Is There an Objective Good?

Does objective good exist?
objective good
Is there anything that is good in itself, good because of some inherent value rather than for some practical value, or is this only a chimera we pursue in vain?
inherent value
If what is good becomes only what is practical or what pleases me, then freedom becomes only a matter of doing whatever I want. Perhaps with a qualification of “as long as it does not hurt others” tacked on to the end. Freedom becomes a chasing after my own desires.
C. S. Lewis warns against a culture deciding that there is no objective good, that there is no definition of the good that exists outside of ourselves. He writes in Abolition of Man that “when all that says ‘it is good’ has been debunked, what says ‘I want’ remains.
Madeleine L’Engle writes in A Circle of Quiet that “Our country in general assumes that ‘the pursuit of happiness’ really means ‘the pursuit of pleasure’ and that therefore pleasure is the greatest good.Here, however, is the lie: We believe that if we decide objective good to be a myth, we are then free to choose. We are free to pursue our own desires.”
The truth, however, is that rather than being free to do what we want, we instead become enslaved to our own passions and desires. If there is no standard of goodness toward which we should aim, we only become bundles of desires, chasing after the next craving with no strength to resist and rest.
If, however, there is a good that is inherent in the fabric of reality, then freedom is the freedom to choose that good. Freedom is the ability to control our passions and desires by aiming them toward what is good.
freedom to choose good
Freedom is the cellist who has the skill and strength to weave her music into the whole, creating a beautiful song with the other instruments around her, pursuing a something that all would agree is intrinsically good.
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Art Credits: Fairy Tales by Jessie Willcox Smith; The Pieta by Michelangelo; Woman at a Table Near a Cello by Carl Holsøe

We Are Witnesses

We are witnesses.
Witnesses
Jesus declared it, and so it must be.
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
Not I would like for you to be my witnesses or even I command you to be my witnesses but you will be my witnesses.
We who claim to be Christ-followers, we who carry the very name of Christ, we are His witnesses.
Whether we like or not.
We might be good witnesses.
We might be bad witnesses.
But make no mistake, we are witnesses.
Do you see that verb?
To be
Not you will witness but you will be my witness.
Witnesses
It is a state of being. A way of life. A walking along the Way that communicates the Truth about Life.
You do, of course, have to have witnessed something in order to be a witness.
It is not enough only to have heard about God, we must have experienced Him in order to be a good witness.
‘It is one thing,’ said Henry Suso, ‘to hear for oneself a sweet lute, sweetly played, and quite another thing merely to hear about it.’ And it is one thing, we may add, to hear truth inwardly for one’s very self, and quite another thing merely to hear about it…One word from the lips of the man who has actually heard the lute play will have more effect than a score of sermons by the man who has only heard that it was played. ~ A. W. Tozer
Experience is always better than secondhand.
Witnesses
And what if you have never truly witnessed God, never experienced His Holy Spirit? Or what if it has simply been a very long time?
Go away. Find time, make time to get by yourself. Sit before Him in silence. Wait. Do this over and over, refusing to let go until He lets Himself be known.
It does not have to come in any dramatic way. It mostly, in fact, does not. He was not, after all, in the great wind or the earthquake or the fire.
Most often He comes in the stillness, in the quiet. He comes in the little, in the overlooked. He comes in the still, small voice.
Which is why we must be silent and alone regularly in order to experience Him.
Once you do, however, He will, slow and small change by slow and small change, transform you into the witness He wants you to be.
Whether you even realize it or not.

 

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Art credits: The Road to Emmaus by Claes Corneliszoon Moeyaert; Jesus and the Disciples on the Road to Emmaus by Pieter Bruegel the Elder; The Road to Emmaus by Robert Zund

Glory

Glory

Glory

A glimpse of You which 
Must be veiled lest
We fall blinded on the road.

 

The light which shone
On Moses’ face was
Caught from being with You.

 

You say be still, yet
It often feels as
Though the darkness remains.

 

What is the secret of
Beholding You, of 
Letting You blaze through me?

 

Time, time, and more,
Forty years if even
A day spent with You.

 

All of my time is
Worth giving away for just
A brief moment in fire and cloud.

 

I long for a touch of
Even Your hem, to
Soak and steep in Your

 

Glory.

 

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Art credit: photo from NASA

The Way Home to the Father

We are told to follow Jesus, to imitate Him as we live out our God-life here on earth.
We know this, and yet we find it all too easy to skim over the harder parts of His story.
washing feet
Some of the hardest parts to follow, at least for me, are the foot washing and the crucifixion. Yet these are two of the pieces that most embody Emmanuel, God-with-us.
Jesus spent much of His ministry telling the people around Him that His time had not yet come. Now it is the time of Passover and Jesus knew that His time had come. His time had come to leave this world and go to the Father.
What does He do first, now that His time has come? He washes the disciples feet. All of them. Even Judas.
serving
The Word of God, the Word made flesh, the Word who laid aside His glory in order to become a man now lays aside His clothes of fabric in order to wash feet.
He does not wash our feet despite the fact that He is God, but because He is God. This is how He shows us the Father.
This footwashing points us toward the cross, toward the moment when Jesus reveals the depths of the Father’s heart for us. This is who God is: the One who lays down His very life, first in service and then in giving it up completely through death, for His beloved creation.
These events, the footwashing and the crucifixion, are the events that lead Jesus to His time of going to the Father.
They are the events which form the ladder from this world to the Father’s world. They are the acted words the eternal Word must speak. They are the way home that the Son of God must take. ~ N. T. Wright
Why do we think that we can find a different way home to the Father?
deny self
Jesus says, after He has finished washing the feet of the disciples, that He has laid out a pattern for them to follow.
This is so hard. We are so proud and selfish. We proclaim Jesus as Lord and really mean that we have taken up His mantle of lordship within our little piece of the world. We want to rule and to push the serving bit off to the side.
This, however, is not following the pattern Jesus set for us. This is not imitating Him.
Instead, we, too, must lay aside our clothes, our clothes of pride and selfishness, and wash the feet of those given into our care, as the disciples were given into the care of Jesus.
We, too, must lay aside our lives, picking up our cross and dying to ourselves, for those the Father loves.
dying to ourselves
This is our way home to the Father.
To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Art credits: The Washing of the Feet by James Tissot; Jesus Washing the Feet of Peter by Sudharkarbira; Christ Washing the Disciples’ Feet by Francesco Vanni; Jesus Washing the Feet of His Disciples by Albert Edelfelt