Stanford Vox Clara | HUMAN WHOLENESS & SUFFERING | Spring 2019

Vox Clara

H U M AN WHOLENESS AN D S U F F E R I N G

The Bible and Suffering, 7 Balancing LGBT+ Rights with Religious Liberty, 12 The Foundation of Flourishing Relationships, 20

SPRING 2019

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

Letter from the Editor Sarah Thomas

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The Foundation of Flourishing Relationships Neville Muringayi

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Suffering, Wholeness, and the Human Condition: Spring Veritas Forum Aldis Petriceks

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Christian Sexual Ethics Anonymous

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Deconstruction and Reconstruction Owen Wang

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About Vox Clara

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The Bible and Suffering Michael Fitzpatrick

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On Catholic Liturgy Thomas Colburn

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Balancing LGBT+ Rights with Religious Liberty Hormazd Godrej

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Futuristic Riley DeHaan

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What’s Up With the Platypus?

Glen Davis

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Letter from the Editor The theme of this issue is “Human Wholeness and Suffering.” We chose this theme in partnership with Veritas at Stanford, who on May 15 will host a Veritas Forum on meaning and flourishing amidst suffering.

Suffering and death are the constants of human existence. Though science and medicine have made great advances, suffering and death remain elusive. They shock us with the threat of non-being. For thousands of years, myth, literature, and religion have sought to make sense of suffering and death, developing narratives of the drama of human existence. In Christianity, the cause of suffering and death lies in our estrangement from God, our eternal ground. Yet through the life, death, and resurrection of God incarnate, Jesus Christ, we are given the possibility of returning to God in the next life, if we have faith working through love. From this, Christian hope certainly seems forward-looking. But it also shapes our lives in the here and now. The Gospel speaks of a distinctly Christian ethic, in which suffering, virtue, and the life well-lived are experienced anew in the light of Christ. In the City of God, St. Augustine argues that suffering can tend to our “moral improvement,” if we view it “with eyes of faith.”

Many articles in this issue discuss Christian ethics. With concerns ranging from futurism to infidelity to the exploitation of women, these authors offer a solution in the theological meaning of our embodiment. Other articles explore suffering and the problem of evil in the Bible, and others meditate on Liturgy as the convergence of Heaven and Earth, God’s majesty and humanity’s weakness. As Calvin writes, “man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he has previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself.”

Sarah Thomas Sarah Thomas Editor-in-Chief

President & Design Lead Dorothy Kang

Editor-in-Chief Sarah Thomas

Designers Tristan Wang Ante Qu Kailah Seymour

Editors Riley DeHaan Philip Eykamp Amy Wang Tristan Wang Owen Wang

Campus Outreach Coordinators Jasmine Doan George Lausten

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L E T T E RWholeness, FROM THE Suffering, and Condition: E D the I T OHuman R Spring Veritas Forum Aldis Petriceks

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etween the swelling and the tears, I admired Joan. I admired her kindness, her humor, her softness of voice. Hers was a courage which rarely abated, even when the edema burst through old scars, even when her children came and left to return to their slowly dissolving semblance of a normal childhood. There was something so powerful, almost harrowing, in her responses to those trials. They carried a spirit of crisis — a desire, a need, to do something that would alleviate this suffering, or at least make something beautiful out of it.

The rigid, pink band of fibrous scar tissue ran five or six inches along the outer side of Joan’s lower leg.

Her terminal illness had all but halted the function of her kidneys, causing her body to swell with excess fluid, turning that pink band — a memory of previous sufferings — into a distended, translucent-pink mountain range. When diuretics and pain medications were exhausted, the only solution was to stick a needle in that watery ridge and draw back the syringe. Yet it was only a temporary fix: for all their warmth and skill, the nurses could not stave off time.

On the day of our first meeting I, a hospice volunteer, sat on the chair next to her, asking if she might like company. “Sit down,” she told me, with the warmth only a mother can give. “Please, please come.” Wearing a wearied but sincere smile, she in-

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troduced herself and bade me do the same. I told her about my upbringing, my work, my intention to become a physician. She responded with intent and active silence, nodding her head and widening her eyes, taking genuine interest in the minutiae of my young and relatively comfortable life. I enjoyed talking with her, though I felt strange whenever the conversation moved toward my life goals, as if we were entering a realm, a country — the future — which only one of us would ever witness.

Our conversation halted when, in the middle of a vigconfront illness and disability far earlier than others, our orous nod, Joan felt another brief sting of pain. (Her culture has managed to avoid thinking about suffering hospice team worked round-the-clock to provide effecand death as if they were — well, the death of us. tive pain management, but it can be a precarious task to balance comfort and lucidity in dying patients, particuThat avoidance is, of course, understandable. But in larly those like who, like Joan, wish to retain their cognichoosing to elevate the beauty, the health, the vibrancy zance.) The accompanying silence hummed long enough of human life, are we missing something essential about that both of us had forgotten who was speaking, and the human condition? Is it not for good reason that the what about. I could discern the cause of my own silence: ancients — in their literature, their philosophy, their arts my heart broke for this woman’s broken body. I won— were so enamored with suffering and death? Perhaps dered what life was like for her on the there is something to inside. Was she bursting with sorrow, be learned from the WHILE A GREAT MANY MUST ubiquity of these molike that scar above her ankle? Was the only option to drain, drug, and divert STILL CONFRONT ILLNESS AND tifs, something about away as much of that pain as possible? and death DISABILITY FAR EARLIER THAN suffering Or was there room for hope, meaning, which, paradoxically, OTHERS, OUR CULTURE HAS brings a richer underand wholeness for this dying woman and her family?

MANAGED TO AVOID THINKING standing of beauty and life.

ABOUT SUFFERING AND DEATH In the stilled silence, after taking a deep breath and cocking back her AS IF THEY WERE — WELL, THE We humans struggle head, Joan opened her eyes and with mortality, imperDEATH OF US. flashed her mischievous smile. Her manence, and death. eyes scrunched, the corners of her But we also struggle, mouth turned upwards, and she chuckled with a deep even as we live, with the faltering of our own bodies. So and belly-wrought ah-ah-hah. I was perplexed. Here was when faced with illness and suffering — with the ima woman who should have had decades more to live. A perfections of these carbon-based water sacks — can we woman who deserved to see her children grow up, fall in hold on to our meaning and flourishing? Or is wholeness love, break their hearts, and make something beautiful dependent on the health of our bodies, our fragile and of their lives. And here she was, stifled for a moment by fallible physiologies? an all-too-human pain, yet resonant with a deeper, more joyful frequency. What was it?

These are neither simple nor abstract questions. How we structure our lives, how we respond to sorrow and joy, Or, put another way: what made her whole? how we relate to the suffering of others — all these, and more, are tied to our view on what suffering is, what broWe humans are rather unique in the ability to contemkenness is, and what it means to be whole. For people of plate not only our existence, but also its end. That is, the all ages and conditions, these are inescapable questions. reality of our imperfection. That imperfection has enIf we are to look at life with both lucidity and wonder, gendered different responses across human history. The both honesty and joy, we must find for ourselves the medieval Christian church, for instance, had a practice source of our wholeness. known as memento mori — literally translated, remember you will die — which aimed to bring peace, focus, For this reason, Veritas at Stanford will be hosting a diseven joy, from the regular contemplation of one’s morcussion on May 22, 2019, between Drs. Ray Barfield tality. Other cultures have been equally contemplative and B. J. Miller, two physicians shaping our unabout human fragility, embracing more vivid reminders derstanding of wholeness and meaning in of their impermanence: costumes, festivals, and periodic the face of profound medical suffering. un-interments of the dead.

Ray Barfield is a pediatric But in the modern West, our response has been someoncologist at Duke what more avoidant. With the progress of public health University, and modern medicine — and, perhaps, social media — director of the culture at-large has placed an ever-tighter grip on Duke’s youth, beauty, and vitality, casting age and death as the cruelest of pathologies. While a great many must still

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pediatric palliative care program, and professor of Christian philosophy at Duke Divinity School. An author of novels, philosophical books, and academic papers, he has pursued his diverse endeavors with love — a love that sees far beyond his patients’ broken bodies — tying a scientific spirit and a philosophical mind with a Christ-centered heart. B. J. Miller is a palliative care physician at UCSF, a triple-amputee, and a leading figure on death, dying, and end-of-life care in the United States. With kind eyes and an unflinching empathy, he sees his unique suffering as “a variation on a theme we all deal with — to be human is really hard.” As the former director of the Zen Hospice Project, and a current advocate for better end-of-life care throughout the country, he has brought comfort to patients and families while garnering attention from NPR, Oprah, and the New York Times.

On the night of the event, Barfield and Miller will be joined

by Dr. Lucy Kalanithi, Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at Stanford and widow of Paul Kalanithi, author of When Breath Becomes Air. Kalanithi will be moderating the discussion from her unique perspective as both a physician, and one who has watched her husband suffer from terminal lung cancer.

These three figures — coming from different specialties, backgrounds, and worldviews — will guide our Stanford community through complex questions of human brokenness, and in doing so, help us better understand what it means to be whole. They will focus not only on the common problem of suffering, but the ways in which their social, cultural, and religious views influence their responses to that suffering. For to ask where our wholeness comes from is to ask who we are, why we are, and how we are to live. Yet whatever the questions, we should not assume that Barfield, Miller, or Kalanithi will have invariably neat and concise answers. Indeed, I have found that trite answers

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have always paled in comparison to the wisdom of patients like Joan, patients who held on to a deeper love, a deeper joy, even as their bodies and minds were stretched and cracked by trials.

I had the privilege of witnessing such a love, such a joy, in that very first afternoon with Joan.

As the visit came to its close, Joan spoke glowingly of her children, her husband, and the lives they would lead. She spoke of the love pulsing through that hospice facility: never before had so many people devoted so much just to make her comfortable. These things alone, she said, were enough to make her smile. But just before I left, she mentioned, through humble and quiet eyes, a hope in a God who loved and cared for her no matter how broken her body, or how troubled her soul.

This, too, could have been taken for a trite answer. But she spoke with conviction. She spoke as one who had suffered.

She spoke with joy.

Joan died not long after, leaving behind the memories of her family and those who have had the privilege of caring for her.

But above all she left the impact of a beautiful life — a life which remained, till death, the very image of wholeness.

Aldis Petriceks is a former research assistant at the Stanford School of Medicine, and now an incoming student at Harvard Medical School. He is passionate about narrative medicine; health care for older adults and the dying; and the relationship between suffering, identity, and meaning amidst medical illness. He also loves running, hiking, and conversations on philosophy and theology.

THE BIBLE AND

SUFFERING M I C H A E L F I T Z PAT R I C K

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e all experience suffering of various kinds. Some suffer physically, others emotionally, and still others spiritually.

