To An Unknown God Fall 2010

Unknown God

to an

Heroes and Superheroes Volume 3 || Issue 2 || Fall 2010

A Journal of Christian Thought at Berkeley

to an

Unknown God

Cover:

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Heroes and Superheroes

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In Defense of Risk

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Seeing Miracles Today

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Fall 2010

Reflection Prayer and Disappointments The significance of prayer Sean Jeong

What is the church so afraid of?

Daniel Garcia

Culture

The Lord our Savior, not our hero

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Wesleigh Anderson

Heroes Get Remembered (Mis)conceptions about heroism

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Elena López

Super Gifts

What Peter Parker and Billy Graham have in common

Lila Carpenter

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De-script-ion

Who is your Director?

The Call A small transformation in my faith journey Andrew Kuo

Jesus Fish Can religion and science coexist?

Sarah Knight

Mediation on a Text An attempt at the question, “Why death?”

Sally Stosich

Timothy Cho

Literary

Spandex and Jesus

Smudged

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Why Jesus is not the typical superhero

Devon Jue

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Cover Diana Zheng (front) Valerie Lu (back)

Drawings David Yang (27, 28, 31) Andrew Kuo (opposite)

When the vine shading me withered Chris Han

Why, God? When things don't work out Jake Baker

Photographs Christine Han (3, 11, 21, 23, 25) Grace Ho (1) Edna Liu (5, 15, 24)

andrew kuo

Poetry

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Hero

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For Laurie

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Kawai Mang

Rachael Shen

that little gold star Emily Chan

Unknown Submission

Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you.

— acts 17:23

Lue-Yee Tsang

• A (Wo)Man for All Times • Seventh Pitch of the Wombat • Godly Oxcart Kevin Christopher

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• Boots • Fountain • Not a Bird Sally Stosich

To An Unknown God is not affiliated with any church or other religious group, and the opinions expressed in articles do not necessarily represent those of the editors. We are completely student-run and funded partly by the student body as an ASUC-sponsored student publication. Funding is also provided through individual donations. Distribution is free while supplies last.

To An Unknown God Fall • 2010 Dear Reader,

editor-in-chief

In the name of progress, our society continually dubs individuals as heroes of noble thought, beautiful appearance, extraordinary character and expertise, setting them apart from the common mold. The university is, in fact, an important hub where many of these societal heroes are produced. But when we fixate our gazes on these figures, we often forget that they—regardless of what they’ve achieved—will fail, disappoint, and leave us forgetful selves standing agape.

When we place our hope in humanity, it’s easy to grow smug about our heroic deeds as we march to the city hall, sign petitions, delve into studies of philosophy and technology, organize initiatives, and even as we serve our ministries. Yet, day by day, as we fulfill our duties, our hearts grow agitated with the sluggish progress toward perfection. Where is the societal infrastructure that defends the weak and detains evil? Where is the fellowship that consists of people who are wholly convicted by the Gospel and urgently speak words of God’s wrath and mercy to a city full of broken spirits? Will the process of sanctification please speed up? The earth can only groan for so much longer.

This semester’s theme, “Heroes and Superheroes,” allows us to delve deeper into an examination of our souls, which we find beautifully crafted after God but miserably condemned to sin. It is a proclamation, startling to the world, of our need for a Savior, a hero who defends and intercedes for the wretched, and a superhero who can defeat death itself. Paul wrote to the Christians of Ephesus that they were once dead in transgressions and sins, but that God raised them up with Jesus Christ and seated them with Him in the heavenly realms so that He might show the incomparable riches of His grace (Eph. 2:1, 6, 7 niv). Not a single person, regardless of personal accomplishments, can survive a moment, much less eternity, without God’s grace. But even so, this grace ultimately testifies not of those God saves, but the God who saves.

This story was never about you or me. It was, is, and will always be about Him. So as we engage in the restoration of society and the sanctification of our body, let us ask ourselves: by whom, for whom? Let us never be content until we are on our knees, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, equipped with the Word, and witnesses of the miracle of salvation. Demand not, for we do not deserve such mercy, but “ask and you will receive” (Matt. 7:7 niv). May Jesus Christ be to us more than a moral teacher, but a Savior who defeated death on the cross through His resurrection—a Savior worth living and dying for.

Sarah Cho, editor-in-chief

Sarah Cho

executive editor Emily Stone

managing editors Daniel Kim Erica Vilay Grace Ho, Lue-Yee Tsang

publishers Chris Han Elizabeth Hui

advisory board Steven Fish Department of Political Science

Tsu Jae King Liu Department of Electrical Engineering and Computing Sciences

Jeffrey Reimer Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Jan de Vries Department of History

photographer Christine Han

Assistant Editors Lila Carpenter, Joyce Chang, Kylie Foo, Elizabeth Kim, Kawai Mang, Rachael Shen, Javonna Stewart, Joseph Yi

EDITORS EMERITI Stephanie Chiao, Laura Ferris, Cliff Mak, John Montague, Whitney Moret

“In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David's line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.”

— Jeremiah 33 : 15–16

grace ho

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In Defense of Risk contributing writer

Daniel Garcia

* This is not to undermine the many excellent pastors, ministers, staff workers, and counselors who indeed are a reflection of the unconditional love of Christ in the crisis moments of people’s lives.

daniel garcia is originally from Barrington, Illinois. He has recently completed his doctorate program in Physics at uc Berkeley.

2 To An Unknown God | Fall 2010

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ast spring, a group of students decided to hold a dinner for the Christian community. Their motivation was simple: to promote cross-Christian dialogue. At this event, Bears Breaking Bread, the hope was that good discussion would be fostered between groups that generally don’t talk to each other, such as Protestants and Catholics. But, it was clear from the start that many groups thought this dinner was a bad idea, spiritually dangerous.

They discouraged members from going, warning that if they did go, they should be intellectually armed. In a way, there was a spirit of fear, a quarantine: to venture inside, one must have the right protection.

There are times when this spirit of fear comes home. I know some people who have lost loved ones or are going through tough times. They start asking the hard questions: “God, why? I thought you loved me. Is this what your love looks like?

Are you even there?” And then, sometimes, their communities start pulling away; these communities, they don’t want to deal with the dangerous questions, the uncomfortable ones—it rocks the boat. Alas, some pastoral support doesn’t walk with students into the dark places.

Instead, the conversation is stunted, replaced solely by reminders of divine sovereignty, consisting of Bible verses protecting faith and hindering discussion, rather than words of hope incarnated by the person present.* Those hearts which are legitimately grieving either deal with it on their own, or become so distant from their church or fellowship that they just leave, no longer at home in a community that itself is pulling away.

With the theme of “Heroes and Superheroes” I feel obligated to ask a simple question: What is

the essence of a heroic Christian life? The answer that comes up again and again is risk. A world without risk is a world without heroes. And yes, a world without evil is a world without risk. Why is the idea of the hero so ubiquitous, so profound in our collective experience? I think, partly because it is an echo of Jesus Christ, the hero of heroes, and thus one of the “good dreams,” to quote C.S. Lewis, that our species has received from God. The hero looks at a world of evil, full of risk, and says “Onward!” like little Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings who said, “I will take the ring to Mordor…though I do not know the way.” A hero can only exist in a fallen world, and thus is a profound response to that world and perhaps, even of its evil. The more we isolate ourselves from the world, both mentally and physically, the less we will find Christian heroes. I think about Michelangelo’s masterpiece, David. A hero knows the choice of going home to the “pasture,” to the known and understood, but chooses the unknown, chooses Goliath. That is the moment captured in Michelangelo’s epic work. David, with worry covering his brow, embodies the moment when one turns, looks into risk and uncertainty, from Gethsemane to Golgotha, and in doing so lives the Gospel, becoming the Christian hero.

And so I ask the unorthodox question, are we creating churches and fellowships that promote good risk in the spirit of the Gospel? Or, are our churches, our communities, our fellowships places that value safety and hegemony? I regret to say that too often I find our priorities are exclusively: #1 Protect the students from the “world,” #2 Follow Jesus Christ. Additionally, I sincerely wonder, particularly in “immigrant churches,” if that protection is actually partly motivated by a subconscious fear of cultural

assimilation, a mentality of “us” and “them” that brings fear. From my experiences, it seems like we are more afraid of the world with its risks, questions, and uncertainties, than of loving it as God so loved the world.

If we as churches and fellowships do not promote a culture where it is safe to take risks and consider ideas that might be at odds with our own, we may still be preaching the Great Commission, but the workers become increasingly inexperienced. The result is we end up “evangelizing” people who are basically like us. As churches or fellowships, do we “pre-screen” speakers or events for our students? Sometimes yes (e.g. Bears Breaking Bread). I know there are also communities that would rather not have its members reading this magazine. Are we teaching Christian students to engage the world or hide from it? (Indeed, should we be surprised that we have so many Christian bubbles?) Are we teaching them to create two different cosmoses or one unified world? As students at Cal with such a diverse student body and course offering, we will invariably encounter competing ideas in gender and sexuality, in evolution and the origin of biological life, in comparative religion and philosophy. Are we preparing students to interact with these ideas, to learn from them as well as intelligently critique them? Or, are we encouraging them to avoid them, or at best hold them at an arm’s length? This can only result in an odd tension where there is one mode of thinking in church or small group, and then another in the classroom and beyond.

We need communities that acknowledge the hard questions, seek the hard answers, and engage with the campus in ways that take us out of our comfort zones. It isn’t just about having the “right answers.” It is forgivable for a person to wonder if our faith is so weak that we must hide it in protective environments, isolated groups, with tight systematic theologies. If our faith doesn’t work in the day-to-day world of Berkeley, outside small groups and Sunday sermons, then something is not right. This is as much an engagement of our minds as it is of our physical presence. If our response to differing opinions, doubts, or new ideas is to avoid, to

return to our pastures, then it is hypocritical to expect anything different from non-Christians we may share the Gospel with.

In the end, we settle for church Christians in a world that needs world Christians. We get Christians that can quote chapter and verse, but when faced with differences, real questions, and real opportunities, they are unable to even attend an inter-Christian event, or allow themselves to struggle with faith. Surprisingly, we end up violating that oft quoted mantra of evangelical Christians—a personal relationship with Jesus Christ—by precluding the very questioning and experiences that make one’s faith his own. This should be as true after becoming a Christian as before.

