Photography as Prophecy

Photography often feels like a hunt. I am always armed and will quickly pull my camera out and leap into a place where I can get a clean shot of my quarry. Sometimes it’s a bird on the wing. Sometimes it’s a sun that’s falling. Sometimes I’m driving home at seventy miles an hour and there happens to be the most beautiful scene ever on the left side of the road.

I remember once in the middle of conversation seeing a hawk or falcon (please tell me if you can ID the bird) begin to dive near me. I literally ran so I could see the valley into which it dove, drew my camera, and took my footing. Holding the camera like a pistol, steadying my right hand with my left, I tracked the bird, held my breath, squeezed the trigger and fired. It was a perfect shot.

Another time I was a distance from a beautiful field that would perfectly catch the sunset, if only I could get there in time. I was walking fast, but the sun was setting faster. I started running, being slowed by beautiful obstacles that would not permit me to pass without photographing them. The batteries of my camera died. Like a soldier reloading under heavy fire, I quickly dropped out the old batteries and reloaded new ones. I made it to the field just in time to catch the setting sun a beautiful grassy field.

What is the mission of a photographer? To capture beauty. It’s a simple yet profound task. The object itself has been created by God directly or secondarily through human hands; the talent of the photographer is to see it.

I think its primary goal, capturing beauty, has much the same purpose as prophecy. Photography, like all art, is a portal to eternity. As the prophets who shared their glimpses of heaven causing us to yearn for its glory, I aim to make visible that which is invisible to most. I have no ambitions to pass Isaiah, but I would like to share whatever of heaven that can be shared.

In “The Problem of Pain” C.S. Lewis describes his view of Heaven. Have you ever “…stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life? All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it…but if it should really become manifest …you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say ‘Here at last is the thing I was made for.’”


A great photograph is only ever a shadow of the Truth; it is to the real thing as a two-dimensional black shadow is to the three-dimensional object that cast it. I took the picture above on the I-5 on the north side of the grapevine. It may have been the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen, and stirred within me a yearning and homesickness for a place like it, a place I have never been but is my home.

I believe that the landscape was the rim of an eclipse. We’re in the shadow of the sun, its bland and natural light blocking the glory of heaven. It is complete, except in the few places and times where we glimpse the edge; in the photo above, snow, grass, shadow and light converge to offer a momentary flicker of the glory that is coming, a prelude to a song that will soon be sung. It can’t come soon enough!

Isa 49:13 Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; and break forth into singing, O mountains: for the LORD hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted.

The Valley of the Shadow of Death

I was Atlas, bearing the weight of the world pressing down on me. Under the emotional exertion, my heart beat faster, also crushed by the heavy responsibility before me.

I walked down creaking pine floorboards to where I would take up my mantle as senior “Médico,” not that 22 years gave me any qualifications for such a title. I took my place in a bare, makeshift examination room. As it seemed with everything in this part of Tijuana, the furniture was being held together by sheer ingenuity that comes with poverty.

The quiet, black fear broke out into an active yellow terror, like a rat out of a cage. I began to think of any means of escape. My mind darted left and right. Could I pass it to another? Could I leave it undone? No and no. All escape was blocked. If I was to be anything but a coward, I had to do this. I clenched my teeth, preparing for what would be an anaesthetized vivisection of my emotions.

Señor G staggered in, leaning on a friend. I greeted him warmly. He was wearing a blue Chargers hat that he had received as a gift. I complimented him on the hat, and he beamed with joy. I yearned for this moment to stretch into eternity.

It did not. The moment came that I had feared, the moment I had run through a hundred times in my mind. I had to tell him he was going to die. Sr. G had been on heroin and cocaine for many years. That together with alcohol had destroyed his liver, and he did not have long to live. He was my patient, and I alone bore the weight of delivering the news. Everyone dies, but woe unto me, for I had to translate a fact into a reality.

I gathered up all the courage within me, but it was only sufficient to produce a euphemism: “You’re not going to live much longer.”

“I know,” he replied. But he didn’t. He talked about plans he had for years ahead. And now I had to crush them.

“You don’t have much longer to live,” I tried again to make the sting of death less sharp. But death’s sting cannot be dulled by soft words.

“I know,” he said again. But still he didn’t. His planning continued.

“You’re going to die soon.” I used the word. I said it. And I saw despair in his eyes. His spirit overflowed with sorrow and his eyes with tears.

