Martyholman.com

George and Darren: The Finale

Marty Holman — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:45:02 +0000

George Lippert

Darren Bell

George and Darren are having a conversation about faith and worldview. George is an artist/writer who is a christian, and Darren is an engineer who is an “agnostic.” The last several days they’ve been having a conversation on martyholman.com based on this question:

MH: In a world full of opinions and thoughts and gray, as opposed to previous eras of black and white, it can be tough to really know where someone’s coming from. As a writer/artist (George) and an engineer (Darren), What is the basis for your worldview?

They talked for some time of the Bible and rationalism and belief and knowledge and have shown the utmost respect for one another in the process. But coming to the end of the conversation, will it get intense? Here’s the finale of George and Darren. And in case you missed them -

part 1
part 2
part 3 – with Jeff

The first comment from George is from part 3, but is important to read before Darren responds, as Darren references several parts of George’s comments:

George Lippert: The claim that Truth is unknowable is, in itself, a Truth claim. What is the basis for this Truth claim? Using your previous comments, I’m led to the next few questions.

On the other hand, you compare Truth about spiritual matters (vague and disparate) to the Truth about the mass of an electron (measurable and uniform). I’ll call this the Disparity Quotient, and I think it is a very fair question, one that I consider myself at length.

The Holistic Quotient is one you already addressed by acknowledging that, eventually, one has to make logical assumptions based on the available evidence. Thus, you do not need to measure every electron on earth to determine a logical assumption of its mass. And yet you say that since we cannot experience the absolute totality of God’s alleged omnipotence, said omnipotence cannot be assumed. Why?

The Disparity Quotient is admittedly trickier, methinks. Still, how does disparity of beliefs about spiritual matters deny that there might be one absolute Truth? Many people might disagree about the contents of a mysterious box (think of the classic thought experiment of Schrodinger’s Cat), but that does not imply that there is not one constant truth regarding what actually IS in the box.

To claim that disparity of beliefs means there is no such thing as Truth seems to me like saying that in a world of second graders there would be no such thing as algebra. Mathematical Truths exist even if the second graders have no concept of them (although they themselves may deny it vehemently).

So. All that to say, how do you back up your Truth claim that there is no way of knowing Truth? I believe I know Truth (albeit in a limited form, revealed by God’s revelation through the Bible, and through NO act of wisdom, wit, or worth on my part). Your worldview denies mine. Therefore, I would be curious to know what your basis is for it. Why, in short, am I wrong?

Darren bell: I don’t actually have a problem with faith, but I believe faith should be put within reasonable limits. Faith should be salted by an understanding that as humans our perspectives are very limited, and we cannot make claims larger then what we actually have knowledge of.

I don’t believe any ground exists where it is possible to say that one religion is right and one is wrong, or that there is one true path, etc. To say that you need the top of the mountain view, and no human being has that.

All tertiary claims of having a top of the mountain perspective to me are no better. To say, “I do not have knowledge of the top of the mountain, but I know the creator of the mountain, and he told me what the mountain looks like from the top” or any variation of divine revelation through a secondary source whether person or book still claims to have irrefutable knowledge of the source. The source makes claims greater then humans can reasonably make, but you trust the source, so you allow it to make greater claims then you would yourself. At different points in our lives we all do this. I had a conversation with a friend of mine earlier this week about a relationship, and she was giving me advice and I recognized that in my current circumstances she had more perspective on my life then I did so I listened to her. Because I know her I trusted her and I recognized that my decision making ability was impaired.

I have three problems with extending what I mention above about my friend to religion. 1) I’m still responsible for that decision, and almost all of the facts surrounding the decision are obtainable by me, it’s just confusing. Meaning that the advice I accepted wasn’t out of the circle I have drawn around myself for what I can and cannot know, she was just helping me make sense of the facts I had in my circle. That I had observed or experienced firsthand and involve people I know. 2) The evidence required to substantiate the claims that because you know God in your own sphere means he is God everywhere and over everyone in order for you to extrapolate his seeming omnipotence to you to the universe are very high, and as far as I can tell unobtainable. 3) The subjectiveness of the argument, and the fact that the subjectiveness of spirituality does not lead to consensus but leads to dissent and that there are literally millions of people all claiming to know absolute truths, or claiming to know the creator that has told them the Truth, that contradict each other should concern any person. It is highly concerning.

