a Jew, or a wife asking about her dress. Sure, lies might often be bad, but there seem to be clear cases where they work for both small and great goods. I can admit that lies sometimes do work, in the sense that they do obtain certain desirable results. But I would argue that these results are usually, if not always eclipsed by the ideals and values they sacrifice, as we just saw with the wife’s dress.

What Kant argued for and what I am going to continue arguing for in this episode, is that the truth is always better for obtaining the ultimate things - the ultimate values. Those ultimate values may be harder to envision in the moment, and they may take a long time to realize. In fact, one might never realize the attainment of the ultimate values they invest in. It may be an investment for the future. My goal in the rest of this article is to show you how this investment works, and explain why it's worth your consistent integrity and sacrifice of immediate gratification. To help cast this vision, I want to start by introducing you to a concept that I think is going to encapsulate in one word what I’m going to end up explaining in many. This is a concept that I’ve actually been mulling over for a long time, but didn’t know there was a term for it until just a few months ago when I was reading through Dr. William Witt’s work on the atonement, of all things. In that work, Witt brought up a term called "eudaimonism." There seem to be several variations of meaning for this word, but the basic gist of the brand I’m going with is essentially this: Doing good works. Like, functionally. Good actually works. As a Christian, this type of thinking makes perfect sense. A good God created a good world, so you’d expect that doing good would produce harmony - shalom. You should get better results from doing good: functioning relationships, health, everything. Of course Christians believe we now live in a fallen world, so telling the truth to a murderer at your door looking for your friend, or to your wife - who may soon become a murderer at your door looking for you if you tell her the truth - it may not always work out well in a fallen world. But truth is not only an integral component of God’s good world, it is a functional component as well. It produces better results.

Before I move on I have to caveat this brand of eudaimonism from two other ideas with which it might be conflated: consequentialism and the prosperity gospel. Both of those eudaimonistic counterfeits are anathemas and I hate them. They produce nothing but rotten fruit, yet they’d be easy to confuse with eudaimonism. First, the prosperity gospel is an idea that says if you follow God then good blessings will come to you. If you send in a thousand dollars to the sleazy televangelist, God will bless you with a sevenfold bounty. That is not eudaimonism, it’s karma. It's guaranteeing that God is going to give you something in return for your actions. Eudaimonism doesn’t say that at all. Rather, eudaimonism says that the world functions in a particular way so that if you do something like say nice things to and love an enemy, that will foster better relationships and less violence than if you up the ante through harsh words and violent confrontation. You might be killed by this enemy you try to love, but your loving actions may actually produce better long-term results by ending the cycle of violence so your kids don't grow up seeking revenge on their father's murderer (see the movie "The Kingdom" for a fantastic example of this cyclical violence).

The second notion people conflate with eudaimonism is consequentialism. Consequentialism says that something is good because it produces good results. So if something ends up working, then it is christened as good on consequentialism. The ends justify the means. That’s not how eudaimonism works. Eudaimonism says that when something is good, it tends to work. On consequentialism, the outcome is objective and what is good is subject to change.The results are determined before the good - so that the good can then be determined. On eudaimonism the good is always kept objective

Both of these bastardizations - consequentialism and the prosperity gospel - pivot on the definition of the notion of what "works." Most of the time people are going to define “what works” as either a Nietzschean will to power or a will to pleasure. And honestly, these two things really go hand in hand and have all sorts of manifestations. Political or social status can help one grow rich, which in turn helps one to maximize pleasures and control. Likewise, becoming wealthy can help one to have more control over life and perhaps become politically influential. Consequentialism, then, scoffs at the idea that something like never lying could actually work, because “works” is going to be defined as power or pleasure.

It was in 2016 that I realized this is exactly the struggle I was having with my Christian community. My white Evangelical community determined that “good” was that which could secure them power. Consequently, what would not have been deemed good a decade before became labeled as good in the twinkling of an eye. And you know what, it "worked." The Republican candidate was elected. Evangelicals grasped power. Yet if you look at what’s been happening to Evangelism since then, the decline went from a graded slope to a precipice. Scandal after scandal, deconstructionist after deconstructionist, and growing cultural animosity towards Evangelicals - animosity labeled as undue persecution against innocent and righteous lambs, of course - it’s all hit a fevered pitch. So if four years of power is what defines “works,” then consequentialists can have their four years. But that’s not what Eudaimonists mean when we define "works.” We’re not talking about momentary power or pleasure, we’re talking about universals. Ideals. Values. Meaning. A will to meaning. 

