We Are All Stark Raving Mad

I just back from a short drive and on the way back we listened to 'All Things Considered' where Jon Ronson, the author of The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry , was being interviewed. The main premise of the book, which sounds like it would be an interesting read, is that much of the world is run by psychopaths. I laughed, but as I listened to some of the things the classified as constituting madness and as telltale signs of madness, a few things stood out. Much of what he described are often described as 'having a power trip', 'being a ruthless leader', or a 'cuthroat competitor'. Mr. Ronson is not describing madness, he is describing sin.

Many people today cannot accept that 'normal' humans could be as bad as most humans evidently are. Forget Hitler or Stalin, how do we explain a basically good man taking pleasure in firing hard working employees when he knows that they need the job and will have little possibility of finding another job? How do we explain a basically good person talking about their belief in the predator instinct and the dominance of the strong? What about the kids who walk into schools and start shooting, or the career criminals who see nothing wrong with their way of life? If we do not believe in a God or a Devil, we are forced to accept these evils as part of the world and either deny the difference between good and evil, or we can normalize it by calling it madness. While there are definitely those who would chose the first option, appealing to evolutionary development and the survival of the fittest, there are many who cannot accept this solution. They feel on a basic level that certain things are just wrong, and when they see people take joy in these things, unwilling to admit to the existence of evil, they conclude that these people have a psychological problem.

The result is a society afflicted with varying degrees of kleptomania, narcissistic personality disorders, and a myriad of variations of madness. Everyone in a society is afflicted with madness to one degree or another, because all deviations from good behavior are results of madness.

If this is true society cannot function. If everyone is mad to one degree or another, who is to say what is madness and what is sanity. If you remove the basic standards that God put in place; right and wrong, good and evil, you remove the logical and rational basis for society to function. Evil exists, and calling it madness and normalizing it will do nothing to ease the pain or fix the damage that it creates.

It is true that there are psychological disorders that are real disorders and are neither results of a conscious desire to sin nor indicators of present or past sin and I have no wish to diminish the suffering that such diseases cause. There is however, a difference between someone who has a legitimate disorder and someone who is just plain evil.

King Arthur

This is an essay I wrote to (very) briefly cover the history of the Arthurian Legend with emphasis on the earlier portions of the story. I would like to eventually do something a little more in depth on certain characters or portions of the story, such as Merlin. Check it out, and I hope you enjoy it.
King Arthur, Man, Myth, And Legend

It Is Finished

The pain came stronger, with each pulse throbbing,
His bleeding hands and slowly tearing feet,
Slowly him of his strength was robbing
was this cross so different from his father’s seat.

Below him cried the mortal horde,
jeers and jests from those he loved,
those he saved from death’s dark sword.
They laughed and sneered still unmoved
by the blood and sweat that from his face ran down
and soaked into the dark and thirsty ground.

Beside him hung two more,
petty thieves, he saw their lives,
doomed to eternal wrath and gore
beneath the law for their unnumbered crimes.

All about him the host of God arrayed.
All stood there who had at the beginning stood,
The Traitor, Lucifer, all his power displayed,
his being devoid of all that was good.
Beyond him stood Michael in sorrow,
And Gabriel wondering what would be tomorrow.

But beyond them all his eyes were sent,
The judgement hall he watched and felt
There was all his focus bent.
As before God the law and judgement knelt.

Each and every crime from days long past,
and from those days still now untold
upon himself were laid at last.
The pain increased a hundred thousand million fold
And judgement’s darkness descended about him,
And he felt the burning, freezing, tearing pain of sin.

Time seemed to stand still,
watching the Son of God,
Suffer a world of ill.
As his blood fell red upon the sod.

He bowed his head as the pain raged on,
Love held him there, love pure and true,
Love it was that made him strong,
God and man he stood, pure and true.

Then he felt it, drawing near,
he cried for wine, his mouth to clear.
All would hear it, from the gates of gold
to the bulwarks of hell, the mountains old
and the flowers young, from the east to the west
Once more he would speak before his rest.

He swallowed the wine put too his lips,
letting the wetness fill his mouth.
It was only a few short sips,
but he would be heard from North to South.
Gathering his strength he lifted up upon the nail,
that pain by the judgement rendered pale.

He filled his mortal lungs with air,
and with all the strength in his mortal frame
He cried out the words so sweet and fair,
The words so long he had awaited.

“Tetelestai!” He cried with all the power at his command,
“It Is Finished!” His work was complete.
Man from God was no longer banned.

The rocks cracked and the angels reeled
The temple curtain God in a moment rent.
From him his children were no longer sealed.