I’m the first to admit none of this is easy.

Indeed, risk for its own sake is pointless, and throwing sheep to the wolves is ill-advised at best. But in many cases, the pendulum has swung too far. This is the paradox of church: to be both safe and unsettling, comfortable and challenging. We need to encourage discussion on a host of issues, to welcome interaction with our campus and its groups, and to support and affirm students who are struggling with faith and, thus, fight the temptation to pull away. We need to be willing to try new things in our ministries as the Spirit inspires students.

Ultimately, our faith must be our own. We live on the hopeful side of the Cross. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead and we need to trust Him. He went into places, both physically and personally, where His disciples were afraid to go, in some cases commanded not to go. And it was risky, people abandoned Him, and things didn’t turn out splendidly all the time. We need to be such heroes. Every Christian is to be a little Christ, and so every Christian is to be a hero. It is a heroic thing to engage with the world in all its complexities. Anyone can avoid; it takes a hero to engage. If we have no risk, we have no heroes. And so the question remains: Are we more interested in protecting students or letting them follow Jesus into risky places?

Do we value safety and hegemony over a very unsafe Jesus? If we want life without this risk, Jesus is a hard Lord to follow. •

christine han

Fall 2010 | To An Unknown God 3

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miracles

seeing miracles today contributing writer

Wesleigh Anderson

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4 To An Unknown God | Fall 2010

u r God is not a superhero.

Many of us learned the opposite in Sunday School as children, and I do not mean to disparage your childhood churches by saying this; saying “God is the ultimate superhero” is true is some respects, and it is an easy stepping stone for young people to reach greater knowledge. Like saying “the American Revolution was fought because of taxes,” there is a grain of truth, though it is grossly oversimplified.

But saying that God is a superhero misses His most essential attributes: God has no alter ego.

He cannot fail. He does not stop being who He is.

However, when we read about God in the Bible, it is easy to think that He is now hiding from us. Even Elijah, who was taken into heaven without dying, despaired of feeling the presence of the Lord (1 Kings 19); for us, the task of trusting God must feel infinitely harder. This seems unfair: how can we feel God’s presence when He does not appear before us? Why must we believe without touching the wounds in Jesus’ hands ( John 20:27)? When Superman went without appearing, people began to doubt his existence—is he sick? dead? But God has promised us that He does not change, so what has?

Perhaps we do not have enough faith today.

Jesus did tell us that “according to [our] faith will it be done to” us (Matt. 9:29), and we know that when people “lack[ed] faith,” Jesus “did not do many miracles” (Matt. 13:58). However, God does not require faith to perform miracles, though He may choose to withhold miracles from those who do not trust in Him. When the Israelites grumbled in the desert that they had no food, God provided them with manna despite their lack of faith. Out of the Twelve Disciples,

only John is recorded as staying by His side at the cross ( John 19:26). Still, Christ died and rose again not just for John who stayed by His side, but for everyone, even Peter, who denied him three times.

In teaching us that miracles are not dependent on faith, God also teaches that our faith should not be dependent on miracles. People only believed that mild-mannered Clark Kent was Superman when they saw him fly. Jesus, on the other hand, did not perform His miracles to make people believe in Him. We even repeatedly see people not believe despite the evidence in front of their eyes. In Luke 11:14–15, Jesus healed a mute man by casting out a demon, but in the very next verse, people again asked “for a sign from heaven” (Luke 11:16). Even when He performed this greatest of all miracles—rising from the dead after saying He would—most still did not believe. Jesus rejected people whose trust was based only on miracles; their faith was not authentic. During Passover, “many people saw the miraculous signs [ Jesus] was doing and believed in His name” ( John 2:23). However, because their faith was dependent upon the miracles Jesus performed, He “would not entrust Himself to them,…for He knew what was in a man” ( John 2:24–25). The people were merely astonished by Jesus’ novelty, rather than being truly convicted

by God and repentant of their sins.

But is faith not faith, regardless of its origins?

No. Jesus showed that belief in miracles alone can easily lead us astray; the devil is cunning and makes attempts to imitate God to deceive us.

Satan “himself masquerades as an angel of light [and] his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness” (2 Cor. 11:14–15). People reacted in the same way to seeing Jesus perform miracles as to seeing Simon the magician practice

sorcery: they followed him because he had amazed them. We know that Simon was not acting under the power of God, because no Samaritan had yet “receive[d] the Holy Spirit.” Even after his baptism, Simon was not a true Christian, for his “heart [was] not right before God [and he was] full of bitterness and captive to sin,” and God will not bless an unrepentant heart (Acts 8:10–23). Satan has not given up imitation, and he will not give up until the end time when the false prophet of Satan will perform “great and miraculous signs,” and in doing so will deceive “the inhabitants of the earth” (Rev. 13:13–14).

Thus, miracles should not be the primary foundation of our faith. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “faith is being…certain of what we do not see,” and we can certainly see miracles. What purpose, then, do miracles hold for us today?

First, though miracles should not be the basis of our faith, they are “signs,” as John calls them.

God does not use them to reveal the Messiah to those who don’t believe, for “they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31). Rather, He uses them to confirm the Messiah to His people. When Jesus turned water into wine, “He thus revealed His glory, and His disciples put their faith in Him,” but they had already been following Him before He performed this sign ( John 2:11). This miracle was not the foundation, but simply the confirmation—a sign of what they already knew to be true.

This does not, however, tell us where the miracles are today, but the book of Daniel holds a curious and unexpected answer to this question. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon built a colossal golden idol and proclaimed that everyone must bow down to it, but three Jewish captives faithful to God—Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego—refused. In a fit of anger, the king had them thrown into a blazing furnace, but they told him, “the God we serve is able to save us from it, and He will rescue us from your hand.

But even if He does not, we want you to know… that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up” (Dan. 3:17– 18). They knew unequivocally that God had the power to save them, but they also knew that He

was under no obligation to do so, and yet their faith in Him did not falter. Superman would be nothing if he let Lois Lane die, but God’s salvation does not always come in this world. The Lord did, in fact, deliver the three men; however, the most awe-inspiring moment was not when they walked out of the furnace unharmed.

Rather, it was when Nebuchadnezzar saw them and praised “the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,” not because of the miracle he witnessed, but because “they trusted in [God] and defied the king’s command and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God” (Dan. 3:28). The true miracle was not their earthly salvation from fire, but their eternal salvation that came from trusting God. Incredible miracles pale in comparison to an unwavering faith. Thus, we can see now that God still performs the most incredible of His miracles each and every day.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “miracle” as “a marvelous event not ascribable to human power or the operation of any natural force.”

Though this definition applies to the three men surviving the furnace, it is even more relevant to their faithful confidence in the face of death and to Nebuchadnezzar’s repentance upon witnessing that faith. We, who are born into sin, are not capable of doing anything for the glory of God; without Christ, “we [are] powerless” (Rom. 5:6). Without Christ, we must perish in eternal separation from God, and no human will or natural power can change that. Rather, only God has “brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:13–14).

Thus, anything we do for the glory of God is a miracle of His doing—when we bear the fruit of the Spirit, that is a miracle; when we spread the Gospel, that is a miracle; and when we are saved by God’s grace, that is a miracle. As Christians, we are all miracles, not because we are born, but because we are born again. But, if you think you have not yet known the miracle of Christ in your life, I invite you to witness, like King Nebuchadnezzar, the faith of every true Christian and “call upon the name of the Lord [that you] will be saved” (Acts 10:13). •

edna liu

*All Biblical references from the niv

Wesleigh Anderson is a second-year English and American History major recently from the Puget Sound.

Fall 2010 | To An Unknown God 5

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Heroes Get Remembered A treatise on the common (mis)conception about heroes and true heroism contributing writer

Elena López

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Elena López is a second– year Japanese Language & Culture major. She loves reading, fantasy and sci-fi, comedy, philosophy, karate, anime, and Zelda video games but can’t eat sushi.

6 To An Unknown God | Fall 2010

ne thing I know and am constantly amazed by and grateful for is that I am loved—I was saved by a hero unlike any other, with whom none can, or could ever, compare. But what do most people think of when they hear the word “hero”? Do you imagine a tall man in a cape or a knight in shining armor? A mythological demigod of unsurpassed might and strength? A renowned swordsman or archer? What exactly constitutes a hero?

A “hero” is defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica as typically the main character in a literary work or any figure celebrated in the ancient legends of a people or in early heroic epics. I find this description rather subject to interpretation and reevaluation. Of course we are accustomed, especially in the collective memory and culture, to a certain set of values, tropes, clichés, and archetypes that encompass the (super) hero persona. Our hero is powerful and, if not physically accompanied by superpowers or blessed with mental prowess or foresight, characterized by an indomitable spirit even in the face of great evil or impossible odds. This person (for we have heroines too, though they are a rare breed) may be “The Chosen One" to vanquish evil, a recurring archetype that is quite prevalent in popular culture media, such as in Harry Potter, The Matrix, and The Legend of Zelda video game franchise. The common trend has been to romanticize individuals who exhibit these values —which can detract from seeing the real picture of true heroism versus heroic deeds.

We also have modern and historical examples of individuals whom we recognize as heroes for having stood up for justice, been voices of reason, or for being of remarkable contribution to society: Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Bill Gates (to some), and Shigeru Miyamoto

(the father of Nintendo). Needless to say, it is an extensive and ever-expanding list, but what is most interesting is the attribution of the title “hero” arbitrarily according to personal values.

This makes sense, of course, in that we choose whom we look up to or appreciate for certain reasons, but this selection is highly telling of our selfish judgment of others on the sliding scale of idealism versus cynicism. By way of a very shallow example, in proclaiming oneself an exclusive Nintendo fan, one overlooks the positive qualities of other artists and game developers of other companies (namely Sony and Microsoft as major competitors), and this negligence can lead to violent confrontations among gamers known as flame wars. This arbitrary selection of “heroes” is not to say that certain individuals aren’t heroic or are genuinely recognized as heroes (whether or not one deserves to be considered a hero is another discussion), but rather that we as humans are not impartial or unbiased in said selection.

