Neighbours and friends - part 1

Is it possible to find that which is common in different kinds and expressions of love?, and can we grasp love's essence from they have in common? Let's look at two kinds and see.

Carol Simon has given a good treatment to the topic of neighbour love, as I have read. Drawing from Simone Weil's meditation on the parable of the Good Samaritan, she understands love of neighbour to be the perception of something worth loving in the neighbour. The lover may know nothing about them, not their name, or their history, but they 'see' them and know that this person has a destiny given by God, and, through imagination can envisage ways to promote and nurture that destiny in the neighbour, even at their own cost (i.e. renouncing their own plans, and giving of their time and money etc). This love may be a momentary reaching out, but can have life-long consequences. It can be as simple as a smile or hello to a stranger that lets them know they are not alone, to the offer of a lift, or a job, or a meal. It is helping someone in need, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and providing shelter for the homeless. It is caring for the sick, and defending the helpless. This is something that is very important in the Torah and Israel is severely rebuked in the prophets for not having this kind of love. Jesus also warns his disciples that those who do not show this kind of love have no place in his kingdom.

Is this kind of love based on some kind of 'seeing' the other, a perception of their 'preciousness' or perhaps their need? While this idea resonates a lot with me, I see its dangers, as has been pointed out by Augustine and Anders Nygren. What happens if we cannot see? what happens if we cannot find? What happens in a world where suffering is swept under the carpet, in distant countries where we are not personally confronted with the agony and starvation that our neighbours are enduring and perishing in? There is a modern parable of a man who had stalled his brand new Ferarri on the middle of a rail crossing. While reaching for the ignition to restart his car, and while hearing the crossing bells start to ring he notices a little boy has a foot caught in the tracks not far off. Seeing the train approaching at fast speed he is faced with the decision: 'Do I leave my car here and rescue the boy? Can I get it started in time, move it and still save him? Can I assume he will free himself in time? what will I do?' The more he thought about it the more his time to pursue the latter two options ran out. His eyes fixated on the boy and though he did not know the boy at all, he knew that he was worth more than his expensive car. He left his car and ran to the boy's aid. He managed to remove his foot from the stuck shoe just in time before the train arrived, but he was not able to run back to his car and move it too!

This man was willing to give up a car worth quarter of a million $$$ to rescue a boy he didn't know simply because he saw him in real need. We can ask ourselves what our response would be in the same situation. We can ask if our response would have been different if other people had been near by, such as the case where a woman in a crowded apartment complex was raped and stabbed repeatedly over several hours, screaming out for help the whole time, but not a single person came to her aid before she died. When the police surveyed the other tenants, they all assumed someone else was already gone to help her. Without seeing the truth they were not compelled by love to at least seek out the truth. And yet again, though we might have answered the first question with a very confident 'yes', a car is worth nothing in comparison to a boy's life, and yet around 40,000 children die every single day from starvation related diseases. We do not sell our cars to save those children. We are reminded from time to time that they exist and that the situation is real, but we are not always compelled to act. It is often when we see an image of a malnourisheed child that we are most moved to give. I still remember the image of an incredibly thin child on the movie Beyond Borders which I commented on a while back. There really is something in the seeing, but then is love constrained by what can be seen? (cf. "^If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. " 1 John 4:20).

From the story of the Good Samaritan, is a neighbour defined as anyone we see in need? Or is a neighbour simply anyone who is in need? Is it love of our neighbour that causes us to pay our taxes? The knowledge that our money is paying the medical bills of someone in need, and the rent of someone without a job? Or because it is an impersonal transaction, can it be a way of "giving all I have to the poor, but not have love..." (1 Corinthians 13). And yet, if we specifically give money to a person, it is much easier to recognise and affirm that this is an act of love.

Is love blind, or must it first see?

I took part in a psychology experiment as part of my 1st year psych studies at Melbourne Uni. The experiment 'exposed' a group of us to images and stories of people suffering torture and inhumane violence, coercion and oppresion in Dili (around the time of the Dili massacres). They then offered several ways for us to respond and asked what we would choose (if anything). to pose their thesis as a question, they were wondering whether when people are shown need or injustice, and if they believe they are in a position to make a difference to that situation, are they compelled by a sense of responsibility to act? (cf. "If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?" 1 John 3:17). Again, the response is indeed a response, to 'seeing' something, or being confronted by something. The something typically has to be personal (another person suffering or in need). I remember seeing groups of activists passing out flyers at Melbourne Uni all the time, for various causes, and none of these ever really arrested me, but that psych experiment left a lasting impression!

