Love Does Not Exist

My love list is similar to many. I love God, my spouse and children. I love lemon chills and vacations. I love putting in a good days worth of work and I love Sabbath. However, the Christian life is one that comes to see that love does not exist.

This is not to say that love is not real. Love is very real. But love does not exist as an object that we can identify. Or to echo John Caputo, Love does not exist, it insists. What does that mean? Here is an example.

When I walk through a park I see a lot of things. I also do not see a lot of things. I walk through the park and walk past 100 people and don't see them. These people are like other things in the park - objects. The people might as well be trees or benches and I just don't see them. 

However, the moment I walk past my son I instantly see him. I can tell you the color of his eyes and what he was wearing. I can tell you if he was happy or upset or if he was pretending to be a Jedi knight fighting off the bad guys from Skylanders with his fellow good guys from Paw Patrol. I can walk past him and when I see him he is not an object - he is a subject. It was love that pulled him from crowd and into my view. from the background to the foreground. When we experience love, we are responding to the invitation of love to not see something or someone as an object but as a subject. To "objectify" someone is to not experience love for that person. 

This is why love insists. Love is everywhere, insisting all things into existence. If there was no love then all things would evaporate. One Bible writer says that God is love, and we all know that God is not an object. God is the animating force of all things. God is not a thing - God calls all things into being. Without the Love of God then it all ends. Or to put it another way, love never fails.

Mad Men Having More Influence on Evangelism than Jesus

If you consume any sort of media these days you will find that advertising is more annoying than ever. Not long ago, we would sit through commercials because we did not have the ability to speed through them. (Who can forget the most famous introduction to commercial breaks: Chuck Woolery said the Love Connection will be back "2 and 2".) Today however, banner ads on websites are ignored, pop ups are blocked and pre-roll ads are universally deemed annoying. So when we do have to experience an ad we feel like we are being subjected to something that we did not sign up for. 

Essentially, advertisers are the uninvited guests to a dinner party.

The television show "Mad Men" glorified the advertising model of something you might call caught and taught. This was the time of no skipping or blocking ads. It was the time of limited media channels. It was a time when every ad was seen by a vast majority of Americans because no one had any choice - people were caught. The ad's job then was to capitalize on this caught audience. The viewer was "taught" about the product/service and saw the desired benefits. Today, the closet thing we may have to the "caught and taught" is each year with the Super Bowl. 

The "caught and taught" understanding of advertising is not only annoying it is now obsolete. Truth be told, I have never seen an episode of Mad Men! We all are consuming media in a dramatically different way than was previously possible and advertising is trying to figure out how to stay relevant. 

For many in the Church, "doing evangelism" is thought of in the same terms of the "caught and taught" method. It is thought that you go to a place where people are "caught" (street corners, subways, buses, parks, etc.) then proceed to teach the Gospel. More sophisticated versions of caught and taught evangelism include building a relationship with someone with the intent to teach them about Jesus. If we are going to use methods of "caught and taught" for evangelism, that is just fine we just need to remember one thing: Evangelists are the uninvited guest at the dinner party. 

No one appreciates a dinner guest who shows up and begins to comment how they are better cooks and select better wine than you do. No one appreciates a guest who talks only about topics she/he wants to talk about. No one appreciates a guest who stops does not listen but only waits for their turn to talk again. 

When we "do" evangelism it is important to remember that evangelism is sharing of Good News. This means that it is contextual. Good News to the addict is not the same Good News to the single mother of three. Evangelism influenced by Mad Men is more interrupting and agenda driven. Evangelism influenced by Jesus is more listening and following.

THE Scientific Method is a Misunderstanding

Elementary school science class taught me a basis outline of “the scientific method”. I do not recall the specifics but what has stuck with me is the overall flow of: hypothesis, test, measure, and conclusion. Recently I was informed that “the scientific method” is incorrect. Not the method, but the idea that there is THE (or just one) scientific method. Different sciences have different methods.

For instance physics has a method that works for Newtonian physics but quantum physics is more theoretical than material. Biologist have the benefit of knowing the results of their hypothesis much quicker than geologists who have to have a different method while waiting eons for rocks to move. The sciences have methods that make sense in their field but might not make any sense in another field.

Of course, these different methods are neither better nor worse than one another. While these methods are different in their specifics, in a general sense these different methods are unified in their efforts to better understand the mysteries of the world.

These different methods also contribute to a humility among the most respected scientist. A zoologist does not over reach into the field of astronomy in order to correct or condemn. The zoologist knows there are limits to her field and her understanding and those same limits exist in the astronomist. Each field respects the methods of the other fields. There is no attempt to prove the superiority of one fields methods over another. Criticism comes from within the same field - chemists argue with chemists.

For as much as religion has to teach the sciences, I wonder if religion has something to learn from science.