A hero to one person may be more of an antihero with a larger dose of moral ambiguity to another. Vigilantes (e.g., Rorschach in Watchmen or V in V for Vendetta) can, and almost always do, embody both extremes of heroism and villainy on the same coin. Again, perspective and understanding of motivation and actions, as well as personality, is of utmost importance in discerning heroism. Coming to a consensus on what constitutes heroism is another problem and something we don’t always agree on. It can even be argued that judging by one set of values over another risks falling into the vicious circle of moral relativism.

I am personally a fan of acts of heroism of epic proportions. So let’s take a look at The Lord of the Rings, for example. Most people hold that either Frodo or Aragorn is the main hero (i.e.,

the protagonist, especially in the films), but I always staunchly give my vote to the unsung hero Samwise Gamgee, the sidekick gardener: In terms of absolute bravery, loyalty, love, devotion, and sacrifice, I challenge you to find a better possible candidate than Sam in this saga. These essential traits are evidence of one’s heart and what I believe ultimately characterize a true hero, as opposed to just possessing certain heroic qualities or performing heroic deeds.

And here’s the point I’m trying to make: that we have a skewed and biased view of what constitutes a true hero in this modern day and age. For the most part, we love legends and epic stories which include mythologies and much of the foundation of religions, and we love hearing about real people who in essence try to make the world a better place. The hero of Christians, despite his divinity, was an average man who worked at a lowly craft; ate with his friends and family; cared for the sick, the injured, the hungry and weary; suffered and felt pain and betrayal; and carried the weight of the entire world (our sin) on his shoulders. Now watch The Return of the King again and tell me if you don’t see Sam carrying Frodo and the Ring up Mt. Doom in a hopefully new and reevaluated light. Plus, Sam makes a mean rabbit stew with po-ta-toes.

Now, this isn’t to belittle or ignore biblical heroes, but rather to provide some popular cultural framework for comparison in trying to understand our own misconceptions of heroism.

Of course Jesus, as mentioned, demonstrates the greatest example of heroic sacrifice and love and is the embodiment of what true heroism should be. However, because of his dual nature as both fully human and fully divine, perhaps some other human “heroes” should be explored. Of particular importance in regard to understanding the markings of true heroism among regular people is the list of the normal and flawed individuals who nevertheless receive special commendation in Hebrews 11; they are recognized for their faith and are considered favorites of God precisely for this reason. Here the argument would be that true faith is equated

with being a true hero in Christianity, where faith means obedience to God’s laws in trust and love—even at the cost of life, honor, limb, and loved one. This obedience is essentially humble submission. The overarching implication is that the road of a true hero will be arduous and painful, and rightly should be.

Apart from an obscure reference to the passage of the elves into the immortal West across the sea and from Christ himself rising from the dead, Enoch, one of the favorites listed in Hebrews, is truly the legend who never died and is another example of what constitutes true heroism. A seemingly minor and innocuous character (much like Samwise Gamgee in that sense), he is only mentioned in a few verses in the entire Bible; we are barely told anything about him except that he literally walked with the Lord and by faith he “was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found because God had taken him away” (Heb. 11:5 niv). All we know about Enoch is his singular obedience and devotion to following God, quite literally.

To quote a message I heard today, champions (and heroes and legends) are not made overnight.

The way I see it, true heroes are like steel blades, molded, forged, and tempered continuously by God’s fire and love. The trials and tribulations that beset them test their spirits and remove impurities until the end product is nigh indestructible and is a true sword of evil’s bane.

As humans, we lose our edges and might even break sometimes under stress or duress, but the true heroes are those who submit, like Enoch, to God and allow Him to actively shape them after His image. Complete submission is the hardest thing anyone can ever do, for our own worst enemies are ourselves who give outside forces and deceit a way in. Just ask Gollum. •

Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.

— The Sandlot Fall 2010 | To An Unknown God 7

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Super Gifts

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ell, crap. Bruce put down the pencil after tallying up his scores:

staff writer

Lila Carpenter

Likeability: Indestructibility: Super senses: X-Ray Vision: Dedication: Web Shooting: Wall Crawling: Superhuman Strength: Flying Ability: Invisibility: Control of the Elements: Intelligence:

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8 To An Unknown God | Fall 2010

7 1 0 0 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 9

He peeked over at Clark’s paper.

Indestructibility, Superhuman Strength, and Flying Ability all had high marks. Bruce feigned stretching as he turned himself in his seat to peek at Peter’s paper: Wall Crawling, Super Sense, Web Shooting…anything cool missing from Clark’s paper had high marks on Peter’s. Now Bruce leaned over to his left and, finally, he noticed a pattern of numbers he recognized on Tony’s paper. Although he still felt bad about the boringness of his scores, he was glad to know that he was not alone.

Meanwhile, in a room not too far away, May sat in her church leadership circle dreading her approaching turn to share her results: the moment she would say that she had, in fact, failed the Spiritual Gift Test. She looked down at her highest-ranking results, noticing for the umpteenth time that there was nothing spiritual about them. Encouragement? What’s spiritual about that? A poodle can be encouraging. And hospitality? Wonderful, I’m the Martha Stewart of Christianity. May’s anxiety rose as next to her Jason announced his spiritual gifts, ones that he probably shared with Jesus himself. She was

unsure exactly what that might be, but she was positive it would be better than encouragement.

The world of superheroes is not so different from our world. When the spider bit Peter Parker, Peter did not receive a list from which he could choose his favorite powers. Likewise, spiritual gifts are not ours to pick, choose, and assign. They are exactly what the phrase says: gifts. We do not get to offer input. “It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have” (1 Cor. 12:11 nlt). God is our Stan Lee, creating each one of us with a set of gifts necessary for our story.

Peter left the meeting a little disappointed.

Despite the helpfulness of web-shooting, jealousy bubbled for Clark’s flying ability. This is where his mind was when his thoughts were disrupted by a cry of distress. It was distant, but his acute senses heard it clearly. Darting behind a building, he ripped off his clothes and pulled on his mask. Spider-Man’s webs shot out, lifting him up into the metal forest of New York. Mid– swing, Spider-Man made a decision. If Clark can do it, then why can’t I? Instead of propelling himself forward with another web, he decided to fly weblessly. And he did. All the way to the ground.

The next day, May’s thoughts were still on the Spiritual Gift Test. She was so distracted that when it was her turn at bat, she did not even see the ball fly by. Three times. She struck out. Defeated, she went back to the dugout and was soon joined by Deborah, who was feeling guilty about missing an easy pop fly. Just as May was about to playfully bump her arm and say, “Hey, it’s okay. You’ll get the next one,” a thought popped into her head. This is it. I don’t have to take what’s given to me. If Jason can be a leader, I can be a leader. So instead of offering an encouraging word, May stood up on the bench, bumped her head, realized the dugout was too

short to stand on benches, climbed back down, and started yelling at her team from the dugout floor: They needed to play better. They needed to stop sucking. They needed to get their act together. They needed to quit letting everyone else down. They needed to win. Deborah started to cry.

When we try to use gifts that are not ours, the results can be disastrous. Sometimes this attempt is to compensate for what we think is a weak or inconsequential spiritual gift. This fallacious assumption can lead to the creation of a Picasso-esque Body of Christ. God created us to compliment and complete each other in His Body: “if the whole body were an eye, how would you hear?” (1 Cor. 12:17 nlt). If everybody were leaders, who would follow? If all the Justice League members were Supermans, what would happen in a kryptonite meteor shower?

Tony entered his huge mansion and tromped downstairs towards all his toys. His body had no hidden talents—nothing would shoot out of his wrists if he inverted “I Love You” sign language. Like he would be caught dead signing “I love you” anyways. Still, he would not complain if granted invisibility, flying, x-ray vision, or really anything else—not all superpowers required girly hand signals. What makes me so undeserving of something cool? He pushed the thought from his mind. Just do what you do best, Tony. The shiny, stainless steel tool kits rose out of the center of the table at the press of a button. He looked over his tools—his closest friends—hoping for some inspiration. He got it. Another button, this time accompanied by a fourteen-digit code code, and a wall began turning. Tony admired his mansized iron suit as the wall slowly rotated towards him. A machine moved the suit to his table, and Tony started to work.

May couldn’t understand why Shakira’s voice was in her ear when only a moment before she had been walking on the beach with Matt Damon. Oh. She picked up her phone blasting “My Hips Don’t Lie” from beside her bed and muttered a groggy response. What time is it? Her concern about the time and the disappointment about losing Matt Damon vanished when she heard the voice on the other end. “Can I come over? Josh broke up with me. He said he found

someone better. Please let me come over. I don’t know what to do.” May could not answer affirmatively quickly enough, and as soon as they hung up, she was running around the apartment—making coffee and hot chocolate so Gabby would have a choice, ensuring there was plenty of room on the bed, the couch, and anywhere else she might want to sit, pulling out movies that might help as distraction. She was just grabbing the chocolate ice cream and spoons when there was a knock at the door.

Gabby practically fell from the doorway into May’s arms. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know where else to go. I can’t be alone. I’m sorry. You’re the only one I could come to. You’re the only one.” May held Gabby as she sobbed. Maybe it’s okay I’m not a leader.

We do our best work—the work God intended for us to do—when we are using the gifts He intended us for. Though Tony considers his super-intelligence as lesser than the abilities of his co-heroes, it is the utilization of this seemingly lesser gift that enables him to be an awesome superhero. Similarly, “some parts of the body [of Christ] that seem the weakest and least important are actually the most necessary” (1 Cor. 12:22 nlt), meaning that the spiritual gifts we may think are unimportant can be some of the most valuable. When a friend needs encouragement, the last thing on her mind is your inability to speak in tongues.

Clark lives in Metropolis because he knows that his powers would be wasted flying around Smallville. Tony leaves his profitable career inventing weaponry to better serve those who need his gifts. Instead of spending his time lounging around his ridiculously nice apartment, Bruce risks his life nightly to protect Gotham City. As Spider-Man’s uncle so eloquently puts it: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

These superheroes realize that they have a responsibility to use their gifts to help more than just themselves. The same rings true for us.

