Romanticism and Existential Philosophy

This is an interesting piece on romanticism and existential philosophy

Philosophy Is Not A Luxury

I have bee recently reading a book called “Irrational Man” by William Barrett. It was originally written in 1962 and it is generally recognized as the book that introduced the Existential philosophy of continental Europe to America. You may be familiar with existentialists, perhaps even without knowing that they were existentialist. Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Soren Kierkegaard are some of the big names in Existentialism. Martin Heidegger is another.

As I have read about these late 19^th and 20^th century thinkers they appear to me to be an extension of the Romantic Movement of the early 19^th century. The Romantics, as I have described in this blog, were reacting to what they saw as the excessive intellectualism of the European Enlightenment. They believed that humankind had developed an untenable hubris in relationship to its ability to understand everything. The bottom line…

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The One Design of the Christian Life: Enjoying God

“One design you are to pursue to the end of time – the enjoyment of God in time and in eternity. Desire other things so far as they tend to this; love the creature, as it leads to the creator. But in every step you take, be this the glorious point that terminates your view. Let every affection, and thought and word, and action, be subordinate to this. Whatever you seek or shun, whatever you think, speak, or do, be it in order to your happiness in God, the sole end, as well as source, of your being.”

– John Wesley, Plain Account of Christian Perfection.

Through my many years as a Christian, I’ve found that this is the real crux, the real design, and the real goal of the Christian inward life. While we have many responsibilities and desires, it always leads back to this one thing – enjoying God in this life and the life to come.

The Launch of Life-Ecstatic

1 Thessalonians 5:

²³ Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. ²⁴ He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

This is a key verse and, if read both in its context and simply, implies that God may “sanctify” a Christian “completely”, keeping the whole soul and body blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. It continues to say that God is faithful and “he will surely do it.”

Can we see what it says? It says we may be “completely” or “entirely” sanctified. For any person who has come to life in Christ Jesus (AKA, a Christian) this is a pretty stunning promise.

Psalm 16:

5 The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
6 The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
7 I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
8 I have set the Lord always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
my flesh also dwells secure.
10 For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
or let your holy one see corruption.
11 You make known to me the path of life;
    in your presence there is fullness of joy;
    at your right hand are pleasures [delights] for evermore.

It’s with these two verses that I relaunch my faith blog under the name Life-Ecstatic. The word “ecstatic” is used as a noun for mystics and as an adjective for experiencing joy and excitement. I’ll be using it in both these respects, pointing toward a ‘valid’ mysticism that belongs to the Christian life, a mysticism that’s about ‘devotion’ (that alone should give you a clue where that’s going to go) and speak about the single goal of every Christian’s life, which is joy in God. My blogs will go around qualifying why I see it that way and encouraging Christians to bring all of their life onto one single focus, one single goal.

I’m of the firm belief that many Christians feel pulled this way and that way with the mass of information, books, blogs and teachings out there. Yes, my one is another one. But, I’ve found that when you’re able to pull your focus toward one thing, there is fruit and direction in your life. Pursuing “joy in God” is another way of saying that our central goal is to “worship God”, but I don’t use that language because the word “worship” has become quite vague for many of us.

To come back to the beginning, it’s this ‘joy in God’ that leads us to sanctification, the outcome of that inward desire of the Christian to live a holy life before God and man. “Holy” means a life of perfect love, the kind of love Jesus had. It doesn’t mean we dress in strange clothes and hang out on a mountain in solitude, but solitude is certainly a way of getting to the goal! So how all of these sorts of things interconnect will be the main themes of these blogs.

My blogs on business, current affairs and so on will be housed at my www.ryanpeterwrites.com website.

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Anne Rice Interview: Why She Quit Christianity

For those of you who don’t know Anne Rice, she is best known as the author of The Vampire Chronicles including Interview with the Vampire, which was translated into a movie some time back, starring Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Christian Slater. She’s a great writer.

A few years back (I don’t really know how long ago) she became a Christian, a Catholic in particular. But recently she has announced that she has quit Christianity.

This is a great interview (only just over four minutes) where she explains a little more about why she quit Christianity and what she means by that. She also briefly explains her new work focused on angels. I found it interesting, especially since I am a writer myself and a Christian.