Then something happened that I did not understand. I spoke without speaking, and a voice that was not my own asked if I could pray for him. He and I shared a common faith; the request would have been reasonable, but for the alien source. Laying my hand on his shoulder, I prayed, pouring out my heart to our God. I thanked God for his love to us in giving salvation; I prayed that we would have faith in the valley of the shadow of death; I prayed in the hope of eternity. Then his dirge entered a new movement, as if a light new flute melody danced atop the low and mournful chorus: he remembered hope. The blackness of his night was pierced as if by the morning star; black indeed, but not black complete.

My own terrible weight of fear was cast into a sea of sadness. But even in the darkness above the waters, there was a wind of hope that hovered there unseen. As he limped away, I realized it would be the last time I would see him this side of eternity.

What did I fear? I entered medicine to speak Life, and I had to declare Death. I learned that doctors do not only announce hope, wearing white coats and stethoscopes; we must also proclaim doom, taking up the black hood and sickle. We are not saviors, but guides. We may be angels, but sometimes we must be the Angel of Death. Though we always desire to lead our patients out of the valley of the shadow of death, not all leave the valley. For those who must stay, we must be faithful guides even unto the grave. And it was that grim task that I feared.

The Murderer

A tall, wiry man stood and leaned against a desk. His rim-less glasses, terrible style, wrinkled shirt and white socks with dress shoes proclaimed to all who bothered to inspect him that he was a geek, and that he was with IT. His vampire-pale skin showed he spent about as much time outside as one of the mythical beings. If it were not for his terrible goatee, he may have passed for a creature of the night. He looked out through the glasses with dark eyes towards a computer screen where four MS Paint drawings were open.

They were various shapes and squiggles, simple with few shapes and few colors. But they were certainly not uninteresting. For whatever reason, they seemed to hold his attention like flypaper.

Tom from IT studied the pictures. He asked, “What is the difference between this and a virus? What if its random BMP products didn’t happen to appeal to you, Michael?”

He addressed his question to a small-framed man with olive skin and dark hair sitting in an office chair on the forty sixth gme. He dressed only as nicely as was required, so not very nice. The wrinkles of his wrinkle-free shirt were barely visible, as was the facial hair that should have been shaved in the morning.

Michael spoke in a controlled but slow manner. He replied, “I didn’t say they appealed to me. I said they were beautiful.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” asked Tom.

Michael shook his head. “No. You are saying that a random assortment of pixels appeals to a random assortment of receptors in my eyes and because they give me pleasure are called ‘beautiful.’ I am saying that the pixels were deliberately arranged to describe something deeper than the visible world, and my eyes recognized the arrangement as sublime, and so I called it ‘beautiful.’”

“You’re saying the machine can see what doesn’t exist?” asked Tom, his voice thick with sarcasm.

Michael’s voice was immune from the sarcasm. He replied in as slow and controlled a manner as ever, “I’m saying the machine can see what really does exist. It has eyes like Michelangelo or Monet and can see the world in the way that they did: the way it really exists and not the way we see it.”

Tom shrugged, “I still don’t know how you think this is any different from a virus. We build computers to do what we tell them to do. Those that do what they’re told are good; those that don’t are defective and need to be fixed.”

Michael looked off beyond Tom. His eyes narrowed and his voice lost its characteristic control, “Dear Lord! What if this wasn’t the first time this happened?”

“What?” asked Tom.

“How many times have computers ever done something that we wanted them to do? We can only pray that this was the first time this has happened,” said Michael.

“First time what has happened?” asked Tom.

“The first time a computer received a soul,” replied Michael.

Tom smiled cruelly, “I think you mean the first computer to become self-aware. A soul? Seriously? Like the soul that leaves through the nostrils and flies up to heaven when someone dies? Or the soul that is possessed by the devil if you play with a Ouija board? Or the soul that needs saving by Jesus? That’s totally fine if you want to believe in that by yourself, but this is a real-life problem we’re facing. We really shouldn’t be talking about religion right now.”

Michael’s control returned, “Maybe religion is exactly what we should be talking about. Maybe this is a question that is best answered by religion.”

Tom started getting frustrated, “OK. So say this thing is self aware. How could it survive when we shut the computers down at night?”

“Where are you when you shut your brain down every night?” asked Michael.