Paul states the purpose of these gifts very clearly in his letter to the Corinthians: “A spiritual gift was given to each of us so that we can help each other” (1 Cor. 12:7 nlt). Superheroes are at their best when they are using their gifts to help others. So, too, are we. •

•

•

lila carpenter is a thirdyear pacs major from Santa Cruz, California. She loves letting out her inner superhero by wearing capes and jumping on beds.

Fall 2010 | To An Unknown God 9

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contributing writer

Timothy Cho

W

de-script-ion

e want to be the authors and leading actors of our own scripts, deciding right and wrong in worlds we create. The unfolding of our stories are grand masterpieces that aim to find any way for the world to continually shine on us spotlights, for the audience to cry and be mad and rejoice with us. And why shouldn’t this be so? You are the author and hero of the story you’ve created, right? But then you realize something: Not only are you the author and protagonist, you are the audience as well. The one you’re truly trying to impress is your own conscience. You try to justify your faults by displaying your good sides rather than your bad, in order to reassure yourself that you are a “good person.”

We live in a postmodern society where absolute truth is a taboo and experiential “truth-for-me” is accepted. But where does that logically end? If we create our own “truths”­—our own worlds in which we are our own main characters and authors—to please our audience (ourselves), then we end up with colliding plotlines that competitively yearn to make their own authors the superhero.

Take a look at the “superheroes” who declare that there is no absolute truth: By claiming so, they have imposed their plotline of “no absolute truth” upon others. They are, fundamentally, holding the belief that they are the superheroes of a world they have made for themselves. The postmodernist’s plight is that he desires to be the author of his own script when his own script claims that his own authorship is an impossibility.

Postmodernism, quite frankly, is simply a rehashing of the plight of the Fall: And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil. (Gen. 3:4–5, asv) Yes, the first temptation is a de-script-ion: God is the Author and Creator of a world in which He declares by His sovereign wisdom and goodness what is Good and Evil and in which He is the main character, allowing by His good pleasure for man to be a participant in the glory as a character, but Adam and Eve freely chose to tear the script that God has given them. No, they said, we don’t want to be supporting characters anymore. We want to create our own script in which we choose for ourselves what “truth” is, what “love” is, what “good” and “evil” are, etc. They didn’t realize that they were undeservedly a part of the grandest story of all time. Instead, they wanted to be 10 To An Unknown God | Fall 2010

“as God,” determining for themselves their own scripts and worlds, in which everything revolved around themselves. Yet as a result of their de-script-ion, we all, as descendents of Adam and Eve (Rom. 5), are cursed into believing that our finite selves can ultimately create the perfect storyline, and we do so in ways that go against God and our fellow man. It is like a disease, and we sin because we are sinners—yet we justify it because in our own worlds, “good” and “evil” are what we want them to be. In the end, however, God is the true Author who has determined what Good and Evil are.

God could have left us in this state. He could have left us to live in our own skewed worlds believing that we are the protagonists— and ultimately given us our wages in hell, the place where God’s mercy and love are absolutely removed and only His righteous justice and hatred of evil are left. And we deserve that, because we have left His script of true Good and Evil, and we have made Evil to be “good” in our own scripts. Yes, God is good and absolutely loving. But He is so good that He hates evil. He is so loving that He loathes evildoers. God’s hatred of evil means that He has a passionate love for goodness and righteousness and that He wants to get rid of evil. God is the superhero who will defeat evil once and for all in His story. The problem is that the antagonist is us. It is this conflict that arises in the plotline of the story of redemption: if God is perfectly just and wants to destroy evil once and for all, how can He save anyone, since we are the evildoers?

Truly, we are authors of lies, made-up fantasies that blind us like badly prescribed lenses. When once we believed we were the superheroes, the “good guys,” in truth we are the villains, the ones who naturally are inclined to work against the true Protagonist, whether we realize it or not. We are not the righteous that God loves and the evildoers are not some force external from us.

Romans 3:10–12 asv tells us: There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none that understandeth, There is none that seeketh after God; They have all turned aside, they are together become unprofitable; There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one.

We are the evildoers, and God, in order for Him to be perfectly just, holy, good, and righteous must ultimately do away with us in order to do away with evil. The antagonist of the story must be destroyed and the Protagonist must prevail...

...But God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved), and raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:4–6 asv).

This is the Good News! The Author of all things became a character in a world that is hostile and turned against Him, putting on all of the weaknesses and finitudes of His characters, living a life of perfect righteousness on behalf of His enemies (us), dying by suffering the punishment of God’s hatred against evil due to us, and coming back to life, proving that He has conquered death and sin! In the true script, the Author became the Superhero to not only destroy evil but to save evildoers.

So, what now?

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the gospel. (Mark 1:15 asv) Jesus tells us to drop the scripts we have made for ourselves. He lovingly tells us that the world we have created is a lie. He calls us to tear our scripts up, resign as authors, and realize that we are not donning the cape of a superhero but cowering in the shadows as

the supervillains. Like two sides of the same coin, Jesus calls us to repent (turn away from our sin and ourselves) and to believe in (grasp and entrust our entire lives to) the Gospel. Jesus tells us He has played the role of the Superhero on our behalf. He tells us to resign as authors and to receive the new script of Jesus’ Gospel— His life, His death, and His resurrection—not as a new act to play, but as an act that has already been played for us and we can live out.

He calls us to surrender as supervillains and unite ourselves to the Superhero, the only one who can cover all of our wickedness and cleanse us from the inside out.

Truly, we fall so short of loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. But remember, Jesus Christ loved you enough to do all of that on your behalf, and He tells you to put aside your script of religiosity for His script of pure religion—a life driven, shaped, molded by the Gospel. You never go beyond the Gospel, and it must be a daily remembrance. Every waking moment we ought to continually cast aside our scripts and receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ, knowing that we come to Him with nothing and, in love, He clothes us with His vestments of the true superhero. • Timothy cho is a fourth– year English major from Santa Barbara, ca.

Christine Han Fall 2010 | To An Unknown God 11

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The One and Only

Real-life superhero

contributing writer

Devon Jue

T

i

• Devon Jue is a junior studying pre-medicine and economics. He loves wearing Woot! shirts.

12 To An Unknown God | Fall 2010

he body-tight spandex, the cape flowing in the wind, the mask to hide one’s identity, the inconceivable weapons and gadgets and the powers beyond normal human capabilities—we are all familiar with what characterizes a superhero but all these attributes of superheroes only exist to us as fantasies. Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Superman, the Green Lantern, Hiro Nakamura, and Jack Bauer are all confined to their glossy paper and screen-projected media due to their fictional nature.

What interests us the most are their fantastical, larger-than-life situations where they use their powers to put their lives on the line to protect the well-being of normal, law-abiding citizens like us. I mean, who else but the Incredibles are able to take down an indestructible, rampaging robot sent by Syndrome to sell “superpowers” to the public? But because of these grand portrayals, our expectations for those we recognize as heroes in our own lives are often too high. We take for granted the great teachers, dare officers and ymca counselors whom we never identified as heroes, but above all else, we forget our greatest hero of all, Jesus.

Savior and Redeemer, Son of God, Messiah, King of Kings, Alpha and Omega, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel: these are a few of the many titles of Jesus, but hero is not one of them. The word hero comes from the Greek word “heroes” which literally means “defender” or “protector.”

When Jesus and his disciples were crossing the lake to Gadarenes by boat, a storm came and threatened their lives, but Jesus protected His disciples from drowning by calming the storm Himself (Matt. 8:23–26). Jesus also defended

many people by casting out demons from those who were possessed (Matt. 15-32, Mark 1:34, Luke 9:37–42). Even now, it is in Jesus’ name we pray the Lord calm our storms in life and free us from our demons. But most of all, Jesus protects us all from the consequences of our own sins by dying for us on the cross and taking the burdens of our sins Himself.

But Jesus is no ordinary hero. He performed numerous miracles where He made the blind see (Matt. 9:27–30), the lame walk (Mark 2:2– 12), the lepers well (Luke 17:11–14), the deaf hear and the mute speak (Mark 7:32–35), and raised the dead back to life (Matt. 9:23–25).

Prior to His death, Jesus had even predicted His own death three times (Matt. 16:21–28, 17:23– 24, 20:17–19), and at the time of His death and after, Jesus fulfilled all of the prophecies made in the Old Testament about the Messiah. Not only was Jesus the living sacrifice for everyone’s sin, but He rose from the dead and later ascended to heaven to join His father as His right hand ( John 20:1–20; Luke 24:50–51).

Jesus carries the characteristics of both a reallife hero and superhero: He is not only a defender and a protector but He defies human capabilities and He sacrificed His own life for our well-being in the grandest situation where He proves that He is the one and only Messiah.

But what sets Him apart from all the other superheroes is that He is real. Jesus is the one and only real-life superhero that will ever exist, and what He did for us goes far beyond what any fictional superhero can ever do. •

reflection

Thoughts I

imagine that most Christians have at one point or another, if not on an on-going basis, struggled with the concept of prayer.

Prayer may be one of the most mysterious and hard to understand concepts in Christianity for me. At the same time, prayer is a more immediate issue than many other complex intellectual discussions, such as predestination or infant baptism.

Intellectually, it comes down to this: What is the point of prayer? It seems pointless to pray to God, especially intercessory prayer. Doesn’t He already know what we will pray about; why would we need to bother praying? Can His will be changed? The Bible says God is immutable, yet examples like Abraham and Moses seem to show intercessory prayer changing fates of people. Is it consistent with God’s immutable nature to listen to intercessory prayers?

Practically, it comes down to this again: What is the point of prayer? At the core of it, some people who pray tend to consider God as some sort of a cosmic vending machine, with prayer being the coin. I, on the other hand, rarely ask for anything specific. I would like to think that it is because I am surrendered to God’s will, but if I’m honest with myself, it is most likely because I am too afraid of my prayer going unanswered.

After all, I cannot be disappointed if I don’t ask for anything, and my faith will be more stable when I don’t have to struggle with God disappointing me.