The love of neighbour sees need, or sees injustice against a person, and is compelled to act.

but what does the love of a friend see?
Stay tuned...

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Love derived from its types

I have explored three ways of looking at love: (1) seeing something precious in the beloved that causes us to respond in love, namely to protect, nurture, enjoy, give to and promote that beautiful precious thing for its own sake, (2) choosing to love another person regardless of whether we perceive any beauty or value in them, and (3) seeing the person's need for God's presence, and God himself welling up in us to be poured out to the beloved. These are three quite different views, but all have their overlapping aspects. Can we continue to push ahead and get to the heart of love itself?

Would another approach be to explore the types of love, as Caroline Simon has in her book? She explores neighbour love, friendship love, romantic love and marital love (that is as far as I have got so far so I am not sure what other types she has detected). Is there a possibility of seeing what these different types of love have in common, as well as what the three understandings above have in common, and perhaps derive an understanding of love's essence from that? I shall try to do so after considering what I have read. Stay tuned...

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Echoes in the dark

Oh, for a conversation partner.

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Love as a substance

Just to go on another tangent, I was watching an episode of the X-Files the other night called Milagro, in which love was described as a substance not of this earth, which humans are unable to create, and the only power we have over it is to destroy it.

Playing with this imagery, one might imagine that love is 'something' that comes from God (1 John 4:7-21, especially verse 10). One might envisage that love is an unseen or spiritual 'substance' that only manifests as we, through faith, pour it out to another (Faith, hope, love). God is love (1 John 4:16) and all love comes from God, and God indeed commands that we love one another just as he loves us. So, using this imagery, can we ascertain what is actually happening when we love?

Perhaps God's own self-giving essence (ousia) is 'poured out' (to death) into the beloved in a kind of perichoretic fashion. Perhaps what we see in the beloved which drives us to love is not actually anything of value (as I have said earlier that it is the perception of this preciousness which evokes our loving response), but rather we see the need, the absence of wholeness that yearns to be whole, that yearns to be filled with what only God can provide: himself. Perhaps loving is the completion of the other with God's all-sufficient indwelling. The completion of the God-shaped hole. Or to put it into metaphors that I like to play with, to put God into the image of God.

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The classical definition of love

Not long after my last post I continued reading further in The disciplined heart and was confronted with what is considered the classical Christian understanding of love, or to be more accurate, loves. Christians have traditionally drawn a distinction between three types of love: eros, philia and agape. Some of the more prominent champions of this view are Anders Nygren, Martin Luther and Søren Kierkegaard. They posit that eros and phileo are natural human loves, and therefore lesser loves than agape, which they believe is the word used for God's love of humanity. I found it interesting to read Simon's rendition of this classical view, especially just after reading a view that resonated with my own. So I thought I would interact with those views also.

The classical view understands what I have been defining as love as having characteristics of eros and philia. Eros is defined as passionate love (usually romantic love). It's central characteristic is desire, desire for the beloved. It sees in the beloved something it desires, and seeks to acquire that something for itself. In some ways it could be referred to as the souls attempt to transcend itself, to find completion in another. Eros is never used in the Bible, and thus never used to express God's love toward us, but some theologians believe it is apt to represent our reaching for God, as Augustine says "we are restless until we find our rest in him." As Eros can be understood as our reaching beyond ourselves for something to 'complete' us, it is typically seen as an egocentric love, a love that consumes, and is therefore unworthy of the love Christ commands us to have. It also makes sense, that if this is the definition of eros then it is not appropriate for God, who is complete in himself and thus does not desire anything from us.