Christians suffer like everyone else. For many Christians, the Bible provides a deep and abiding resource for understanding our experiences through its stories. In what ways does the Bible speak to our experience of suffering? What meaning does the Bible ascribe to suffering, pain, and sorrow?

It is tempting to think that the Bible just gives a flat answer, much like a rule book or field guide. That would be to misunderstand what the Bible is. It is an anthology of texts, written by many authors over more than a millennia. The portraits of the meaning of suffering it gives are polyvocal, mutually enriching and dynamic. And for Christians, these stories are inspired, used by an inexhaustible God to deepen our lives. Instead of one simple answer to human suffering, the Bible provides several themes that pervade its stories. I will trace out two themes here, the theme that we suffer because of our wrongdoing, and the theme that we do not suffer because of our wrongdoing, but rather through the time of trial. These themes pull against each other, but they present an important tension that enriches our understanding of life.

The first major theme of the Bible is one of justice. Bad things happen because people violate God’s justice. When you are virtuous, God blesses you, and when you sin, God disciplines you. God tells Moses regarding the sins of a particular Israelite generation, “Not one of the men who saw my glory and the miraculous signs I performed in Egypt and in the desert but who disobeyed me and test me ten times—not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their forefathers. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it.”1 God disciplines these people for their disobedience. From their perspective, the misfortune of being unable to reach the promised land in their lifetime was a result of God’s justice upon them.

The converse, a reward for virtue, is seen in God’s favoritism towards a particularly faithful Israelite: “Because my servant Caleb has a dif-

ferent spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it.”2 When God makes his covenant with King Solomon, he sets forth a contract, promising Solomon an eternal throne if he and his sons observe God’s commands and decrees.3 If Solomon doesn’t, God will cut Israel off from the land he has given them.4 The King of Assyria conquers Israel, not because of the Assyrian’s military might, but because the Israelites sin against God: “Therefore the Lord rejected all the people of Israel; he afflicted them and gave them into the hands of plunderers, until he thrust them from his presence.”5 The prophetic literature especially develops this theme, as most of the writings come from various exilic periods. Hosea repeatedly describes how God will punish Israel for her unfaithfulness to him.

God emphatically reminds the Israelites he is just in his judgement because he was the one who rescued them from Egypt on the command they acknowledge only the one true God. Yet because they forgot, he says he will come upon them like a lion, and they will fall by the sword.6 Amos provides a similar warning with God telling the Israelite community, “You only have I chosen of all the families of the earth; therefore I will discipline you for all your sins.”7 This includes telling the people of Israel he will crush them as a cart crushes when loaded with grain.8 All of this is done to chastise the people and call them back to faithfulness to God. God uses bad things in a disciplinary fashion, hoping to bring about a return to obedient behavior.

The foregoing examples suggest that suffering is a result of sinfulness, of not doing good and of disobeying God’s justice. The aphorisms of the book of Proverbs often suggest this very thing: The Lord’s curse is on the house of the wicked, but he blesses the home of the righteous.

The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry

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but he thwarts the craving of the wicked.

No harm befalls the righteous, but the wicked have their fill of trouble.9 But in the same wisdom literature that the Proverbs come from, we find biblical themes that suggest this cannot always be true. The book of Job spends its entire 42 chapters wrestling with the problem of suffering. Job, a man who is experiencing extreme suffering, is “comforted” by three neighbors who all defend the notion that suffering comes only to those who are sinful. Bildad, one of the neighbors, implores, “[S]urely God does not reject a blameless man or strengthen the hands of evildoers.”10 However, Job challenges them, asking, if God does not reject blameless people or bless evil people,“Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power? . . . Their homes are safe and free from fear; the rod of God is not upon them.”11 He describes in detail the happiness the wicked have.12 From his perspective, his friends’ worldview is not born out: “Yet when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness.”13 Additionally, Job questions the authority of the Hebrew traditions, even some of the Ten Commandments, asserting that they are unfair: “It is said, ‘God stores up a man’s punishment for his sons.’ Let him repay the man himself, so that he will know it!.”14 It’s not fair for God to punish innocent generations and spare the wrongdoer. Job does not see suffering and blessing applied consistently: the innocent suffer and the wicked go free.15 In a neighboring wisdom text, Ecclesiastes, the Teacher concurs with Job’s testimony: “In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: a righteous man perishing in his righteousness, and a wicked man living long in his wickedness.”16 Both voices question the doctrine espoused by Job’s friends, for they notice there is a judicial inequality in life, an inconsistency regarding how suffering is experienced: “There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve.”17

...NOT ALL WHO SUFFER ARE SINNERS, AND NOT ALL WHO PROSPER ARE SAINTS.

Regardless of how people live their lives, the same death awaits everyone. Nature shows utter impartiality and indifference to the righteous and the wicked.

Here Job and the Teacher agree in almost haunting unanimity:

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One man dies in full vigor, completely secure and at ease, his body well nourished, his bones rich with marrow. Another man dies in bitterness of soul, never having enjoyed anything good. Side by side they lie in the dust, and worms cover them both.18 The wise man has eyes in his head, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both. Then I thought in my heart, ‘The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?’ I said in my heart, ‘This too is meaningless.’ For the wise man, like the fool, will not be long remembered; in days to come both will be forgotten. Like the fool, the wise man too must die!19 Job and the Teacher conclude that not all who suffer are sinners, and not all who prosper are saints.

These themes are not purely Old Testament, but continue in the New Testament. Jesus speaks to recent tragedies in the lives of his community to illustrate that suffering is not an indication of sinfulness or righteousness, as Job’s friends thought: “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? . . . Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?

I tell you, no!”20 And in Matthew 5:45, Jesus teaches, “[God] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Indeed, Jesus’ sacrificial death illustrates acutely that not all suffering is due to sinfulness, for Jesus was our sacrificial lamb, presented “without blemish or defect,” free of sin.21 If Jesus did not deserve his Cross, though he freely accepted it, not all humans deserve the crosses they are asked to bear either.

These observations do not lead Job or the Teacher to reject God as their Creator and Sovereign Lord.22 But why then do they suffer? The first two chapters of Job suggest that God is testing him. But why put him through such agonizing suffering? What test could be worth such torment?

I want to suggest that the Bible is very unmodern in this respect. For God values our holiness far more than our sinful happiness. Deuteronomy 8:2, referring to the Israelites’ 40 years of suffering in the wilderness, fills in a context of God’s testing: “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.” The true state of the soul of humans is what concerns God. It appears then that a holy soul is preferable to a happy

livelihood and even worth a miserable one. The Bible is challenging us to value holiness, not just happiness.

The voices of Job and the Teacher suggest that, at least sometimes, suffering is a test of holiness, not condemnation for sinfulness. This does not mean that God wants us to suffer; rather, it means God wants us to be holy, even if that requires a trial by suffering. Incredibly, Job comes out of his trials not in despair, but proclaiming, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.”23 Suffering is a refining fire that purges our lives of meaningless complications that keep us from focusing on what is necessary for our lives.

This second theme provokes some tough questions, however. Job and the Teacher are describing a faith that remains even when our hoped-for deliverance doesn’t appear. If someone trusts me because I come through for them, should they continue to “have faith” in me when I don’t? It can feel like Job is maintaining a faith in a God who does not deliver when the chips are down. He doesn’t deserve to suffer, and yet God allows Job’s suffering to persist. However, this might overlook the literary structure of the Bible.

For prior to these tests, God had already proven his generosity and faithfulness. These tests are crucibles of remembrance. Job, for example, had already lived a long life blessed by God, as had the Teacher. God wants to see that those who trust him do so not because God will continue to bless them, but because they really do love and trust him. This perspective is exemplified by Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego in one of the Bible’s later stories: If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.24 What good is faith if we abandon our commitment to God at the first sign of trouble? The story of Job is one of testing a person as to whether he loves God for God’s own sake, or only for the benefits. A real faith in God is one that is grounded much deeper than God bribing us for our love with an easy life.

Two themes have been briefly traced in the Bible on suffering — two themes which seem in tension with each other. Parts of the Bible seem to espouse an idea of suffering being a disciplinary response by God to sin. If you don’t want to suffer, then obey God and carry out God’s commands. But Job and the Teacher seem to say the opposite, that the world is filled with injustice where good people are taken advantage of, and cruel people flourish. Which of these two themes are correct? Perhaps they both reveal truths about

our world. It does seem that the Bible strongly conveys a picture of God correcting and stopping evil in the world, refusing to stand idly by. But this cannot reasonably be applied to every case of suffering, because good people do suffer. Job and the Teacher provide a useful corrective that neither position is a law of the universe that predicts when and where people will suffer. It is both the case that God brings judgment on the guilty and that God tests the innocent.

Job is nothing if not remarkable for his acceptance of good from God as well as trouble.

This case study illuminates something about how we approach the Bible as well. We must be careful seeing the Bible with a monolithic voice. We just saw two themes in the Bible that seem to illustrate different stories of suffering, and there are other themes besides these. Either taken alone would lead us to a distorted understanding of what the Bible has to say.

We humans are taught to think of meaning flatly, as an effect that arises simply from a word or sentence presented by a speaker or writer. But we know from metaphor and literature that often meaning can only be suggested, seen in the interplay between images, or between characters. Often the Bible can be the same.

Its revelation of God appears as the stories culminate and overlap, speaking to and with each other. Perhaps the truth lies not in choosing one or the other theme on suffering, but in letting the two themes speak to each other where the meaning arises between them and carries the voice of God.

a real faith in god is one that is grounded much deeper than god bribing us for our love with an easy life.

Numbers 14:22, 23 NIV Numbers 14:24 3 1 Kings 9:4–9 4 1 Kings 9:7 5 2 Kings 17:5–20 6 Hosea 13:4–16 7 Amos 3:2 8 Amos 2:13 9 Proverbs 3:33; 10:3; 12:21 10 Job 8:20 11 Job 21:7, 9 12 Job 21

Job 30:25 Job 21:19; Cf. Exodus 20:5 15 Job 21:28-30 16 Ecclesiastes 7:15 17 Ecclesiastes 8:14; Cf. Ecclesiastes 9:2–3, 11.

18 Job 21:23–26.

19 Ecclesiastes 2:14–16.

20 Luke 13:2–5a.

21 1 Peter 1:19.

22 Job 42:1–6; Ecclesiastes 5:7.

23 Job 42:3.

24 Daniel 3:17–18.

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Michael Fitzpatrick is a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at Stanford, and a student leader for the Episcopal-Lutheran Campus Ministry. A self-admitted theology and liturgy nerd, Michael can be found most Sundays worshiping at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Palo Alto.

