The Church – The Israel of God and The New Creation

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation. And as many as walk according to this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.  (Galatians 6:15-16)

In Galatians 6 St. Paul speaks about the Israel of God and the New Creation.  The Israel of God in this case refers to the Church, the Body of Christ.  St. Paul did believe that Christian believers were the Israel of God – not the New Israel (as versus the Old), but the continuation of the only Israel of God.  St. Paul does not use the phrase the “new Israel” but does believe that in Christ we are a new creation.  As Sergius Bulgakov wrote:  “The end of the world is not physical but metaphysical. In reality, the world does not end but is transfigured into a new being, into a new heaven and a new earth. ”  It is not just Jews or Christians who are renewed and transfigured but the entire cosmos.   St. Paul (and the entire New Testament) also does not use phrases like “True Israel” or “True Faith” when speaking about the Christian Church.  Actually the Church’s claim to be the “True Faith” is based upon the idea that we have received a true understanding of Christ and the world.  It is Christ as Truth that makes Orthodoxy true and the fullness of the truth.  “The greatest gift of Orthodoxy is its conviction of being the true faith, that is, a way of faith and life which possesses and proclaims the truth as a gift of God. At the heart of this awesome claim is Christ Himself who said; “I am the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6). Based on the truth of the person and saving work of Christ, the Apostles and Church Fathers have bequeathed to Orthodox Christians a remarkably coherent and universal vision of truth pertaining to God, man, creation, salvation, Church, ethics, society, family, marriage, vocations, and so on.”        (Theodore G. Stylianopoulos, The Way of Christ)

Journey into the Unknown: Science and Religion

Physicist and author Brian Greene wrote an article in the May 2009 magazine WIRED entitled, “Journey into the Unknown: It’s the Questions, not the answers, that make science the ultimate adventure.”   In that article he captures what seems to me to be the very essence of science:  it is about exploring mystery without which science would come to an end.  He says science is not memorizing  facts, charts and equations, rather “science is the journey.”  His definition of science is how I normally conceive science, and not only science but theology as well.  Greene writes:

Science is about immersing ourselves in piercing uncertainty while struggling with the deepest of mysteries. It is the ultimate adventure. Against staggering odds, a species that has walked upright for only a few million years is trying to unravel puzzles that are billions of years in the making. How did the universe begin? How was life initiated? How did consciousness emerge? Einstein captured it best when he wrote, “the years of anxious searching in the dark for a truth that one feels but cannot express.” That’s what science is about.

For me it is also what theology is about for not only do we exist in a universe which we can explore and endeavor to discover its hidden truths, the universe also exists in God who has chosen to reveal Himself in and through the universe which He made.  Science and religion are both quests – science into the macro-cosmos and the microcosmic universe, and theology into the depths of the soul of humans as well as into the eternal life of the Triune God.  Greene says,

Established truths are comforting, but it is the mysteries that make the soul ache and render a life of exploration worth living.

The wrestling with mystery, not the ascension to resolution, defines who we are.

We all are in search of understanding what it means to be human, whether we consider the human to be created by the Divine or a purely material product of random natural forces.   Theology too is about trying to move us from what is known (the physical, material universe) into the unknown (the mysteries of God).   For many religion is nothing more than repeating ancient formuli:  “God said it. I believe it.  That settles it.”  I on the other hand along with so many others have experienced in theology a great sojourn often taking the answers to discover what is the right question?

Because I conceive science and theology the way that I do, I look to both science and theology to enrich my understanding of what it is to be human.  I see no need for the two to be in opposition to each other -  if they are seeking to find answers to the universal questions of humanity, they are going about it in different ways and making very different assumptions.  I don’t see any basic reason for science and religion to be in opposition to each other for they are both different ways of knowing the universe AND what they conceive of as ultimate reality are totally distinct.  In science ultimate reality is the material universe while in religion ultimate reality lies in God the creator of the material universe and who is not coterminous with this universe.  Our ability to know God may in some way be limited by our being part of the material universe, but we humans also have the roots of our being in God.

