Evolution, Ethics, and Theodicy

Michael Le Page at CultureLab wrote a review of a book entitled Inside the Human Genome: A case for non-intelligent design by John C. Avise. The title of the review expresses succinctly what I find to be the most profound link between the debate over evolution and the debate over religion.

The title Le Page chose was, "A caring god would not have designed us like this."

Essentially what modern atheists do is restate the problem of evil in terms of evolutionary science. Look at how much DNA is wasted, they say. Look at what a mess it all is if you really look at it. Look at how much better it could have been if it really had been designed.

Thus the fascination that scientists have toward the human body and its incredible complexity is tempered by a sober realism about the horrible things that can occur naturally, all because our biology is so screwed up.

As N. T. Wright wisely points out, the problem of evil cuts both ways. For the religious, the problem is, "If God is good and God is in control, how can bad things happen?" For the atheist, the problem is, "In light of the immense evil that surrounds us, is all of the good that we experience just a big cosmic joke? Is there any meaning to it at all, or is it essentially random?"

Any self-aware scientist has to feel the tension. We study the world around us because it truly is so fascinating, so beautiful, in all of its complexity. But yet that very complexity leads to many things that cause incredible misery. Should we love or hate the world we live in?

Christians are far from working out this question. Although scripture insists that the world was good, even very good when God created it, the current state of the world difficult to measure from a Christian perspective. Is the universe in all of its complexity still essentially good, or has it experienced fundamental corruption?

And different denominations of Christianity profoundly disagree on their doctrine of the end times, which has significant implications for how we view the universe now. Is God going to completely obliterate all created matter and bring in something totally new, or are we going to see some continuity between the old and the new? Should we spend time caring about this world, or should we be so other-worldly that we think only of the next?

This question, which I maintain is equally unclear for both atheist and Christian, really comes to bear when considering ethical questions we face today. For Le Page, it comes down to this:

Why do we still allow children to be born with hideous diseases that could be prevented? Why do we rightly glorify efforts to cure diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's, but still regard tackling the root cause - our dismal, degenerating DNA - as taboo?

Our ethics have been so hideously distorted by superstitious nonsense that we cannot see the clear moral imperative: we need to start sorting out the mess of a genome evolution has left us as soon as we can.

I'm not unwilling to sympathize with Le Page on this point. For him, the problem of evil can be solved by endeavoring to fix it ourselves. I think it would take a certain hardness of heart, from a Christian perspective, to completely shut him down on this point.

Yet I do think it's worth reflecting on where our power to do good is coming from. If all of the universe has been formed out of the oblivion by totally impersonal forces, what makes us think that we have actually accomplished anything by attempting to alleviate human suffering? Will not all of our attempts to solve the problem of evil be swallowed up by death and decay?

If, on the other hand, we believe the testimony of ancient Christians, who claimed that the Messiah was truly raised from the dead, and that God's new creation has begun, there is something to hope for in fighting against the problem of evil. There is power in every attempt to alleviate human suffering, because we have hope that the power of God really is for us, not ultimately against us.

Now if we do rely on such power, then in fact it would be wise to use caution when approaching ethical problems. The urge to just "do something" when faced with problems of suffering in the world has to be tempered by wisdom. That is where religion derives its moral authority in society; it preserves the memory that the best intentions often pave the road to hell.

But if we say that ultimately our hearts our set on the next world and not this one, then I don't really know what we do about the problem of evil. We can hope to escape it, but we can never hope to really solve it. I can see how a scientist would have a real problem with this.

Ultimately I think the way we, both Christians and atheists, need to approach the question of theodicy is by asking the question, "Should we love or should we hate the world around us?" I think this will put us all on more common ground as we consider important ethical questions facing our world.

It's easy for atheists to think, "There just can't be a loving all-powerful God out there because there is evil," and it's easy for Christians to think, "I know why God allows evil, and atheists are just so hard-hearted that they won't accept it."