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O N CAT H Thomas Colburn

T

O

LIC LIT U RGY

hick smoke billows from the censer, perfuming the air with an ethereal mist that twists and dances like a drop of dye in a glass of clear water. Psalm 43, whispered, floats with incense into the rafters: “Introíbo ad altáre Dei. Ad Deum qui laetíficat iuventútem meam,” meaning, “I will go unto the altar of God. To God, Who giveth joy to my youth.”1 The priest climbs the stone steps, rising unto the mountain of Calvary as Christ, the High Priest, did two millennia ago. On this altar Christ’s redemptive sacrifice shall be remembered, and He shall be brought into our presence by the hands of His priest.

Liturgy, the act of solemn public worship of God, is a set of prayers and rituals that have the four-fold task of thanking God, making atonement for the sins against God, adoring God’s Supreme Majesty, and asking for God’s blessing and grace. When contemplating the nature of liturgy, one must first consider the nature of worship. The illustrious medieval Catholic philosopher, theologian, and Doctor of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, reminds us in his Summa Theologiae that: by the one same act man both serves and worships God, for worship regards the excellence of God, to Whom

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reverence is due: while service regards the subjection of man who, by his condition, is under an obligation of showing reverence to God. To these two belong all acts ascribed to religion, because, by them all, man bears witness to the Divine excellence and to his own subjection to God, either by offering something to God, or by assuming something Divine.2 Aquinas illustrates that worship of God is not only an act of service to God, but is an obligation of the whole world. God who did give Himself through Christ and sustains our existence deserves the highest praise and honor. In the Liturgy, we set aside time for the sole purpose of worshiping God. We are not “productive” in an economic sense; instead, we reflect on our past and await with longing Christ’s second coming. Hence, the Liturgy evokes joy and agony, pain and relief, life and death. It brings these polarities into stark contrast. The joy of commemorating the event which marked the opening of Heaven is bound tightly with the greatest suffering the world has ever known: Christ’s Agony and Death on the cross. Similarly, the joy and hope of Christ’s Second Coming is manifest in the remembrance of His Passion's tragic end.

How is the Catholic Holy Sacrifice of the Mass distinctive in its prayers and rituals? As we worship God, Heaven meets Earth and God incarnate hears our pains and sorrows as we stand face-toface with God in the Eucharist. The Eucharist, from the Greek meaning “thanksgiving”, is mentioned in some of the earliest works of the Apostles and their successors, including in The Didache and in St. Ignatius of Antioch's "Letter to the Smyrnaeans."

St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch and likely disciple of St. John the Evangelist, notes in circa AD 107 that the individuals separated from the Catholic Church “abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead."3 This is the great Mystery of the Holy Mass: the belief passed from the Apostles and Sacred Scripture that when Christ first broke bread, the offering became the one, same bloodless sacrifice to be offered in fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy of Malachi in the line of the priest Melchizedek.

Melchizedek, an Old Testament High Priest who offered God a sacrifice of bread and wine, prefigures Christ the Eternal High Priest. Christ, upon offering Himself once and for all on Calvary, died in atonement for our sins.

The priest in the modern Mass, in the vein of priest generations ahead of him, offers to God the same sacrifice, but bloodless, in commemoration of the death of our Savior. But Christ is not re-crucified. Rather, the same sacrifice is manifested again in our midst, as Christ asked of us in John 6:55–57: “Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day.”4 It is also in the sacrifice of the Mass that we offer Christ all that we are, just as Christ offered Himself totally for our salvation. We pour out our hearts in abasement. God, our refuge and our strength, receives the petitions of His humble servants, and through this most intimate and profound connection of priest and the GodMan High Priest, God is brought into our midst.

Holy Mass recalls not only the brokenness of human nature, but also our deep longing for the closeness of God.

In the Liturgy, the bread and wine offered at every Mass contain the fullness of Christ: body, blood, soul, and divinity. St. Ambrose (d. AD 397) wrote about receiving Our Lord in the bread and wine made Body and Blood: “I fly to Thee that I may be healed and take refuge under Thy protection, and I ardently desire to have Him as my Saviour whom I am unable to withstand as my judge. To Thee, O Lord, I show my wounds, to Thee I lay bare my shame.”5 Christ’s words echo through the generations, “For this is My Body, For this is the chalice of My Blood, of the New and Eternal Testament: The Mystery of Faith: which will be shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins.”6 The words “this is My Body” appear in Matthew 26:26–28, Mark 14:22–24, Luke 22:19–20, and 1 Corinthians 11:23–26. They reflect the mystical reality of that which the Catholic Church rightly calls transubstantiation. Ludwig Ott, a German theologian, explains the doctrine of transubstantiation as: “Christ becomes present in the Sacrament of the Altar by the transformation of the whole substance of bread into His Body and the whole substance of the wine into His Blood.”7 In this mysterious and beautiful conversion, the bread and wine cease to exist in the substance of bread and wine, though they retain their accidents, or physical properties, of bread and wine. They have undergone a change of substance into the living, resurrected body of Christ. And so Christ is bodily in our presence, and the same Sacrifice of His Passion is revealed under the veil of the accidents.

Holy Mass recalls not only the brokenness of human nature, but also our deep longing for the closeness of God. We offer all our pains to God and trust in His mercy. We are the living

resting place of God whereby He transforms our souls, and beckons us onward on the path to sanctity. Our sinful souls are made close to Him that is sinless, and our King is made to reside in His body of Christian believers. We give our best to God, house Him in ornate and beautiful churches, present Him with our finest music to sing His praises, and yet, the nature of this worship always looks back to one event that took place in AD 33.

The beautiful bleeds into the brutal sacrifice Christ undertook. In that sacrifice, we recall David’s song to the Most High: “Praise and beauty are before him: holiness and majesty in his sanctuary. Bring ye to the Lord, O ye kindreds of the Gentiles, bring ye to the Lord glory and honour: Bring to the Lord glory unto his name. Bring up sacrifices, and come into his courts: Adore ye the Lord in his holy court. Let all the earth be moved at his presence.”8 In the juxtaposition of suffering and thriving, victory and torture, we are reminded of our weakness and our rebellion against God, who is perfect Goodness. Housed in the Liturgy is the most profound reflection of self and the quest for that which is perfect, God. With our actions of worship, we experience the converging of Heaven and Earth. We are made witnesses to the stark contrasts between human folly and Divine Wisdom, human weakness and Divine Fortitude, and human fault and Divine Perfection. We are reminded of the life of sin we have lived compared to the grandeur and perfection of God. Made present before us, we see the suffering Christ endured for our salvation. Within a few pages in this mysterious divine story, however, we are given the great promise of eternal bliss that is to come.

Missale Romanum, Ex decreto SS, Concilii Tridentini restitutum Summorum Pontificum cura recognitum, Editio typica (Boston: Benzinger Brothers, 1962), 216.

2 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q. 81, A. 3, ad. 2.

3 St. Ignatius of Antioch, “Letter to the Smyrnaeans” (AD 107).

4 John 6:55-57 Douay-Rheims.

5 The Daily Missal and Liturgical Manual (London: Baronius Press, 1962), 89.

6 Sancta Missa, Canon Missae 7 Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Charlotte: TAN Books, 1992), 379.

8 Psalm 95 Douay-Rheims.

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Thomas Colburn is an undergraduate majoring in Chemical Engineering. When he is not in lab making solar cells, Thomas enjoys studying Catholic thought, dogmatic theology, and sacred polyphony. Thomas is the head of Faith Formation for the Catholic Leadership Team, founder and president of Stanford Gregorian Society, and a lover of Catholic liturgical traditions. He can occasionally be found altar serving around the Bay Area or sitting in choir at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Oratory.

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Balancing LGBT+ Rights with Religious Liberty

Hormazd Godrej

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he movement to promote LGBT+ rights has produced well-deserved victories that have enhanced both freedom and equality in American society. The discrimination still suffered1 by many in the LGBT+ community has had devastating effects on their health, dignity and economic well-being,2 and activists are right to push for legislation that would protect LGBT+ individuals from discrimination. However, concerns by religious Americans (many of whom are Christian) about how such legislation could threaten their religious liberty have tragically been dismissed as “homophobic.” This intolerance towards religious individuals has the potential to erode America’s status as a beacon of religious freedom. Religious liberty has been an enduring American virtue, as evinced by its Constitutional protections, by its inclusion in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech,3 and by the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act, which requires the U.S. to promote and advocate for religious freedom globally.4 The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of religious liberty several times over the last century, such as in Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940), Sherbert v. Verner (1963), McDaniel v. Patty (1978) and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014). Beyond America’s borders, religious freedom has been recognized as a global right by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.5 In a world in which religious freedom is increasingly under threat (as is the case for Christians in the Middle East and South Asia), it is essential that the U.S. sets an example of utmost tolerance for religious freedom. And since issues of religious freedom in the U.S. today increasingly concern LGBT+ rights, we must pursue a centrist path that values both of these important principles and ensures their future.

We can start by distinguishing among the various actions which some describe under the catch-all term of “homophobic discrimination.” I divide these actions into four categories: discrimination against individuals based on their sexual identity (Category 1), discrimination against couples based on the nature of their relationship (Category 2), refusal to service rituals and events such as same-sex marriages (Category 3), and refusal to engage in speech endorsing such rituals and events (Category 4). Although each of these actions is technically a case of “discrimination”, in the sense of “the act of making or perceiving a difference”,6 the term “discrimination” is contested as an appropriate label for Category 3 and Category 4, since those actions might be influenced by religious conviction rather than prejudice, prejudice being a

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necessary condition for discrimination in the other sense of the word: “prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment.”7 For the purposes of this article, I use the term “discrimination” in the sense of “making or perceiving a difference” to describe all four categories.

These categories can best be understood by examples. Category 1 includes cases such as a restaurant owner refusing to serve dinner to a gay man. Category 2 includes cases in which a restaurant owner would normally serve a gay man, but refuses to serve a same-sex couple. Category 3 includes cases in which a caterer would normally serve dinner to LGBT+ individuals and same-sex couples but refuses to cater food for a same-sex wedding due to the caterer’s religious convictions. Category 4 includes cases in which an individual refuses to design a cake or write a poem for a same-sex wedding, as these actions would involve endorsing a message which violates the individual’s religious convictions. Category 4 differs from Category 3 because it involves both freedom of religion and freedom of speech, whereas Category 3 only involves freedom of religion. The Supreme Court case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission is perhaps the most well-known example of Category 4 discrimination.

