Telos Spring 2012 Issue

TELOS

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A WILLIAMs Journal of Christian Discourse

wonder Eat, Pray, Bake, Love Mustard Seed Faith In Smitten Gratitude

spring 2012

TELOS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

SENIOR EDITOR

Inez Tan ’12

Elizabeth Hwang ’13

Frank Pagliaro ’14

{Contributors}

Jamie Baik Sevonna Brown Judith Clerjeune Rachel Durrant Jasmyne Grismore Kelsey Ham Elizabeth Hwang Brian Li

Emily Loveridge Si Young Mah Caleb Miaw Andy Morgosh Frank Pagliaro Sydney Pitts-Adeyinka Inez Tan Keelia Willison

{Thanks}

SENIOR EDITOR

Amanda Su ’14

JUNIOR EDITOR

Wyatt Boyer ’15

JUNIOR EDITOR

Jasmyne Grismore ’15

We are indebted to the Cecil B. Day Foundation, the Chaplain’s Office, the Dean’s Office, and College Council.

{Definition}

Telos is the Greek word for “purpose,” “goal,” or “fulfillment.” For us, telos represents a direction that can only be found through God. JUNIOR EDITOR

JUNIOR EDITOR

Chih McDermott ’14

Steven Servius ’15

LAYOUT EDITOR

Emily Loveridge ’14

{Purpose}

The Williams Telos is a journal dedicated to the expression of opinions and perspectives informed by the Christian faith.

{Contact}

LAYOUT EDITOR

LAYOUT STAFF

LAYOUT STAFF

Si Young Mah ’14

Jamie Baik ’14

Michael Berry ’15

LAYOUT STAFF

LAYOUT STAFF

Ed Ciobanu ’15

Amber Ellis ’15

LAYOUT STAFF

Samira Martinhago ’13

Email williamstelos@gmail.com with comments, questions, or submissions.

Cover photo by Sevonna M. Brown Sevonna M. Brown ’15 is from Saginaw, Mich. She enjoys reading, creative writing, photography, and film.

All pieces in The Williams Telos are reflections of personal opinion, interpretation, and understanding of the Christian faith, but do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Telos board or the publication as a whole.

If you would like to support us with a subscription or donation, please visit our website at williamstelos.wordpress.com.

t he WI LLI A M S

BUSINESS MANAGER

BUSINESS MANAGER

Marcel Brown ’15

Sydney Pitts-Adeyinka ’12

FINANCE STAFF

Doris Mbabu ’15

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TELOS Spring 2012

t he WI L L I A M S

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TELOS 03

inside

Spring ’12

Letter from the editor

FEATURES 09

Wonderfully elusive

11

In praise of wonder

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Mustard seed faith

Caleb Miaw contemplates the doctrine of the Trinity.

Inez Tan seeks out truth in literature.

Andy Morgosh challenges our conceptions of intellectual belief.

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Man of mystery

Frank Pagliaro delves into G.K. Chesterton’s portrayal of God.

REFLECTIONS 04

Relishing the indescribable

Rachel Durrant celebrates God’s love and the Colosseum.

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The language of God

Jasmyne Grismore explores who Jesus is in His own words.

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Jubilation

KELSEY HAM

Judith Clerjeune reclaims the goodness in creation.

Spring 2012

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t h e W I L L IA MS

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TELOS PROFILES 07

Eat, pray, bake, love

Elizabeth Hwang and Sydney Pitts-Adeyinka talk to Keelia Willison ’14.

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In smitten gratitude

Inez Tan interviews fiction writer Linda McCullough Moore.

SI YOUNG MAH

ART 16

Branches

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Back cover

by Kelsey Ham

by Jamie Baik

POETRY 06

My recurring dream

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Perspective

by Keelia Willison

EMILY LOVERIDGE

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The Williams Telos

by Brian Li

Letter from the editor “I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.” –Morpheus, The Matrix Looking back on four years at Williams, I realize that I only ever made academic progress by traversing the swampy pits of academic crisis. When I was a first-year, I thought: Wow, I don’t know anything. For better or for worse, recently I’ve been stuck with the vaguely existential question: How do we know anything?

To begin with, the word ‘know’ operates differently according to its subject. To know a language =/= to know a song.

To know an answer =/= to know a thing or two. And knowing about somebody is different from knowing somebody.

What do Christians mean when they talk about knowing God? When Jesus walked among people on earth, He perplexed them. On one occasion, He tells a group of Jews who had been following him, “Yet because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me?” (John 8:45-47) Reading that, I can see why many followed Him, yet many left Him too.

More importantly, however, we can see that Jesus wants people to ask themselves why they will not believe Him. The why implies that there’s much more between those two extremities. That why is a space of wonder.

If knowing is a destination, then wondering is a journey. That includes going the wrong way, getting lost, finding unexpected pathways. As there are many roads, there are many ways of getting there. We’re at Williams because we believe in a liberal arts education: that there’s value in a diversity of ways of seeking truth because they inform and enrich one another. You become a better mathematician for learning how to write poetry, or a better artist for studying the laws of physics. Willful exploration and free wandering are complements, as are the rational deliberation of reasoning and the intuition of dreams.

Our writers and artists in this issue invite you along a journey with us. Jasmyne Grismore explores what God’s language tells us about His character. Frank Pagliaro explores how G. K. Chesterton interprets God’s view of suffering in his novel The Man Who Was Thursday. And Andy Morgosh challenges the very grounds for belief, in God or otherwise.

Jesus invites us to know Him by His actions; He stakes the truth of His words on it. As His followers, we don’t claim to know all the answers or to have everything figured out. But we offer up some of the doors we do know, and invite you to walk with us through them.

Yours faithfully, Inez

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RACHEL DURRANT

Relishing the indescribable

by Rachel Durrant

Thinking about the architecture of love

The heels of my boots make a clacking sound against the smooth cobblestones, echoing down Via dei Fori Imperiali as I walk. People crowd the street on either side of me, tourists and locals alike, all bundled up and wishing it were warmer. I quicken my pace in an effort to escape them. I’m tuned out to the cries of young children throwing snowballs at each other and the enthusiastic shouts of the street vendors and the unnecessary honking in the distance. All I can see is the structure before me. I catch a glimpse of sunlight peeking out through the Colosseum’s arcades as I draw closer. The structure looms over me, and for a split second, I think I can hear the clashing of third-century metal against metal and the sounds of trumpets and the roars of the crowd pouring out from the main entrance. I return to the present and take a seat under the shade of a nearby tree, gazing up at what is left of this impressive arena in awe.

Of all the places I’ve visited in Rome thus far, my absolute favorite place is the Colosseum. Excitement bubbles up in me every time I sit and gaze up at it. The very first time was especially exciting; not only was I seeing the Colosseum in person, outside of a photograph for once, but

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The Williams Telos

I was also seeing it during an event that made all (well, most) of the Romans quite excited: it had snowed the day before. The snow made the Colosseum seem magical, despite its grotesque history as a place where thousands of spectators had watched men attack each other, until only one was left standing. Many centuries later, I can attest to the way the Colosseum has been romanticized – I can look upon it without dwelling on its frightening past.

It’s hard to describe why I find the Colosseum so fascinating. I mean, there are so many inspiring places in Rome. Why has my heart settled on this one? I suppose part of it has to do with the structure itself. It makes you feel so incredibly small, like a child looking up at her first rollercoaster. When you stand before the Colosseum and crane your neck backwards, the top looks as though it’s part of the sky – it’s never-ending. Maybe it’s because I feel connected to it through the many Christians martyred within its walls, rendering me speechless and a bit melancholy. Maybe it also has to do with the grandeur it possesses, despite its simplicity. Unlike many other places in Rome, such as the cupola of St. Peter’s Basilica or the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Museum, the Colosseum is

not covered in elaborate paintings or topped with exquisite sculptures. It is simply a massive stone edifice with a series of arcades cut into it that forms the huge amphitheater it is. And rather than being overwhelmed by its impressive size, I find myself yearning to bask in its glory.

When I stop and consider my fascination with the Colosseum, I realize that it is similar to my fascination with God’s love for me. During the very first moments I spent gazing up at the Colosseum, no words to describe the arena came to mind. It was beyond description, and it simply left me with my mouth agape. I see God’s love in the same light. Every time I stop and really consider how much God loves me, I’m completely blown away. The Creator of the entire universe loves me. What a huge deal! It’s truly amazing. God. Loves. ME! And yet, I often wonder, how could God love someone who spends more time asking Him for her desires rather than thanking Him for His blessings? How could God love someone who constantly loses patience with the people around her, even her own family? How could God love someone who often judges people’s actions as though she has the right to do so? And how could God love someone who doesn’t always love Him back? In spite of my countless other imperfections, He STILL loves me. And no matter how much I hurt Him with my shortcomings, He will never stop loving me. Consider how, despite its gruesome history, the Colosseum is still considered a thing of beauty, like God’s love. God loves me in the same way; His beautiful love covers up my ugly failures.

Imagine the person you love the most in this world.

Imagine how you would feel if that person abandoned you.