Taking these things into consideration I do not feel the threat or pressure from the arguments conducted between some scientists and some religious people who see God and science as being in opposition over such issues as evolution or the age of the universe.  While I have been interested in the writings of Intelligent Design folk in trying to bridge the gap between science and religion, I have not become convinced that have found the way to build the bridge.

I read two books earlier this year  which explore the relationship between science and religion on the issues of creation and evolution which I will comment on is this series of blogs.  The books are Denis Alexander’s CREATION OR EVOLUTION: DO WE HAVE TO CHOOSE?  and Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett’s EVOLUTION FROM CREATION TO NEW CREATION: CONFLICT, CONVERSATION, AND CONVERGENCE.   Both books do a good job of using scientific fact and information and Christian theology to look at science, intelligent design and theology.  They propose slightly different solutions for how to hold science and religion together but both believe they are compatible.   The effort to insist that science and religion are in fact compatible is one that appeals to my own interests.  I have read at times Jerry Coyne’s blog Why Evolution is True and note his frequent criticisms of religious people who attack science and also his well expressed doubt that religious efforts (such as intelligent design) to find compatibility with science do so only by co-opting science and requiring that science abandon its own principles and logic. 

Next:  Creation or Evolution: Do We have to Choose?

Objective Truth and the Need for an Observer

“If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it still make a sound?”

“Mathematics is not a discovery, but a human invention.”  (Andrew Louth).

Andrew Louth in his book length essay, Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology, engages ideas about whether truth can mean the same thing in the humanities as it does in science and whether these two realms of intellectual engagement with the universe can in fact use the same methodologies to evaluate truth claims.  His essay is both thought provoking and informative.  It caused me to reflect again on the claim of science and its relationship to truth.

Louth says, “Science is concerned with objective truth … Such truth is independent of whoever observes it…”  Science is concerned with eliminating errors due to perspective or history and with establishing facts independent of the observer.

I have to wonder whether Louth’s definition of science or scientific truth is adequate given the insights of Einstein’s theory of relativity or those of quantum mechanics where in fact the observer effects and even determines what is observed.   In the world of quantum physics – which also happens to be our world – the facts are quite dependent on the observer and on the observer’s frame of reference.   The first law of science would have to be an observer must exist for truth or information to be observed, recorded, and/or interpreted.   Truth does not exist where or when no observer exists.

Do mathematical relationships exist in nature?  Only in as much as there is someone to observe them.  The mathematical constant pi- “the ratio of any circle’s circumference to its diameter in Euclidean geometry” – may be true, yet if there is no one to make that measurement/observation or to use that ratio, it is meaningless.  It has meaning only to the extent that there is an observer to take note of it.  So mathematics is indeed a human convention – at a minimum a human observation if not a human invention.     Mathematical ratios, constants, patterns, formula or calculus are true/truths, but only to the extent that there exists observers to take note of them.  As long as there are observers mathematics is true regardless of whether or not the facts/information are useful.    Do such formula thus give us a true vision of the world, or are they truthfully mere conventions of those of us who can observe them?   In other words are they a truth which the observers impose upon reality?   It is humans who have invented the means – mathematics – to both make and make sense of the ratios, relationships and formulas which are observed to exist in nature.  Though for humans there is a discovery of mathematical relationships, it is only because there are humans that such discoveries are made and then imposed upon nature as a way of relating to it.

If no one exists to observe the falling tree, there is no question about sound that has any meaning – it doesn’t matter whether or not vibrations or noise exist as both the energy and the tree have no meaning.   There would be no one to know.

Mathematics, like science, is thus observer dependent.  It may be for scientific and mathematical truth that any observer would note the same fact, but without the observer in the first place there would be no fact at all.  It is the observer, or any observers or all observers which “make” something factual and thus establish truth.  Truth holds meaning only to those who can observe it. 

