"Let the rivers clap their hands"

Last week, with Psalm 97, I described the pagan vision of the natural world, all of creation animated by spiritual powers and potencies. The poetry of the Psalms echoes this vision with its anthropomorphized descriptions of the natural world. For example, in Psalm 98 the rivers clap and the mountains shout.  

These images could be mere metaphor. The material world, in such a view, is inert and dead. Rivers do not clap and mountains do not shout. Any such descriptions, therefore, are romantic indulgences and poetic pretending. We import a subjectivity where it doesn't exist.

And yet, borrowing from David Bentley Hart's recent book, the pagan vision of creation, where "all things are full of gods," may be more faithful to the Biblical imagination than scientific materialism. And yet, this appreciation and rehabilitation of the pagan worldview will be worrisome to many Christians. As I mentioned last week, viewing the world as full of spiritual powers and potencies raises concerns about idolatry and the demonic. Two very legitimate concerns. But the presence of temptations here doesn't mean the cosmology isn't true. In fact, these worries admit the validity of the pagan perspective. We would't be concerned about such things if none of it was real. 

There is also goodness in this vision of the world as well. As I described last week, the imagery of the Psalms opens up the possibility of a baptized paganism, viewing the powers of nature, visible and invisible, as subject to the lordship of Christ. I described how C.S. Lewis presents a vision of baptized paganism in The Chronicles of Narnia. A lovely illustration of this comes from The Magician's Nephew where the children bear witness to Aslan creating the world:

The Lion opened his mouth, but no sound came from it; he was breathing out, a long, warm breath; it seemed to sway all the beasts as the wind sways a line of trees. Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again; a pure, cold, difficult music. Then there came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children’s bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying: “Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters."

It was of course the Lion's voice. The children had long felt sure that he could speak: yet it was a lovely and terrible shock when he did. Out of the trees wild people stepped forth, gods Fauns and Satyrs and Dwarfs. Out of the river rose the river god with his Naiad daughters. And all these and all the beasts and birds in their different voices, low or high or thick or clear, replied:

“Hail, Aslan. We hear and obey. We are awake. We love. We think. We speak. We know.”

Lewis blends nature mysticism with Christianity. Creation is awake. 

As Psalm 98 says, the mountains shout and the rivers clap. 

Last post in this series reflecting on enchantment and disenchantment in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. 

The main thing I want to point out, here in the final post, is how the vampire genre has become increasingly disenchanted. 

The evil in Stoker's novel is very much enchanted, and sacred objects, especially the Host, repel the vampires. The battle is explicitly supernatural, a struggle between Good and Evil. In Dracula the Christian faith is true and provides the means of resistance. 

But as the vampire genre has developed and evolved over time, Stoker's privileging of Christian metaphysics has been displaced. You see this whenever the Christian weapons from Dracula, like the crucifix, are portrayed as impotent and powerless. In many modern vampire stories, the vampire will laugh at you if you hold a crucifix aloft and will chid you for being superstitious. In modern stories, vampirism is often given a biological explanation, like a genetic mutation. The occult has been eclipsed by science. The effects of garlic, silver, and sunlight are described as severe allergic reactions. In much of the modern vampire genre God is dead. The world is wholly disenchanted.

You also find the disenchanting effects of Protestantism in modern vampire stories, a loss of the sacramentalism in Stoker's novel. For example, in Stephen King's Salem's Lot crosses are effective against vampires. But there are two changes. First, these are crosses, not crucifixes. A very Protestant change. Also, there's a scene where Father Callahan holds aloft a crucifix, but because the priest lacks faith the crucifix proves ineffectual. Notice the shift away from the robust sacramentalism of Stoker's Dracula. What matters in Salem's Lot isn't the power of God but the power of faith. The weapons against evil have shifted from the objective to the subjective, from the ontological to the psychological. Recall how the most powerful weapon in Stoker's Dracula is the Host, the Real Presence of Christ. A real, material power. But in Salem's Lot, the power shifts toward the human and the mental, something wholly subjective. As Barlow says to Father Callahan in Salem's Lot, “It is your faith against my faith, Father. Is your faith enough?” The center of power now resides the human heart. Do we have enough faith? Sola fide! Believe! God is in your mind!

All this to share how you can trace the influence of modernity in the disenchantment of the vampire genre since the publication of Bram Stoker's Dracula. And this is an easy test anyone can conduct: In the vampire story you're reading or watching, when the crucifix--or cross!--is held aloft does the vampire even care? 

The indifferent reaction of the modern vampire to the cross reveals much about the modern world.

As I mentioned in the last post, Bram Stoker's Dracula is a liminal book, in plot and when it was published. The book sits at the cusp of the Old world and the New, poised between ancient superstitions and scientific progress. The novel dances been skepticism and faith.