Could you see yourself still loving that person whole-heartedly? This is what unconditional love looks like, and this is one of the many places where we fall short, because we’re incapable of loving that much. There is always a point where our own love falters. We’re flawed. We make mistakes. How could our love for people manage to be perfect when we’re so imperfect? But that is one of the things that makes God so incredibly extraordinary. His love is perfect, and his love is ENDLESS. As a Christian, I try to love everyone because it’s one of the things God calls me to do. That doesn’t mean it’s

easy. But God genuinely loves every single person on this planet of ours. Think about it. God loves you just as much as He loves me, which is just as much as He loves President Falk, which is just as much as He loves that guy who lives down the hall from me. Do you see what I mean?

And although we constantly abandon Him or neglect Him or hurt Him with the things we say or the things we do, His love for us never fails. I had a friend once who did something that made me extremely angry. If I were a cartoon character, steam would have been coming out of my ears. What did I do when this friend tried to apologize?

I yelled. I really let this person have it. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m not the type of person who yells.

I’m also not the type of person who gets angry, ever. This feeling was completely new for me. When I woke up the next morning, I felt awful. I was beyond myself with guilt, and I kept thinking about how I wasn’t acting very Christ-like in that moment. I wasn’t trying very hard to love my friend the way God does. I remember breaking down and crying that morning, still filled with anger, but an anger that I had never experienced before, an anger I never wanted to experience again. I prayed and asked God to forgive me for acting in such a way and to help me set things right with my friend. Immediately, I felt at peace and I felt God’s love washing over me, as though God was saying, “I’ve got you, Rachel. And I’m not going anywhere.” What a love!

When you look at the Colosseum today, as stunning as it is, whether its architects spent much time adding details to its façade, you’re left with something simple and unadorned. In the same way, God’s love is pretty simple when I think about it. He doesn’t pick and choose who to love. Instead, He just loves each and every one of us equally. As David often reminds us in the Book of Psalms, His love endures forever. That is just one of the things that makes God so amazing, so wonderful.

“When you stand before the Colosseum and crane your neck backwards, the top looks as though it’s part of the sky.”

Rachel Durrant ’13 is an English major from Long Island, N.Y. She enjoys taking pictures, belting out Disney songs in the shower, and eating gelato, among other things.

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My recurring dream

by Keelia Willison We rub noses.

Tiny chest, it rises filling me and my new purpose: you, just you. I’m always seeing your blue pjs, brushing curly waves, your eyes are Grandpa’s grayish hue, just what I’ve dreamed for you handing me something you just drew, a crayoned clumsy sweetness, smiles yellow scribbled past our faces.

I’ll pick you up you’ll laugh – then freeze.

One small closeness to be treasured till I meet you.

Keelia Willison ’14 is an English major and Leadership Studies concentrator from Kampala, Uganda. She loves almond butter, camping, almost anything to do with Donald Duck, and Jesus.

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The Williams Telos

Eat, pray, bake, love

by Elizabeth Hwang and Sydney Pitts-Adeyinka

A conversation with Keelia Willison ’14

MEGHAN ROWE

Keelia Willison was born in the United States and moved to Kenya at age twelve when her father took a sabbatical from his job as a worship pastor. “He wanted to take my whole family – I have four siblings – to live in a developing country just so we’d get that global perspective,” she said. The following year her dad took a job offer in Uganda and settled the family overseas.

In addition to broadening their children’s perspectives, her parents also encouraged them to explore and question Christianity. “Although my dad is a pastor and my mom is also a devout Christian, they definitely tried to let us find our faith on our own,” Keelia said. “I totally took it for granted, but every Sunday I would go to church and listen to my dad give the sermon. Afterwards, over lunch I’d be able to ask him about all the things that I doubted, disagreed [with] or found interesting, and he’d be able to answer most of those questions. Even now, if I’m reading the Bible and I find something I don’t really know about, I’ll call him and ask him about that.”

Kampala, Uganda and Williamstown, MA may be continents apart, but Keelia had heard about liberal arts colleges from her older brother, who attends Swarthmore College. Immediately after attending Williams’s on-campus information session, she knew she was going to apply Early Decision.

After Keelia was accepted, her parents and sister were concerned about how the stress of life at Williams would affect her. “My parents said, ‘You, going to Williams? The average number of cups of coffee drunk per day [at Williams] is four.’ They were not really fans of me coming here.” Keelia and her dad struck a compromise – she had to have a stress outlet at Williams. He offered to buy her a piano or guitar, since she played both, but Keelia opted for another passion instead – baking.

“I started [baking] in 2nd grade where I would go over to my friend Abby’s house. We started with those cylinders of dough that you cut into cookies and put on a sheet.

We got more complicated, and we started [baking] every time we were at each other’s houses. Then, my sister and

I went through a cupcake infatuation with the rest of the world. We would set aside weekends where we would bake together. It was time for us to catch up on our lives.”

As a first-year, Keelia began baking regularly in Mission. Originally, she was just baking with a few close friends, but soon, others took notice. “A lot of people would walk through that entryway that’s right next to the door – people who had just gone out, or were about to go out, would all stop and poke their heads in, asking ‘What are you making? It smells so good! Can we have some?’

This was such an easy way to make people happy, and it’s something that people would rather do than go out, at least momentarily.”

Later that year, while on a service trip with her firstyear Bible study group, Keelia had a realization. “We were talking about how wherever you are, God can use you for that place and for the people there. I thought, well, there aren’t many options for people on the Williams College campus for not drinking on the weekends, and I know that people love to come by Mission kitchen [while I’m baking] and hang out. What if I were to start something that was exactly that?”

And so “Get Baked” was born. But because the group was covering new ground, neither of the two primary Spring 2012

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campus social organizations – All Campus Entertainment (ACE) and Williams After Dark (WAD) – knew who should provide the funding. In terms of the social life on campus, Keelia explained, there were either campus parties or alternative, WAD activities, but “this other end [of the spectrum] wasn’t really covered – the people who stayed in, watched movies and did homework. This [was] the place I want[ed] to focus on.” After a few backand-forth meetings, WAD suggested that Keelia try talking to the Health Center. It paid off: “Within five minutes of talking to Ruth Harrison, the director of Health Services, I had five hundred dollars at my disposal to get started as soon as I wanted I was so excited, and we put out $350 to buy equipment. That was the most fun I’ve ever had on Amazon.”

By the spring, “Get Baked” was almost ready to hold its first event. But Keelia worried no one would come. She wondered, “God, what was I thinking? It’ll just be me and my friends, and we’ll have way too many cookies.” A few overheard comments brought her some confidence: “People would walk by, talking about the posters, and say, ‘Oh, ‘Get Baked’! That’s such a hilarious name! I think I might actually go.’”

The first night was an incredible success. Even before “Get Baked” officially opened at 10 p.m., other first-years offered to help or asked for samples. “[The help] was really good,” Keelia laughed, “because it was just me and Meghan [Rowe ’14] making 250 cookies.” The turnout was exactly what she had hoped for.

“From 10 till midnight it was so crowded, with so many people who I had never laid eyes on before,” Keelia recounted. “We had a couple of drunk people in there eventually, and it was great because they were hanging out with the people who weren’t drunk. We had people in their PJs, two games of pool going on, someone at the piano, somebody else singing along. I could see introductions happening everywhere.” In retrospect, she says, “I can’t believe that I was so stressed beforehand. It was all for nothing. If God wanted me to do this, why would it fall flat?

“While I see this club as a direct result of my faith, because I definitely couldn’t do this all on my own, I don’t think of it as a ‘Christian’ club,” she adds. The club now hosts an event every month as an alternative – or addi-

tion – to First Fridays. “The second time we made 450 brownies and they were also all gone,” Keelia remarked.

Yet as much as she loves how much people have enjoyed “Get Baked!” so far, she remains humble about her own role. “None of that credit should go to me. It was entirely God’s idea. It was entirely Him showing [me] things.

Well, my dad just happened to force my baking equipment on me and I took it to college, and Mission’s kitchen just happens to be where people pass through on a Friday night.

And there just happens to not be another stay-in club on Friday night. Everything was just perfectly set up for this to happen, and I’m just making sure it runs smoothly.”

“We had people in their PJs, someone at the piano, somebody else singing along.”

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The Williams Telos

This is the recipe Keelia and her roommate Meghan used for the ginger cookies they served on the first night of “Get Baked!” Adapted from The Holiday Cookbook.

Joe Carson’s Ginger Cookies 2 c. all-purpose flour

½ tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

¼ c. shortening

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 c. sugar

2 tsp. ground ginger

2 tbsp. molasses

½ tsp. ground cloves

1 egg

1. Combine flour, baking soda, spices and ½ teaspoon salt.

2. Beat shortening 30 sec. Add sugar and beat until fluffy.

3. Add molasses and egg. Beat until combined. Add dry ingredients and beat on low speed until well-combined.

4. Shape into 1 ½ inch balls. Dip into a small bowl of water, then a bowl of additional sugar. (For a lighter coating, just dip in sugar.)

5. Arrange 3 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake in a 350° oven for 15 minutes or until light brown on bottom. Cool on wire racks. Makes 20.

Sydney Pitts-Adeyinka ’11/’12 is an American Studies major and Africana Studies concentrator. A native of Dallas, Texas, Sydney enjoys traveling, shopping, using her Apple products, and making her friends smile.

Elizabeth Hwang ’13 is a Biology and Chemistry major from N.Y. She loves baking, as long as it doesn’t involve beating egg whites.

