The Dark Tower

This is a small segment of something I've been working on. I'm not really sure what it's going to be yet, except that it is a part of a bigger piece. Anyway, I like it and thought I'd share it.

It is in the shadow of this moonless midnight that the gunslinger sets forth from the barren wastelands in search of his menacing dark tower, and it is in this same moonless midnight hour that I set out on a quest of my own in search of the dark tower, my own dark tower. And just as he saw his so many years ago so many worlds away I now see mine looming, no leering at me, those twin spires gleaming like the fangs of a cobra about to strike its pray. And yet there is some greater force at work, a drawing force, a force that will not allow my minds eye to turn from the dark tower, titan object of my fate. I stare, so intently that as I gaze into the obsidian black I begin to see through the tower and back inside of myself, realizing that I am the dark tower, or at least a small part of it. I must reach the tower, and I must destroy it or unmake it and so unmake myself. But no, not unmake, remake. And in the unmaking of the tower I will remake myself, turning back the gnawing and ever growing infections that thrust forth snaked arms, the veiny tendrils of death itself that have wrapped their fatal arms around my heart and caged my mind with steely fingers, so like the bars of a prison, only intertwined among the maze of thought paths in my now tortured psyche.

The Heart and The Machine.

Did you know that a heart is a lot like a machine? Now, I’m not talking about the sort of heart that goes thump-thump and pumps blood (though I suppose it bears its own resemblances to machinery in its own biological sort of way). I’m talking about that part of a person that loves and hates. That part of a being that feels. Or doesn’t feel as the case may be.

It was this very “not feeling” that I was reflecting on today when I realized that I had never really understood the greater implications of that phrase “a broken heart.” I mean, when I had thought of a broken heart I had always thought of the typical tears in the eyes, knots in the stomach, and ache in the chest. The typical expressions of inner agony and a heart in anguish. But as I thought longer about it, the thought came to me that a broken heart was very much that – broken. Not broken as in rended with a huge crack down the middle as it is usually pictured, but broken in the sense that it doesn’t work. Or at least that it doesn’t work right.

A heart is a far cry from being anything close to mechanical, but in the sense that a machine can break down in such a way as to be unable to carry on with its particular function, so the heart is unable to do its job after it is broken. A broken heart shuts down just like a malfunctioning machine, though not without its own warning. Where gears and belts might squeal and squeak and squawk the heart screams and bleeds and cries in its own way, but after all that it just quits working. Like its run out of fuel or blown a gasket. And then, just as the gears no longer grind and turn, the heart no longer feels. It doesn’t know how to feel. And so even when the life starts to come back into it, those feelings go all askew because the heart doesn’t know what they are or what even to do with them. It isn’t sure if they are good or bad, it isn’t sure if they will hurt or not – it doesn’t know if it should even be feeling anything at all. For all it knows it was broken for good and all of this feeling is just some sort of sick joke to revive it enough to be able to break it again. And certainly some hearts believe that lie, and stay broken forever.

But the truth of the matter is that even the most broken of hearts can heal. Even the ones that have been shattered to a point that they are unrecognizable are not unredeemable. They can be fixed back up just like a machine if there is time, effort, and care enough to do so. All it takes is the right tools in the right hands. And that is how a heart is a lot like a machine.

Gen. 1:2

I promised a piece on my work with Genesis, and so here is a summary of the issue and my conclusion. Keep in mind that this is a single page summary of an issue that I barely covered in ten.

Genesis 1:1-2 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters”. (ESV)

There are many who think that the noun ruah is the first mention of the Holy Spirit in scripture. Indeed, the vast majority of biblical translations reflect this, interpreting ruah as “Spirit”. Recently however, there is a growing trend in biblical interpretation to translate ruah instead as “wind,” perhaps reflecting a hermeneutic that is more aware of the culture and context of the Genesis narrative.

While this issue is certainly not a hill that needs to be battled over, it should be clearly understood and carefully thought through because of its importance to the development of the Holy Spirit in scripture. Theologically speaking, the interpretation of ruah will not change our basic views of Pneumatology in that it will not bring into question the nature or existence of the third person of the trinity. It will however reveal the tendencies of our hermeneutic and our ideas of progressive revelation.

The interpretive problem is straightforward enough; ruah is taken to mean “spirit,” “breath,” and “wind” throughout the scriptures. The difficulty lies in deciding which meaning is meant in the original narrative after examining the literary, historical, and cultural context, and evaluating the semantic structure of the passage.