In the 21st century we literally lock people up that say they have received divine revelation or know personally the God of the universe, unless they are part of an established church. I don’t believe any of the evidence of the Bible stands up to modern critique and the rigorousness by which we judge it is watered down because of it’s antiquity and the mysticism surrounding it. If anyone claimed that someone rose from the dead today we don’t believe them, it doesn’t matter how much proof they have or what they say. As modern people we believe that to be impossible. But it was possible 2000 years ago!

But in the end I concede that to my mind there is enough room for God even in the most reasonable and rigorously defined formulation of knowledge. Our doubts and unknowable are just too great. And though I have serious concerns about that moral compass of mine leading me towards religion just being sociological and cultural baggage . . . there the needle rests none the less.

Faith salted in this way leads to respect of other people, it leads to humility when viewing yourself and it leads to you putting yourself in a worldview that includes other people and is able to be widened by others experiences also.

GL: Thanks Darren.

Just to respond to a few things:

1) I actually don’t have a problem with a subjective experience of religion/God, although I can see how it might seem that way from what I said. Any religious experience is a very personal, subjective thing. I DO believe it is a problem when one’s subjective/speculative experience of God is the primary basis of their belief. We humans are simply too unreliable, distracted, fallen, and selfish to be trustworthy in that regard. This is why I choose to trust external revelation– i.e. the Bible.

2) I am intrigued by the idea of personal balance. We are more than purely intellectual beings, just as we are more than purely spiritual or emotional beings. I suspect that our beliefs (not only about spiritual things) become flawed when we rely too heavily on only one of those resources.

Darren, I admit that if I had your mind, I suspect it would be very hard for me not to filter all of my beliefs (or lack thereof) about Truth through the hard lens of empirical evidence. For another person, they might choose not to engage their clinical intellect at all, instead rejecting some beliefs based on the fact that they don’t “feel genuine”. Another person might believe or disbelieve based on some personal mystical speculation gleaned from spiritual meditations.

In short, I wonder if potential Truth can only be grasped (albeit imperfectly) when one balances all the facets of our humanity? Does that make sense?

I have not attained balance, but I will say this: where my intellect fails me in my belief, my spiritual experience of God’s truth takes over. Where my spiritual experience of God’s truth fails me, my emotional assurance of God’s fatherhood takes over. These are hardly perfect, and frankly I still struggle quite a lot from time to time (especially if I allow only one of those aspects of my humanity to exert too much influence), but all told, this is where my belief in Truth holds: in the web between intellect, spirituality, and emotion.

Thus far, I respect your perspectives Darren (and I sometimes share them, at least a little), but while I see that your worldview makes a certain kind of sense, I don’t see how it denies that there might indeed be a Truth– or that the revelation of God through the Bible might be wrong. Nor do I see exactly how a lack of PERFECT intellectual understanding of the totality of Truth means that one must reject any form of the concept (anymore than failing to grasp calculus is a reason to assume that it is impossible to know or does not exist). I appreciate that it is a struggle, though, and a messy one.

But honestly, here’s the nub of it: if Christianity isn’t true for everyone, then it isn’t true at all. That’s evident in Jesus’ own words. Call it arrogant, simple-minded, and culturally insensitive, but none of those things are arguments against the veracity of the claim.

But I appreciate being sharpened on these things and being pressed to think carefully about them. I look forward to more.

DB: I wouldn’t say that my worldview denies that there might be Truth, or even that the Bible reveals God through revelation. I like your analogy about the second graders and algebra, but the only thing I would say about it is that you say that second graders can’t comprehend something higher then them, but that that higher thing exists in spite of their knowledge of it. And yet, if you give second graders the chance to advance mathematics . . . you would wind up short of algebra or calculus. You would end up with a mess.

Sans an algebra book of course, which is what we all claim we have.

Here indeed is the crux of the whole issue:

“But honestly, here’s the nub of it: if Christianity isn’t true for everyone, then it isn’t true at all. That’s evident in Jesus’ own words. Call it arrogant, simple-minded, and culturally insensitive, but none of those things are arguments against the veracity of the claim.”

I agree with you that this doctrine is true. And it is the chief conflict of my religious thought at the moment.

Because I assert that you do not have the authority to say such a thing. To make such a claim. And more to the point: I think it is too far reaching to allow the Bible the authority to make such a point.

