Intellectual Anxiety

It's happening far less than it used to, but every once in a while I find myself held captive by a kind of intellectual anxiety. This anxiety bears a couple different forms of fruit. One is a kind of nauseating self-pity, where I mope about all the things I don't know. I'm sure the cure of this is the same, supposed cure for drunkenness (something I know nothing about): a simple video recording of yourself when you're in that state so you can see how foolish you really are. The second, which is linked to the first but slightly different, is the "I don't know what book to read next" quandary. The latter can be far less reprehensible than the former, but it needs to be restrained because it can lead to unhealthy habits.

One of these potential habits is a tendency to rush through books in order to read the next one. This often means that one plows over details and fails to grasp the points of the book, thus failing at some level the entire point of reading in the first place. It's better to slow down and read for comprehension.

A second and deadlier, potential habit is laziness or a lack of discipline; lack of discipline sounds less harsh, especially in a culture where the virtues aren't prized. When one recognizes the need to slow down and read for comprehension, nay, when one realizes that learning is a slow, arduous journey that takes time, it is tempting to disparage (at least at some point along the way) about the entire thing and become less disciplined, lazy and, perhaps, apathetic. Because the nature of learning is difficult, we will always be tempted to take (illegitimate) shortcuts and/or recycle cheap information. (There are some shortcuts that are not illegitimate, but it takes a clear mind, disciplined spirit and hearty dose of willpower to know which ones are legitimate and to act accordingly.) Choosing secondary sources that have been written by scholars with academic integrity, by which I mean they read the primary sources carefully and the important secondary literature, is a difficult task.

I'm currently trying to get a better handle on Origen, and Henri de Lubac, in his History and Spirit, has reminded me that in the history of Origenian studies many have given "too good an appearance to what is actually laziness and lack of curiosity." He's speaking directly of the many scholars(?) who have resolved to borrow old theses about what Origen said or what his hermeneutical method was instead of girding their loins and returning ad fontes. In these cases, stereotypes of Origen have simply been borrowed and reused, thus reciprocating false information. This is unacceptable, which makes my intellectual anxiety that much more acute. We find ourselves saying, "How can I, who doesn't even have a PhD (which is the nadir of ridiculous excuses), ever possibly have the time or energy to tackle primary sources and present my students with first hand experience? How can I know who's who in Origenian studies? How can I...?" The short answer might be, "you don't!" The slightly longer answer is, "you don't, but you need to make time and figure it out." (Whimpers and sniffles.)

To be a person in the academy at some level requires a measure of discipline that does not come cheaply. Although my anxiety will probably linger, it is a comfort to me that I am trying to produce lectures and class discussions that have been earned through careful study of my own. It's been told to me by my colleagues at my school that we normally know the content but it's the organization that poses the challenge. That is often a very true statement, but I've often found that I'm not confident of my grasp of the material on which I'm teaching, which means I've some serious thinking and reading to do. One could, I suppose, fall into patterns of self-reliance or self-righteousness: "It's all up to me! Look what I've done!". But I've personally had too many great teachers, to whom I give not a little credit for my intellectual formation, and too many failed lesson plans and incoherent lectures to suffer from either of these deceptions. I have an irresistible hunger for learning that needs to say "No" to the various temptations of our day in order to keep reading and learning. I need to resolve to try and read primary sources more often instead of relying too heavily on secondary sources. These are easier said than done, but these are things we all ought to pursue.

I strive to make my entire life more and more balanced and disciplined. I'd rather be spurred on to keep reading because of an occasional anxiety attack over which book to read next than let that anxiety fester into intellectual self-pity and laziness, symptoms of much deeper problems. If there's anything to these reflections it is that teaching, reading and learning truly are moral exercises, which means that one can tragically fail at them.

C. S. Lewis on Pacifism

One of my favorite authors is C. S. Lewis. The reason why I like him so much (there are actually many reasons) is that I get the sense that he has thought most of my thoughts already and come up with answers better than I could ever give. However, today I read an essay by him that did not sit well with me, and I am not sure what to do about it: thus this blog entry.