All of this raises the interesting question then as to whether before consciousness existed in the universe anything can be said to have existed?  If there was no one to observe the Big Bang in what way can we say that we know of it?  What we can OBSERVE are the effects of the cause, but before there were observers there was no “truth” (though we may have to acknowledge that there was truth to be observed!).   The truth about the origins of the universe exist only because now there are beings to observe existence and to impose their understand on the beginnings.

There is of course the notion of God.  If as Genesis says God existed, then there always was an observer even when the physical universe did not exist.   How could there be an observer without there being an observed?  Here at least Christians would say there was the Trinity – the Triune eternal persons who knew each other.   It is they who decided to bring the visible universe into existence and observed it all from the beginning.  There was a knowing Trinity of persons who brought into existence that which can be observed. 

Humans, according to the Scriptures have received a revelation from God about all that can be observed.  In creating conscious (self conscious and reflective) beings, God’s revelation can be observed.  Meaning is created by the conscious beings interacting with that which can be observed.   Because of God we are able to know of things which existed – truths – before we were there to observe them.  We thus can impose on the past meaning, we can impose on the past scientific and mathematical formula to make sense of that which we could not observe.  We understand these truths though they are based upon the assumption that existence even when it couldn’t be observed must be the same as it is now that it can be observed. 

The existence of observers of the universe is what creates truth and meaning.  The observer is necessary to impose on existence meaning and the appellation “truth” on existence.  In this sense scientific truth is no less dependent on the existence of an observer than is theology.

When it comes to establishing truth, mathematics and science are dependent on the same thing as the humanities or theology: namely an observer.  This is an anthropic principle – from the point of view of humanity at least, and a theistic principle from the point of view of God.

The Touching Story of the Apostle Thomas

THOMAS SUNDAY                  John 20:19-31

 The sense of touch – what is its importance to our lives?  

 We confirm many truths with it.  We confirm that a loved one is near by.  We sense warmth and life by it.  We can convey love and concern through it.  We connect to others in a deeper way when we touch them.  We confirm we are not dreaming, that we are wide awake, still alive and we can use touch to awaken another.  We can also use touch to diagnose illness and convey health through touch as some are trained to do.  It can also be used to convey tenderness and affection, as well as use it to get someone’s attention.  Touch can be used to verify truth.

Touch is also involved when we make the sign of the cross on ourselves, when we are baptized and chrismated, and when we receive the Holy Eucharist.  Through this sense we can be put in touch with God, as the Apostle Thomas discovered.

Of course touch can be used purely for sensuous, pleasurable and self satisfying purposes as well, as St. Gregory Nazianzus reminds us:

 Let us purify our touch, taste, and throat, not touching softly and enjoying smooth things, but touching the Word made flesh for our sake as is fitting, and imitating Thomas in this. Let us not have sauces and seasonings tickling our palate, since they are akin to more harmful tickling. Rather, let us taste and know that the Lord is good, a better and more lasting taste. Let us not refresh briefly that cruel and ungrateful conduit, which sends through and does not keep what has been given it. Rather, let us delight it with divine words sweeter than honey.

Hypocrisy: the Destroyer of Faith

In my blog Too Much Truth? I offered my thoughts about Rod Dreher’s USA TODAY opinion piece, How Much Truth is Too Much?, in which he writes about how the sex scandal in the Roman Catholic Church had such a negative impact on his own life.  He ultimately left the Roman Church and found his way into the Orthodox Church in America.  His article raises the difficult question and issue about whether absolute truth and transparency is needed from the church if there exists such a horrible scandal that it might drive people away from the church if they knew the truth.  In other words if ignorance is bliss, is it spiritually ethical to leave many people ignorant about a church scandal if the scandal might lead to many losing faith?

Brooke Gladstone in an interview for ON THE MEDIA   Paradise Lost   (13 February 2009) spoke with Bill Lobdell author of Losing My Religion: How I Lost my Faith Reporting on Religion in America and Found Unexpected Peace.  Unlike Dreher, Lobdell left the Roman Church and lost his faith in God.  Why?