Philia is typically understood as friendship love, the bond of two friends, and is characterised by affection. It is a love that sees the beloved as an equal and sticks by them so long as they continue to be perceived as equal. In contrast, the classical view implores that agape is higher than both eros and philia because agape loves in spite of what it sees. Agape alone can be called Christian because it alone can love the unlovely, the unlovable, regardless of whether any value can be perceived, and regardless of whether there is in fact any value at all in the beloved. Agape is characterised as a disinterested love, without motive, without regard for one's self, without necessarily having any affection or emotion, not as a response to the other, but as an initiating act, performing loving deeds for the good of the other, but not because of the other. It is a love that is done by choice, by will and because God commands it.

While this understanding of love(s) does have resonances with the Bible, I do not think it is without some problems too. If Agape is a love by choice and has no origin in the beloved, then to love a person is not to communicate anything to them about themselves, rather it communicates to them something about ourselves. Agape does not say "I accept you, you are precious," it can only say "I will do good to you." I think there are many Christians who will read that and say this is how it should be, because we are all sinful and thus should indeed not be accepted, but rather, by grace good should be done to us, not because we deserve it, but because of the nature of the one who does love us. And indeed this is why the classical view is the classical view. And yet, it does not resonate with me, neither am I convinced it is a necessary explanation, as if there are no other possibilities or models for understanding love.

Having said that, I am not very mature in my view, and find it hard to articulate, still hoping that a progressive scan image will become clearer and more defined with each passing.

If agape does not see value in the beloved, and indeed does not care, does it see the beloved at all? Is the love (however we must redefine its essence under this definition) really directed to the beloved, or is it like a wine which, as it is poured our of the bottle, forms its own glass (can't remember where I read that image). If agape creates value in the beloved, then is the object of agape actually the beloved, or is it that thing which it itself created, which is distinct from the so called beloved. Does it in fact say, "you have no value, so I will create something valuable and pour myself into that." ?

If agape does not see the other person, but acts on the choice of the lover, what governs the choice? Is it arbitrary? Will we love whom we will love, and hate whom we will hate? I see another resonance to one model of Christianity here, a model which, again, does not resonate with me!

If agape does not see the other person but loves in response to God's command, then what is the 'love'? The love itself must ultimately be defined by what it does, since it is merely the result of a decision. The decision is to act, and the deed becomes the love. But then why does Paul speak of being able to do love's work without actually having the love itself:

If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,^ but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 CORINTHIANS 13:3)

To me this indicates that the act is not the love, but that love can be the motive for the act. If love is the motive, then perhaps the classical definition is not quite right. Indeed we are commanded to love one another as Christ has loved us (perfect tense, not past tense). And indeed this would mean to love the unlovely, the sinful, the evil people. And what if we cannot see any 'value' in the beloved, are we unable to love them by my definition. Are they dead, needing a creative love to resurrect them? Or is it that we love them in faith that 'what you do to the least of these you are doing to me'? Or by faith that they are made in the image of God and therefore there IS absolutely value in there, we just need to be patient to see it.

And yet, if we can love by faith, without seeing that thing which evokes our love, then how can love be defined as the perception of that thing, from which all else flows?

This exploration is finding many challenges. Carol Simon sees the role of imagination as indispensable to love overcoming a fallen humanity in which perceiving the beloved's destiny can be an all but impossible task. Paul sees love as bound to faith and hope in a way that neither can be separated from the other. How can we love someone for whom we see no hope? How can we see hope if we have no faith? Why would we even care if we had no love?

But again, it all comes back to what actually is the love?

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Love, faith and imagination

I wish I could be saying right now that I am back and refreshed after a long break from blogging (about 3 months now), but I am actually feeling a bit sick and anything from refreshed, despite being on holidays. But I thought I would write again anyway. So let's get back onto thoughts of love.

In my last post I spoke of love as a sense; something which can comprehend in another that which evokes our love. I have been reading a book by Caroline Simon (still) which talks about the role of imagination in love. She seems quite influenced by a single thought from Simone Weil about the good Samaritan who actually stopped to help the person bashed and bloodied on the side of the road.

