Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, in his article "Natural Law" written for the Harvard Law Review November, 1918 writes:
"We all, whether we know it or not, are fighting to make the kind of a world that we all should like-- but that we have learned to recognize that others will fight and die to make a different world..."
"The jurists who believe in natural law seem to be to be in that naive state of mind that accepts what has been familiar and accepted by them and their neighbors as something that must be accepted by all men everywhere."
"... The question remains as to the Ought of natural law."
Holmes suggested throughout the piece that there are no "oughts" in the world we live in. By laying the foundation for legal pragmatism, Holmes desires a world without certainty and truth. Perhaps these ideas are the consequences of progressivism in American culture and politics. But I think the issue is more fundamental than progressivism, for the idea that man is purposeless in a dark world of chance Holmes calls the "Can't Helps."
In The Problem of Pain Lewis seems to identify this thinking as an element in all developed religion. It is the second of four strands their identify within Christianity:
"All the human beings that history has heard of acknowledge some kind of morality; that is, they feel towards certain proposed actions the experiences expressed by he words 'I ought' or 'I ought not.' These experiences resemble awe in one respect, namely that they cannot be logically deduced from the environment and physical experiences of the man who undergoes them."
Thus Holmes seems to be rebelling against one of the most fundamental assumptions of mankind. This is nothing new under the sun for man will always resist the truths of his Creator. Holmes may be among the first to introduce progressive ideas into our justice system. But these ideas are not new and certainly not original to Holmes.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Meditations on the "Meditations"
Failure to observe what is in the mind of another has seldom made a man unhappy; but those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.
Men exist for the sake of one another; teach them or bear with them.
Enter into every man's ruling faculty; and also let every other man enter into yours.
Let no act be done without a purpose.
In one way an arrow moves, in another way the mind. Yet the mind, both when it cautiously examines the ground and when it is engaged in its inquiry, is nonetheless moving straight ahead and toward its goal.
Reading the "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius has been really refreshing. I love it how he understands the nature of man within a community. Thus man should be teachable and should learn from others seeking a higher purpose, which is the same goal of knowing truth.
Men exist for the sake of one another; teach them or bear with them.
Enter into every man's ruling faculty; and also let every other man enter into yours.
Let no act be done without a purpose.
In one way an arrow moves, in another way the mind. Yet the mind, both when it cautiously examines the ground and when it is engaged in its inquiry, is nonetheless moving straight ahead and toward its goal.
Reading the "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius has been really refreshing. I love it how he understands the nature of man within a community. Thus man should be teachable and should learn from others seeking a higher purpose, which is the same goal of knowing truth.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Unity of the Bible
"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman..."
-------
"For to us a child is born, to us a Son is given..."
The first passage is from Galatians (4:4) and the second is from Isaiah (9:6).
Amazing how the Bible should be read as a whole for its story is told as a whole.
Merry Christmas...
-------
"For to us a child is born, to us a Son is given..."
The first passage is from Galatians (4:4) and the second is from Isaiah (9:6).
Amazing how the Bible should be read as a whole for its story is told as a whole.
Merry Christmas...
Friday, November 28, 2008
The Inner Ring
The only certain rule is that the insiders and outsiders call it by different names. From inside it may be designated, in simple cases, by mere enumeration: it may be called "You and Tony and me." When it is very secure and comparatively stable in membership it calls itself "we." When it has to be suddenly expanded to meet a particular emergency it calls itself "All the sensible people at this place." From outside, if you have despaired of getting into it, you call it "That gang" or "They" or "So-and-so and his set" or "the Caucus" or "the Inner Ring." If you are a candidate for admission you probably don't call it anything. To discuss it with the other outsiders would make you feel outside yourself. And to mention it in talking to the man who is inside, and who may help you if this present conversation goes well, would be madness...
