Some thoughts on 'Life of Pi'

Shanda and I just saw Life of Pi this week for the first time.  First of all, I just want to say that this was one of the most visually striking movies I have ever seen, Ang Lee did a fantastic job with the cinematography!  I highly recommend the movie to anyone who hasn't seen it yet, it was one of my favorite movies of the year.  The rest of this post will have spoilers, so please don't read this blog until you have seen the movie and/or read the book.

Not having read the book myself, I was very surprised by the ending.  It makes for a rousing discussion: which ending (animals on the boat versus humans on the boat) was true, or does it matter?  What is so interesting is that how the author/director views faith is highly dependent on which interpretation is true:

Interpretation 1 - The human story is true

There are some troubling implications behind this interpretation of the ending.  The human account of the story is quite brutal, with Pi choosing to murder the cook in the boat after watching him viciously murder his mother and the sailor.  By choosing to recast the story in more innocent terms with animals, this essentially portrays faith as nothing more than a repressive reconstruction of reality to gloss over one's sins and troubles.  In other words, faith is not based on truth, but based on an inability to come to grips with reality.

Interpretation 2 - The animal story is true

If the animal story was the true story, than Pi had to make up the story about the humans simply because many people aren't capable of wrapping their minds around how fantastical the world can truly be.  By this view, God can interact with His creation in such grandiose ways that many humans cannot even come to believe that it could be true.  What is fascinating here is that now the exact reverse is true compared to the previous interpretation: it is the secular-minded people who are repressing reality because they cannot come to grips with how big God is.

Interpretation 3 - It doesn't matter which story is true

I think this is the most likely meaning the author intended, which if true would be akin to Pantheism.  Pantheists believe that God is in all things, and that all things lead to God.  Everyone finds God/truth by their own path.  Ironically, Pi's father aptly explains the fundamental flaw with Pantheism when he says to Pi: "People who believe in everything end up believing in nothing."  What he means by this is that the only way that every religion and belief could be true is if they are all equally false and meaningless.  After all, each of the primary religions makes objective claims about what the purpose of life is and how to attain righteousness, so they cannot all be true unless they are all equally meaningless.

What do you all think, which ending did you believe?  Does the open interpretation make the book/movie shallow or profound?  I would be interested in hearing the thoughts of others.  

The end of responsibility?

Hey all!  Sorry again for the sporadic posting, I will try to be more consistent in May.

An interesting news story caught my attention today, apparently a New Hampshire man lost his entire life savings ($2600) on a carnival bucket-toss game.  What fascinates me most about this story is that:

A) After losing $300 in his first go-round, he decided to go all the way back home to get his remaining savings ($2300) to gamble on the exact same bucket-toss game.  

B) The prize he spent $2600 trying to win, an Xbox Kinect accessory, can be bought brand new along with an accompanying game for under $100.

C) He is suing the carnival for fraud.

I can't help but conclude that America has now finished its cultural descent into a new era where nobody is held responsible for their own actions.  Was the carnival game misleadingly simple?  Sure.  Are the odds heavily against winning?  Of course.  But this should be common knowledge, or at the very least become apparent by experience after wasting $10 or $20 on the game. Please note that I am not saying that nobody takes responsibility for their life anymore, of course millions and millions of Americans take responsibility every day.  Rather, what is different is that nobody is required to take responsibility for their personal and moral choices if they do not desire to.  To illustrate this point, imagine what would have happened even fifty years ago to a man like this: he certainly would not have any grounds for a lawsuit, and all of his friends and family would have taken him to task for his selfishness and gross negligence with his family's money. 

How can a poor father of a young child justify even risking $300 on a carnival game, let alone go back and gamble his entire life savings to try to win a video game?  If this was indeed all of the money in his name, how could even $100 be worth gambling away?  In my opinion, if anyone deserves legal trouble from this news story, it's the father himself, whose reckless use of his family's resources has endangered his child's security and well-being.  He should be thankful that social services sets the bar for parenthood so low that he doesn't have much to worry about.

I end on a positive note: at least he received a giant banana for his heroic efforts!

Alternatives to the gospel?

Sorry for the long hiatus, everyone!  I was busy preparing a lecture series on science and faith that I will be giving to my church next month.