Pragmatism and Lysoled Cake

I hate pragmatism, and just about hit the ceiling whenever someone says they do something 'because it works'. Pragmatism, Machiavellianism, call it what you will, it doesn't work. The reason it doesn't work is simple, humans as a race do not have enough knowledge to predict with any kind of accuracy the totality of the future. When we are assessing how we will achieve a goal we have to evaluate three different areas. First, what is the goal we want, then what is the best way to get there, and what will be the fallout from getting said goal. For instance, let us say we want someone else's cake. Having decided on the goal, we then decide the best way to get there is to demand it. We assume that since we are the upperclassman and the cake belongs to freshmen, there isn't anything they can do. However, the cake, it turns out, has been sprayed with Lysol. Also, demanding the cake irritated the freshmen, so while you are at the library, said freshmen stuff rotting chicken up your air vent.

This illustrates that pragmatism violates itself because it doesn't work. The above was a humorous situation, after the chicken was removed, but the mess Neville Chamberlain created in Europe wasn't a funny for the hundreds of thousand of Czechoslovakians Hitler killed.

The reason pragmatism is so appealing is because its main contender isn't so appealing if you just want to help yourself here and now. Christianity tells us to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do.

Most atheists talk about the divine busybody who makes us do the right thing because it is his set of rules. God created the world and the universe a certain way, with a structure that works very well when you follow the rules. When you violate the way the universe is structured, there are natural consequences. God's rules are the owner's manual to the universe, and people throw away the manual, talking about being 'free spirits' and 'independent of a omnipotent dictator' and proceed to fail miserably in their lives.

When you choose what is right over what you think works, the outcome is good. The catch is that it may not be good for you right now. Thus, if you are the most important person in the world (as per atheism and evolution) and if there is no afterlife (as per atheism) then pragmatism is a far better option, but it will still fill your room with stinking chicken.

The Purpose of Man

The great question that every person faces is what is man’s purpose in life? The most common answer from Christians is something along the lines of ‘To glorify God and enjoy him forever”. That may indeed be a great answer, but in order to construct an argument from it, let us analyze what it means to glorify and enjoy God.

First let us look at glorifying God. To glorify is much the same as to honor, to make look good, etc. The best way I know to honor God is to obey his commandments, pretty fundamental right? Okay, so glorifying God is obeying God, but what else does it mean? As Christians we are called to be ambassadors for Christ, so how does an ambassador honor he who sent him? By behaving in such a way that brings credit to the name of the sender. So glorifying God is being obedient to his commands and acting in a way that brings credit to his name.

But what does it mean to enjoy God? Most people I believe have grasped the idea, if not the practice, that enjoying God means creating and cultivating a relationship with him. I would submit that one way to enjoy God is to enjoy what he has created. God created the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and God created man. God does not create to fill space. Everything he creates is to glorify him in some way. When man sings a song, paints a picture, has a family, grows a garden, plants an orchard, raises an animal, he is glorifying God by engaging in the creation that God made.

There are two extremes that Christians seem to be prone to, at least in America. One group says that we should enjoy what God has created, learn about him from the good things in life. They then proceed to chase a relationship with God by spending all their free time ‘enjoying God’ without attending to the business God has given them to do. It such people the phrase ‘So heavenly minded they are no earthly good’ refers to. The other extreme is to be so focused on following the particular mission or command God has given that we forget to enjoy and engage in the world that God created.

To bring this all together, if you focus on enjoying God through the life he has given you, you will fail to complete his plan for you. You are like the soldier who, having gone behind enemy lines, proceeds to get to know the occupied locals and joins their tribe; a relationship has been established, but nothing has been done to further the lord’s plan. You have failed to make a meaningful contribution to the Lords work. When you stand before the Throne with God Almighty sitting in judgment what will you say? ‘I knew you Lord, though I ignored your commandments’? ‘Lord I enjoyed your creation, though I did nothing to save others from hellfire’?

If on the other hand you become so focused on completing the mission God has given you, you will become disappointed and bitter. Man is built for victory. In one of the Nazi prison camps, it was said that a particular commander ordered an experiment to see how people handled a pointless task. Prisoners were forced to move a pile of rocks from one side of a field to the other, then back again, day after day. Men began going mad on the third day. God does not ask any of us to accomplish a goal or mission, and for a very simple reason, we can’t. Until Christ returns, we are fighting a losing battle. God asks only that we give everything we have to fight for him, and he will worry about the results. If your only focus is on glorifying God through obeying his commands, you will be sorely tested as you see yourself failing continuously to make any kind of impact on the world. Doing combat with the world, the flesh, and the devil, you will be wounded many times, and you must seek comfort in the Lord if you are to continue. When you stand before the Throne, will the Lord say to you “You obeyed me, but did you love me? You honor me, but do you love me?”

There is no easy way. If you want to be called a good and faithful servant you must not only enjoy the Lord, but you must honor him as well. Do not spend all your time trying to achieve measureable success, do not ask, at the end of the day ‘What did I get done’ or ‘Do I feel fulfilled’. Instead, ask ‘Did I make good use of my time to honor and glorify the Lord’?