Thoughts for anyone who is Stressed

It’s been a pretty busy week for me as a graduate student and I keep hearing friends complain about their stress levels. I decided to post some encouragement from one of my favorite nineteenth century pastors:

It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow that weigh a man down. –George MacDonald

The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to, and the last duty done. –George MacDonald

Anything big enough to occupy our minds is big enough to hang a prayer on. –George MacDonald

Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness. –George MacDonald

This morning I read Colossians 3:23 and it also has some good advice to offer for anyone who feels like they are drowning in responsibilities:

And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men.

Ask yourself of all these things you are doing, “Who am I doing this for?” If the answer is God, then you should be glad of the responsibilities He has given you. If the answer is anyone else…then why are you doing it?

Goats and Sheep

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’  

Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?  And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’  And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,  I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’  

Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’  Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

This is the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, a story Jesus tells in the twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. I often find myself tempted to base my identity as a Christian on the things that I don’t do, and I think this is a common ailment among believers. We think that what sets us apart are the things we abstain from. But this parable is a direct challenge to that mindset.

C.S. Lewis says that this parable

“can leave no conscience untouched, for in it the “Goats” are condemned entirely for their sins of omission: as if to make us fairly sure that the heaviest charge against each of us turns not upon the things he has done but on those he never did--perhaps never dreamed of doing.” -C.S. Lewis: Reflections on the Psalms

Unfortunately I think that we modern Christians have developed a reputation based on the things that we condemn. Christians are people who don’t use vulgar language. Christians don’t go to R rated movies. Christians don’t fornicate. Christians don’t drink (if you’re Baptist). Christians don’t celebrate Halloween (we have ‘fall festivals’). The list goes on. I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t abstain from certain things, but I think it is a waste to make that the center of your faith. Your worship should be about action rather than inaction. People should know that we are Christians because of what we do, not because of what we don’t do.

Epicurean Paradox

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

It’s called the Epicurean Paradox, and it’s attributed to the Greek philosopher Epicurus. Epicurus died a couple of centuries before the birth of Jesus and Christianity, so if he really is the originator of this conundrum then it isn’t specifically aimed at the Church, but it is a philosophical question which still applies to our society today. I prefer a more pointed translation of the argument:

1. If God exists, he is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good.
2. A perfectly good being would want to prevent all evils. An all knowing being would have known every way that evil could come into existence. An all-powerful being would have the power to stop evil from coming into existence.
3. Evil exists. Thus God is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not omnibenevolent.

I have commonly seen this logical problem treated as if it is unanswerable, but in fact it has been tackled by many philosophers and theologians throughout history. There are a lot of theodicies which attempt to solve the conundrum by arguing for the greater good of free will, but I think there’s a more simple solution to the equation. It was proposed originally by Augustine of Hippo and later refined by Thomas Aquinas: the solution to the Epicurean Paradox is that evil doesn’t exist.

It may sound heretical at first, but bear with me. Evil doesn’t exist in the same way that coldness doesn’t exist. When we say that something is cold we don’t mean that it possesses a certain quality of coldness, but that it lacks the property of heat. Coldness isn’t something, it is the absence of something. In the same way, evil is not a thing, it is a lack of something. When we say that something is good we are saying that it possesses some intangible quality of goodness. When we say that something is evil, what we mean is that it lacks goodness. Thomas Aquinas says it this way: “Evil is nothing else than a privation of that which a thing is naturally apt to have and ought to have. But a privation is not an essence, but a negation in a substance” (Suma Contra Gentiles III).

           As Christians we believe that the intangible quality of goodness we sense in creation is the presence of God. We also reject the pantheistic idea that everything is God. We believe that God is an individual entity that exists separately from creation. Thus it is possible to sense an absence of goodness (God’s presence) which we would call evil. Since God is metaphysical this absence is felt not in specific global locations but in certain situations where immorality is committed: murder, gossip, thievery, rape, gluttony, etc. Jesus touched on this truth in John chapter 3 when he uses the analogy of light and darkness. Darkness is not a real thing of itself—it is simply the absence of light.

A common misconception which has led to the popularity of the problem of evil is the belief that death is the ultimate evil. We think that death is the worst thing that could happen to anyone, and anytime we see death (especially unexpected death) we consider it evil. But this must be a misconception, for everything that is living at some point dies. To have a biological beginning and end is what separates us from inanimate objects. The duration of our existence may be of value to us, but to a Supreme Being outside of time the difference between a short life and a long one may be as trivial as the difference between being short or tall of stature. It would be impossible to judge such a thing with our present perception of chronology.

To say that death is evil is to say that God is absent when someone dies. But from the words of many dying people it would seem that this is not the case. Steven, the first martyr, declared that he could see God clearly as he expired, and from the records of martyrs that I have studied God’s presence seems to be a common theme despite many gruesome and brutal demises. People might look at a situation like a mass murder in a shopping center and say: “where was God?” Well He certainly wasn’t in the heart of the people doing the killing, but He could perhaps have been with the victims as they were dying. You can also apply this way of thinking to so called “natural evils” like earthquakes, floods, volcanos, etc. While we may find the destruction and decimation of natural disasters inconvenient and tragic, this doesn’t make them “evil.” God can still be present in them, and is often more present in tragedy than in peace.

A letter to me from six years ago:

"The history of science is a graveyard of dead and abandoned ideas…. Humans are awesome, don’t get me wrong, but we tend to believe that what we currently think we know about the universe is reasonably correct even though statistics aren’t on our side. Previous generations incorrectly thought the exact same thing about what they used to think was true.” -Michael Stevens (Vsauce)

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvKeCcxD3rQ&list=UU6nSFpj9HTCZ5t-N3Rm3-HA

 Dear Undergrad Jeremy,

                College is going to turn your existence into a search for truth and validity. In all aspects of your life you are going to have people teaching you theories. These theories can range from scientific to philosophical to theological. You may feel like you choose to believe or not believe in theories, but in reality you are choosing to believe or not believe in people. Probably by a person who is smarter than you and believes it because they were taught by someone smarter than them. You can trace those theories back to a single smart person. And there were other smart people who disagreed. One smart person’s theory may be more popular than another, but that doesn’t necessarily offer it any greater validity.

                I’m not saying that all truths are subjective or that you get to make it up as you go. I’m saying that you shouldn’t waste your life trying to figure out who is right and who is wrong. Try living your life instead of just thinking about it. Look for a person’s value not in their intelligence, but in their happiness. And spend your time pursuing true joy rather than transient knowledge. 

Sincerely,

Post-grad Jeremy