Through a Glass Darkly: Volume I Issue 2 "Hope"

HOPE

THROUGH A

GLASS DARKLY

VOLUME 1 | ISSUE 2 SPRING 2020

FOR NOW WE SEE THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY; BUT THEN FACE TO FACE. (1 COR 13:12A K JV)

contents 04 06

EDITORS’ NOTE

THE HOPE OF THE CROSS IN AN UNJUST WORLD

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UNSPOILABLE

FLOWERS OF THE FIELD

Gabriel Cairns

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HOPING FOR LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE

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Stephen Lidbetter

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TO LIFT

COME

Emily Lobb

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LIVING IN UNCERTAINTY HOPE AND HUMAN FLOURISHING

Alvin Tan

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GOD’S NATURE

Abigail Howe 3

editor’s note

T

here’s enough material about how we are living in unprecedented, unfamiliar, and uncertain times. We hear countless stories in the news, watch countless reports from the government, and read countless emails from the university about arrangements for term. This mini-issue of Through a Glass Darkly is not about that. Rather, it is about hope—the hope that we all seek to tide us through this season.

The word “hope” brings to mind two poems. The first is by Emily Dickinson, which begins: “Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all –1 Dickinson paints a delicate picture of a fluttering creature that is the embodiment of a sweet, undemanding hope. And perhaps this is the kind of hope we wish to have too—delightful, constant, and celestial. But ‘delicate’ is really the other coinface of ‘fragile’, and a feathery hope is essentially ethereal and fleeting. When you pit a dainty thing against the weight of reality, it is not difficult to predict which will be victorious.

My friend Bradley puts it like this: “Full-bodied hope is a thing with flesh.”2 You need something corporeal to confront the realness of lockdown, furlough, and death tolls. It must be strong enough to bear our burdens, powerful enough to effect true 1 E. Dickinson, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers.” Poems, ed. by T. W. Higginson & M. L. Todd (Boston, MA: Roberts Brothers,1891).

2 B. Yam, “Hope is a thing with flesh.” The Yale Logos.

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transformation, and reliable enough to stand the test of time.

“This is the kind of hope,” Bradley continues, “that demands to be reckoned with. If not, it will reckon with us.”

The body that is the hope of Christians is that of Jesus Christ.

It is a body that was beaten, hung up, and pierced. It is a body that was given for us. It is a body that was raised, that ascended, and that provides the basis for a living, breathing hope.

This issue seeks to explore that hope: Where does it come from?

What does it mean for us? How can we take hold of it? We all wrestle with these questions, and perhaps there is much to learn by wrestling together.

The second poem about “hope” that I think of is by Daniel Donaghy, and it ends: Fear is the knot in a golden cord twisted around the heart, without end or beginning.

Hope is the hand that unties it.3 It takes an embodied hope to loosen the heart from the grip of fear. And perhaps as we navigate the coming months, separate but together, we may catch a glimpse of the hand, the body, the hope.

Alvin Tan Editor-in-Chief

3 D. Donaghy, “Hope.” Start with the Trouble (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2009).

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the hope of the cross in an unjust world Gabriel Cairns

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I

find it hard to talk about my hope. Not because I don’t have enough—I believe that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ I have the greatest hope of all; a hope that I am unconditionally loved, universally known, and eternally secure. In fact, the problem is the opposite: I have plenty of cause for hope. I have a place at a top global university studying a sought-after degree, a safe home, financial security, good health, a loving family—should I really expect people to wonder where my hope comes from? When I try to tell people about hope, I want to make it clear that I could continue to rejoice in Christ, even if all these things suddenly disappeared. But for me, it’s still an ‘if ’. For others, including many with whom I have these conversations, it’s a reality.

Try talking about hope to someone with none of these things.

Try talking about hope to a rough sleeper in Oxford battling an anxiety disorder, alongside the alcohol addiction they gained as a coping mechanism. Or to a child with muscular dystrophy, growing up in an orphanage in China, abandoned by their parents. Or to an inner London teenage boy with a fractured family and failed education, and nothing to resist the pull into gang crime. Or to a farmer in Sub-Saharan Africa, whose field yields a fraction of what it used to, as climate change brings longer and more brutal droughts every year. Or to a woman facing continual abuse at the hands of sex traffickers, who, even if she escapes, will carry psychological scars all her life. Or to a child with terminal cancer who has given up on the basic dream of a normal life.

I have plenty of cause for hope, but that makes me part of an overwhelming minority, not just worldwide but even in Oxford.

Simply put, some people have it much, much worse than others. This forms the core of many people’s primary objection to Christianity, whether asked as a matter of intellectual ques7

tioning, or from a place of deep pain and resentment—if God is real, and He is loving, and He is all-powerful, why is there so much suffering, and why is it shared so unevenly? When I have to respond to someone who asks that question from agonizing personal experience, I’m often aware that I just don’t have the answers they need. Because, even though my life hasn’t been without pain or difficulty, I’ve comparatively only had to wrestle with that question as an intellectual exercise. Many who ask this question seem to believe that my relatively comfortable life has enabled me to maintain the faith I was taught from a young age; whereas the injustice and suffering they witnessed, or often experienced, led them to abandon hope in a loving God long ago. And that’s why I’m a Christian—but they can’t be.