"One of the two is only a little piece of flesh naked, inert, and bleeding beside a ditch; he is nameless; no one knows anything about him. those who pass by scarcely notice it, and a few minutes afterward they do not even know that they saw it. Only one stops and turns his attention toward it. The actions that follow are just the automatic effect of this moment of attention. The attention is creative. But at the moment when it is engaged it is a renunciation. this is true, at leas, if it is pure. The man accepts to be diminished by concentrating on an expenditure of energy, which will not extend his own power but will only give existence to a being other than himself, who will exist independently of him. Still more, to desire the existence of the other is to transport himself into him by sympathy, and as a result, to have a share in the state of inert matter which is his." (From Waiting for God by Simone Weil).

This excerpt points to the moment of comprehension in which the Samaritan beheld the man and had love for him (pity/sympathy). The actions which followed were the response of love. Caroline Simon believes that the human imagination plays a role here also, enabling us to see beyond what is visible on the surface, to the thing of immense value which cannot be seen. She would possibly say that imagination plays more the role of seeing what could be rather than seeing what is, or to use words closer to her words, comprehending that this person has a story and a destiny rather than merely seeing what is.

There are so many aspects in this little excerpt that need to be explored: what is it that causes the Samaritan to stop and pay more attention? What is is he sees that evokes the response of love? Is there anything particularly Christian about this? What role does imagination have in this? What role does faith have? In what way is his loving response a 'renunciation'?

To provide a little more background into the story of the Samaritan a few things need to be noted: (1) Jesus was telling this story to answer the question of 'who is my neighbour' just after stating that the second greatest commandment was to love our neighbours as ourselves. (2) In the story two Jewish holy men walked by without stopping; a priest and a Levite. It seems these men were prevented from loving the man due to their conceptions of law and holiness, which prevented them from defiling themselves with anything unclean (e.g. blood). What they saw in the man was something that would defile them and render them unable to perform their holy duties. But the Samaritan was already despised by the Jews. Samaritans held a somewhat common religious background to the Jews and maintained copies of the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament) which they held as scripture, but they were a mixed race (i.e. impure as sons of Abraham). I am not sure if the Samaritan would be considered defiled by his understanding of the law by helping the bleeding man. By defiling himself there is certainly a 'renunciation' involved in acting in love. Even without defiling himself there is a sacrifice of time and money; a renunciation of his immediate plans and some of his possessions. We would say that there is often sacrifice in love, though it does not always seem like a sacrifice to give to someone else for their own sake.

To recast the story in today's terms, we might find the robbed man replaced by a homeless drug addict with his thumb out on the side of a road looking for a lift. Many cars with 'good' people drive right on by; they have to keep their kids safe in the back seat, they don't have any money on them to give him, he looks dangerous, and he could have hepatitis for all they know. In any case they are on their way to church or a family function and don't want to be late. While all the cars go past a taxi stops. The bum apprehensively opens the door and looks in to see the Arab driver looking back at him. There is a moment of silence as they look at each other and the bum explains he doesn't have any money for a fare. The driver explains there will be no fare and asks him where he wants to go. "To the city, where I can find shelter and food." Instead the driver takes him to his own house, lets him use his shower, gives him some of his own clothes, a meal and a bed. Introduces him to his family, and asks him about his story.

The bulk of people saw a dirty bum, worried about germs and violence, and felt indifferent or incapable of helping. But one man was willing to wear the cost (renunciation), whatever it might have been. Why? What did he see in the bum that others did not see? (or is my definition of love wrong and it is nothing to do with perceiving something that evokes a loving response). the taxi driver might have been a muslim, and thus his love was not 'Christian'. Does that matter? Is there a difference between Christian and non-Christian love. I know there are some (such as Bonhoeffer) who would say yes.

Is it by faith that we 'assume' there is something to love in some people? Is it by imagination that we 'create' something to love, or see what could be? Is it by mere arbitrary choice that we choose to love a person regardless of what we see (and somehow not manufacture the works of love without having the actual love)? Or is it by faith that we assume there is something to love in each person and therefore take the time to search for it, that we might evoke a genuine response of love? There are still some who would say we love because Christ first loved us; because he commands us to, and for no other reason. But I ask, what is it you are doing when you are loving this way? What is the love?