The final blow came in a Portland courtroom. It was a hearing for a mother whose child was sick. She was trying to get more child support from the child’s dad, who happened to be a Catholic priest. And she really lived a miserable life. She lived in a friend’s basement for free. They got food from the food bank. And the priest was on the stand. He had a great lawyer, just the sharpest attorney. She couldn’t afford one.

And so, it was this mom, basically, against this high-priced lawyer. And his defense was, I took a vow of poverty and I don’t have any money to give.

I saw the mom being crushed by this machine. And I sat there in the courtroom and I wasn’t surprised. I kind of lost that sense of outrage, even.

As bad as sin is, it is hypocrisy which destroys the Church and destroys the faith of the membership.  A fallen priest is very troubling to the world, but when the church engages in hypocrisy – when it says it is holy and it is not, when it says it is true but it is not – that is soul destroying.   Christianity is not just about believing it God or the bible, it is also believing in those who bear witness to Christ and who proclaim the scriptures and claim to live by them.  Lobdell said:

 Well, they said, you know, keep your eyes on the man on the cross, not the person behind the altar. And that’s true, and I get that this is human failing. But the problem is, for me, I thought the church – and any religious institution – should be somehow better than Enron or a corrupt government. In some ways, it was worse.

When the Church becomes machine, when it is institution, it justifies whatever it does, it protects itself rather than protecting the people it is to serve.  And yes it should be better than Enron or corrupt government.   This is why it has to scrutinize itself ever so much more vigilantly.  This is why total transparency, accountability, honesty and truthfulness have to be its norm.   We should have no secrets to hide -  truth is our way through the world.  And never should it happen that any believer is shocked by what they learn about the inner workings of the church.   That people are sinners is no scandal but only the truth.  That the church would deceptively hide the sins of its leaders enabling them to hurt more victims is purely scandal for it hides the truth and takes many people into the darkness of evil.  However much sin might undermine people’s faith in the church, hypocrisy mocks the believer, taunting them with a horrible soul destroying notion that nothing is sacred, nothing can be trusted, nothing is true, that there is no God.

This is why the Church must rid itself of hypocrisy and always deal with the truth, not matter how painful, for it is the only thing the Church really has to offer the world.

Too Much Truth?

Rod Dreher in a recent USA TODAY opinion piece, How Much Truth is Too Much?, speaks about how the sex scandal in the Roman Church so negatively affected him that he nearly lost his faith  completely and did ultimately leave the Roman Catholic Church and ended up in the Orthodox Church in America (the same church to which I belong).    Dreher begins his piece with these words:

The details of the Catholic sex abuse scandal nearly destroyed my Christian faith. In a painful spiritual epiphany, I learned that the whole truth does not always deliver a greater good. Indeed, full transparency can harm society – and even, perhaps, our souls. But do we always have an alternative?

Dreher is not saying that society or the church would have been better off not knowing the details of the scandal.  But he acknowledges the terrible personal pain he felt as a Catholic when he realized the depth of the problem in the Roman hierarchy. 

As a Catholic, I kept telling myself that the evil of some priests and bishops does not obviate the church’s teaching. But the deeper I immersed myself in details of the crimes and the stories of the victims, my grief and fury distorted and overwhelmed logic.

The fault was mine. But any institution – sacred or secular – that has to depend on deception, and the willingness of its people to be deceived, to maintain its legitimacy will not get away with it for long. These days, the attempt to withhold or suppress information doesn’t work to protect authority, but rather to undermine it.

He then proposes a most pertinent observation and question:

Societies cannot survive without authoritative institutions. But which authoritative persons or institutions can withstand constant critical scrutiny? In our culture, we are predisposed to see damage done from failing to question authority. We are far less capable of grasping the destruction that can come from delegitimizing authority with corrosive suspicion. How much reality must we choose to ignore for the greater good of our own souls, and society?

