God and Greatness: Jesus, Miracles, and Social Constructionism

I very nearly wrote this as a comment on my previous post, but decided it was important enough to merit a post of its own.

It's important to note that all of my thoughts on God and Greatness, as expressed throughout this blog, began sometime in high school (yes, BEFORE the Matrix), while considering the words of Jesus.

It began at the passage about the mountain and the mustard seed.

Jesus said, "If you tell this mountain, 'Go and throw yourself into the sea,' and you have even the faith of a mustard seed, it will do it." That made a lot of sense to me. Didn't God, in Genesis, give Man dominion over all the earth? Didn't Jesus call us all Sons of God? Jesus did miracles. Moses did miracles, too. And Elijah, and David, even, if you want to look at it like that....

After all, isn't that the point of prayer? That you can, by asking, get a miracle happened? That's like performing one, no?

Well, that's how we're taught the passage. If you ask God for something, and have faith in Him (and if you're a faithful enough person that what you want meshes with God's will), it will happen. God will answer your prayer, and move the mountain.

That is...that is not at ALL what Jesus says. It's not even CLOSE to what he tells his followers.

And reading through his actions, the miraculous things he does, you see two sorts: there are those things he asks God for--and God grants them instantly--and then there are those things that he commands. He commands the injured to be healed, and they are. He commands the fish to have his tax payment in its mouth, and Peter goes and finds it true. He commands the fig tree to whither, because it displeased him. And he tells his followers, "If you command a mountain to move, it will." And the story of the Bible gives us NO REASON to try to explain that away, as anything other than literal, direct truth.

That's my basis. There are things that Jesus does as the Son of God. Then again, there are things he does as the Son of Man, and it's not for no reason that he is called both. Yeah, I did it on purpose to make you read the sentence twice. Paul calls us co-heirs with Christ. Jesus, in the passage with the tax-paying fish, called Peter (and--as I'm not Catholic, I'll say this--and by extension, all his other followers) equally sons of the king.

This feeds into the Don't Worry speech in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said, "When the one greater than the Temple comes, what does the Temple matter? Eh?" Reality was made for us, not the other way around. Mountains don't MATTER. Water doesn't MATTER. Jesus walked across the surface of the sea, defying reality, but when it comes right down to it, the sea is just a THING. Jesus is the son of God.

And we are too. That was most of his point.

Reality is just a dream we've constructed. We, on the other hand, are True Things. We are from a place greater than this, we can reorder EVERYTHING around us because we gave it the order in the first place.

It fits with everything else you'll read in the Bible. It fits with everything Jesus said. This is not just a sojourn, it's a fantasy. We have a responsibility to learn from it, to grow in this temporary soil, but it's not Real. It doesn't MATTER.

When you look at it like that, miracles are easy. Magic is easy. But, then again, isn't magic evil? No. I'll say that immediately and without reservation, no. I'll go on to say, you shouldn't do it, but that's another issue entirely.

Tools are not evil. Power is not evil. What Man does with it...that can be good, or it can be evil, but a capacity for change is not, in itself, morally aligned. Reordering reality can be used to improve people, or to destroy them. That's true whether you're using Social Constructionism or bulldozers. Same thing.

That said...I already answered this in yesterday's post, and Nicki brought it up specifically in her comment. When we attempt to Construct a reality to suit our needs, we tend to build something other than the Paradise God provided. It's possible to be making something closer to it than the world at large (happy families do it all the time), and that's a good thing, ain'it, but the most powerful wizard couldn't match the happiness, or goodness, of a truly submitted Christian.

Hmm. Thoughts. Let me know your reactions.

God: The Fall of Man

This is, in fact, one of my conclusions, several months from now, but I'll post it now, so you can scoff and ridicule, and several months from now, you can feel sheepish. Because I'm that kind of tyrant.

It is my goal to establish that Social Constructionism (that very Human Greatness that I'm attempting to describe in other conversations) is the "Knowledge of Good and Evil."

It is my goal to establish that Man, in his rebellion, learned the secrets of world-building.

It is my goal to establish that, upon these premises, we can understand a God who does not create pain or death or suffering in the world, but constantly strives to prevent it.

Also that God keeps no record of wrongs. God is Love, right, and Paul lists it right there with the rest, "Love keeps no record of wrongs," and how -- EXACTLY how -- does that jive with the Book of Life, in which some are scheduled for destruction? Eh?

Yeah, I kinda left my pattern there.

That's the point, though. Where does "Love keeps no record of wrongs" fit into it? What about Jesus, lecturing in the Sermon on the Mount about not worrying? Consider the lillies of the field, and how beautiful are they, and how much more valuable are you, and yet even Solomon in all his glory couldn't match them.

That one strikes a discord for me. Are you saying (forgive me for getting into theoretical math here, but)

Solomon < lillies < me

?

I don't think that's the point. I think Jesus' point is that Solomon got it wrong. In all his striving, he couldn't achieve what the lillies do just by living, in complete submission to God. And, more importantly, any one of us CAN achieve far greater glory than that, by doing the same.

But very few of us could even get CLOSE to what Solomon did, no matter how hard we try.