Some see this as a harmless but inevitable difference of opinion, brought about by our different personalities and experiences. But to others, the sight of thousands of Christians peddling out the same old explanations for suffering whilst enjoying their own comfortable lifestyles represents more than just naivety. It seems to them to be symptomatic of a religion that encourages people to be complicit in a broken society of injustice and inequality. The mainstream belief, occasionally explicit but more often implicit, is that Christianity is, and always has been, a hinderance to natural human progress: used to enforce the status quo, defend oppressive power structures, and spread 8

hatred and division. In order for humans to create their own utopia, Christianity needs to be eradicated, or at the very least subjected to strict control to prevent Christians from infringing on the lives of others.

Sadly, this perception isn’t without basis.

For every professing Christian throughout history who has stood up for the rights of the poor, met the needs of the vulnerable or challenged racism and bigotry, there are many who have done the opposite. The churches which distort the Bible to justify grotesque racism, sexism, or homophobia; the politicians who proudly claim to endorse Christian values yet show utter disregard for society’s vulnerable; the respected Church leaders who use their influence to commit twisted sexual abuse; the prosperity preachers who sell false hope and a false Gospel to tens of millions, profiting from the desperation of the working class. And perhaps many Christians who agree all of the above is wrong, yet whose faith will often take them no further than to the end of their comfort zone.

Everything I’ve said so far seems to make a pretty miserable case for Christianity, and in my opinion, this, rather than any scientific or philosophical objection, is the largest reason why the magnificent hope of Christianity is widely seen as unattractive and unbelievable. People’s primary experience of 9

Christianity—and often their only experience—is through the mediocrity of Christian behaviour, rather than through God revealed in the Bible. But if we look into the Bible, we begin to see how radically the Christian God turns society’s perceptions and standards on their head.

The first thing we note is that the Bible is filled with people aghast at the reality of injustice: David (Psalm 12), Asaph (Psalm 73), the writer of Ecclesiastes (3:16, 4:1), Job (chapter 21), Jeremiah (12:1), and Habakkuk (1:3) are just a few of those to recognise and question the oppression of the vulnerable and the prosperity of the wicked. And God’s thundering response from the glory of heaven isn’t a series of well-rehearsed theological rebuttals. He actually turns the question back on us. Throughout the Old Testament law, the Wisdom books, the stark warnings of the prophets, the teaching of Jesus, and the epistles of early Church leaders, God fiercely demands that His people care for the vulnerable and love their neighbour as themselves, and condemns the hypocrites, oppressors, and exploiters, with an intensity that should force every Christian to self-examine. And so in the whole Bible, God actually acknowledges the problem of

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injustice and of suffering far more frequently and consistently than any human. Not only that but He prescribes the solution: he calls each and every one of us to right these wrongs as far as we can and gives a stark promise of judgement upon all the perpetrators. This should be enough for us—but what the God of the Bible does next is extraordinary.

I find it hard to talk about hope because I have plenty of cause for hope, and the people that I talk to often do not. My struggles and hardships simply don’t match up to theirs. And God, on His heavenly throne, should be infinitely further removed from the problem of human suffering. Yet the Bible claims that, in the person of Jesus Christ, God became a man. And not a king or a hero—God became an ordinary carpenter’s son, spending his first night in a manger instead of a bed. He fled persecution as an infant; as a man he knew poverty, hunger, thirst, abuse and rejection. Ultimately, he was betrayed by a close friend, arrested, tried illegitimately, tortured, publicly humiliated, and executed in brutal fashion upon a cross, as a common criminal. Such a man ought to have no hope whatsoever—yet hundreds of millions across the world base their lives around him.

Because according to the Bible, the man Jesus Christ was God, and he proved this by rising from the dead. And if this is true, then God has complete power over death, and so has a hope of everlasting life even for those who suffer as Jesus did.

More than that, it means that when Jesus talks of hope, he talks as one who knows how it feels to bear the full force of injustice. His message is for everyone—the rough sleeper, the abandoned child, the teenage boy, the farmer, the trafficking 11

victim, the cancer patient—because when he promises hope of eternal life, he knows what it’s like to have no hope at all. This is the hope that I and all Christians live by and cling to, and it comes with a challenge. If we claim to be followers of Jesus, then we ought to follow not just His teaching but also His example, in humbling ourselves and sacrificing our own prosperity to show love to the hopeless, by caring for them, defending their rights, addressing their needs—but mostly importantly, by sharing with them the same hope which Jesus shares with us.

In his life and death, Jesus sets out through teaching and action the perfect model of a life devoted wholly to others, and a heart set on bringing lasting hope to a world marred by injustice; a model which still challenges and startles the most devout Christians today as much as it did in his lifetime. Every one of Jesus’ actions is motivated by genuine love and compassion for the physically and spiritually needy, rather than to boost His reputation or offset His guilty conscience. This might be unrecognisable from the half-hearted, often self-serving lives led by too many Christians today. Yet when we even display the faintest echoes of Christ’s character, we can change the lives of hundreds, if not millions. And if my actions truly reflect His, they would more than make up for the inadequacy of my words in trying to express the hope I have.

