This is a cheap trick of the charlatan, but it is used because it works:  Forget everything you think you know about “mysticism.”  Let’s refresh our understanding.

A mystic is a person – you or I could be a mystic.  You might also call someone a winner, or a loser.  You might call them blessed or cursed.  You might call them a mystic, or a muggle.

Now, these pairs have been chosen because they relate to experiences a person has had.  No one is a “winner” until he wins; no one is a “loser” until he fails.  A person must experience blessings before we call her blessed, and must endure afflictions before we call her cursed.

One might now object:  “Muggle” sounds more like an innate property of a person, rather than an experience that person has had.  This would miss the point!

Alas, one may not speak anymore without a preponderance of intellectual speed bumps and stumbling blocks!  Say this about modernity – it is awfully tedious.

No, muggle, I was only being colorful.  I will now be technical:  You have your mystic, and you have your naturalist.

What, then, is the experience which the mystic has had, which the naturalist (at least according to his philosophy) has not?

For the Christian, it is really quite simple:  It is an encounter with the living God, directly or indirectly.

In the details, the curious naturalist can get confused, skeptical, even dismissive.  Rightly so, given his intellectual commitments.  But it really isn’t so confusing, and while skepticism is often a virtue, it is careless to be completely dismissive of mystical experiences.

On at least one front, I tend to line up with the naturalist.  I do not buy as mystical any kind of experience which is reliably induced, which fits neatly into a preconceived system of belief, or else which is described by terms meant to be profound, which have no clear meaning (e.g. “thoughts of light”).

Behold – my earlier complete dismissal of contemporary Christian music!

Now let the speed bump appear:  Ah, but it was not good to be completely dismissive.  Very well – I have learned.

While I do not necessarily endorse every song or effort from such bands, I have come to appreciate Jars of Clay.  I would commend to you certain songs from Third Day and Hillsong United.  And I would commend David Crowder Band.

Please note, I do not hereby commend the videos or comments to you.  Probably best just to listen.  Nor do I commend them as musically exceptional.  They are not, as far as I can tell, especially innovative or challenging.

What I see in them I recently noticed while listening to “How He Loves” from David Crowder Band (linked above).  I said to myself, “He’s had a mystical experience.”

What one notices in “How He Loves” is a concerted, desperate effort – like a man trying to paint a picture of his deceased wife – to express and thus, to share, his encounter with God.

The true naturalist can hardly guess at this.  It may seem to him that, because the mystic uses words which are intelligible to him, such an experience must not be so extraordinary.  Indeed, consider:

He is jealous for me

Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree

Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy

When all of the sudden

I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory

And I see just how beautiful You are

And how great Your affections are for me

To the naturalist – let us presume a humble naturalist – this is perhaps a little strange, as it suggests a powerful encounter with a non-existent entity.  The lyrics themselves, from the mouth of David Crowder, seem to be authentic and are perhaps charming in their style, though not what we might expect from a master of the English language.  The humble naturalist might back up my claim – contemporary Christian music is not all terrible.

Such a review is (quite precisely) condescending, but who can fault the reviewer?  Such a person imagines himself above the song because he can’t imagine himself in it.  After all, he has not had a mystical experience.

A fellow mystic, however, might find herself weeping at these humble lyrics.  For her, they are not merely charming, but evocative.  They call out, from the fogginess of memory and doubt, her own encounter with the Everlasting, with Love Himself.

She is not especially caught up in the literary value of the words.  She knows their authenticity is better gauged by their insufficiency, though they strive for all of the beauty and grandeur they can convey.  She knows that words will never be enough; one evokes the oceans because there is nothing else which is so vast and yet so immanent.  The sky is likewise vast, but out of reach; the ocean can touch every inch of her body, and swallow her whole.  (Says David Crowder:  “If His grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking“).

The mystic understands how God is like an ocean.  More importantly, she understands how God surpasses the ocean, and this is why she weeps.

Allow me one more note:  What about the one who is not a naturalist, nor a mystic?  Let’s take an “ordinary” believer, who simply thinks Christianity is true, but has not experienced the presence of God in any direct or astonishing way.  (This could be extended, in a way, to people of other faiths, but there is not space for that here).

Though I have asked the question, I reject the premise – there are only mystics.  It is the true naturalist who is illusory, established on a false view of reality.  No one is really a pure naturalist.