It is beyond what it is possible for a human to know. I do not believe that any amount of historical or psychological evidence can support the claim (especially in light of the conflict of other people against such views) that the Bible is the revelation from God that is applicable to all human beings.

The more I look at myself and the arguments and evidence I rely on. The more I see other people saying the opposite thing from me who rely on the same subjective experiences, cultural momentum and historical evidences backing up their antithesis. And it shakes my foundations and makes me questions the basis of all my beliefs, correctly so.

That being said, I don’t reject that God may exist. But my rationality forces me to frame God within my known limits of what I can have the ability to declare. I do not have the ability to know whether the Bible is God’s inerrant word for all human kind, and therefore I do not claim it is, regardless of the fact that according to it’s internal doctrine I must claim that in order to adhere to it perfectly. I can BELIEVE, I can have FAITH, but I cannot KNOW.

GL: I like it when we find places that we can agree upon, even if our perspectives on them are totally different. Again, I suspect this could go on forever, so for now I am content to say “good topic everybody!”

Tomorrow I’ll share my thoughts on the conversation, but today, feel free to share your thoughts about what was said!

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George and Darren (and Jeff)

Marty Holman — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:26:20 +0000

George Lippert

Darren Bell

Round three took place on a quiet Monday afternoon, as George worked at his computer in St. Louis and Darren nodded off at his workplace in Philly. But just when things were starting to quiet down, my friend Jeff asked to read the conversation, and believing the conversation to be a part of an ‘all-in’ facebook thread, he intervened, and brought new life to the conversation. You can read parts 1 and 2 here and here.

Jeff Campbell (JC): This is Jeff Campbell. What an awesome go around. There’s a whole bunch of things I’d love to chime in on. But I think I’d like to muddy the waters in one quite specific way. I think this really applies to both of the positions I’ve seen lain out here.
The question (which I’ll admit is a wee bit loaded) for me is this:
In most of our relationships, we don’t wander around looking for propositionally sound logic. I don’t make any attempt to inductively or deductively prove my love for my wife.
Why does this appear to be our sole mode of discussion about God?
I’ll buy that some of this belongs– since George has never met my wife (Darren has) I might owe him some sort of scientific/mathematically sound argument to prove her existence.
I believe in Truth with a capital T but agnowledge I only percieve truth with a lower case t; I believe the whole thing is wonderously and glorioiusly subjective in this life…
Any thoughts?

Jeff Campbell

GL: Hi Jeff,

Just to try a quick stab at this: as you say, if I (for some reason) decided to deny that your wife exists, it would not be enough for you to tell me that she exists because you love her. I would require SOME sort of scientific, objective proof. While I myself am content that the Bible’s claims are true, that Christianity is the one way to God, etc, I respect the doubts of those who require more concrete, measurable evidence. In the case of your wife, you could merely point at her and say, “there she is,” case closed. Making the case for Christian belief with those who do not immediately except the inerrency of the Bible (or my subjective experience of it), etc, is a very different prospect.

Fortunately, I think the truth of Christianity can indeed be shown (although not conclusively proven) by historical, psychological evidence. As you know, many skeptics have approached the historical record with intention to disprove Christianity only to become converts themselves.

Thus, I am reluctant to merely state “Christianity is true because this is how it subjectively effects me”. The Truth is not true because I believe it. It’s true even if no one believes it. That’s what makes it Truth. I respect the doubter and the true skeptic enough to deal with the issue on their terms.

At least, as much as possible.

DB:

To Jeff:

There is consensus between you and your wife about your love. It is acknowledged by pretty much everyone as a subjective thing (love) and only effects a small amount of people. I think love should be rigorously looked at to ensure it is positive and not detrimental to yourself, your wife or the people you interact with, which all good people search themselves thoroughly before they let their loves loose on the world. How much more so for religion?

Basing a worldview on personal experience is fine so long as you don’t extend your worldview to other people, ’cause it might not be true for them. Unfortunately this is what religion does. My point was never that we cannot know anything, it was that we need to make better distinctions between what we know and don’t know and then let that distinction effect how we interact with other people. So that we don’t interact with them thinking we have knowledge that is more awesome or better then theirs.

The weird thing is I think Jeff is saying something that George will strongly disagree with. That it is not improper for religious belief to be based on subjective experience. That those subjective experiences express something just as true as rational thought.