(I can’t get the embed code to work properly, so please watch it here)

Being Honest: God Has Disappointed Me

Picture credit — here

Has God ever disappointed you? He’s disappointed me, many times, if I’m going to be honest. Which obviously I am.

Several things have influenced this post. One, last week someone I know objected to Philip Yancey’s book ‘Disappointment with God’. I don’t think they quite understood the point of the book, nor Yancey’s style, which is usually about brutal honesty.

Second, I find myself once again disappointed with many things in my life that I have hoped for. And after each disappointment, each fresh realisation that actually certain things MAY NEVER happen that I hope(d) for, I have to go back to a startling revelation that was given to me years and years ago, and tends to become deeper and deeper every time I get to this point of disappointment: The point of my life is to find joy in it. In the life I have. In the circumstances I am in, regardless of what they are. The point is not to find joy in the life I wish I had; the life I live in my dreams; a life that can sometimes become so real that the only response to my own life is disappointment and depression and frustration that God doesn’t seem to care much about the life I WANT.

God is more committed to our life than we are. Let me reiterate it to drive it home. He is more committed to my life than I am. I want the life of my dreams, he wants me to enjoy the life I’ve actually got. It’s like I’m munching on a delicious and juicy nectarine but thinking to myself that I’d prefer an orange. Oh why, Lord, did you give me this delicious nectarine? I want an orange. And so I miss just how wonderful the nectarine is because my mind is thinking about how great it would be if I had an orange.

God seems very interested in giving us joy IN our circumstances, not just taking our circumstances away. Joy is in God, not in our circumstances going away. I have to keep learning that lesson. The miracle of a life in God is being joyous in the troubles of life, not the troubles of life just being taken away. Yes, God does take away some troubles, but there are other troubles that seem to stay. But yet God is there, ready to give us joy in the midst of those troubles, as we cling to our great hope that finally, one day, EVERY tear will be wiped away and everything will, at last, be made new. Including us.

Do We Know How to Ask?

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened … If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matthew 7:7-11)

I write this in a time when I am doing a LOT of asking God for things, many of which I have been trusting for for years now.

In our modern McDonalds fast-food culture, we can get confused with scriptures that tell us to simply ‘ask’ and we will receive. Attempts at making this easier to understand by including the idea that we must ask what God wants can sometimes just aggravate us, because many things we ask for (such as health or a healing) seem to make sense to be God’s will, both biblically and logically.

But the kind of asking the Bible talks about is different. It incorporates these other two actions as well — seeking and knocking. The knocking can, quite clearly, refer to a persistence and the seeking to a knowing of what God’s will is, but I think there’s more to it than just that (as profound as those might be).

We don’t just seek to know His Will but we seek to know Him. We seek His presence. In our asking, seeking His presence is a huge part of the whole thing. We don’t just want to know what God wants, we want to know who he is. And we want to keep knocking on the door where we keep asking, “Who are You Lord? Show me who You are!” If we seek we will find, if we knock the door will be opened.

Do we know what asking means? Do we know how to ask? God is not a McDonalds, clearly, we don’t do much seeking and knocking when we pick up our double cheese burgers. Neither are those double cheese burgers very nourishing. As we seek and knock to know Him, we find ourselves nourished, with peace, joy and such things; the very core need of any of our prayers.

God wants us to ask, seek and knock at the same time. See, God is not one who is quick to reward, but when he rewards, he rewards richly.

Why Theology is Important for Social Justice Pt 1

I think theology is a highly important topic. That’s why I write about it so much. Our theology (or lack of one) is important because it influences the way we live, and therefore it influences the way we see justice and how we take action.

Justice, or social justice, is a big topic these days. Everyone’s talking about it in some form or another, while fewer may be doing something about it, and even fewer can get to do something about it full-time.

If you’re a pantheist (the belief that God is everything, and everything is God, basically) or a panentheist (the belief that God is IN everything, and everything IN God) I think social justice will be a challenge. If God is everything, God is also the evil people of the world, and he is also that instinct, that tendency, to do evil. If God is IN everything, he is also IN that tendency, and IN evil people (and they are IN him).