Perhaps not, you might say, but they would deny any encounter with God.

True enough, and now we venture close to that deeply troubled position of reading others’ minds.  I have no interest in that.

Rather, with respect to their minds, I invite them to consider these things.  Only consider the parts of your experience which defy physical explanation:  Why do you think anything is good?  (Is love good?)  Why is truth so valuable that you respect people who will sacrifice for it?  Why do you trust logic to sort out truth from falsehood?  (Does it matter whether a thing is true or not?)

Why do you wish to pour yourself out into the water when you gaze out over the ocean at night?  Why do you wish you could walk on water, or run without growing tired, or live forever?  Why is it that you can imagine sharing something better than sex with a person, but you can’t say what it is?

Loosen your restraint – follow for a moment, and see where the questions lead.

The longing is sincere, and ubiquitous.  A direct encounter with God is not required, only an answer:  Is there anything which satisfies these longings, or not?

The mystics answer in the affirmative; some have even tasted and seen.

If you’re not already a fan of www.houzz.com, I highly recommend it.  The pictures are often gorgeous, and the things people do with architecture and decor really are amazing.  (It can sometimes be approached as a challenge by the DIY types).

Well, Houzz led me to this site by way of an article on kitchen upgrades, and so I took in what information could find.  I’m not keen on granite, so the idea that its favor is fading intrigues me.  (Nanotech countertops?!  The future is now).

And good heavens, don’t forget the comments.  A debate broke out over the existence of God!

Granted:  It takes a little over 30 comments to get to God, and up until then, the comments were largely relevant to the article.  I was enjoying the back and forth, as I know nothing about geology.  There are even some fun electron jokes thrown in for good measure.

Now, it would seem “Faith Priest” said something worthy of being censored; though the content is lost, we get an idea from “guru dogg” that it was incendiary, possibly explosive.

“When you see a warhead missile detonating above your city, how will your state of mind react to the state of burning flesh? When your eyes melt in your sockets, how loud will you call out to God?”

Huh?  I, for one, really want to know what Faith Priest said.  No matter, there’s still some fine material ahead.  “Bubbawubba Gump” says,

“Holy bat sh*t crazy, Batman! @guru, you have spent way too much time in a dark room dreaming of what god will do to everyone and you should see a psychiatrist. If the bombs drop they will definitely be sent by some psycho who believes God wants him to destroy the world, not by someone who doesn’t believe in an afterlife.”

So, Gump starts off in the land of humor and proportional response, then takes a sharp turn toward Dawkinsville, where any instance of evil is “definitely” the the fault of religion.  Because only religious people perpetrate evil.

“Geri” tries to bring the conversation to the abstract:

“Without God, I am the sole authority and measure of my own good. There is no objective measure of good unless it is in comparison it to the infinite goodness, God Himself.”

Geri is actually getting ahead of me in the series on objective morality, but you can guess I agree with his/her point.  Not that the combox following an article on countertop surfaces is the best place to plant one’s flag.

Not one to let a reasonable point be made, “jfahle3” retorts:

“See, caveperson, I don’t believe in an invisible sky giant. Fortunately for you, I don’t need an invisible sky giant to tell me not to steal from you, I just know it’s not right to steal from you.”

Let’s see – presuming superiority by name-calling, grossly misrepresenting what is meant by God, and failing to comprehend the point he/she is criticizing.  Here is the New Atheist trifecta!*

Something is missing, though.  “SwoodTN” goes for the knock-out with a left hook nobody saw coming…

“Interesting article about granite. You know what is really interesting about granite? It can be found on every continent on earth and has the distinction of being carbon dated as earth’s oldest rock. Scientists say it formed over millions of years as the earth’s surface cooled. But if you look at granite under a spectron microscope, you will see radio halos trapped inside.”

Unless you’ve read Internet comboxes before, then you totally saw it coming.  Here is the “But how do you explain this?” angle, which takes a narrow set of facts and interprets them in an apparently straightforward way, with the conclusion that God did it.  Frankly, the jargon is beyond me, but the rhetoric is par for the course.