Also I do try to frame everything in my life in terms of making propositionaly sound logic. I’m not denying that I love the things I love, and that to me certain of my desires are a priori in themselves without further reason, like love. But those things aren’t uncontrolled in my life, I think for a long time about my feelings and their sources, whether they are robust, whether they are going to be around tomorrow, how they effect people. I take my feelings and I put them in a larger framework. Same for God, I may love him, but don’t trust that love unless I can put some scope in it. Cause Darren’s love of God is meaningless unless God is God right?

MH: As the conversation continues, what do you like or not like about what the participants are saying?

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George and Darren, 2

Marty Holman — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:10:37 +0000

Darren Bell

George Lippert

Yesterday I introduced a conversation between my friends George and Darren. I know them from two completely different contexts, but from my recent facebook interactions with them, I noticed that they were very similar in some ways and very different in others. So I thought I would ask them to answer some questions for me via email, then replay the action here at martyholman.com. The following is part 2 of that discussion. You can find part 1 here.

George Lippert (GL): Intellectually and spiritually stimulating, Darren.

If I understand you correctly (and pardon me if I am boiling down a stew to make a pill), is it a fair summary to say that your perspective is basically that everyone’s truth is true for them but not necessarily true for anyone else? All religions are equal (different paths up the same mountain)? In essence, is it the case that all truths are relative to he/she who believes them, based on the proposition that, to them, those truths order their world, give them clarity, and therefore serve the basic purpose of a belief system?

Darren Bell (DB): Partly. But mostly I think I’m trying to say something deeper.

To take the mountain analogy and the famous humanist scenario of many people walking up the mountain from different sides all moving towards an ascendancy, the top of the mountain. A friend once told me that that story has the major flaw of all bad philosophy, that it fails to take itself into account and be self-reflective. The story requires a view from the top of the mountain to propose.

When I was thinking about your summary earlier today my first response was “No! I’m claiming there is no mountain at all!” Then I realized that is also claiming a knowledge that I don’t have.

To keep the mountain metaphor going in my view people are walking around in a forest with ~20 yards of visibility. In walking around we meet other people and talk to them about what they have seen walking around. And sometimes you meet people that are walking around that claim that we are all on a mountain, and that some people are going the correct way in the forest and others are going the incorrect way.

I hate the word truth. The sentence “Everyone’s truth is true for them” to me is the whole problem, and it is what most people do. They have experiences, they put those experiences together and then they blanket the world with them and operate like they are true for everyone. I think it is a very subtle difference but it is to me, an important difference in attitude about how you view your ‘own truth’ or ‘own worldview’. And that you DON’T let your personal truth become Truth.

Because Truth is unknowable.

To talk even briefly about the God thing. To know for a fact that God existed using the faculties we have you would have to be able to witness his infinity. Literally, to say God is infinite you have to see his infinity, you have to see or experience his omnipotence everywhere and through all time. Maybe there is a very strong force that operates in my cubicle at work, as far as I know it is omnipotent. But when I go to my co-workers cubicle he is no longer powerful there.

Now I understand that at some point for knowledge to grow you have to extrapolate knowledge from your circle of experiences and make assumptions about the way the rest of the world works. The problem with most of spirituality though is that the experiences people have are GLARINGLY DIFFERENT!! In science when a scientist measures the mass of an electron every other scientist measures the same mass. However when people follow their ‘internal moral compass’ everyone scatters like cats each chasing their own cubicle god and claiming it is God. “Well he is god in my cubicle so he must be God everywhere.” That is bad extrapolation. And the myriad of human experience tells us that is bad extrapolation because there is no consistency of experience between one person and the next.

I don’t have Truth. I have experiences and perspective, and those things can never be wrong, only my interpretations of their meaning can be wrong. Because of that I try to be very careful with my interpretations of there meaning and confine that interpretation into what I believe claims that can be rationally asserted and are also going to be true for the next person that has the same experiences as me. You know . . . more or less.

GL: Thanks for going into it again, Darren. Obviously I disagree on some major points, but I won’t spend anymore time in this post hashing over it (unless you and Marty wish it). We could go on for volumes, I am sure. I do agree with you vigorously on the futility of seeking Truth through subjective personal cogitations and speculations. I suspect we humans no more contain Truth than lightning bugs contain Lightning (to paraphrase the immortal Twain).