That dance is mainly played out between Dr. John "Jack" Seward and his former professor Abraham Van Helsing. Seward, as a psychiatrist, is a modern man of science. But when he is stumped by Lucy Westenra's symptoms, he calls upon Van Helsing, his former professor. Van Helsing soon begins to suspect that something occult is going on, but he refrains from disclosing his thoughts to Seward. Knowing him to be a modern, scientific man, Van Helsing knows Seward will be skeptical about Van Helsing's diagnosis of the problem. Consequently, as things unfold it's between Van Helsing and Seward where the issues of faith and doubt in the modern world come out in the novel. 

For example, early on, in discussing Seward's perplexity at Lucy's aliment, Van Helsing says to him:

"You are a clever man, friend John. You reason well, and your wit is bold, but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are, that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplated by men's eyes, because they know, or think they know, some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all, and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain."

Such a great line: "It is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all, and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain."

Later in this same conversation, Val Helsing asks Seward to open his mind, to set aside his scientific prejudices, so that Val Helsing can disclose what he thinks is happening:

"Well, I shall tell you. My thesis is this, I want you to believe."

"To believe what?"

"To believe in things that you cannot. Let me illustrate. I heard once of an American who so defined faith, 'that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.' For one, I follow that man. He meant that we shall have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth check the rush of the big truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. We get the small truth first. Good! We keep him, and we value him, but all the same we must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe."

This passage captures how Van Helsing is a man of two worlds, a man of science and a man of faith. Seward's epistemology, by contrast, is small and asymmetrical. Science, for Seward, has collected a pile of pebbles we call "facts." But he lets those small truths, even a single pebble, derail the entire train. The granular, factual, and small blinds Seward to larger realties. 

Van Helsing also values science. All those facts, those small truths, we keep and value them. But we don't let this handful of facts trick us into thinking we have in our possession all the truth in the universe. 

If you like the work of Iain McGilchrist, Seward is left-hemisphere dominant. Seward can see the granular but he can't see the larger whole, pattern, or Gestalt. Seward's attention is too narrow. He can't see big pictures. Van Helsing, by contrast, is more balanced in his cognitive processes, able to let his right-hemisphere piece together a mosaic from the bits of the factual. 

In short, in the novel Dracula Van Helsing, as the hero of the story, presents us with an epistemological ideal. As a man of science, Van Helsing is firmly planted in the modern world and is at home there. But as a man of faith, Van Helsing is also able to perceive larger and greater realities that his more modern student, Dr. Seward, cannot. Seward can only see illness. Van Helsing can see both illness and evil, and this greater perceptual range makes him the champion of the story. 

Over the Christmas break I went with my son Aidan to see Nosferatu, the modern remake of the 1922 silent film. The original film was a pretty bald ripoff of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. So much so that Stoker's widow sued the German film makers for copyright infringement. 

When I went to see Nosferatu, I had not seen the 1922 original. Nor had I read Stoker's novel. But in watching the movie I was struck by its themes of enchantment and disenchantment. The story is set in a world coming of age. Science, medicine, and technology are advancing. And yet, emerging from the shadows of the Old World there appears a spiritual terror. Something dark and menacing still haunts the modern world.

Stoker published his novel in 1897. And as the author of Hunting Magic Eels, I'm interested in our culture's drift from enchantment to disenchantment. So the liminality of Nosferatu caught my attention. And given that Nosferatu basically borrowed Stoker's novel, I decided to read Dracula for the first time.

Here's what shocked me. Bram Stoker's Dracula is a very Christian novel. I would even say that Dracula is one of the greatest Christian novels of all time. Christianity suffuses the book. Faith is the air the novel breaths. Fans of the novel, of course, are aware of this, but the pious devoutness of the story caught me by surprise. However, if you've not read the novel, here's a selective survey of its Christian content and themes. I've tried to avoid spoilers.

First off, the main characters are Christian. The Harker's, the couple at the center of the drama, are Protestant. Professor Abraham Van Helsing is a devout Catholic. The group trying to defeat Dracula pray together and explicitly view their battle against Dracula as a spiritual conflict. As Van Helsing says at one point (by the way, Van Helsing is Dutch so his English is broken), "Thus are we ministers of God's own wish. That the world, and men for whom His Son die, will not be given over to monsters, whose very existence would defame Him. He have allowed us to redeem one soul already, and we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more. Like them we shall travel towards the sunrise. And like them, if we fall, we fall in good cause." Before the climatic encounter with Dracula, the group prays with Van Helsing: "We men all knelt down, Mina lying prostrate; and Van Helsing lifted his hands and said:—‘O God, give me light in the darkness!’”

Second, the reality of heaven plays a key role in the drama of the story. The status of Lucy Westenra’s soul is at risk if the group cannot free her from the curse. As Val Helsing explains, "When this now Un-Dead be made to rest as true dead, then the soul of the poor lady whom we love shall again be free." When Lucy's soul is freed, Van Helsing declares, "For she is not a grinning devil now, not any more a foul Thing for all eternity. No longer she is the devil's Un-Dead. She is God's true dead, whose soul is with Him!"