But if we consider together the more complicated question (all of us admitting that it is complicated) that I have just put forward, we will realize that we have a lot of different values to weigh against each other. One value is of our curiosity about this beautiful and fascinating universe; another is our desire not to see people suffer.

How we measure those values against one another will make an enormous difference for our future. The problem of evil is not some philosopher's game; it is a real, practical matter for all people.

Abortion Policy and "Health Care Reform"

NRLC Media Backgrounder: Abortion Policy and "Health Care Reform"

The above link is for anyone who would like details on the current pro-life opposition to the Senate health care reform bill that Nancy Pelosi et al. are trying to push through Congress.

You can say whatever you want about the need for health care reform, but I think a little respect for our position is in order. This is a principled stand. It is not asking a lot that the federal government spending shouldn't fund abortion. The vast majority of Americans agree, but Pelosi and her fellow crusaders can't give us the simple dignity of a guarantee. The argument that "we wouldn't be changing current federal law" is simply not good enough.

Here's a simple question: if current law supposedly already prohibits federal money from being spent on abortions, then how can it possibly hurt to respect the conscience of millions of Americans by stating in clear, simple language that health care funding will not go toward abortions? As superfluous as that may be (and my hunch is that it isn't) it would at least show some basic respect.

Pro-choicers, you might think that pro-lifers are trying to take away your personal choices. But we think you're trying to kill people with our money. Which of these really carries more weight? Be honest with yourself, and have a little respect for us.

There are plenty of us pro-lifers who would be fine with seeing this health care reform bill pass, as long as we had a guarantee that federal money couldn't be spent on abortions. So wouldn't the most prudent thing to do be simply to give us what we want? We're not asking a whole lot.

But just as I was saying back before the election in 2008, I fear people too often underestimate the abortion lobby's power over seemingly virtuous politicians. I guess "change" doesn't come without collateral damage, namely thousands more children each year being killed thanks to government spending.

Or so I am led to believe.

Calvin on Free Will

In this blog post, I get to tackle Book II, 2.1 - 4.8 of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, which deals especially with everyone's favorite doctrine of Calvin's, his doctrine of free will, or rather his doctrine of bondage of the will.

Now, before I begin, I think it's necessary to untangle two very distinct doctrines that don't have as strong a connection as one might at first think. Those two doctrines are providence and bondage of the will.

The doctrine of providence was dealt with back in Book I (see my post here). In Calvin's understanding, every event happens not only with God's foreknowledge but by his decree. This is obviously a tough idea to swallow (given that so many bad things happen) but Calvin defends it as scriptural.

The doctrine of bondage of the will described in this section of the Institutes is not the same thing by any means, because Calvin is not talking about our will being subject to the decree of God. Quite the opposite: our will is enslaved by the devil.

There is a relationship between these two doctrines, but ultimately if we're going to understand them both, we have to first uncouple them. I think a simple example helps to illustrate my point.

In the Garden of Eden, according to Calvin, Adam and Eve had free will. Their will was not bound by the power of evil. They had the power to choose good or to choose evil. So Calvin's doctrine of the bondage of the will starts after Adam's first sin.

However, Calvin's doctrine of God's providence starts before Adam's first sin. Calvin would say that even though Adam had perfectly free will in Eden, yet it was ultimately God's decree that determined everything. This is paradoxical and confusing, yet Calvin defends it.

So to me, personally, the doctrine of providence is way harder to understand than the doctrine of the bondage of the will. Bondage of the will in Calvin's theology can be seen in terms of cause and effect: Adam sinned, so human will was corrupted and is no longer free.

Providence, on the other hand, has no such explanation. It is all-pervasive in Calvin's thought. All things, good or bad, ultimately come down to the mysterious decree of God. Even when people have free will still God's providence reigns supreme, in some incomprehensible way.

Just one comment on this before continuing. Many people would wonder, "If it's all up to God's providence, why pray?" But Calvin would surely respond, "Why would you pray if it's not all up to God's providence?"