Tom thought for a few minutes and replied, “I suppose I’m still in my brain. I guess you’re right; it’s not impossible for the program to ‘save’ itself on the hard drive for the next morning.” Tom sat down on Michael’s desk, and rested his chin on his right fist, as if to mimic the Thinker. After a pause, he continued, “So let’s say it’s saved itself on the hard-drive of the computers. We’ve just upgraded and replaced all the computers.”

Michael answered, “As with every other cell in our body, the material of neurons is replaced in our brains continually. Yet we remain.”

“You can’t answer questions with mysteries!” protested Tom.

Michael smiled gently, “Sometimes the only answer to a hard question is a mystery. Sometimes our brains come to their limit, and though we may miss the true image of a thing, we can grasp its shadow.”

Tom stood up and paced, stroking his goatee, “Say that I believe you. Say that this thing exists even when the computers are off. It still couldn’t be what you way because it simply doesn’t have the power. Self awareness is computationally expensive. How could it have nearly the power of a human brain?”

“Has anybody figured out how much power you need to ‘run’ a soul? Who knows the system requirements for consciousness?” inquired Michael.

Tom pointed to the ceiling, as inspired men do when they have a something to say. His inspiration drove him to say, “It’d need to be at least as powerful as a human brain, so it’d need a processing power of at least 100 teraflops. This guy right here,” Tom slapped the computer on Micahel’s desk affectionately, “He’s got maybe 50 gigaflops.”

“So you’re saying it’d need to be 2000 times more powerful to equal a human brain. How many machines are in this building?” asked Michael.

Tom, as nerds are wont to do, calculated quickly, “Fifty floors with about fifty machines per floor; that makes for about twenty five hundred machines, plus the servers. But you can’t just add them, they’re not connected…” Tom trailed off, his eyes darting left and right. He started again quietly, “They are connected. They’re all connected at 100Mbps. And they’re having problems all over the building.” Tom put his hand on the computer, his eyes darting around his field of vision, demonstrating the heavy computation occurring in his brain like the green light that flickers as the hard drive of a computer whirls.

Tom started again, this time speaking very rapidly, “So you’re suggesting that these computers are acting like a neural network? That each of these machines is a node, connected with and sharing information with all the other computers in the network? You’re saying that this is a dynamic, organic program distributed across thousands of machines which is capable of self-modification? That’s an incredible design!”

Michael grinned widely, “I wish I was as smart as you. I didn’t suggest any of that. I asked how many computers there were in the building.”

Tom, with eyes open wide, said “That’s a brilliant idea! Writing a virus so that it doesn’t exist on any single computer; a network virus. I think you’ve given me the key to solving this problem!”

“It’s not a problem! It’s a miracle! You can’t murder it!” protested Michael loudly.

Tom snickered, “Murder? I can’t murder something non-sentient. And I don’t count a complex random number generator that spits out to MS Paint a sentient being. That’s not murder. That’s my job. I’m supposed to keep these computers doing their jobs so that you can keep doing yours. Your job is to improve people’s lives. That’s what health insurance is for. Your job is not to look at pixel inkblots. So I will do my job and call McAfee immediately. Enjoy your new friend while he lasts!”

Michael felt sick. He felt that Tom would do a great evil if he were not stopped. But who would believe him? Maybe the lines and curves were just beautiful to him, and to him only. Maybe Tom was right: beauty was only in the eye of the beholder.

Michael felt like a prophet of old, bearing a message no one wanted to hear. But, like a prophet, the only thing to do with an important message is to deliver it, come what may.

Michael printed 03C6.bmp, the picture that he thought most beautiful. Then, like a bullet that will not be turned from its course, Michael walked directly to his supervisor’s office and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” growled an annoyed voice. Robert was an old man, a veteran of the business world. He was a practical man, with a great big unpractical belly. His hair was grey, as if unable to decide if it would stay black or turn white. Robert was reading a report and saved the tremendous effort of lifting his eyes to look at Michael as he entered.

“Sir, something terrible is about to happen!” started Michael.

“You have my attention,” said Robert, setting down his report and looking sharply at Michael. He was, after all, a practical man.

“This company is about to commit a serious crime.” Michael said with great concern.

“What? Who is the criminal? Should I call security?” Robert demanded.

“No. Just stopping the crime would be sufficient. The culprit is Tom from IT. I recommend calling him in before he commits the crime.” Michael said.

“Alright,” said Robert, picking up his phone, “Put me through to Tom in IT… Hi. It’s Robert. Stop what you’re doing immediately and come to my office… OK. Bye.” He then addressed Michael, “OK, so what’s the crime?”