Third, and this is something I think almost everyone knows, the weapons used against Dracula are spiritual weapons: Holy water, rosaries, crucifixes and, most importantly, the Consecrated Host. This last bit surprised me. In vampire movies you often see crucifixes held aloft. But the Host, by far, is Van Helsing's weapon of choice. The Host is used to repulse a vampire from attacking. The Host is used to despoil tombs and coffins so they cannot be used by vampires. The Host is used to determine if someone has been tainted by Dracula's blood. And crumbled bits of the Host are used to create protective circles that Dracula cannot enter. Even more than crucifixes and holy water, the Host is the most powerful weapon against evil in the novel. 

The power of the Host in Dracula has been of scholarly interest and debate. Bram Stoker's religious views were opaque. We do know he was raised Protestant in the Church of Ireland. Given the Protestant and Catholic debates swirling around the doctrine of the Real Presence during his lifetime, some have wondered if Stoker had a sacramental agenda in writing Dracula. Or even a Catholic agenda. For example, in the novel we see the Protestant protagonists coming to accept and embrace Catholic objects, like the crucifix. Very early in the story, before Jonathan Harker goes to Dracula's castle, a peasant woman, fearing for his safety, gives him a crucifix. Later on, upon finding himself trapped in the castle, Jonathan finds comfort in the crucifix. This comfort causes Jonathan to question his Protestant misgivings about the object:

It [the crucifix] is an odd thing which I have been taught to regard with disfavor and as idolatrous should in a time of loneliness and trouble be of help. Is it that there is something in the essence of the thing itself [the crucifix], or that it is a medium, a tangible help, in conveying memories of sympathy and comfort? Some time, if it may be, I must examine this matter and try to make up my mind about it.

Beyond Protestant misgivings, Jonathan is standing here, early in the novel, in that liminal space between the old, traditional faith and scientific modernity, poised between enchantment and disenchantment. He wonders if the crucifix possesses spiritual potency--"something in the essence of the thing itself"--or if it's just a comforting memory. As the story progresses, Jonathan's doubt will be dispelled. The crucifix, along with other holy and consecrated objects, do possess spiritual power. Sacramentally speaking, there is, truly and powerfully, "something in the essence of the thing itself." And the Host, as the Real Presence of Christ, is the primary example of this sacramentalism throughout the story.

All that to say, given this sacramentalism in Dracula, scholars debate if Stoker had a theological agenda in mind in writing the novel. Regardless, a sacramental imagination suffuses the book. Which, as I mentioned, surprised me. I picked up what I thought was a horror story and found myself contemplating the Real Presence. 

As I said, Bram Stoker's Dracula ranks as one of the greatest Christian novels.

Last post in this series.

While rereading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I was struck by how much passages of the book reminded me of Jordan Peterson.

(For new readers, I am both appreciative and critical of Jordan Peterson. Any given post I write about Peterson never captures my whole view. This post is in the appreciative category.)

I had recently read Peterson's latest book We Who Wrestle with God, so his ideas were in my head when I picked up Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. 

One of Peterson's big ideas, a repeated refrain, concerns how facts are insufficient to guide human life. In any given moment we face a blizzard of facts. Which ones should we attend to? Which facts have meaning for us? Can a fact even be a fact without that meaning? And so forth. What we need, according to Peterson, are values which help us rank and sort through the facts we encounter. These values, says Peterson, are ranked hierarchically. Some values are more important than others. Continuing, if you keep walking up this hierarchy of value your reach the highest value, the highest good. This is the Logos, the value that governs all other values and determines which facts have value for us in directing our choices and actions.

These ideas are found throughout Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Here's a sampling of passages:

"Our structured reality is preselected on the basis of value."

"Reason was no longer to be 'value free.' Reason was to be subordinate, logically, to Quality."

Quality (Value) "is the generator of everything we know."

"The facts are there but you don't see them. You're looking right at them, but they don't have enough value...The facts do not exist until value created them. If your values are rigid you can't really learn new facts."

Here's an extended passage where Pirsig describes how value rigidity blocks our ability to see facts. This is an example that Peterson has used in his own work:

I keep wanting to go back to that analogy of fishing for facts. I can just see somebody asking with great frustration, "Yes, but which facts do you fish for? There's got to be more to it than that."

But the answer is that if you know which facts you're fishing for you're no longer fishing. You've caught them. I'm trying to think of a specific example...

All kinds of examples from cycle maintenance could be given, but the most striking example of value rigidity I can think of is the old South Indian Monkey Trap, which depends on value rigidity for its effectiveness. The trap consists of a hollowed-out coconut chained to a stake. The coconut has some rice inside which can be grabbed through a small hole. The hole is big enough so that the monkey's hand can go in, but too small for his fist with rice in it to come out. The monkey reaches in and is suddenly trapped--by nothing more than his own value rigidity. He can't revalue the rice. He cannot see that freedom without rice is more valuable than capture with it. The villagers are coming to get him and take him away. They're coming closer...closer!...now! What general advice--not specific advice--but what general advice would you give the poor monkey in circumstances like this?