I think the parable of the prodigal son elucidates this well. The prodigal son disrespected his family by asking for his father’s inheritance early. He was essentially saying, “Dad, I wish you were dead.” He left home with money in hand and lived it up in the city, surrounded by supposed friends. He had money, which gave him control, status, and pleasure. But when his money ran out he ended up returning home, only to find that the father who had raised him, nurtured him, clothed him, and fed him, was still there to do it all again, at the lowest point in his life. No matter what the prodigal son did, he had a foundation. He had a family - or at least a dad - who would always love him and be there for him. The son explored the will to power and the will to pleasure. He found that his actions to obtain these things wills “worked..." For a time. But then he just as quickly found out that what seems to work to maximize power and pleasure is fleeting, and it’s a will to meaning that is truly valuable. A will to meaning is the bedrock upon which true and lasting pleasure and good can be obtained. This is human flourishing right here - the good of not only the prodigal son (the individual), but also the good of the family unit and broader community (society).

Another great place you can go to get a glimpse of this concept is in Victor Frankel’s book entitled, “Man’s Search for Meaning.” It’s an absolutely beautiful book that gets inside the heads of Nazi concentration camp survivors. One of Frankel’s thoughts from the book reminded me of a crossroads the prodigal son came to. Frankel wrote about how prisoners would sometimes obtain cigarettes as part of their rations or for various work details.  Of course cigarettes did one no good. What the prisoners really needed was food, as they were only given something like 10 oz of bread a day and maybe some broth. Cigarettes, then, were for trading. You’d trade them for food in order to survive. Frankel said that whenever they saw a man smoking a cigarette they knew he had less than 48 hours to live. Smoking cigarettes rather than trading them for food meant that an individual had given up hope just as the prodigal son had given up home. It was a giving up of a will to meaning and embracing the fleeting will to pleasure. But things didn’t turn out quite so bleakly for the prodigal son as it did for those who smoked cigarettes in the concentration camps, because the prodigal son chose differently at the crossroads. Luke says that the prodigal son was  “longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate” Of course that’s disgusting - to eat  the remains of a cob the pigs had eaten off of and that had been slopped in the mud. But for a Jew it would have been infinitely more disgusting considering that an unclean animal - a pig no less - had come in contact with this food. Yet the prodigal son, in his longing to satiate his senses with the basest food that could be imagined - recognized that his life held more meaning than to stoop to satisfy his longing with what would have only been a temporary reprieve. Instead of smoking the cigarette - or eating the defiled cob - instead of doing a momentarily disgusting thing so that good may abound, the son chose the ultimate thing and turned towards home and towards his good father. He left the cob - his immediate sustenance that he needed to survive - in order to have his patience rewarded and his relationship restored when he was welcomed by his father with a fattened calf.

All of this is really just a long way of saying that while you might think Kant and I are crazy for the position we hold on lying, my bet is that if you do think that, you have a different, and what I’d call a skewed definition of this idea of “what works.” You might think you define “what works” as a will to meaning, but in reality, you definite it as some amalgamation of power and pleasure in the positive, or in the negative, you might define "works" as the avoidance of pain and discomfort for you or someone else. I’m sure you’re chomping at the bit right now for me to try to make my case that never lying actually obtains greater meaning, because you don’t think the case can be made, especially when it comes to murderers at your door. We’ll get there.Trust me. But before we do, I want to show you a parallel example that I think will help us when I try to show you how never lying obtains meaning for us. I want to look at the instance of martyrdom.

What, if anything, does martyrdom obtain? It doesn’t work. It’s pointless, right? It ends a life and prevents any more meaning from being created by the martyr, either through disciples or through progeny. Yet it was an early church Father, Tertullian, who declared that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. It was Telemachus, a martyr, who supposedly brought an end to much of the gladiatorial contests in Rome through his martyrdom. How is it that martyrs can obtain with their one life, the lives and wellbeing of multitudes, saving both souls and lives through the influence of their death?

Well, the martyr may embrace a refusal to dehumanize their enemies. They may refuse to deny reality. They might refuse to devalue their convictions. They display a bold confidence. There are any number of ways that a martyr, with their spiritual capital, redeems the lives of many. For while this world is being expunged for the martyr, another world is simultaneously being put on display for those looking on the martyr and seeing what she is doing with her life. How is she spending her life? And exactly here that we see that foundation of would we talked about at the beginning of the episode. Martyrs display what would be if everyone lived life as they did. What the martyr believes works - what is valuable and what is meaningful - is made evident by their courage, faithfulness, and integrity in facing even the most gruesome of ends. Their means of integrity displays their true and ultimate end, which is embedded in their very own ending. They put on display ultimate, immutable, and pure ideals through their living out of a will to meaning. How could someone with a will to pleasure or a will to power ever compete with eternal and incorruptible things like those? Conservative Christian consequentialists will give you four years, but a Christian martyr who refuses to compromise her integrity will give you eternity.

