Now I stare at people's shoes

Hello,

As a note to the reader, I would like to point out that I have nothing to say about the reading for this week.  I personally believe that if I have nothing to say, I shouldn’t say anything.  It seems like such a waste of time and energy.   However, for the sake of my grade in this class, I will make something up.  Feel free to consider this an apology for what you’re about to read.  Enjoy.

            Education is easily considered to be one of the most valuable things one could possess.  Why do people hold it hold it in such high regard?  Is it because of the opportunities that it presents to the student?  While it does provide a plethora of opportunities, it does so much more.  In my first blog post, I wrote about how Arthur Holmes has explained the importance of a liberal arts education in shaping the mind of an individual.  He is more concerned about what the education will do to an individual instead of what it will do for them.  I believe that St. Basil would agree with this too.

            For those who are unaware, St. Basil wrote on the use of pagan literature as a means to educate Christian children who were not mature enough to understand the Bible.  On the topic of pagan literature, he writes that “we should not accept everything without discrimination, but only what is useful” (Basil VIII).  He obviously believes that the pagan literature (such as works by Plato and Aristotle) is not completely true, but had truth in it.  It is to be polarized into what is useful, and what is useless.  This is a process that I have repeatedly gone through for over twelve years in my schooling.  Every source of information that I had learned from (until this year) is considered pagan.  I had never opened a Bible in a school for academic purposes until I started to attend Olivet, and even then, most of what I currently learn from is pagan.  Is this wrong?  No, it is not, as there are still things to be learned from literature that is not strictly Christian.  St. Basil even lists several Biblical figures such as Moses and Daniel who had studied, learned, and grew from pagan literature.

           Having established that a Christian’s education is not to be restricted to the Bible, my sequential mind begins to wonder what the next step is.  Suppose a student studies the pagan literature described by St. Basil.  How is the student to distinguish what aligns with the Bible without being mature enough to comprehend the Bible?  This seems almost paradoxical to me.  Our other reading, Go With God by Stanley Hauerwas, seems to provide an answer to this.  The student needs a mentor.  The student is to seek “professors who have reputations as intellectual mentors of Christian students” (Hauerwas 4).  If the student is not mature enough to understand the Bible, then it is their responsibility to find someone who is.

            I find it appropriate to close with a quote by Aristotle (one of the pagan authors referenced by St. Basil).  He said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it”.  It seems ironic how the pagan Aristotle perfectly explains St. Basil’s view of Christian interaction with the pagan literature of the world.

*Title Note:  Since I didn't like what I wrote I wanted to give you something worth considering.  You can tell a lot about a person by looking at their shoes.

Romans Response

It is very common for Christians to regard God as their friend.  While this may be true, it makes me very uncomfortable.  Through reading the book of Romans this week, I was reminded of the relationship between God and man.  While the denotation of the word “friend” can apply to one’s relationship with God, the connotation given to the word by our culture cannot.  The word “friend” seems to suggest that man is on the same level as God, that they are equals.  Paul, the author of Romans, would say otherwise.

While explaining that all people sin, Paul writes that “There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:18).  No one can understand the power of God on their own, and I feel like this fact gives us a better understanding of His power, but we are still only scratching the surface.  The point is that God’s power is unfathomable, and we are to fear Him for it.  In the beginning of the book, Paul refers to himself as “a servant of Christ Jesus” (Romans 1:1) and he later tells the reader that “you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness” (Romans 6:16b).  So, as Christians, we are called to be servants and slaves to Jesus and God’s commands.  This is drastically different from the connotation of the word “friend”. 

Not only is God omnipotent, but He has also done so much for his creation.  Considering all that He has done for us also helps to shape our perception of the relationship that we have.  Christians “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24).  We are redeemed from our sin that sentences us to eternity in Hell, so that we may be in the presence of the almighty God.  God had and has no obligation to save us from our wicked ways and there is nothing that we can do to earn this salvation.  Because of this, we should not only fear God but also come before him with an attitude of thanksgiving and adoration. 

            So, what are we to do in light of the relationship between God and man?  Paul is rather straightforward with what we as Christians are to do.  He tells us to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual act of worship” (Romans 12:1b).  We are to worship God in all that we do in our lives.  This is no easy task though, and I believe that Tyler Joseph, the singer and lyricist for the band twenty one pilots, explains that in the song Ride.  He raps, “"I'd live for you, " and that's hard to do / Even harder to say when you know it's not true”.  We can say that we will live for God, but if we’re honest, we know that we will fail in doing so at some point.  This is where God’s grace comes in to save us yet again and we can praise Him even more for His mercy.  But “are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?  By no means!” (Romans 6:1-2b).  If one is a slave to obedience to God, then they are no longer a slave to their sin and this is how it should be.  We ought to live in fear and adoration of God for all that He is and has done.