Each of the four categories has different implications for religious freedom and LGBT+ rights. Category 1 and 2 are the most harmful for LGBT+ rights, while having little significance for religious freedom. In contrast, Category 3 and Category 4 are deeply connected to religious freedom, while not posing an existential threat to the LGBT+ community. Category 1 discrimination is a pernicious threat to the LGBT+ community’s flourishing. To live in a world that does not outlaw Category 1 would be a living nightmare for LGBT+ individuals, a nightmare that has tragically existed for far too much of human history. Not outlawing Category 1 discrimination would mean that a gay man could live his entire life either hiding his identity from the world or being refused entry to restaurants, bars, hotels and clubs, not to mention facing discrimination in the workplace. Banning Category 1 discrimination, while leaving Category 2 discrimination legal, would do little to rectify this situation. In such a situation, a gay man would theoretically be free to openly express his identity and enter a public place without discrimination, unless he did so with his partner. If a same-sex couple lived together and frequently ate together (as mixed-sex couples often do), then they could also face discrimina-

tion on a daily basis. Hence, Category 1 and Category 2 discrimination should both be banned, as they constitute a fundamental threat to the ability of LGBT+ individuals to live an ordinary life, equal to that of their heterosexual fellow citizens.

Neither Category 1 nor Category 2 discrimination could be meaningfully defended using arguments of religious liberty. To the best of my knowledge, most religions do not prohibit serving food to persons of a particular sexual orientation. Therefore, a restaurant owner opposed on religious grounds to the moral permissibility of homosexual acts would not be violating their religious beliefs by providing food to a same-sex couple or a homosexual individual, since the food they give is not directly used to facilitate romantic or sexual behavior that violates their religious beliefs. The same argument applies to other examples of public accommodations: bowling alleys, sports clubs, night clubs, shopping malls, barber shops, etc.

A more challenging example within Category 2 discrimination concerns hotels and beds, since a religious hotel-owner or bed-salesman could reasonably cite religious concerns about providing a same-sex couple with a hotel room or bed that could be used for sexual activity that violates their religious beliefs about complicity in sin. However, since hotel rooms are primarily used for temporary residence and since beds are primarily used for sleeping, neither has an explicitly sexual purpose.

Hence religious concerns about providing hotel rooms and beds to same-sex couples should be considered too tenuous to legally permit discrimination. Thus, these forms of Category 1 and Category 2 discrimination against the LGBT+ community should also be outlawed by legislation.

Category 3 discrimination creates a different set of challenges for religious liberty and LGBT+ rights. Although Category 1 and Category 2 discrimination can create daily obstacles to the pursuit of happiness for members of the LGBT+ community, Category 3 discrimination would typically be an infrequent occurrence in the life of an LGBT+ individual, since it only involves specific rituals to which religious individuals object. These rituals are typically weddings, which usually occur only once or twice in a person’s life. Therefore, Category 3 discrimination is a less threatening and cumbersome form of discrimination than Category 1 and 2. Banning Category 3 discrimination would seriously harm religious liberty in America. The uniqueness of Category 3 compared to Categories 1 and 2 is exemplified by an op-ed penned by Vice President Mike Pence, then Governor of Indiana, about Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.8 As Pence notes, the bill demands that the law apply strict scrutiny to actions that violate religious liberty, yet it does not permit discrimination against same-sex couples in restaurants or other public places. Although serving food or providing a hotel room to a same-sex couple is not a violation of most people’s religious beliefs, participation in a same-sex wedding could reasonably violate someone’s religious beliefs, since many religions — including Christianity, Islam, Orthodox Judaism, and the Baha'i Faith — hold that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that homosexual acts are sinful: complicity in them is complicity in sin.

Several Christian bakers and florists — such as Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop — have cited their Christian faith’s stance on marriage as a reason they oppose servicing same-sex weddings. If a Christian believes that their participation in a same-sex wedding transgresses God’s law and makes them complicit in sin, their being compelled by the state to service a same-sex wedding would be a violation of their freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. Outside of Christianity, Americans of other religions have also expressed concern. For example, the Muslim scholar and activist Ismail Royer has argued that The Masterpiece Cakeshop case should be of great concern to American Muslims. After all, mainstream Islam teaches that homosexual acts are sinful, and one can easily imagine scenarios in which Muslim restaurant owners would balk at supporting the celebration of a same-sex wedding, just as they might hesitate for religious reasons to cater a party with pork or alcohol. As the Quran admonishes: “Do not help one another in sin and transgression: and fear God.”9 As Royer shows, one does not need to be a Christian to see how recent religious liberty cases have important implications for Americans of other faiths.

The above arguments about Category 3 apply similarly to Category 4 discrimination. Since Category 4 discrimination only applies to the refusal to endorse certain rituals, such as same-sex weddings, it would also be an infrequent occurrence in the life of an LGBT+ individual. In fact, since it only involves refusals to service same-sex weddings in ways where speech and expression are involved — for example, writing a poem, making a painting, or designing an artistic wedding cake — it would be an even less burdensome form of discrimination for the LGBT+ community than Category 3 discrimination. Banning Category 4 discrimination, like banning Category 3 discrimination, would involve state compulsion for participation in certain rituals. Indeed, banning Category 4 would be even more harmful than banning Category 3, as such a ban would threaten not just one, but two constitutionally protected freedoms: freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

While many Americans may see parallels between discrimination on the basis of race during the Jim Crow-era and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, these parallels are only accurate when comparing Jim Crow-era discrimination to Category 1 and Category 2 discrimination, and not to Category 3 and 4 discrimination. Category 1 and 2 involve refusing any contact with the LGBT+ community, similar to how businesses operating in the Jim Crow South would refuse any contact with African-Americans. This kind of blanket discrimination is very different from the conduct of a Christian baker who happily bakes cakes for homosexual customers, but rejects requests to bake cakes for samesex weddings. As Jack Phillips, the baker in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, said, “I don’t discriminate against anybody — I serve everybody that comes in my shop … [but] I don’t create cakes for every message that people ask me to create.”10 Despite attempts to characterize the Masterpiece Cakeshop case as one of Jim Crow-style discrimination against all people of a

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certain protected class, the facts of the case clearly show that it revolved around refusing a specific request to endorse a certain message.11 Similarly, in the Arlene's Flowers case the plaintiffs have themselves affirmed that the defendant, Barronelle Stutzman, sold them flowers for several years, refusing only to provide floral arrangements for their same-sex wedding.12 This distinction between Jim Crow-style discrimination and refusal to provide services for same-sex weddings has been noted by philosophers Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis, who write, Jim Crow was about … avoiding contact on socially equal terms with certain patrons, by refusing them any service. Today’s complicity claims are about denying certain requests — whoever comes to make them — while avoiding contact with no one. They are not about doctors’ refusals to serve women, or florists’ refusals to serve gay people, but about refusals to perform abortions or celebrate weddings.13 (emphasis in the original) Hence, an accurate analogy cannot be drawn between the racial discrimination of the Jim Crow era and Category 3 & 4 discrimination.

We can conclude from this analysis that a society that wishes to protect the rights of the LGBT+ community and the right to religious freedom must outlaw Category 1 and Category 2 discrimination, while simultaneously defending the legal right to practice Category 3 and Category 4 “discrimination.” While many people can differ on whether Category 3 and Category 4 discrimination are morally correct actions, a society that values free speech and freedom of religion must legally permit them.

Although I myself am a non-Christian and a strong supporter of same-sex marriage who would be happy to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding if I had any talent in the art of cake-baking, I recognize that it would be a gross contravention of religious liberty for the state to force someone to service a same-sex wedding in violation of their religious beliefs and conscience.

Both the abolition of Categories 1 and 2 and the legalization of Categories 3 and 4 requires concrete political and legal action.

To end Categories 1 and 2 discrimination, we must amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Adding “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes to the Civil Rights Act would prevent future cases of housing, workplace, and public accommodations discrimination against the LGBT+ community. While several states have already passed legislation outlawing discrimination against the LGBT+ community, this type of legislation is desperately needed at the federal level. Any amendments to the Civil Rights Act should clarify that exemptions will be made when such discrimination is against a particular ritual (such as a same-sex wedding) rather than discrimination against a person or couple based on their sexual orientation.

Additionally, the United States Supreme Court should continue to rule in ways that protect religious liberty. Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission — a case of Category 4, involving both freedom of religion and speech — was correctly decided by a 7–2 majority in favor of Jack Phillips’ Masterpiece Cakeshop, in a major victory for religious liberty.

However, that ruling was particularly narrow — it rested large-

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ly on evidence that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission did not show religious neutrality toward Mr. Phillips — and the case involved Category 4, not Category 3, discrimination. Hence, its verdict may not extend to other religious liberty cases. In the case, Mr. Phillips alleged that his constitutional right to free speech was abridged by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s mandate for him to bake the wedding cake featuring an artistic design by him celebrating the wedding. During the case, some of the Supreme Court justices questioned whether free speech would have been a factor had the plaintiff been some other professional such as a chef, hair stylist, makeup artist or jeweler. While the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of legally permitting Category 4 discrimination in this case, it did not take a stance on the right to engage in Category 3 discrimination. Since future cases may deal with Category 3 (involving only freedom of religion, not also freedom of speech), it is essential that the Supreme Court judge these cases by affirming the right to religious freedom.

I have argued for legally banning Category 1 and 2 discrimination and legally permitting Category 3 and 4 discrimination. Such changes will face significant roadblocks from both sides of the political spectrum. Many on the left will refuse to legally permit Category 3 and 4 discrimination, while some on the right may resist attempts to ban Category 1 and Category 2 discrimination.

However, a pragmatic political compromise between the two sides must be achieved. This compromise will not fully satisfy either side, and will probably not provide total clarity for every case. Future cases may defy easy classification within any of the four categories. For example, the question of whether religious adoption agencies can discriminate against couples based on their religion or sexual orientation will need to be tackled independently from the framework suggested above. Nevertheless, we must persevere in establishing an even-handed compromise which will protect two of the most important principles of our society — equality for the LGBT+ community and freedom of religion.

Liam Stack, “The Challenges that Remain for L.G.B.T. People After Marriage Ruling,” The New York Times, June 30, 2016.

2 Dhruv Khullar, M.D., “Stigma Against Gay People Can Be Deadly,” The New York Times, October 9, 2018.

3 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “Four Freedoms,” January 6, 1941.

4 Public Law 105-292, International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.

5 UN General Assembly, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” 217 (III) A (Paris, 1948).

6 “discrimination,” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, 2019.

7 Ibid.

8 Mike Pence, “Ensuring Religious Freedom in Indiana,” The Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2015.

9 Ismail Royer, “American Muslims, Lot's Wife, and the Christian Baker,” Public Discourse, November 27, 2017.

10 Adam Edelman, “Baker who refused to make cake for gay wedding: ‘I don't discriminate’,” NBC News, June 5, 2018.

11 David French, “Stop Misrepresenting Masterpiece Cakeshop,” National Review, November 30, 2017.

12 Curt Freed and Robert Ingersoll, “Why we sued our florist friend: The Arlene’s Flowers story,” Winona Daily News, November 16, 2015.

