nebulosa_borboleta1I attended an interesting debate last Saturday night between Justin Schieber and Blake Giunta. Blake used the fine-tuning evidence as one argument for God’s existence and Justin countered by pointing to the Coarse-Tuning argument.

What is the Coarse-Tuning Argument?

Assuming that the various finely-tuned constants can take on any value up to infinity, then any finite life-permitting range (even a large one) would become an infinitesimal subset. Thus, even coarsely-tuned parameters could be considered improbable. This is often seen then as a reductio ad absurdum against fine-tuning – for then we should be equally surprised no matter how wide the range of life-permitting values is for a given constant (so long as it was finite).

Blake followed Robin Collins in arguing that coarse-tuning could still represent an improbable situation if indeed we knew that the possible values for the various constants could go to infinity. However, I don’t think many physicists would be persuaded of anything improbable if the universe only required coarse-tuning rather than fine-tuning to support life. In fact this was the expectation prior to the pioneering work of Hoyle, Barrow, Tipler, Carter, and others. No one that I’m aware of argued that physical constants being life-permitting pointed to design until the life-permitting range of constants was discovered to be exceedingly narrow.

Why coarse-tuning would not be accepted as improbable?

Most physicists did not accept a Coarse-Tuning Argument not because it might not be improbable if the possible range was infinite, but rather due to skepticism that the possible range of constants could be infinite. If David Hilbert was right, actual infinities are nowhere to be found in reality and it would be impossible for the constants to be infinite. See my previous blog for a discussion of some of the issues associated with actually infinite quantities. Even if Hilbert is incorrect, one could still argue that one can estimate probabilities by taking limits and that Hilbert’s Hotel shows simply the counter-intuitive nature of dealing with infinities. Even if the actually infinite is possible, physicists generally reject candidate theories that entail the actually infinite – at least if the equations cannot be renormalized to avoid the infinities.

Is the range of possible values for the constants infinite?

The key assumption in the Coarse-Tuning Argument is that the possible range of constants could be infinite. However as Luke Barnes has pointed out the concept of mass becomes incoherent if fundamental particles could exceed the Planck mass. Particles over a certain mass would form a black hole and therefore be impossible to create. Does it really seem physically possible that an electron could have a mass of a billion tons? Might it be prohibitively difficult to create particles with such a huge mass due to the energy or energy density requirements in making it? Would such a massive particle be stable? We could treat the case that the electron’s mass was greater than some huge value as corresponding to there being too few electrons after some small amount of time in which the universe expanded and cooled. This special case would obviously be life-prohibiting as electrons are necessary for chemistry, stellar fusion, and other processes critical for life.

What about force strengths?

Another class of parameters that have to be finely-tuned is force strengths. Most physicists think that at least 3 out of the 4 fundamental forces are unified at certain energy levels – and probably all 4. Thus, there is an underlying relationship between the forces that would constrain their relative strengths. Ratios of the force strengths would not be infinite. If a constant governing a force strength had a value of 0, that special case could also be evaluated with respect to its ability to support life. All 4 fundamental forces are thought to be necessary for life although there are ways to have life without the weak force – but only by compensating with additional fine-tuning in other aspects.

Robin Collins argues that once force strengths become too large we lose our ability to predict whether or not such a scenario would be life-permitting – there could be new physics at such large energy scales. This is not a problem for the fine-tuning argument as defined by leading advocates though because the argument only addresses the parameter ranges for which we can reliably evaluate suitability for life – we consider only the epistemically-illumined region. Here is how John Leslie explains it in his Universes book (which I highly recommend):

If a tiny group of flies is surrounded by a largish fly-free wall area then whether a bullet hits a fly in the group will be very sensitive to the direction in which the firer’s rifle points, even if other very different areas of the wall are thick with flies. So it is sufficient to consider a local area of possible universes, e.g., those produced by slight changes in gravity’s strength, . . . . It certainly needn’t be claimed that Life and Intelligence could exist only if certain force strengths, particle masses, etc. fell within certain narrow ranges . . . . All that need be claimed is that a lifeless universe would have resulted from fairly minor changes in the forces etc. with which we are familiar. (pages 138-9)

In other words, it still looks like the rifle was aimed if it hits a tiny group of flies surrounded by a vast wall without any flies – even though there might be other flies on parts of the wall we cannot see. A design inference can be justified even though we lack complete knowledge about the life-permitting status of all of the possible parameter space. We’re only evaluating the local, finite region for which a determination can be made.

A finite number of physically possible constants?

If one takes the fine-tuning argument based on physically possible parameter space rather than metaphysically possible parameter space, then it’s expected that the range of values for constants is finite. I’ve previously linked to this important article by John Barrow outlining different ways in which physics itself can drive constants to different values. For example, spontaneous symmetry breaking in the early universe affected various parameters related to electromagnetism and the weak force. The Weinberg angle could have taken on other values that would have resulted in alternate derived parameters. However, nothing in those equations allow any of the parameters to go to infinity.

