Shed the Wetsuit

The Gulf Coast took a moment in silent prayer over the last week. The water temperature is back over 70 degrees. For all the non-surfers; this is huge. The last few months have been a harrowing ordeal of swimming around in frigid water in skin-tight neoprene looking like something in between a B-movie Space Ranger and one of those yoga instructors that wear the unitards. Well, as of this week, they go back into storage until December.

Wetsuit, wetsuit, why do hate you so? You are tight and uncomfortable. You are constricting and have a seam in all the wrong places. You fill your cells with frigid water that no only sucks the life from me so that my body hovers 1/2 a degree from hypothermia, but you also add several pounds of dead weight and at my age it ALL counts.

However, it's more than that. Shedding the wetsuit is more than getting rid of a piece of uncomfortable clothing. It's the shedding of a false self. It is getting rid of a man-made skin that separates you from fully engaging the wave. Essentially, it's a barrier. There is nothing like the feeling of a wave washing over bare skin. There is nothing like the feeling of the warm sun on your shoulders after being washed by cool water. And there is also nothing like the feeling of the salt rubbing on your slightly sunburned back, and you know it absolutely worth it.

The wetsuit is our ego. It is a barrier, a false barrier, that prevents us from true intimacy with the wave. Our ego is false self that acts as a barrier to true intimacy with God and each other. Just as the wetsuit is a self-imposed isolation that keeps the water out (and keeps us stewing in our own filth), so does our ego isolate us from true surrender to the love of God and the love that we are called to extend to each of our brothers and sisters. So long as we insist on presenting a false self to the world we can never actually find intimacy with another person, we aren't really invested. We are always holding something back.

This Lent, my challenge to myself is to shed the spiritual wetsuit. My goal is remove the barriers that I have set up to protect a fragile ego that really isn't worth protecting. The potential is to be an walking, talking, moving, breathing manifestation of the Love of God. The reality is that so long as I cling to my ego I am only a manifestation of love of myself.

Vacation

No post this week. I'm on vacation and that means vacation from everything except surf (and apparently yard work).

Teacher, Teacher...

We all remember with fondness (or lack of) elementary school. I'm sure we remember that there were, and still are, subjects that we seem to understand better that others. Because of our background; that is our childhood, our education, our environment, and our own innate capabilities we have a slightly nuanced approach to life.

Back to grade-school: I am a teacher with a class of twenty students (all you teachers out there, stop rolling your eyes, I know it should really be about 35 students but only 28 desks and 25 books) and I am teaching them basic algebra. First, it must be assumed that if I am teaching algebra I know algebra (again, teacher stop laughing) and I'm not just making it up as I go. Again, not only must I know algebra but know it well enough to spot mistakes and teach it. But here's the problem: as stated above, everyone of those twenty students is different. I can teach algebra to the class. The entire class got the same lecture, same examples, same worksheets, same everything. So why do some excel, some fail, and some inhabit that squishy middle section we call "average"?

There will be a certain percentage that will immediately grasp the concepts, will excel, and will move on to higher math with little interference. Albeit this is a very small percentage. Then there is the opposite end of the spectrum that is also a small percentage of those who will fail. There are many questions that arise when you have some excelling and others failing. Finally, there is that large middle-range of those who are not excelling or failing but muddling through. Let's take each in turn:

Those who excel: Are they born smarter than the others? Probably not. I'm not aware of any scientific test that can be performed to distinguishes two normal human brains and determine one is smart and the other dumb. Is it environment? Did the parents or previous teachers provide an environment that nurtured the development of engagement with regards to academic study? Is it possible that they have a personality that inclines them to pay attention better? It's not that they are any smarter, they just listen. Instead of playing with their shoes or drawing on their worksheet they are actively engaged in the lesson. However the understanding occurs; it does, in a tangible and demonstrable way.

Those who fail: Again, are they born dumber than the others? And again, probably not. However, study after study has shown that if parents do not value education and create and environment that encourages exploration and the desire to learn, the children have a high risk of academic failure, or struggle at the very least. This is not to say that a kid raised by parents who have no education and don't care about education and even ridicule a child attempting an education won't excel, just that the odds are not in his favor. There is another factor here. The kid could come from a very different background than one that is anti-intellectual, in fact the opposite. The background could be one of entitlement and expectation (on the kid's part). If the child is raised in such a way that they are given all they desire without any expectation on their part, what are they learning? Why should I bother to learn, I get whatever I want whether I know this or not, whether I get good grades or not. It's not that the child has the cards stacked against him or that he is antithetical to learning, he just doesn't care, because he doesn't have to. These are the kids who are playing with their shoe-strings and drawing on their worksheets. And, again, this is shown in a very tangible way: lack of understanding.

Then there is the middle: these are the kids that represent most of us. They somewhat get get. They try. They get get some right, some wrong, but ultimately it prove that they have a working understanding but not a spectacular showing. In other words; they are average.