13 John Corvino, Ryan T. Anderson, and Sherif Girgis, Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 191.

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Hormazd Godrej is a coterminal master’s student in statistics at Stanford. He previously studied biology as an undergraduate at Stanford (class of 2018).

He practices Zoroastrianism and is ordained as a Zoroastrian priest, and he is interested in issues concerning religion, politics, and the intersection of the two.

futuristic riley dehaan

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ooking around Stanford’s campus, it’s not uncommon to see bleary-eyed students who have been coding (oftentimes quite contentedly) in front of a screen for days on end. In any campus café, startup techies chatter passionately about the world-changing ideas they have been feverishly grinding away on for eighty hours a week, and worldclass researchers rush from lecture hall to lab, energetically discussing next steps with half-dead PhDs in tow. As a graduate student, I’ve often found myself so absorbed in projects, research, and problem sets that I have not considered family, friends, or other human beings (beyond of course the teammates I depend on, the professors I voluntarily slave away for, or the hypothetical users, or subjects, of my research) for weeks, only consciously remembering them briefly in coming up for air between deadlines. Here at Stanford, in the broader Bay area, in this Silicon Valley making innovations at possibly a greater pace than any other place in history, unbelievable natural and human beauty is strangely juxtaposed alongside a culture of workaholism that has comparatively little time to appreciate it.

Why is it that, in an era of unprecedented material surplus and consequent opportunity to enjoy the world we find ourselves in, so many of us choose to work ourselves to exhaustion, even as it becomes easier, in absolute terms, to pay the bills? Many of us perhaps seek a career of conventional and competitive success, some may feel pressure to conform to an externally placed identity, many truly believe in the benefits of their work for others, and some enjoy the thrill of making new things, new projects, new innovations. We can likely feel each of these pressures for success, acceptance, altruism, and creativity driving us forward at some level in our endeavors.

Regardless of their particular flavor, I suggest that an underlying core of all of these motives of hyperproductivity is a sense of futurism, a predominant, internal orientation toward the future at the expense of enjoying the present moment.

Whether the hypothetical fruits of our labor are envisioned in terms of personal gains or in terms of contributions to the broader good, the mental focus is on some moment to come in which our efforts will be consummated, a moment other than the current one actually being experienced. This futuristic mentality can be felt in minute-to-minute mentally flitting

about, thinking about the next errand, the next homework assignment, the next step in the project, the next application, the next thing. It can be felt in a continual focus on the fiveyear timeline, of once I graduate, once I get my first job, once this idea gets off the ground, once this technology matures.

But of course, once the end of the five years has been reached, futurism can be seen in one’s mindset being immediately shifted forward another five-years, to the next thing. Onward, onward.

In my own expressions of this mindset, I have caught myself treating conversations as exercises in developing social skills and being bored in any discussions not leading to my learning novel concepts or ideas, as if the point of conversing was primarily learning how to better improve or understand life, mine or others, rather than being present with those others whose lives I was presumably trying to help or understand.

And of course, there is the broader career concern with networking, of building “connections” through endless conversations about projects and post-graduation plans with brightly smiling, apparently engaged faces asking you to “tell me more!” (and being one of those faces asking others), but conversations which are largely forgettable and interesting only for what they might lead to down the road.

The mentality of futurism is interesting and to a degree, necessary; no person is, or could be, entirely future-oriented or present-oriented while continuing to go on living (at some point we have to step away from the project to eat, and at some point we have to figure where we will get our next meal). However, here at Stanford and in the Bay area I believe we tend toward being predominantly futuristic. Most people do not get into power schools or sexy tech companies without a fair amount of delayed gratification, and most once they do arrive in Silicon Valley find themselves alongside many qualified peers also vying for promotions, research positions, and venture capital funding. Beyond the high level of competition, futurism is promoted by Valley culture itself. Research as an institution rewards the generation of novel ideas and primarily reviews previous ones for the sake of better understanding how to innovate further. Celebrated startups are renowned for overturning the status quo with emerging technologies, and even less “disruptive” corporations must

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aggressively satisfy stockholders, regardless of previous quarterly performances. The developing notion of technological progressivism, of a societal trend building from the Enlightenment to the current Information Age and for many, leading into a “Singularity” which “[merges] our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots,”1 beyond which human life is unrecognizably transformed by technological development, en-

shrines a mentality of futurism in permanently providing a better horizon to look forward to and work towards.

But when we reach the end of what we currently see as the frontier, of our five-year timelines, of the supposed glorious utopia of human progress, will we care enough to stop and look around, or will we continue on, endlessly seeking out and creating new futures in our careers, in our research, in space, in virtual reality, in minds downloaded onto silicon?

There is something circular and contradictory, something of an almost literal chasing after the wind in this futuristic mindset. The moment we reach the future we planned for is the moment we move on, seeking something new. No matter what we have obtained, we only strain for something just beyond.

Did we then really want that which we looked forward to in the first place? If we do not do due diligence in experiencing, reflecting on, and celebrating the thing in front of us, then our lives are never fully engaged, even with the very things strived for. Futurism, when it dominates a person’s outlook, becomes simply another form of (albeit productive) escapism from the already actualized potential of any present moment to which we ever arrive at and ever exist in.

THE MOMENT WE REACH THE FUTURE WE PLANNED FOR IS THE MOMENT WE MOVE ON, SEEKING SOMETHING NEW. NO MATTER WHAT WE HAVE OBTAINED, WE ONLY STRAIN FOR SOMETHING JUST BEYOND.

What then would it look like to more fully engage with the present reality around us? What might be missing from the futuristic mentality that would balance and complete it? For again, the problem is not in thinking in terms of the future per se, but in having one’s entire self being predominantly directed toward some moment to come, even while all of life is experienced only in the here and now. Recognizing one’s futurism calls for taking a step back and intentionally focusing on the gorgeous scenery, the rich personalities

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and conversations, and the results of efforts worked toward all around us on this amazing campus and in this amazing life. It calls for reflection, reminiscence, and nostalgia and for more than simply “taking care of oneself ”, a phrase which in academic contexts often carries connotations of self-care primarily for the sake of sustaining and maximizing productivity, rather than for an actual work-life balance. It calls for looking up from the laptop, from the stack of unread research articles, from the list of job, conference, and funding applications. Endless planning and looking forward to goals checked off must be punctuated with a pause, to look around and maybe see something unplanned for, or even something completely expected, and to appreciate that thing for what it is, rather than for what it can do and the strategic effect it can have on other things.

Personal commitment to rhythms in life can also be a powerful reminder of the present moment. Making time for meals, sleep, weekend trips, holidays, and regular calls to keep in touch with family and old friends (all of which I know I’ve at least been successfully tempted to skip, sometimes, particularly late in the quarter, as the rule rather than the exception) can continually reorient us to the basic necessities and elemental features of life, and defend against mentalities and trains of thought pushing indefinitely into the future. I have on more than one occasion heard friends in college talk at length about the absolute pointlessness of sleep and their wish that medical “cures” for our need for it would be found, soon. This feeling is understandable and illustrative.

Sleep is a mysterious and interesting part of living in the moment. During it we’re seemingly aware of very little, but without it (at least currently), we can’t fully engage in anything. Beyond our physiological need for it, sleep provides a beautiful temporal structuring of our lives into distinct episodes as well as providing for cycles of activity and inactivity (for some of us, sleep can at times be our only form of release). The tranquility and intimacy of a late night’s walk would become much more difficult to find if people were as active at night as during the day. And of course, even if sleep were made obsolete, would it make any of us any more productive, relatively speaking, than before? Those of us finding that we just cannot meet deadlines while maintaining standards wouldn’t likely be any better off, as the deadlines would simply be accelerated as society adjusted to the new ability for humans to literally work 24/7. The understandable desire to skip out on sleep, even if we weren’t zombified by its lack, is a particularly concrete example of the future-oriented mentality. To commit to a regular circadian rhythm, as well as to the other rhythms of ordinary life not directly leading to gains in productivity, may be one of the most practical and intentional repudiations of futurism.

It might be a helpful starting point for us to consider the recurrent philosophical theme of the good life and our personal conceptions of it. How do we imagine spending our time once the five-year goal is reached, the “problem” of generalized AI is ever “solved”, the universe is analyzed at the level of a theory of everything, and disease, hunger,

FUTURISM, WHEN IT DOMINATES A PERSON’S OUTLOOK, BECOMES SIMPLY ANOTHER FORM OF ESCAPISM poverty, and inequality are eradicated? What would we dwell on if our list of goals were exhausted? Long hikes in the mountains? Having dinner with family? Watching all of the eclectic movies you always wondered about? Volunteering with kids? Whatever it is we imagine ourselves doing, orienting toward the present might start by exploring those visions of the ideal life to the extent we are able now. Perhaps we would find some of what we previously considered worthwhile meaningless and be moved toward something otherwise undiscovered. Regardless, conscientiously making time to fully experience, enjoy, and appreciate the things in front of us is what all our futuristic ambitions are ultimately building toward. To spend the best moments of life looking forward to some later date would be to miss out on the time that we have been actually given.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? … But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough trouble of its own.

Luke 12:25, 33–34 Ray Kurzweil, “The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology” Penguin Books, 2006.

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Riley DeHaan is a first-year masters student in Electrical Engineering interested in questions at the intersections of faith, AI, technology, and daily human experience. He regularly worships at Abundant Life Christian Fellowship in Mountain View and is a member of Stanford Chi Alpha.

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WHAT’S UP WITH THE PLATYPUS? GLEN DAVIS

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Early dawn outlines the hills like stitches on clothing or sketches on clay. But its light is too much for those who are evil, and their power is broken.5

Platypodes (even their plural is weird) don’t seem to fit together.

They are more like Pokemon than actual living creatures. In fact, the platypus is so bizarre that for decades after the first platypus skin arrived in the British Museum of Natural History scientists were convinced it was a hoax.1

The sea was viewed as a place of chaos and destruction in the ancient Near East, so God is making a powerful claim about Job’s situation by reminding Job that He limits the sea. And then to make it clearer, God makes the same point using sunshine: criminals shrink back from their wickedness when dawn appears. In other words, whether we are considering natural chaos or personal evil, God claims to have set up a system that permits but limits it. Nothing is happening to Job that is outside God’s control. It is all within the bounds that God has established.

ave you ever seen a platypus? They’re about two feet long, they weigh three to five pounds, they’ve got a duck’s bill and webbed feet, they’re covered with fur and have four legs. They are mammals, but they lay eggs, and they are venomous to boot.

Life can seem like a platypus. When tragedy unfolds we think, “Dear God, what’s up with this world? The pieces just don’t fit together like they should.”