Barrow also notes that unifying gravity and quantum mechanics is only possible if “the true constants of nature are defined in higher dimensions and the three-dimensional shadows we observe are no longer fundamental and do not need to be constant.” Because of quantization, the number of ways of compactifying these extra spatial dimensions would be finite. We can treat the case that quantization is not in effect as a special case that would not plausibly support life. Without quantization, atoms are not stable and would not have consistent properties permitting information to be stored. Even String Theory entails a finite number of possible sets of fundamental constants. Many theorists think it’s quite large, perhaps 10500, but all we need is for it to be finite to avoid the infinities required by the coarse-tuning argument. Refer to my previous blog for other reasons to expect a finite range for constants of nature.

Initial conditions

Cosmologist Luke Barnes also points to the fine-tuning associated with the initial conditions of our universe as an example immune from the problems of infinities. Unless one thinks that probabilistic statements cannot be made despite the reputation of statistical mechanics as a well-established physics discipline, one is able to conclude that our universe started out in an incredibly special, highly-ordered state. The number of life-permitting states is extraordinarily tiny compared to possibilities as Roger Penrose has computed – see my blog for details. Since the number of particles was finite and the volume of space in the early universe was quite small, there is no problem of infinities that prohibits a rough probability estimate.

Summary

More work should be done in assessing the possibilities of infinities and the potential impact on the fine-tuning argument. However, I see no reason that Coarse-Tuning would be a reductio ad absurdum against fine-tuning because if we knew for sure that the constants had an infinite range the finiteness of the life-permitting range should suffice for demonstrating that life-permitting universes are a tiny subset among possibilities. However, physicists are rightly skeptical that these constants could be infinite. I’ve listed several reasons for thinking that the constants couldn’t have an infinite range – which is why physicists were not astounded until they discovered that life-permitting ranges are tiny among possibilities that can be evaluated. We can compute that the universe would be lifeless if gravity were 40 orders of magnitude stronger even though we might have some slight uncertainty about what happens if it were 4000 orders of magnitude stronger and do not know a precise upper bound of what is physically possible.

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you.  Blessings, Jim Whiddon

291. CRITICISM “Carve praise in marble, trace criticism in the dust.” — Arabic saying.

292. FRIENDSHIP “Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers.”

Excerpt From: Keller, Timothy. “The Meaning of Marriage.”

293. PROVIDENCE “In his book The Mystery of Providence, John Flavel wrote of a French believer by the name of Du Moulin, who was running for his life from persecutors and climbed into an oven to hide. Within moments a spider began to weave a web over the mouth of the oven. Du Moulin’s enemies, seeing the spider’s web, never dreamed that he was inside. And thus he was delivered.”

Excerpt From: Farrar, Steve. “True Courage.”

294. FUTURE VS. PAST “There is a reason your windshield is so much bigger than your rear view mirror.” — Unknown

295. ROLE MODELS “So from the gospel stories of Jesus’ life, you get the idea that seeing a person’s life is at least as important as getting a list of lessons from that person. Yes, sermons are important, but seeing the actual life of the guy who gives the sermon might be even more powerful. And you get the idea that how you live affects others. It teaches them how to live.”

Excerpt From: Metaxas, Eric. “Seven Men.”

296. SEX ED “Twenty years ago, Dartmouth College made shocking headlines for equipping incoming college freshmen not just with everything they needed to know about sex, but rather everything they needed to engage in it. And I mean everything. Along with various examples of drugstore birth control, the freshman sex kit included an “oral dam,” a device I decided at the time I would probably prefer to avoid knowledge of, carnal or otherwise. Back then, a college setting up eighteen-year-olds for sexual experimentation seemed outrageous. Today, middle school students in Maryland learn “buying a condom is not as scary as you think.” In Wisconsin, they can pick them up for free at a “health” fair. First-graders in North Carolina get primed on homosexual marriage with King & King, a storybook about a handsome prince who spurns a run of princesses for a handsome prince of his own. New Jersey put together a sex ed kit that, among other things, gives elementary school students, the lowdown on masturbation. Kindergartners in New York learn the mechanics of AIDS transmission.

Rather than instill virtuous behaviors based on the judgment that it is “bad” to use drugs, or “bad” to engage in premarital sex, we choose to build a logical case against vice based only on the risks involved. And these we neutralize by also, logically, teaching the young to “take precautions.” It is a halfhearted argument at best for “healthy” behavior. Without making such behaviors anathema, society merely tries to talk its jaded young out of indulging in them—and for no “good” reason.”

Excerpt From: West, Diana. “The Death of the Grown-Up.”

297. RISK TO WIN “The team that makes the most mistakes usually wins.”

— Coach Piggy Lambert

298. MISSION DRIFT “Consider this mission statement of a well-known university: “To be plainly instructed and consider well that the main end of your life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ.”

Founded in 1636, this university employed exclusively Christian professors, emphasized character formation in its students above all else, and rooted all its policies and practices in a Christian worldview. This school served as a bastion of academic excellence and Christian distinction.