The title of the essay is "Why I Am Not a Pacifist", and it is found in his book The Weight of Glory (Harper, 1949). The question, which is a question of Conscience, is whether or not it is morally right to enter into war at the behest of one's government or society. How does one go about answering this question? Lewis uses the reasoning process as an analogy to how one might decide. When anyone sets out to determine whether something is true or false (the precise goal of the reasoning process), she first receives facts either through her own experience or based on someone else's experience. Second, she gathers her own intuitions, which are nothing other than the self-evident truths that all healthy and sane minds perceive. The person who denies that 2 + 2 = 4 is not generally viewed as under- or even uneducated but an idiot (Lewis's words). No one has to make an argument for why 2 + 2 = 4. Perhaps the law of non-contradiction fits into this intuition category as well. The third element is the ability to arrange 1) the facts and 2) the intuitions to see the connections between them in order to ascertain the truth. I imagine this third step as an investigator who gathers evidence and facts and then connects the dots to make a case for what really happened and who dunnit. Error sneaks into either #1 or #3 as you either get the facts wrong or you put the pieces of the puzzle together incorrectly. Intuition, which consists of these undemonstrated principles upon which further arguments are based on, doesn't need to explained and cannot be disproved. This all makes sense. However, according to Lewis there is a key difference between ascertaining truth and falsehood and ascertaining good and evil: "while the unarguable intuitions on which all depend are liable to be corrupted by passion when we are considering truth and falsehood [that is, the reasoning process], they are much more liable, they are almost certain to be corrupted when we are considering good and evil [that is, the conscience process](68)."

The stakes are higher when we are trying to determine whether X decision or Y problem is right or wrong. As is often the case, people claim certain beliefs to be intuitions when really they are "remote consequences or particular applications of [one's intuitions], eminently open to discussion since the consequences may be illogically drawn or the application falsely made." Christianity, which I happily ascribe to, has plenty of examples where people have tried to claim certain beliefs as undeniable, when in actual fact they were illogical. I'll let you fill in your own blank. Lewis has established an important principle for moral decisions: "nothing is to be treated as an intuition unless it is such that no good man has ever dreamed of doubting...For a mere unargued conviction is in place only when we are dealing with the axiomatic."

Thus far Lewis has identified four factors that influence how we determine whether something is morally right or wrong: facts, intuition, reasoning, and a regard for authority (this one he kind of tacked on at the end). Based on these four criteria he then shows how and why he cannot be a pacifist.

The Facts
He argues that it can never be proven that ALL wars are ALWAYS more harmful than helpful. The measure of harm or good that a war produces can never be compared to what would have happened had the country not gone to war or had gone to war. Our current situation in the USA is entirely appropriate to use as an example. We can only speculate, which is extremely unreliable, about what would have happened had we not declared war on Saddam Hussein, I mean Iraq, I mean terrorism. Regardless of your position now, we'll never know whether more harm or good was done. So at least theoretically, a just war (which he has not defined) or a war that causes more good than harm is possible. According to Lewis, "history is full of useful wars as well as useless wars (74)."

Intuition
The biggest danger involved in this stage is what was mentioned earlier: mistaking an intuition for a conclusion. Again, to claim as an intuition, as the pacifist does (or a certain kind of pacifist), that no one should ever go to war is, in Lewis's mind, this type of mistake. The statements, "no one should ever go to war," and "war is always wrong" are not undeniable intuitions since they are clearly not agreed on by a majority of people, according to Lewis. It is a conclusion that needs an argument rather than something accepted by all good people.

What is intuition in the mind of Lewis is that one ought to help another out, whether it is family, a neighbor or a fellow citizen. And this beneficence is more rightly directed at these types of people rather than a stranger, etc. Given the choice between helping a guilty man, or a stranger and a righteous man, or a kinsman, it seems obvious to all, according to Lewis, that our efforts and energies are rightly spent on the latter, and this is based on intuition. If we are in a position where we must choose to help one of two parties, our very choice of one over the other might lead to causing some degree of violence or harm to the one left out. This leads Lewis to believe that for the sake of the greater good, it might be right to allow someone to die or to kill someone. Lewis is not trying to advocate death and killing, but he show how theoretically we could find ourselves in such a position. Theoretically he does not conclude that it is always wrong to kill. Death may be the only means of restraining some person who threatens a community. If pacifism becomes the majority view then this will lead "to a world in which there will be no Pacifists (78)," presumably because our enemies will attack us and we will not fight back. Perhaps pacifism is not very pragmatic at a certain level. If ending war in the world is to be accomplished can pacifism accomplish it? Lewis offers instead a mentality that tries to take each case of war or whatever with wisdom and discernment. "To avert or postpone one particular war by wise policy, or to render one particular campaign shorter by strength and skill or less terrible by mercy to the conquered and the civilians is more useful than all the proposals for universal peace that have ever been made (79)."