So it's all about submission. It's about giving up. It's not about works, it's not about effort, it's about living entirely in submission to God....

Yeah, nothing new there. And yet....

Go read the Fall of Man. It's Genesis 3:16-19 (at least the bits I'm talking about here). Oh, fine, I don't trust you at all, so here's a pasting:

¹⁶ To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."

¹⁷ To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.

¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.

¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."

That's NIV, and it's not my preference necessarily, but it's the first one I found. Read it in your own version, if you've got one handy.

Okay, this is where I'm heading with these articles:

God didn't punish Man by cursing the ground (not even because it was God's fault). God didn't cast Man out of Eden. God didn't hit woman with birth pangs. None of that happened in the passage you just read (although we've been taught that it did since we were two).

Here's what did happen:
God created Man, and made Reality to contain him. He shaped Reality exactly like Heaven.

Man discovered within himself the ability to shape Reality, to make it what he wanted. Man had a perfect example available (Heaven, Eden, it's where he'd been living for his whole life), but out of pride, chose to create his own, inferior reality, rather than living in perfect happiness in the one God had given him.

"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven," and all that.

And God looked down on Man, and saw what he had done, and in his wisdom recognized what Man would do with his power. Now listen closely: at this point, God did NOT punish Man in order to encourage him to grow up better. He didn't expel him from Heaven to protect Heaven's purity. He looked down on Man, and said to him, "Look, you have chosen to exercise the ability to shape worlds. You are not God, you are not good enough to make what I made for you. As long as you keep trying to build your own world, it's going to look like this..." and then he described what life would be like in a Constructed world.

And THAT is what you read, above, in Genesis 3. Not his punishment, not his divinely-inspired, unknowably mysterious justice, but a simple prediction. He said, "This is the BEST you'll be able to do," and described what we know as Life. And in sharp contrast to that was the immediate memory of Heaven, in the form of Eden.

Which was still there. Which still is. It's just submission. It's just Constructing a world like the one God provided, not like the one we want for ourselves. It's surrendering. It's living like the lillies, not living like Solomon.

The angel with the flaming sword? That's Man's pride, it's no agent of God's. So say I. I'll get to it, in time.

God, Government, and Greatness: Suggested Reading

Well, we've already discussed the viability of my ideas in the classroom. How about a reading list?

These are a few of the works that I'm closely familiar with which, I would say, bear direct and meaningful impact on the ideas I'm discussing in these conversations. If you have a recommendation of the same sort, I'd very much welcome your posting it as a comment to this post, or in response to any post that brings the recommendation to mind.

Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel" - Novel
I'm about a third of the way through this one, and quite confident it belongs on the list. Daniel recommended it to me personally, and even before that I'd heard such great things of it that I was already convinced. I just resumed reading it today. It deals with a modern day revival (during the Napoleonic wars) of practical magic in England.

Richard Dawkins's "Unweaving the Rainbow" - Treatise
This is another I haven't finished, and also one Dan recommended to me. It's an atheist scientist's reaction to the non-scientific world's (specifically the poetic world's) complaints that scientists strip life of its magic in exchange for petty knowledge. I'm very interested in what he has to say, because I very much hold the claim he's directly refuting.

Roger Zelazny's "The Chronicles of Amber" - Novel series
A series of five short novels (with a sequel series of five more) concerning a family of Princes able to construct worlds out of their imaginations. It is a direct exercise in the fantastic aspects of Social Constructionism, as well as a VERY well constructed story, as well as a really uplifting piece on the human condition. I recommend it above any other piece of literature, ever.

John Milton's "Paradise Lost" - Umm...poem, right?
Read it. Actually, take a course on it. It's worth it. If they offered the kind of lit courses on Zelazny that they offer on Milton, I'd be saying the same for those, but go enroll right now for a course on Paradise Lost if you haven't taken one before. If you're a Christian and a remotely academic person, you need to realize just how much of our mythology derives directly from this one piece, as well as the power of its imagery in the original setting.

I know there are more. I'll follow up with further comments as they occur to me.

God, Government, Greatness: The Concept of Sin

Sin: the deliberate prevention of the realization of potential.

Just like that.

I don't believe in Positive Divine Law (that is, something is Evil because God says it's evil). I don't think there are sins that are sins because they're "against the rules." It doesn't make sense, it doesn't WORK (God MADE people in such a way that they constantly test the limits, they constantly tear at any boundaries around them). Establishing any Positive Divine Law is the same as forcing Man to sin, which is, I believe, antithetical to God.

No. I really don't believe in "sins" as atomic units. Rather, I think of "sin" as a term meaning, "those actions which prevent us from attaining Paradise."

Close enough -- those people who want to look at it that way could still use that definition to incorporate those atomic sins which, by being committed, keep us from getting to Heaven. Telling a lie -- bam! You've sinned, so you can't get to Heaven so, in effect, you've committed an action which prevents you from attaining Paradise.

My point with that last sentence was to convince you to accept my definition of sin, so that we can have some mutually-agreed-upon term. From that point, I'm going to establish my position (which you're most welcome to whole-heartedly reject).