To me, Christ’s commandment and example is so challenging and life-transforming that it’s no wonder even the best of Christians fail to fully honour it, and why we often present such an uncompelling case for God. But when we let the God of the Bible speak for Himself, we see He isn’t indifferent to injustice and oppression, nor is He incapable—far from it. Jesus Christ reveals in his life, death, and resurrection that God’s standard of justice, love, and compassion is so far beyond what a human can achieve that He Himself has to act to fulfil it. Where 12

Christians fall short daily, Christ has already succeeded, and invites all to share in his victory. And so, when I talk about my hope, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not talking about the hope of a middle-class Oxford student. The hope that I hold on to, and invite you to share, is the hope that remains steadfast in the face of any misfortune or injustice: the hope of Jesus on the Cross. > <

Gabriel is a second year Maths student at Worcester. He enjoys playing guitar, going for walks in nature, learning obscure facts, and attempting to write or draw things, and is almost permanently distracted by one or all of the above.

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hoping for love and acceptance Stephen Lidbetter

E

ver noticed that people always have dreams? Something innate within us moves us to set our sights on what could be—the athlete who dreams of the gold, the artist who dreams of being world-famous, and the Oxford student who dreams of the first, the blue or the spouse. Because there’s something coming, there has to be—or so we tell ourselves. Life’s alright now, but once I have that first, I’ll be set for life. Once I get a blue, I’ll be accepted. Once I find a relationship, I won’t feel quite so alone.

And of course, right now we’re all dreaming of the day when lockdown ends, when there’s a coronavirus vaccine, and when we can actually see our friends and families again—Zoom is a poor substitute for being with those we love. In fact, a large part of what makes lockdown so hard is that loss of human connection. The isolation and loneliness that comes with being indefinitely separated from others gives rise to a genuine sense of hopelessness. And so, we do what we always do—we look to the future. We read about the COVID-19 vaccine trials, we start guessing about when lockdown will end, and we plan the party we’re going to have as soon as large gatherings are allowed. We dream about seeing people again.

Even the most introverted of us aren’t very good at being alone.

We all have a deep longing for emotional connection—the kind

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of connection that just can’t be found on a video call. There is a universal desire to find love and acceptance, and if you don’t believe me, then just look at the messages of our songs and our films. In fact, it seems to me that this is the fundamental hope of the human heart: the hope of love and acceptance. And that’s why it hurts so much when these hopes aren’t realised.

Unrequited love, heartbreak, and rejection are such painful experiences precisely because we are let down by the very thing in which we had hoped to find fulfilment. Ultimately, we all long to belong, and we love to be loved.

But love doesn’t come easily. Someone may think they love me if they don’t really know me—but then it’s not me that they love. True love requires genuine knowledge, and that scares us.

To allow myself to be truly loved, I have to make myself vulnerable, and therefore allow someone to get to know the ‘real me’ underneath it all. And of course, the fear is that when someone sees what I’m really like, they won’t like me very much at all.

This fear leads us to draw back from intimacy, and to hide from the very people we hope to find love from—because if they knew all the darkest things I’d done, said and thought, they’d never look at me in the same way again. Better to present a lovable façade than to reveal my unlovable self.

It’s possible that I’ve spent too much time listening to Spotify’s ‘All Out 10s’ playlist recently, but in my view, this whole sentiment is beautifully and hauntingly captured by the lyrics of Imagine Dragons’ song ‘Demons’: Don’t get too close It’s dark inside It’s where my demons hide It’s where my demons hide

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We push people away to prevent them from seeing the darkness that lies in our hearts. In fact, I sometimes think we hide even from ourselves. How much time and energy do we invest in telling ourselves that we aren’t so bad really, or that we’re at least better than the other people around us? That nobody’s perfect, and we should just learn to love our imperfections, and find people who will do the same?

Except, of course, they’re still imperfections. And deep down we know that the platitude ‘nobody’s perfect’ can never honestly rescue us from our insecurities. What we so deeply hope for is someone who will acknowledge our imperfections, and rather than pretending that everything’s fine, will love us as we are in spite of them. We long with all our heart to be fully known, and fully loved.

So, is this most fundamental hope of ours destined to be frustrated? Are we condemned always to live either with the emptiness of being loved without being known, or with the loneliness of being known but not loved? Wonderfully, I’ve found that this hope is not in fact empty, because in the person of Jesus Christ there is one who offers us a love that is genuinely unconditional.

Jesus doesn’t lie to us or tell us what we want to hear. He knows of the darkness inside, the thoughts we’re glad no one knows about, and the words we regret saying as soon as they leave our mouths. He sees all this, and he acutely diagnoses our problem.

The problem lies in our hearts, he says—and it is out of our hearts that come all the things which defile us.

So Jesus sees this sickness of heart—but he doesn’t run from us in the way we might expect. Instead, he offers himself to us.

Why? Because, in his words, it is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. Jesus has not come to call the righteous, but 16

sinners. He understands exactly the condition of our hearts— he knows us better than we know ourselves—and yet he loves us completely. And Jesus promises to heal our hearts because Jesus himself is the cure.