...But you have met the phenomenon of an Inner Ring. You discovered one in your house at school before the end of the first term. And when you had climbed up to somewhere near it by the end of your second year, perhaps you discovered that within the Ring there was a Ring yet more inner, which in its turn was the fringe of the great school Ring to which the house Rings were only satellites. It is even possible that the School Ring was almost in touch with a Masters' Ring. You were beginning, in fact, to pierce through the skins of the onion. And here, too, at your university-shall I be wrong in assuming that at this very moment, invisible to me, there are several rings-independent systems or concentric rings-present in this room? And I can assure you that in whatever hospital, inn of court, diocese, school, business, or college you arrive after going down, you will find the Rings-what Tolstoy calls the second or unwritten systems...
...I must now make a distinction. I am not going to say that the existence of Inner Rings is an evil. It is certainly unavoidable. There must be confidential discussions: and it is not only not a bad thing, it is (in itself) a good thing, that personal friendship should grow up between those who work together. And it is perhaps impossible that the official hierarchy of any organization should quite coincide with its actual workings. If the wisest and most energetic people invariably held the highest posts, it might coincide; since they often do not, there must be people in high positions who are really deadweights and people in lower positions who are more important than their rank and seniority would lead you to suppose. In that way the second, unwritten system is bound to grow up. It is necessary; and perhaps it is not a necessary evil. But the desire which draws us into Inner Rings is another matter. A thing may be morally neutral and yet the desire for that thing may be dangerous...
...My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action. It is one of the factors which go to make up the world as we know it-this whole pell-mell of struggle, competition, confusion, graft, disappointment, and advertisement, and if it is one of the permanent mainsprings then you may be quite sure of this. Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care. That will be the natural thing-the life that will come to you of its own accord. Any other kind of life, if you lead it, will be the result of conscious and continuous effort. If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an "inner ringer." I don't say you'll be a successful one; that's as may be. But whether by pining and moping outside Rings that you can never enter, or by passing triumphantly further and further in-one way or the other you will be that kind of man. I have already made it fairly clear that I think it better for you not to be that kind of man...
...As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain...
...And you will always find them hard to enter, for a reason you very well know. You yourself once you are in, want to make it hard for the next entrant, just as those who are already in made it hard for you. Naturally. In any wholesome group of people which holds together for a good purpose, the exclusions are in a sense accidental. Three or four people who are together for the sake of some piece of work exclude others because there is work only for so many or because the others can't in fact do it. Your little musical group limits its numbers because the rooms they meet in are only so big. But your genuine Inner Ring exists for exclusion. There'd be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident: it is the essence...
C.S Lewis- "The Inner Ring"
...But you have met the phenomenon of an Inner Ring. You discovered one in your house at school before the end of the first term. And when you had climbed up to somewhere near it by the end of your second year, perhaps you discovered that within the Ring there was a Ring yet more inner, which in its turn was the fringe of the great school Ring to which the house Rings were only satellites. It is even possible that the School Ring was almost in touch with a Masters' Ring. You were beginning, in fact, to pierce through the skins of the onion. And here, too, at your university-shall I be wrong in assuming that at this very moment, invisible to me, there are several rings-independent systems or concentric rings-present in this room? And I can assure you that in whatever hospital, inn of court, diocese, school, business, or college you arrive after going down, you will find the Rings-what Tolstoy calls the second or unwritten systems...
...I must now make a distinction. I am not going to say that the existence of Inner Rings is an evil. It is certainly unavoidable. There must be confidential discussions: and it is not only not a bad thing, it is (in itself) a good thing, that personal friendship should grow up between those who work together. And it is perhaps impossible that the official hierarchy of any organization should quite coincide with its actual workings. If the wisest and most energetic people invariably held the highest posts, it might coincide; since they often do not, there must be people in high positions who are really deadweights and people in lower positions who are more important than their rank and seniority would lead you to suppose. In that way the second, unwritten system is bound to grow up. It is necessary; and perhaps it is not a necessary evil. But the desire which draws us into Inner Rings is another matter. A thing may be morally neutral and yet the desire for that thing may be dangerous...