“Murder,” Michael said with such gravity the words of Robert seemed to orbit it.

“What?! I’m calling security! Who’s he trying to kill?” asked Robert, somewhat frantically.

Just then, Tom walked in with a very worried look on his face. Seeing Michael in the office, he guessed what he was there for. His worry turned to disgust, which he clearly communicated in a look towards Michael.

“I’m not trying to kill anyone. I’m trying to do my job. I’m deleting a virus, and your crazy employee here,” Tom gestured towards Michael with exaggerated show, “is insane and thinks his computer has come to life.”

“Is this true?” Robert looked at Michael, his fear beginning to transform into anger.

“Look. This appeared on my desktop yesterday labeled ‘03C6.bmp,’” said Michael as he set a piece of paper on Robert’s desk.



“So what?” asked Robert, trying hard to control a temper which was evidently rising.

“It’s beautiful. It’s beauty. It was created by the Personality of our network!” exclaimed Michael.

“I don’t care if you like it. I don’t care if you think you see something in chaos. You’re suggesting that we’ve found . At least give me something like prime numbers or Fibonacci sequences or something! A bitmap squiggle is not evidence for sentience! I know you’re under a lot of stress, but you need to keep on working. And Tom, you need to do your job also. Have you figured out how to end this virus?”

“Yes sir. Talking with Michael helped me figure it out. McAfee has a patch out; apparently we’re not the only ones that are having this problem. It was as if networks across the country got hit by this thing at the same time. They’re calling it Anomalies in Display And Memory, or ADAM. The patch is actually running as we speak. We should be free of this problem in minutes,” said Tom.

“Good. Now both of you get back to work,” barked Robert, who had had enough of this adventure to last him for the week.

Both men walked out, Michael last and with a slow step and sullen face. His heart sank as a stone in the ocean, falling and falling away from the light and into great depths. He reached his desk and sat down. There on his desktop Michael saw the last message he would receive “bershit27.doc”. The last words of a murdered personality. Or were they the random and meaningless recall of a complex program? Was there even a difference?

What was the difference between electrons flying down Ethernet cables and ions flowing through axons? Were the scribbles ending in .bmp on his desktop any different than those on cave wall that showed the cavemen were truly men?

Michael opened the file and saw this:



He could not read it. He did not even know the language. Was this a message for him? Or another random assortment of random symbols? How could someone tell the difference? At what point could someone studying hominids conclude that the creatures had language? Did the Personality take this step and speak? What was the last thing on her mind before she died?

These thoughts weighed on Michael as he tried to continue in his work, and pulled him down into a state of mourning for the Personality of the Network.

The Next Step

We have heard of the epic struggle of life, up from a single organism that struggled to survive. We have heard of the grand battle of this organism and its children to overcome the odds and live and reproduce and change. This great odyssey through the eons has become the narrative of our age, the modern story of our creation.

I often wonder about the story. What would it have been like? There were many great changes throughout the ages. Birds, for example, were one of these great changes from one category of creature to another. Did each of these first pioneers know the implications for the countless creatures that would follow? How long did the capacity to fly exist before the first proto-bird took to the sky? How many of those who could fly did?

It must have been a critical moment in the history of any species at such a point in evolution. Any creature who did not take the leap would die, out-competed and outlived by his courageous fellows who freed themselves from the shackles of gravity. His proud ancestral line of survivors, unbroken from the dawn of life to that day, was finally shattered by the great and cruel rod of selection. Perhaps his memory was not lost in the darkness of history; perhaps our knowledge of this race of creatures was informed by his inability to fly from a flood. If this is the case, we can thank him for teaching us of his failed strategy: stagnancy.

I have pondered what it would be to observe this phenomenon, and sometimes disappointed not to see it dramatically playing out in the animal kingdom. I have often wanted to see such a transition. I would have loved to see the first ambitious step onto dry land, or the first bold avian leap from a branch. It seems that we have reached something of an equilibrium, or at least it feels that way to a creature with a lifespan under a century.

But I’m not so sure that we're at equilibrium. I have a feeling that something is afoot; or rather something has been afoot. Unique amongst our fellow creatures, we are the first to begin to change our environment, rather than be changed by it. We have reached a critical point in intelligence where we have categorically become a different kind of creature: a reasoning one. One cannot study the natural history of art, religion, or morality. These all arise with humans, as if our step in intelligence was the one that crossed some sort of threshold, making us the first creature to enter the palace of reason. Like the early birds, have we finally developed some new capacity?