Certainly a hallmark of modern American Enlightenment thinking is an antagonism toward all authority.  (“Power corrupts.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”)  But as Dreher notes what has occurred in American thinking is a “delegitimizing” of authority which indeed is very corrosive in society because in the fallen world there is a need for legitimate authority for humans to live together as society.  The fact that some authorities are corrupt, or that authority is perhaps often corrupted, cannot change the reality that in this world there are no alternatives to authority in society.  As James Madison noted, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.  If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”  The fact of the matter is that we have humans exercising authority over other humans, and therein lies the problem.  Those governing are not exempt from or freed from sin, the fall, temptation, any more than the governed. 

The Church in its history did believe that bishops would be elected as leaders because the holiness of their lives would be obvious to the community of Christians.  So too Madison believed that voters would recognize the virtuous among themselves and elect such men to lead them. 

But leadership positions do not just attract the virtuous, and people do not always see through the shallowness, pretense, façade of those hungry for power as they choose their leaders.  Consequently in the church men do come to power who have a desire to lead even if they do not have the virtue to qualify themselves for leadership.  

In America, that church leaders fail is certainly the cause of scandal.  However, it seems to me it is more often the hypocrisy of failed leadership that so undermines authority.   We assume church leadership is virtuous and the leaders are willing to take on that mantle whether it is deserved or not.  (In Orthodoxy every leader is proclaimed “Axios” – Worthy – whether he is or not, whether we know it or not.)  Transparency, as painful as it is, speaks the truth to us – it reveals how honesty we are about ourselves and it reveals the truth of our rituals.

Truth is Truth and Other Myths

One of the amazing things about science is its ability to constantly test its “dogmas” and a willingness to change some of its most “sacredly” held views about life or the universe.   Of course since scientists are human, science has its own resistance to change, even in the face of factual evidence, but because it doesn’t have a closed canon of scripture which it must defend, science does not have a revealed truth, but only a discovered truth.   Since new discoveries are being made continually, “truth” in science is always up for debate.   So we find Kenneth Chang writing in the 1 December 2008 NY TIMES  that A New Picture of the Early Earth has emerged – ideas of held by geologists as “true” a mere 20 years ago are being replaced by new conclusions drawn from new data.

the common thinking until recently was that life could not have emerged on Earth until … about 3.85 billion years ago. …

That is no longer thought to be true.

“We thought we knew something we didn’t,” said T. Mark Harrison, a professor of geochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. In hindsight the evidence was just not there. And new evidence has suggested a new view of the early Earth.

Here we see how science views “truth.”  Truth is something discovered by scientists AND it is an interpretation of those discoveries.  “Truth” is thus testable and mutable. The facts can change, and the interpretation of facts can change as well.  Thus in science it is acceptable to conclude that something that once was thought to be true later be disproved and a new idea of truth emerges.  Thus Dr. Harrison can say with scientific comfort, “we thought we knew something we didn’t.”

Religion has a slightly different view of “truth.”  For the major Western religions, truth is something revealed to us by God, not something we discover by human means.  And truth is embedded in Scripture and the Scriptures are closed – cannot be altered or added to.  What can change though is our understanding of the Scriptures.   For example both Christians and Jews read the Tanakh/Old Testament, but interpret those scriptures in decidedly different ways with Christians accepting that Jesus is the key to unlocking the truth of the scriptures.

Dr. Harrison, as a scientist can readily admit that the new evidence means what scientists taught as truth has been shown to be incorrect.  The new evidence now available  is “‘completely inconsistent with this myth we made up,’ Dr. Harrison said.”