I do feel that the ultimate goal of Man is to attain Paradise. Philosophically, that's referred to as living the Good Life. Theologically, it's getting to Heaven. I'm talking about both, but most concerned with the latter.

Okay. So.... There's a very long argument here, which I should get into exclusively under the topic of God, but I think I can posit a little bit here. The ultimate goal of Man is to attain Paradise, and every Man has the potential to achieve that goal. I believe that utterly, and encourage you to believe the same. Sinning is acting in such a way as to lose your opportunity or, in other words, failing to meet your potential.

Honestly, I feel like the only Evil Thing is deliberately preventing the realization of potential. Whether it be Murder (in which you stop a life, thereby preventing the realization of the ultimate potential, in that every Man, in every moment of his life, has the full potential of the Creator within him), or good ol' Catholic Sloth (in which a Man, with the full potential of the Creator within him, chooses not to act, not to create, but to waste his potential).

This is my beef with the Church, and with the U.S., and my answer to several of your comments. Yeah, it's good in it's current form. Yeah, it's doing good things in the world, even. It's successful. But it's NOT living up to its potential. A church as a social club can be quite helpful to its members, but it's squandering all the authority given it by its being the embodiment of Christ on earth. NOTHING ELSE GETS TO BE THAT. The church is the only entity with that potential, and it is using that potential in only the smallest of ways.

That I call Evil.

The U. S. as well. Most representative governments, I believe, cater to the lowest common denominator, and that inherently limits the realization of potential. That's not just something to shake your head over. That's SINFUL. Every bit as much as Murder.

That's where I'm coming from. That's my starting point. You might hear me talk of the "Godaccountant Myth" and think I'm claiming there is no evil, there is no sin, there is nothing barring Man's entry into Heaven. By no means. I'm just saying: God doesn't make sins -- people do.

Now...I DO have answers to the theological and ethical questions that raises, and I'll get to them in another article. For now, I'm just establishing my basic concept of sin, which goes a long way to explaining why I feel the way I do about several of the issues I've already brought up (spittle flying in my bewildering vehemence).

Hope that helps. More later.

Aaron

Poetry

Wow....

I never realized I had written so many poems, or how much they said. I could put you guys through a month of Poetry Interpretation 101, and still not be done with my own stuff.

I should be a professor, just to inflict this stuff on my students.

Actually, I'll probably save them up and use them as illustrative comments on my articles. Most of the really good ones are about religion (although I have one about the tension between Myth and Science called "I'll Drag You Back," of which I'm pretty proud).

The main one on my mind right now is "We Call Worship." It's...fascinating.

Refined Understanding (A Poem)

Okay, back to business. This is a poem, not so much proposing my ideas about Social Constructionism, but assuming them and describing their ultimate effects. If you don't see it at first, by all means ask. I'd love to discuss this one. I think of it as one of my most fun poems.

Refined Understanding
They say the trick to making something beautiful—
To making an elephant from a block of ivory—
Is just to carve away whatever
doesn't
look like an elephant.

Take away the corners, sharpened edges
Until you’re left with just the thing
staring back at critical eyes.

It works, you see. It can’t help but work.
You take away what doesn’t match, and everything that’s left
must necessarily serve its purpose.
So if function is your only goal, you’re guaranteed success.

The catch, though—there is a catch—
is that it may always be a little more like an elephant.
There’s always more to carve, to peel away,
and your little figurine gets better…and littler.

The thing is—in all your accuracy—
The thing is—with every little bit you peel away—
The thing is, as you progress and shrink
You seem to forget what got your attention in the first place:
Elephants are big.

I Feel Alive (A Poem)

This is a poem I'm thinking of submitting to the Writer's Digest competition this year. Let me know what you think.

And, yeah, I know you'll all be wondering, so I'll just tell you now to keep you from having to ask. It's Chris O'Donnell.

I Feel Alive….
I feel alive…
Like, what it means to feel alive--
Not just surviving, simply pressing on….
I feel alive, all full of life:
Vibrant, virulent, vital.

In a storm, a terrible storm all raging,
I am become the lightning strike.
Flare, fire, discharge.
Explosive and blinding and impossible to ignore.
I feel alive….

At midnight,
all the world asleep,
And the clouds conceal the paltry silver lights
and the wind's a whisper, nothing more….
I am become the huntingbird's shriek
The wolf's sharp howl
The piercing cry of a predator, so mighty in his element.
I feel alive….

In the desert,
I'm the rain, cold as ice on burning skin.

In a blizzard,
I'm a fire, pop and crackle and warmth that almost hurts.

In your dreams,
I'm the moment that wakes you screaming, or smiling, or panting for breath.

I feel all full of life:
The biting of a bluster wind,
The whipcrack of a breaking limb,
The shattering of fine stained glass--
or of expensive crystal--
The bitter taste of blood,
The thunder of your heartbeat
when you've run too hard,
The pang of hunger, want, or need.
I am become loneliness and violence and pain…
And beauty, sweetly whispered or crashing down in waves.
I am become all the shining, pounding, loud sensations
that make a man alive.

I feel alive…
because of you.