I sometimes wonder if we just give credit to God when by chance good outcomes happen, and blame ourselves or our bad prayers when by chance bad outcomes occur. I constantly torture myself with the question of whether I’m praying

on Prayer & Disappointments

without the faith to fuel it. I’ve seen godly people desperately and earnestly pray for things only to be denied, and I’ve seen people pray for what in my eyes are the dumbest requests and still find their prayers answered.

Supposedly, “prayer changes not God but us who pray.” I suppose that makes sense in a paradoxical way. Prayer is a mystery and its efficacy is a contradiction. Each and every time, prayer tests faith and mirrors the content of our hearts.

What do I mean? It can be argued that the purest, simplest, and the truest answer to why we pray is because we are commanded to do so

by God. God tells us to pray, and tells us that it matters, somehow. We do not understand how or why it matters (besides the obvious reason of communication with the Divine), and therefore now we’re at a fork in the road when it comes to prayer. Each time we’re on our knees we each have a choice. It is as if Christ asks us each time we pray, “Will you believe that I hear your prayers even though you may not feel heard?” We can take this command as an empty and foolish gesture, doubt, and lose heart. We can take this command and misrepresent and misuse it. Or, we can choose to take each occasion to pray as a sign of our faith in God whose mystery is greater than our comprehension. As we continually and unceasingly choose to step in faith and lay down our will and self to God, it reveals, nay, rather it shapes the content of our hearts to His will. I imagine this is how prayer changes us who pray.

Remember this: the Kingdom advances on its knees.

contributing writer

Sean Jeong

Prayer changes not God but him who prays.

— Søren Kierkegaard

Sean Jeong is an alumnus of uc Berkeley who likes to write random things every once in a while.

Fall 2010 | To An Unknown God 13

culture

The Call contributing writer

Andrew Kuo

B

Andrew Kuo is a secondyear mechanical engineer from Pleasanton, ca.

14 To An Unknown God | Fall 2010

ehind

me my friend is praying in tongues, in front of me the worship leader is prophesying coming revival, and surrounding us thousands of Christians are bent over crying and singing to yahweh. I stared into the sky as I rested on the grassy lawn in front of Capitol Mall in Sacramento. My mind wandered, my stomach churned—but my heart and soul remained unmoved.

It was just twenty hours ago that I had packed up and run down to bart, heading up to Sacramento for The Call. I’ll admit I held reservations about the event because of how charismatic ihop (International House of Prayer) is known to be, but I was excited and anxious to see what God was going to show me there. But as I sought desperately to hear God’s voice and feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, I only felt numb inside. Suddenly, one prevailing notion breached the surface of my thoughts— this is all crazy. This is all freakin’ crazy.

In the midst of thousands falling on their knees, my perception of what following Jesus meant imploded as I listened to Lou Engle call for a new generation of Christians that were not simply playing religious games. He called for a true pursuit of holiness that involved fasting, prayer, and ultimately—sacrifice.

At that point, I realized that Christianity has got to be the most ridiculous and insane religion that anyone could ever believe in. If a person was looking for a religion with a God who would help him achieve their goals in life, he would be better off as an atheist than becoming a Christian.

Before Sacramento, I was comfortable with life in general. Sure, I struggled with pride and some insecurities from time to time, but nothing big. Yet as I thought of what true sacrifice meant, the duress of spiraling emotions tugged at my heart. The thought of truly giving up all of my own pursuits festered in my mind and the happiness I had from my faith faded away.

Perhaps I was not pursuing a secular American

dream, but I still wanted the Christian equivalent of a wife and two kids, a dog, and a home on the range with a white picket fence.

Many of us Christians lead lives that have an uncanny similarity to those who do not know the Gospel. Speaking for myself, I do the same thing when I look forward to the blessings of life more so than to knowing God himself. The fact of the matter is I thought I knew God and I didn’t want to sacrifice anymore.

But little did I know that my God is an infinite mystery. That I barely knew Him—and every step I took to improve our relationship would be worth more than anything else I could ever have.

What if, I thought, there is more to following Jesus than just being involved in a campus fellowship, studying to secure a good job after graduation, and trying my best to pursue a Godglorifying relationship with someone? Logically, it didn’t make sense for me to be Christian at all if all I was doing was pursuing my dreams, albeit different dreams, in the same way that many nonbelievers do. Jesus has called me to lose my life—to give up my pursuits for the kingdom of God. That’s scary.

What if I don’t have a secure job after I graduate?

What if I never get married?

What if I regret the comforts I forsook, the pleasures I never had?

What if at the end of my life I won’t be happy?

What if what God wants is not what I want?

What if…?

As my entire being wrestled with these burning questions, Jesus’ words gripped my soul at that very instant.

For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. (Matt. 16:25 nasb)

To truly follow Jesus, I should pick up my cross and follow Him (Matt. 16:24). However, to pick up that heavy cross, I must first release my grip on all of the idols that my sinful nature is forcibly clinging onto. I was created with dreams and desires, talents and blessings, but sometimes even those things can become idols.

As I started questioning what idols I was still holding onto, certain verses pierced the depths of my heart. Luke 9: 58, 61–62 nasb reads, And Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

Another also said, “I will follow You, Lord; but first permit me to say good-bye to those at home. But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Reading this over and over again, my heart twists and turns and wrenches itself into tears that bead down my cheeks because I know that Jesus is not being figurative. He demands my undivided attention.

He’s being serious.

And reading about the rich young man in Mark 10:21-22, I identify completely with his emotional response as he leaves Jesus with his head held low, realizing that he could not sell all of his possessions and give to the poor. I see the blessings that God has given me and stubbornly

clench my fingers around them, wailing and crying at the thought of God taking them away from me.

I’m not going to lie: I don’t have it all figured out, and a lot of those what-ifs will stay what-ifs as God continues to reveal His purpose for me.

I just have faith that Jesus is the one and only person worth following, that God is the only one worth knowing, and that the Holy Spirit is the only being that I desire to be with every day of my life.

Following Jesus does indeed call for a great sacrifice, but He also says that those who follow Him will not feel overwhelmed by His commandments “for my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:30 nasb).

And I will testify, that despite how difficult it has been recently for me to consecrate my life to God, I have been feeling freer and more full of hope for the future than I have ever been. I’m just beginning to see that God truly is all that is worth knowing.

For when the disciples were asked if they wanted to desert Jesus, they replied “Lord, to whom shall we go?” ( John 6:68 nasb). At that very instant, the disciples knew that they had nothing else to gain or lose from this world.

We can sweat, strive, and toil away, living only for ourselves by chasing what we think will satisfy us, but truly following Jesus grants us depths of peace and freedom—even from death. Jesus is calling for your life; how will you answer? •

edna liu Fall 2010 | To An Unknown God 15

culture

J

esus Fish

S

contributing writer

Sarah Knight

can

religion & science

coexist?

16 To An Unknown God | Fall 2010

urvival of the fittest should not apply to religion, yet studying the biological sciences can be a tough journey for Christians. Life scientists and Christians alike are constantly confronted with two controversial issues: the first, evolution; the second, the overall existence of God. These matters can be incredibly difficult to grapple with and even Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, struggled. He began as a prayerful Christian, even studying at seminary during his younger years. However, as he discovered more about evolution, he rejected Christianity entirely, saying, “I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation.” From the example of this first rejection, society has managed to slowly lose its faith as well. In general, it’s rather disconcerting to see those flashy bumper decals picturing the Darwin fish consuming the Jesus fish, but why can’t science and Christianity simply coexist?

I am a Molecular and Cell Biology major and I am a Christian. I have never had somebody approach me and specifically challenge my belief, but I have struggled with my faith regarding what is presented in lecture and what I read in scientific periodicals, particularly in the context of evolution.

Evolutionary biology is a fundamental discipline under the umbrella of life science, however, and every Christian, not just those majoring in biology, is faced with the test of doubt.

Darwin’s loss of faith did not happen in an instant. He stated that he was “very unwilling to give up” his belief. He searched for confirmation in the gospels, yet was repeatedly unable to dig up evidence that would convince him of the existence of God and Jesus. Believing wholeheartedly in the morality taught by the New Testament, he was most strongly driven away by the Old Testament with its surreal events and its angry portrayal of God. Biologists, however, do not always have to take the path of Darwin.

Christianity from a Biologist’s Perspective I believe we are allowed to make our own interpretation, without forcing ourselves to choose sides. Perhaps our interpretation will catalyze the argument that convinces nonbelievers of the reason for our faith. Upon much meditation, my thought is that creation is a true story—with an evolutionary twist. I take the creation story more as a metaphor than a literal account of events. I think that there were an original man and woman, but they originated from another species and so on and so forth; all the way back to primitive Earth and the first prokaryote. Once God gave the Earth light, the Bible reads, “and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth.” (Gen. 2:5 niv) Light and water are needed to generate life, and God knew that. When God made Eden for Adam, I believe he made Earth with an oxygen-rich atmosphere and photosynthetic plants, and organisms which he “formed out of the ground,” or out of primordial soup.

God had a plan. For example: mitochondria, the energy-producing organelles in a eukaryotic cell, are special. They have their own dna.

According to a theory, mitochondrial dna exists because mitochondria were originally single-celled organisms that were engulfed by Earth’s primitive eukaryotes. Humans and animals receive this dna only through their mother—its existence is encoded in our genome. In the book The Seven Daughters of Eve, the scientist Bryan Sykes reveals research which traces the mitochondrial dna of the human race. Sykes took mitochondrial dna samples from people of certain ethnicities, from certain regions, to determine their relation to each other. Astoundingly, he was able to trace human existence back to a theoretical original seven women. If we can essentially connect humans to each other through mitochondrial DNA and

localize findings to seven original women, could not the existence of the first hominid be Adam?

Really, humans must have originated from several original humans, and can we not name those original humans Adam and Eve? I do not think that Darwin truly took everything he studied into account. He reportedly lost his faith in miracles, saying “The more we know of the fixed laws of nature, the more incredible do miracles become.” But is that not the point? Miracles are incredible.

They defy the laws of thermodynamics, of hypothesis—of scientific research. Did he not consider the fact that life itself is a miracle? That our specific Earth managed to whip up just the perfect combination of circumstances in order for life to exist, for billions of unique forms of life to exist, is a miracle in itself? Earth is a unique arena, and a higher power must have had a say in that.