MH: Actually, I wish it. Would love to hear your answers to his, and maybe another round or two.

GL: Well, honestly, my answer is just a couple more questions. I really don’t mean for this to be belligerent, so I apologize in advance if this sounds obtuse. The claim that Truth is unknowable is, in itself, a Truth claim. What is the basis for this Truth claim? Using your previous comments, I’m led to the next few questions.

I appreciate that you use analogies. You describe us as people wandering aimlessly in a foggy wood. We are unable to know the full Truth about this wood because none of us can see the whole of it. I’ll call this the Holistic Quotient.
On the other hand, you compare Truth about spiritual matters (vague and disparate) to the Truth about the mass of an electron (measurable and uniform). I’ll call this the Disparity Quotient, and I think it is a very fair question, one that I consider myself at length.

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George and Darren

Marty Holman — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:00:45 +0000

George Lippert

Darren Bell

George Lippert and Darren Bell.

A creative and an engineer, both who happen to be friends of mine, and today I’d like to introduce you to a new feature of Martyholman.com. Both George and Darren are really really smart. Now I wouldn’t tell them this, but when I see them write on facebook or their blogs or when I chat with them, their insight and thoughts have inspired me to think more, so as a connector, I had an idea.

Why not get them to help more people think in a gentleman’s dual of intellect.

So I asked George and Darren, as two men who think very different from one another in some ways, and very much alike in others, to answer a question that I would ask via email, and then chat back and forth about their answers. Along the way, Jeff Campbell gets involved in the conversation, and he makes things even more interesting. Because this conversation was so lengthy, these posts will last most of the week. I trust you’ll be inspired to think thorugh their conversation and ask questions to all the participants. So I’d like to introduce you to George (GL) and Darren (DB).

MH: So tell us a bit about yourselves.

George Lippert: I’m a full time CG artist and part-time writer currently haunting the suburbs of St. Louis. Between being a husband, a father of two awesome little kidlets, paying taxes, cooking Mexican food, mowing the lawn, keeping my 100-year-old house from falling down, and playing lots of racing video games, I formulate lots and lots of “controversial” opinions. Some of them I will surely share below.

Darren Bell: I’m Darren Bell. I’m a Chemical Engineer living in Philadelphia that lived for 6 years in New England mostly going to college and one of those years attending Fellowship Church. Spiritually I’ve been all over the spectrum from an Ayn Rand-esque athiest to going through 40 Days of Purpose. The last couple years I’ve been away from the church and Christianity, in the past 6 months I’ve found a church I really like in Philadelphia. Although aesthetically something appeals to me in Christianity and also I find it helpful to be reminded of certain morals I tend to forget I am pretty much agnostic.

GL: We do indeed live in a time when a black-and-white worldview is not only unpopular, but outright ridiculed. Hard and fast absolutes are considered narrow and intolerant. Up until recently, I shared this perception, based on my background in (what I’ll call for lack of a better term) a fundamentalist upbringing.

I, like many people, grew disillusioned with a spiritual worldview that placed far too much emphasis on superficial rule-following. In rebellion against this, I (rightly) trashed the external rulebook as a method of determining rightness or wrongness in God’s sight.

Unfortunately, along with that man-invented rulebook, I also trashed the God-ordained fundamentals of absolute truth. I didn’t do this consciously, but it happened nonetheless. I began to trust subjective sources of spiritual reality as much as the Bible. Speculation became just as reliable as revelation in terms of the truth (if such a thing could even be known) about God.

The result was that I very nearly abandoned my faith (such as it was). I was disillusioned, selfish, confused, and generally irate with God. Why? Because he simply did not make a lick of sense to me. Of course he didn’t. My head was full of contradictory thoughts about him, based on the wildly various sources of information that I was trusting as a means of knowing him.

Just to list one example of those many contradictions: how could God want my “best life now” for me, while the apostles themselves were almost all murdered horribly for their faith? Was I better than them, somehow? Had God changed his M.O. toward mankind?

This and many other confusingly contradictory thoughts about God eventually wore me down. I was done.

And then, for the first time in a long time, I heard the gospel. I won’t go into it in detail (this is already too long) but it floored me. It was so simple, so amazing! This basic, fundamental truth that 1) I was simply too messed up ever to save myself, and 2) that I didn’t have to, because Jesus did it for me– it absolutely boggled my mind.