Calvin definitely believed that God answers prayers, and that the prayers of the faithful can actually change the course of events. How does he reconcile that with his doctrine of providence? In some sense, he doesn't; whatever mystery is lurking there he just ignores.

But in another sense, there's no need to reconcile prayer with providence; for Calvin they go hand in hand. Calvin was no deist. He didn't believe in a far off God who determined everything long ago and is now simply watching. Quite the opposite: for Calvin, God is always close to whatever is happening. This is where prayer makes the most sense.

I could spend all eternity trying to hash this out, but I haven't said anything yet about Calvin on free will. The basic doctrine is simple enough: "Man has now been deprived of freedom of choice and bound over to miserable servitude" (this is the heading to Book II, Chapter 2). Don't you love Calvinism?

I find that Calvin here deals with lots of philosophical arguments in his development of the doctrine. Although he is blunt, he is also aware of and sensitive to many philosophical and theological questions about how we should view free will.

He understands that there are two errors to be avoided:

(1) When man is denied all uprightness, he immediately takes occasion for complacency from the fact; and, because he is said to have no ability to pursue righteousness on his own, he holds all such pursuit to be of no consequence, as if it did not pertain to him at all. (2) Nothing, however slight, can be credited to man without depriving God of his honor, and without man himself falling into ruin through brazen confidence.

Calvin's view, then, is simply the most intensely God-centered you can imagine: None of the credit belongs to us, and all of the blame belongs to us. We justly deserve blame for what we do wrong, but only God deserves credit for what we do right.

He sympathizes with the early Church Fathers who seemed to uphold free will, but from his point of view they were falling into error (1): they thought that if they denied free will, they would relieve humans of their responsibility to be righteous.

He criticizes the philosophers for falling into error (2): they fall into the belief that humans by our own efforts can purify ourselves and become righteous.

Calvin actually demonstrates himself to be a sort of compatibilist, in the sense that "man is necessarily, but without compulsion, a sinner." In other words, humans sin willfully and not because they are forced to; but yet because our very will is tainted, we will necessarily do evil and not good. So we are justly condemned, even though in some sense we can't help ourselves.

I find that discussions of the will are most confusing because it's difficult to talk about something outside of ourselves affecting something that is at the core of who we are. Calvin's doctrine of the will is not about the devil tying up our souls so that we no longer have a choice. It's something much, much deeper and scarier.

One way to gain power over someone is by being stronger and being able to force them to do what you want. The other way, which is much, much scarier, is to be able to lure them in so that they actually obey you even though they think they're doing what they want.

My friend once told me that choosing not to follow traditional moral codes is also a form of self-discipline. Choosing not to restrain one's sexual appetite, for example, is as true a decision as choosing to restrain it.

But if you sell yourself into slavery and call it freedom because you chose it, you're still a slave. That is the way the devil works. He is far more powerful than a strong man. He has no need to attack you. He simply waits while you come crawling to him willingly, thinking that you are exercising freedom in doing so.

This is how Calvin understood the state of the human will. I have to say, it's difficult not to agree with him; I see it both in scripture and in experience. In our world it is not the sin that we feel guilty for that worries me. It is the sin that we feel no guilt for, because we think we are doing right! That is the ultimate slavery.

Still, Calvin is not as unreasonable as some would take him to be on this issue. For instance, he says that it's okay to use the term "free will" if it is understood correctly: "If anyone, then, can use this word without understanding it in a bad sense, I shall not trouble him on this account. But I hold that because it cannot be retained without great peril, it will, on the contrary, be a great boon for the church if it be abolished. I prefer not to use it myself, and I should like others, if they seek my advice, to avoid it."

But what about the good things that people do? Humans aren't utterly corrupt, are they? No, and Calvin actually praises the abilities that God has given people through his Spirit. This is one of the passages in Calvin that I most enjoyed reading:

Whenever we come upon these matters in secular writers, let that admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God's excellent gifts. If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God.