In my previous posts, I discussed why salvation through unmerited grace was moral.  In short, I argued that grace is moral because:
         1) It was freely offered by Christ through his perfect life and sacrifice
         2) Receiving this unmerited righteousness from Christ inspires us to freely love God and others out of gratification and humility
         3) The institution of marriage affirms the importance of grace and unconditional love

But are there any viable alternatives to righteousness through grace?  Let's explore other morality systems one by one to compare:

Alternative 1: Righteousness by works

      This is the morality system set up by the majority of religions and even by most atheists.  The basic premise is that for a person's life to be validated (whether it be heaven, reincarnation to a higher being, karma, respect, honor, etc.), they must live up to a certain moral code.  Nearly every religion but Christianity, and also many secular societies, operate under this model.

     Perhaps the biggest pro of a works-based morality is that it is fair.  If a person lives up to the moral code, then they get the reward or the respect.  If they fail to live up to the moral code, they get punished and disgraced.  Fair, right?

     However, a huge problem crops up for anyone living by this system.   If your moral code comes from the Bible, it becomes very clear that everyone is constantly falling short of the divine laws ascribed there.  For example, Jesus teaches that anyone who even looks at another person with lust in their eyes has committed adultery in their heart, or that anyone who speaks in anger against another person has committed murder in their heart.  Nobody I know can live up to that.  Even people living by a more personal code of morality fall short of their own rules.  Imagine that you had a tape recorder that recorded every moral statement you ever made (for example: it's wrong to tailgate).  Now imagine at the end of your life, this tape record is played back to you, just think of how many of your own "rules" you have broken yourself!  In the end, nobody can live up to their moral ideals, whether they come from the Bible or even just from their own personal feelings of justice.

     In my experience, only two paths are possible when people operate under a works-based morality that they are unable to live up to.

         A) Accept defeat: The first option is to recognize that your life has fallen short of your moral code and accept failure.  This is obviously self defeating, and people who give up on themselves ironically usually start sinning and doing more harm than ever.

          B) Moral compromise: Another option is to compromise your morality so that you just barely pass the bar.  "Well, yes there was that one time I tailgated, but it's not like those other people who tailgate all the time on purpose."  "Okay, sometimes I get drunk, but I'm not like those people who are using hard drugs."  "Well, sometimes I shout at my wife, but at least I didn't get a divorce like all those other people."  But this is a cop-out, clearly your moral standards are being heavily compromised to validate your own deeds.  This is not driven by a sense of justice or truth but by selfishness and delusion.  This sort of "halfway" morality raises all sorts of difficulties: how do you define how many moral failings one can have while still be seen as "righteous"?  How do you demand justice for other people's shortcomings while simultaneously excusing your own moral failings?  

Alternative 2: Moral relativism

       Besides righteousness by works, the only other conceivable alternative to righteousness by grace is to completely remove ALL conditions for righteousness.  In other words, everybody lives their own life, and all lives are equally valid.  There is no final judgement, or if there is, everybody is given a free pardon because everyone can find their own way to truth and justice.  There is no objective or external sense of right and wrong, instead, "to thine own self be true".

      The huge problem with moral relativism is that nobody I know can really be a relativist.  Most people who act like nobody should judge anybody have no problem getting morally outraged at Hitler and the Holocaust.  Yet how can this anger be justified if there is no objective morality?  Clearly, in every human heart lies the profound truth that there are indeed objective moral values and duties that we need to be held responsible for.

Coming full circle: back to grace

     The amazing thing about righteousness by grace is there is no sense of compromise.  Jesus truly lived a perfectly righteous life of perfect love without sin.  Since Jesus is freely offering to give this righteousness to us as a gift, this means that by extension we too can be seen as righteous without compromise.  Grace also removes the need for vindictive anger toward others, as our grace is not by our own deeds, so we cannot view ourselves as morally superior to anybody else.  And since God will be the ultimate and perfect judge, we can trust that He will exact justice on unrepentant sinners without needing to take vengeance ourselves.  In conclusion, righteousness by grace inspires gratitude and love while suppressing anger and vengeance, and is a more rational and reasonable route to salvation than works-based righteousness or moral relativism.
    

The morality of the Gospel

"Ask yourself the question: how moral is the following?  I am told of a human sacrifice that took place two thousand years ago, without my wishing it and in circumstances so ghastly that, had I been present and in possession of any influence, I would have been duty-bound to try and stop it.  In consequence of this murder, my own manifold sins are forgiven me, and I may hope to enjoy eternal life."
-Christopher Hitchens

A resurgent point of attack on Christianity has been the morality of grace through Christ's atonement, the central tenant of the Christian faith.  For those not familiar with the Gospel, the New Testament lays out the fundamental problem and solution of the human condition:

THE PROBLEM:  All humans have sinned, and "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23).  This "death" goes beyond a merely physical death, but is rather referring to an eternal separation from the holy presence of God and His perfect love and provision.   