The martyr really puts things into perspective for us, especially when we, like the psalmist, look around and see that evil seems to prevail. The martyr helps us to see that the aging and decrepit former philanderer and the weakened and impoetent dictator may have had a few good decades, or so it seemed, but by the end of their lives, there is nothing left but rubble. There is no eternal there. Unlike the martyr, it’s the persecutor who displays that their system doesn’t work, for the persecutor displays insecurity, hate, violence, dehumanization, and an extreme sensitivity to opposition. The persecutor displays nothing but vacuity and destruction. Ironically, in trying to erase the meaning of another, the persecutor displays their own meaninglessness, and allows the martyr to put their eternal values and meaning on full display. So if we are going to sit here and say that what works is defined as pleasure or power, we completely miss what actually plays out in the vacuity and hopelessness of a persecuter's actions, or in the deep meaning of the martyr’s actions.

With martyrdom under our belts, let’s switch over to the concept of lying now and consider Kant’s murderer at the door. What does lying entail?Lying may work, but it also might not, as Kant himself shows. People often act as though lying will save a friend while refusing to lie will mean certain death, but that claim is wholly unsubstantiated. People think lying is a much more effective means than it actually is. So, maybe lying works, but maybe not. So let's just take what we do know. We know that lying dehumanizes a person, it reduces autonomy, it undermines the social contract, and it embraces and displays a world that should not be. It justifies the known means by the hypothetical ends - and wildly optimistic ends at that. For a Christian there’s even more reason not to lie. Lying contradicts the character of God, and the embracing of evil displays our lack of faith in God. Compromising on God's moral standards shows that we either believe that God is powerless to save us, or that God isn’t deserving of our faithfulness in all circumstances. As you can see, lying is terribly problematic and leads to a horrendous depiction of God's good world.

Yet if we take a look at truthfulness from the standpoint of what "works" through the lens of a will to meaning, we will see a completely different depiction. Integrity, no matter what, works in a eudaimonic fashion, in that it fosters a world that eschatologically will one day be by providing, through our integrity, a foretaste of what would be, if only we’d all refuse the evil for the good. People recognize the importance of integrity and lone voices elsewhere. Be the matchstick that steps out of line. I see that meme a lot. Be that German citizen who speaks up to the Nazis when all your neighbors are silent, even though that means you'll be persecuted or killed. Be the one person with a camera and a voice when you’re witnessing police brutality against someone else, even though that endangers your life and likely won't lead to indictment of the police. We all know that those things might cost you, but if everyone just goes along and embraces evil, what would the world be? We all dream of a better world - of what should be - and we constantly call on our society to display what would be at a cost to themselves. Clearly, most of us don't truly believe that we get to pick and choose our morality. But that begs the question… If you should speak when your neighbor’s autonomy is being violated by the Gestapo, shouldn't you speak up when it’s being violated by a lie.

Whether we realize it or not, most Christians are consequentialists who typically have a will to power. I mean, just look at the run Christendom has had in the West. It doesn’t take much digging through history - or even modernity - to see the death grip Christianity has had on the sword But that will to power only lasts so long - until a death grip turns into death throes.  We’ll have to see how things play out, but even as a Christian, I, like Kierkegaard, think the demise of Christendom will be a good thing in the end. Christendom’s will to power is so antithetical to the message of Jesus, I don’t know that the world can pick out Christ from much of Western Christianity. Nevertheless, Christian nationalism is on the rise in the West in part because Christians think that Christendom's will to power has been a good thing and want to preserve it, or get it back. I'd like to explore this will to power and compare it to what I'm proposing here as a eudaimonic will to meaning.

For the sake of analogy, let’s explore Christendom's will to power by switching over to the field of art. Just imagine that Christians, because they ought to have the clearest picture of the world as God intended it to be, tend to be the best painters in the world. Imagine that these Christians - these painters - all of a sudden decided to quit painting. They got this bright idea that, because they loved art so much, they were actually going to spend their time and resources not painting, but taking over society. But don’t worry, the paintings wouldn’t stop. These Christian painters were taking over society so they could force everyone else - all the non-painters - to start painting. Painters love paintings so much, they’re going to make everyone paint! Even if that coercion meant that the natural born and professionally trained artists were no longer painting, but politicking. Even if they had to coerce and force painting on people. Even if the non-painters didn’t want it or didn’t have the skillset to do it. Even if they had to destroy priceless paintings so there would be more incentive to produce art - it would all be worth it so that everyone would become a painter. Can you imagine the resentfulness the world would have towards art and painting? Can you imagine the low quality of art that would be produced in such a society?