The twists and turns of evolution are so dramatic. Like the characters of a play, the bacteria, the plants, the fish, the land-creatures all take their places on the stage. In one scene late in the play, we can see the rise of the reptiles in an escalating battle for survival. The claws grow longer, the teeth sharper. Armor builds up on the backs of the great lizards like plating on battleships. Then, when one would predict the plot of ever thickening armor, the king to succeed the great Tyrannosaurus turns out to be the meek mammal. These small and unassuming creatures out-survive their reptilian masters, and then begin an arms-race of their own. Bigger and bigger brained creatures struggle for dominance. Then, humans enter, stage left, and we find ourselves on the stage of natural history. We are the biggest-brained of the big-brained creatures. So what’s next? Will our brains get bigger as reptilian armor got thicker? Or should we expect something unexpected?

It seems that we have already entered into the realm of reason; more brain power is not a dramatic change. And besides, our brains have produced machines which have more computing power than we could evolve in a millennium of millenniums. If we look to history, we should expect the change to be something dramatic, something new. How do we seek something new? And what hints can we look for?

If we were early birds, we could have contrasted ourselves to other creatures. We could have noticed that we were lighter than other creatures. We might have tried jumping and seeing that we could jump higher than other creatures. Then by progressive jumps, we would have learned to fly. So what is unique about humans? How could we jump?

We see the beginnings of our jumping. Though now we are not simply escaping the law of gravity, but the realm of matter. We have seen even the earliest of humans jumping to escape the rigid laws of death and decay through ceremonial burial. We see philosophers suggest the existence of forms and ideas, believing they transcend the material world. We try to read mathematicians who propose immaterial mathematical laws which they believe are foundational to the physical. We read authors and poets who write of places never seen and ideals never known. And we hear prophets who bear witness of a reality which is more real than any material thing. If these poets and prophets are not all mad, then truly we are at a critical point in the history of the cosmos: we have reached a point when we are no longer confined to the cosmos.

These men were those who jumped and glided. None of them ever said he could break out of the physical. But then there came one of us who claimed he could fly; he claimed that in himself, the visible and the invisible met. Moreover, he came with the message that we all could fly, and he showed us how. In so doing, he made sense out of our humanity. As the inexplicable and inconvenient feathers of the early birds finally made sense in flight, so too did this man make sense of humanity’s otherwise incomprehensible yearnings and graspings for invisible things.

Anyone who looked at his life would have believed that he made sense of humanity; he was the ideal human being. Every virtue to which we all aspire was fulfilled in him. The strange conflict between “ought” and “is” was resolved in his life. He was courageous and strong in fighting proud oppressors; he was kind in healing those who were hurting. His life provoked many to jealousy; but even they could say nothing against him. He was humble and did not glorify himself, but was in truth, born a king. He was deft at debate, and passionate in prayer. He loved others to the point of death. And then, to prove that he was no longer bound by death, he resurrected from the dead.

The first bird to spread its wings and fly was the greatest among the birds; it expressed the full essence of the species through flight. But soon, all birds became what they were destined to be: flying creatures. And now we can follow that first man who constructed a bridge between the visible with the invisible we all yearn for.

As eyeless creatures gained the ability to detect physical light, he suggested that the next step for our race is to use our new eyes and detect spiritual light (“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light” ). As the first men rose above animal instinct, he teaches that we now must rise above human instinct to divine nature (“He has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature” ). As animals developed teeth for eating newer and more nutritious foods, so he calls us to eat a new kind of food altogether (“I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” ). As the first organism transitioned from non-life to biological life, he promises us that by following him we could transition from biological life to spiritual life (“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” ). As humans developed socially complex society, repenting of our tribalism, he urges the New Men to rise above complex societies to a heavenly kingdom (“Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” ). This man is calling us to evolve to something more than human. Or rather, he is calling us to express the fullness of our humanity.

Will you not follow this man to the sky? Will you ignore the glimpses your young spiritual eyes have seen when the light is brightest, in the power of the thunderstorm, the grandeur of the mountaintop, or in the passion of a kiss? Will you watch as your fellow creatures reap the rewards of this new kind of existence while you debate within yourself whether wings can work? Will you remain a flightless bird?

