Sun it Rises

"Meaningless! Meaningless!... Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless."

Sometimes good people die. Sometimes evil people prosper. Work is hard, painful things happen. People sometimes get what they deserve. Sometimes they don't. The sun rises, the sun sets. Life goes on.

There is nothing quite like a good meal, or a couple of pints. There is nothing quite like being in love. There is nothing like working hard for something and then achieving it. The sun rises, the sun sets. Life goes on. People are forgotten, memories are lost. Everything is meaningless.

Sometimes we take ten steps forward. Sometimes we get knocked twenty back. Some people die lonely, some people surround themselves with riches and are still not fulfilled. Some people are born in poverty and live in poverty and die in poverty. Some people are forgotten. The sun rises, the sun sets. Life goes on. Everything is meaningless.

There will be always be more knowledge, it will always be unattainable. You can study your whole life and still be discontent. Wisdom is valuable, but difficult. No one truly knows the future. No one knows how many children you will have, how happy you will be.  No one knows how many years you have left. The sun rises, the sun sets. Life goes on. Everything is meaningless.

There will always be poverty. There will always be hypocrisy in religion. There will always be ignorance. There will always be selfishness and greed. There will always be those who strive for something beyond themselves. All came from stuff. All are heading back that way. There is nothing new under the sun. The sun rises, the sun sets. Life goes on. Everything is meaningless.

Life is good when you're young. I read lots of books. Listen to music. I have hardly any responsibilities or ties. I am in love. I drink good beer, I eat good food. Bad days will inevitably happen. Difficult times no doubt lie ahead. I will seek after God with all of my life. I will pray to him, worship him, live a live focused on him. The sun rises, the sun sets. Life goes on. Everything is meaningless.

So what next? What can we do in face of such meaninglessness?

"here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgement, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil." 

The sun rises, the sun sets. Life goes on. Everything is meaningless. It is in these words that I find truth, and then hope. 

Don't Ask Me Why

I've just watched Laura Marling in the Minster Chapter House. The Chapter house was built in 1286. It is an absolutely stunning piece of architecture; a round, finely carved stone room with a domed roof and intricate stained glass (look at it here). A woman one month older than myself stood for 50 minutes and plucked a stringed piece of wood whilst singing down a microphone. And honestly it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever experienced. Hard to explain why though.

There was something deeply spiritual about that experience that I found fascinating. It's incredible how just sounds, just bricks can create something so special. I was just fixated by her performance, by the beauty of her song-writing, by how her voice echoed round the room, the skill of her playing. I was stuck to my chair, almost trance like. And I suddenly thought; the human being is incredible. Music is incredible. And I don't understand it. It makes no sense that mere sounds can make me feel like this.

But people have been doing it for centuries. Every time I hear 'don't think twice it's alright' by Bob Dylan or 'Clare de lune' by Debussy it sends shivers down my spine. I don't know if other people experience this phenomenon, but I can only describe it by saying that it moves my soul. I don't necessarily mean that in a metaphysical way, but what I mean is that there is something totally beyond me in those moments, there is something I cannot reduce down to just electrical impulses and neurons firing (in actual fact, it is likely that this is the cause of the phenomenon, but this is not to say it can be reduced down to this level.)

I re-watched the film American Beauty a couple of weeks ago. There is a guy in that film who is fixated by beauty. There is a scene in the film when he films a carrier bag flying around in the wind for fifteen minutes, he claims it is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. I'm not convinced personally, but he makes a good point when he says:

"Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in. "

And that's precisely how I felt as I watched Laura Marling sing to 200 people in a small room in an ancient building. It was one of those moments I wanted to capture and revisit.  There is something so beautiful about the universe, so beautiful about the human mind, about music, I have to ask why. I have to seek something beautiful, there has to be something creative behind the fabric of the Universe. Not in a way I can ever prove, or in a way that won't seem foolish if you're already sceptical, but in that moment in time, in those snapshots of beauty, I could not doubt that there was a God, I could not doubt his presence.

In a world full of pain and suffering, there is beauty. In a world where death looms round every corner, there is hope. As Paul puts it in Romans 8- creation is under bondage, but it is crying to be released, it will be brought to beauty and glory. In those moments, I understand this, I understand what it means to see beauty in the universe, to see hope. And whilst we live in this broken world, it is so important to get those glimpses of beauty. To stop and see the sunset, to meditate on the beauty of a piece of music, to get lost in a moment.