I had been in church for decades, and I had not heard that basic, simple, awesome truth for as long as I could remember.

So I began to seek out more of those basic Biblical axioms, completely free from human speculation. I fell in love all over again (and maybe even for the first time) with the comforts of simple, absolute truth.

Now, I need to hear those truths everyday, because I forget them so easily, and because the world is so bereft of them.

There is, in short, a mind-boggling misconception that absolute truth is restrictive, somehow– that it does not respect freedom and diversity.

In fact, absolute truths are the most freeing thing in the world. Just ask anyone who has ever had to navigate a mine field. Would they claim to be offended at the “absolute truth” of a map showing exactly where all the mines were? Or would they chafe against the “restrictions” on their ability to tramp however they wished, pell-mell, regardless of the outcome?

In fact, the map of certain fundamental truths is the most freeing thing in the world. It frees me from the constantly worrying blare of the voices of speculation and guesswork. It provides a groundwork for belief that is unshakable because it does not originate with me or with other men. It comes directly, by revelation, from God himself.

Of course, this depends on one accepting the Bible as God’s inspired word. Without that, then it’s all just back to the wildly disparate winds of speculation again. If I was stuck with that, I’d choose to believe absolutely nothing. It’d be safer.

I do choose to believe in the revelation of God through the Bible, however. Not out of faith alone, but because the evidence of history, sociology, psychology and my own conscience point toward its veracity.

The existence of certain unavoidable and undeniable truths is not popular– it is, in fact, about the least popular concept in the country right now. But (and this is a huge but) the popularity of a belief bears no weight whatsoever on whether or not it is true.

MH: Thanks George. Darren?

DB: One of the first things I think of when I consider what the basis for my world view is is the importance of perspective. We are kind of trapped in perspective. Everything I view and interpret and touch mentally or physically, to take it into my mind and try to understand it or interpret it I have to get my Darren fingerprints all over it. And this is how it is for pretty much everyone as far as I can tell. I think a really healthy way to live is to have a respect that other peoples lives make sense to them inside their own heads, just like yours does. In fact exactly like yours does. I think a second healthy trait is to try to see your beliefs from the perspective of someone who doesn’t share them to see if they are merely based on your own perspective (i.e. I got in a car accident once and now I don’t drive even though driving is statistically pretty safe) or if they are broader then just what is in front of your eyes, in other words are the things you’re building a worldview on bigger then your own personal truths?

Back when I was a Chrisitan I was really excited about it’s “internal constancy” and faith=sight arguments, I would always say “I believe in God like I believe in the sun, not only because I can see it, but that by it I can see everything else.” And it really does!! It is totally true, that ain’t a sham at all. It took me several years but the more I thought about it the more flaws I saw in that type of thinking.

One of the advantages of trying to see your own beliefs from the third person is that you start to understand that just because we live in society that is religiously dominate by Christians, other people actually have religious worldviews that illuminate their world the same way as the Christian worldview. I started asking myself “Don’t you think Muslims feel that their beliefs correctly and insightfully help them to understand the world, and Buddhists and Jews?” In fact that is what all worldviews do, they are suns to our mental world. And for years I looked at the world through the lens of Christianity and honest to goodness, it was compelling, it made the world make sense, it had answers that made me think “Man, this is all so clear, I must be looking through the right lens onto the world!” But then I realized other people were looking though different lenses, and were at least claiming to see the world just as clearly as I was claiming.

This lead me only recently to conceptualize an important idea about what we can and cannot know, that it is proper for people to understand the limits of their ability to know things and the extent their beliefs can reach, and to have an intellectual respect for those limits. There is a circle around me. And within that circle is my perspective and my experiences, and that is pretty much all I have. From that I develop a worldview, I say some things are good and some things are bad and some are in between. I say some things are pretty or ugly, valuable or worthless, meaningful or banal. And I try to respect that circle and the limitations it imposes on what I truly can and cannot know, it is the salt of my worldview.

I believe aesthetics are important. I pursue happiness, beauty and understanding cause I just plain old like them. I don’t pursue them because they are absolutes, or ordained by an eternal creator. I just like sitting out under a blue sky reading a book, and it doesn’t concern me at all that doing so isn’t good because it was ordained by some higher power, I’m content with doing it simply because it’s pleasant.