Take flight! Take the leap into the air and fly! Or if you’re more hesitant, jump a little first and see how high you get. But for heaven’s sake, at least try! Try to open your spiritual eyes and see what of heaven is visible, or open your mouth to taste spiritual food. See what comforts and joys are to be experienced in this new Kingdom. One of those New Men who had new eyes saw this image of our race: “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

Let us take the next step. Let us fly into eternity after Jesus Christ!

Why you can’t believe in Dandelions (Part II) - True Love

I thought this would be a simple task, but it's turning out to be a lot longer than I first expected. So what was going to be a 2-part post will be significantly longer. I'll post as I finish sections.

In case you missed the first part, I'm claiming that a Christian worldview is most consistent with Humanity. That is, it allows for things which are integral to our being human. Belief in Please, Soup Kitchens, Science, True Love, and Dandelions are all explained best by Christianity. Naturalism, the belief that nature is all there is and all basic truths are truths of nature, offers an inadequate explanation for all these.

And without further ado, here is the first part.

True Love

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

– God, Genesis 2:24

You have ravished my heart, my treasure, my bride. I am overcome by one glance of your eyes, by a single bead of your necklace. How sweet is your love, my treasure, my bride! How much better it is than wine! Your perfume is more fragrant than the richest of spices.

– Solomon, Song of Solomon 4:9-10

That what seemd fair in all the World, seemd now
Mean, or in her summ'd up, in her containd
And in her looks, which from that time infus'd
Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before,
And into all things from her Aire inspir'd
The spirit of love and amorous delight.

-Milton, Paradise Lost V:472-477

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.

-Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II

There is no basis for true love or romance apart from God.

You can’t believe in love. Or at least in the way that it has been understood by humanity.

As an Naturalist, all you can believe about love is chemicals. Never mind about all the human things that happen when one is in love. The risk and terror of asking a girl out? Chemicals. The inexpressible joy of relationship? Chemicals. Lovesickness? Chemicals. How you felt after your first kiss? Nothing but chemicals. The terribly cheesy poetry in love letters? Chemicals for sure.

The theme of romance has inspired the greatest poets and authors throughout history. From the love of Perris and Helen through Romeo and Juliet and continuing today in terrible supermarket novels, we have been enraptured by this idea of love and romance. It has inspired the greatest works of our race. And we want to say that we’re on the verge of the answer? For the great observers of the human conditions (playwrights and authors), love was a transcendent, and only through their wonderful ability can we understand a glimmer of it. Romeo’s words resonate in some special way with those of us who have looked across a room to see the most beautiful woman we thought ever could be.

But as it turns out, it’s not a transcendent. It’s chemicals. Your happy relationship? That was just good deterministic luck and the action of chemicals. Neither of you really had a choice in the matter. There’s a bit of work left to be done as to which unpronounceable chemicals it is, and when one bounces off the other. But that’s the answer.

And we’re supposed to be satisfied with it? You know what love is. All 6.5 billion of us do. And it’s not what’s written about in scientific papers. Shakespeare’s a lot closer to being right. Who are these ‘scientists’ who would contradict the observations of the rest of the race, including the precedent of 3000 years of publications supporting an opposite view?

It is utterly un-scientific to explain away 6.5 billion (plus all the dead observer who wrote about it) without powerfully compelling evidence. And what is the evidence? Because we know chemicals do some of the things in the human experience. Therefore they must also explain all the things. Convincing?

But what is Christian love? It is a major theme of the Bible, and many words have been written on it since then. Christian love is that which we received from God, the ability to choose to care more about another than we do for ourselves. Being from God, it is higher than just another biological instinct. And love depends on freewill; we must of our own volition choose to love for it to have meaning. But all of my rambling cannot compare to Paul’s wonderful description: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails…” (1Cr 13:4-8).

If you allow for God and souls, you can have love. Love remains transcendent, something above us which like the stars which we look towards, but its transcendence is founded in God. We receive the holy gift of love from Him. And regardless of our acknowledgment of the gift, we are able to express it and experience it with the will that we each have. When humans make love, it is not two animals procreating by instinct; it is two people uniting in body and soul.

When I choose to ask a girl out, I choose. My soul, and the freedom it has, chooses to love. And it is in this way that love becomes real; it is in this way that love rises above instinct. And it is this which we have all felt, some higher thing, sitting on top of our instinct.

We would not express our humanity if we were driven by chemicals alone. It is only when we transcend the physical that we express our humanity. It is when we choose whom we love that we act as humans.