Notice how easily Harrison as a scientist can say that what they taught as truth turns out to be a myth scientists made up.  In science all “truth” is an interpretation of the known evidence; and, for something to be true it must be testable, experimentally provable or disprovable.  For science, Truth is not some sacred revelation which must always be accepted.   Thus if science bothers to look at the book of Genesis as science, it uses its own measure of truth to test any claims of Genesis as science and no “truth” discovered there is ever off limits to further testing or disproof.   If a claim cannot be tested in some fashion, it cannot claim to be “truth.”  Science does not approach the Scripture as “truth” in the same way a believer might.   And to be honest, scientific truth is mostly a threat to “biblical truth” only if one tries to read the Bible literally or as science.   Biblical literalists and Creation scientists are threatened by the word “myth”, scientists are not, and neither are those who recognize the Bible as a source of truth but not as science. 

Science has an innate ability to question its own theories and ideas, and even to declare as myth things it once held to be truth.  Science thus sees the world differently than does religious faith.  Christians understand Scripture to be a sacred revelation – revealing God and the meaning of life, not necessarily offering “truth” as science defines it or dissects it.

Believers might find some comfort in scientist admitting their ideas of “truth” change and are changing – science as the invincible truth that will disprove the revealed truths of faith is shown to be far more tenuous than it cares to admit.  Biblical literalists and Creation scientists need also note that the admission that what science taught 20 years ago about the formation of planet earth is myth, does not translate into a support for Creation Science.  For what the scientists have come to realize is that the conditions for life on earth stretch back in time even further than was imagined, giving even more time for the process of evolution to work its way to the present.   . “‘This means the door is open for a long, slow chemical evolution,’ Dr. Mojzsis said. ‘The stage was set for life probably 4.4 billion years ago, but I don’t know if the actors were present.‘”   If what science now believes to be true holds up under scientific scrutiny, the chance of evolution having occurred becomes more credible.  For the believer it only means that we might be given a glimpse into what chemical and biological processes God put into effect to bring life into existence.   The fact is that once God created matter, He fashioned the universe using that matter and limited His Divine Power to work with and within the laws of nature which He created to carry out His Divine Plan.

Why did God make insects?

I began reading E.O. Wilson’s THE CREATION: AN APPEAL TO SAVE LIFE ON EARTH.   Wilson, a Harvard Professor who has stirred up plenty of controversy in the scientific community with his ideas in sociobiology, is a secular humanist who addresses his book to fundamentalist Christians in an appeal that they cooperate with scientists in taking a passionate concern for the environment. 

“Some postmodern philosophers, convinced that truth is relative and dependent only on a person’s worldview, argue that there is no such objective entity as Nature.  It is, they say, a false dichotomy that has arisen in some cultures and not in other cultures.  I am willing to entertain such a belief, for a few minutes anyway, but I have crossed too many sharp boundaries between natural and humanized ecosystems to doubt the objectivity of Nature.”

In this statement Wilson, a former Baptist himself, gets as philosophically close to the world view of believers as he is going to get – he believes in objective truth and opposes the notions of postmodernism. Wilson probably would not accept the prediction of some that science and Buddhism have a future together but that more doctrinal religions like Christianity will disappear over time, unable to compete in the world of intellectual discourse (see my Science vs Religion or Truth is truth?).  Wilson takes a fairly dogmatic stand that there is such a thing as objectivity when it comes to truth.  However, he does not accept a theological truth or objectivity, but believes the only truth worth pursuing is that which is empirical.  He is not very sympathetic to religion:

“There are still thinkers around the world, some in commanding political and religious  positions, who wish to base moral law on the sacred scripture of Iron Age desert kingdoms while using high technology to conduct tribal wars-of course with the presumed blessing of their respective tribal gods.”

Ouch!  While I would say to have such a low opinion of Christians he seems unfamiliar with the ideals and spiritual writings of the best in Christian history, nevertheless he certainly has witnessed plenty of examples of modern American leaders who seem to fit his description and whose opinions prove his point.

Wilson is somewhat famous for claiming that eventually genes will be found which determine much of human behavior, including genes that govern whether a person is a believer in God or not.  Despite his thoughts about genetics, science and secular humanism, he offers some warnings about where genetic research is headed.