“Prism” replies with the obligatory, jargon-for-jargon rebuttal:

“(2) Granites that have been appropriately age-dated (using K-Ar, U-Pb, Rb-Sr isotope dating, e.g.) range from billions to less than a million years old. Felsic magma may be cooling deep in the earth (forming new granite) even as we speak (basic earth processes continue to operate as always), but younger intrusive rocks are not yet exposed at the surface for study.
And (3) re: radio halos in granite – not even close to true. See http://paleo.cc/ce/halos.htm”

When you’re numbering your points 40 comments deep in an article about kitchen upgrades, you might be wasting your time.  It might be easier to say, “That’s interesting,” and point out that a mysterious occurrence in geology – if it is actually mysterious – does not tell us much about the existence of God, the ground of all reality.

Only two more, because they are more down to earth (or, up to the surface?).  “Stevo” says:

“So called scientific TRUTHS are only theories that are constantly amended as more facts are discovered. Christianity is belief in proven facts about Jesus that only requires faith.”

I think I get what Stevo is saying, but his intellectual opponents on dishwashers.reviewed.com are not even going to try.  Remember, Christian brothers and sisters – when in doubt, be modest in your claims.  If you have no doubt, be even more modest.

We finish with “PlacidAir,” who replies,

“There are no “proven facts” about Jesus — that’s why it’s called ‘faith’.“

I strain myself here to understand what PlacidAir is saying, though as a disposition, I do endorse modesty (see above).  Is PlacidAir saying that we have not proven that Jesus existed, for instance?  The simple existence of Jesus of Nazareth is as close to certain as it can be – doubting it gets you the label of “Myther,” which is about the same level as the “FlatEarther“.

There probably is some grand take-away here, but I’ve relayed this combox debate simply because I found it amusing.  I hope it lightens your day.

*As always, the New Atheist is to be contrasted with the serious, non-militant atheist.  They may be distinguished by the following measure:  The latter can be reasoned with.

The controversy over the Supreme Court decision on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby has been…well, hysterical, when you think about it. There are, for instance, otherwise intelligent people shuddering for the United States. It is unbecoming for a scientist to be reading tea leaves – principally because they aren’t any good at it – since it causes them to declare that a “theocracy” is afoot.

Of course the word “theocracy” only enters the conversation because it’s scary, like communism, and not because anything like a theocracy is imminently threatening.

Rather than dig into the case as one more bloviating layperson, I’d like to comment on an issue which plays into the discussion, which has plenty of application over and above SCOTUS.

Namely, there is a peculiar fear of religion, and a distinction of religion from…well, I guess the “normal” or “ordinary” way of looking at things. There is also the widespread illusion that science and religion are so different from each other that they are actually opposed.

Here I would like to introduce the notion of worldview. This is simply the way a person believes the world to be.

Is the world knowable, or not?  If so, how can we know it, and what can we know about it? Is there a God, or not? Am I the only one who exists, or do all these other people exist in the same way that I do?

If these questions sound philosophical, that’s because they are. One’s worldview might also be likened to one’s personal philosophy. What do you perceive to be the purpose of life, if anything? What is all of this for? What duties and obligations do you have, if any?

How one answers questions like these, then, determines (or is indicative of) his worldview.

It should be obvious, I think, that while there may be trends in the way people answer these questions (the ancient Chinese might answer differently than the medieval Muslims, who again answer differently than modern Latin Americans), there is not necessarily any neat, “standard” response.

In other words, there is not a neat, “normal” response from which we could say that religion departs. If anything, religion would have to be part of that normal response, given its ubiquity across space and time.

Now, let us usher in an interesting idea: Secularism. This, of course, is a lack of commitment to any particular religion, and a positive commitment toward the common understanding of the common good. This is such an alluring idea, in fact, that it is taken to be the “standard” worldview, from which other worldviews (especially religious worldviews) depart.

I would then argue: Secularism is not meant to be a worldview. It is meant to be a mutual agreement not to impose any particular worldview. In the same way, a recipe is not an ingredient – it is a description of the way the ingredients are meant to come together.

The fascinating thing – to this bloviator, anyway – is that in its refusal to impose a particular religious worldview, secularism has thus seemed very attractive to those who reject all religious worldviews – I mean, atheists.

In fact, many atheists have often been only too happy to wear the mantle of secularism, and many Christians have been too dense to understand the distinction: Atheism is a worldview, but secularism is not. (I do think, lest I hang too many of my brethren in Christ, that plenty of atheists are so fanatical as to miss the distinction, too).