A man named Job faced a very confusing platypus situation thousands of years ago in the Middle East. Job was a righteous man, and yet with the permission of God Satan killed his family, destroyed his wealth, and gave him a horrible disease.2 Job began to wonder: how could a God of justice allow him to suffer this much? Soon Job’s friends began to accuse him of deserving this suffering. Even Job’s wife began attacking his faith.3 Job protested that he was innocent and argued with his friends for a long time, then something surprising happened. God showed up and agreed to respond to Job’s complaint. In essence, God told Job what was up with the platypus.

From out of a storm the Lord said to Job: why do you talk so much when you know so little? Now get ready to face me! Can you answer the questions I ask? How did I lay the foundation of the earth? Were you there? Doubtless you know who decided its length and width.

What supports the foundation? Who placed the cornerstone, while morning stars sang, and angels rejoiced?4 God’s initial questions establish the fundamental difference between God and Job — God is the creator, Job is not. And as a created thing, Job doesn’t have the whole picture. He only sees the externals of this world. It is like gazing upon the webbed feet, the bill, and the fur of a platypus. He doesn’t see the complex neural, skeletal and cardiovascular system unifying the creature. It only looks like it doesn’t fit together because he doesn’t understand it.

The Creator moves on to talk about the sea and sunshine:

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When the ocean was born I set its boundaries and wrapped it in blankets of thickest fog. Then I built a wall around it, locked the gates and said, “Your powerful waves stop here! They can go no farther.” Did you ever tell the sun to rise? And did it obey? Did it take hold of the earth and shake out the wicked like dust from a rug?

Next, God asks Job about the ends of the earth, the home of light and darkness, and the home of the weather.6 These are crucial parts of the world, but Job knows nothing about them. If Job doesn’t know what happens there, how can he claim that what happens in front of him is unjust? Like a child claiming a doctor is mean because he uses needles, Job lacks perspective.

This part of God’s answer to Job, then, can be summarized as “I limit evil, and I have reasons for permitting it that you do not understand.” I find this argument fascinating, but I am even more fascinated by the fact that God does not explain to Job the reason for his suffering. We know exactly what the cause of Job’s suffering is, but Job never discovers it. The Satanic origins of Job’s afflictions are as apparent to us as they are mysterious to him.

God’s decision not to explain Himself to Job is one of the more important messages of the book.

By structuring the book this way, He is making the same argument to all of us that He made to Job: “I have my reasons and you will not always understand them. Trust me.”

Something of this sort seems inevitable when discussing an omniscient entity. We have all had the experience of not agreeing with a decision made by people better-informed or smarter than us. Their wisdom was only apparent to us after the fact. How much truer must this be of decisions made by non-humans?

We are already beginning to see this phenomenon emerge with software. Patients have received accurate diagnoses for reasons inscrutable to physicians,7 algorithms win chess games in ways that defy the judgments of the best human masters, and there are software-generated mathematical proofs too large for humans to process.8 As Will Knight observed in the MIT Technology Review, “we might soon cross some threshold beyond which using AI requires a leap of faith.”9 We can often follow an AI’s reasoning after the fact, but we some-

times cannot generate the decisions on our own. And there are even decisions we don’t understand except in the vaguest way. We propose principles we think the AI might have been following but we aren’t confident we are correct, and the principles are certainly not sufficient to recreate the decision if we are faced with it again in altered form.

Something similar happens when we are talking about God’s decisions. We come up with explanations, but the explanations are often incomplete. As God cautioned us, “My thoughts and my ways are not like yours. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, my thoughts and my ways are higher than yours.”10

mans. God is patiently waiting for as many to embrace His invitation as possible before He removes evil from it.

4. Additionally, we must remember that we are not yet capable of dwelling in a perfect world without ruining it. But this is not forever: God invites us into a transformative process. By placing our faith in Jesus wePetriceks invite Aldis the Holy Spirit to begin a renewal in our lives that after death will result in our being able to partake of perfection without polluting it.

But if there is an all-knowing and loving God, then His reasons will be both right and at times inscrutable. Accepting this is at the heart of faith. Faith is not primarily about belief — faith is about trust.

We are not yet at the place where machine-generated decisions are worthy of our full trust. Perhaps we will get there, perhaps we will not. But if there is an all-knowing and loving God, then His reasons will be both right and at times inscrutable. Accepting this is at the heart of faith. Faith is not primarily about belief — faith is about trust.

And trust presupposes a lack of complete understanding. Faith is confidence that aligns with the evidence but goes beyond it.

And so, with the understanding that we lack full understanding, here are some of the answers that begin to address the problem of evil and suffering.

1. There are things God could prevent in His power that he permits in His wisdom. His reasons for permitting suffering must be very compelling, because God voluntarily endured horrible suffering on the cross.

2. Heaven and hell are important aspects of any Christian account of suffering. Heaven means that perfection is coming, and hell means that justice will be done. Skeptics sometimes claim that if God was all-powerful and good that He would remove evil from the world. The Christian doctrine is that He is doing precisely that. Our issue is less with His plan than with His pace.

3. His pacing is more understandable when we realize that much suffering is the result of human sin and folly, and so to eliminate human suffering God would have to eliminate hu-

To return to the platypus — it exists. The skeptical scholars eventually learned that what seemed disconnected on the outside was a system of marvelous wonder on the inside. It is nice that we now have a deeper understanding of platypodes and have even given the species a modern scientific name: ornithorhynchus anatinus.

But our understanding the way the platypus fit together did not make it any more or less real. Understanding just made us more comfortable with it.

It is nice when we understand things. But our understanding them is not a precondition for their reality.

Natalie Zarrelli, “Why 19th-Century Naturalists Didn’t Believe in the Platypus,” Atlas Obscura, April 21, 2016.

2 Job 1–2 CEV 3 Job 2:9 4 Job 38:1–7 CEV 5 Job 38:8–15 CEV 6 Job 38:16–30 7 Will Knight, “The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI,” MIT Technology Review, April 11, 2017.

8 Bob Yirka, “Computer generated math proof is too large for humans to check,” Phys. org, Feb 19, 2014.

9 Will Knight, “The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI,” MIT Technology Review, April 11, 2017.

10 Isaiah 55:8–9 CEV 11 2 Peter 3:9–13 12 1 Corinthians 15:50–57 1

Glen Davis, an ordained Assemblies of God minister, has been the advisor of Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship at Stanford since 2002. He blogs at theglendavis.com and is on Twitter @theglendavis.

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The Foundation of Flourishing Relationships NEVILLE MURINGAYI

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ove is a crucial component of human flourishing and wholeness. The two greatest commandments in the Bible are to love God and to love others.1 It is these commandments that have the tremendous power to transform human relationships and are at the core of Christian belief.

A relationship with God is unique in that it is not contingent on one’s own self diligence, efforts, or works, but on His love and grace for us. God reached out to us by sending His son to die for us so that we could have a lasting covenant relationship with Him and be forgiven of our sins. God calls us to love others in the same manner He loves us, with grace, faithfulness, sacrifice, and joy. Having a close relationship with God allows someone to truly seek the betterment of those they are in relationship with because that’s what God does for us, “In other words becoming a loving person means living with the roots of your life sunk deep in the love of Christ for you.”2 The more time someone spends with Jesus the more they become like Him, walking in compassion, forgiveness, and sacrificial love.3 Of course, human relationships are not always as straightforward and simple as this.

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The topic of eros, or romantic love, evokes a plethora of feelings for people, ranging from tragic heartbreak to blissful memories. The common understanding of intimate relationships, especially by many young, college-aged adults, is that they are complicated. Issues such as relationship ambiguity and finding the right person to be with are major concerns that can cause confusion. But I believe that romantic relationships, even at this stage in life, don’t have to be complicated. I recently got engaged to my girlfriend of two years. Before I proposed, I can honestly say there was never a point where I felt our relationship was complicated. I believe that complications can arise when there is no set foundation or standard that is set for the relationship. The foundation my fiancé and I set from the very beginning was to center everything that we did as a couple around Christ and to make God the foundation of our relationship. Having a God centered relationship was paramount for us because it allowed us to be very transparent about our

intentions and expectations for one another. Love can be simple when you have strong moral beliefs that are grounded in faith.

A relationship that is God-centered is the most beautiful expression of romantic love. It is one in which both people are first and foremost striving to have a relationship with God and as a result can achieve a steady, loving, and selfless relationship with one another. Establishing this standard in any relationship requires that both people involved are walking closely with Christ individually.4 The reason why a God-centered relationship is important in the long term for a couple is because it allows them to have a love for each other that is not based solely on an ephemeral, mutual attraction, but rather on a firmly established commitment to one another that is built on a foundation in an unchanging God. There is a sense of true intimacy, grace, and freedom that overflows into the relationship as a result of a couple making God their exclusive source of love, joy, and peace.

The divorce rate in the United States is one of the most disheartening statistics within the topic of marriage and relationships. According to the American Psychological Association, the divorce rate of couples in the United States in 2018 was 40 to 50 percent.

There are a plethora of reasons why married couples decide to divorce, but there is one main reason why they get married: love. According to Pew research, 88 percent of couples decide to get married because of love.5 This begs a question. Is love enough to keep a couple married? Shaunti Feldhahn, a Harvard graduate, conducted research on what makes a happy marriage. She compiled a couple of statistics that were related to faith and marriage. One of the most notable statistics was that 53% of “Very Happy Couples” agree with the statement “God is at the center of our marriage.”

This is contrasted with the other statistic that 30% of “Struggling Couples” disagree with the statement, “God is at the center of our marriage.” These statistics shed light on her underlying observation that “Highly happy couples tend to put God at the center of their marriage and focus on Him, rather than on their marriage or spouse, for fulfillment and happiness.”6 Love is of course a fantastic reason to get married, but as humans, it is inevitable that we

The first quality that a man should look for in a woman is her relationship with God.9 A woman who is walking closely with the Lord is someone who is going to be able to love selflessly. The source of her joy and light doesn’t come from anything ephemeral from this world. Her beauty comes from the light of God within her. The foundation for her life is Jesus and everything she does is established on that basis. A woman who is walking with Jesus is going to have a heart for serving and loving others.10 She isn’t going to be consumed by just her needs, her wants, and her problems. She is going to put the needs of others around her before her own. She is going to have the heart to take care of her family and others around her who need her help. She is the kind of person people in her life come to for advice, support, and love.

The second quality to look for is trustworthiness.11 A woman who is trustworthy follows through with her word. She values loyalty and never has to be questioned about dishonest actions or intentions. A woman who is trustworthy can always be counted on to do the right thing and be the right person.

will experience disappointments and frustrations with our spouses and ourselves. In those moments, God is what makes the difference because His love never changes and remains stable no matter the circumstances of the relationship. Making God the center of a relationship is what empowers people to love their spouse sacrificially and unselfishly because they are not relying on their spouse to be their savior.

One of the most important human decisions a person can ever make is choosing a partner for marriage.