Well, I think you might say exactly what I've been saying about value rigidity, with perhaps a little extra urgency. There is a fact this monkey should know: if he opens his hand he's free. But how is he going to discover this fact? By removing the value rigidity that rates rice above freedom. How is he going to do that? Well, he should somehow try to slow down deliberately and go over ground that he has been over before and see if things he thought were important really were important and, well, stop yanking and just stare at the coconut for a while. Before long he should get a nibble from a little fact wondering if he is interested in it. He should try to understand this fact not so much in terms of his big problem as for its own sake. That problem may not be as big as he thinks it is.

A little bit later, Pirsig describes how we avoid value traps like this: "You've got to live right too. It's the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts." Living right helps you see the right facts. This is Pirsig's case for virtue ethics and echos Peterson's own interest in "rules for living." We can only come to see the right facts in life if we are "living right," living in accordance to the Dao and the Logos. 

Peterson has listed Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as among his influences. You can see that influence in the passages above. Specifically, for both Pirsig and Peterson, value comes before facts and helps us select which facts we shall attend to. More so, value creates facts. Value creates our experience of reality. Consequently, in order to live well be must "live right." We must live in accordance to value. For only in living right can we see aright and find the answers to the problems and challenges of life.

"you are exalted above all the gods"

Psalm 97 is one of those passages where the henotheism of the ancient Israelites comes into view. The heavens are populated with gods but Yahweh reigns supreme over these lesser spiritual powers. As Psalm 97 says, the Lord is "exalted above all the gods."

This is a view that carries into the New Testament as well. For example, Satan is described as the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4). True, in both the Old and New Testaments the gods of the pagans are also described as demons. Regardless, gods or demons, the world teems with spiritual powers. 

In my recent series on the fairy-faith of the Celtics peoples, in preparation for a class I'm teaching in Ireland, I discussed the Celtic experience of the natural world as suffused with spiritual agency. This animistic view of the natural world is common to paganism, then and now. Traditionally, these beliefs have been alarming to Christians. The spiritual worldview of paganism tempts us into the idolatrous and the demonic. And no doubt that is a Biblical concern. And yet, Scripture also describes how these spiritual powers have been tamed and brought under the lordship of Jesus. From Colossians 1:

He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn over all creation.
For everything was created by him,
in heaven and on earth,
the visible and the invisible,
whether thrones or dominions
or rulers or authorities—
all things have been created through him and for him.
He is before all things,
and by him all things hold together.
He is also the head of the body, the church;
he is the beginning,
the firstborn from the dead,
so that he might come to have
first place in everything.
For God was pleased to have
all his fullness dwell in him,
and through him to reconcile
everything to himself,
whether things on earth or things in heaven,
by making peace
through his blood, shed on the cross.

In the words of Psalm 97, Christ is exalted above all the gods. What this vision opens up is what might be called a baptized paganism. The spiritual powers and potencies of paganism indeed exist. But these agents hold no power or terror for they have been conquered, reconciled, and brought under the lordship Christ. This baptized paganism is the vision C.S. Lewis shares in The Chronicles of Narnia. Narnia is full of nature spirits and pagan gods. These spirits and gods were created by Aslan and they are submissive and obedient to his rule and command. Lewis fuses paganism and Christianity. The natural world is suffused with spiritual agency. The nature spirits exist. But the Lord is exulted above all the gods. 

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was published in 1973. The motorcycle ride at the heart of the book took place in 1968. The defining intellectual events in the book, when Pirsig taught rhetoric at Montana State University, took place in 1958-1960. 

I don't know how much the fact/value split was on the intellectual radar screen in the late 50s. Of course, the split goes back to the Enlightenment, but its impact upon culture didn't seem to be widely appreciated until the unraveling of the Sixties. The broad, Western cultural consensus, rooted in the Judeo-Christian worldview, kept the values of Americans mostly homogenous up until the fracturing that occurred during the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Consequently, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance captured a moment when people were beginning to notice existential dislocations between human life and technological progress. This fracturing sets the stage of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance with Pirsig's reflections upon how his hip and artistic travel companions, John and Sylvia, find themselves romantically alienated from the machine that is making their motorcycle trip possible. John and Sylvia's alienation from technology is taken as an example of a larger cultural diagnosis, how the modern world possesses vast technological capacity but is also existentially lost and adrift. How did this situation come to be? Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance sets out to answer that question.

Although Pirsig doesn't describe it this way in the book, his answer about our cultural problems basically points the finger at the fact/value split. To the one side is science, rationality, and technology. To the other is value--the true, the beautiful, and the good--what Pirsig calls "Quality." At a critical part of the book, during his years teaching at Montana State, Pirsig chaffs at how Quality/Value has been reduced to the subjective in the modern world. This triggers his mission to prove what I'll call the ontologization of value. This pursuit leads Pirsig into metaphysics, and an eventual mental breakdown. But the mystical insight he reaches, that Value is the Real, is the philosophical accomplishment of the book.