It is this healing that Jesus purchases for us as at the cost of his own life. As Jesus is nailed to a cross to die, he wins for us the possibility of a relationship with him. By his death and resurrection, he makes it possible for sick hearts to know and receive him, and so to find healing. We take one look at the darkness within us and expect Jesus to send us away empty-handed. But instead, his arms are nailed wide open at the cross, inviting us to come to him and find the love of which we have always dreamed. Knowing that he has accepted us makes it that much easier to love and be loved by others: we no longer depend entirely on their approval for our security.

Do you know that deep, deep hope for love and acceptance? I believe that Jesus is the one in whom that particularly human longing finds its fulfilment. We are constantly searching for it apart from him, but as Augustine says, our hearts were made for Jesus and they are restless until they find their rest in him.

Even today, Jesus invites us all in to know his love and acceptance. Real hope is to be found at his cross—as we come to him and let him make our hearts new, we find in him the true love that we’ve always hoped for. < >

Steve is a second year PPE student at Worcester. He enjoys anything to do with football, and is still dreaming of the day when QPR return to the Premier League. He also wonders whether recent efforts to teach himself the guitar are a reflection of his abilities as a teacher, or as a pupil.

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‫( נָָׂשא‬na.sa) ‘to lift’ Ps 25:1 Ps 81:2

Ps 121:1

Nah 1:5

Isa 53:4a

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To you, O Lord, I na.sa my soul.

Na.sa a song; sound the tambourine, the sweet lyre with the harp.

I na.sa my eyes to the hills.

From where does my help come?

The mountains quake before him; the hills melt; the earth na.sa before him, the world and all who dwell in it.

Surely he has na.sa our griefs and carried our sorrows.

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god’s nature Abigail Howe

I

never thought of going outside as much of a luxury. It’s something that’s easy to take for granted, especially in Oxford, where you can explore the Botanical Gardens or Port Meadow without much thought. But, under current lockdown rules, time outside is limited. While having a garden helps, we can’t move around with our typical freedom. It’s given me a new appreciation for walking and the world around me; I’m lucky enough to have fields near my house where I’m unlikely to run into other people. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been amazed by the pace of the change—flowers blooming and fruit trees growing rapidly. My regular walks have encouraged me to think about seasons, beauty, and the hope which God can transform into certainty.

It’s easy to recognise the beauty of the natural world without thinking about the reason for it. Psalm 19 tells us that “the heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands”. Theologically, then, nature is an active participant, drawing attention to God’s glory simply through its existence. But it is our responsibility to notice it. It’s far too easy to get wrapped up in deadlines, stress and socialising, especially during term-time. We can forget to look beyond ourselves and see God’s glory actualised through the world around us. While it can feel like we’re frozen in time and estranged from our normal lives, this can also be a time of reflection where we can slow down, look at the world around us, and think about life’s biggest questions.

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Every day, I walk through a field populated by five very placid horses, and I’ve noticed how relaxed and content they seem to be. It’s something that’s truly aspirational—especially now, at a time when we’re so given to worrying! In fact, Job 12:7–10 encourages us to look to the animals of the natural world, as well as the earth itself, as an example of God’s wonderful provision for us. Psalm 33:5 develops this, seeing the world as an embodiment of His love for us: that the earth is even ‘full’ of his unfailing love. Rather than merely giving us enough to get by, He offers us abundance. Think of the variety of trees and plants around us in the UK—and beyond that, across the whole world. Everywhere, we are blessed with a wonderful range of plants, creatures, and landscapes. Though bluebells are near extinction in the UK, in Kent—where I live—there are plenty. Their purpose is their beauty, and it shows God’s love for us.

But not all of my contemplations were so positive. Even though lockdown may be keeping us inside, climate change still continues. Environmental threats can seem like they’re eroding the seasons themselves, leading to threatening extremes. It’s essential that we remember our duty towards the planet and each other. Global warming threatens diversity and we are called as children of God to counter this by being dutiful stewards—Isaiah 24:4 shows that there is an intersection between spiritual rejection, and physical decay of the world around us. However, we also need to have hope for a better future and remember that God has ultimate power. Through Him, all things are made possible.

Yet even despite these potential causes for anxiety, as I have been out walk22

ing, I have been comforted by the birds. It seems like they have been singing more lately—perhaps it’s just that we have been listening! These birds have the simple faith that food will be provided, and that what is provided is enough. In Matthew 6:26, the writer shows how we are so much more significant than the birds—but he points out, ‘yet your heavenly Father feeds them’. It shows Christians everywhere that we should have a similar faith. The regularity of seasonal change serves as another indicator of both bountifulness, and God’s consistency. In Psalm 96, it’s written that we should “let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy”. Wherever we are—with whatever access to nature we have—let’s try to be joyful and jubilant, letting our faith in God show through our actions as a sign for others, just as nature is a sign for us of God’s love, power, and provision. > <

Abigail is a first year English Literature student at Magdalen. She has what some people may describe as too many books. She sees it as too few bookshelves.

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unspoilable There’s an old adage that goes, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” And yet the idea of having plans seems almost absurd in an uncertain and rapidly changing global situation.

We’ve invited a few friends to share their reflections on some of their spoilt plans—and how, in contrast, God’s plans are unspoilable.