Wonderfully elusive Embracing the mystery of the Trinity

by Caleb Miaw “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in Himself.” [The Catechism of the Catholic Church]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/oter/3586062159/

How can God be three in one? No matter who you are talking to – a skeptic, a Muslim or a Jew, a child or a teenager in Sunday school, an adult seeker or a mature Christian believer – this question almost always comes up in (and often dominates) discussions about the Trinity. The Christian formulation that God is one being in three persons is counterintuitive; it seems illogical and irrational. Framed this way though, the Trinity becomes a mathematical problem to be solved or, at best, a doctrine

for apologetics to explain and defend. Both seem to have little practical relevance to the Christian life. The doctrine of the Trinity, however, is what makes the Christian understanding of God distinctly Christian and not merely theistic. Without it, we cannot fathom the depth or the richness of the Christian understanding of God, nor can we share it effectively with others. The doctrine of the Trinity, therefore, enables us to speak rightly about the God who is revealed in Scripture as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In On the Trinity, Augustine reasons that since humans were created in God’s image, we should expect to find traces of the Trinity in ourselves. Augustine is especially known for his psychological analogy that posits a reflection of the Trinity in the mind’s act of knowing, which involves memory, understanding, and will. He was careful to emphasize, however, that such analogies were of limited use in conceptualizing the Trinity and would eventually break down. When pressed, every analogy for the Trinity results in tritheism (that God exists as three separate and independent persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) or modalism (that God manifests himself at different times as a different person – first as Father, then as Son, then as Holy Spirit – but that God is not eternally three persons), doctrines that deny that God is both Three in One and One in Three. Despite our best efforts to understand and explain the Trinity, then, our minds are incapable of fully grasping it because it is beyond their comprehension – and we are mystified.

We must be clear, however, that the mystery of the Trinity does not mean that we cannot know anything definitive about God. Understanding the meaning of the Greek word mysterion used by the New Testament writSpring 2012

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ers can help us here. Although our English word “mystery” is derived from this word, its popular meaning today is significantly different from its meaning in the original Greek. In current English, a mystery is something obscure, dark, secret, or puzzling. If something is mysterious, it is inexplicable or incomprehensible. However, the

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“The Trinity establishes and proclaims the mystery of God – it reminds us that we cannot fully fathom the unfathomable; it teaches us to embrace the limits of our knowledge.”

Greek word as used by the New Testament writers has a distinctively different meaning. Instead of an impenetrable secret, it suggests an open secret, one that has been revealed. As Eugene Peterson points out, this mystery is “not the mystery of a darkness that must be dispelled but the mystery of a light that may be entered. It is not something we do not know but something that is too much to know.” The Trinity, then, is a truth beyond human discovery that safeguards and secures the mystery of God. We know it only because God has taken the initiative and revealed it to us. Because God himself “has spoken to us by his Son,” Christians believe that we have been given definitive knowledge of God (Hebrews 1:2). Thus, we confidently proclaim that God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is Three in One and One in Three.

Our definitive knowledge of God, however, can never be comprehensive. Augustine worked hard to understand the revelation that God is Three in One, yet he never entertained illusions about his ability to decipher its mystery. He developed a precise and elaborate technical vocabulary for the Trinity, “not that [the mystery] might be spoken, but that it not be left unspoken.” As we apprehend God’s triune self-revelation, we also acknowledge (and gladly confess) that we do not fully comprehend God. We are grateful that God has revealed himself to us, but we also recognize that the greater whole eludes our grasp.

Thus, God’s self-revelation simultaneously dissolves and preserves divine mystery. Our best thinking does not dispel the mystery but instead deepens it.

The modern mind has little patience with mystery. We have fostered the false assumption that we can figure anything out, given enough study and research, and pride ourselves on being able to penetrate the unknown and offer solutions to life’s most perplexing problems. No doubt,

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we have taken significant strides forward in uncovering knowledge about our world and overcoming superstition.

Confronted by the mystery of the Trinity, however, we are no longer in a position where we can master the subject.

But who wants to be told that? Quite frankly, the notion is disconcerting and unsettling. As A.W. Tozer suggests,

The Williams Telos

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“To admit that there is One who lies beyond us, who exists outside of all our categories, who will not be dismissed with a name, who will not appear before the bar of our reason, nor submit to our curious inquiries: this requires a great deal of humility, more than most of us possess, so we save face by thinking God down to our level, or at least down to where we can manage Him. Yet how He eludes us!”

The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that our highest reasoning powers and most profound logical categories will never resolve or remove the mystery of God. Our finest words about God are but feeble, faltering attempts to express what can never be adequately conveyed in any human language. The Trinity establishes and proclaims the mystery of God – it reminds us that we cannot fully fathom the unfathomable; it teaches us to embrace the limits of our knowledge. Paul, a New Testament writer, joyfully exclaims, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Romans 11:33) His inability to penetrate the mystery evokes in him not confusion or frustration, but exhilaration and wonder. Likewise for us, the mystery of the Trinity ought to inspire wonder and worship.

I have drawn heavily upon the work of Stephen Seamands (Ministry in the Image of God), to which I am much indebted.

Caleb Miaw ’11 is currently on staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Williams. He is wonderful but not terribly elusive.

In praise of wonder Seeking answers in philosophy, science and literature

by Inez Tan duced the same effect, it was called a scientific theory or law. By the 18th century, science had become the dominant force in European intellectualism. We call this time period the Age of Enlightenment.

As we might expect given the tremendous ideological changes in this time period, literature changed too. Critic Ian Watt describes how following the Enlightenment, the novel emerged as a literary form that was radically interested in the individual’s experience of the world. In contrast to the general type characters of romances (the chivalrous Sir Knight), for the first time, fictional characters had proper names that were like real people’s names, and were titled as such: Tom Jones or Robinson Crusoe. The novel “interested itself much more than any other literary form in the development of its characters in the course of time” (Watt, 22). Furthermore, as people began demanding more rational, logical explanations for what they witnessed, fiction became much more invested in causality.

Before, literature was dominated by the romance, defined

by Reeve as “a heroic fable, which treats of fabulous per-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bahoolala/2716244667/

Our modern concept of wonder dates back to French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (1596– 1650). “Descartes sees wonder as prompting an urge to explain or to give an account. Confronted with a wonder, you are at first astonished, and then you wish to understand how you came to be astonished,” writes Robert Macfarlane, a professor of English at Cambridge. Thinkers such as Descartes and Locke ushered in a new age of philosophical realism, which presumed that the truth could be discovered by the individual through his or her senses – a newfound emphasis on individualism perhaps best encapsulated by Descartes’s famous statement Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am).

Descartes’s particular formulation of wonder as astonishment followed by the desire to seek explanations gave rise to modern science. The scientific method grew out of the philosophic trend of discarding purely theoretical methods in favor of empirical investigations. Scientific practitioners sought to construct testable hypotheses based on observable phenomenon. If the same cause pro-

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sons and things,” and which featured “what never happened nor is likely to happen.” Drawing on older forms including the myth and the fairytale, romance stories depended on chance, coincidence, and deus ex machina.

But following the advent of formal realism, Watt writes, “The novel’s plot is… distinguished from most previous fiction by its use of past experience as the cause of present action: a causal connection operating through time replaces the reliance of earlier narratives on disguises and coincidences”1 (Watt, 22).

Though the various disciplines have their own methodologies and standards for what constitutes proof, all pursue truth by asking what-if questions. Thus, we should expect to find fundamental similarities in their approaches. For example, contemporary novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson sees direct parallels between science and literature because narrative, like a scientific hypothesis, is something we construct for its explanatory power in getting to truth3. She writes, “Fiction has the

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“Though the various disciplines have their own methodologies and standards for what constitutes proof, all pursue truth by asking what-if questions.”

character of a hypothesis, or it is written in an implied subjunctive, because it means that reality is greater than any present circumstance. It says, ‘I will show you how that past or other or potential reality might feel, how it might look’” (Robinson, 34-35). ‘Potential reality’ is key here. Robinson notes, “Fiction is narrative freed from the standard of literal truth. In effect, it is the mind exploring itself, its impulse to create hypothetical cause and consequence” (Robinson, 36). Unlike journalism, which has an allegiance to what really happened – to literal truth – fiction’s territory is everything that could happen.

If not literal or scientific truth, then what kind of truth can fiction be said to express? Along with most other forms of art, fiction conveys emotional truth. Whether categorized as high art or low art, paintings, architecture, movies, and songs are usually not so much about making a point as they are about making you feel something. To put it another way, art can provide an experience which contains emotional truth.

Narrative forms in particular can also have a compo-

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nent of moral truth. Good stories make us see other people’s point of view and wonder how they feel, which has implications for how we should treat one another.

That does not mean that stories should moralize; writer and Catholic Flannery O’Connor in fact says that true art forbids it. I still remember the first of her stories I read, when I was about thirteen – A Good Man is Hard to Find, about a bickering family finally brought to a boil by an encounter with a murderer called the Misfit. The story features a complete dramatic action, that is, its plot resolves itself, and yet it leaves you with questions.

For example, who is to blame for what happened? The car crash that occurs isn’t quite an accident, and yet the Grandmother can’t be said to have intentionally caused it, even if she led them to the wrong state and brought the cat that startled the driver who then drove into a ditch.

The Misfit justifies his actions by saying that he was first treated unfairly – “I found out the crime don’t matter.

You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or

The Williams Telos

}

take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you’re going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it.”