It’s from Harvard University—this statement described their founding mission. Harvard began as a school to equip ministers to share the Good News.”

Excerpt From: Peter Greer, Chris Horst & Anna Haggard. “Mission Drift.”

299. COACHING “You ought to coach each player like they are going to become your son-in-law.”

Excerpt From: Joe Ehrmann, Paula Ehrmann & Gregory Jordan. “InSideOut Coaching.”

300. COSMIC JOKE “When asked why he doesn’t believe in astrology, the logician Raymond Smullyan responds that he’s a Gemini, and Geminis never believe in astrology.”

Excerpt From: John Allen Paulos. “Innumeracy.”

While it might seem like a trivial question, the answer is actually the birthplace of our national identity.  The beliefs and convictions of our founding fathers lay the groundwork for interpreting our Declaration of Independence and Constitution—the documents that direct our daily freedoms.

According to Real Clear Politics, an average of several polls observed over the past couple of weeks, a staggering 65% of Americans feel the nation is heading in the wrong direction.[1] What is more worrisome is the lack of consensus on what direction is right.

Political pundits assert that this is because of a lack of leadership; Christians say it is because we have rejected God; atheists assert it is because we have too much religion. With so many varying opinions, how are we ever going to move forward to be the nation we once were?

At the Constitutional Congress on July 28, 1787, the Congress had been in gridlock for over a month. After all, deciding on a brand new government with the voice and opinions of 55 men was no easy task. But it took the voice of one man to bring order to that meeting and determining our nation’s foundation.

“How has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly appealing to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings…I have lived, Sir, long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”

constitutional-convention

Who said this? Benjamin Franklin.

For all of the critics who alleged that Franklin was a deist, is it unusual that he appealed to God to intervene in the affairs of men? What’s more, is that he is here quoting Jesus[2] at a government meeting?

This quote alone establishes that Benjamin Franklin, at least in the latter part of his life, was in fact not a deist.[3] While there is not enough time to dive completely into what Benjamin Franklin actually lived and believed (stay tuned at a later date for that discussion), these words allow him to be a variety of things. A deist is not one of them.

The result of this faith-ridden stance has been marked as the time when the Constitutional Congress began daily praying and attending church services…and subsequently established our revolutionary form of government in less than 6 weeks.

This Founding Fathers post will be the first of many in a new blog series that will seek to open the discussion on the Faith of our Founding Fathers.

Reestablishing our national identity requires looking to what that foundation was built on and who built it. To keep our foundation from being taken out from underneath us we must call to God for help.

President George Washington proclaimed, “It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.”

[1] Real Clear Politics averaged 6 polls conducted between 9/3-9/15/2014.http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/direction_of_country-902.html

[2] Matthew 10:29 “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.” (New International Version)

[3] Deism: 1. Belief in the existence of a God on the evidence of reason and nature only, with the rejection of supernatural revelation (distinguished from theism ). 2. Belief in a God who created the world but has since remained indifferent to it. Dictonary.com.

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you.  Blessings, Jim Whiddon

281. FAITH-BASED “Faith in mankind is harder to sustain than faith in God. Where secular organizations place their faith in the human person, religious organizations recognize that human persons—divorced from God—can never truly deal with the problems most fundamental to human society. Poverty may be alleviated, but prosperity brings its fair share of problems along with it.”

Excerpt From: Peter Greer, Chris Horst & Anna Haggard. “Mission Drift.”

282. WISDOM “One of the primary ways God protects us is through the wisdom he grants when we strive to walk in his ways. Obedience to him protects us from all kinds of dangers — not so much because he miraculously intervenes but because he doesn’t have to. Obedience sets us on a wise course.”

Excerpt From: Harris, Raymond. “The Heart of Business.”

283. BIBLE CHANGED? When someone says that the Bible has been changed by men over the years, ask them to consider:

“How does someone remove select lines of text from tens of thousands of handwritten documents that had been circulating around the Mediterranean region for over three hundred years? This would be like trying to secretly remove a paragraph from all the copies of yesterday’s L.A. Times. It can’t be done.”

Excerpt From: Koukl, Gregory. “Tactics.” Zondervan. iBooks.

284. SIN AND ECONOMY “Sin is a constant in both Capitalism and Socialism. The difference is that in socialism, you have sin plus COERCION, with capitalism, there is sin plus FREEDOM of choice.”

— Jerry Boyer

285. WINNERS “The moderately successful person focuses on the roadblocks, on how to get over or around them. The winner focuses on the goal.”

— Tom Harrison

286. ENTITLEMENT “saying among poker players: If you’re at the table for more than half an hour and can’t tell who the sucker is, you’re it. Similarly, if you’re a college graduate in your early twenties, and you look around at your peers and can’t see a problem with a sense of entitlement, maybe you have a problem.”

Excerpt From: Murray, Charles. “The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead.”

287. CUSTOMERS “In the midst of a world filled with ambivalent salespeople, there is one company that has been a winner for three decades because it takes a people-centered approach to everything it does: Nordstrom. The word no never entered into their vocabulary.