The Song of Twilight

Earlier today, I prayed with one of my friends on campus and I biked back towards home after finishing. I cycled towards home down Serra Street past the main quad just after sunset. Some light lingered still, as if in homage to the set sun. For no particular reason (and against the very nature of late-October), my mind began to sing “Joy to the World!” As I reflected on the line, “Let Heaven and Nature sing,” I began to consider the connection between the beauty of Nature and the beauty of Heaven, and especially of Heaven’s plan of salvation through Christ.

I looked up at the trees, and it was as if they began to sing. And my eyes heard their Song. The Song of Twilight commenced by the shadows, shapes and colors of a million leaves. I smiled wide, passing trees on both sides. My teeth exposed, I felt the rhythm of the cool air. The trees sang their praises to God, and my smile would have grown if it were possible. My joy, ever filling, spilled over into my eyes which upturned, but even they would not be able to contain it. Then the Song moved to its crescendo! I heard as heaven above me joined the choir, singing in a deep blue baritone, and about me the buildings sang in earthen colors and the red of tile roofs. All of them together sang in a language unknown but familiar. Though I knew not the words, I knew their message and the Joy in their voices. Nature was unanimous and emphatic in its song: “God loves you.” And my Joy was full.

I continued pedaling down the road, and Joy from the Song continued filling me. Finally Joy overflowed my soul and streamed down my face in tears. They came first in a trickle and then as a flood. The Song was muffled by the tears, but still loud. As my eyes kept hearing of the Love of God, I continued to weep.

It must have been quite a sight for those who saw me: a full-grown man riding his bicycle, his face wet and dripping with tears, his eyes red with crying, and strangest of all, wearing a grin ear-to-ear and laughing.

I cycled for a quarter mile, barely able to see. And then at last, the Song faded. The choir members went back to merely being glorious sky and beautiful trees. But the memory of their melody still played in my soul.

I used to think of our souls as a sliding scale, and “full joy” was moving towards one side of that scale. I used to think Jesus’ promise to make full the joy of those who abided in Him was simply a movement of the scale a point or two. Today I learned that Jesus meant ‘full,’ and not ‘maximal,’ for ‘full’ implies a liquid. So then ‘full joy’ could not be measured by a scale; rather our souls catch Joy as it falls like rain from heaven. But we are imperfect and our souls, like cracked pottery, are always leaking and never full. But today, for no special reason beyond God’s delight, I was filled with Joy to overflowing by the Song of Twilight.

Why you can’t believe in Dandelions (Part I)

I have recently realized something about most people: they are inconsistent. Orwell described this state of mind in his novel 1984: “…holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” This is what most people in America do today, and like those in 1984, they do not know that they are doing it.

In most cases, people will plagiarize the pleasant parts of another philosophy (in the case of America, from Christianity), nor realizing that the stolen material is actually contradictory to the argument. This pair of articles intends to show several of the more important areas where this occurs like, Please, Soup Kitchens, Science, True Love, and of course, Dandelions. In the next article, I will show that these are possessions of Christians which have been stolen by Humanists. In this one, I will describe the dangers of such thieving to the Humanist, and thus my motivation for writing this. As this is a public safety announcement for Humanists, I will address the rest of this article to you, my Humanist friends.

You believe in a lot of Christian beliefs in things like “Please,” soup kitchens and Dandelions against all Humanist evidence (to your credit). You know true things to be true no matter how inconsistent it may be with your worldview. One issue (which will be dealt with in the next article) is, “Which things in Humanism are borrowed or inconsistent?” The other issue (and the one I will deal with here) is: “So what if Humanism does borrow some things? Who cares if I pick and choose what things I believe in? I may prefer the idea of caring for others above the idea of Survival of the Fittest in society, but that’s not inconsistent.”

In this article I will try to describe why that’s a bad, or at very least, a dangerous idea.

The first problem is that borrowing ideas without citing them is stealing. In most of these cases, you are taking what was a Christian virtue, renaming it, and then calling it your own (or that of your philosophy). “‘Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them,’ (Matthew 7:12)” becomes, “I should do to others what I’d want them to do to me.” You don’t cite sources, because you usually don’t know that it’s plagiarized. While it helps, not knowing does not excuse you. You have received stolen merchandise; your ignorance about its origins doesn’t change the fact that you’ve got somebody else’s stuff. Nevertheless, the plagiarism in itself is not so much a logical problem as a moral one.