In other words, truth, wherever it is found, is God's truth, and all people who have such truth deserve our respect and honor. This is a great theological tradition, and I think we have a constant need in the Church to emphasize it.

But as for spiritual understanding, Calvin stresses that it is only by the Spirit that a person's will can ever be regenerated in order to seek the good. And he emphasizes that this is wholly the work of God, even after regeneration; he does not regenerate us only to then allow us to make up our minds, but he regenerates us completely, so that just as sin once had absolutely sway over our hearts, now righteousness does.

I have to wrestle with these ideas, but I've spent all my time just writing them down. Calvin's theology is so dense that it's hard to break it down into simple concepts that I can work with. The Institutes are 1400 pages long, and yet the only reason they're not three times as long is because Calvin's writing is so focused!

Maybe after I've let these ideas percolate a little while, I'll have more commentary to make.

Reading Paul

For he will repay according to each one's deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.

Romans 2:6-8

During the adult education hour at our church, I've been going to a class on Romans. We Protestants love Romans, don't we? To us it almost seems to summarize the gospel more sublimely and succinctly than, well, um, the gospels. (shrug)

Anyway, the structure of the class has been to hit a series of hot-button issues dealt with in Romans, rather than to outline the overall argument. The teachers have been very up front that this is what they're doing, so I can't blame them for it. It is good to educate Christians about modern controversies about the Bible. At the very least, when people hear all the fuss about N. T. Wright and the "New Perspective on Paul" they'll know a little bit about what's going on.

I have to give the teachers credit for stating explicitly that we're not to judge anyone with regards to the controversy on Paul's view of justification in Romans. There's an awful lot of mudslinging that goes on over seemingly obscure theological issues, but since many people take those issues to be the core of the gospel, they're quick to pass judgment on new ideas.

What do I mean by "obscure theological issues"? It might sound offensive to many Christians, but that's really what these are: obscure. Face it. You don't know what Romans says in Greek, do you? If you do, then great, but let's all admit from the start that a) Paul is hard to understand and b) if God's salvation is based on understanding theological fine print, we're all screwed.

So what are these issues that are obscure yet central to what many Christians believe is the gospel? Quite simply: God's righteousness, our guilt, and justification by faith apart from the law.

These are big theological concepts, so thankfully we've broken them down so that even little children can understand. We're all sinners, but God is so merciful to us that he sent his only Son to die on our behalf, so that if we believe in him he will forgive our sins, and we can go to heaven. Justified by faith: just as if I'd never sinned. Easy, right?

Except that it isn't so easy. Evangelicals insist so adamantly that our salvation is not by works that they virtually screen out passages like Romans 2 (see the quote above) where Paul explicitly states that there will be a final judgment according to works. What happened to faith alone?

I asked one of the teachers at the end of our class today about this, and he actually thought that Romans 2 worked in his favor, against the New Perspective guys, including Wright.

His reasoning is as follows. The thing that the New Perspective does with Paul is that it makes justification by faith not so much about how we are saved (soteriology), but about who constitutes the church (ecclesiology). There is massive evidence for this shift in Romans, including the fact that every single time Paul brings up justification by faith, it's in the context of talking about the Jew/Gentile distinction that is now abolished in Christ.

The problem, my teacher says, is that Romans 2 makes it clear that when Paul talks about works, he is also talking about the moral law, not just the particularly Jewish law. So when Paul says that justification is by faith apart from works, he means those works, too.

Wait a minute. So, he's basically interpreting Romans 3 in such a way as to nullify what was just said in Romans 2, and to do that he actually uses Romans 2? That's like using Paul to refute Paul. Something is amiss.

In fact, the vast majority of evangelical churches interpret Romans 2 the way they want to. They call it "reading in context," but it's not reading in Paul's context--just the context of post-Reformation theology. They explain it like this: in Romans 2, Paul is showing us that God has the right to demand of us perfect righteousness. But then in Romans 3, he shows us that none of us are righteous, and that there's no hope except in God's mercy. So then he finishes Romans 3 by telling us how we are justified by faith apart from works, because there's no way we could be saved by our works.