THE SOLUTION: "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.  Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son" (John 3:16-18).

In short, the Gospel is that Christ offers himself as a substitute.  All of humanity's sins are placed on Jesus on the cross, while Jesus' righteousness is in turn given to us as a gift for all who would receive it.

And now the question: is this vicarious redemption moral?  Is it right to give an innocent man the penalty for our own shortcomings while claiming his righteousness as our own?  Here, I would like to argue that the cross is indeed the most moral choice of action, as it reduces human suffering and maximizes human love and compassion.

First of all, it is essential to remember that Christ knowingly placed himself on the cross of his own volition: he desired to do so for our sake.  To illustrate the importance of this, imagine a teenager who, while playing baseball in his back yard, hit a ball through his rich neighbor's ornate window.  It could hardly be considered moral for the teenage boy to demand that the neighbor pay for his own repairs.  However, what if the neighbor, noting the boy's genuine remorse at his mistake, freely offers to pay for the repairs himself, as he had no shortage of money and knows that the boy's family would not be able to afford it. 

A number of positive, moral things would come of such a scenario.  Not only will the window still be restored, but this repair will not come at the great expense of the poor family who could not afford the cost.  Such generosity will inspire a profound feeling of gratitude in the boy's family toward their neighbor, perhaps even sparking a friendship between the two families which would not have otherwise existed.  Indeed, imagine that now the teenage boy freely offers to mow the rich man's lawn for him.  What is crucial to note here is that the boy's choice to mow the lawn was not to pay for the window; the window has already been fixed and paid for by the rich man himself.  Instead, the boy has chosen to mow his neighbor's yard simply to reciprocate the love and generosity that has already been poured out on him.  Needless to say, he will also be a lot more careful with his baseball games from now on as well! 


It is the same for those who are genuinely reborn by the gift of grace they receive from Christ.  This unmerited love that we have all received inspires us to live more sacrificially and joyfully, not because we have to but because we feel inspired to.  Grace gives us the realization that there is more to life than living for ourselves, that loving and serving others unconditionally is contagious and life-giving. 

In conclusion, I argue that the unmerited favor offered to all of mankind by Christ is an exceedingly moral theology.  It inspires us to give more love and to live more morally than we otherwise would have without the full knowledge of God's personal love and care for our lives.  While the cost of this grace, the cross, is indeed very high, Christ freely accepted this penalty and considered the cost worth the freedom and love that it gave to all of the world. 

In my next post, I will examine the hypothetical alternatives to grace and their moral implications.

The gospel in marriage

A few months ago, my wife and I attended a seminar at Duke University featuring John Lennox, a noted mathematician and philosopher from Oxford.  For about two hours, he laid out the reasoning behind his Christian faith and how his science and logic are only validated through a Christian worldview.  Ironically, his most compelling story had nothing to do with math or philosophy at all, but was rather a portrait of the gospel told through marriage.  Just in time for Christmas, here is a loose paraphrase of his personal take on the gospel offered by Jesus:

Imagine if, when you had first met the woman you desired to marry, you said to her: "If you cook all of my meals for the next fifty years, and do all of the cleaning and raise our kids, and love me perfectly, then after all of that I will decide that you are worthy to get married to me."  Any self-respecting woman would likely slap you in the face if you had such stringent and life-long requirements before you even deemed her worthy of marriage! 

And yet, how many of us seem to view a relationship with God in this way?  Too many people, often even self-proclaimed Christians, seem to think that God requires us to live a righteous life before He could ever accept us.  Nearly every religion raises a standard we have to live up to before we are seen as righteous in the eyes of God or others.  And yet our very hearts seem to cry out for the opposite.  Going back to the marriage example, John Lennox pointed out that it was BECAUSE he decided to marry his wife up front and love her unconditionally that she feels the desire to love him and serve him back. 

It is the same way with God, thanks to the grace offered to us through Christ.  Through Christ's perfect life and sacrifice for our sins, we are seen as righteous in the eyes of God regardless of our past, present, or future sin.  It is a gift of unconditional love and acceptance.  And it is BECAUSE we are already loved and accepted by God that we feel a sincere and joyful desire to love Him and our neighbors with our whole hearts. 