...My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action. It is one of the factors which go to make up the world as we know it-this whole pell-mell of struggle, competition, confusion, graft, disappointment, and advertisement, and if it is one of the permanent mainsprings then you may be quite sure of this. Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care. That will be the natural thing-the life that will come to you of its own accord. Any other kind of life, if you lead it, will be the result of conscious and continuous effort. If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an "inner ringer." I don't say you'll be a successful one; that's as may be. But whether by pining and moping outside Rings that you can never enter, or by passing triumphantly further and further in-one way or the other you will be that kind of man. I have already made it fairly clear that I think it better for you not to be that kind of man...
...As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain...
...And you will always find them hard to enter, for a reason you very well know. You yourself once you are in, want to make it hard for the next entrant, just as those who are already in made it hard for you. Naturally. In any wholesome group of people which holds together for a good purpose, the exclusions are in a sense accidental. Three or four people who are together for the sake of some piece of work exclude others because there is work only for so many or because the others can't in fact do it. Your little musical group limits its numbers because the rooms they meet in are only so big. But your genuine Inner Ring exists for exclusion. There'd be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident: it is the essence...
...The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it...
...We are told in Scripture that those who ask get. That is true, in senses I can't now explore. But in another sense there is much truth in the schoolboy's principle "them as asks shan't have." To a young person, just entering on adult life, the world seems full of Insides," full of delightful intimacies and confidentialities, and he desires to enter them. But if he follows that desire he will reach no "inside" that is worth reaching. The true road lies in quite another direction. It is like the house in Alice Through the Looking Glass...C.S Lewis- "The Inner Ring"
Monday, October 27, 2008
Be Real
There's something inherently interesting about meeting people. This year I've been the most conscious I have ever been when it comes to introducing myself to those whom I've never interacted with before. First impressions are interesting but rarely accurate. I've learned part of the fun is follow up introduction after that initial awkward meeting stage is complete.
I've challenged myself to be real this year, even when I meet people for the first time. Enough with the superficiality I've only grown to hate more since I came to college. I've always hated fake people. People who care so much about their reputations, they forget to be honest, not only with themselves, but with their friends.
So this year I want to be real. People may not like it... and I'm working on that. But I'd much rather prefer honesty with people than acting like everything is okay when it is not.
I've challenged myself to be real this year, even when I meet people for the first time. Enough with the superficiality I've only grown to hate more since I came to college. I've always hated fake people. People who care so much about their reputations, they forget to be honest, not only with themselves, but with their friends.
So this year I want to be real. People may not like it... and I'm working on that. But I'd much rather prefer honesty with people than acting like everything is okay when it is not.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Come Thou Fount
It has always amazed me, that in a day and age where song writers struggle to write songs with applicable meaning, that many hymn writers of old already succeeded in this feat centuries before today's artists! Take the hymn "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing." I am amazed at the theological richness found within the hymn that is easy to overlook when singing it.
First Stanza:
Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love
The author, Robert Robinson, recognizes that it is God who must tune our hearts to sing of the grace of God in songs of loudest praise. The Lord must teach us this "melodious sonnet" of His redeeming love. Our salvation is not something we earn or achieve through our own merit. The hymn writer writes that God tunes and teaches us to sing of the love of His redemption for us.
Second Stanza:
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Hither by Thy help I'm come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.
Ebenezer is an Old Testament reference to "God who has helped us." Certainly the Lord has come to our rescue from sin bringing us home to fellowship with Him. Once again the author notes how Jesus sought us when we were strangers wandering from God. "Interposed" is a key word referencing the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross taking our sins as His own. There was nothing we could do that deserved this sacrifice. Left to our own devices, we had wandered away! Christ did not only die for us, He also came sought to rescue us. What an amazing Savior we have!
Stanza Three:
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let that grace now like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above
I think that might be my favorite stanza. When we think of the concept of being a "debtor" to something, a negative connotation immediately comes to mind. We do not want to be in debt. Sin is a debt. It is a debt that continues to grow larger and larger to the point where we would never be able to pay it off. Imagine a debt like that in your personal life. A debt that grows by the millions per year while you only made a tiny fraction of that amount. Even if you paid some of it off, the debt would only grow larger. But Christ is our sacrifice. He paid that debt for you and me. And now we are debtors but no longer to sin, but to His grace. And as we live day by day in the process of sanctification, our debt to grace increases and increases. But this is not a bad thing as the author notes for he wishes to be "constrained" with a fetter to the Lord.