The only problem is that's basically interpreting Romans 2:6-8 out of existence. It's not reading it "in context," it's just a failure to take it seriously. In absolutely no part of Romans does Paul ever indicate that he's not utterly serious when he says, "To those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life."

So is this "works salvation?" Well, one huge complicating factor is that Paul often seems to view salvation as a different thing from judgment at the end time. Having taken my teacher's advice and read Romans straight through (about three times since this class start three weeks ago) I noticed that often Paul talks about being "saved" while referring merely to conversion. It seems to indicate being rescued from the present corrupt generation and being brought into God's people, "grafted into the root," as it were.

But then other times, as in Romans 13:11, Paul refers to "salvation" as being the end time, perhaps the return of Jesus. And in that context, he says quite explicitly that we need to "lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light."

Paul would seem to be saying that the first kind of salvation is absolutely not based on works, but entirely by faith (cf. Romans 10:9-10). But as for anticipating the hope in which we were saved (8:24) Paul exhorts us to "put to death the deeds of the body," "for if you live according to the flesh, you will die." (8:13) And this seems entirely consistent with what he said back in Romans 2, that people will be judged according to works.

But is it by our own effort that we're saved? Paul doesn't really seem to be saying, "Just put in the effort and you'll be saved." He says, "If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." Without the Spirit, for Paul, nothing is possible. With the Spirit, everything is possible. So in the end, it's still all by grace--not by your own works, but by the work of the Spirit.

What is Paul's primary message in all of Romans? Well, starting in Ch. 1 he talks a lot about faith; then especially in Ch. 8 he talks about hope; but he ends the letter by talking about "the greatest of these": love. Echoing the words of Jesus, Paul answers for us the question of how we ultimately please God: "The commandments... are summed up in this word, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" (13:9)

Kind of funny how 1 Cor. 13 is the "love chapter," and then it turns out, so is Romans 13!

And that really does, I think, summarize Paul's biggest point ever: it's all about love. In Romans 2, when he's talking about judgment, he starts with, don't judge others! And in Ch. 12-15, he talks about serving one another, overcoming evil with good, and not violating someone else's conscience, and all the other ways in which we show love.

In the end, I don't understand Romans any better than the next guy in my Sunday school class. But I do know that Protestants will often go to great lengths to twist passages in Romans that don't suit their preconceived notions of what "the context" of Romans is. And that seems wrong to me, mostly because I think it causes us to miss Paul's greatest point ever, which is that it's all about love!

So if anyone asks me what the gospel is all about, I will say it's all about love. And I think that's easy enough for a child to understand.

Big business conservatism? No way.

I really appreciate this article written by Jonah Goldberg, which discusses why "big business" does not equal "conservative."

In fact, the interesting bit of information he opens up with is how much big business seems to support the Democrats: "It's worth remembering that Obama was the preferred candidate of Wall Street, and the industry gave to Democrats by a 2-1 margin at the beginning of last year."

Yet, as Goldberg points out, the generally left-leaning newspapers would rather focus on whatever support big businesses are giving Republicans. What they fail to highlight in stories with headlines like "Wall Street shifting toward Republicans" is that Wall Street is still giving a majority of their political contributions to Democrats, despite whatever gains Republicans have made.

In casual political conversation, it's almost a given that Republicans are in line with big business while Democrats are trying to protect the little guy from those big evil corporations. Could it be that big evil corporations had a change of heart last year and decided to support the liberals in office?

I doubt it. Here's Goldberg's take on things:

The lesson here is fairly simple: Big business is not "right wing," it's vampiric. It will pursue any opportunity to make a big profit at little risk. Getting in bed with politicians is increasingly the safest investment for these "crony capitalists."

It's all about profit. Would anyone seriously be surprised to hear that?