When company chairman Bruce Nordstrom was asked who trains his people, his response was “their parents.”

Excerpt From: Luntz, Frank. “Win.”

288. A GREAT MARRIAGE 1. Marry someone with similar tastes and preferences. Which tastes and preferences? The ones that will affect life almost every day. It’s okay if you like the ballet and your spouse doesn’t. Reasonable people can accommodate each other on such differences. But if you dislike each other’s friends, or don’t get each other’s sense of humor, or—especially—if you have different ethical impulses, break it off and find someone else.

Personal habits that you find objectionable in each other might be deal-breakers. Jacques Barzun identified the top three as punctuality, orderliness, and thriftiness.

2. What you see is what you’re going to get. If something about your prospective spouse bothers you, but you think that you can change your beloved after you’re married, you’re wrong.

3. It is absolutely crucial that you really, really like your spouse. You hear it all the time from people who are in great marriages: “I’m married to my best friend.” They are being literal. They enjoy the day-to-day company of their spouses more than they enjoy the company of anyone else, they can talk to their spouses more openly than they can talk to anyone else, and they can be quietly companionable with their spouses as with no one else. Occasionally this kind of compatibility can develop after marriage, but it’s more common to be apparent beforehand. People often lament how hard it is to know whether one is truly in love. That’s true. But it’s not hard to know how much you like someone. Focus on that question even more than you focus on whether you’re in love. Here are two things to worry about as you do so: A) Do you sometimes pick at each other’s sore spots? You have fun together, the sex is great, but one of you is controlling, or nags the other, or won’t let a difference of opinion go. I believe that two people who love each other should be careful to avoid saying anything that will inflict hurt. Occasionally there will be an overwhelmingly compelling reason why the hurtful thing must be said. But if your prospective spouse says hurtful things heedlessly, or seems to take any pleasure whatsoever in causing hurt, break it off.

4. A good marriage is the best thing that can ever happen to you. Above all else, realize that this cliché is true. The downside risks of marrying—and they are real—are nothing compared to what you will gain from a good one.”

Excerpt From: Murray, Charles. “The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead.”

289. EINSTEIN “Einstein had a boyhood dream of what it would be like to ride on a light wave. Is it physically possible? Could you actually ride on a light wave? And then, years later, he comes up with his theory of relativity. He asked one question as a six-year-old—a pretty amazing question. Would it physically be possible to ride on a light wave through space? And the whole world changed because of that one question from a six-year-old.”

—JIM DAVIDSON, CO-CEO, SILVER LAKE

290. CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU After he died someone asked his accountant, ‘How much money did John D. Rockefeller leave?’ And the reply: ‘He left … all of it.’

— Unknown

When David Limbaugh let his friend Steve know that he had doubts about Christianity, he was surprised by Steve’s response. Instead of a blast of arrogant judgmentalism, Steve responded like a Christian should—with grace and evidence. What has happened since that time is told in Limbaugh’s excellent new book, Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel. Limbaugh artfully tells his journey from skepticism about Christ to skepticism about skepticism and ultimately to trust in Christ.

David is a lawyer, but he doesn’t write like a lawyer. While he’s intellectually precise, he writes as if he’s sitting across the table from you, anticipating your questions and objections. This is rare for a book of Christian evidences (often called Christian apologetics). Such books often read like technical manuals, but not Jesus on Trial. Limbaugh not only does a masterful job of highlighting the abundant evidence that supports Christianity, his insights into what the scriptures actually say will have you marveling at the tapestry of scripture and the Savior who wove it.

From the very beginning, Limbaugh bares his soul, holding nothing back about how his previous doubts were shielded by an embarrassing lack of knowledge. He writes, “I knew, after all, that I hadn’t really given the Bible itself a hearing, much less a fair one. To my surprise— and this is embarrassing to admit—Steve showed me how verses of Scripture, both Old and New Testaments, were tied to others in content and theme with remarkable frequency. Amazingly, I had never looked at a reference Bible before, and I was blown away. My ignorance was on display, but Steve wasn’t remotely judgmental— to help me learn more, he even gave me that Bible. I was genuinely intrigued to discover that the Bible was not simply a mishmash of stories, allegories, alleged historical events, and moral lessons. There was obviously a pattern here, and for the first time in my life the Bible appeared to me to be thematically integrated. The scales on my eyes started peeling away.”

His two chapters called “Aha Moments” reveal the numerous tipping points in Limbaugh’s journey where scale after scale fell away—tipping points that no honest seeker of truth can ignore.   Of course, as Limbaugh admits, many who are not interested in truth, or have their own agenda, ignore or remake Christ in their own image.