This decision alone has the significance to affect almost every aspect of one’s life ranging from living situation to occupation to lifestyle to children. There’s a wealth of resources available about how to choose a spouse, but I believe that the criteria can be boiled down to a few essentials that are founded upon the idea of making God the center of the relationship.

Being in a relationship has been one of the most enjoyable, wholesome, and loving things I have done in my Stanford career.

My fiancé and I established a strong moral foundation from the very beginning in order to have clear expectations, prioritize our relationship with God over our relationship with one another, and love one another unselfishly. Relationships in this generation are infamous for being complicated due to unclear intentions and a lack of foundation. Love doesn’t have to be complicated. It becomes simple when it is centered around the moral standards that God has established. A God-centered relationship is one in which the couple pursues God individually and establish a strong foundation that allows them to leave each other unselfishly. Relationships, especially marriages, are beautiful and ultimately a reflection of our relationship with God. Couples that look beyond their relationship to God for their love, fulfillment, and joy produce very happy marriages. Loving God and loving others are the greatest commandments in the Bible. Having a close relationship with God tremendously transforms relationships because it makes people more forgiving, more loving, and more sacrificial.

...it is inevitable that we will experience disappointments and frustrations with our spouses and ourselves. In those moments, God is what makes the difference because His love never changes and remains stable no matter the circumstances of the relationship.

The first quality that a woman should look for in a man is that he is imitating Christ.7 This is the most crucial quality any man can have whether he is single or in a relationship because everything he does flows from his relationship with God, most notably, in this case, how he will treat her in the relationship. A man whose identity is in Christ is someone who can face his challenges with strength from the Holy Spirit and Word of God. He will neither be overcome by the worries of this life nor dragged down by his insecurities and baggage. His ultimate trust is in Jesus and not in himself or anything else in this life. The second quality to search for in a man is someone who has self control.8 Living a life with discipline and self-control allows a man to commit to the word of God, do what he says he is going to do, and do the right thing even when it’s not the easy thing.

He can always be counted on to be there for the people in his life and live according to God’s Word.

Mark 12:28–31 NIV John Piper, “The Depth of Christ's Love: Its Cost,” Desiring God, March 26, 1995.

3 Ephesians 5:1–2 4 Colossians 2:7 5 Abigail Geiger and Gretchen Livingston,“8 Facts About Love and Marriage in America,” Pew Research Center, February 13, 2019.

1 2

Ed Stetzer, “Marriage, Divorce, and the Church: What do the stats say, and can marriage be happy?,” Christianity Today, Feb 14, 2014.

7 Ephesians 5:2 8 Titus 1:8 9 Proverbs 31:30 10 Proverbs 31:20 11 Proverbs 31:11 6

Neville Muringayi is a senior studying engineering. He has been a Christian for as long as he can remember. He comes from sunny southern California, but was born in Zimbabwe. His family consists of his parents, two younger sisters, and fiancé.

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CHRISTIAN SEXUAL ETHICS

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he Christian teaching on chastity, or abstinence from sexual relations until marriage and then faithful loyalty to one’s spouse in marriage, may be seen as quaint at best and judgmental at worst. As feminist Robin Rinaldi writes, “I had expended so much effort as a teenager and young woman trying to avoid the shameful female pitfall of ‘being used.’ Why had no one ever mentioned the satisfaction … of sharing pleasure through my body?”1 In her estimation, the traditional Christian view on sexual morality is unnecessarily limiting and passes unjustified judgment on sexually libertine behavior. Yet, I contend that the Christian view on sexual morality is not only consistent with the Christian teaching on human dignity and love, but also addresses in a transcendental and loving way much of the real pain and dissatisfaction with the status quo that inspires feminism. Both Holy Mother Church and the proponents of sexual liberation correctly identify the problems of the current sexual paradigm, however, only the Church offers the proper solution.

It is important to first define the Christian sexual ethic clearly and truthfully. The Epistles of St. Paul come to mind, such as this verse: “Fly [from] fornication. Every sin that a man doth, is without the body; but he that committeth fornication, sinneth against his own body.”2 At first glance, this seems to confirm the assessment of people like Rinaldi that the traditional view on human sexuality is rooted in judgment. St. Paul condemns “fornication” in no uncertain terms, and so the Christian view initially seems judgmental of anyone who commits that sin. However, a deeper look contradicts that view entirely.

When St. Paul refers to “fornication,” the word in the Septuagint is porneia, meaning something like “harlotry” in English. As Professor Kyle Harper argues, this harlotry hearkens back to the metaphor of harlotry for idolatry — a spiritual harlotry of sorts — in the Old Testament: every covenant that God makes with the Israelites is broken in the same way that an errant spouse can betray their spouse.3 The entire book of Hosea tells the story of a man commanded by God to marry a harlot and to forgive her betrayals repeatedly, much in the same way that God Himself made covenant after covenant with Israel even after their repeated spiritual infidelities in the form of idolatry. While St. Paul does indeed condemn the sin of fornication, his critique comes from concerns of disloyalty to God rather than from judgment.

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The second part of this verse, “he that committed fornication, sinneth against his own body,” is also relevant. In the late Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, the Pope echoes St. Paul’s claim about “sinn[ing] against [one’s] own body,” arguing that when the

first man and woman (Adam and Eve) in Genesis first felt shame in noticing their nakedness, each “[hid] before the other with [his or her] own body,” losing “the original capacity of communicating themselves to each other.”4 Here John Paul notes the change that occurs between Genesis 2:25 and Genesis 3:7. Lust, which Adam and Eve first felt as a result of their consumption of the fruit of the Forbidden Tree, caused them to lose a sense of communion between their bodies that existed before. Hence, they can be said to have sinned against their own bodies. Similarly, as St. Paul argues, when we allow lust to come into our lives, we harm our own bodies’ dignity. This is the Christian perspective.

...the Christian view allows the sexual relationship to achieve its highest potential.

Importantly, we must also consider the perspective with which we started — feminism. One of the most strident and influential voices of the feminist movement, the late Andrea Dworkin (d. 2005), offers an interesting view on sexual ethics, in this case through the lens of pornography. In her essay “Pornography Happens to Women,” Dworkin argues that a woman in a pornographic film “is a standard of compliance” and “a standard of submission.”5 On a campus where topics like sexual assault, consent (or the lack thereof), and regret after sexual encounters are constantly on our minds, and in a culture where the average first exposure to pornography comes at the age of eleven, Dworkin appears both prescient and particularly relevant to the issues gripping college sex life. When she decries the “standard of submission” to which women in pornography are reduced, she decries not only the “process of dehumanization, a concrete means of changing someone into something” suffered by these women, but also the larger dehumanization suffered by women living in a world with men whose real-life sexual expectations are distorted by pornography.6 With regard to this (denied) dignity of women, Pope John Paul II clearly rejects this dehumanization, arguing that “the woman cannot become the ‘object’ of ‘domination’ and male ‘possession’.”7 In the Christian tradition, St. Paul and Pope John Paul II both argue that sexual relations (not to mention other acts) outside the confines of the natural marital bond are not only sinful disloyalties against God, but also betrayals of one’s own body. In this latter sense of betrayal against one's body, the staunchly Jewish and feminist Dworkin might agree. Indeed, she took great criticism in her time for aligning by happenstance with the so-called “religious right” on the issue of pornography.

Moreover, specifically regarding sexual liberation for women, feminist Van Badham argues that women’s liberation in effect made women more accessible as sex objects to men. She quotes writer David Quinn as having written in mockery of #MeToo that “the only sexual rule today is ‘consent’, and men have been taught that women are potentially always sexually available because that is what ‘liberation’ means.”8 Arguably, this means that any man willing to coax a woman into giving consent, no matter how uncomfortably, can under the modern sexual ethic feel justified in that action. On the contrary, even in early Christianity when slavery was legal, Kyle Harper reminds us that the Christian “Paul’s ban on porneia restricted one of the slave-owner’s most ordinary prerogatives: sexual access to his slaves.”9 When “liberation” makes a woman, at least theoretically, more susceptible to unwanted advances than a slave, perhaps some reevaluation is appropriate.

In conclusion, while many of the concerns underpinning libertine, and particularly feminist, sexual mores and trends on college campuses like Stanford’s respond to real issues of objectification, their proposed solutions only exacerbate the problem. On the other hand, the Christian sexual ethics that may seem stuffy, quaint, or oppressive actually affirms human dignity in the general sense and consecrates sexual relations in the specific sense. Rather than suppressing personal liberty, the Christian view allows the sexual relationship to achieve its highest potential, as a metaphor for the relationship between God and Israel, and now God and His Church. More practically, Christian sexual ethics no longer faces the exploitation and suffering commonplace in our culture replete with hookups and pornography, because it transcends the temporal, incomplete, inequitable pleasures of these with a call to something higher. Christ Himself says in the Gospel of St. Mark: “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife. And they two shall be in one flesh. Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”10 This, here, is what Christianity has advanced for two millennia: the epitome of human dignity and transcendental satisfaction.

Robin Rinaldi, qtd. in Zoe Williams, “Who took the sex out of the sexual revolution?,” The Guardian, March 22, 2015.

2 1 Corinthians 6:18, Douay-Rheims.

3 Kyle Harper, “The First Sexual Revolution,” First Things 279 (January 2018): 43.

4 Pope John Paul II, “Relationship of Lust to Communion of Persons,” Theology of the Body, June 4, 1980.

5 Andrea Dworkin, “Pornography Happens to Women,” 1993, 2.

6 Dworkin, “Pornography Happens to Women,” 1.

7 Pope John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, August 15, 1988.

8 Van Badham, “That's patriarchy: how female sexual liberation led to male sexual entitlement,” The Guardian, February 1, 2018.

9 Harper, “The First Sexual Revolution,” 44.

10 Mark 5:27-29, Douay Rheims.

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DECONSTRUCTION AND

RECONSTRUCTION Musings on the Nature of Sin in an Entropic World

Owen Wang

A

re people fundamentally good or bad?

A frosh dorm brings together people from all over the world, from every angle of life experiences, and indeed every background of belief. I began to discuss this question one night my freshman year, after a chance conversation with a good friend in my hall who happened to grow up Catholic. I was not a believer at the time, and she was one of the first Christians I had intentionally and vulnerably engaged with in conversation about their faith. Growing up, my family and I never participated in any form of religion. Church was not a part of my life, and most of my friends had similar backgrounds. This conversation was in an entirely different space. I was a little apprehensive, and completely curious.

Up until that point my impressions of who Christians were and what they stood for were pretty unfavorable. Christian leaders on television would preach love and acceptance, and on the next channel believers would be in an angry rally shouting hellfire-and-brimstone condemnation to bewildered people on the street. I had heard previous experiences of friends whose honest questions had been dismissed as doubts to be quenched at various youth camps or schools, and who had been advised to single-mindedly trust the Bible because it’s God’s word — which we only know because the same Bible says it is. None of this made sense.