But he also rejects the Grandmother’s attempts to reform him, saying, “I don’t want no hep. I’m doing all right by myself.” It’s precisely the story’s refusal to provide any easy answers that so compels its characters and readers alike to confront their deepest beliefs.

No coincidence, then, that the best-known line from the story should also be the most enigmatic. Of the Grandmother, the Misfit’s unflinchingly pronounces, “She would have of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” To some extent, the Misfit is channeling the voice of the Grandmother’s conscience. But the violence of gunfire also implies that trying to be “good” might also prove fatal.

What can we make of this? Fiction writer Jim Shepard puts O’Connor’s vision in the context of his summation of a general Catholic perspective – “that serious transgressions matter. As in, what you did to that person is a terrible thing and still affects them. And the idea of re-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/studiobeerhorst/5443093537/

demption, then, is also a serious thing.” To put it another way, you can imagine an alternate worldview in which serious transgressions don’t matter. But under Christianity, which holds that Jesus had to die in order for sins to be forgiven, transgressions and their consequences cannot be taken lightly.

Stories can be said to have three overlapping levels of meaning: firstly, what the writer deliberately puts forth, secondly, what the writer unconsciously includes, and thirdly, what readers and critics perceive. O’Connor is particularly insightful and intentional with regards to that first level and in light of her Catholic beliefs. On her own fiction, she writes, “I often ask myself what makes a story work, and what makes it hold up as a story, and I have decided that it is probably some action, some gesture of a character that is unlike any other in the story, one which indicates where the real heart of the story lies.

This would have to be an action or a gesture which was both totally right and totally unexpected; it would have to be one that was both in character and beyond character; it would have to suggest both the world and eternity...

It would be a gesture which somehow made contact with mystery… I have found that, for me, this is always an action which indicates that grace has been offered. And frequently it is an action in which the devil has been the unwilling instrument of grace.”4 Two ideas are worth expanding on; firstly, grace. Grace, for Christians, specifically refers to the love and forgiveness of God which none of us deserves and yet all of us desperately need. The Grandmother in A Good Man winds up radically changed by grace. She starts off admonishing

the Misfit, “You could be honest too if you’d only try” – a statement whose full comic absurdity only comes through when you picture your most humiliating relative saying it. But by the end of the story, the Grandmother has realized her wretchedness and the poverty of her own moral state. When she finally tells the Misfit, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” and touches him on the shoulder, she’s a completely different person – perhaps even a good woman. But her transformation irrefutably comes at a high price.

Mystery, the second idea, also has a particular meaning in a Christian context: as O’Connor explains, “that [human life] has, for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for.” Together, grace and mystery comprise a wondrous paradox. On the one hand, it implies that all human efforts to live up to God’s standards are worthless; on the other hand, God’s unconditional love – to the point of death on the cross – bestows upon every human being profound worth. Christianity is founded upon many such mysterious paradoxes. Christ came not as a king, but as a servant. He claimed that His kingdom belonged not to the religious leaders, but to little children. To believe Jesus’s words seems to simultaneously require foolishness and faith. In novelist Ron Hansen’s Mariette in Ecstasy, it’s an old and learned priest who, when asked for his opinion on a miracle, smiles and says, “I don’t believe it’s possible.

I do believe it happened.”

Returning to wonder – in the same way any analysis of a story shouldn’t be taken as exhaustive, mystery is what all good literature teaches us to respect and leave intact. The experience of reading fiction at once compels us to seek truth and grants us space to wonder. Hansen writes elsewhere that fiction “is far better experienced than interpreted… To fully understand a symbol is to kill it” (Hansen, Stay, 12). We’ve all felt the frustration of the English classes where we’ve stabbed away at symbolism as if to exhaustively wring out ‘the meaning’ of the text.

Unlike the mystery of a mystery novel, which exists only to be fully and neatly figured out, good fiction defies our attempts to ‘solve’ it. “A story really isn’t any good unless it successfully resists paraphrase, unless it hangs on and expands in the mind,” O’Connor writes. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t construct theories and look for meaning, only that we should expect what we find to expand our understanding of mystery’s complexity rather than reductively hammer it out.

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In life, as in fiction, fundamental irresolvability can be confounding – yet liberating as well, if we will only keep up hope. Art researcher Khadija Carroll notes, “Where there is a lack of closure there is wonder.” Fitting last words in praise of wonder – at the end of investigations, when we discover there’s still more that we don’t know, we’re back at the mercy of wonder again.

bears a deep relationship to truth.”

[4]

On the mind-boggling subject of grace, O’Connor goes on, “I

don’t want to equate the Misfit with the devil. I prefer to think that, however unlikely this may seem, the old lady’s gesture, like the mustard-seed, will grow to be a great crow-filled tree in the Misfit’s heart, and will be enough of a pain to him there to turn him into the prophet he was meant to become. But that’s another story.” (In parables, Jesus used the mustard seed as a symbol of how the small-

I would like to thank Professor Gage McWeeny and Professor

est faith may grow into the biggest tree, an image of the kingdom of God; He also says that His disciples may move mountains with faith

Jim Shepard for their help.

“as small as a mustard seed.”)

[1]

In his essay The Rise of the Novel, Watt concludes that regard-

less of the direction of influence, philosophical and literary realism “must be seen as parallel manifestations of larger change – that vast transformation of Western civilization since the Renaissance which has replaced the unified world picture of the Middle Ages with another very different one – one which presents us, essentially, with a developing but unplanned aggregate of particular individuals having particular experiences at particular times and at particu-

Sources Dillon, Brian and Macfarlane, Robert. O Altitudo! Cabinet Magazine, Issue 27: Mountains. Fall 2007.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, Fielding. University of California Press, 1962.

Reeve, Clara. The Progress of Romance through Times, Centuries, and Manners. 1785.

lar places” (Watt, 31). For another take on the novel’s influence on

Gallagher, Catherine. The Rise of Fictionality. From The Novel

Western development, Catherine Gallagher argues in The Rise of

Volume I: History, Geography, and Culture, ed. Moretti, Franco.

Fictionality that “novels promoted a disposition of ironic credulity…

Princeton University Press.

Indeed, almost all of the developments we associate with moder-

McKeon, Michael. Generic Transformation and Social Change:

nity – from greater religious toleration to scientific discovery – re-

Rethinking the Rise of the Novel. From Theory of the Novel: A His-

quired the kind of cognitive provisionality one practices in reading

torical Approach, ed. McKeon, Michael. The Johns Hopkins Univer-

fiction, a competence in investing contingent and temporary credit”

sity Press, 2000.

2

(Gallager, 347).

[2]

More on the rise of the novel; critic Michael McKeon points

out that formal realism doesn’t fully displace romance conventions:

McGurl, Mark. Zombie Renaissance. n+1. 27 April 2010.

Robinson, Marilynne. On “Beauty.” Tin House Issue 50: Beauty.

Winter 2011.

Gothic myth Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus comes five

O’Connor, Flannery. A Good Man is Hard to Find. Image Books, 1970.

years after Pride and Prejudice. Charles Dickens’s novels frequent-

McGarvey, Bill. Busted: Authors Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard

ly set the two conventions side by side: deeply realist characters are

– A Catholic Conversation about Faith, Fiction, and Friendship.

haunted not just by their past actions, but by actual ghosts as well.

March 14th, 2006. http://bustedhalo.com/features/busted-authors-

Mark McGurl suggests that our contemporary obsession with zom-

ron-hansen-jim-shepard

bies as allegorical figures is a sign that we’re heading into a new age

O’Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners, ed. Fitzgerald, Sally

of ‘speculative realism.’ In other words, people are still interested

and Fitzgerald, Robert. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 1961.

in the kinds of stories that formal realism can’t handle all by itself.

Hansen, Ron. Mariette in Ecstasy. HarperPerennial, 1991.

[3]

Central to her essay, Robinson links art, language, science,

and religion by their common quest for beauty, noting how mathematicians and physicists endorse as beautiful or elegant theories “which are likelier to cleave to the nature of things because of their

Hansen, Ron. A Stay against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction. HarperCollins Publishers, 2001.

Carroll, Khadija Z. Curating Curiosity: Wonder’s Colonial Phenomenology. http://www.nowlook.at/PDF/curiosity_text.pdf

efficiency and soundness of structure.” She continues, “If this were at all a philosophic age, we might be wondering why it is that beauty can test reality and solve its encryptions in the modest, yet impressive, degree our humanity allows. For me, this is a core definition of beauty: that it is both rigorous and dynamic and that it somehow

14

The Williams Telos

Inez Tan ’12 is an English major from New York, N.Y. She agrees that a good man is hard to find.

Per spe c t iv e

by Brian Li

A man once climbed a mountain side To gaze out from its lofty peak And see the noble valleys below, The rippling rivers and regal trees.

Enchanted by the scene before him, He’d perch up in the summit’s heights ’Till honey golden sun depart And silken starry night arise.

He built his home upon that rock, A city on a hill, a quiet place, That he could everyday look out At the beauty past his windowpane.

But as the freshest air soon smells stale, And the richest comfort rot to common, So did daily dose of majesty Blind his eyes from the view around him.

How quickly he forgot the glory That captivated him then.

And so do we forget the King That calls us to repent.

When first confronted with ourselves Before a Maker so divine, We’re shocked to find forgiveness free, Instead of death, we’re given life.

What seemingly endless joy!

What wonderfully boundless love!