He writes, “We must not casually remake Jesus in the image in which we prefer to see Him or which conforms to the popular culture’s misperceptions about Him. Our politically correct culture may, presumptuously, choose to recast Jesus as indifferent to sin and saccharine sweet, no matter the circumstances, but this Jesus is God, and God cannot look upon sin. What do these revisionists make of the Jesus Who made a whip of cords and drove the moneychangers out of the Temple (John 2: 15)? … What do the revisionists say about the Jesus Whom Paul describes as “revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus ” (2 Thess. 1: 7– 8)? What of the difficult moral standard Jesus laid down in the Sermon on the Mount? Did He show indifference to sin there?” Limbaugh rightfully concludes: “This idea that Jesus is meek, mild, indifferent, and non-judgmental is the stuff of pure myth.”

In addition to correcting the culture’s emasculated view of Christ, Limbaugh has two fantastic chapters tackling the paradoxes of Christianity. These include: God’s plan of salvation, including the relationship between grace and works; the acknowledgement that we are sinful yet commanded to be perfect; the Trinity, that God is one in essence yet three in persons; that Jesus has two natures, human and divine; that you must give up your life to find it; that Christians are strong when they are weak; that God is sovereign yet humans have free will; that God knows all and is unchangeable, yet we are to pray; that the Bible is inspired yet written by men; and many others. The insights Limbaugh brings to these paradoxes are some of his own, and the best nuggets mined from Christian scholarship that I doubt you’ll find in one place anywhere else.

Limbaugh devotes several chapters to the evidence for the Bible, including its unity and reliability as evidenced through history, archaeology, prophecy and science. He debunks several myths and misunderstandings along the way, and then saves his final chapter for what many think is the atheist’s trump card against God: Evil.

Many years ago David provided me an “Aha Moment” during one of our very many theological discussions. He said, “Evil really bothers me, but only Christianity has a sensible answer to it.” There’s no question he’s correct. We wouldn’t even know what evil was unless good existed, and real objective good could only exist if God exists. As David explains, evil turns out to be a backhanded argument for God. In fact, evil is the very reason God entered human history in the person of Christ. Only his sacrifice can solve the evil in my heart and yours.

David puts it this way: “Don’t be offended by the notion that you must have saving faith in Christ. Don’t assume that God is making you jump through unnecessary hoops. He is the One Who suffered for you. He did this so that you could live. He doesn’t ask you to believe because He is on a divine ego trip, but because He loves you and wants you to latch on to Him in order to be saved from your sins.”

I just can’t recommend Jesus on Trial highly enough. Every thinking person should investigate the claims of Christ, who is unarguably the most influential human being to ever walk the earth. If his claims are true (and Limbaugh shows they are), then we won’t be putting him on trial—he will be putting each of us on trial. Only Christ can secure you a favorable verdict.

David Limbaugh will join cold case homicide detective J. Warner Wallace as a speaker at the CrossExamined donor banquet on October 9, 2014 at the Big Chill in Charlotte, North Carolina.  For details on attending, email Gil@CrossExamined.org.

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you.  Blessings, Jim Whiddon

271. “The founding fathers of America were extremely well-educated men and great students of history, “the well fed, well bred, well read, and well wed,” as historian James McGregor Burns described them. They represented a nouveau aristocracy, not by birth as in the mother countries, but through development of their minds and talents.”

Excerpt From: Ben Carson, M.D. “America the Beautiful.”

272. TAXES “So when Jesus says to give to God what is God’s, and to Caesar what is Caesar’s, He’s claiming that Caesar isn’t God, and that God’s authority is outside Caesar’s jurisdiction. Caesar has some legitimate claim to taxes if one participates in the Roman monetary system, but he has no claim on our ultimate allegiance. God is God. Caesar is not”

Excerpt From: James Robison & Jay W. Richards. “Indivisible.”

273. WISDOM “Some define wisdom as “seeing life from God’s point of view.” I prefer to say that wisdom is the ability to apply biblical truth to real-life Without the Bible, no one can be wise, for wisdom is the ability to see more than things as they are “under the sun.” It’s the ability to perceive how the God of heaven sees a situation and to apply His divine wisdom to it.”

Excerpt From: Jeremiah, David. “Searching for Heaven on Earth.”

274. DECISIONS “More often than not, the ability to make good decisions is the result of making bad ones first. An insightful man once said, “It’s a wise man who makes a good second decision.”

Excerpt From: Byron Forrest Yawn. “What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him.”

275. GOD’S LOVE “Does it hurt your feelings that God doesn’t need you? Maybe you think this means He doesn’t love you. No, you have it backward. It means He loves you even better than you thought. True, I might well suspect that my wife didn’t love me if she said she didn’t need me. But that’s because human love can’t be separated from need. We love not only to fulfill the needs of other people but also to fulfill our own. And that’s all right up to a point because God made us full of needs. But His love isn’t like ours. It’s not need-love; it’s pure gift-love. Though He needs nothing from us, He pours Himself out for us. Nothing drove Him to create us, yet He did.”

Excerpt From: Budziszewski, J. “How to Stay Christian in College.”

276. FORGIVE OTHERS “THERE IS SOME GOOD IN THE WORST OF US AND SOME EVIL IN THE BEST OF US. WHEN WE DISCOVER THIS, WE ARE LESS PRONE TO HATE OUR ENEMIES.”