So the above kind of answers the questions “what is the basis for your worldview?” even though it does very little to define the content of that worldview, what I think about things, whether love is important, if I voted for Obama and whether I eat baby puppies for dinner. And since that was Marty’s question I guess I won’t go too much further (at the moment) in to WHAT I think, as I have answered HOW I think.

MH: So what do you think? Any questions so far for George and/or Darren?

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Being Number 1

Marty Holman — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:06:32 +0000

Being number 1 is a real problem. To be number 1, you have to be prepared to be belittled by numbers 2 through number 52. You have to give up trying to be number 1 at everything, which will really make you number 43 at everything. If you are number 1, and anything even looks like it’s wrong, here come those following numbers again, and this time, they’re out for blood, telling you about all the ways you were wrong.

What makes it worse, is that eventually number 1 will fall, because the thing that made number 1, number 1 will eventually be copied by numbers 2 through 102, and something more innovative will arrive, allowing number 1 to be susceptible to that one that started at number 103, but was willing to pay the price to go against the grain of numbers 1 through 102, and then they will jump to number 1.

And the former number 1 (now number 2) will be the first to belittle this new number 1.

Most people aren’t willing to risk everything to gain everything, only to lose it all again.

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The 13 mile tear jerker

Marty Holman — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:11:45 +0000

I’m not sure what we were thinking, but Mark, the super fast, built for running type guy, who’s been running with me almost every Saturday for the last 5 weeks, and I started our 13 mile run on Saturday afternoon. Earlier on we had tackled an excellent team service project at the Community Harvest Farm in North Grafton, then we decided to meet up again for what would be the longest either of us had ever run, even Mark, the super fast, built for running type guy.

Carie crushed the course, the morning before, and now it was our turn. And I couldn’t have been more prepared and more scared of anything, including the time I rode the highest, fastest roller coaster in the world at the time at Cedar Point – The Magnum XL 200. I’m not in the 8th grade anymore, but this was even more terrifying. What if I couldn’t do it?

So we met at 4:30 pm, and started what we now know as the descent up to our halfway point. For that reason, the first half was really easy. The whole thing was basically downhill, something we might have researched first. So for 6.5 miles, I thought, we can really do this. We wooped that run like David jacked up that dang giant with 5 smooth stones and a trumpet. Then running back it started to get a bit harder. It didn’t seem uphill, yet my legs were getting tired and when we eventually did get to a part that seemed uphill, I found myself ready to give up.

When I stopped running to take a break, I looked at our gps reading, and we had hit 11.11 miles, and it seemed like 2 more miles would never come. I felt nauseous. I felt weak. I begged for Mark, the super fast, built for running type guy, to go on ahead so he wouldn’t have to wait for me. He wouldn’t. He was being challenged too. The last two miles were so fierce. Mostly uphill. All tired. And to make matters worse, we passed my house at 11.6 miles. Couldn’t we just stop a bit early?

Finally we arrived at the 13.11 mile mark, and the run was over. I had nothing left. No legs. No breath. Mark, the formerly super fast, built for running type guy and I walked quietly to our cars, looked at each other with faint glances of satisfaction, and went our separate ways.

I drove to my house and sat in my car for a few minutes. I couldn’t really move and Carie was visiting some family, so sitting in the car just seemed appropriate for the occasion where one can no longer move. I called Carie, told her I finished, and unfortunately, she was on the other end of what happened next. I lost it. For no reason that I know of, and just because I felt like it, or maybe it was because I had nothing left in me…

I just cried into the phone for the next 10 minutes.

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The Story before the Story

Marty Holman — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:47:56 +0000

This weekend I have to run 13 miles.

I’m not looking forward to it, but I now have an example to help quench my fear. This morning my wife Carie ran that distance, and I’m pretty proud of her. We’ve only been running for 5 weeks consistently (4 times a week), and now we’re ultimately training for a half marathon in October. At first we considered a full marathon, then pulled back for this season. But we’ve managed to stay on the training schedule for the marathon up to this point.

Because of scheduling conflicts, our training is one day apart, so Carie runs the training schedule one day before me most of the time, and I don’t mind telling you how scared I have been about my 13 mile adventures this weekend. But Carie showed me it could happen, gave it her all, and finished the 13 miles. Well, actually because her mom, who ran with her, took a wrong turn, she ran 14 miles, but I’m not doing that – on accident or on purpose.