I submit that the author never intended ruah to be translated as an absolute “either/or” but instead purposefully utilized a word that would encompass a “both/and.” In the Hebrew mind, the idea of a “divine wind” carried with it implications of “the spirit of God,” though not necessarily referring to the Holy Spirit. Here it should be acknowledged that the use of the word ruah does not imply both specific meanings simultaneously, but instead is used as a broad term encompassing the whole range of meaning from wind to spirit. This is a common literary construction in Hebrew as can be seen by the use of the word neser to represent both the eagle and the vulture (or in English as can be pointed out that “panther” may refer to any number of large feline carnivores such as the black leopard, puma, cougar, or jaguar), and one that allows the author to use ruah intentionally as an ambiguous term, knowing that the Israelite mind would see, understand, and even assume a close relationship of the ideas.

See the Light Up Ahead?

Sitting here on the verge of freedom I look ahead to the morrow, when the stresses of the present will be naught but a vague shadow upon my lightened heart. This past week has been a tumultuous one with finals, soccer, and summer plans. As it stands right now I have one final left (Sociology) and a paper to finish - discussing the meaning of the word ruah in Gen. 1:2 and whether it means "wind" or "spirit". I am very much looking forward to putting this semester behind me and moving on to the next with a clean slate. Well, I have procrastinated long enough. Hopefully I'll be posting about my Genesis paper soon. Until then, God bless.

Social Justice, The True Injustice

According to the recent trend of jumping on board the popular platform of whatever social justice issue is in vogue, I decided to briefly respond with the following:

Tongues Raging,
Guns Blazing,
Humanity at War.

Words Ripping,
Bullets Dripping,
Humanity at War.

Hearts Crying,
Bodies Flying,
Humanity at War.

At surface level this expresses the simple conflict that evidences itself when more than one human being lives in close proximity to another [aka sin]. However, there are a couple of points that I would like to make following a deeper vein of thought.

My initial reaction is to wonder what it takes for a certain social justice issue to make it mainstream. I mean, what precedence do the children being forced into guerrilla slavery in Uganda have over discrimination against aborigines in Australia, the race induced massacres in Eastern Europe or the sex slave market that covers half of the globe? Don’t misunderstand my frustrations. I believe that all these things are issues and that something should be done about them. My frustration comes more from the motivation and agenda behind certain modish social justice issues.

For the sake of example I will use the Invisible Children movement. Before I comment further, let me say that I greatly appreciate Invisible Children and what they are doing, and have even gotten involved with the organization myself. But as I have thought about the movement and my own participation I have had to come to grips with the question, “What is this actually accomplishing?” At first glance the answer is obvious – we are trying to stop the conflict in Uganda. But for those of us who ascribe to the idea of a higher knowledge and order to the universe than the United Nations, the question goes much deeper. In fact, as much as anything else, I think that the recent social justice movements show us the desire and need that our society has for meaning and purpose in life, while pointing out the epistemological absurdity of such behavior. In brief, the un-believer, without Christ, has no reason or basis in and of himself for which to perform any act of benevolence to another human being, and if he does then it is simply satiates the need for fulfillment in life and is ultimately a selfish deed, reflective only of the intellectual absurdity in which the individual is functioning. And so, the believer who wishes to get involved must realize that the only way to truly affect the social climate of the environment in which a particular issue is occurring is to transform the people with the mind of Christ by sharing with them the historically redemptive plan of salvation that God has orchestrated.

This point leads me back to the question of, “What are we actually accomplishing?” Invisible Children is trying to develop social awareness of the situation in Uganda and consequently invoke U.S. governmental pressure upon the state of Uganda to pursue peace talks with the guerrilla rebels. But honestly, what are peace talks going to achieve? Rebel groups don’t want peace anymore more than we want war. They have an agenda and won’t back down until they get what they want – especially when half of their fighting force is comprised of teenagers who have been kidnapped and forced to fight. So then, it seems that the only other viable option is the removal of the rebel group. But in order to do this we must incite and support the kind of conflict we are trying to end, and in doing so will harm the very children we were trying to protect. At this juncture it seems as though there is no solution to the problem. It is not my intention to postulate an answer, except to say that the answer [like everything else] lies ultimately in the realm of theology, and will forever escape the reaches of anthropology.

All that to say that I wonder if war, racism, and poverty are really the social issues we, as the theologically informed, should be worrying about.