—Martin Luther King Jr.”

277. THE BIRTH AND THE GREAT CELESTIAL CONFLICT “Most of you probably have a Nativity scene that you take out over the holidays and place on a mantel or coffee table. Most of these scenes share a regular cast of characters: shepherds, wise men, maybe a few barnyard animals, Joseph, Mary, and, of course, the baby Jesus. Yes, ours has an angel or two and I imagine yours does as well. But that’s about as far as the supernatural gets. What is the overall mood of the scene? Don’t they all have a sort of warm, pastoral atmosphere to them, a quiet, intimate feel like the one you get when you sing Silent Night or Away in a Manger? And while that’s all very true, it is also very deceiving because it is not a full picture of what’s really going on. For that, you have to turn to Revelation 12:

“A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter . . . And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.” (vv. 1–5, 7–9)

As Philip Yancey says, I have never seen this version of the story on a Christmas card. Yet it is the truer story, the rest of the picture of what was

going on that fateful night. Yancey calls the birth of Christ the Great Invasion, “a daring raid by the ruler of the forces of good into the universe’s

seat of evil.” Spiritually speaking, this is no silent night. It is D-Day. It is almost beyond my comprehension too, and yet I accept that this notion is the key to understanding Christmas and is, in fact, the touchstone of my faith. As a Christian I believe that we live in parallel worlds. One world consists of hills and lakes and barns and politicians and shepherds watching their flocks by night. The other consists of angels and sinister forces and the whole spiritual realm. The child is born, the woman escapes and the story continues like this: “Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring—those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” (Rev. 12:17)

Behind the world and the flesh is an even more deadly enemy . . . one we rarely speak of and are even much less ready to resist. Yet this is where we live now—on the front lines of a fierce spiritual war that is to blame for most of the casualties you see around you and most of the assault against you. It’s time we prepared ourselves for it.”

Excerpt From: Eldredge, John. “Wild at Heart.”

278. HUSBAND’S SACRIFICE “One thing is certain: we are to give ourselves up [for our wives] just as Jesus did for his church. Dying to save her. Dying to rescue her. Dying to present her pure to her God. That, gentleman, is the calling of a Isn’t it interesting that the stereotype of a modern man is exactly opposite this? You’ve seen this stereotype played out on the screen. The man is all about himself. His food, his hobbies, his addictions, his deformities, and his vanities dominate his life and the lives in his family. He is one big black hole of self, a giant suck hole of self-interest.”

Excerpt From: Mansfield, Stephen. “Mansfield’s Book of Manly Men.”

279. SYNONYMS FOR FAITH “My favorite book isn’t War and Peace or Huckleberry Finn, although Huckleberry Finn is close. It’s a thesaurus. The reason is simple. There are hundreds of words, probably thousands of them listed that can capture an idea or thought and propose words to describe those thoughts or ideas with greater precision, which would add much more clarity to what I’m trying to say. Now I try to explain my faith in much the same way a thesaurus does and see if I can’t swap a word that is used far too much for another that might add more meaning, more life.”

Excerpt From: Goff, Bob. “Love Does.”

280. SLOW AND STEADY “When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens—and when it happens, it lasts.”

Excerpt From: Wooden, John. “Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and reflections On and Off the Court.”

 

For better or worse I was a child of the 80’s, and during that time a new rock band came on the scene that changed pop music, both in Britain, America and eventually the world. I immediately loved their sound as soon as I heard it. Their style was unique, and the lyrics had a real message. Their songs resonated much deeper than the typical pop tunes being played on the radio. That band was U2 from Dublin Ireland.

In May of 1987 the band released their 5th studio album titled “The Joshua Tree.” The second track on that album is a “gospel-esque” song that producer Danny Lanois encouraged Bono to write.[1] The song is “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” The song has been acclaimed by many critics and publications as one of the greatest songs of all time.[2]

What makes this song so unique and timeless? Sure it’s Bono’s excellent vocals, Adam Clayton’s chilled-out bass, and the Edge’s astral guitar licks, but I believe that it is also something more, something much deeper. The song touches on a truth that is embedded in all people – a deep sense of longing and desire for something that this present world cannot fully satisfy. Here is the second refrain.

I have kissed honey lips

Felt the healing in her finger tips

It burned like fire

(I was) burning inside her.

I have spoke with the tongue of angels

I have held the hand of a devil

It was warm in the night

I was cold as a stone.

But I still haven’t found

What I’m looking for.

But I still haven’t found

What I’m looking for.

The song is written in the style of a gospel-lament which has it roots in the Psalms, the Lamentations of Jeremiah and later, African-American Spirituals. So, what is the singer lamenting?

He is lamenting that no matter what he tries or what he does, ultimate satisfaction isn’t found in this world. His satisfaction must come from somewhere else. He was made for something else, for somewhere else, or perhaps for someone else. He is a pilgrim and a sojourner on this earth, “just a passing through.”