Authority
After confessing that he has not found "any very clear and cogent reason for inferring from the general principle of beneficence the conclusion that I must disobey if I am called on by lawful authority to be a solder," he turns to authority. Authority is of two types: human or divine. The human authority for Lewis, which is his society, decided against pacifism. And all the ancient authorities that still speak to us today like Homer, Virgil, Plato, Aristotle, etc. have also decided against pacifism. Lewis feels as if he would go against the majority of history by being a pacifist. He claims that divine authority, primarily Scripture, gives clear indications that it is against pacifism. To the one passage in the Sermon on the Mount that he quotes (Mt 5.39: Do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the cheek, turn to them the other cheek also), he says this applies only at the individual level, and in its original context was given to people who needed to apply this to their daily lives with very practical situation. This was not a principle at the macro level. Paul gives a larger, macro level principle when he speaks of the government's use of the sword (Rom 13.4). He also takes Jesus' encounter with the Roman centurion as important since Jesus does not tell him to quit being a soldier because it leads him to commit evil. (This is an argument from silence, and thus it cannot be used by either side. Jesus often boggles us by what he does not say, and as much as it may make us squirm, I believe they are better left in their enigmatic form for us to ponder, not to make too much of.) Lewis also provides examples from the 39 Articles, Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine to back him up, three sources which I agree are quite important.

His final comments about pacifism have to do with the fact that by being a pacifist one does not have to do the dirty work. We can flee to Canada, evade the draft, and go on with life. I suspect that there are many "pacifists" who are so because it is a fad or it is anti-Bush or something. These types of "pacifists" are certainly detestable because they really lack courage and spine. As Lewis notes, war combines all of our greatest fears: suffering, death, cold, hunger, sickness. If we are pacifists because we are cowards then I couldn't agree with Lewis more.

All this summary now leads to my own idiosyncratic critique. I must say at the front that I have not been to war, and Lewis served in the first world war. I know war from an occasional glance at CNN.com, the New York Times, and the Economist, which means from a distance. There is the whole experiential element missing in my argument for what I call a mild-pacifism, which I grant as a weakness, albeit a thankful one. But I think there are weaknesses in Lewis's argument too.

First, I am not sure I buy his criteria for establishing whether something is good or evil. I agree that what people have believed intuitionally throughout history is important, but does that make it right? Sometimes the opinions of the people are simply wrong. He appears to put this notion of intuition, which I agree with for the most part, on par with the words of Jesus himself. And this leads to my second critique. He hardly even dealt with one of the most foundational sections of gospel wisdom in the entire New Testament: the Sermon on the Mount. What about blessed are the peacemakers? Am I supposed to surrender my self and my values to the state? Perhaps he would say, "sometimes war leads to peace," but is that the story history tells? Yes and no. War is always bittersweet. Is it even possible to make any categorical statement about whether or not a war was useful or useless? To me war is like a game of chess where each player takes turns jumping over the others pieces, and the winner is the one who simply doesn't lose all his pieces first. War doesn't build up, it tears down. Are there any winners in war? I don't doubt for a minute that the VE day and VJ day parades and celebrations in the States were extremely joyful and relieving moments. Some wars have winners and losers. But no one leaves unscathed. I am not making a statement about WWII. I don't know how to evaluate any war, even the ones that led to great good. It's so complicated, and for that reason alone I am reluctant to fight.

Lewis has hit what I think is one of the biggest problems that any theory about the morality of war needs to grapple with and that is the relationship between the individual and the nation or country. Lewis is able to say that for the sake of the many, the one ought to fight. While I see the reason behind that I'm not sure I can agree with that, at least theoretically. It is a very Christian thing to stand up for those who cannot defend or support themselves, but I believe, based on Jesus' own teachings and life that this does not need to entail violence. The reason why I consider myself a mild-pacifist is because I believe there might be a situation where using violence is the only way to obey the commandment to stick up for others. In that case I would be conceding some ground to Lewis. However, I pray to God that will never happen. I must also say that I'm incredibly scared at what I might do if put in an intensely evil situation. If I have a gun in my hand while I witness unimaginable crimes, what would I do? I don't know. In the meantime, I rescind my right to the second amendment. I don't want a gun because I don't want to be put in a position when I might use it. I'd rather die than kill. How consistent will I be to that statement when the pressure is on me? I don't know.