Perhaps there is a distinctly Christian love, as I am sure Caroline Simon will point out as I continue to read her book. She uses 'imagination' where I use 'faith', to acknowledge that each person has a destiny, she seems to be pointing to the position that it is the perception of the destiny that is the thing which evokes our love response. To put it another way, our destinies are given by God, it is his creative and redemptive work in us, and as we perceive God at work in the other, God-in-us joins in to complete his work. As we perceive God working in another (Christian or non Christian) we work with him. This is love's creative aspect, this is its Christian aspect, it is where faith and imagination are required (and hope, but I will look at that another time). It is where we need to see beyond what is plainly visible to that which is invisible, and to that which may not yet exist except in the realms of pure potential.

Here ends the chapter!

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...on to love

It has been a while since my last confession...

I have avoided this topic for quite some time now, feeling unqualified to write anything down on it. For me this is the most important topic, at the heart of the gospel, at the heart of human-human relationships and divine-human relationships. It is the topic at the heart of life. My plan is to just start writing, and refine the thoughts in successive passes and posts. Hopefully things will come to a point of clarity. In many ways the previous posts were a prolegomena to this, since all I am posting is words.

First up, a tentative definition:

LOVE:
noun. A spiritual sense by which we can perceive reality in a way that approximates God's perception.
verb. The act of sensing reality through God's eyes.

I have thought for some years now on the definition of love. From 'feeling' to 'verb' to 'regard for the other' to 'will that seeks flourishing of life'. From looking at loves expressions to its effects. I am coming to the thought that love is a sense for several reasons:

(1) Some years ago I heard tony Campolo speak of love as seeing through someone's eyes into their heart, and their heart reaching right back through to your own and gripping it. I found this to be a profound insight. To run with this idea we might imagine that, despite looking at many people each day as we walk past them in the street, there are times in our lives when we look at a person and find something in them that compels us to love them. What we think is our love for them is actually our response to what we see. But to identify love as the response it to have something that is mechanistic - simply present the goods before our eyes and we cannot help but love. In reality there is more to it than that.

Take for example the person we once loved but now cannot for some reason. Usually in these cases something happened that hurt us, or made us see something 'ugly', 'unlovely' in that person, something that we couldn't 'overlook'. Why is it that we look upon a drug addict, for example, or an adulterer, and we see a person who we cannot trust, a person with whom something is wrong and who we should maintain a certain 'safe' distance from? At the same time we look upon a cute little baby and can be filled with affection? Is this another mechanistic reaction, like instinct? Or is there more to it? I think the key to this scenario is the word forgiveness. A baby is often a helpless person, totally dependent, quite innocent, vulnerable, non-dangerous, a fresh 'heart' craving our love and compelling us to respond in love. It is easy for us to perceive a baby through the eyes of love. But drug addicts, adulterers, violent or aggressive people, even depressed people we find that we hold something against them, something that prevents us from loving them. Only when we can truly forgive them do we find that we can see them again through the 'eyes' of love. Only then can we deem them as 'worthy' to receive our love (again taking love as the response for the moment).

So, if love can be hindered by unforgiveness (and transgression before that), and if in the absence of those things (as well as the absence of our own fear and insecurities) we can freely look upon others with loving eyes, then love might not be the response at all, but the very act of perceiving that which illicits the various 'loving' responses.

(2) People often think they love a person soon after they have met them, but after they get to know them more they find that the person they loved was a figment of their imagination. To truly love a person you have to know that person truly (warts and all). This requires (a) that they reveal their true selves, and (b) that we are able to perceive and appreciate what is revealed. Thus the saying 'to know you is to love you', has a bit of truth in it. On the flip side of this coin, it is often only when we spend some time to get to know the real person that we find the fears and apprehensions we once had are not justified, and we often come to find a new respect for people who we might have dismissed on first impression. Love delights in the truth.

(3) I have never been convinced by the statement 'love is a verb, defined by its actions'. 1 Corinthians 13 speaks of many actions that a person can do for another, but they can all be done without love and thus amount to nothing. For the Apostle Paul as he writes to his church, the only thing that is important is the love itself. If you have love then the actions will flow, but to manufacture loving actions without having the actual love, this misses the point and creates artificial fruit without a tree. Therefore love must be something other than its expressions, it must be a source, a fountain. And yet what is the source, the point from which all flows?