Here a much younger “Edge” explains the origins of the song & Bono sings it with a gospel church choir in Harlem, NY.

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis articulates an argument for the existence of God based on our dissatisfactions as well as our deepest desire, which sounds a lot like the lyrics of U2’s song. I would even argue that the core idea is the virtually the same.

Lewis’s argument goes like this:

…A baby feels hunger; well there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world[3]

Philosopher Peter Kreeft has done us a great service and re-formulated Lewis’s argument from desire into a syllogism that might be a little easier to follow.

  1. Every natural innate desire corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire
  2. But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth and no creature can satisfy.
  3. Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth, and creatures which can satisfy this desire.
  4. This something is what people call “God” and “life with God forever.”[4]

Premise 1 – Every natural desire corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire

The key here is that every natural desire has a corresponding reality. The implication is that there is a distinction between two kinds of desires – natural desires and artificial desires. Everyone has natural desires, like the desire for water, food, sleep, friendship (companionship), etc…, but we also have desires for things that are artificial, or conditioned by society – like the desire to be famous, or the desire to possess superpowers (like one of the Avengers), or the desire to own a Ferrari.

However, with the artificial desires, we don’t recognize a condition called “Ferrari-lessness” which corresponds to, say a natural desire like the desire for water (thirst), or for food (hunger).

Premise 2 – But there exists a desire in us which nothing in time, nothing on earth and no creature can satisfy.

This premise is existentially true, and either one senses it or not. It can’t be forced. It may be pointed out, however, that even though one might not sense a desire for God, it doesn’t mean that the desire is non-existent,  just buried under the concerns, the worries and the busyness of life.

The Southern novelist Walker Percy commenting on “the search” in his classic novel The Moviegoer (1961) touches on this idea:

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be on to something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

Something is missing, so we despair. Indeed, as Thoreau writes, “…most men live lives of quiet desperation” (Civil Disobedience & other Essays), or like mythical, Greek Sisyphus, we “feel” the futility and the endless drudgery of work & life and deeply sense that there must be “something more.”

If God is the ultimate source of joy and fellowship, then nothing but Him and Him alone (& life with Him forever) will satisfy the heart of every person.

This truth has been articulated by many different voices throughout history.

“For He [God] has set eternity in the hearts of men…” – King Solomon (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

“Thou, O Lord hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee” – St. Augustine (The Confessions)

“There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.” – Blaise Pascal (Pensees)

“Not to be onto something is to be in despair” – Walker Percy (The Moviegoer)

“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” – U2 (Bono)

Peter Kreeft brilliantly summarizes premise 2 this way:

The second premise requires only honest introspection. If someone defies it and says, “I am perfectly happy playing with mud pies, sports cars, or money, or sex, or power,” we can only ask, “Are you really?” But we can only appeal, we cannot compel… Even the atheist Jean-Paul Sartre admitted that “there comes a time when one asks, even of Shakespeare, even of Beethoven, ‘Is that all there is?’”[5]

Premise 3 – Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth, and creatures which can satisfy this desire.

Premise 4 – This something is what people call “God” and “life with God forever.”

Admittedly, the conclusion of this argument is not an “air-tight” case for the God of the Bible, but it is certainly a stepping stone. When the argument from desire is placed alongside of other arguments for God’s existence, such as the cosmological argument, and the teleological argument, then I think it makes a pretty compelling case worthy of serious consideration.

Kreeft says, “What it proves is an unknown X, but an unknown whose direction, so to speak, is known. This X is more: more beauty, more desirability, more awesomeness, more joy.”[6]

Our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. ~ C.S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory, pg. 42)

Truth, Goodness & Beauty

It may be that beauty, and our desire for infinite beauty and truth and goodness is where we feel the unfulfilled longing[7] the most, as Kreeft brilliantly explains:

There are three things that will never die: truth, goodness and beauty. These are three things that we all need, and need absolutely, and know we need absolutely. Our minds want not only some truth and some falsehood, but all truth, without limit. Our wills want not only some good and some evil, but all good, without limit. Our desires, imaginations, feelings or hearts just want not just some beauty and some ugliness, but all beauty without limit.

For these are three things that we will never get bored with, and never will, for all eternity, because they are three attributes of God, and therefore all God’s creation: three transcendental or absolutely universal principles of all reality.   …Truth, goodness and beauty are ‘patches of Godlight’ here in the ‘Shadowlands.’ Their home is Yonder.[8]

Christianity teaches that the only way to truly KNOW God is through Jesus Christ who came to reveal Him for Who He truly is.

“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3)

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Still_Haven%27t_Found_What_I%27m_Looking_For (accessed, Sept. 2, 2014).

[2] Ibid.

[3] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book III, chap. 10

[4] Peter Kreeft & Ronald Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics (Downers Grove, IL, 1994), pp. 78-81, also see his “The Argument from Desire” on http://peterkreeft.com/topics/desire.htm (accessed Jan. 1, 2006).

[5] Ibid.

[6] Kreeft, Op cit.