Merry Christmas Eve!

Some thoughts about why school shootings happen

Yesterday 26 people, including 20 young children, were shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut.  In addition to being the second worst school shooting in American history, behind only the massacre at Virginia Tech, the shooter's choice of an elementary school (as opposed to the more typical high school or college setting) was particularly shocking and saddening. 

Already a common theme in both the media and the general public is the question of "how could somebody do this?!"  Indeed, whenever an American citizen performs an unspeakably horrific act to his peers, I have noticed a general trend to immediately dismiss the perpetrator as insane because they cannot think of a single answer to this question.  This conclusion would make sense if every shooter had a clinical history of schizophrenia or severe psychological impairment, and perhaps it will come to light that the current shooter did indeed have a medical condition.  But from previous shootings, for example Columbine in 1999 and Aurora in 2012, we know that very often the perpetrators came from normal two-parent families, were very intelligent academically, and had no mental condition whatsoever (in the clinical sense).   

Therefore it seems very dangerous to me to dismiss all shooters as clinically insane.  It may be a comforting thought to many that no sane person could ever shoot innocent people, but I believe we have very clear historical evidence to the contrary.  To pass off these perpetrators as merely crazy is to ignore the underlying societal problems and worldviews that cause some people to act like this in the first place.  A somewhat related example I can think of is the tendency for many to similarly dismiss Hitler and the terrorists behind 9/11 as insane, when in reality those people were very intelligent and in control of their faculties and simply operating under a very different set of values and worldviews.  

If insanity is out of the question for many of these cases, it brings us back full circle to the question: "what could cause somebody to do this?"  In this post, I argue that there are 3 things that modern American culture has forgotten about our society and human nature, and only by relearning them can we truly confront the underlying problem.

1) Humans are not intrinsically good beings

        I have noticed a recent trend, particularly among secular humanists, to consider all humans as inherently good.  To me, this is not only a dangerous worldview to hold, it is laughably out of touch with the reality of the world.  Consider just a smattering of evidence.  Every civilization in the world, until the past two hundred years, has endorsed slavery.  Most superpowers in world history have felt entitled to pillage, kill, and rape indiscriminately upon conquering a new nation.  An estimated 1.6 million children are currently being sex trafficked right here in America.  I could literally go on for hours, but honestly I think you all get the point.  I mean just read the news every day and it gets pretty obvious that we have a selfish and twisted nature.  To those who still think that humans are fundamentally good in nature, let me ask you this: if America's entire police force announced it would stand down for a single day, and no laws were enforced, what do you think the American people would do to each other?  We need to confront our sinful and selfish nature before we can successfully restrain it.  And on that note...

2) Humans need accountability

      Because humans have evil tendencies, we need accountability from our family and communities to help restrain our wickedness.  An excellent example is pedophiles such as Jerry Sandusky.  What many fail to understand is that nobody becomes a pedophile, or even a more conventional adulterer, overnight.  It takes years for a person's moral state to gradually decline to the point where even an affair or molestation can be self-rationalized to gratify selfish desires.  What is crucial to note here is that this self-rationalization typically only makes sense to the perpetrator when they are able to isolate their thoughts and actions from society.  This is why Tiger Woods was so careful to keep all of his affairs secret from absolutely everyone, he instinctively knew that isolation was the only way he could ever continue to justify his actions.  As long as everything remained personal and a secret, he continued to act in increasingly debauched ways, it was only when things came to light that he was able to self-acknowledge and confront his demons.  The point here is that if people valued openness and accountability from their family, friends, and church, I think we would find a lot less people on a long-slippery slope.  I know that I personally have benefited enormously from the accountability given by my wife, my friends, and my church, and seeking out and welcoming this accountability has fought back a lot of personal demons created by my selfishness and sinful nature.