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Witnessing some Christians who lived by the morality they preached and whom I could ask my own questions may have changed my mind, but I hadn’t personally encountered many yet.

I concluded that Christians were an arrogant, hypocritical lot, and gave the issue no more thought until much later, when I came to Stanford. As I interacted with more friends and acquaintances who professed their faith in Jesus, there was a dissonance in not understanding why they did and why they felt so strongly in doing so.

Especially confusing was the doctrine of original sin: people were sinful from birth, and it was an inescapable and persistent condition. What did sin even mean? It felt very abstract and ungrounded.

My general intuition connected it with notions of right and wrong and some sense of imposed morality, but morality is also a complex (some would even say relative) concept. It seemed ill-defined, and didn’t seem to mesh well with the concept of sin as a pillar of Christian theology that was supposed to be absolute. When we discuss immorality or evil thoughts or actions, there is usually an associated magnitude. We judge some crimes to be worse than others, such as a thousand-dollar fine for littering versus a prison sentence for convicted arson. The Christian conception of sin however differs from these notions in that the state of being sinful itself is a binary indicator of whether you can be in unity with God, can be granted life after death, and so on — being better or worse on some moral spectrum is irrelevant. How could the two be unified, or was I not thinking in the right direction at all?

Deconstructing the notion of sinfulness A core part of the Christian paradigm is that people and the world around them are inherently flawed and imperfect; brokenness or sinfulness are words thrown around often in this context. It isn’t merely a comment on the human status quo, but a deeper statement on the way that this world — and us, as part of it — behaves according to particular laws. There’s a pleasing symmetry in being both universal and personal, and I realized this underlying idea is not novel.

For example, from physics we understand that the world around us is decaying. The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy in any closed physical system will always increase spontaneously and irreversibly. Ice cream melts and does not reform itself, salt and pepper in a container only further mix together when shaken up and do not resegregate. A powdery pile of ashes beneath the campfire will not turn itself back into wood kindling. The pens and papers on your desk will naturally grow cluttered over the quarter from random placements — unless you put in the effort to rearrange them. Chaos shows up at every scale all around us. Bridges rust and cities weather into rubble, their concrete crumbs settling with a crash into their lowest energy state. Detritus on the forest floor decompose, deconstructed into their organic components by fungi and bacteria. Our sun, like all the rest of the universe’s stars, will grow cold over eons. The universe with all its matter and energy, left to its own devices, will eventually dissipate into asymptotically diminishing vibrations of heat, the trailing tendrils echoing into an exhausted void. Entropy will grow; order will not return without some external work being exerted.

As physical beings, we are no exceptions to the rule. In the book of Ecclesiastes, the wise Teacher humbly realizes after much reflection that man and beast are not so different, for “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”1 This is a reference to the creation story from the book of Genesis, where Adam and Eve’s consumption of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil yield a ruinous sentence: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”2 The transience and flimsiness of human lives is a theme that runs throughout Scripture. Biological bodies are not closed systems and work is continually put in to maintain life and

repair malfunctions, but even so we observe a losing battle against entropy. Despite modern medicine and our immune system’s best efforts, our vessels will still tend to break down. We all will die ultimately, and “are like water spilled out on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again” (2 Samuel 14:14 ESV).

On a larger scale, human decisions come into play, but these too are flawed. Our mental capacities to look ahead and anticipate consequences are humanly limited. The number of unpredictable factors out there so greatly outnumber the factors I can predict, that it’s difficult to imagine my actions could control my

Understanding the nature of sin is not the same as its justification. life with any certainty. And just by the sheer weight of probability, our limited-horizon decisions rarely bring us the optimal outcome; out of all the permutations of paths I could take, there are uncountably more harmful ones than beneficial ones. In Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, he poetically describes this phenomenon manifest, where many factors have to fall into place for success but a single one missing leads to disorder: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This isn’t to say I won’t continue to prepare for job interviews or look before crossing the street, but I do realize that I cannot plan for every eventuality. The ultimate trajectory of these decisions is out of my hands. If life itself could be modeled as the most chaotic and unpredictable of all games, I feel no shame in acknowledging I am a grossly unqualified player.

Even if we could see the future, our decisions and willpower reflect the same pattern of a tendency toward failure. We make suboptimal choices every day, whether we recognize them or not. The neurochemical pathways in my brain tell me to procrastinate on my essays and problem sets and to eat foods giving me short-term pleasure while only accelerating the decay of my health. My default urge is to pick the path of instant gratification ahead of me without regards to future consequences, and this extends to interpersonal dynamics as well. In annoyance I lash out at my dad during a long road trip, vindictively pleased in the moment and damage our relationship. In complacency I decide to flake on meetings and outings or show

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up late, implicitly showing a lack of respect for everyone else’s time or schedules. Among the people I care the most about, I all too often push for my own interests thoughtlessly without considering others’ needs or if they’re comfortable. The words of Apostle Paul come up and echo in my mind, and I’m despondently amused by how relatable they are even after two millennia: “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do…”3

Reconstruction and Renewal Reconstructing my interpretation of sin and brokenness allowed me to look at it in a different way, one that doesn’t invoke shame but instead one based on acceptance of our mortal condition. Having said all of this, the takeaway isn’t that we’re excused because sin is unavoidable; no professor would extend a late deadline for a student simply because they contest that the desire to procrastinate is natural. Understanding the nature of sin is not the same as its justification. There’s no need to feel bad about who we are, but we can’t push aside the responsibility for the things we do — the fallout from our mistakes will certainly not pick itself up. Therein lies the difference between releasing shame, and absolving guilt.

We’re bound to sin, through our actions and choices as well as in our surroundings — and yet this sin is inexcusable. Is the point of Christianity just to emphasize this miserable paradox? Thankfully not, as the faith also offers a solution indicated by its very namesake. Christians believe that people are freely offered salvation and sanctification because of Jesus Christ: we are saved because his sacrifice has already paid the price for our debt, and we are sanctified because through it we’re continually shaped more toward His likeness. Within this framework, our sin doesn’t dirty us or make us any less. In God’s eyes, we are adopted into His family now because of Christ’s sacrifice, and our struggles are redeemed — we’re not fighting uphill against a deteriorating world on our own, but with its Creator Himself by our side ready to restore and renew us. In the gospel of John, Jesus announces: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”4 Therefore recognizing our own fallen condition doesn’t demean our humanity, but actually is part of what characterizes us as authentically human. We all inevitably fall short. Although we each strive and fail in our own way to arrive at an ideal of what we know we should be, Christians believe that despite this pattern we’re uncon-

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ditionally accepted by God: no matter who you are or where you’ve been, Christ’s death was meant to break open a path anyone could take toward Heaven so we wouldn’t have to endure eternal separation from Him. The abilities and achievements we take pride in don’t matter in His eyes, because He recognizes how fragile and fallible they are. Indeed God “chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong… so that no one may boast before Him.”5 The universal commonality of our imperfections, regardless of their varying magnitude, encourage a level playing field, and by embracing broken, imperfect people in action we practice — and from those around us, taste — the way God embraces us.

Calling out our flaws doesn’t demean our humanity, but actually characterizes us as authentically human.

I don’t quite remember how the conversation with my friend ended that night, but I still reflect on the same kind of questions often. The answers I have are never complete; whenever I feel like they are, new nuances arise — and I hope they continue to, because that means I’m still growing and expanding my understanding of who God is. The alchemical breaking down, rebuilding, unlearning and learning as we walk with God is a crucial process that strengthens the foundations of faith. It’s a process that’s full of stumbling and chaotic, noisy missteps, backtracking if need be, and in our time on Earth we’re definitely not going to arrive at a perfect conception of Him, nor live out His image in body or spirit perfectly. But the punchline is that in understanding this about our fallen human nature, God made a way so we don’t have to: we’re only called to trust and believe in His guidance, and His hand carries us the rest of the way.

1 2

Ecclesiastes 3:20.

Genesis 3:19.

2 Samuel 14:14.

John 16:33.

5 1 Corinthians 1:27-29 NIV 3 4

Owen Wang is a coterminal masters student in the Computer Science department, studying AI and applying computer vision to interdisciplinary tasks such as semantic segmentation for coral reefs. When not pondering about human cognition and language or theories of mind, he enjoys inventing experimental new recipes (putting out fires as needed) and dissecting his favorite films and TV shows.

ABOUT

VoxClara

OUR MISSION

OUR NAME

Vox Clara is a journal of Christian thought at Stanford, dedicated to cultural inquiry in the light of faith and reason. We seek to provide a forum for Christians and non-Christians at Stanford to engage in dialogue related to Christianity, culture, and life's biggest questions.

We believe it is important to address issues of faith in the university community. As Jane Stanford’s words on the wall of Memorial Church attest:

In the words of C.S. Lewis speaking on Christianity, “it is at her centre, where her truest children dwell, that each communion is really closest to every other in spirit, if not in doctrine. And this suggests that at the centre of each there is something, or a Someone, who against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks with the same voice.”

“There is no narrowing so deadly as the narrowing of man’s horizon of spiritual things. No worse evil could befall him in his course on earth than to lose sight of Heaven. And it is not civilization that can prevent this; it is not civilization that can compensate for it. No widening of science, no possession of abstract truth, can indemnify for an enfeebled hold on the highest and central truths of humanity.

‘What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?’”

THE NICENE CREED We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, one in being with the Father.

Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered, died, and was buried. On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

We at Vox Clara celebrate this voice of Jesus Christ and believe that His is the true voice. For this reason, we have chosen “Vox Clara,” a Latin phrase meaning “clear voice,” as our name.

THE AUGUSTINE COLLECTIVE Vox Clara is part of the Augustine Collective, a network of student-led Christian journals on college campuses throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. There are around thirty journals to date, all committed to the premise that faith and reason belong together. For more information, see augustinecollective.org.

T H E V E R I TA S F O R U M Vox Clara partnered with Veritas on this issue and made the spring issue theme align with their Spring Forum on Human Wholeness and Suffering. The Veritas Forum helps students and faculty ask life's hardest questions. Over 200 universities in North America and Europe have hosted over 2,000 Forums. The Veritas Forum is committed to courageous conversations. They place the historic Christian faith in dialogue with other beliefs and invite participants from all backgrounds to pursue Truth together. For more information, visit veritas.org.

WEBSITE

voxclara.wixsite.com/voxclara

EMAIL

voxclarastanford@gmail.com

MEETINGS

Mondays, Old Union 201 at 7:30

SPECIAL THANKS TO Carlos Armenta and Folger Graphics

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The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word “love”, and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre.

God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. “Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.” We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest “well pleased”.

— C. S. Lewis