“Beyond the curing of obvious hereditary diseases such as multiple sclerosis and sickle-cell anemia, by gene substitution, the human genome will be modified only at risk.  It is far better to work with human nature as it is, by changing our social institutions and moral precepts to get a more nearly optimal fit to our genes, than it would be to tinker with something that took eons of trial and error to create.”

In other words, in his thinking humans should pay a lot more attention to the human impact on the world  environment rather than trying genetically to change humans to better survive in the world we are creating by our lifestyles and environmental disregard.  This is a main theme of his book.  He is hoping to interest religious people in environmental issues – to be concerned about the things we intentionally do that have unintended consequences on the environment.   As Wilson sees it, we should be concerned about the tiniest insect populations which are part of this earth.

“People need insects to survive, but insects do not need us.  If all humankind were to disappear tomorrow, it is unlikely that a single insect species would go extinct, except three forms of human body and head lice…. But if insects were to vanish, the terrestrial environment would soon collapse into chaos.”

He describes why this is so as the ecosystem of planet earth relies on insects for pollination, for food, for giving us flowering plants as food, for renewing the soil, for decomposing dying things.  Humans surviving in a world without insects, so Wilson says, “would offer prayers for the return of weeds and bugs.”

Those very pesky pests – weeds and bugs – which we wonder why God ever created, Wilson says would be sorely missed in a world in which humans manage to damage the environment to the point it cannot sustain insect life.  The smallest creatures play a significant role for the existence of Christians and for the world we know.   That idea was not lost in the screenplay of H. G. Wells’ THE WAR OF THE WORLDS and what finally defeated the invading Martians.

“The end came swiftly all over the world, their machines stopped and fell.  After all that men could do had failed, the Martians were destroyed and humanity saved – by the littlest things which God in His wisdom had put upon this earth.”

What is truth?

“Light does not fail because men have blinded themselves; it remains, with its own properties, while the blinded are plunged in darkness through their own fault… Therefore, all who revolt from the Father’s light, and who transgress the law of liberty, have removed themselves through their own fault, since they were created free and self-determining.”   (St. Irenaeus of Lyons)

The sun continues to shine even if all people have blinded themselves.  The sun continues to shine even when dark storm clouds cover the earth.  Neither human blindness nor the darkest storm clouds change the nature of or the properties of the sun.  

This applies to spiritual truth, to the light of Christ as well.  The Light does not fail even if everyone chooses blindness.   It is possible to have eyes and not see as the scriptures warn.  Truth is not diminished because people will not see it, embrace it and proclaim it.  It is no less true just because no one wishes to know it.

Seeing is Believing and Then Again Its Not

In a 22 July 2008 NY Times science article, Mirrors Don’t Lie.  Mislead?  Oh, Yes,  Natalie Angier offers us a look into how mirrors do mislead our brains.  I recommend you read the entire article.   For those who haven’t studied much physics or haven’t studied it for awhile and can be amazed by basic science, I encourage you to try this as an experiment yourself, as described in the article:

Imagine you are standing in front of a bathroom mirror; how big do you think the image of your face is on the surface? And what would happen to the size of that image if you were to step steadily backward, away from the glass?

People overwhelmingly give the same answers. To the first question they say, well, the outline of my face on the mirror would be pretty much the size of my face. As for the second question, that’s obvious: if I move away from the mirror, the size of my image will shrink with each step.

Both answers, it turns out, are wrong. Outline your face on a mirror, and you will find it to be exactly half the size of your real face. Step back as much as you please, and the size of that outlined oval will not change: it will remain half the size of your face (or half the size of whatever part of your body you are looking at), even as the background scene reflected in the mirror steadily changes. Importantly, this half-size rule does not apply to the image of someone else moving about the room. If you sit still by the mirror, and a friend approaches or moves away, the size of the person’s image in the mirror will grow or shrink as our innate sense says it should.

Bottom line:  Seeing is believing and then again its not.