Despite my personal belief that science can find a friend in religion, I am continually stunned when I find a scientist or a doctor with belief in God. Yet should I be?

In this vein, I made a visit last June to my optometrist to purchase a new pair of glasses and a few more cases of contacts. I normally do not speak much at optometry appointments, at least beyond politely answering questions the doctor poses. That day, though, I decided to try to hold a conversation with the guy. Both out of interest and in an effort to make small talk, I began questioning him about the functions of various parts of the eye. He calmly answered my questions, when suddenly I remarked, “Isn’t it amazing that everything in the eye fits flawlessly together with such perfect function?”

“Yeah,” he replied over his shoulder as he typed a few notes into his computer. Surprisingly, he perked up a little. “I am amazed by the phenomenon every day of my life.”

“Is that why you became an optometrist?” I asked. I decided I wanted to study molecular biology because I am always amazed by the beautiful structure and function of the cell. I actually find most of my faith in the study of biology. How would so many details work in such perfect harmony with one another if not for our creator?

He looked at me with a perplexed expression.

I think he was confused by the fact that I was speaking so much this time, and even going so far as to question him. “Yup, that’s exactly why I became an optometrist.”

I usually find it rather difficult to question people about their faith, but I took the initiative this time. “Are you a Christian?” I asked. It felt pretty weird, and not only because of my lack of experience. I had never really talked to him about anything other than school or the weather.

A smile spread across his face. “Yeah, I am.

And I see the human eye as a perfect example of God’s glory.” Silence. I was a little stunned. I had never known he was a Christian and I had been visiting the guy for the last six years.

“I completely understand what you mean,” I said, likewise grinning.

Many people separate science and religion when really they go hand in hand. Believing in evolution is a belief in itself, just like believing in the power of creativity, or believing in the grace of cellular respiration. A belief is something that blurs the line between concrete fact and theoretical ideas. There may be hard evidence of evolution, but there is also evidence that Jesus existed. My views have been influenced by my conversation with my optometrist. I have come to the conclusion that we can find Christians in any environment, the life sciences included: indeed, I have met amazingly intelligent, scientific people with faith that can move mountains.

When God said, “Let there be light,” to me, at least, he meant, “Let there be a source of energy to catalyze important, life-giving reactions.” God has to be given credit. Evolution exists, but God was the planner, the molder, the director. He made Adam and Eve out of the clay of an anaerobic environment. Life is beautiful, no doubt about it. Yes, some of our processes malfunction; we are not perfect creations. We contract diseases and we lose the ability to walk, but consider the astonishing number of days we spend in perfect health. We are God’s magnificent portraits, all the way down to the microscopic level.

So can biology and Christianity share a symbiotic relationship? I think so. •

• • •

Sarah Knight, from Eureka, California, is a secondyear majoring in Molecular and Cell Biology with a minor in English.

Fall 2010 | To An Unknown God 17

culture

Meditation on a Text:

What do a Book and a Man* have in common? contributing writer

Sally Stosich

R

Writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is… the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing…

Disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins.

— Roland Barthes

* In the catholic sense of the word

18 To An Unknown God | Fall 2010

oland

Barthes has called for the immolation of the author to the vitality of the text, and I hope in my feeble efforts to suggest that this death is not only necessary, but indicative of the sacrifice of Christ to the eternal life of His beloved. Death in the midst of eternity substantiates the present with a past and a future.

Let us agree upon the immortality and breadth of textual Art as a living form resurrected in the mind of each reader. The author endures with the text, but is subsumed by it, as the text reverberates in its eternal presence outside and beyond linear time. Barthes, in his essay “The Death of the Artist,” insisting upon the infinite receptions of a text to the reader as opposed to the interventional guidance of the author, writes a line that for me turned the relationship of author and text inside-out and topsy-turvy: “he [Proust] made of his very life a work for which his own book was the model.” Now the text is largerthan-life. In this one line, Barthes proclaims both the eternity and the materiality of the word—it is written and bound, yet it transcends its own purpose. In a strange turn, it is the man that follows, imitates, reveres, and aspires to the text, a concept that suddenly alienates him from flesh and blood. The author, thus removed from his own context, both precedes and proceeds from his creation. He emulates and performs a larger Creation than himself—here he begins an active role in Eternal life. As the writer awaits the performance of the very paradigm that he creates, the future relentlessly scripts the present, and it redeems the past. What will follow promises what is, and has been before. In turn, what has been is, and will be, a stage rehearsal for the veritable act to follow. Let a text be an offspring of the author—yet which has begotten which?

Both are separate and similar imaginations of

the future. Through his text, the author lives (forever) for and through and by his multitude of infinite characters possessing pieces of this imagination. The author’s alienation from his text and reader is the point of death from which he remembers mysterious bliss and anticipates a fictional perfection.

Perfection is beginning and the end, and Perfect Death lies in the middle. If the author himself is an echo of his own words, a material extension of his own imagination, what then is he but a symbol of something greater? Just as a gold-leafed icon is a two-dimensional meditation upon the Divine, so the author carries an artful purpose in death. Barthes calls for complete annihilation of the author.

(Augustine expands this annihilation to the universal and relentless modes of past and future.

Even the present is undergoing death now… and now.) But Christ goes further than that: Perfection precedes and follows the act. The word must pull from a place beyond the powers of remembrance and imagination. This Perfect word must be embodied through it all. I think of the word prehistory. It implies a redundancy, an excess: before that which came before. It inevitably begins a series of propagation. Endless, bottomless, artful retrograde. This word, and its microcosm before, is a word as endless, and as hopeful (or terrible), as the word in the opposite direction: tomorrow. Who can bind Eternity and be bound to a body? Who can “bookend” Eternity, if I may? Augustine writes of One who opens and closes with this Perfect Word, in a language that literally bookends: “‘God who is with you God’ ( John 1:1). That word is spoken eternally, and by it all things are uttered eternally.” Barthes, resigned to the grave as author, agrees: “…there is no other time

than that of the enunciation and every text is eternally written here and now.” In this hum and blur of eternal animation, how is death made conceivable? How is it made imperative?

The Holy Word that precedes, proceeds from, and supersedes creation, is the Eternal Art, Mr. Barthes! It is a living performance larger-thanlife. And the Author dies. This Perfect Death is the climax of the story. The proliferation of death concentrated in one body—in a singular moment in time—and an infinite, indefatigable resurrection would resonate as the text of the author proceeds from and through and to the author towards new life. The text of scripture as a story of promise, recurrence, and redemption is a story of infinitude in revolution. It is a nonlinear work of Art in its creation, reception, and return. It wonderfully requires man, and redeems him. Consider Jonah, a man whose beginning is his end is his beginning. “The Word of the Lord came to Jonah…But Jonah rose up to flee…from the presence of the Lord” ( Jon. 1:1-3). Jonah cannot escape eternity. He is called to perform a fragment, a figure, of the Word incarnate that has called and presently calls him into being. As a fragment, Jonah enters and exits scripture in four short chapters. Jonah meets his end as he is flung into the sea with every thought of death and oblivion. His plunge to the dark abyss for three days and three nights both prophecies and expunges Christ in one breath. Jonah promises Christ (forward), and imitates Christ (backwards) in this revolution, as he is “swallowed up” by darkness, with “weeds wrapped around his head” (2:5). His drama of flight, repentance, and restoration is a performance and affirmation of the past and the future. Jonah’s fractured life is not obliterated, but preserved to its end in Perfection. For Jonah, it is the eternal enunciation, the rolling Word, that would deliver him from the stomach of the fish. In oblivion, the prayer of the prophet inside the belly wonderfully manifests his foreseen restoration: “I descended to the roots of the mountains…But Thou hast brought up my

life from the pit, O Lord my God” (2:6). The text of his prayer not only affirms his present predicament, but the words prepare for his drowned, hopeless condition, embodying the act of death: “Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me” (2:5). His words imagine Jonah’s future: “I called out of my distress to the Lord, and He answered me” (2:2). Not long after Jonah proclaims “Salvation is from the Lord,” the fish vomits Jonah onto dry land. The Word imagines and performs the act. The act is thus a consequence of the word, spoken through Jonah.

The word performs itself, and ejects its “dead” author from the abyss, as a promise of the future. In this way, the man is made alive “simultaneously with the text,” as Barthes proclaims. Jonah’s prayer is not finite, individual, or even temporal—it is Eternity itself. These words that flow from Jonah persist with the flow of God’s Faithfulness, Mercy and Love.

They harmonize with the words of the psalmist hundreds of years earlier: “O Lord, Thou has brought up my soul from Sheol; Thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit” (Ps. 30). Barthes writes that the author must become nonexistent for the text to live for the reader. He may or may not realize that the death he orders is a Death of Redemption and Grace.

Barthes requires a Perfect Eternity that requires Death, and it is only in this Perfect Death that Life comes and endures. In the greatest and most magnificent act of Grace, Christ the BookEnd, who “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” breathed no more. And out of this Death arose Eternal Life. A Death that could halt Eternity itself. And Eternity that would resume. Such a Perfect Death alone could bestow Eternity and then some to the author.

In my effort to explicate my title question, I will instead leave you with the embodiment and performance of the unfathomable William Butler Yeats: “Who can tell the Dancer from the Dance?” •

Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author” in Image, Music, Text, trans.

Richard Howard (1977) Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Book XI, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 226.

New American Standard Bible, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1977)

Sally Stosich graduated from uc Berkeley in Spring 2010, with a Bachelor’s in English Literature. She hopes to become Latin American this next year.

Fall 2010 | To An Unknown God 19

literary

T his is the story of the boy I turned into an idea, and the book that turned out to be a man. staff writer

Chris Han

A

lex went to my middle school. We were in Christian Club together for a while. He was the president. He had a loud voice and he prayed fervently. That was all I really knew or cared to know about him.