The author recognizes the tendency in man to wander. But through the grace of God we can constrained and bound to Jesus Christ forever. What a wonderful promise that our Father gives to us.
Truly this treasured hymn of the church has much to teach us when we stop for a moment to meditate on its words.
First Stanza:
Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love
The author, Robert Robinson, recognizes that it is God who must tune our hearts to sing of the grace of God in songs of loudest praise. The Lord must teach us this "melodious sonnet" of His redeeming love. Our salvation is not something we earn or achieve through our own merit. The hymn writer writes that God tunes and teaches us to sing of the love of His redemption for us.
Second Stanza:
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Hither by Thy help I'm come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.
Ebenezer is an Old Testament reference to "God who has helped us." Certainly the Lord has come to our rescue from sin bringing us home to fellowship with Him. Once again the author notes how Jesus sought us when we were strangers wandering from God. "Interposed" is a key word referencing the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross taking our sins as His own. There was nothing we could do that deserved this sacrifice. Left to our own devices, we had wandered away! Christ did not only die for us, He also came sought to rescue us. What an amazing Savior we have!
Stanza Three:
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let that grace now like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above
I think that might be my favorite stanza. When we think of the concept of being a "debtor" to something, a negative connotation immediately comes to mind. We do not want to be in debt. Sin is a debt. It is a debt that continues to grow larger and larger to the point where we would never be able to pay it off. Imagine a debt like that in your personal life. A debt that grows by the millions per year while you only made a tiny fraction of that amount. Even if you paid some of it off, the debt would only grow larger. But Christ is our sacrifice. He paid that debt for you and me. And now we are debtors but no longer to sin, but to His grace. And as we live day by day in the process of sanctification, our debt to grace increases and increases. But this is not a bad thing as the author notes for he wishes to be "constrained" with a fetter to the Lord.
The author recognizes the tendency in man to wander. But through the grace of God we can constrained and bound to Jesus Christ forever. What a wonderful promise that our Father gives to us.
Truly this treasured hymn of the church has much to teach us when we stop for a moment to meditate on its words.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Mark 5:25-34
25A woman who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years, 26and had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse-- 27after hearing about Jesus, she came up in the crowd behind Him and touched His cloak. 28For she thought, "If I just touch His garments, I will get well." 29Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. 30Immediately Jesus, perceiving in Himself that the power proceeding from Him had gone forth, turned around in the crowd and said, "Who touched My garments?"31And His disciples said to Him, "You see the crowd pressing in on You, and You say, 'Who touched Me?'' 32And He looked around to see the woman who had done this. 33But the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth. 34And He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your affliction."
Although this is a familiar passage, I think it is a good reminder of how intentional Christ acted here on earth. Even His miracles point to a higher purpose, picturing His own actions as Lord. The woman in the crowd suffering from a bleeding disease would have been considered unclean within Jewish society. Such a curse would have prevented her from worship in the temple and fellowship with God's people. She was denied the right to participate in one of the most important aspects of culture- that being the act of coming together with her people to worship Jehovah.
Similarly, before we are justified through Christ, we are unable to have full communion and fellowship with the Lord. Our sin prevents our worship with the Creator as we are unclean with sin. Like the woman, we seek the help of outside sources spending time and money where we will not find help. We look to our own strength and the wisdom of the world for answers. However our own actions will not satisfy our healing and restoration to fellowship with the Lord. We must come before Him humbly, on our knees in faith, knowing that when we are drawn to Him, Christ provides healing and salvation.
Jesus chose not to ignore the woman rather taking the time to note her faith. He will also acknowledge us before the Father as our Mediator and the Savior of our sins. Because of His work on the cross, we are no longer unclean. How marvelous this miracle of Jesus to not only do a wonderful thing in the life of a suffering woman, but to also show a picture of His remarkable work of salvation in the lives of suffering humanity!
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