That we say in our deepest parts, “Lord, you will always be enough!”

Yet as the time rolls slowly on, And routine creeps in bit by bit, Fast fades the promise that we made To always find ourselves in Him. So easily our hearts turn cold, The fires wane, the passion’s lost, Forgetting the wonder of His grace And swiftly losing sight of the cross.

Brian Li ’12 is a Math major from Calif. His hobbies include eating good food and thinking about eating good food.

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Branches “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

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The Williams Telos

If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

John 15: 5-8

Kelsey Ham ’12 is a Biology and Religion double major from Mont. She can be found climbing mountains, strumming her uke, and wearing Chacos in the sunshine.

Spring 2012

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The language of God

Discovering God in search of truth and love

by Jasmyne Grismore

In the gospel of John, Jesus tells His disciples that He will soon be leaving to prepare a place for them, and that one day, they will be together again. Thomas asks, “How can we know the way if we don’t know where You’re going?” (John 14:5) Jesus answers, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life…” (John 14:6a) What Jesus reveals to his disciples, and to us as well, is that to know Him is to have direction, truth, and purpose in our lives. Jesus does not merely liken himself to these ideals; rather, He asserts that He is the direction, He is the truth, and He is the purpose. Similarly, in 1 John, we read that “God is love;” thus, to know God is to know love (1 John 4:8). Nonetheless, despite the many attributes of God laid out in Scripture, God Himself rarely makes claims such as ‘I am truthful’ or ‘I am loving’.

To do so would suggest that He functions only as a follower of these principles rather than the author of them. By equating Himself to universal ideals such as truth and love, God establishes Himself as the source of all things good.

Claiming to be the source of anything is a bold statement. I surely cannot say that about myself; for instance, it would be inaccurate (not to mention, extremely obnoxious) for me to refer to myself as truth. The closest I can get is to say ‘I am right,’ but even this wording is faulty.

Neither I, nor any human, can ever be right. That is, we can never encompass all that is right or attain perfect righteousness. Even if we resort to describing ourselves in terms of our individual character traits, we fall short. The traits themselves define us, but we don’t (and can’t) define them. So it seems that, in actuality, we can never be anything. Put less abstractly, we can never be the source of anything, even the most intelligent, most The Williams Telos

talented of us. For example, we credit Isaac Newton for discovering gravity and its related mechanisms, knowing fully well that he did not bring gravity into existence.

Likewise, Van Gogh painted the famous Starry Night, but he took no part in creating night or stars. By our very human nature, we lack both the ability and the authority to create something from nothing.

At this point, it’s reasonable to feel rather dismal about our place and role in this world. The truth is that because we ourselves cannot originate anything, we can only exist and function as part of something else. In what I think is an attempt to maintain their independence and autonomy, some claim that there is no source – and for good reason. To claim that there is a source is to admit that we are in some way accountable to a higher authority. Even so, I personally believe that in more ways than one, having no source is quite a bleak alternative. Speaking for myself, I know that without my faith in God, my sense of purpose would diminish. If I accept that I can’t ever be anything or attain perfection in any way, I would have to question what I am doing here, where I am going, and why it even matters. I can’t imagine that I would ever escape the recurring voice in my head persuading me to believe that everything I did was ultimately futile. Moreover, without a source of good, there would be no reason for me to uphold ideals like truth and love, much less expect others to also uphold them. If we wish to believe that people have even the slightest capacity to love and be true and kind, it is to our advantage that we submit to some rule of authority.

For there to be a source at all, it must exist outside the human realm. Imagine we traced the world back to

“By equating Himself to universal ideals such as truth and love, God establishes Himself as the source of all things good.”

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INEZ TAN

its very first life form; we would have to admit that even it did not create itself. Most would agree that some external occurrence, force, power, or being was responsible for its existence. For Christians, God is the Creator, the ultimate source of existence; in Him all things move and live and breathe (Acts 17:28). Rather than an amorphous abstraction of universal ideals that reward us for our good deeds and strike us for our wrongs, Christians believe in a personal God, One who knows each of us by name and desires fellowship with us. By acknowledging God as the Creator, I must suppose that He created me with and for a purpose. Why else would a perfect God feel the need to create anything outside of Himself? Christians believe that part of our purpose is to be like Christ. As followers of Christ, literally His representatives to the world, Christians have as their role to exemplify truth, love, and goodness rooted in the identity of a God who is sovereign over all.

In us, God created a desire to seek truth and love, hop-

ing that in our search we might come to realize that He is truth and He is love, as well as all that is good. In our search we find that neither our intellect nor our talent is enough to make us the origin of anything. We are also free to believe that perhaps goodness does not require a source, and the fact that it exists is sufficient. However, with this view we miss out on the opportunity to have a genuine relationship with God, who has made Himself accessible to us. There is great freedom in loving a God who is at once righteous and forgiving. When Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,” He points us to the ultimate source — a sovereign, holy, beautiful God.

Jasmyne Grismore ’15 is from Alexandria, Va. Very few things excite her more than good food, good conversation, and a good book.

Spring 2012

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Mustard seed f http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoyachubby/464140864/

Rethinking

What reasons do you have to be sure of your beliefs about God? Confirmation bias is a psychological phenomenon which describes our tendency to seek out information that confirms our opinions and beliefs while avoiding information that contradicts what we believe. I take a lot more time on each page when I’m reading C.S. Lewis compared to Richard Dawkins.

Christians: Have you ever argued an atheist to belief in God? Atheists, have you ever convinced a Christian of the illogicality of their beliefs? How much time have you spent on this? Full disclosure: I’ve been successful about two times out of a hundred.

I like reading the Bible a lot more when the stuff I’m reading fits into the neat theological painting that I’ve drawn. I don’t think I’m alone on this. I’ve heard my brothers and sisters quote 1 John 4:8[2] a whole lot more than Romans 9:22[3].

When I’m having a good week – doesn’t matter how many times I’ve prayed, or sought God’s presence, or read the Bible, or served others, or loved my enemies – I tend to be much more certain about God’s existence and love for me than when I’m having a crappy week. That is to say, I forget Matthew 5:3-4[4], Matthew 5:45[5], James 1:23[6], 2 Corinthians 1:3-4[7] ... I could go on.

When one’s identity is intertwined with one’s beliefs (as is often the case with religious belief), doesn’t it mean that to alter one’s beliefs is, in some sense, to sacrifice a part of oneself?

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The Williams Telos

Jesus has this strong aversion to signs, to demonstrations of his divinity through alterations of reality. There’s this one scene in Matthew 12 where the Pharisees (members of the Jewish elite) wish to see a sign from Jesus.

Now, perhaps they don’t have the purest of intentions when they make this request of Jesus, but still, you would think that since Jesus’ ministry is largely about demonstrating that he is who he says he is, he would seize this opportunity for all that it might be worth. Consider his response to the Pharisees: “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah[8].” (The Jonah allusion

{

“God has blessed me with his he has authored miracles, kepthas he let me down. And still times within the next month llDpillow at night and wonder

refers to the story about Jonah who was in the belly of a whale for three days; likewise, Jesus will be in the belly of the earth for three days before he conquers death and rises again.)

People frequently tell me that they would believe in God if only he made himself more evident. Like: if only God would write his name in the stars, then I would believe. Or I’ve heard people wonder why God seemingly makes it so hard for us to believe in him if our faith and love is his foremost desire. Give us a sign, for heaven’s sake, we say. But in response I submit, 1) If you did see God proclaim his ex-

faith

[1]

the nature of belief

istence in the stars, are you so certain that this would lead to a lifetime of belief? God has blessed me with his love, his presence, his Word; he has authored miracles, kept promises; never once has he let me down. And still I can tell you that a couple of times within the next month I’m going to put my head on the pillow at night and wonder if he’s really real. 2) What kind of God would that be (one who demonstrated His existence through magic tricks)?

What conception of God would we form in our minds?

What would it mean to be a disciple of this God? 3) What about the Incarnation and the Crucifixion and the Resurrection? What more could you ask for?

}

love, his presence, his Word;ff promises; never once I can tell you that a couple of I’m going to put my head on the if he’s really real.”

It reminds me of a story author Brennan Manning tells about how he got the name ‘Brennan.’ While growing up, his best friend was Ray. The two of them did everything together: bought a car together as teenagers, double-dated together, went to school together and so forth. They even enlisted in the Army together, went to boot camp together and fought on the frontlines together. One night while sitting in a foxhole, Brennan was reminiscing about the old days in Brooklyn while Ray listened and ate a chocolate bar. Suddenly a live grenade came into the foxhole. Ray looked at Brennan, smiled, dropped his chocolate bar and threw himself on the live grenade. It exploded, killing

Ray, but Brennan’s life was spared. When Brennan became a priest he was instructed to take on the name of a saint. He thought of his friend, Ray Brennan. So he took on the name ‘Brennan.’ Years later he went to visit Ray’s mother in Brooklyn. They sat up late one night having tea when Brennan asked her, “Do you think Ray loved me?”

Mrs. Brennan got up off the couch, shook her finger in front of Brennan’s face and shouted, “What more could he have done for you?” Brennan said that at that moment he experienced an epiphany. He imagined himself standing before the cross of Jesus wondering, Does God really love me? And Jesus’ mother Mary pointing to her son, saying, “What more could he have done for you?”