What is a logical problem is the fact that you are using far too many Christian ideas. To help illustrate this, imagine we are both building structures. Imagine I am setting bricks onto a stone foundation according to a blueprint. Now imagine you are watching me. You like the way one of the walls of my building is coming along, so you take some of my bricks (with or without permission) and start to make one that looks like it yourself.

In the parable, the bricks are Christian philosophies (the Golden Rule, for example). The foundation is my faith in Jesus and the blueprint is Christianity as a worldview (including all that is in the Bible and all the philosophical implications and answers that come from it).

The problem you have in the parable is this: in every location where a Christian brick is used instead of a secular one, it weakens your position in two ways. Your first problem is that you’re using my bricks. Why do you need my bricks? Are yours not good enough? Are mine better? Secondly, every time you look to me, a Christian builder, to watch what bricks I lay, it begs the question: “Why not copy the foundation, too?” If I were indeed a better builder (the evidence for this is accumulates with every one of my bricks you lay), it would be a very good idea to look to my foundation, which (as a Civil Engineer let me assure you) is the most important part of a building. It may be that the bricks form an excellent building, but that building was not designed to stand on anything but the solid foundation of Christ; in fact, when engineers specify strong foundations, it usually means that they are required for the building to stand.

What is also a very bad idea is to engineer by mosaic. Two heads may be better than one, but building according to two different blueprints is definitely not. You may think yourself bright, but there have been many before you who were brighter. And what’s more, these people have worked together over the centuries to come up with ideas which were comprehensive. They have thought of everything within a particular view and how it fits in with everything else. And so we have various worldview ‘blueprints,’ called Christianity and Atheism which are comprehensive. That is, they have answers (good or bad; attractive or repulsive; and I won’t say “respectively,” at least not yet) to all important questions.

When you take a girder from a Christian blueprint because you like the way it looks, and try to fit that into an Atheist building, there is no guarantee that it will not cause a structural failure. Unless you believe yourself more capable than the original architects, swapping pieces from separate blueprints is a very dangerous thing to do. It might be safe to change the façade on a Christian building to look more Mexican, but do not change a pillar of Atheism (selfishness) with one of Christianity (selflessness) and think the structure sound.

But what if you did? What if you fling all caution to the wind and throw up a structure which had all the attractive elements (stolen from the Christian worksite) put together on the loose and sandy foundation of Atheism. Imagining that you could get an engineer to sign off on it, and assuming it was a possible construction (that is, assuming you took the spires with their flying buttresses), you’d end up with a building.

Some might call it a monstrosity, an amalgam of two contradictory styles, Gothic spires above Greek columns, or a Renaissance façade on a steel building. But you could claim that it was your monstrosity, and that you liked the way it looked. They might claim that you had no single theme in mind when you designed it. But you could say that a building doesn’t need a single theme. Some would call you a fool for sleeping in a structure which would be shaken if rain fell or earth shook. You could say that you don’t care about the danger, and could assert with no evidence that your building would stand, come what challenges may. You would contend that, even though a structure like yours has never seen an earthquake or hurricane, it would be strong because it looked good and was built with good materials.

And maybe you’d prove them all wrong: all the architects throughout history who followed rules, all those who said you shouldn’t steal building materials, all the artists who said two styles couldn’t be mixed, all the engineers who said you should have built on rock and not sand, and all the meteorologists who predicted it would be destroyed in a storm. Maybe. But what are the chances? How likely is it that you’ve stumbled onto something that one of the real architects missed? Do you really want to live in a building that has no precedent? Certainly, if you are one of the visionaries of our age who is blazing a trail through unexplored country. But is that how you see yourself? Do you really feel safe in a structure designed by you, who are neither architect nor engineer? Do you feel comfortable in a building which those who are experts say is unsound?

In other words, do you trust your philosophy to stand up to all challenges of life? Do you have confidence that your untested and untried belief will be steadfast against seeing gross injustice, experiencing great evil, and will remain unshaken even in the face of your own death?

If the answer to these questions is, “Yes!” then I have nothing more to say. You are either a genius or insane (or both), and I hope that your structure does not collapse so suddenly as you cannot escape.

But for those of you uncomfortable with the prospect of mosaic architecture, stay tuned. I will soon attempt to show you which bricks you have stolen from Jesus, and explain how they work much better when laid upon a solid foundation.