Bekah Goodchild God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear though the earth give away and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. (Ps 46:1–2 NIV) These words from the beginning of Psalm 46 have been a great source of hope for me over the past few weeks. In this time of uncertainty and fear, it can be easy to think a lot about what we’d be doing now if all were as it should be, to look at our diaries and calendars and feel utter despair at the sudden emptiness of the foreseeable future. But this verse from Psalms is a great reminder of who our God really is: He’s not only bigger than the sources of our present fears, but also bigger than anything in our lives, full stop.

Bekah is a first year French and German student at Lincoln. She enjoys (uni)cycling and climbing and also likes playing piano more than her neighbors like to hear it. ▶

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Christians can instead see this time, which has been stripped of much of the usual hustle and bustle that can otherwise overwhelm our lives, as a challenge to see God and our relationship with Him in new ways.

COVID-19 can take away what can feel like so much of our lives, but the refuge and strength that we find in God, the fact that Jesus died for our sins out of love for us, and our inheritance as His children, can never be taken away; it can never perish, spoil, or fade.

So, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, the help God offers to us is ever-present. Our hope in Jesus Christ can never be cancelled and will never postponed; He will always provide strength. We will always find refuge in Him. He will never leave us or forsake us.

Thomas Farlow As insane, and maybe pretentious, as it sounds, Oxford was never the dream university for me. Despite all the glitz and prestige on offer here, my sights were squarely set on a tiny Christian Liberal Arts college right outside Chicago. It just felt so right to study theology in all the ideality of a Christian bubble. After travelling out there, sleeping on the floor of a first-year dorm, tagging along to a day’s worth of classes and experiencing everything they had to offer, it seemed clear: this was the place for me.

And I just knew it was where God was calling me.

◀ Tom is a first year Theologian at Oriel. And he seems to be the sort of guy who always buys theology books but somehow never seems to get around to actually reading them.

A few days before Christmas, I got a package through the door, postmarked Chicago, Illinois. Not only had they offered me a place, but they had offered me their Presidential Scholarship. It was the dream.

But that’s never really the way things work out: like any good dream, it never entirely translates to the real world. Between private tuition fees, medical insurance, and flights, neither the generosity of my parents nor my scholarship was enough. And it soon became clear that without tens of thousands of dollars more, it wasn’t going to all to work out as I planned.

It felt like what I thought God was calling me to wasn’t something that He was willing to provide.

Even after this, though, my university life didn’t turn out the way that I expected. As much as the plans we make feel spoiled or that God isn’t providing, we can take huge confidence that this isn’t really the case. Thinking back, it is so beautifully clear that in closing the door I longed for, He opened the door to something so much greater. Every day I spend in Oxford—even virtually—is his amazing blessing out of a situation that was initially painful and uncertain.

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Ilona Clayton Ilona is a third year History and German student at Somerville. She loves dancing around her room, daydreaming, and using watercolours to decorate her walls. ▶

In February of Year 13, I ruptured the ACL in my right knee during a football match while doing a turn I had done a thousand times before.

I haven’t been able to play football or touch rugby competitively since, which has been hard to come to grips with.

There was a delay for several months with the NHS, but they managed to find a surgery slot for me at the last minute. What was cool was that it fell exactly two days after my A Levels were over and it was also half term in Malaysia, so my mum, a teacher, was able to fly over and look after me for a week. God’s timing was, as always, perfect.

What wasn’t so cool was that my then boyfriend, who was also going to Oxford, broke up with me a month later and although I’d had the surgery so I could go back to playing sports competitively, I soon found out that it was unlikely to be possible.

At the time my faith was in shreds and looking back, I realised that it had a lot to do with my relationship and how I was choosing to spend my time.

Within weeks I had lost the foundations I had built my identity on. When I got to Oxford I was swept up by the CU and I realised how frail those foundations had been. The cornerstone of my identity is now no longer something that can be taken away, but instead God-given: His Son, Jesus Christ. Even though my time at university wasn’t at all what I was expecting, those experiences have brought me to where I am now, and I am so grateful for them.

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Jon Carlisle This ongoing pandemic is a grim reminder of our own mortality. We are confronted with the fact that even when we search deep within ourselves, or in the world around us, true security is nowhere to be found. Both as a society and as individuals, we are driven to question: can I really put my trust in anything? The Christian response is a seemingly ludicrous “Yes!”, but what does that trust really look like, and what does it result in?

It’s easy to imagine some kind of loyalty-based system: if we trust God “enough” He’ll reward us with health and a bright future; we’ll look back in our old age and see how it all worked out for the better. In reality, as difficult as it sounds, God promises no such thing. Absolutely, for many people this cheery outcome will be the case (praise God!). I have no doubt that God will graciously work through these strange circumstances in ways we wouldn’t otherwise see. But the fact remains that there have been, and there will be, faithful and loving Christians who will contract coronavirus—and tragically, won’t recover. So can we really trust Jesus when He says that God’s people are securely held in His hand? Doesn’t Jesus promise “life to the full”?

In fact, Christian hope and trust involves looking back on past evidence, in order to look forward to a future certainty. God will bring restoration and justice to His creation, and He offers everyone the choice to accept eternal life in his perfect kingdom. But why would anyone give credit to this insane claim of eternal life after death? Well, to put it simply, because Jesus is alive! If you’ve never considered the evidence for his resurrection, I’d strongly urge you to investigate for yourself.