I’m obviously not talking about Christians painting real paintings here. I’m speaking of Christians painting with the brush of morality, the vision of eschatology. We Christians say we believe in a good God who created a good, functioning world, so we should have the best vision by which to depict the ideal through the living out of our lives. We shouldn’t, as Christendom and the will to power have done, quit painting the ideal in an attempt to force everyone else to live out the ideal we proclaim, while refusing to live it out ourselves. Christendom ends up not living out the ideal it proclaims because they don’t really think it works. A will to meaning is powerless. But if a good God created a good world, why wouldn't a will to meaning work and why would moral compromise often be required to bring about good? Doing good would fail only if God doesn't exist as the creator of our world, he doesn't exist as wise, or he doesn't exist as good. Embracing the damnable doctrine of realism, consequentialism, and power is making a statement through one's morals that God doesn't exist with all his superlatives, or perhaps he doesn't exist at all. Conversely, if a good, wise, and loving creator God exists, then eudaimonism - a life always seeking the good, no matter what - works.

Our job as Christians, then, is to faithfully represent the world that truly is - the world that would be if only everyone could see the painting - could see reality clearly. I think this sort of sentiment is offered up in an early Christian document called the letter or the Epistle to Diognetus. I want to quote it at length here because I think it’s a beautiful summation of what I’m trying to convey here. The epistle says,

"What the soul is in the body, Christians are in the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, yet is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world, yet are not of the world. The invisible soul is guarded by the visible body, and Christians are known indeed to be in the world, but their godliness remains invisible. The flesh hates the soul, and wars against it, 1 Peter 2:11 though itself suffering no injury, because it is prevented from enjoying pleasures; the world also hates the Christians, though in nowise injured, because they abjure pleasures. The soul loves the flesh that hates it, and [loves also] the members; Christians likewise love those that hate them. The soul is imprisoned in the body, yet keeps together that very body; and Christians are confined in the world as in a prison, and yet they keep together the world. The immortal soul dwells in a mortal tabernacle; and Christians dwell as sojourners in corruptible [bodies], looking for an incorruptible dwelling in the heavens. The soul, when but ill-provided with food and drink, becomes better; in like manner, the Christians, though subjected day by day to punishment, increase the more in number. God has assigned them this illustrious position, which it were unlawful for them to forsake."

Christians ought to be the soul of the world - the painters depicting reality. Contrary to what the will to power or the will to pleasure tells us, the true painter’s canvas is often the canvas of suffering, just as we saw with the martyr. Suffering destroys all but the truest of the true - that with ultimate meaning and value. 

There’s a famous story of another artist - in this case, sculpting rather than painting. The story is that of Michelangelo working on the famous statue of David. According to some accounts, Michelangelo said something like, “In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.” While he probably didn’t say that, there is a quote that is more probable which says something similar, though it wasn’t specifically about the great statue of David. "The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material." Whether Michelangelo said either of these brilliant statements or not, I think we can recognize that great artists have a knack for doing this kind of thing. They see as existent reality what we, the unartistic couldn’t even imagine in our minds. Yet after the artist’s creation is completed, it looks so easy and we can’t imagine that it would have been any other way. Artists give us a vision for what was there all along, we just couldn’t see it.

So it is with suffering and meaning. Suffering whittles and chips away at our hearts and lives of stone. It forces us to come face to face with the choice of whether we’ll seek meaning through integrity, or whether we'll compromise for a will to power or pleasure. It forces us to choose whether we’ll eat the cob the pigs stripped clean and smoke the cigarette, or whether we’ll return home to our good father. We can choose to embrace and identify with the statue of David that the chisel of suffering is leaving behind in order to reveal a magnificent sculpture to the world, or we can identify with the discarded rubble and dust destined for oblivion.

Truth, while seemingly inconsequential at times, is a part of the vision for the good, meaningful, valuable, ideal life. Meaningless lies - or lies that seem to obtain a good greater than the lie - are easy to embrace if we fail to understand the foundation of a world that must be built to support the priceless, massive, heavy, - yet fragile statue of meaning woven into the fabric of the universe - a statue that suffering, and those made to suffer, are able to reveal more and more to the world through their display of the eternal. But such a work can only be created and put on display by those who harbor a foundation - a scaffold of would. Jesus, on such a scaffold, once held on his back, the world that he created with his hands. Christians are invited to erect the same woulden scaffolds, in the same shape - that of a cross. The servant is not greater than the master. On our scaffolds - in our suffering - through our unwillingness to compromise integrity or to deny meaning - the world will see one even greater than David put on display - David’s son, the Christ. The world, through our display, will see that what would be, once was. And is. And is yet to come.