3) Humans need to worship something

       I am not just referring to religious people!  My point here is that no matter what your worldview is, everybody chooses to worship something in their lives as the ultimate or most important thing(s).  The Christian argument, which I firmly believe, is that even good things, when elevated to "God" things, become bad things.  Besides the lack of accountability, a major problem in American culture right now is we are worshiping a lot of things that were never meant to be worshiped.  For example, many teenagers idolize social popularity and acceptance, to the point where it feels like their life is over if they are socially marginalized.  This was likely a key point related to the Columbine shootings, in which the shooters were bullied and social outcasts.  If your entire purpose depends on this popularity, then why not end your life if you cannot achieve it?  Why not kill those who have socially shunned you?  If sexual gratification is the ultimate goal in life, then why not have affairs or engage in prostitution?  My point here is that if you idolize worldly things such as popularity, money, power, or sexual gratification, this can actually lead you to horrific acts such as school shootings or sex trafficking even if you are a clinically rational person.  It is not insanity that has led people here, it's their idolatrous worldview!  We were not designed to worship worldly things: they are not only inherently unstable (how easy it is to lose power, money, and popularity!), but also unable to lastingly fill the God-hole that is in all of our hearts.  For that we need Jesus, and I will post a series on the need for grace over the Christmas season. 
     

  

 



  

 

The practicality of sexual morality

I know that including the word "practicality" in a post about sexual purity is somewhat ironic.  Waiting until marriage to have sex can feel like anything but practical from the point of view of a young and single person.  So when I talk about the practicality of sexual morality, I am not referring to the ease of demonstrating this virtue, but rather the broad and important impacts that it has on society.

First things first, what exactly is meant by sexual morality?  As CS Lewis puts it in his book Mere Christianity:

"There is no getting away from it: the Christian rule is, 'Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence.'"


A 2002 survey found that about 95% of people in America had premarital sex.  Interestingly, 73% of Americans identify as Christians.  Clearly, there is an apparent contradiction here.  I believe that part of the underlying problem here is that for too long, many churches have painted sexual morality as a purely spiritual matter.  This is a problem because it creates the illusion that waiting until marriage does not have any actual benefits besides promoting your own spiritual well-being.  This will not be a convincing enough reason for most young people to endure sexual repression for years on end.

In this post, I argue that the Christian call to sexual morality was not solely due to spiritual well-being, but equally motivated by Christ's call to love others and to combat suffering.  To illustrate my point, I will briefly summarize all of the changes that would occur if everyone only pursued sex in the context of a loving marriage.  Please keep in mind that I am NOT saying that we will ever live in a world where everyone actually does this, I know that is impossible.  I am just giving the reasons why sexual morality is a loving thing for people to strive for, as it would greatly reduce human suffering and misery.

1) No more unwanted children - If everyone waited until they were in a loving and stable marriage to have sex and have children, there would not be any unwanted children.  This would completely eliminate abortions, kids living in foster homes, and children living with parents who don't really want them.  I don't have to explain any further how this would significantly reduce the amount of suffering and problems in the world.

2) No more children born out of wedlock - For the first time in American history, more than half of all births are out of wedlock.  This means that it you were to go into a maternity ward and point to a newborn baby at random, there are better odds that this baby does not have a married mother and father.  As the husband of an elementary school teacher, I can personally attest that children that don't have the stability of married parents have more emotional issues, lower self-esteem, and poorer academic performance compared to children in traditional family units.  Obviously children would not be born out of wedlock if there was no sex out of wedlock, solving this problem that is crippling the education system and America's social stability.

3) No more prostitution, sex trafficking, and pornography - There are untold millions of people who are currently in sex trafficking and prostitution, many of them children.  What is driving the demand for all of these industries is the immense market for sexual gratification and exploitation outside of the context of marriage.

4) No more STDs and AIDs - At least 30 million people currently are infected with HIV.  Roughly 1 in 3 adults in America have an STD and shockingly 1 in 4 teenagers.  Many high schools and even middle schools are reporting large outbreaks of herpes and gonorrhea amongst the children.  It is impossible to obtain or spread an STD if people waited until marriage to have sex, this is the best and only surefire way to prevent STDs and their vicious spread.

In conclusion, try to imagine a world that had no abortions, foster homes, kids born out of wedlock, prostitution, sex trafficking, pornography, or STDs.  All of these are impossible when the only context for sex is marriage.  The difference this would make in people's overall quality of lives is so large as to stagger the imagination.  I would even go so far as to say that this would completely remove at least one half of all human suffering and poverty on the globe.  This is why I argue that sexual morality is far more than just an emotional or spiritual good (although it is that too).  Everyone who strives to live by it will do their part to love their neighbor and eradicate human suffering.  We cannot force others to follow sexual morality, but the responsibility is on each of us to live it out in our own lives and to encourage it in our communities.