In the cold light of coronavirus, it’s clear our earthly lives are fragile and fleeting. With this in mind, God’s wonderful offer of eternal life with Him seems even more awesomely, joyfully, outrageously generous. > <

◀ Jon is a second year Mathematician at Keble.

He loves music, puzzles, writing short descriptions of himself, and all things welfare.

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come Emily Lobb

There the man sees the image clearly at last.

There the woman receives her lover into her heart And weeps on his breast, though he never comes.

(Wallace Stevens, ‘Poem with Rhythms’)

Come. Where? A fantasy space where the man sees at last the half-glimpsed shadow, where the lovers—separated by lockdown? by the checkmate of circumstance? by silence, fear?— find each other’s arms. And still, even here in the fantasy otherwhere of the poem, the woman waiting for the man she loves remains alone. He doesn’t come; he never comes. This weeping figure: rejected, abandoned, kept from her lover by some cold weatherfront of fate? Or just silent, trapped in the tyranny of the unsaid? You never knew how much I really liked you, because I never even told you, oh but I meant to. Are you still there?

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Tonight I walked in the fields and yelled at the beauty of the sky; the slender shadows of the trees over lane, black-edged sticks of charcoal; the glassy greyness of the lake with its white rocks, its handful of geese, its single swan.

The winter it is past And the summer comes at last And the small birds are singing in the trees— Now everything is glad Oh but I am very sad For my true love is parted from me The true love, though disproved by modernity, recurs in song and in personal mythologies: the person to know you (me.

Who?), to look at you and say you, to understand. Kathleen Jamie wrote, I never / could explain myself, never / could explain. And I ran over the field, the give of the grass, luxurious with sorrow.

White dog under a grey sky, the jealous grandeur of the clouds, the lowering evening, the fields crying out. Walking, thinking, unable to get to the ends of thoughts; the single swan parting the water as it sailed towards me. Yellowish grass, trees still bare. The perfection of the swan, and no one to share it. And I wanted to laugh and to weep—who am I, why am I alive in a world so utterly, desperately other from my sole self, isolation, all right, who can know me? He never comes. And, anyway, he wouldn’t understand. I never / could explain. Me. Who? In ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, Keats suspends his lovers in the moment before the kiss, frozen in marble, always winning near the goal and never reaching it. Did he know, writing poems and falling into death with his fiancée Fanny living through the wall, close but unable to be together, that love would never bring him what he wanted? That consummation would always shiver, shatter?

That he and his beloved would never truly be one? He knew.

To say done, over, is to usher disappointment in: everything you 31

do, everything you write and make, leaves you with some emptiness, some sense of is that all? The whole world seems to be saying, ‘that is all.’ If he came and I wept on his breast, would I not say, is that all?

The sky is crying for the field and the field for the sky. Does the swan not love the lake and the lake the white swan? And yet they cannot be together: the final meeting cannot come. Is the whole world not crying out for rest? The trees stretching branches upwards and roots down, the clouds forever rearranging themselves, all of them shouting, come to me, come back. Me seeing you for the last time and not realising that was goodbye.

Come back. The poems slipping through my hands. Reading and writing and I never / could explain myself, never / could explain. Asking, is that all? Is this all there is? This pain, this gap from the man’s blurred view of the image and the fantasy place of clear sight? This chasm from the woman to the man that she loves?

Come. He never comes. How can I hope if there is only this, questions left unanswered, promises unkept, a field and a sky and a swan and a lake kept apart, a heart shouting and not being heard?

The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’

And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’

And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.

The story of the world is a story of desperate desire, to see clearly, to love and be loved. I feel the size of it in my heart, the pink and grey clouds, the melancholy majesty of the swan.

You don’t have to be in love to feel your displacement, your exile, your aching isolation from your desires. The bride is saying Come to a lover who isn’t here, that woman waiting for the man that she loves.

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He says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’

And the final yes hasn’t yet happened. Everything disappoints, everything is other, everything I read and write tracks a path through its own futile incompleteness, because everything is incomplete. The field is waiting for the sky. I hope now because he’s not here yet. That woman waiting. He says, ‘Surely.’ We hope for what hasn’t happened, and I hope for a coming that will close the gap from what I want to what I feel. A promise that will be kept; and then the women will weep no more. Tell the swans, tell the sky, tell the field. Surely I am coming soon.

Come. > <

Emily is from Ayrshire. She goes wild swimming and writes novels about other worlds. She is a third year English student from Teddy ‘the best college’ Hall and is excited to spend next year as a postgrad doing her favourite thing: reading modern poetry.

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living in uncertainty HOPE AND HUMAN FLOURISHING

Alvin Tan

H

ere’s a question. Would you choose a lottery that gives you a 50% chance of winning $1000, or a 100% chance of winning $450?

If you chose the latter, you’re in good company—many people are disincentivised by the uncertainty of the first option, even though theoretically you would receive more from it on average.1 This type of behaviour is known as ‘risk aversion’, and in a season of seemingly incessant uncertainty, it may be particularly illuminative to understand how we process—and perhaps thrive in—such uncertain scenarios.