(4) If love is the perceiving of something lovable in another person (or object?) then what governs this? Why don't we love everyone? Why don't we see something in everyone that compels us to love in the same way we look at so few people and are compelled to love them? What is the difference between one person and another, or is the difference inside us? In so many ways the things that stop us looking through the lens of love can be traced back to (a) unforgiveness, (b) fear and (c) selfishness.

(5) There are definitions of love that centre around the response we have when we perceive something loving, and definitions that approach love by love's goal, but this troubles me because if love's goal is to seek and act towards the good (or 'flourishing') of the beloved, then what exactly is that 'good'? In what way can love determine what course of action will result in good or flourishing, since we have such limited knowledge?

Therefore, the most workable starting point I can think of is the point at which a loving response is evoked in a person, that moment of realisation, of encounter, of confrontation with something beautiful, something of worth, something that compels our hearts to respond. The ability to attune this sense, to seek out such an encounter in each person we come across, to see that which is worth loving, this is the discipline of love. It must come down to a way of perceiving. So, is love a discipline, a commitment to 'know' each other? Or is it still the response to that knowing? If you see a baby and are filled with affection and a sense to care for and protect the baby, but then do nothing to stop a dog from attacking it, did you really love them? But in reality, if you really did have that encounter and had the realisation of love for them, would you do nothing?

I know there will be some Christians out there that would say love cannot work in this way. That we are all full of sin and so there is not anything of intrinsic worth in us to love, and that God loves us only by grace, though we don't deserve it. I disagree with this kind of thinking. But I think the argument comes down to the very nature of love itself, and how it is defined. I would dare to say that people who hold the view that there is nothing in us worth loving would need to hold the definition of love that restricts love to its actions, and not to its motives, which I think logically is an incomplete definition. Any attempt to get to the heart of love must comprehend its motives and causes. The best offering for the view that there is nothing worthy of love in us is the view that love 'creates' worth in the beloved - it creates something that is worthy of its own love. I'm not sure about that. It has merit but it just doesn't seem right. If I love someone, they already exist, and I love them for who they already are, not something I or my love has created. And if I was loving something my love has created, it would not be that person I was loving, but rather my own creation. To truly love a person, we must connect with what is there.

To be continued...

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Reflections from the other side

There's this blonde out for a walk. She comes to a river and sees another blonde on the opposite bank. "Yoo-hoo!" she shouts, "How can I get to the other side?"
The second blonde looks up the river then down the river and shouts back, "You ARE on the other side."

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The truth of it

Continuing my exploration of words and reality, it is time to consider how 'truth' comes into play. I was watching The Bourne Supremacy the other night, and came across a scene where an assassin who was thought to have killed Jason Bourne was summoned out of the nightclub he was lounging in to the door of the car of his boss. The window is wound down and the boss says 'your phone was turned off, what the hell is going on?'

'You told me I could have the month off." He replied.

"You told me Jason Bourne was dead." And he wound up the window and drove off.

A short and simple transaction of just a few words, but there was so much in them. Everything had been rested on the words the assassin had previously told him. He took his words as reality ("as gospel") and based a whole future path on that. But the assassin's words were not true, they did not reflect the reality, and thus the two characters integrated their lives and decisions into a fictional reality.

What struck me was the importance of being told the truth in order to make correct judgments. We need to be told words that we can depend on. We need words that are true, that we can make decisions on, that we can trust. We make decisions that can affect the rest of our lives, and those decisions are often based on the words we receive.

"We can only go on the information we have."

What the assassin said was actually true as far as he knew it, but he didn't know the whole story. If I go back to my previous example of the various news articles about the real estate market and interest rates, they are largely making claims based on limited information. They do not know the whole picture and therefore are incapable of making a truthful claim (truth-full). As far as they can report a trend, that trend may be true, but it is not the whole story. Any claim deduced from this cannot be considered truth.

And so, in a world of people with limited ability to grasp the 'whole story', it would seem the truth is inaccessible. If nobody can know the whole picture, if we each are given but a piece of the puzzle, we are left to guess how it fits into the larger puzzle. Perhaps indeed we ourselves are that piece of the puzzle, and we all wonder how we ourselves fit in. And yet, every single day we find ourselves trusting the claims and words of other people; people who are just as limited as us. When we face it, we are confronted with the fact that faith is necessary to do anything in this world.