Pantheism and panentheism is a very interesting and romantic way of looking at the world. But I think it can lead to problems of justice. I think Taoism is one of the most mature pantheistic philosophies out there, but a core tenet of Taoism is not to disrupt the flow of things — as the Beatles sang: “Let it be.” Evil and death can seem so natural because it’s all we’re used to, but if we believe we must not disrupt the ‘flow’ of things, then how could we be passionate about social justice? I don’t see any logical way that we could.

Now I would like to be fair to pantheism and panentheism and not write it off just like that with a few words. I’d be open to debate it as I think it would make an interesting discussion. But even pantheism’s modern cousin (a kind of spiritual environmentalism) presents the same problem. Even its strange cousin (a sort of atheist pantheism, which we’ll talk about) presents problems for justice.

Our theology influences our worldview, and our worldview influences the way we live. We’ll expand on this through a series of posts.

When Twins War is Complete!

It’s been three years in the making after I wrote, re-wrote, then re-wrote, then got some professional advice, then re-wrote, then proofread, then spell checked, then had to work our some phonetics, and now it’s finally ready – When Twins War, my fantasy book of 130,000 words, is as good as I think I’m going to get it and it’s headed off to a publisher today which I hope will pick it up.

The twin desert cities of Iza-Kiêrre and Ben-Kiêrre are going to war, and their war is feared to be a prophetic sign that the Moncoin, a spiritual entity that once almost destroyed the Kingdom of Lexedore, has returned.

Tarkanyon, an Outlander who has dedicated his life to the grand mission of the Outlanders – to ensure peace in Lexedore and find the Wealth, the ancient magic of a race known as the genicoins – is tasked to forge peace between the cities. But soon he has more questions than answers and realises the fate of Lexedore could be at stake.

I’m really excited with how the book turned out in the end. The last editing process was the most excrutiating but also the most rewarding part of the whole process. The world of Lexedore now feels more alive than ever before, and the characters seem to have, well, more character than ever before. I thoroughly enjoyed the ending, complete with an interesting philosophical take and a middle-eastern dance. I can’t wait for people to start reading it in this form at last.

Warning to friends: I WILL BE PUNTING THIS BOOK BIG TIME. Even if a publisher doesn’t pick it up, I will self-publish and punt this like crazy. I’m so happy I’ve stuck to this and gone through all the pain and discouragement, dreaming and re-encouragement of writing this work. After this, of course, will come more!

Wish I had some art to show for it, except for some lousy cover which I invented on Gimp a long time ago and this lousy map which I did in some weird map-making program. I suppose it’ll have to do for now 😀

This is cover art for When Twins War that I did when I was bored. THIS IS NOT THE FINAL COVER ART.

A map of Lexedore where events for When Twins War take place

God’s Glory is not a Laser Show

(Image from here)

What is God’s glory, exactly? What do (some) Christians mean when they talk about the ‘glory realm’?

Well, I think for a lot of Christians God’s glory looks something like a laser show, metaphorically speaking. For them it’s about bright flashing lights, angels appearing, the skies cracking open — THAT’s God’s glory for them. It’s all about the eyes — it’s all about seeing something amazing.

But Christianity can not and should never be relegated to that. This isn’t a laser show. This is about hearts changing. The fruits of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness and self-control. When people talk about God’s glory why don’t they ever talk about that? Is God’s glory about seeing something amazing, experiencing something out-of-this-world? Or is it in the simple day-to-day reality of becoming a person that reflects Jesus — a person who produces those fruits in a real rubber-hits-the-road kind of way.

A lot of people get stuck in hype rather than reality. Flashing lights are cool and all but they last only a moment. The Spirit producing His fruit is a lifetime thing. God’s glory is in the quiet un-hyped transformation of hearts. I recall Elijah’s experience when there was an earthquake and a forceful wind — yet the Lord was not in them. Rather, he was in the small, still voice. (1 Kings 19.)

Perhaps the reason for this disparity is when we don’t understand how glorious God’s creation actually is. The earth is glorious, and so are we — God’s creation, made in His image. Heaven and Earth met in Jesus when he walked this planet and now meet in us, by His Spirit. And, surprise surprise, most of that isn’t a big light show.

In the World But Not of the World: Transformation

(Picture from here)

This is the last part on a series of posts that link to a sermon I recently did at my church, Church on the Square in Sandton, Johannesburg.