Formally, uncertainty arises in situations in which information about action outcomes is limited or incalculable.2 In the laboratory, access to information is controllable by the experimenter, who is able to directly manipulate the relationships between actions and outcomes. But few real-life situations follow such a paradigm—the nature of the environment we live in precludes deterministic prediction of most events. Human brains thus need to account for this unpredictability in their decision-making processes.

1 Kahneman, D. & A. Tversky. ‘Choices, values, and frames’, American Psychologist, 39, no. 4 (1984). 341–350.

2 Huettel, S. A., A. W. Song, & G. McCarthy. ‘Decision under uncertainty: Probabilistic context influences activation of prefrontal and parietal cortices’, Journal of Neuroscience, 25 (2005). 3304–3311.

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As we have seen, humans generally dislike uncertainty, and we consider it a kind of penalty that can offset rewards. Studies in neuroeconomics have suggested that we assign a sizeable cost to uncertainty; this is demonstrated in the uncertainty effect, which is the phenomenon whereby a risky option is sometimes valued less than its worst possible outcome. For example, people on average were willing to pay $38 for a bookstore’s $50 gift certificate, but only $28 for a 50–50 lottery for $50 or $100 gift certificates, even though the outcome would be equal or better than the former.3 This valuation may seem irrational at first glance, but it reflects the fact that uncertainty reduces our ability to prepare for the future, which causes us to prefer options that are more certain. Indeed, some neuroimaging studies have even shown that our brains calculate uncertainty about uncertainty—that is, how frequently reward uncertainty changes 3 Gneezy, U., J. A. List, & G. Wu. ‘The uncertainty effect: When a risky prospect is valued less than its worst possible outcome’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121, no. 4 (2006). 1283–1309. It should be noted that each participant only underwent one condition, and were thus unable to compare between the two options.

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over time.4 Evidently, our brains consider and integrate a whole assortment of uncertainties when we make decisions.

Why does uncertainty play such a big role in human cognition?

On one level, it’s clear that uncertainty affects planning, and hence survival and flourishing. But neuroscientist Karl Friston has proposed a bigger claim—a “unified brain theory” revolving around uncertainty. He suggests that the ultimate aim of biological systems is to minimise surprisal (i.e. the discrepancy between predicted and observed information).5 According to this argument, the successful prediction of information allows brains to maintain homeostasis (equilibrium) between their internal models of the world and the external states of the world.

This is known as the free energy principle (with free energy being average surprisal over time) and is supported by evidence that the brain actively does attempt to predict incoming sensory signals.6 This suggestion has been gaining popularity due to its ability to unify approaches from information theory, statistics, 4 Behrens, T. E. J., M. W. Woolrich, M. E. Walton, & M. F. S. Rushworth. ‘Learning the value of information in an uncertain world’, Nature Neuroscience, 10, no.

9 (2007). 1214–1221.

5 Friston, K. ‘The free-energy principle: A unified brain theory?’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11, no. 2 (2010). 127–138.

6 Rao, R. P. & D. H. Ballard. ‘Predictive coding in the visual cortex: A functional interpretation of some extra-classical receptive-field effects’, Nature Neuroscience, 2, no. 1 (1999). 79–87.

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neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence research, and it also resonates with the wealth of evidence that uncertainty is disfavoured in biological systems.

However, taking the free energy principle to its logical conclusion raises an important issue, known as the “dark room problem”: why should agents perform any action other than proceeding to the least stimulating environment and staying there? A dark room devoid of sensory input would effectively reduce uncertainty to zero—and yet we do not observe actual biological agents doing this. On the contrary, placing humans in sensory deprivation environments results in widespread intellectual and perceptual deficits, and many participants in such experiments are unwilling to continue after 2–3 days.7 Friston has suggested that the dark room problem can be resolved by noting that the free energy function depends not only on sensations, but also on the model of the world predicting them—and thus the agent that is conducting this mental modelling.8 Thus, uncertainty is only minimised in a dark room if 7 Zubek, J. P., M. Aftanas, J. Hasek, W. Sansom, E. Schludermann, L. Wilgosh, & G. Winocur. ‘Intellectual and perceptual changes during prolonged perceptual deprivation: Low illumination and noise level’, Perceptual and Motor Skills, 15 (1962). 171–198.

8 Friston, K., C. Thomton, & A. Clark. ‘Free-energy minimization and the darkroom problem’, Frontiers in Psychology, 3 (2012). 130.

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the agent is optimised to predict and inhabit it. But this resolution seems to be circular: agents don’t occupy dark rooms because they don’t predict that they do, and they don’t predict this because such agents don’t actually occupy dark rooms.9 Friston’s proposed solution merely shifts the question to another location: what is it about humans that predisposes them to not predict habitation in dark rooms?

Here’s my proposal: the motivation for continued human activity is hope—that is, an expectation of something that is yet to come which would improve the condition of the agent. Hope explains the innate human motivations of curiosity and exploration—the desire to seek new stimuli and situations, even though this by definition entails great uncertainty.

Exploration is a key part of most animals’ behaviour. If a particular plot of land has run out of food sources, the natural choice is to search for a new feeding location. The fundamental principle behind exploration is the idea that the prospective utility of an alternative goal may exceed the utility of the pres9 Sun, Z. & C. Firestone. ‘The dark room problem’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, in press.