Extra Note:  This is unrelated to the rest of the blog post, but I wanted to bring attention to a verse that reminded me of a conversation that I had with a friend.  Paul writes, “Let love be genuine.  Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9).  This is the mark of a Christian.  My friend reminded me of what it looks like for love to be genuine.  To that person: I hope you know who you are and thank you.

Week 7 Response

            For the most part, I appreciated the Confucius reading selection, Chung-Yung, that was assigned this week.  Even the style and format was a refreshing change of pace from the typical readings.  Its structure made it easy to pick up and put down.  However, the part that I appreciated most about the reading were the numerous parallels between Chung-Yung and the Bible, even though it had no influence on Confucianism.

            As a Christian, it was fairly easy for me to notice similarities between Chung-Yung and the Bible.  The first major one that I noticed was a quote on the unwobbling pivot.  It was written that one should “Center oneself in the invariable” (Confucius, 105).  This reminded me of the parable that Jesus once told in the book  of Matthew.  It says, “24 Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.” (Matthew 7: 24-25 ESV).  In the parable, “the rock” is the invariable.  By centering himself in the invariable, the wise man was able to withstand the storm.  Now this leads to the question of what is invariable?  The parable is very clear that Jesus’ teachings are invariable and unchanging, but the Confucius writing is not so clear.  It is also vague when it says, “The man of breed pivots himself on the unchanging and has faith.” (Confucius, 115).  When I read this I immediately wondered what the man of breed is to have faith in.  There were several other similarities that I noticed such as a variation of The Golden rule (page 121), the importance of keeping your word (page 123), the harmony of parents (page 129), courtesy to foreigners (page 159), and holding material riches in low esteem (page 159).  The common trend that I found throughout all of these was that Confucius did not give reasons for doing these other than for being a man of breed.  Christians should be motivated to live this way to strive to live like Jesus did and to show God’s love to a broken world.

            Having established that there are undeniable similarities between Christianity and Confucianism we must now ask the question “so what?”.  Asking this question led me to wonder what the end goal (or telos for you Aristotle fans) is for these two things in question.  They both seem to point to some sort of universal or supreme good.  Both establishing that there is a standard of perfection that the average man is to strive towards.  From the Christian viewpoint, I can understand that this moral standard of perfection is unattainable by man, but that through Jesus’ sacrifice and God’s forgiveness, we can enjoy life free of the wages of sin, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6: 23 ESV).  As I attempted to consider the Confucianism viewpoint, I remembered a critical piece of information.  Christianity is a religion.  Confucianism is an ideology.  Christianity has an end goal, while Confucianism does not.  It is a system of philosophy.  It was intentional for Christianity to have an end goal and for Confucianism to lack one.

Week 5 Response

Imagine that you are playing a game of darts.  It would be fairly easy for you to hit the dart board.  Now imagine that you have been blindfolded and the board has been moved.  Would you even attempt to throw the dart?  Without having a goal or knowing where to aim, is it worth playing the game?  Aristotle understood the importance of teleology, which is “the fact or character attributed to nature or natural processes of being directed toward an end or shaped by a purpose” (Merriam-Webster), to the human life and wrote on it in his work, The Nicomachean Ethics.

It is proposed that the end goal for humanity is a theoretical “supreme good”.  When I read this, I immediately thought of the Law of Moses in the Old Testament of the Bible.  But the next rational question is whether this high standard of good is attainable.  In both the Biblical and ethical cases, I would say that it is not, but instead that it serves as a goal and a standard for our lives.  We can know that this ultimate good is the goal of humanity as “the highest good is clearly something final” (Aristotle 13).  This is teleology in its true form.  The apprehension of this supreme good and understanding of its acquirement.  Aristotle writes that “knowledge of this supreme good is of great importance for the conduct of life… we shall have a better chance of attaining what we want” (Aristotle 2).  And what exactly is it that we as people want?  Why happiness of course.

Happiness is the end goal for people.  We want other things as a means to happiness, but we want happiness for what it actually is.  But what exactly is happiness?  According to Aristotle, “different people give different definitions of it” (Aristotle 5).  As I am writing this, I would say that my definition of happiness is to have rest.  Happiness is not rest, but I want rest as a means to happiness.  Aristotle however, holds to a more sophisticated definition of happiness.  It is a “certain kind of activity of the soul in accordance with virtue” (Aristotle 22).

If virtue leads to happiness, then we must understand what it means to be virtuous.  There are two types of virtues.  There are intellectual virtues (such as wisdom, intelligence, and prudence) and moral virtues (such as liberty and temperance).  The possession of these virtues is what makes one virtuous, which is what leads to happiness according to Aristotle.  Intellectual virtues are obtained by experience and teaching.  Moral virtues, however, are obtained by practice.  We strengthen them by exercising them.

So to return to the dartboard illustration, virtue is like taking aim at the dart board, which is happiness, and knowing that the goal is to hit the board is like teleology.  If we have no goal, then we have no chance of attaining what we want (like happiness).