In the middle of eighth grade I began turning Alex into an idea. I would like to think it was inevitable. What else are you supposed to do with a kid who announces to thirty middle schoolers that he has cancer? Alex told us he had a particularly deadly form, that it was in his soft tissue and leg muscle and seemed to be spreading, and that the doctors told him that children with cancer could die quickly because as they grew so did their cancer cells. And he said he would not die. He said God would heal him. So, you see, I had to make Alex special.

Over the years, I finished Alex’s transformation into an idea. It was not hard to do. He swept in and out of our classrooms; long enough for me to see him, not long enough for me to become disillusioned with him.

Our relationship consisted of a series of short questions and short answers. I would ask him if he was doing all right. Alex would grin and say God was taking care of him.

I picked up tidbits about him during our years in high school. He was proud of being Russian. He liked cars and wanted to get into uc Berkeley. I learned more important things as well. He was getting a preaching license through some kind of online seminary program, which I had not known you could do. I do not think he really needed the license. He came to school more than usually cheerful one day and told us he had given a sermon from a park bench. He also survived his first round of cancer. His doctors were confused, but I felt a certain smugness. His survival felt like a validation of my beliefs.

20 To An Unknown God | Fall 2010

I noticed the physical changes. Alex sprouted a cane which he used to walk around sometimes. His cheeks hollowed. He went permanently bald. Alex started looking more normal again in junior year or so, after the chemotherapy stopped, but then the cancer came back.

In the five years until senior year of high school, we had a single genuine conversation. I asked him what job he wanted. He told me he wanted to be a businessman, like his dad. That did not quite go with what I wanted to know about him, so I set it aside. I asked him what virtue he respected the most.

“Integrity,” he said. “I want to be a man of such integrity that my wife, my church, and my business associates will never have to doubt me.”

I filed that away. Alex became to me, not so much a role model, but a book, some great classic that I took off the shelf again and again and puzzled over for years.

I believed that if I contemplated that book long enough I would come to understand more about life and God. I struggled to understand how he could have such great faith. I wondered if I should be as confident as he was, or if it was alright to stay the way I was.

Alex died when we were seniors. I was unsettled by his death. It was not the death of the protagonist of my book that bothered me. I knew that was allowed, even necessary, in books, and I had a ready explanation for it. What disturbed me were certain details in those last scenes. The details interrupted my understanding of the novel and kept its ending from being satisfying. At book’s end, readers should be left with a sense that they have expanded, that they have become better in the wake of those words. I was left, instead, with an image and some words that itched at me till I bled.

His last words to the school were posted on Facebook by a friend. He declared, he believed, that God would heal him. Alex slipped into a coma, and died.

There was an open casket at his funeral. They had slathered his face in make-up. He looked like a whitewashed puppet. Like a lie. He had loved integrity.

His story failed me. I could not permit that. Not when his story had been the foundation for so much of my thought and emotion. Instead I toyed with doubting the Writer.

I wrestled with all this for a few months and came to no satisfying conclusion. I had received a card from his funeral. I pinned that to my wall as a sort of promise to deal with these memories, and then for a year and a half I slipped into an uneasy, false rest.

Three weeks ago, I began writing this reflection on Alex. It was a way to force myself to think about him.

When I revisited Alex’s blog, I found there had been more added to it since I last checked. I learned that becoming a businessman was just a side goal. He wanted to become an evangelist at Yale. At the same time, it turns out that he was trying hard to understand why his cancer had returned. It surprised me that Alex would be troubled over that. He had always been so sure of everything.

I found a link to Alex’s Twitter, but the comments he made bothered me. Alex would say these great things about faith and fire, and then he would tell some joke that was not funny at all. Sometimes he would sprinkle in comments that I found kind of dumb, or talk about how tasty his food was. It was irritating.

I ended up ignoring those details in the first drafts of this essay. In fact, I ended up almost erasing Alex altogether from an essay that had originally been meant partly as an elegy. I suppose I realized that I had done something wrong when, after looking over my first draft, one reader told me he could not tell who Alex was—what he was sick with, how old he was, what his ministry was like. I saw I had become so caught up in answering the question of his death that I had forgotten about his life.

This week, I brought up Alex in passing to my dad; told him that it bothered me that God had not honored Alex’s faith and that Alex had believed, and yet had been so wrong, about what God would do.

My dad called me dumb, and told me that Alex had just been a kid who still had a lot to learn about God. He also told me that even if Alex’s knowledge was still green, his trust in God was something beautiful that he had presented to God. I gave Alex a burden no human can bear. I turned his story into a vine that shaded me against my burning doubts. When that vine withered away, when Alex’s last moments were not in keeping with the flawless Christian I needed him to be, I resented the God who took away my protection. But Alex had always been flawed. It was the One who tended to Alex who made him beautiful.

I wish I had let Alex be a person, and not just the hero in a story. I wish I had let him be fallible. I wrestled with his death for so long, and still cannot quite let it go, because I needed Alex to be my faith for me. I wish I had just let him be a child with a child-like faith, whose Father framed his gawky drawings on the wall. Perhaps then I could have fought with him, failed with him, and grown with him. Perhaps I could have watched the Father as He quietly gardened, ensuring that five years that should have been tragic would bloom. Instead, I did both the Gardener and Alex a terrible wrong. I seeded Alex’s death with doubt.

Strange, then, that what grew out of it in the end was an apology, a thank-you, and a hope that these smudged words too would be framed on a wall. •

christine han

Chris Han is a sophomore who is still trying to figure out how to ask God questions with the right heart.

Fall 2010 | To An Unknown God 21

literary

“Why, God?” contributing writer

Jake Baker

C

jake baker is a fifthyear Philosophy major and Computer Science minor. He particularly enjoys baking and writing fiction.

22 To An Unknown God | Fall 2010

h urch had never been welcoming for him, but he kept coming back. The solitude helped him pray, and in prayer, he could be completely honest with God. With people, he could never be fully honest.

At least, he wasn’t accepted when he was honest. That’s why she’d broken up with him. He had told her about his hidden past. Isn’t this what you told me to do, God? To be a man of honesty? To bring the past to light? Well I did!

In a dark corner of the church, he knelt down, alone. God, every time I listen to you, I suffer. Why do you let them hurt me? Don’t you love me?

He had asked these questions before; always for different reasons, but always the same questions. Now he chose to be alone—away from the accusing eyes that always saw a flaw in him.

He moved toward the altar. His whole life he had felt misunderstood, and most Christians made it worse. They wouldn’t accept him. He never wanted to be attracted to other men. He never asked to be different. He just was. I shouldn’t have told her. She wouldn’t have found out.

He’d thought she would accept him; he’d thought he knew her. Aren’t Christians all about forgiveness and love? She was supposed to forgive me.

She was supposed to help me live a new life. Didn’t she love me? The breakup reinforced his belief: Nobody really cared for him.

He stood before the altar, clenching his hands.

What can you do to make up for how I’ve suffered?

Will you answer? He looked around and felt his gaze drawn upwards. He noticed something he hadn’t seen before: Christ weeping on the cross.

His anger grew as he saw the helplessness of the figure. Sometimes God seemed as weak as the wooden Christ suspended in midair. Wasn’t God supposed to be the opposite? Why must I suffer?

Don’t you love me?

A familiar verse interrupted his thoughts: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”

Startled, he looked more carefully at Christ.

The tears still bothered him. How could God the Father be vulnerable to sorrow? Why are you weeping? You’re supposed to end my pain!

But He hadn’t.

Jesus was supposed to represent the Father.

He was supposed to be man’s way to God. But all he saw was a weak, dying man. Why the suffering and shame, when the result was death?

You didn’t have to die. What was the point?

He remembered bits of Sunday School lessons—something about Jesus suffering to save all mankind. He tried to picture that. He imagined Jesus, bruised and bloodied, on the cross; His sweat and blood mixing as they trickled down His starved body. Jesus. His weakness, his shame, and his suffering were made into public entertainment. Jesus, too, had known rejection.

He, too, had been shunned. The masses jeered as a man ran up and spat on Jesus. Why are you letting this happen? Aren’t you the Son of God? Don’t you have the power to stop this?

In answer, the cross seemingly grew closer and voices grew louder. The air became dusty and the smell made it hard to breathe. He looked around and wiped spit off his lip. Suddenly, he realized that he was in the crowd. He was the man that had spat on Jesus. And he was shouting: “Kill that man!” no. “He’s responsible!

He never protected me!” No. “Make him suffer!”

No. No! no!

The crowd faded away. He stood before the cross, alone. Jesus was weeping. Thomas, my child, I did this for you.

A tear fell on his clasped hands. Thomas realized he, too, was weeping.

poiesis, n.

creative production,

especially of a work of art

— Kawai Mang christine han Fall 2010 | To An Unknown God 23

poiesis

For Laurie For a sweet little girl I met in Belize.

You are beautiful and perfect just the way you are.

For a face that radiates the favor of the Father.

Don’t let anyone else tell you what you are worth.

For a hug that makes me wish for more time.

You are not a “mistake” or a “burden” or an “orphan.”

For a smile that shoots straight to my heart.

You deserve the absolute best and nothing less.

For Laurie

I still see your wide smile and feel your tight embrace.

He catches and wipes away every tear you cry.

I remember your pig-tailed hair and deep, brown eyes.

He mends your broken heart and heals your scars.

My heart hurts and my eyes water when I think of you.

He erases the past and gives you a new future.

I hope you remember what I told you before I left:

He is leading you to a glorious destiny.

If you ever feel lonely or sad, just pray.

If you ever feel lonely or sad, just pray.

If you ever feel lonely or sad, just pray.

There’s so much more I wish I told you.

He will never neglect or abuse you like others have.

There’s so much more you need to know.

He will never abandon or oppress you like others have.

Above all, know that you belong to Someone.

He loves you endlessly and boundlessly.

Know that Someone calls you His own.

Endless and boundless are life and joy with him.

If you ever feel lonely or sad, just pray.

If you ever feel lonely or sad, just pray.

That Someone is the King of all Kings.

There is One who rescues you from pain and poverty.

That King adopted you as His precious child,

One who gives you an address on a street of gold.

So now you are a princess in His kingdom,

One who stretches out His arms so you can rest upon His knee.

And no one can ever take that away from you.

There is infinitely more I mean when I tell you:

If you ever feel lonely or sad, just pray.