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ent task, and a sufficiently significant difference would mean that it is more sensible to pursue the alternative task instead.

And yet, humans’ exploratory behaviour far exceeds that of any other living organism. We create and innovate, we investigate the world through science—we have even gone to the moon!

The humanness of the drive to explore can be characterised by the evidence that our frontopolar cortices—the front-most part of the brain, which is employed in exploration of alternative goals—are much larger than our closest biological relatives, and may even have a sub-region that has no analogue in monkeys.10 Something fundamental to our design steeply inclines us towards exploration—and that something seems to be an unrelenting hope. When we have a strong conviction that a potential future state will be better than the current one, we head off in search of that future state and the paths that may lead to it.

But what gives us this hope of a better future state? It seems ridiculous to fixate on something that has little certainty, and for it to influence so much of our decision-making. The philosopher John Gray picks up on this in his critique of modern meliorism—the idea that human life can be gradually improved— by explaining that it is fuelled by the “Christian myth” of a new creation, an ushering in of a kingdom ruled by Jesus coupled with the destruction of evil.11 To him, the modern atheist should shed themself of the allure of secular humanism, and confront the fact that humanity’s progress is a mere illusion.

Without the beliefs of the Christian worldview, the notion of certain human advancement is baseless and untenable.

10 Mansouri, F. A., E. Koechlin, M. G. P. Rosa, & M. J. Buckley. ‘Managing competing roles—A key role for the frontopolar cortex’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 18 (2007). 645–657.

11 Gray, J. Seven types of atheism. London: Allen Lane, 2018.

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However, for the Christian, this is not an illusion or myth. It is a truth that is promised to us in the Bible. The new creation is described in the book of Revelation (particularly chapters 21–22), which speaks of a world in which there is no violence, no pain, no sadness, and no death. It is a picture of astounding beauty and brilliance. Most importantly, humans will enjoy the presence of God forever—the very thing we were designed to do.12 This is the future state that we know is infinitely better than our current condition, and that we hope in.

The biblical concept of hope is not a vague, soothing analgesic or a placebo. Rather, it is a sense of trust and expectation, and a confidence that the thing hoped for is certain to come. Christians can hope in things that are as yet unseen because we have a living hope in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:3). Since we trust in the person of Jesus Christ, we can trust that he will come again and establish his kingdom in a renewed creation. Hence, this future state is not just better, but also a definite reality that will come to pass.

And it is not just Christians who have that nagging sense that the world at present is not in the best possible state it could be; rather, all of creation is awaiting that promised renewal (Rom 8:19–25). This instinctive longing is why hope functions as the currency of society. This is why we yearn to be in a better state, and why our mental models predict that such a state will come.

This is why we are willing to devote resources to exploration, innovation, and creation. This is why we can thrive in uncertainty despite our negative evaluation of it. We are certain that there is something better, regardless of the intervening uncertainty.

12 “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.” (Westminster Shorter Catechism)

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Living in the midst of uncertainty requires a hope for a better reality on the other side. Such a hope motivates us to keep going, in spite of the discomfort that uncertainty puts us in. The real question, then, is this: do you have something—or someone—in which you can ground that hope? > <

Alvin is a third year Psychology and Linguistics student at Queen’s. He enjoys reading about everything, and is surreptitiously using this biography to solicit book recommendations, even though he probably already owns too many books.

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team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Alvin Tan

EXECUTIVE EDITOR Alex Beukers

OICCU LIAISON Christopher Gooding

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER Rachael Chan

IMAGE CREDITS All images used are public domain or under licences that permit commercial use except as noted: pp. 1, 2, 14, 16–17, 30–31, 33, 35–38, 41, 44, Alvin Tan; pp. 18–19, Alvin Tan and Joni Edyn Sng; pp. 21–23, 28–29, 42, Elizabeth Biggs. pp. 21–23 includes material from Brusheezy.com.

This issue is published in collaboration with the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, a student organisation that aims to give every student in the University of Oxford the chance to hear and respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can find OICCU at oiccu.org, or on Facebook or Instagram at @oiccu.

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about Through a Glass Darkly is a student-led journal of Christian thought and art committed to expressing that the gospel of Jesus Christ is living and active in our fields of study and creative expressions as much as it is present in our books and college names. We seek to provide a space for students to test the veracity and credibility of the Christian faith, and to find that it holds true and enriches life.

We desire to honour our God-given calling as students to critically explore and see our platform as a way to engage with faith intellectually and critically. We hope that this journal is not the end of the conversation, but the start of one. We know that all that we know, we know in part, and that the Lord will illuminate and reveal more to us the more we seek after Him. Through a Glass Darkly is part of the Augustine Collective, a network of student-led Christian journals in university campuses throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. For more information, see augustinecollective.org.

Through a Glass Darkly is not affiliated with any church or religious organisation, and the opinions expressed in the publication do not necessarily reflect those of the editors.

All content copyright Š 2020 Through a Glass Darkly and its contributors. All rights reserved.

Contact us at throughaglassdarklyoxford@gmail.com, or connect with us on Facebook or Instagram at @throughaglass.ox.

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DOMINUS ILLUMINATIO MEA