Simply put, Pirsig overcomes the fact/value split by restoring Value to its transcendental status. And more than a transcendental status, an all-encompassing transcendental status. 

What might that mean? In the book, Pirsig calls Quality the Dao, Dharma, the Buddha, and the Godhead. I can't recall if he compares Quality to Brahman, but that would also apply. In the Christian imagination, Quality would be the Logos.

This was this bit--the ontologization of value--from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that I didn't know what to do with when I first read the book. As I recounted in the first post, I was in the grip of science at the time and didn't know what to do with the mystical aspects of the book, or why they were important. But now, as I also recounted, my concerns are more metaphysical, even mystical. Consequently, I better appreciate what Pirsig was trying to do and say. Life after the fact/value split is a disorienting, incoherent mess. And the only way to overcome the split is the ontologization of value. Value exists and we live our lives in relation to that value. This is a critical part of the story I tell in The Shape of Joy.

Of course, I come at this question from a Christian perspective. But I don't think it is too hard to make a connection between the Dao and the Logos. As I wrote about recently, Chinese translations of John 1 translate the Greek word logos as Dao. C.S. Lewis also describes the ontologization of value, in its moral key, as the Dao in The Abolition of Man. 

All that to say, having missed the point of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance during graduate school, due to my scientific orientation and wariness about mysticism, I found myself, upon rereading, appreciating the ambition of the book. As I describe in The Shape of Joy, I agree with Pirsig's vision. Value is the Real, and we live our lives in an ongoing mystical relationship with that ontological Reality.

I read Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in graduate school, and like millions before me was fascinated by the blend of memoir, travel narrative, cultural commentary, and philosophy, both Eastern and Western. The book is hard to classify, and it can be enjoyed in many different ways. 

When I read the book in graduate school I was just discovering my love for psychological research. I was writing my Masters thesis at the time and was finding that project engrossing. I was also taking counseling classes and seeing clients in my practicum settings. So mental illness was also on my mind. If you've read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance you can see how my interests at that time in both the scientific method and mental illness would have drawn me to the book. I also had a longstanding interest in philosophy, and almost pursued a PhD in philosophy, so that was a draw as well.

But what I didn't really appreciate at the time was Pirsig's "metaphysics of Quality." I don't really think I understood it, and it sounded a little woo-woo. My thinking then, as I said, was pretty rationalistic and scientific. I was deep into my research. So the Zen stuff didn't really connect with me. I was, though, interested in Pirsig's reflections about how scientific insights, guided by Quality, mysteriously bubble up into consciousness. I was experiencing my own discoveries at that time, minor though they were, and had felt the euphoria of theoretical insight and empirical confirmation known by all scientists. It was a thrilling time.  

Still, it was strange to feel a bit alienated from the central focus of the book, the metaphysics of Quality. 

Many years have past since graduate school. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a book I once liked but had not thought much about since. But over time my interests have evolved. In the early part of my career, psychological research is what I did and I published journal articles. You can browse some of them here in my Google Scholar profile. In the early 2000s, my research turned toward the psychology of religion, research that culminated in my first two books, Unclean and The Authenticity of Faith. From there, starting with Reviving Old Scratch, I began to write theologically focused books for a general and popular audience. To the point that a lot of people think and call me a theologian when I'm really an experimental psychologist. I teach statistics and research for a living. 

Due to the theological turn in my thinking and writing, almost all of it shared and recounted here in this online space, over the last decade I've been thinking a lot, like many theologians, about the fact/value split and its effect upon us. Simply stated, the fact/value split describes the dislocation between science and values. When it comes to factual claims science is the tool we use to describe the world, a tool that can bring about unanimity of opinion. Facts are public and empirically available. Values, by contrast, are personal, private, and subjective. Given this, there is no way to bring about a consensus when it comes to morality or the common good. Our values are personal and relative. Which is an intolerable situation. The modern world is characterized by scientific and technological power on the one hand with moral incompetence and spiritual confusion on the other. The story of how this all came about is told in books like Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue and Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. 

My interest in the fact/value split comes into view with my latest book The Shape of Joy. Readers of the book will have observed how I connect our mental health crisis to our loss of value--our disconnection from the true, the beautiful, and the good. A clear example of this that I describe in the book concerns the psychological construct known as mattering, also called cosmic or existential significance. Brené Brown describes mattering as the spiritual conviction that you are worthy of love and belonging. Let's underline that word "worthy." Our worth is existential and cosmic in nature, an issue of metaphysical value. 