In the last post I mentioned that in this post I would talk about transformation, since the series has focused more on the separation of Church and State and how that means the following:

1) That the Church should never be the State and should never wield the sword. The State’s responsibility is to wield the sword. The Church is a people, not an institution.

2) Christians are transferred into a Kingdom which functions under a King named Jesus — ie. political opinions must be seen as separate to the Church. If you’re a socialist and I believe in democracy our core mission, the Kingdom, is the same — which is to love others sacrificially and unconditionally like Jesus did, and let the world know that they can find love, joy, peace, salvation, real eternal life, and much more in Jesus. We should make sure we understand that political opinions are not the same as theological opinions — democracy or socialism is not a theology, it’s merely just a political opinion. Sure, one might turn out to be better than the other, but that doesn’t mean it is necessary more Christian, because the only thing Christian in this world is essentially people.

3) That the Church (the people) should never mix world ideologies with Christian ones — ala thinking that democracy is of the Bible and the spread of democracy akin to the advancing of the Kingdom; living like capitalists with our money instead of Christians who give generously and don’t make upgrading their lifestyle their core mission in life; always exercising our rights over others and looking to have power over them rather than serve them as Jesus served/serves us; judging people according to their income, education; and so forth.

4) The Church should never run as the world does — ie. running a church like a democracy (pastors / elders are voted into their job); running a church like a socialist state; and so forth.

That summary shows how difficult it can be to understand how we are still to transform our world and make it into a better place. After all, Christians do pray that God’s will be done on earth as it is done in heaven. Plus, the Kingdom works its way through the whole dough, meaning that it is meant to permeate every aspect of society in every way.

‘In the world but not of the world’ is probably the best way to explain this. I think that the principle way transformation is done is through love first, which puts us on a relational level with others or those in power. Only then can we suggest (and only suggest) what might be good in a particular situation, or point politicians towards the basic principles espoused in the Bible, leaving it to them to work it out in detail, as that is, after all, their job.

Christians should also get involved with social causes as much as they can, as long as the social causes don’t become the core focus. We can bring as much food to poor people as we want, but until their hearts are changed (by Jesus himself as they believe in Him) they will not be able to truly break out of the systems of thought and spiritual entanglements that hold them in poverty.

Poverty is perhaps the easiest way to show what I mean. It seems pretty obvious that God has a big heart for the poor and so should we. This means that we should encourage our government(s) to look after the poor in various ways. But HOW that is done is a matter of political and economical opinion, not biblical opinion. It probably makes more sense to work in helping poor people be lifted out of the systems of thought that hold them captive rather than just give them hand-me-outs, but there is a time for hand-me-outs too. How that is worked out is not mentioned in the Scriptures — the Scriptures merely show us that we SHOULD care for the poor and for justice, but it’s up to us to work that out in the details, and to work with the State as best we can to work it out, but only as advisers never anything more.

Something like freeing people from slavery is an obvious evil to work against. But there are evils that are not so obvious, especially when it comes to things such as whether the State should allow homosexual couples to get married. (I realise this is controversial but it’s worth saying and it might stir up some conversation.)

After all, is it fair for a State to give benefits to heterosexual couples but not homosexual couples? Shouldn’t it view all people equally? Aren’t all viewed equal in the sight of God? The argument for or against it can be quite persuasive both ways.

I believe the Bible speaks against homosexuality as a lifestyle, but that’s something for Christians. Whether or not the State should allow such couples to get married is more a matter of political opinion than of anything else. Sure, I think a healthy country boils down to healthy families, but how this is all worked out in detail is a matter of opinion. What I do know, however, is that the State should never force the Church to marry homosexuals, as much as the Church should never enforce its morality through the State. Both have disastrous consequences.

People should come to Christ willingly. Our job is to love them sacrificially and unconditionally so that they would choose our God, enjoy the life He gives, and then choose His morality and lifestyle for themselves. The legalising of homosexual marriage I don’t think makes our job any harder than it already is. We love people just the same and counsel them just the same. Sometimes we have to love through difficult situations, but we ought to do it just the same.

Through the changing of hearts society itself will look more Christ-like, which is what we want, but that would be through people exercising a freedom to choose, rather than being under a compulsion — either socially or legally — by the Church. And it will come through us loving and living like Jesus.