The truth is, both Christians and atheists (and Muslims, and Hindus, and…) should be happy to wear the mantle of secularism – unless they have a better strategy for governing in a pluralistic society.

Or, I suppose, unless they intend to install a theocracy.

Now, critical to secularism, it seems to me, is the free exercise of religion; but let’s amend it, and call it the free exercise of worldview.* We should not leave the atheists out, after all, or they might claim the whole damned system for themselves and install an anti-theist-ocracy. (Don’t laugh…it’s been done).

Let’s ask the question: Is it right to impose on an employer (or anyone), and require her to provide for a product or treatment to which she is morally opposed?

Is it really in line with the idea of secularism that we should require people to act in opposition to their worldviews, so that other people will receive what is considered “good” within their worldview?

Forget for a moment that this was an issue raised mainly by Christians. Think of yourself, and your sincerely held worldview. Think of one particular action which you find morally offensive.

The argument is, can a society really be justified in forcing you to commit (or be complicit in) that action, no matter how “good” other members of that society perceive it to be?

Don’t be hasty. Don’t assume you’re cool with whatever. That is not the meaning of secularism.

The meaning of secularism is to provide a real opportunity for people of multi-various worldviews to live authentically within their own worldviews, while living in common with each other.

Government impositions on sincerely held beliefs are a sin in secularism. They cripple secularism.

And they necessarily favor one worldview over others.

*Whether this bears the spirit of the Framers is a fair and interesting question, but I aim to talk about secularism principally as a concept, and not within any particular historical context.

In our time, Christmas is a lovely thing.  It is universally observed as a time for giving, family, good works.  Only a little more narrowly, it is the great holy day, brought out as something better than any heirloom or treasure, recognized as the arrival of a singular hero, God Himself.

The comfort of family and traditions veils the shock.  Consider the infant!

A baby in the room will elicit warm smiles, soft coos, sure hands to cradle her.  The infant receives and cannot offer, cries but cannot articulate, trusts but cannot protect herself from harm.

At Christmas, we are not often reminded that the world is still enemy territory.  Christmas is the time when it feels as though the world could be otherwise – perhaps there could be peace on Earth.

But that is not the pretense for the Incarnation.  The pretense is that the world is fallen, is in need of redemption.  The pretense, as Christ later says, is that men are wicked, this generation is faithless.  They cannot grapple with the mess they’re in.  It will destroy them.

Now, if you had all power and determined to fight and win this conflict, would you begin by emptying yourself of all that power and appearing as an infant behind enemy lines?  This is the paradox that would destroy all reality:  That God made Himself utterly vulnerable to death.

That baby in the manger is everything.  And he has nothing, can say nothing, can protect nothing.

Why?

We with finite powers may begin to answer this:  If we had all power, we might storm the earth, take the holy innocents trapped behind enemy lines, and speed them to Paradise.  And then, if we had the stomach for it – and we would, being holy – we would destroy whatever remained in water and fire, and begin again.

But who, exactly, would you have rescued?

All are under the grip of sin.  None are innocent.  You would return to Heaven empty-handed, and turn around and destroy all those you meant to save.

Do you see the predicament?  We are willing captives.  We choose this every time we sin.  Meanwhile, God loves us and wishes to redeem us to unimaginable glory.

If He comes in force, we are likely as not to resist!  Our guards go up, and all of the things we value more than we should, all of the priorities we have placed above Him – these things we cling to in defiance of Him.

Not you?  Do it now, then.  Go where He has been calling you.  Give up the sins, give up even the good things which nevertheless stand in your way.  Leave all things behind – do not look back – and follow Him.

See it now?  You are the enemy’s territory.  Your heart is behind enemy lines.  God cannot rescue you by destroying you.

Make no mistake.  There is evil, and it must ultimately be destroyed.  Violently, with a permanence so profound you will not remember it existed.

Yet you are redeemable, and one of the ways you can observe this is by your response to an infant.  Do you offer a smile?  Does your hope awaken?  Would you protect the baby from harm?

It was a master stroke, wasn’t it?  God almighty, appearing as an infant invader?

He had to come claim your heart, first.  Only then could He lead you out.

Thanks for the tip from Chris Fox, who is more newsy than I am.

A father expecting twins blogged about his feelings and experience, and there was some kind of backlash; the mother (his pregnant wife) then did a write up to offer her version of the story.