Call me soppy, pretentious, naive- I don't particularly care. But I believe, in the infamous words of the philosopher Samwise Gamge, 'that there's some good in the world and it's worth fighting for.' 

Running on Faith

I believe because I can do no other. I wasn't argued into faith, I wasn't persuaded into faith. I became self conscious and I believed. I'm not alone in this. Others can remember the first time they had faith. My mate James for example became a Christian 5 years ago. He was at a festival with me and my friends when he got out of his seat and went to the front to respond and never looked back since. I don't think anyone persuaded or argued him into it. He just got up from his seat and walked into faith. Today he is introducing people to Jesus left right and centre, he is devoting his year to serving God and his Church. It astounds me. All because of that one moment when he leapt into faith.

 Recently I can't get away from the absurdity of faith. Understand me when I say 'absurd'. I don't mean absurd in the sense that we might often hear it. Absurd carries quite a few negative connotations, we might say "The big bang theory is an absurd theory." When we say this we usually mean it's unreasonable or that we disagree with it. When I say that faith is 'absurd that's not quite what I mean. Sartre uses the notion of absurdity to refer to all of existence. Things exist and we are confronted with their existence but there seems to be no meaning behind them. There's some pretty hilariously pretentious pieces (apologies Sartre fanatics) when Sartre talks about being confronted by the absurdity of a tree trunk as a form which confronts his senses but which has no meaning, when we strip away the names we give it, when we experience things as they actually are, we see that they're utterly absurd.

For me that's a pretty good account of faith. I've become increasingly disillusioned with apologetics, with the whole McGrath/ Dawkins spat. It once used to fascinate me, I used to want to be able to argue any atheist into the ground. Now I can't really be bothered. Partly because the arguments don't always convince me, but partly because I think that faith isn't a proposition to be proved at all. Don't get me wrong, there's a use in discussing apologetics if it helps people to see that the Christian faith isn't absolutely bonkers. But it irritates me.

Kierkegaard argued that faith is a paradox, he held that the rational mind cannot ever comprehend God fully or prove that he exists. Faith is all about risk, faith is about leaping into something absurd. I daily leap into the absurd. I choose daily to trust in God. You might have read up to here and think that I'm actually a bit of an idiot. That I've lost a grasp on rationality and am just looking for a way to cling onto some stability that has been indoctrinated in me. Surely that's a possibility, but I don't think it's the truth. You see the thing is we daily leap into the absurd. All of us. None of us can fully understand the universe, the existence of consciousness, life our own existence. When we confront things as they really are, stripped away from all the meaning we bring to them, all we have left is absurdity. Christianity isn't a proposition at all. It's a complete overhaul of my being.

I endorse Christ to you wholeheartedly. I believe that he has redeemed me. That he has set me free from my own self centered universe, I believe that he offers me life eternal. But following Christ is a total worldview. It is a lens that infects every aspect of my existence. It is not something I can be persuaded of in the same way that I can be persuaded that there used to be dinosaurs walking on planet earth. I believe that faith in Christ is the ultimate fulfillment and it brings hope and truth to everything.

But at the same time it's utterly absurd. I cannot tell you why I believe. I believe because I can do no other. I am transformed into faith. That is why I am increasingly frustrated with the limits of rationalism. At some point we all have to leap. That is why Kierkegaard claims that faith is so offensive to rationalism, it threatens the very basis of it. It is a frustrating splinter that cannot be removed, even amidst the tightest argument, there always exists the slightest doubt. I have chosen to leap fully into Christ, and into his promises. I'm not an irrational idiot. But I will constantly fustrate the humanists of this world with my faith. Because faith cannot be eradicated by debate. When we start to enter into the view that rationalism is the only option, faith might diminish, might fade into the background. But I cannot escape the absurd, I cannot shake off faith. It is the most real thing to me.

We need to show faith, we need to model it. That is why I think my friend James leapt into the unknown that day; he saw faith amongst him. I leap every day into what sometimes seems paradoxical and unknown. My hope is that other people will see the power of faith and choose the same.