I’d say that my cognitive belief in God, as in my certainty as to whether or not he exists, fluctuates on a dayto-day basis. But I find that if I judge how much faith I have in terms of how I am living my life – in other words, to what extent my life reflects my belief in God, or how foolish I would look and how utterly misguided my decisions would seem if God did not exist – this changes very slowly, perhaps on a year-to-year basis. I would say that compared to myself five years ago, I am less certain about whether or not God exists as a mental idea but am much more devoted to him in my daily life.

Psychologists note that when your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger. No small wonder that when I took a Winter Study course on atheism in my sophomore year (class makeup: 1 Christian, 12 atheists), no one changed sides.

The German (agnostic) philosopher Wittgenstein: “What inclines even me to believe in Christ’s resurrection? I play as it were with the thought.–If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed in the grave like every Spring 2012

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/sa_ku_ra/7857464/

human being. He is dead & decomposed. In that case he is a teacher, like any other & can no longer help; & we are once more orphaned & alone. And have to make do with wisdom & speculation. It is as though we are in a hell, where we can only dream & are shut out from heaven, roofed in as it were. But if I am to be REALLY redeemed,– I need certainty–not wisdom, dreams, speculation–and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what my heart, my soul, needs, not my speculative intellect. For my soul, with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, must be redeemed, not my abstract mind. Perhaps one may say: Only love can believe the Resurrection. Or: it is love that believes the Resurrection[9].”

A lot of people have told me that I’m only a Christian because my parents are Christians. To which I would reply 1) my sister and I went to church before our mom did 2) then aren’t you just agnostic/atheist because your parents/friends are? 3) If this were true, I’m pretty sure I would have walked away from the faith soon after the going got real tough. On second thought, all of that sounds a bit harsh. What I mean to say is this: my journey seeking God has been exciting, demanding, heart-wrenching, peaceful, scary, blessed, and challenging all at once. I’ve had to do a lot of ‘growing up’, as it were. It hurts me just a bit when you chalk the whole thing up to something like genetics, as if a relationship with God were like unattached earlobes.

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The Williams Telos

I recently completed a thesis on deconstruction and theology. I’ll save you the burden of having to read it: language and our beliefs are inextricably intertwined, deconstructionists like Jacques Derrida say. Because the relationship between words and the objects to which they refer is arbitrary (the signifier and the signified don’t match up; there is no necessary connection between the word ‘tree’ and an actual tree) nothing guarantees that what we say meaningfully refers to an event in the external world. Instead, words only achieve meaning in relation to other words (a tree is not a bush, it is taller and tree is phonetically dissimilar to ‘tee’). Which means that our understanding of what God means is dependent on our understanding of what ‘human’, ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘reality’, etc. mean. Words don’t stand alone. Also, our comprehension of a word is dependent on how we’ve heard it used in the past. We form our understanding of God based upon how we’ve heard others employ the term. No wonder people tend to inherit the beliefs of their parents. Further, a term requires a series of repeated events to come into existence; we must observe a uniform phenomenon over time before we would think to ascribe a word to it. But we must simultaneously be able to differentiate between external objects and events, and this requires language.

Language requires events, events require language. It’s a chicken or egg sort of thing. Okay, so maybe you do need to read the thesis…

But that’s not the point. What I’m trying to say with all these words is this: I don’t think faith is about mental acquiescence to the idea of a God whom we cannot see.

It doesn’t make sense to me to describe it as the act of weighing the relative likelihood of two mutually exclusive possibilities (God exists/God does not exist) and then choosing the more probable. It must be different than that, more than that. What, then?

Jesus talks a lot about this idea of bearing fruit. In

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}

“What I’m trying to say with all these words is this: I don’t think faith is about mental acquiescence to the idea of a God whom we cannot see.”

{

}

“There is more truth in aht human being loving another human being than there could ever be in an encyclopedia.”

one moment, he’s talking to his disciples and he says, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing[10].” A little later Jesus urges his disciples, “Remain in my love.”

To the Christian wading through a merciless sea of doubt: keep wading, keep following, keep seeking! Intellectual certainty will come and go but faith is a decision that can be renewed with every day. To those of you who are frustrated that you cannot find it within yourself to believe this incredible story that many others have, that it just does not seem logical or correct, to those of you who honestly desire to be a Christian but do not feel it right because you cannot take hold of what you deem to be the proper and responsible degree of intellectual assurance: Take hope! Willfully try to remain in the love of God and see what happens. Cry out to God the paradoxical words of the father hoping for Jesus to heal his son: “I believe, help me with my unbelief[13].”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fendunyasi/559856355/

Faith seems to be a daily decision, a daily act of my will to remain in Jesus’s love. It is to passionately seize hold of a certain way of life. My ability to willfully follow Jesus is not encumbered by a passing cloud of doubt or a string of unfortunate circumstances. Jesus’s life beckons to me, invites me to try to stick with him through thick and thin.

one can ask a Christian, ‘What is truth?’ and in answer to the question the apostle and this Christian will point to Christ and say; Look at him, learn from him, he was the truth[12].”

Just about everyone has heard the notion that God loves you at some point or another. But there is a fundamental difference in knowing about God’s love for you and knowing God’s love for you. As long as God’s love for me stays lodged in my brain as an idea, it is of no importance. I cannot reasonably assess it as either true or false. It is not until I experience it, feel it, and try to shape my live around it that it begins to acquire any real definition, any real truth. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life[11].” He did not say, “I am here to teach you about the truth,” or “Truth is believing these doctrinal propositions.” His life was the truth. There is more truth in a hug from Jesus than there is in a hundred propositional statements about God’s nature. There is more truth in a human being loving another human being than there could ever be in an encyclopedia. Jesus is the truth and we move closer and closer to the truth, not as we know more facts about Jesus but as we become more like him. Kierkegaard: “Thus Christ is the truth in the sense that to be the truth is the only true explanation of what truth is. Therefore one can ask an apostle, Spring 2012

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We are with every passing moment painting a picture of our own truth, placing our faith in something seen or not seen, stated or kept silent. Look, I dare you, at the life of Jesus. Look at his love, his joy, his peace, his patience, his kindness, his goodness, his faithfulness, his gentleness, and his self-control. See if you would not like your painting to look like his. See if you would not want to know him, not as an idea but as a friend.

fastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing (ESV).

[7]

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Fa-

ther of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted

by God (ESV).

[8]

Matthew 12:39 (ESV).

[9]

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value trans. Peter Finch (Chi-

cago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 33e.

[Jesus] said to them… “For truly, I say to you, if you have faith

[10]

John 15:4-5 (NLT).

like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move

[11]

John 14:6 (ESV).

from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible

[12]

Soren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity trans. Howard V.

for you” Matthew 17:20 (ESV).

Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

[1]

[2]

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love

(ESV).

[3]

1991), 205.

[13]

Mark 9:24 (ESV).

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his

power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction … (ESV) [4]

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted (ESV).

[5]

Andy Morgosh ’12 is from San Diego, Calif. His post-grad plans include road-trippin’, mountain climbin’, hammer swingin’, and, most importantly, loving on his family.

For [God] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and

sends rain on the just and on the unjust (ESV).

[6]

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various

kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/xslim/2141264926/

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In smitten gratitude

An interview with writer Linda McCullough Moore

http://www.lindamcculloughmoore.com/author-info.htm

by Inez Tan

I knew I was in good hands when I read the way Margaret Mackenzie, the main character in Linda McCullough Moore’s collection of short stories, recounted a particular Thanksgiving with her motley family: There’s noise out front, and two young nieces burst into the kitchen, followed by their dad, my brother Ned, who ducks as he walks into the room, though his height hardly warrants the nod. His wife Hannah and their two teenage boys follow, weighted down with what appears to be all their earthly possessions.

“Sorry we’re late,” Ned says. “The car caught on fire.”

He always has some excuse.

The brisk, knowing perception in Moore’s stories is a big part of what makes Moore’s stories so hard to put down. With a ready word for every situation, her narrator is humorously and scrupulously observant of family, friends, ex-husbands, happy couples, politics, airports, customers, book groups, organized religion, America, and perhaps most severely of all, herself. As I read, I found myself laughing aloud occasionally, smiling often, but most wondrously of all, stopping to reconsider what I thought I knew about people.

Linda McCullough Moore is the author of the literary novel The Distance Between and This Road Will Take Us Closer to the Moon, a collection of short stories linked by

the same narrator. Her stories have appeared in a hundred places such as The Massachusetts Review, The Sun, Glimmer Train, and The Pushcart Prize XXXV. She lives and writes and teaches creative writing in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she also coaches and mentors fiction writers from far-flung corners by mail, and phone, and email. Linda very kindly agreed to this interview over email.

“Often our stories ask the questions, raise the issues that matter most in a lifetime.”

What drew you to the short story form?

I think if we listen, life is happy to tell us what we are. When I first began writing, my poetry was selling like hotcakes (as we used to say a hundred years ago). Then, I realized, I don’t read poetry, or not much; I read fiction (also theology, it must be said). So I wrote my first published novel, and while I do in fact read novels, I came to realize that I am happier and generally speaking a more pleasant person when I am writing stories. Plus, no publisher wants short stories … ever … (BE ADVISED!) so I have a nice built-in excuse for my collection of rejections.

More generally, how do you write stories? (Do you begin with an idea or a character, or something else? Do you draw from your own life, or that of people around you?)