In end, however, what cannot be said is that it's the teacher's fault. All the students were presented with the same material that of an appropriate level as their grade suggests. All were given the same opportunity to see examples, to ask questions, etc. The difference is the student. Some will hang on the teacher's every word, internalizing the lesson so that it becomes ingrained in them and algebra becomes second-nature. Others will listen as best they can, and will for the most part get it. They will make many, many mistakes, but they genuinely want to learn. If the don't succeed by natural ability they will succeed by perseverence. Then there are the those who don't listen, don't care, and will not learn. They will not learn, not because they can't but becasue they won't. They would rather sleep, pass notes, whatever. And in the end, they will fail.

We are all given the same lecture. Granted, we all come with different burderns. It will be easy for some and incredibly difficult for others. However, ultimately, it is our choice. It is each of us that excel or fail or waver in mediocrity. It's not our parents, our environment, or anything but us. So what are we doing. Are we listening intently or playing with our shoes-string?

Fight the Good Fight

I don't know why (probably because I'm teaching a class on the Book of Job), but I've been thinking a lot about evil and the nature of, well, bad things that happen. Before I go any further I want to say that Job is not a book about evil. It is about the theological implications of suffering and how that relates to God and man. I simply said; it got me thinking about evil. I suppose we could argue that suffering is evil, if we were so inclined, but I don't think that is a very strong position. I was more thinking about the existence of evil and how there are many people who use the tangible reality of evil to claim God does not exist. So I'll do a few things in this short post: First, we should define evil. Then, just to clear it up, I'll demonstrate why I think it is erroneous to lump suffering (general) in with evil. Finally, in a very brief way, I hope to show that the reality of evil does not disprove God rather it acts as evidence for Him.

So, evil: the opposite or absence of good. Physical evil (like natural disasters, illness, etc.) is the result of being "en route" in a fallen world towards perfection in God where the possibility must exist for the less-perfect to be alongside the more-perfect. Moral evil is the free choice to sin, that is the freedom to act against God and thus against perfection. This evil is permitted to allow for and to respect free-will. (Catechism of the Catholic Church).

Why don't I think all suffering should be lumped in with evil? I'll have to break suffering down. The first reason is that when people speak of suffering (when rendering it evil) are talking about physical suffering. Here I mean physical as opposed to spiritual, not as opposed to mental; many mental sufferings have a physical cause and are treatable through physical means. Some not all of our physical sufferings aren't even sufferings at all because we intend them; like soreness after exercise or the pain from vaccinations, etc. Self-inflicted suffering for a good cannot be evil. Then there is the other self-inflicted suffering; the unintentional. This is the suffering that we bring on ourselves though mis-calculation (like, say, a sports injury). I certainly could not maintain with any theological certainty that because I hit myself with my surfboard trying to do a trick I never should have tried that God does not exist, or that what happened is evil. Then there is the self-inflicted suffering that that is unintentional but is a result of abuse of freedom, like the suffering that comes from drug abuse. Of course, there is always the unintentional, not self-inflicted suffering. This type is easier to regard as evil, given the definition above.

Unintentional suffering that is not self inflicted is the closest variation that we can really call evil. The famous atheist of the early 20th century Bertrand Russell once commented that a telling a child who is dying in a hospital bed that God loves him and he is going to heaven is not really any consolation at all. True. But what can an atheist like Russell say to that same child, "Sucks to be you"? If evil is the absence of good several implications are made. The most important being that when something is declared evil it implies that there is some objective, universal thing we call "good" that it is being measured against. For Christians, and most other theists, this objective and universal good we would call God, or at the very least an attribute of God. Essentially, for evil to exist it's opposite must exist, and that is God. This is because evil in-and-of itself is nothing, it is only the absence of good. Think darkness. Darkness is nothing. Darkness is only the absence of light. Darkness can only exist where light is not. They are not equals. Light always conquers dark. So, one more time, evil is nothing, it is the absence of good. Evil can only exist where good is not.

The other implication is the problem. If there is a universal, objective good that we measure evil against, then we must concede that there are absolute truths. If something is good it is always good. Evil is always evil. If not, we have nothing. If there is no objective, unchanging good then all this talk about good and evil is pointless. If good and evil are constructs of my own mind then they are just as meaningless as any other construct of my mind and only bear any weight so far as I can force others to follow them. If you and I are allowed to differ greatly on what we consider good and evil then the idea and the term are arbitrary. If they are arbitrary, they are nothing. I hope you catch where this must logically follow.

If there is no objective good then there is no objective evil. On the surface this may not sound bad. What it really means is that all of life boils down to different strokes for different folks. Again, not so bad, until my strokes and your strokes are in disagreement. Then it comes down to contest of strength: might makes right. Hitler wasn't really evil, he just had a different idea of good than we do and he had the power to institute his view of life, but we can't say that he is evil, that would be forcing our morals on him, and that's not right. But wait, the idea that it's not right to force your moral view on others is statement of objectivity. So if I think it's right to force a morality and you think it's wrong, you can't tell me I'm wrong, that would be asserting an objective morality. In the end, we have to either admit that absolutes and objective good exists and evil is the absence or opposite of that good, or we must jettison the whole idea of good and evil and start our new life in the Thunderdome.

Either God exists, or evil does not.