Given how much I was thinking about mental health and the metaphysics of value in writing The Shape of Joy, my mind started to drift back to that book I read in graduate school. The subtitle of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is, after all, "An Inquiry into Values." Specifically, the metaphysics of value. My interests had dramatically changed since I had first read the book in graduate school. In graduate school I was a scientist. Today, I'm more a theologian and metaphysician. I wondered if in rereading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I would be better able to appreciate the central thesis of the book concerning the metaphysics of Quality.

So, I reread Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In the next post I'll share what I found.

Last week I ended a post reflecting upon our current political moment by asking aloud this provocative question: 

"Was it utopian of us to believe that the Constitution of the United States, this democratic experiment, could forever resist and conquer human depravity?"

I want to unpack this question a bit in relation to the "man of lawlessness" described in 2 Thessalonians.

One of the reasons Marxism failed as a political project was because it was premised upon a false anthropology. Marx got people wrong, and because he got people wrong his political and economic vision went awry. By "getting people wrong" I mean how Marx made a fundamental error concerning human motivation. Humans are not solely driven by materialist concerns. Nor do people have an innate altruistic motivation to work for the common good. Lastly, humans do not readily let go of power and wealth. Rather, we are greedy and power-hungry. Simply put, Marx failed to account for human sin and depravity. Marx's overly optimistic and utopian view of human nature doomed communism to failure.

In the question I asked last week--Was it utopian of us to believe that the Constitution of the United States, this democratic experiment, could forever resist and conquer human depravity?--I am asking if democracy will also fail, like Marxism, due to an overly optimistic and utopian anthropology. 

Democracy has lasted longer than communism because, as enshrined in the Constitution of the United States, it is based upon a more realistic and pessimistic view of humanity. The Constitution assumes people are self-interested and power-hungry. It also assumes the American electorate is a bit mad. Given this realistic view, the Constitution sets up a variety of firewalls and its famous "checks and balances." Presidents can only serve two terms. The coolness of the Senate balances the firebrands of the House, tempering the feverish volatility of the American electorate. Supreme Court justices serve life terms, detaching them from the electorate. Congress holds the power of the purse. The Supreme Court has judicial review. People are protected from governmental harm by the Bill of Rights. Etc, etc. We can also throw in non-governmental protections, like freedom of the press.

All of this has been put into place to protect us from evil. Power is distributed so that human malevolence cannot overtake the state. This distribution of power is maddeningly inefficient, but the inefficiency provides protection. And even with all this in place, the protection provided is wildly uneven and regularly fails to protect the populace from corruption, exploitation, and oppression, especially the poor and vulnerable.    

And yet, to return to my question, could it be that the Constitution’s view of human nature—pessimistic as it is—is still too utopian and optimistic? Is it possible that, by failing to account for the full malignity of human nature, democracies will, like Marxism, eventually succumb?

True, by having a more realistic account of human depravity, democracies will have a longer shelf life than communism. Democracies will last longer because they possess capacities that limit, check, and reject malevolence. But those walls and barriers can erode over time and eventually crumble. For example, the Roman Empire lasted for over 2,000 years (from the founding of Rome to the fall of Constantinople). America is just now approaching 250 years. Can we hold on for another 1,750 years? I'm not betting on it. I think the human brokenness we're witnessing in the electorate and in our politics is showing the first cracks of an eventual disintegration. As I suggested, I think it was very utopian of us to think that democracy could save us from human depravity. 

Here's what I mean. And political cards on the table. First, I have dear friends who voted for Trump. I love them and understand their reasons for that support. But I'm not a fan of the President. And while I'm slow to throw around the word "fascism," there are things Trump has done and said that make me think we are starting to see some cracks in the foundation of our democracy. Personally, I think the walls will hold this time around. I'm not sounding an alarm. But again, extrapolate out 1,750 years. The fractures forming today may be micro-fractures, but the micro-fractures will grow and expand over time. 

What do I mean by cracks in our democracy? The January 6th riot and Trump asking Pence to overturn the election. Trump refusing to comply with judicial orders and Vance openly declaring that the executive branch can ignore the courts. But the trigger for me recently was Trump openly talking about various ways to run for a third term. 

And listen, to any Trump-supporting readers, I think the Democrats need to do better on many of the issues you care about. I think the Democrats are a disaster and the swing state losses in this last election should be a wake up call for them. But bracket good-faith differences on policy issues for a moment. I think a reasonable person can see that Trump and his devoted followers, most of whom are Christians, are a stress test for democratic norms. And to play fair, I'll put on the table the fascism of what Rod Dreher calls the "soft totalitarianism" of the Woke and liberal elites. So there's plenty of fascists to go around. And everyone feels victimized.

I get all that. I'm just here to confess that, when Trump started ruminating aloud last week about how "there are methods" for running for a third term, the image of the "man of lawlessness" from 2 Thessalonians popped into my head. Because that's how it starts, it seems to me. That is how the long fuse gets lit.

A man of lawlessness looks across the protective fence of the Constitution and starts to think, "There are methods."