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I’m working on a How-To for the August issue of The Writer magazine, so let me quote a bit of my thinking about this story business: When you’re writing a story, stay out of the way, as much as possible. The work of writing fiction requires the full participation of the unconscious mind, which will not only supply material, but also offer shape and structure in the bargain. The trick is to create an environment where this unconscious mind can have free play. I tried once to share this wisdom with my teenage son, Asa. “To be creative,” I said, “you need time in your life that is empty, boring, vacant, with absolutely nothing happening. You don’t have that.”

“Clearly,” Asa said, “you’ve never been to high school.”

He was right. Every life will have some bit of wasteland, some empty lot where daydreams come to be. Learn to spend a lot of time there.

A closely related caveat: Don’t plan, don’t plot, just write. Once you have your first line on the page, follow its lead. To the extent you get all managerial you will scare off invention and imagination. Having a predetermined plot often makes the story formulaic, as predictable for the reader as the for the writer.

On the extent to which world view affects the writer’s fiction – your Christian faith has shaped you in some pretty fundamental ways. Your character Margaret Mackenzie was raised Baptist but later becomes stridently skeptical of all religion, wary that it might offer false comforts and justifications. In one story, she notes, “If we sing old hymns tonight, we will be wry and properly ironic when we speak of it tomorrow.” But at other times within the same story, she seems right on the brink of having a spiritual breakthrough, wondering, “Can it be there is a difference between who God is and what people do?” How do you see your faith as influencing your fiction, or informing how you write?

In my story which you quote (My Book Group: Wars and Dying) the narrator makes explicit the modern take on death if there is no God. She spells it out: what people mean when they stand up at funerals and say, “She’s in a better place,” is that the She in question has been obliterated. She has ceased to be. The narrator’s strident irony would ask the reader: Is this what life is all about then? Editors from a number of magazines seemed to engage with the story, sending me questions: “Is this a

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Christian story?” “Is this an atheist story?” “I thought about that question for several days.” Often our stories ask the questions, raise the issues that most matter in a lifetime. When I dip my toe into the roiling waters of online dating, I am the Apostle to the Website. When I submit a story to a magazine, I’m the Apostle to the Editor. God will use our stories where He wills. I like that.

A lot.

I have a story, World Enough and Time, a story which attempts broad hints at heaven. I received a lot of mail about that one. One woman wrote, “I’m 89 years old and all my life I have been afraid of dying. I read your story and for the first time in my life I wondered if maybe dying isn’t what we were created for.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathan_and_jenny/2442340668/

In my story We Will Sing All Six Verses, which will appear in the May issue of The Sun, the narrator is sitting in church and thinking: “See, this is why prayer is so unpopular. It makes a person think of things. Now suddenly the preacher’s preaching. ‘It’s very simple,” he is saying.

‘God commands. We act. That’s the ballgame.’ Good grief!

What if he’s right. What if every time you find somebody’s ashes sitting in a store room where you work, you are meant to take them out to the nearest cemetery, and have a pickup funeral. What if when the leaves are fallen, you are only meant to rake them up, and if your family’s spits and spats go back generations, they are to be erased by packing up the family silver and selling it to other families who just think it’s pretty. What if you just stop one

day trying to decide whose fault your life is, put a padlock on the courtroom door, send the court reporter home, and just go forgive your people. Just forgive yourself, or if you know full well you’re not up to the job, get down on your knees and let Jesus do it for you. That is the arrangement that’s on offer, if I’ve got the story right.”

Later in the same story, a mother says about her own son’s death: “‘Tony’s dying was my fault. His dying was my sin.’ I give no answer. We do not do well, I think, to tramp on one another’s owning of a thing. We have no right to steal another’s penitence. ‘So,’ she says, now matter of fact. ‘There is God’s grace or there is nothing.’ She turns to look at me. ‘God is God, that wild, and mean, and full of mercy.”’

There is a saying, wildly popular: Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words. Well, guess what?

I think we need words a great deal of the time. I have trouble imagining my next door neighbor appearing on the morning of the last day of the world and saying to me, “You were such a good neighbor that I extrapolated from that Jesus loved me enough to die for me to make me His forever.” I’m just sayin’. But then I’m a writer. Crazy about words, I am.

I’m a serious devotee of the school of SHOW DON’T TELL, but at the same time, people in our stories will sometimes start talking, with no by your leave, and in my experience, sometimes they just plain tell. These characters are in good company, I think. In Marilynne Robinson’s novel Home people sit on the back porch and talk theology for hours. (It’s riveting.)

In my story Final Dispositions (see: Apostle to the Pushcart Prize XXXV), an imaginary priest spells things out pretty clearly: “‘Sin is the best hope we’ve got. If our problems are mental or psychological, all we’ve got is pills, and they stop working the day that you stop taking them.

Ah, but sin...’ His voice softens. ‘Sin can be named and napalmed. You gotta love a God who’s up to that.’” These lines to be read by a few hundred thousand people who are unlikely to ever read a Gospel tract. That’s what is so dynamite exciting about followers of Jesus writing fiction for a literary or a mainstream audience. Our words, our contagious love of Jesus, His drop-dead gorgeous love for us can find a way into hearts and minds who may not hear any other way. What a glorious charge we have to keep.

What a beautiful commission: we are entrusted with the Truth and the very Love of God and allowed to fit these Spring 2012

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life-giving bits of majesty into our little stories. God, that good to us. I think fiction writers ought to be the most grateful people on the planet.

As a closing point, the theme of this issue of the Telos is wonder. A moment that stands out to me in your work is the moment from which your collection draws its name:

What writers and literature have you been most influenced by? Particularly, have there been any Christian writers?

“Aunt Margaret, turn here. Turn right,” Molly, my little niece, pipes up from the back seat. “Turn right.”

“Why, honey?” I slow the car and hit the turn signal. I’m a big fan of sudden inspiration. I make the turn.

“Thanks!” she says. “This road will take us closer to the moon.”

“I think if we Christians have a common failing, it is our focus on our selves: our sin, our pain, our successes and our disappointments.”

My main influences in story-crafting have been Alice Munro, William Trevor, and Maeve Brennan, whose work I’ve read so very many times. God has richly gifted these three with prodigal grace. (Imagine if God only gifted Christians … what a sad world this would be.)

I believe there is something called “Christian fiction;” although I must confess to never having read such as there be. There’s a story, perhaps apocryphal, of A. W. Tozer’s having been invited to speak at a conference on Christian Fiction. He stood and said, “It doesn’t exist,” and he sat down. It’s always struck me as something of an oxymoron, but I digress. A topic for another day.

You’ve been committed to teaching and mentoring writers for some time. What kind of struggles do you often see?

What’s the first piece of advice you give your students?

Again I will quote Tozer: Acquaint thyself with God. It’s where living starts; it’s where writing starts. And the best way I have ever found to do that is through praise.

Live in thanksgiving. Stand in smitten gratitude. Learn what that means, and the writing will come along just fine. (Oh yeah, one more thing: grammar actually matters. You heard it first from me.)

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I find that moment full of unexpected wonder, and I also wonder about the moment itself. Where did it come from?

Would you have any parting thoughts on fiction and wonder?

I think you have hit upon the wellspring of wonderful writing. Wonder full. I think if we Christians have a common failing, it is our focus on our selves: our sin, our pain, our successes and our disappointments. We are positively captivated by our own experiences, even our experiences of grace. Now here’s the part where I tell you the secret of life: Look at Him. Full stop. That’s the road that takes us closer to the moon, the path that leads us to the stars.

Writing the Gospel to the secular, which is how I understand my calling, isn’t cut and paste. It isn’t formula. It’s living a life lost in wonder, love, and praise. (You’ll have to forgive me. I’m writing this on Easter and I’m a bit carried away. Someone just told me Mary saw the Lord. He talked to her. The whole town’s in an uproar. Dead men are walking down the street. Death died at 5 a.m. The angels are going crazy. Somebody ought to write this down.)

Inez Tan ’12 is an English major from New York, N.Y. She writes fiction, poetry, and occasionally about herself in the third person.

Man of mystery

by Frank Pagliaro

G.K. Chesterton’s faith expressed in his fiction The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908), G.K. Chesterton’s masterful experiment in Christian metaphysical thriller, serves as a valiant attempt at a solution, if not at least an explanation, to the problem of evil. It also functions as a treatise on the utter incomprehensibility of God. Chesterton claimed that he wrote the novel in order to help himself realize the centrality of good in the universe during his arduous conversion process. Indeed, the seemingly unnecessary terrors inflicted by Sunday on the Council of Anarchists mirror the absurd struggles of daily human life. Throughout his often-humorous novel, Chesterton reminds us that we cannot hope to see or intimately understand the ways of the Almighty. Rather, we must intimate divine truths, trusting our faith and reveling in the mysterious aspects of the Lord. Indeed, in his Introduction to the Book of Job (1907), Chesterton himself proclaims that “[t]he riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.” The book’s psychedelic closing sequence suggests that while God remains within and without every piece of existence (even the evil parts), we cannot clearly see every part of him. God obscures Himself in His creation by standing at the center of it. As fallen human beings, we must accept that God stands in the center and prepare for Him to strike our souls with the awe of His creation. God does not mean for us to understand it completely. Ultimately, Chesterton does not aim to solve the problem of evil (which we understand in the context of The Man Who Was Thursday as general human suffering, rather than specific evils that we subject one another to). Rather, he desires to mark out its place in human existence and show that even evil can demonstrate God’s infinite compassion.