While I certainly am not the most courageous man out there, I am not a pacifist because I am afraid of death, etc. In fact, being a pacifist has made me more afraid of death than ever. Of course, the mind always rushes to the most extreme cases, but when I think about any number of situations where my own safety and that of my family and loved ones is at risk I palpitate and lose sleep because it scares me so much. I am desperately trying to trust God with my life, in the most basic way. It's even harder to trust God with the life of my wife. Standing in the gap for people and choosing to do everything possible not to use force does not at all ensure my own safety. It sounds so simplistic, but Jesus (and a number of Christians who chose to imitate him in this way) was led like a lamb to the slaughter. Having been reviled, he did not revile back. Perhaps we need to think of pacifism in more sweeping terms. Jesus did say that anger in the heart toward one's enemy is murder. I retaliate and live by the "eye for an eye" principle when I hate others in my head. Pacifism has far reaching effects not only for decisions of war. And yet, to bring it full circle, for right or wrong, I can honestly say my Christian ethics prevents me from feeling it my duty to go to war for my country, or for any country. I don't want a government or a general making my ethical decisions for me. Maybe that's because I have a hard time loving my country (or any country) because I see all its weaknesses from the inside out. That's another entry for another day. There are a number of my own family members who have served or are serving in the military and do so because of their Christian morality. Which one of us has made intuition into a conclusion?

Running throughout the general tone of Lewis's argument is the sense that wars will always be here so we might as well do our best to fight them with as much wisdom and courage. Jesus gives another enigmatic saying in Mark 14.6-7 when the disciples complain that the expensive perfume this woman was pouring on Jesus' head could have been sold and given to the poor. He says, "Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me." Is this Jesus' way of saying, don't put an end to poverty because it will always be there? I doubt it. We are stuck between the painful realities of human life and the intense longings (intuitions?) of peace and justice raining down on and ruling throughout the world. Even though I highly doubt that universal peace will be accomplished in my lifetime does that mean that I don't work towards it and hope desperately for it? We ought not be comfortable with wars (or any form of evil) at any time, and I feel that Lewis gave a little too much ground for war as a reality.

I recently read a First Things article that discussed the recent slaughtering of around 500 Christians in Nigeria. The author of this article talked about the difficulty these people now face. The tendency will be to at least defend themselves should they be attacked again. How do we advise or encourage these people? I don't know. The staff of First Things planned a march on the Nigerian government building (?) in New York to put pressure on Nigeria to care for its people and to do what is right in the face of fearful opponents. This is a great example of working on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves. We all must do everything in our power to help people in tough situations.

Well, I know I didn't solve anything, and I am certain that Lewis's argument has more explanatory power than mine. But, I would like to think (this is dangerous!) that I have the life and example of Jesus on my side. So often American notions of freedom, of laying down one's life for his or her country are mixed with the freedom given by Jesus, and this is tragic in my opinion. Jesus doesn't offer the world freedom because he fought for it. He gives freedom only through death, the death in which we participate in baptism: a death to ourselves, our rights, our sins. We cannot afford to forget that the conquering Lion of Judah, the Root of David is the Lamb standing as though slain.

more naive than I thought

As much as I hate to admit it, I am more naive than I think. A number of simple assumptions that I have held for years, or even ideas that have emerged after long reflections, have been overthrown and shown to be at least partially false. All of these have to do with how I view people. I've never believed that people are essentially "good," if by good we mean that people live moral and decent lives consistently. For most people, regardless of where they place their faith, going out of the way to help others is not very natural. Of course, there are always exceptions. I do think that in general we are all walking contradictions, people who always expect more from others than we expect from ourselves. We think that small gestures of kindness are worth more than they are, and the gossip, slander or whatever small amount of wickedness that surfaces in our lives are merely trivial and insignificant. As the usual line of logic goes when faced with our own shortcomings, "we are human after all!" And yet, I don't usually wake up every morning thinking how wretched and depraved the world is. I typically refrain from aggressively endorsing Augustine's view of the world as a heap of damnation (this is certainly stereotyping Augustine, which is unfair to such an incredibly complex thinker, so don't disparage him!). But the human soul is a terrifying thing.