If you ever feel lonely or sad, just pray.

— Rachael Shen

edna liu 24 To An Unknown God | Fall 2010

christine han

that little gold star bah! robinson crusoe is a difficult man to discuss when you haven’t read his book there’s excellence in Your eyes, excellence lies in Your eyes of exceeding excellence And I, in Your eyes? struggle to spy all that You see in me in that You see all of me.

Do I dare to claim all that You see me to be, You who saw me into being?

Who saw me when I was not, and still for what I am not yet?

Dad, I can’t quite understand how or where my notion of excellence does not match up with Yours, which I know to be infinitely truer in that it is the only truth.

Dad, in these small circumstances, I see the gold star floating away from the veneer of my being, tarnished, eclipsed, (I guess, I presume?) in comparison to the opulence of Your Son, my Sun, that You tell me I’m clothed in, Sticky foil shape peeling off my sleeve, after so many vehement attempts to adhere and re-adhere again: the hair and dirt and fuzz puts us at odds, separates us, till I realize, sitting in an English section where my mind is mush like the luxuriant filling of the humble pie I am eating in abundance, that my excellence cannot lie only in the minds and eyes of other people— A GSI unwilling to coddle me in my small flailing delusions of grandeur and profundity; That which I feel like I lack so much of when, garbled and muddled and foolish I spout some machinations— maybe a bit of Foucault here— maybe a snippet of jargon there— and always an abundance of locquacious grandiloquent locution— Mechanisms designed to place the hand on my head in a reassuring pat: Stroking my ego, Cupping my notions, Pushing perennially further, that star from my trained grasp and— Covering my eyes From the excellence that has always resided in Yours.

Dad, I’ll ask You to save me from self-pity for want of truth.

I’ll ask You for confidence instead of self-serving diffidence.

I’ll ask You for confidence that’s vested in the pursuit of Your excellence rather than my own or that of the world And God, even though I know that they’re not always at odds, I feel as if that sticker must fall from my sleeve that I might fully see the beauty of the robe You wrapped around me when you called me Your daughter.

I love You, God.

— Emily Chan Fall 2010 | To An Unknown God 25

poiesis

Unknown Submission

Which kept the people ignorant in faith.

You know, salvation’s not in what you think But in the real world. Let the shrunken wraith Of inward-curved devoutness drown in ink.

I. 無所用

2

曾曰:3 Yes, money’s useful, that I fully grant, Which can possessions buy where wishing can’t, But of all useful things, most useless still: For health and wisdom’s place it cannot fill, Nor be their gems, when all else you recant. 人誰無過，過而能改，善莫大焉。 Mine the useless; mind tradition And ancient lore and languages; See conceived sanity’s echoes Longing in the night for knowledge.

4

What is truth?

A poem by the poetess Du Qiuniang. Slightly modified from 300 Tang Poems, A New Translation, edited by Xu Yuan-zhong, Loh Bei-yei and Wu Juntao (Taipei: Shu Lin, 1992), 309.

2

“No use,” or “no way.”

3

“Tsang says,” or “it was once said,” or “the great-grandfather said.”

4

Chancellor Zhao Dun to the Duke of Jin, as recorded in the Zuo Zhuan: “Who among men is without transgression? But to transgress and be able to repent—of virtues none is greater.”

5-12 Remaining footnotes available at unknowngodjournal.com

26 To An Unknown God | Fall 2010

A god of bread, as Averroës said:6 Inscribed with our desires, from Feuerbach,7 It standeth, mute to do our bidding; bled Tradition’s record, what is’t that arbeit macht?8 Compliant masses turn along as cogs, Machinified. But reformation’s call Sounds into darkness: ‘to the source’ unclogs The idle Messe9 of that pragmatic trawl

Love not your golden garb, I pray, More than your youthful golden hours!

Gather sweet flowers while you may, And not the twig of flowers!1

1

II. Doxa (Patri ke Yio ke Ayio Pnevmati)5

No more Malvolio! When object’s spilt On subject’s lap, the blood that silent flows, Reduced to “fancy,” tramples vintage minds with guilt To have no discourse. So enquiry goes…

It seeps through fingers’ grasp, like words from Mom That go in one ear, out the other come, For fantasized projections rule your palm And write on wax Olivias their rhumb.10 “Well, that’s what I think.” Make the world in your Own image, will ye? Form a peopled dream, Never leave, that’s it?

Cobb’s wife—the dream is realer than the rheme— Can’t know no more, and who are you to say Where waking is, where sleeping? Mal has jumped.

But learn the comedy and hear, I pray, The person’s voice, real, different, challenging.

Myopic, see anew! Ephphatha!11 Age To age there’s much to hear, that ye may gauge.

Lue-Yee

david yang

III. Quon me verra brief mes jours definer12 Oh, look to what lasts: lose yourself From silent fury, force unseen— Mammon’s demands for more accumulate; Longevity’s quest, in journeys incarnate For fungal health, after fear’s tonic; Lust’s delusion, the lure of power, In the rotting flesh. Roiling clouds With blood-soaked war water the mind, Drenching woods in drink for the crows, Or for Lady Unsexed, sleeping thrones.

Safely thus, within your eyes Lies the coveted prize, calm without Till phantoms haunt, when hell terrorizes Your wineless heart, the halls of Dunsinane.

Find your rescue: erased your spots, Your heart sprinkled with healing flow, Body washed and blood on your robes Of priest-service. Seen from eternity, Hear God’s word and weary come To the throne of grace. Grasp you more, then, Ruined castles of red delusion For your own? Eat the Body To consume desire, that in sweet passion May lovers love. Let labour’s fruit Beget in a chalice the choicest feast: Here a hall, which hope has perceived Above our dreams, born to life Of a greater flesh, formed by hands Outside our selves, summons a people From blood and water birthed anew, Its walls a womb, warm as a yeasty Oven’s loaf. Leaven’s fermented Through all of the dough till the Day of the Lord; And spiced wine spills forth, Pomegranate politic pregnant with knowledge, Beyond imagining of which men could conceive.

Thou art fairer than the children of men—full of grace are thy lips, because God hath blessed thee for ever.

And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.

Ts ang

All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia—out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.

Fall 2010 | To An Unknown God 27

poiesis

The heroes in this collection include a very old and weathered

A (Wo)Man for All Times When father died mother was left

with three men reduced to boys, hiding behind bedroom doors.

When father was alive we shared

his humor, bravado, and charm,

he we shadowed and echoed.

But when father suffered we woke

from the sweet slumber of permanence,

stirred and roamed alarmed.

We did not call

(for he was now dumb).

We did not visit

(for he was now stiff ’nd).

And when we prayed

we asked not to stop the inevitable. david yang In life’s crashing tides father grew three men of note, while in the calming ripples of age father failed himself; in his wake father’s sons claimed false strength.

And so to mother we now cling, bruised boys stunted in slapback maturity, unfamiliar with (her) deeds of nurture, sacrifice, compassion, and family.

Heroics we applaud—games, risk, microbrews— (we handstung boys of adventure and avarice) lack the mettle of an hourglass love. Remember that.

28 To An Unknown God | Fall 2010

K ev in

rock wall, my mom, and bovine representations of the divine.

Seventh Pitch of the Wombat Glory! Glory! and vanity of pose and rockbent bone.

See momentous man come trod crumb’d fireface’s eternity!

And sweaty palmed clench the luster of an Oregon Polaroid— till wormed wood devour’d, gulped down bravery’s void.

Godly Oxcart I might be wood-framed and boxy, driven by mud-clad beasts— a sort of hideously Godly oxcart It could explain some things

Stand strong, my friend, hark not the heckles of men unmoved by storm and sun sculp’d spines.

You are favored of God’s designs.

Like how my [charitable wife and self-adoration] coexist; or, how my [petulance and plentitude] favor coffee and fluid conversation; perhaps, how I am [aloof and in-tuned] to justice, creativity, religion, and other concepts of humanity Wonder is a sheath to the [invigorating and imperiling] sting of manure today— see how the oxen bleed and sweat, as I creak with the gain of muddy weight Wonder not reserved for fields of poppy, but equally amenable to the stench and burdens of salvation

Chr i stopher

Fall 2010 | To An Unknown God 29

poiesis

Great Boots, Vincent Van Gogh You’ve stepped out of your boots, out of your boots.

Something beautiful from the fields moves and scuffs your boots to goodness and paint laid thick and careful translating mud smudges into smudged light.

The floor is wet with it.

The dark is where the pale yellow and purple are not.

Cracks made not from age, or emptiness, present not in the scene or in the eye or in the boots themselves, But in the space between the eyes, your boots.

one boot turned out and down to show its black insides, not black, but deep red in patches.

At its side the other boot is tapping its toe.

The one takes the other by the lace ending tragically unraveled, tufted like raffia. An earwig at its end.

Or a curled twig.

Or a pheasant doubled over to swallow its tail.

A tree for a tongue brushes out of one boot, Yellow—grey—leaning into the breeze.

You were alone, But the camaraderie—

david yang

30 To An Unknown God | Fall 2010

S al ly

And to this sudden edge of city not a bird.

— Graham Foust I read this line to be the last line ever written.

Blank Bird-less space here on out.

Quiet edge of quiet city.

No end to the birds here. I’ve walked a lifetime From one edge to the other.

I’ve seen and heard more cars, And then fewer cars, fewer squares, Seen fewer letters lining the storefronts.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917 This is a poem about a porcelain urinal torn from its wall, one in a row of many colorless, rusting urinals shaped to replicate natural beauty (i.e., a drop of sap, a flower petal or an abalone shell sounding of the sea) far away from this indecent statement signed by the artist himself truthfully so in bold black ink someone’s pseudonym or signature indeed given at birth nineteen seventeen “I CHOSE it” is not made, but discovered and designated by Mine Eyes and soul and hand apart from my scribble it would be only a urinal, wouldn’t it?

Sto sich

But for the birds there is no quiet here, no unfilled space.

Suddenly running into it.

The line. The outside. Indefinitely.

The edge of this city like a pistol shot.

And there I blur!

Poet, it’s “not a bird,” not “not a word”

Fall 2010 | To An Unknown God 31

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