According to The Man Who Was Thursday, we derive our wonder at the universe from a most unexpected place – order. The story opens in Saffron Park, where the poet and devoted anarchist Lucian Gregory waxes philosophical on the artful power of chaos. “An anarchist is an artist,” opines Gregory. “The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.

He sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen” (Chesterton, 7). According to Gregory, we can only marvel at a universe in strife. This worldview can prove seductive, considering the sad state of our world.

However, Gabriel Syme, the poetic protagonist assigned by Scotland Yard to infiltrate the Anarchists’s Society, pulls us back. Claiming that poetry manifests itself most clearly in England’s Underground Railway (the Tube of Chesterton’s time), Syme claims that “[t]he rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it ... chaos is dull, because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere ... but man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria and lo! It is Victoria” (Chesterton, 8). If we only make the effort, we may see the wondrous glory of God in the order of the universe – especially when we remember that Christ is the Logos, that ordering principle of the cosmos. God ordains all things.

It is almost painfully obvious that Sunday represents YHWH, the Almighty, the Judeo-Christian God. Gabriel Syme recognizes him as the president of the Council of Anarchists immediately. Instantly recognizable as an authority figure, Sunday commands immense respect.

Moreover, the Council Members even ascribe him a sort

“According to The Man Who Was Thursday, we derive our wonder at the universe from a most unexpected place – order.”

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwarby/2405294658

of omnipresence. Says Dr. Bull, “he can be in six places at once” (Chesterton, 58). Syme sees Sunday as genuinely larger than life: “[Syme] had not seen it literally because it was too large to see... it looked as if the big man was entertaining five children to tea” (Chesterton, 31). However, Sunday first appears as the villain, grotesque and offputting in every way. Syme, apparently “too sensitive to the smell of spiritual evil,” insists that drawing near to Sunday seems like closing in on Hell itself. (Chesterton, 32). Sunday acts as the novel’s main antagonist. As the Council members gradually reveal to one another their true identities as undercover law enforcement officers, they position themselves against Sunday’s cunning and malice. He plays the role of worthy adversary, constantly a step ahead of the story’s protagonists. Inspector Ratcliffe laments, “Don’t you know his jokes are always so big and simple that no one has never thought of them? Can you think of anything more like Sunday than this, that he should put all his enemies on the Supreme Council and then take care that it was not supreme?” (Chesterton, 68) We may find ourselves asking why Chesterton has made God so repugnant. However, Chesterton desires that we focus not on the “why?” Attempting to understand God’s ways, which are not ours, will only lead to further confusion over His actions, particularly in relation to the problem of evil.

The more the other characters try to understand Sunday, the more he seems at once entirely powerful and profoundly ridiculous. Until the final chapter, the gradually unmasked members of the Anarchist’s Council express constant anger with, abhorrence of, and bewilderment at Sunday. After all, he has fooled all of them – even more than they know. Almost the entire novel passes before they realize that Sunday does not occupy his time solely by serving as the president of the Supreme Council of Anarchists. He tells them in Chapter XIII, “I am the man in the dark room, who made you all policemen” (Chesterton, 87). Chesterton has created an utterly incomprehensible God. He does one thing and says another, carries out counter-productive whims, and acts at crossed purposes at every step. Sunday bounces and runs like a boy, and even rides an elephant through the streets of a crowded city (Chesterton, 89). His actions make no sense to us – indeed, they frustrate us to no end. Sunday himself declares that “you will have found out the truth of the last tree and the top-most cloud before the truth about me. You will understand the sea, and I shall still be a riddle; you shall know what the stars are, and not know what I am” (Chesterton, 87). We can think of the problem of evil in the same way. The more we try to understand it, the more it baffles us. In The Man Who Was Thursday, God maddens us by becoming a child – utterly incomprehensible, but supremely lovable.

Aside from obviously echoing the Incarnation, Sunday’s child-like quality serves as a helpful reminder of the true divine nature. We should not view Sunday as laughing at us – though he does not quite laugh with us, either. Chesterton, as he does in his numerous Christian apologies, places the burden upon his readership. We can choose to feel cheated by the universe, conned by God. Sometimes, nothing seems to make sense. However, we may also choose to revel in the humor manifested in Sunday. As he flings nonsensical notes to the protagonists, first from the elephant’s back and then from the speeding firetruck, we cannot help but laugh as Syme, Bull, and Ratcliffe read their contents. Sunday has made fools of the men. Yet even as he diminishes them, he leads them to their ul-

“We must make a conscious effort to understand that God, too, has suffered greatly, even to the point of death on the cross.”

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timate destiny, literally and figuratively. He laughs not because he has fooled them, but because he understands the comedy that lies at the deepest heart of the universe.

The Christian understanding asserts that our Lord will return. In the end, as Matthew 11:5 tells us, “The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” Everything will turn out right.

Syme and his compatriots reach this surprisingly full understanding after their chase of Sunday has finished and they have arrived at his deliberately paradisaical estate. At this time, Syme and his fellows finally realize their true identities. After Syme puts on his “peacockblue” costume emblazoned with the sun and stars, he finds that he has discovered his true identity: “If Syme had been able to see himself, he would have realized that he, too, seemed to be for the first time himself and no one else” (Chesterton, 99). Surrendering to the child-like God allows us to discover our truest and noblest selves. However, even as we more fully understand ourselves, God becomes more enigmatic.

The story’s kaleidoscopic ending reveals the full extent of the perplexity of God’s true nature, and informs us about the proper attitude towards the unintelligible parts of creation. As so many philosophers and scholars have tried before, Syme attempts in the book’s final chapter to put God on trial. After Lucian Gregory stands before the seven thrones and indicts the formerly undercover policemen for their lack of suffering even as they rule over a suffering world, Syme cries, “It is not true that we have never descended from these thrones. We have descended into hell.” Syme then turns to Sunday and pointedly asks him, “Have you ever suffered?” (Chesterton, 102) We can certainly identify with both Gregory and Syme. Gregory points his finger at the ruling class, as we often find ourselves wont to do, and blames them for the woeful state of humanity. Meanwhile, Syme blames the Almighty. This, too, seems a familiar recourse. However, Sunday provides the last word.

As his face grows larger and larger, eventually filling the sky and infiltrating Syme’s mind, Sunday echoes Mark 10:38-39, booming “Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?” (Chesterton, 103) Even as he clouds our view of the universe, Sunday gives us its greatest insight. Just as Christ does when He utters these words in the Gospel,

Sunday means the words both as a challenge and a reassurance. We must make a conscious effort to understand that God, too, has suffered greatly, even to the point of death on the cross. Once we understand this point and cease pointing the accusatory finger at God, then we may see the most wondrous aspect of all existence. What seems like evil on the surface (Sunday’s wild goose chase with Syme and the other detectives) may in fact lead us to our salvation (Sunday’s estate, at which the detectives become their fullest, most triumphant selves). God, by participating in our human pain through the Incarnation, has sanctified it. If we turn the question around and ask God if he can drink of the cup of our suffering, we receive a resounding affirmative. God knows what we go through.

He laughs because of it, in order to assure us that we need not worry about our present suffering, nor about those parts of the universe that do make complete sense to us.

The wonder of the beatific vision awaits us. There, everything will finally make sense. In the meantime, Chesterton reminds us to content ourselves with accepting that the Almighty will continue to mystify us. God’s order is not our order and God’s sense not our sense. If we recognize this, we may see through to the goodness of every single day.

Works cited: Chesterton, G.K. The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. Stilwell, Kansas: Digireads.com Publishing, 2005.

Frank Pagliaro ’14 is an English and History major from Cape Cod, Mass. Phrases and platitudes from G.K. Chesterton’s greatest apologetics, Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man, run through his head daily.

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Jubilation

Living faithfully in every area of life

by Judith Clerjeune There is no separation between sacred and secular.

If we reject truths just because they do not sound Christian or ‘biblical’ or sacred, then we are rejecting the spirit of the living God. The creation. The Fall. Redemption and Restoration.

We start talking about the story of Creation and the Fall. The story of creation is not simply about how God created the earth; instead it is the story we are living in.

In order to find our calling, we must know Whose we are. Our individual callings will be different but Christians are all placed within creation as image bearers of Christ.

After creation came the Fall. Harmonious relationships between God and humanity, between humanity and nature, and between us were broken. All was created good, but because of the Fall there is now something wrong with creation itself and we must be aware that whatever we do now has been affected. Sin came from within us, but Jesus provided redemption through his sacrifice on the cross. Jesus took on the full wrath of God that we deserved. He provided not only redemption but also restoration. Restoration is a process that starts internally once we accept Jesus, and it continues to expand to every area of our lives.

We are called to be restored so that we may also be restorers.

God created everything good. There is no separation between sacred and secular because God is and want to be involved in all areas of life. The Fall tainted God’s Creation but everything was created good. At the end of day, God will gather everything unto Himself for His glory and honor.

All of it belongs to God.

Judith Clerjeune ’14 is a History major from Nashville, Tenn. She recorded these thoughts at this year’s Jubilee Conference, which aims to help college students serve God in their field of study.

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“I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

Psalm 139:14

Jamie Baik ’14 is a Studio Art major from N.J. She is a germaphobe, but not when it comes to ice cream.

TELOS spring 2012