The scary thing is that sometimes politics can actually feed the desires of powerful companies to maximize profit. And in our day, this is how "progressive" policies end up actually working. By being overly involved with which businesses are profitable or unprofitable, the government is actually favoring the powerful, not the little guy.

In a just system, powerful people should not be able to gain financially from laws passed by Congress. Markets should be driven by what consumers want, not by what politicians want, especially politicians who are driven by pressure from wealthy political supporters.

This is why it would be so wonderful to have genuine conservatives in government, who believed not in big business, but in free markets. That means restrained government--not "small" government, as many conservatives would put it, but simply disciplined government that didn't use its power to play favorites.

But chances of that appear dismal, as even Goldberg admits: "For years, the GOP defended big business in the spirit of free enterprise while businesses never showed much interest in the principle themselves."

It's no wonder Americans get so apathetic about politics. For all of our conversations about basic political ideology, neither party actually seems to represent the ideology to which is pays lip service.

Yet I do think our conversations about such things are important, because we do have power over politicians in this country. At some point they will listen, because they want votes. See? Politicians are just like businesses, really. Just as you can always count on businesses to desire maximum profit, so you can always count on politicians to want to win elections.

The question is whether the American people, consumers both of goods provided by business and of government provided by politicians, will be able to restrain these desires for profit and power. This means taking responsibility for what we value, both in what we buy and in what political opinions we hold.

Of course, it's easy to get cynical about that, too. Can we really expect Americans as a people to take more responsibility for our values as consumers and as voters? But we can't afford to ask that question. We really don't have an option; American democracy depends on taking this responsibility on ourselves.

To me, this is fundamentally what being a conservative is all about: I think that society should be structured so that people are capable of being independent--not independent from one another, but independent from ruling elites.

From that point of view, it's sheer nonsense to suppose that conservatism is anything like "pro-big business." Big businesses are powerful elites that need to be restrained from exercising too much authority over people. But on the other hand, it is natural to restrain big government for the same reason.

My only question is whether your average, everyday Democrat would disagree with me. Being surrounded by liberals in the academy, I know there are plenty of elitist liberals out there who genuinely believe in meritocracy--which of course means they should run the country because they're so smart.

But I'd like to think that most Americans do value independence from any sort of aristocracy, whether it's based on how rich you are or how smart you are. I just wonder, then, what leads people to vote for such flaming liberals like Barack Obama.

Oh well. Some things I will never understand. At least I have enough freedom to blog about them.

Fasting of the heart

The days are growing longer. The sky is clear. The snow is almost melted. Into my room come gentle rays of evening light. The trees are still bare; but there's something in the light of the sun at 6:00 in the evening that says Spring is coming.

I sit and soak in the gentle light. My heart is open. Feed slowly, I tell it. Just as a hungry man must keep himself from eating too quickly, lest he regret it shortly thereafter, so also I must tell my heart to pace itself. Soak it all in, but not all at once. These are magical moments, but they are fragile.

We are a couple of weeks into the season of Lent, a time of prayer, fasting, and examining ourselves to see where we have fallen short and in what ways we must repent and turn ourselves toward God. I have learned in recent years the benefits of literally fasting. The body is good, but it must be made to serve a higher purpose than its impulses.

But we must eat. Why would we deny the body something it needs? The body needs food, yes, and that is exactly why fasting helps us gain control over the body. When the body gets comfortable having all of its needs met instantly, it is easy for the self to be guided by the body, rather than the other way around.

(And anyway a fast doesn't have to be total abstinence from food; it can be simply eating no meat, or eating half as much as usual, or leaving something out that usually seems essential. But abstaining from food for, say, 24 hours, is not an insurmountable feat. It can be done, and it is a useful exercise of the will.)

The Eastern Orthodox are very thoughtful about this topic. I've been reading a blog with daily thoughts on spiritual practices such as fasting (see also here and here). The practices they prescribe can be intense, as in this post, which makes the reason for such extreme measures clear:

Saint Theophan advises us that the flesh should be persecuted in all it parts and functions so that it can be transformed into a keen weapon of righteousness.