Last week I described the relationship between top-down processing and perception. Specifically, perception isn't a passive activity. Rather, we impose expectations, assumptions, prior knowledge, and beliefs onto the world, and this makes perception possible. As I put it last week, it's "seeing is believing" (bottom-up processing) and "believing is seeing" (top-down processing).

In short, prior beliefs and assumptions create the world we perceive, both disclosing and hiding the world.

Here's a Biblical story that illustrates this dynamic.

In John 6 Jesus feeds the five thousand. Overnight, Jesus and his disciples cross the lake to Capernaum. The next day the crowd looks for Jesus and cannot find him. They cross the lake in search of him. Finding Jesus on the other side, this exchange occurs:

When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”

Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled."

The phrase "not because you saw the signs" can also be translated "not because you perceived the signs."

Basically, an event takes place, the feeding of the multitude. Some only see food. Others perceive (or should have perceived) a sign. Perceptions are bifurcated. Some perceive a free meal, others perceive significances. That is what a sign is, the perception of significances. 

Let me return to the point I made last week about top-down and bottom-up processing. Seeing signs, perceiving significances, is top-down processing. Guided by significances vision becomes beholding. 

"all the trees of the forest will shout for joy"

One of the striking images from the Psalms is the communicative aspect of nature. Rivers clap, the heavens speak, mountains shout, the trees praise.

In the paperback version of Hunting Magic Eels I talk about Hartmut Rosa's work on resonance. According to Rosa, resonance is the experience of being addressed by the world. Reciprocally, upon being addressed we can answer the call. A dialogical relationship with the world is established.

The opposite of resonance, according to Rosa, is alienation from the world. The world is silent and mute. Without a voice, the world becomes inert and factual. Alienation, says Rosa, displays an "asymmetrical anthropology," where subjectivity is arrogated to ourselves leaving the world silent and objectified. In the language of the Jewish theologian Martin Buber, alienation creates an I-It relation with the world, where my side of the relation is alive and the other side is dead. Materialism, therefore, is a relationship with deadness, metaphysical necrophilia.

Staying with Buber, resonance establishes an I-Thou relation with the world. We step into a symmetrical anthropology where life exists on both sides. There is a relationship of communication and exchange where I am addressed by existence and can answer in turn. 

In his seminal book I-Thou, Buber has us consider a tree. On the one hand, Buber says, we can observe the tree factually and scientifically. We can "classify it in a species and study it as a type." We can "subdue" the tree to analyze its chemical makeup, reducing its organic life to a "law." We can turn the tree into a number. In all this, says Buber, "the tree remains my object."

But a symmetrical, communicative relationship could also be established with the tree. The tree can address me. As Buber puts it, the tree "has to do with me." My relation with the tree, says Buber, is "mutual."

The life of faith is to participate in a sacred conversation with the world, to exist in an ongoing, resonant, I-Thou relation with life. You are being addressed by the world. If you listen well, you can hear the trees shouting for joy. 

Faith is answering that call.

Here's a game to play with the family on a road tip. 

Bob is dead in the living room. You must play detective to determine the cause of Bob's death. You can ask me any question about Bob's body or the house as you investigate. I'll answer your questions and from those answers you'll have to crack the case.

The questions come. Where is Bob? He's in the living room. Is there any blood or wounds on the body? No, there is no visible blood, cuts, injuries, or wounds. Is there a gun in the house? There is a gun in the basement. Any open medicine bottles around Bob? No, but there are medicine bottles in the bathroom. 

As the questioning continues, some weird details emerge. Bob is naked. Bob is wet. And so the game goes.

You might have played this game before. If you haven't, here's the secret. Bob is a goldfish who has jumped out of his bowl and died. The trick of the game is that when people hear "Bob is dead in the living room" they automatically and implicitly assume Bob is a human. The crime scene and detective setup reinforces the impression. And once that assumption is made this game can go on for a very long time, befuddling the detectives. And feel free to share answers about the house that deepens the mystery and causes the detectives to chase rabbits. Put a Ouija board on a table, a clown costume on a couch, or drugs in the bedroom. Anything to distract the group from asking the one question that will crack the case: "Is Bob a human?"

The "Bob is dead in the living room" game illustrates what psychologists call top-down processing. Our perceptions are shaped by prior knowledge, beliefs, assumptions, and expectations. We impose meaning upon the world, and while that meaning brings some things into view it blinds us a well. You've heard the old adage, "seeing is believing." Well, it's also true that "believing is seeing." Perception is more top-down than bottom-up.

In discussing value in yesterday's post I mentioned Jordan Peterson. If you know Peterson's work you know that one of his big ideas concerns how value guides perception. What Peterson is popularizing is top-down processing. The mind has to impose value, meaning, and order upon sense perception. Without top-down processing sense perception would be a chaotic flurry and buzz of impressions. Students of Kant will discern here something similar to Kant's notion of a priori categories that the mind has to impose upon sensation in order to meaningfully interpret the world. 