There is much criticism that can be heaped on these two.  Aside from the easy and obvious – “So I made the final call: we transferred both embryos.” …and… “Why would the universe, God, karma, whatever, whomever think it was a good idea to bring forth twins in our lives?” – in the same write-up*, presumably written by the same person with at least a passing understanding of cause and effect…

Well, just sit with that.

Many of the commenters noticed this, of course, but I want to ask another question:  Why would it occur to her at all that anyone had done this to her, as though she was an innocent bystander and was suddenly pregnant with twins?  What’s more, I don’t think she’s the one and only person in the world who would have thought that …even if you leave off her husband.

Seeing as how the divine and/or or transcendent entities she refers to are interchangeable, I assume she does not hold a serious faith in any of them.  In fact, she speaks of a general sense of disillusionment – she went from being an optimistic person to damn-well near a fatalistic one.  She rejects the straightforward acknowledgement of reality from her doctors (“This was always a possibility.”), and rejects the sentiments of others – some presumably having experience as parents – who say, “Things will get better.”  The former she rejects as lacking compassion; the latter as lacking understanding.

I have seen this before – in children, and in adults acting like children, including myself.  It is the position of someone who has not gotten her way, and the only solution she would smile on is that which sets everything right.  Exactly right, the way she would have it.

And other commenters have asked, “So things didn’t work out according to your plan?  You’ll have no pity from me.”  But I want to ask, “Why would you expect that things should go your way?”

I do hold a serious faith, and I do not expect everything to go as I would like.  It is difficult for me to understand why this is a serious objection to faith.  For if you abandon your faith, things still will not go your way all of the time – does that somehow bring comfort, like one who has sufficiently low expectations for life, thereby reducing his hurdles to a height of a few inches, so that he feels accomplished when he clears them?

There are other serious objections to faith – let’s not let disillusionment be one.  After all, doesn’t this only prove the point that, if there is a Creator, ye are not He?

But my good friend has, in part, sent this along to me because I am also a parent of twins.  And I say that these parents already are, too, though they have begun with a false start.

Still – and if I could speak to them directly, this is what I would say – take heart.  It is not necessarily a crime nor a sin to speak your feelings out loud.  But you must recognize that your feelings, in this case, are unworthy of you, and they are unworthy of your unborn children (and your born child, for that matter).  You are a human being, and not a computer program – you may change your mind, and even your heart.  You have freedom of the will.

You are not a slave to the feeling that you have “ruined your family.”  You are not a slave to the feeling of being “not happy.”

And if it was me, speaking to my child, or myself – Rise up, child of God.  Be bigger than you are.  We are all falling, all the time – get up.  Ask for God’s grace, and go on as though you are sure it will come.

Because, y’all, twins are tough.  You find yourself in the situation, sometimes, where you hold one and the other cries.  So you set the first one down and pick up the second…and the first one cries.

And they don’t just cry.  They wail, they beg through big, wet tears for the suffering to stop, they scream as though they are being carried away by lions.  You don’t just attend to their needs – you attend to your own, knowing that this wailing and gnashing of gums is wholly unjustified, and yet you must comfort these children.

And maybe you’re already tired, because you’ve worked all day after losing sleep all night, and the older children are now clamoring, and whining, and relishing even negative attention.  You are probably hungry, having foregone food for the sake of making sure the children are fed, and you really are – a psychologist would readily bear this out – strung out on adrenaline, straining to preserve a semblance of order, of anything looking like control.

You know, with terrible certainty, why some parents beat their children.

Nevermind that you’re feeling vulnerable, financially.  Nevermind that your spouse seems not to understand your plea for help (or simply is unable to do anything about it), or that you felt disrespected at work today, or that your friends are falling away because they don’t have the same obligations you do.  Or worse, your dreams are falling away.  Nevermind the other, even more serious, troubles that life brings.

My dear friends, mother and father – is that all?  You have two real, live people with you.  It is an amazing, solemn obligation even for the naturalist – for the supernaturalist, you are looking at the image of God.  Prefer that you should die rather than fail in your duties.

I beg – I hope and sincerely pray – that you know, you were made for this.  When you see that, and you let the obstacles to it fall away, you will be good parents.  Maybe great.  Maybe holy.  That potential really is there.

Gird your loins.  Change your mind.

It does get better.

*Resisting the inclination to call it an “essay.”