I recently read Leo Tolstoy's novel "Anna Karenina," and one thing I noticed while reading it was that it kept dragging me into the emotions of others. Most of the emotions are painful but real. Anna's infidelity and the aftershocks of such selfishness has become for me a weighty reminder of humankind's potential for destruction. The drama of this story is even more gripping in light of a dear friend's infidelity towards this person's spouse. My first naive assumption about people is that husbands and wives, despite occasional lustful thoughts and perhaps brief moments of infatuation with others, love one another with a deep and sincere love that makes one ashamed of those sordid thoughts, etc. There's nothing I'm more afraid of than being "bad," than coming to the point where I call evil good and good evil. I'm terrified of hurting people and putting anything, whether an idea or an action, into motion so that reckless effects and repercussions are inevitable. I have no respect for people like Anna or my friend.

Another figure in Anna Karenina is a woman named Dolly whose husband cheats on her with their governess. It was painful reading how stupid and foolish Dolly felt after she became aware of her husband's affair. As one who is happily married, I cannot fathom how she felt (although Tolstoy helps me understand). Involved in this first assumption is the idea that unreserved trust, whereby one abandons oneself to their spouse in full confidence and awareness of the vulnerability that this produces, is, at least, true among many people. My hunch is, however, that most marriages never experience true, sincere, and reciprocal love. In such a relationship where a certain degree or level of doubt and skepticism is always present, the moments where one begins to experience real love are usually dissipated by the desire not to be disappointed, or not to appear childish. We think, "true love is found in Disney movies not in real life," and so we settle for various travesties of love: a moment, a fling, a relationship based primarily on external things. The glimpses of a rapturous love are often viewed as mythological shadows that are neither real nor trustworthy; these are dangerously experiential emotions that one must militantly avoid. Despite my naivete, I am convinced that I have loved and been loved more consistently and mightily than most of the world. And the love between my wife and I is, in many ways, in its elementary form. And that's the beauty of it. The picture of the 85 year old couple holding hands and eating ice cream cones together is what we all want. The problem is that most of us are not willing or patient to spend 60 years learning how to die to ourselves and love the other more than ourselves. Unfortunately, all the promises that are made by consumer products, institutions, and organizations that herald great rewards with little or no effort (what immediately comes to mind are weight loss products that claim to work without changing your eating or exercising habits) have transferred to the common perception about relationships and marriage. Damn the thought that people, who live and breath and have deep, complex emotions, can be treated like some type of consumer product with various personal rewards that require minimal effort.

I am entirely ignorant of the lifestyle that much of our culture champions where one has a right to have both sex and multiple sexual partners. Regardless of my "ignorance" (some might call it virtue) of such a lifestyle, I feel quite confident that those who have had multiple sexual partners will never understand or experience the connection between passionate fidelity and passionate sexuality. In my opinion it's truly their loss. The purity and protection of their soul is sacrificed on the altar of a new experience, a new person. There are people, I'm sure, who have led sensuous lifestyles and eventually maintained healthy marriages where they were faithful to one another, but I tend to think these cases are few and far between. One of the lessons I learned from C. S. Lewis's book "Perelandra," which is his attempt to describe the world if Adam and Eve would not have rebelled, is that curiosity is deadly. When the serpent figure, Weston, tries to get the Green Woman (the Eve figure) to imagine that Maleldil (the God of the world) gave her commandments and guidelines to keep her in ignorance. I won't give the end of the story away, but the lesson to be learned is that our curious imaginations about what life could be like if our lover or spouse was different, if they made more money, if they didn't do this or that etc., is like cancer to true love.

In light of these thoughts of mine (I guess I've only mentioned one naive assumption, but it will have to do for now), I rejoice in my marriage and in my wife, the only one with whom I have had sex. We were abstinent before marriage, despite numerous struggles. She is the purest thing I know. To have her love is sometimes frightening because I have the potential to destroy it: the spirit of Anna Karenina lives in us all. My wife also has my love and we both have destructive potentiality. But the dangers of infidelity do not detract from our mutual love; rather it increases it. If by abandoning myself to my wife I run the risk of being betrayed, I'd rather do all that I can to love her as best as I can so that no matter what she and I both know that I did all I could. I know my wife believes the same. By God's grace and our sheer determination, our love will prevail. May God have mercy on my friend who betrayed his/her spouse and kids. "Do you not know that God's kindness leads you to repentance?"