This is not the kind of theology of the body that is usually taught in Protestant circles. Judging by the teaching that comes out of evangelical sermons, one might be led to believe that Christian spirituality ought to involve no physical effort whatsoever.

For instance, in the sermon I heard last Sunday, the pastor explicitly said that it makes no difference what posture you take when you pray, and I'm sure the vast majority of Protestant Christians would be inclined to agree. God judges the heart, not the outward appearance. I suppose that's true.

But the heart, like the body, is prone to various lusts. The body may lust after food and sex, but the heart lusts after beauty, power, status, recognition--not that these are inherently evil, but neither are food and sex; yet lust after such things is spiritual darkness.

A frightening question occurred to me the other day. What else does the heart lust after? Just as the body needs food, what does the heart need, which it then learns to lust after? Friendship, perhaps. Love, romance, beautiful art, beautiful nature, hope, ecstasy, happiness--God?

Can the heart possibly lust after God? Isn't the greatest commandment to love God with all our heart? Yet love is not lust. Lust does not make a marriage. Seeking to make other people look at you is not true friendship. Lust turns inward; love turns outward. Is it not possible to do the same thing with God?

I fear it is. And there is practically no recognition of this in the culture in which we live, perhaps especially in the Christian subculture forged by evangelicals.

Lust after God begins innocently enough, with a deep and ecstatic desire to have a "personal relationship" with God. We pray to God earnest, heartfelt prayers, not mechanically, as the error-prone traditionalists are apt to do. Then "Our Father" becomes my Father, my Jesus, my personal Lord and Savior, mine, all mine.

There is this insatiable hunger for an experience of God, a prayer life that is ecstatic and intensely personal. There is an unquenchable thirst for real worship, the kind you feel when you are waving your hands in the air to music that really moves you. There is a desire to read the Bible and see what it really says, so that you know how to avoid all the errors of the dead, traditional church.

Or perhaps there is simply a desire for something different, something new, something that the masses can't handle because of their simple minds or their hardened hearts. Perhaps there really is something there...but you crave it so badly that you can never really have it.

But God wants our prayers and our worship to heartfelt! But sometimes the heart seeks God, and other times it seeks to devour God. The heart is not so different from the stomach. The stomach craves food, but if it is not disciplined, it will simply devour, rather than eat.

Is it really so hard to believe? Was it not in eating the very body and blood of Christ that the Corinthians displayed their selfishness and gluttony? (1 Cor. 21) Every Sunday before communion, our pastor tells us, "Feed on Christ in your heart, with thanksgiving." I wonder if the pastors at my church ever thought to add, "Eat slowly."

So it occurred to me this Lent that my heart, too, needs a certain amount of fasting, just like my stomach. It is always tempting for a Christian to go into prayer with the heart in a posture of grasping, rather than receiving. But what does the Lord's prayer say? Not "my will," but "Your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven." It is not for the heart to ascend into heaven to take the things of God, but rather to stay on earth, and to receive God's gifts from heaven.

What would that fast possibly look like? It is quite simple, really. Pray the Lord's prayer. Oh, but your pastor will tell you that the Lord's prayer should never be just a formula. Yes, it should. My heart needs a formula, or else it will always be greedy. It needs to be restrained by the words Jesus taught us to pray, so that it will not seek to devour God, but rather to love God.

The only pronouns in the Lord's prayer are our, us, you, and, your. There is no I, me, or my. Prayer is not about me. And prayer (and all of life) is first and foremost about loyalty to the Kingdom of God. Your Kingdom come; your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.

So I will say the Lord's prayer, slowly, on my knees, not adding any of my own words--mechanically, even. This will protect the heart from reaching out to devour. It will be a fast. Just as for the stomach, I don't eat food, so for the heart, I don't feed it with its desires.