All this to make a point about faith. Faith is less about bottom-up processing than top-down processing. Faith is an a priori assumption that brings the world into view. Faith is the imposition of value and meaning that makes perception possible. 

We believe to see. 

In The Shape of Joy I use the research of positive psychology to bring the reader into a conversation about transcendence. Many lines of research converge upon the insight that psychological well-being is associated with living in relationship with transcendence. This is the "outward turn" I describe in The Shape of Joy.

But what is transcendence? In talking about transcendence with my students I don't specify the metaphysical content of transcendence. Rather, I take them on a psychological tour, noting locations where we bump into transcendence. The etymology of the word transcendence means "to go beyond." So here are five locations where we experience "going beyond" the merely physical, factual, and material:

1. Wonder and awe
2. Reverence
3. Value
4. Cosmic gratitude
5. Source of moral obligations

The Shape of Joy walks through many of these. Concerning wonder and awe, in the words of Jane Goodall, we are "amazed at things outside of ourselves." Reverence is different from awe, and concerns our experience of the sacred and holy. Of course, the sacred and holy can trigger awe, but I make a contrast between the hallowed and the wondrous, though the two can overlap.

We also encounter transcendence in our experiences of value, like the value of human persons. We encounter value in how we navigate within an ecosystem of significances that push, pull, and shape our lives.  These significances address us more profoundly than the factual. This is, for Jordan Peterson fans, a point he often makes, how our goal-directed behavior, and even perception itself, operates against a background of value.

Gratitude is a relational emotion, our response to having received a favor or gift. Whenever we experience gratefulness for a moment of beauty or life itself we step into cosmic gratitude, a gratitude toward the source and origin of existence itself. Cosmic gratitude creates the I-Thou relationship with the world described by Martin Buber, what Hartmut Rosa calls "resonance." 

Lastly, the grounding and source of our moral obligations place us in relationship with transcendence. Whenever we stand within an obligating moral framework we are standing sub specie aeternitatis, under the gaze of eternity. 

Notice, again, that this tour of transcendence doesn't specify any metaphysical content. There is no object of "faith" in this list. Nothing to believe in or not believe in. This is one of reasons why I don't think atheism is a real thing. Oh sure, there might be a few dogmatic and fundamentalist atheists out there, but such types border on the delusional and deranged. Most people, even confessed atheists, experience transcendence as I've described it above. They experience wonder. They hallow. They act in light of value. They experience cosmic gratitude. They espouse a moral code. And while an atheist might not "believe" anything, they live their lives in relation to transcendence, "going beyond" the merely factual and scientific. 

Yesterday I made a contrast between post-Christian social justice activism--Wokeness--with the activism of the American civil rights movement that was steeped in Christianity. This is one of those contrasts that causes me to describe myself as a post-progressive Christian. 

As is well known, many of the leaders of the civil rights movement were preachers, like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy. John Lewis ended up in politics, but was in college to become a pastor when he got swept up into the movement. The movement was connected, organized, energized, and hosted by Black churches. The philosophy of the movement was rooted in the Sermon on the Mount and Gandhian nonviolence. And the Christian vision of love was its guiding moral value. Contrast all that with post-Christian social justice activism. 

Yesterday I described what I called the "revivalism" of the civil rights movement. I used that word to describe how much of the movement was aimed at conversion and evangelism. The movement explicitly attempted to change hearts and minds. And from those changed hearts and minds a social movement was born, energized, and sustained. 

Here's a clear example of what I mean in contrasting the revivalism of the civil rights movement with post-Christian activism: the role of music. Singing was ubiquitous in the civil rights movement. And even if you weren't a Christian you got pulled into the music of the movement, much of it rooted in Christian hymnody and Black spirituals. A regular and iconic image of the civil rights movement was people holding hands and singing "We Shall Overcome." Just watch some of the footage from the March on Washington in 1963. Better yet, listen to the March on Washington. That march was a massive church service. That is what I mean by revivalism. And it was a revivalism that wrought powerful social and political change.

And the march continues! But the landscape of political resistance has become increasingly post-Christian. Where's the music? Where is the revivalism? Where's the holding hands and singing? This lack of singing in today's political activism is, I believe, diagnostic. As I mentioned in the last post, there is little concern for the moral and spiritual aspects of social transformation. No connection to faith. No appeal to love. 

And yet, given that I wrote this three months ago, I expect one response to these reflections is that we don't need a faith-based revival as Christians themselves are the problem today. But guess what? Christians were the problem during the Civil Rights movement. Recall to whom MLK addressed his Letter from a Birmingham Jail: the white pastors of the city. If Christians are the problem, revival is the solution. That was precisely what MLK was doing, the evangelization and conversion of Christians.

Is a Civil Rights era revival possible today among Christians? Only the Lord knows. It may be that God is allowing false and lying prophets to lead American Christianity toward its doom in a cleansing, clarifying conflagration. Perhaps out of those ashes a more faithful church might arise.