Don Miller says that “A character in a story is a person who wants something and overcomes an obstacle to get it.” I want to finish this half marathon, and I want to beat a few people along the way, and before today, I had a hard time believing that was possible.

Great examples and heroes are people who exemplify, not only how to live life, but the dreams which we already have in our hearts. Running a half marathon may not make a big difference in the world, but it will make a big difference in me, which I believe will push me to make a big difference in the world.

Thanks Carie!

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New Stories coming soon

Marty Holman — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:05:26 +0000

One day, a writer sat in front of his computer thinking about what to write on his blog. He wrote all different kinds of stuff on a regular basis, but at the time, he had nothing interesting to say. One thing he did know, however, was that the more he told stories as opposed to other genres of writing he tried, the better the results.

So he decided to write a story about himself, and how he was trying to figure out something to write and the epiphany came upon him that he was better at telling stories than trying to get people to feel better about themselves or challenging them to do something.

The problem was that the writer also realized that sometimes he ran out of stories to write, and that made him sad because he knew that, more than anything else, he should be making new stories to write about- going out and making a difference in his world or traveling through a comedy or a tragedy with friends.

You see, this writer seemed to do his best work, not when writing about imaginary lands or other people’s junk, but when he wrote about his adventures- Like the time he realized Jesus might be okay with beer, or the time a bee stung his mouth.

So making new stories became his mission, and he wondered what friends would like to be a part of that mission…

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Hit in the Mouth

Marty Holman — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:49:32 +0000

“That wasp just attacked me and stung me in the mouth,” I lamented to my two friends who previously were laughing at the thing to which I had just reacted so largely.

I finished volleyball minutes earlier after 4 big losses in a row and, already moping around a bit from an epic beating, I bowed low to get into my cellar in an effort to turn on the hose to wash our feet off before we entered the Holman household. With the water turned on and mission accomplished, Bramlett, the left handed wannabee golfer, and Dagget, the wiry 3 languaged nightmare, took turns ribbing me about losing so many volleyball games.

We washed our feet. I could have washed theirs in an amazing display of Christ-like humility via John 13, but I chose to turn the rays of my flashlight in the middle of their eyes instead. I have much to learn.

When we were done with the water, I crawled back down the cellar, turned the water off, all the while listening to their continued teasing about my athletic decent into Hades. As I moved to the top of the cemented Cellar steps, a wasp, evidently very angry at something I’d done, attacked me, allowing absolutely no time for reaction. It immediately hit the lower left side of my lip, and I immediately cried out in pain, holding on to my mouth like Steve Jobs holding on to his reputation.

As could be expected, Brams and Daggett continued their laughing as I grunted a pain-filled roar, at least until I mentioned how bad it hurt, then they stopped, and I could get on with feeling bad for myself.

It took only about 5 minutes for my mouth to resemble Will Smith’s from the movie “Hitch”, but it looked ugly, and I learned a valuable lesson that evening:

If you don’t play beach volleyball on Monday nights, then you probably won’t need to go down to the cellar for the water hose, which means you probably won’t get attacked by a wasp.

Capiche?

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Navigating through Change

Marty Holman — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:57:15 +0000

Navigating through life gets you through that life, but navigating through change helps you to flourish through that life.

Anybody can get through life. And the ways we find to cope are typically mechanisms to help us simply survive. they are the easy ways. They are ways to communicate like complaining, arguing, sarcasm, laying low, just get by, or bitterness. These might help us to get through life, but they won’t help us flourish.

To flourish, we must fight our desires to take the easy route, and navigate head first into change, especially in a world full of extraordinary and fast-paced changes. And in every area, we must meet those changes with the fierceness of someone who wishes to flourish.

Your friends may change. Your technology will change. Your clubs, groups, and churches will change, so too, will the things you’re able to do. Your job will change. Your likes and dislikes will change. And most of the people around you will change. This blog post sounds a little like the book of Ecclesiastes. The tone seems a bit down, but in the end, there is only one great common denominator, and He does not change.

But He helps us to change, and to navigate through those changes, so that in the end, we begin to understand that He is the one we rest upon. He is the one in whom we rest.

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