But the heart needs God! Yes, it does; that is the point. Just as the body needs food, yet we deny it food for the sake of making the body a "weapon of righteousness," so also the heart needs God, or rather to feel intimate with God, yet I will deny it for the sake of making the heart, too, a "weapon of righteousness," capable of feeding on Christ slowly, rather than simply devouring.

And then, perhaps, the heart will be liberated from its selfishness, so that it can truly pray those beautiful words, "Our Father," and actually feel that the Almighty God is indeed Father.

The Economics of Proof

Proof in mathematics (really in logic) is a kind of transaction. For any theorem which says that A implies B, the proof involves a series of transactions in which I exchange the hypotheses contained in A for the conclusions contained in B.

This has occurred to me for two reasons. One is that I've been thinking about economics a bit abstractly lately, in both philosophical and theological terms. The other reason is that my adviser happens to talk about mathematics in these terms quite often.

"Nothing in life is free," she says. Continuing on, she explains to our class that "if you want higher order integrability, you have to give up differentiability," referring to her judicious application of the Sobolev embedding theorem.

I spent countless hours this week doing one calculation that was difficult precisely because it wasn't obvious what exactly I had to trade for the end result. That's where creativity comes into the picture. Sometimes just taking inventory is half the battle: seeing what you already have in a different way is the kind of insight that math demands.

(For the mathematically inclined or anyone who's curious, I was calculating the density function of the exit time of Brownian motion by taking the Fourier transform of its characteristic function using complex contour integral methods. And yes, there's something satisfying about being able to string together that many technical terms in one sentence.)

But it occurs to me that mathematics is not unique in this way. This is exactly what an economy is all about. Goods and services are merely being exchanged--in some sense nothing is created or destroyed. Yet in another sense something is being created.

What's being created in a free market economy? Before I've called it meaning, or value. "Value" is probably a bit misleading, since it has so many prior connotations. "Meaning" is closer to what I'm talking about, but it's tricky to sort out the connotations of that word, also.

It might be a little easier to ask, what's being created in mathematical or logical proof? Knowledge? Yes, and certainly people agree knowledge is valuable. But valuable to whom? Is it valuable to all people when I prove existence and uniqueness of solutions to some partial differential equations? Is knowledge gained in one corner of mathematics valuable for the whole world?

Most academics would love to have convincing answers to this question, since often we're depending on the government for research funding. I don't think the answer is straightforward, and in fact I'm a little more hesitant than most academics to say that all knowledge gained is valuable.

I've just said mathematics is about exchange. It doesn't make sense to carry out some random series of exchanges and call that valuable to humankind. Part of what makes mathematics real work is that there's a result in mind, and I must figure out what I can give in exchange for that result. Presumably that result would actually be desired by people other than myself.

Perhaps this philosophical attitude has led me into a segment of mathematics that is more "applied." But on the other hand, I really do think that "application" is all relative. When I explained my research to a friend once, I started by illustrating that it could be applied to, say, stabilizing a helicopter. After I was finished, he asked, "So, what applications are there for this kind of thing?" I suppose if you don't care about helicopters, none at all!

The point for me is that people matter. So does the way people treat this world that we've been given. We humans have no ability to create or destroy matter; we are not gods. But we have the nearly god-like ability to create solutions to problems, and to create systems that work.

Where does that creative power come from? It comes precisely from the ability to take inventory of what we already possess, but in a new way. We have to figure out what we have that can be exchanged for what we want. This is no small task! Otherwise, mathematics would be easy.

And so it becomes clearer why "free" market does not mean easy success. In some ways, realizing the link between logical proof and free exchange in an economy makes me worry for our economy, for the simple reason that efficient exchange is not an easy task. It requires education, it requires discipline, and even then it doesn't always turn out so well.

But now I realize that I've traded one hour of my time for the opportunity to organize a few of my scattered thoughts, and unfortunately, I don't have any time left at the moment to exchange! This will be an interesting idea to return to later.