I am sure we would all love to have a reliable truth that we can put our faith in. Words from someone who does not have the limitations we have, who knows the full picture, and who can therefore speak the truth. And I am sure that, logically, those words might sound very different to what we might have formulated from our own limited perspective, just as it would be quite strange for that assassin to have shot Jason Bourne and seen his car career over the bridge and into the water and then to say "I didn't kill him at all", and for that to be a true statement.

It is funny that when we think about it, we can accept that truth might even sound foolish to our ears, and yet still be true. The Bible claims that Jesus is the truth (John 14:6). It claims to be words from a God who knows the whole story and can thus speak words of truth, reliable words to put our trust in. And yet so many people find it foolish to consider those words as true. My heart longs for a true word to trust in. Such a word, by necessity, can only come from God.

Tell a man there 4 billion stars in the sky and he will believe you. Tell him a seat has wet paint and he will have to touch it.

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back to words

I didn't get any bites on my questions about what our church is up to, so I thought I would continue to meander along in my exploration of words and the communication of reality. I have had to step back this week and reflect on how this is affecting me personally, as I have noticed just how much we are reliant on words for our understanding of reality. To tell the story:

Adrianna and I are looking to buy a house, and this is a big commitment as many would know. Houses are very overpriced and unaffordable at the moment and have been for some time now, but we really want to get out and have a place of our own.

As we are in this space, we find that we are particularly attentive to news articles about what is happening in the housing market and interest rates and the economy in general, because these things affect affordability. Do we jump in as soon as we can because prices are going up, or do we wait because prices are coming down and will continue to do so.

I have found that the media is just as unreliable in reporting on housing as they are on any other topic. On the same day, one article will say house prices have come down 2% in the last month, another will say they are likely to come down 10% in the next year, another will say 'but wait, the reserve bank is going to cut interest rates so that will change', and then another will say, 'but maybe they aren't going to cut interest rates because employment figures show a growth in employment. All of these articles paint pictures of reality, but are not necessarily accurate or true, even though they are based on facts. They have the power to influence decisions, perhaps we should wait and see if prices settle and/or come down, and in the meanwhile build our capital so as to pay off less interest when we do buy. And perhaps this will lead to more houses coming onto the market, and thus more choice, as it starts to become a buyers market. But then, there are the reports that housing prices will continue to rise because of population growth and immigration which keeps the demand high.

And so, day by day, the facts we are given to make our decisions on are fed to us electronically with words and statistics, which paint pictures, which limit the options and set our focus and bias.

Alternatively, we could monitor the prices ourselves and look at trends, but we don't have access to what houses are actually selling for (just what they are listed for) unless we pay money for reports. So reality is mediated to us by various conflicting sources, and we have to make significant decisions from that information. This shows the power of the media to shape reality as they influence decisions of many people and shape the market. This is even more pronounced int he share markets, where people use mediated information to buy and sell, and rash decisions can be made, and crowd mentalities can be witnessed. The person who can 'mediate' reality and shape decisions has a lot of power indeed.

How do we assess what is 'true', how can we determine which article is 'reliable'? We have established that words have power to shape and influence our understanding of reality, and thus our decisions to interact with and change reality. We also know that if words conflict with other words about what that reality is then we need to decide what is true and reliable over what is false and misleading.

This problem brings us back to the garden of Eden once more, where Adam and Eve made a significant decision based on the words of a talking snake (yeh, nothing suspect there), which interpreted the reality before their eyes and 'deceived' them. As opposed to the true and trustworthy words of the God who created them, they chose to believe the creature instead.

On what basis can we trust the claims of one person over another? Or should we treat all such words with caution and seek to learn everything the hard way, through experience? In the case of the real estate issue, I do acknowledge that it is largely an area of speculation and trends, nothing is certain and it is all dependent on market forces, which are highly unpredictable. If this is the case, then is the speculations no better than the fortune tellers? Is it like the Oracle in the the film The Matrix, who asked Neo if he still would have knocked over the vase if she hadn't warned him about it?

I think we should wait until we find something we like for a price we are willing to pay, and just keep an eye on if prices are starting to come up again.

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