[7] In his autobiographical work Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis explored his own experiences with what he called “the stab, the pain, the inconsolable longing” that he was sure all human beings felt.

[8] Peter Kreeft, “Lewis’s Philosophy of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty,” in David Baggett, Gary R. Habermas and Jerry Walls, Editors, C.S. Lewis as Philosopher: Truth, Goodness and Beauty (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008), 23-36.

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you.  Blessings, Jim Whiddon

261. SALVATION “the Bible doesn’t agree with the view that it’s hard to find out about God. It claims that people make it hard. The apostle Paul wrote that the truth about God was “plain” to the pagans and that in some sense they “knew” it but that they “suppressed” it by their wickedness (see Romans 1:18-23). Jesus made this even clearer by saying that those who seek will find. If this is true, then those who don’t find aren’t wholeheartedly seeking—they are just telling themselves that they are (see Matthew 7:7-8).”
Excerpt From: Budziszewski, J. “How to Stay Christian in College.”

262. SEX = COMMITMENT? “Love is a commitment of the will to the true good of another person, but we also said that its seal is the binding promise of marriage. Before that point, everything is reversible, even engagement. So how can you tell whether you’ve got a commitment? Simple. If you’re married, you have one. If you’re not married, you don’t. Do you have a boyfriend who says he’s committed to you but he’s just not ready for marriage? He’s lying.”
Excerpt From: Budziszewski, J. “How to Stay Christian in College.”

263. PROVIDENCE “[we] stumbled upon the little town of Saint Buryan, in Southern England – a crossroad in the country with a pub, a decaying church, and a graveyard. We stopped and read a few of the gravestones. One that was barely legible commemorated a family that lived in the 1600s. Buried beneath the stone were the mother, who gave birth to a son and died just ten days later at the age of twenty-four; her son, who lived thirteen months; and the father, who died a few days later at age twenty-five.
The faded words on that weathered limestone grave marker [said this]:
“We cannot, Lord, Thy purpose see
But all is well that’s done by Thee.”
Excerpt From: Rainey, Dennis. “Stepping Up.”

264. SUCCESS “Believing that making money is a selfish activity will undermine anyone’s chances of success.”
Excerpt From: Rabbi Daniel Lapin. “Thou Shall Prosper.”

265. SAYING ‘NO’ “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”
— Leonardo deVinci

266. RAISING CHRISTIANS “An overprotected generation has been sold the lie that “Christian living” means material blessing, automatic protection, and bulletproof safety. Two millennia of Christian martyrs beg to differ, and many young adults today are interested in those martyrs’ lives of jeopardy and fulfillment. They are desperate for a new way to understand and experience the worthy risks of following Christ. Life without some sense of urgency—a life that is safe, incubated, insular, overprotected, consumptive—is not worth living. The next generation is aching for influence, for significance, for lives of meaning and impact. Think of your favorite film or novel. Invariably the best stories, regardless of medium, involve significant hazards for the characters. We care about characters for whom the stakes are high—yet we have done all we can to lower the stakes for the newest real-life protagonists in God’s grand, risky story.”
Excerpt From: Kinnaman, David. “You Lost Me.”

267. TRIALS Daniel prayed for deliverance from King Darius’ decision to throw him in the lion’s den. But God did not deliver him UNTIL he was already in the den. Sometimes God let’s you go into the den because that is where He will show Himself to you.
–CS Lewis

268. SPORTS “Lacking the emotional skills to discern the damage to my sense of self, I sought approval from Dah [my dad] through sports and my achievements on the field. I continued to think that if I played well, he would give me acceptance and a gesture of approval. It was an unabashed transaction, a conditional relationship that my father used to try to turn me into the man he wanted me to be. And I complied.
But there is not a more flawed measure of a child’s value than sports. The playing fields are uneven; genetics skew the results in favor of the proper body type for each sport; dedication and determination can do only so much. And yet some parents and coaches use performance as the measure of a child’s worth.”
Excerpt From: Joe Ehrmann, Paula Ehrmann & Gregory Jordan. “InSideOut Coaching.”

269. PROVIDENCE Technically worms don’t have hearts but five aortic arches that for simplicity’s sake are commonly called “hearts.” The aortic arch functions as a heart, although there are no chambers. Worms also don’t have lungs. They absorb oxygen through their skin and then it gets into their blood vessels. The dorsal blood vessel does a bit of the pumping work, with the hearts helping to keep the blood pressure steady. I know you have a pretty busy life with a lot going on, but take a minute to think about how God regulates blood pressure. Not your blood pressure, but the blood pressure of the earthworms in the ground below you. That’s how detailed the providence of God truly is. He governs the entire universe, and if He even governs the blood pressure of worms, that simple fact should reduce your blood pressure. In other words, if He’s taking care of the worms, He’s obviously got you covered too.” Excerpt From: Farrar, Steve. “Real Valor.”

270. REDEMPTION It is said that “every man has his price.” The reality is the price for you has already been paid. Jesus did it.
–Steve Ferrar