Vox Clara
identity
VOLUME 8 ISSUE 1 FALL 2018
Table of Contents Letter from the President |
Christos Makridis
Searching for Home: An Exile Story
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Jiaming Zeng 4
A Whole New World: Reconciling the Personal and External Identities | Anne Hulsey
Two Steps Beyond Myers-Briggs |
Lisa Ann Yu
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Religious Identity at Stanford
Kevin Khieu
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Problem of Evil
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Jonathan Wheeler
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Adopted into God’s Family | Taylor Seaton
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Identity-ing: Embracing Identity in Flux | Liz Cooledge Jenkins 16 Secret Identity | Glen Davis 18 Love, Light, and the End of a Life | Aldis Petriceks
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A Timepiece of Truth | Daniel Heywoodd 22 Fullness of Time | Michael Fitzpatrick 23 About Vox Clara | 26
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Next Steps
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Letter from the President
From Graveyards to Gardens Dear Reader, As we begin a new year, we reflect on the progress that we’ve made after revitalizing Vox Clara from several years of inactivity. Although product development and the logistics of an organization are never easy to pull off, we are filled with joy every day to have the opportunity to write about the truth of the Gospel and testify to the work that Jesus has done in each one of us. We chose the theme of identity for this issue. While society bombards us with many definitions of identity, as Christians we derive our identity from our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. We boldly believe that He was born fully human and fully God, bearing our sorrows, troubles, and sins on the Cross. But, Jesus didn’t just die—He rose again. Our message would fall flat on its face if we did not have the Resurrection because it would have implied that our life ends at the grave. The title “From Graveyards to Gardens” represents a better way. We go from having our identity in a world that is tainted with suffering, affliction, hardship, injustice—you name it—to an identity rooted in the overcoming power that Jesus manifested when He rose to life after the Cross. Jesus calls us all sons and daughters—all that’s required is that we say yes in word and deed. We chose the theme of identity because we’re living at a time when so many labels and outside influences are trying to tell us what to think and how to define ourselves. However, we want to share that there’s a better way than what society has to offer.
through. We no longer need to be shackled to social or other expectations, strive for attention or recognition from people or institutions, or wonder whether we have a place in this world; all those questions are answered by Jesus’ work on the Cross with a simple and unambiguous answer: resurrection is our identity. We in Vox Clara are excited for the upcoming year. We are working on scaling our services with online content, in addition to our bi-annual journal publication. Our aspiration is to create a fluid and dynamic community that can regularly share and learn from uploaded content, rather than having to wait for the full articles twice a year. Moreover, we are partnering with more organizations, looking for ways that we can complement each other in our common pursuit of truth and meaning. Perhaps more than ever, in an era characterized by “too much information”, we want to serve as a hub of knowledge and inquiry alongside our companion organization, Veritas, which recently started here at Stanford and serves as a platform for bringing together speakers to talk and debate about topics in faith and society.
The decision to follow Jesus doesn’t wash away every probWhether you’re a Christian or not, we invite lem, but it does equip us with a newfound joy, purpose, and you to be part of the conversation. In particpower to emerge victorious no matter what we’re going ular, as we continue thinking, reading, and writing, we want to hear from you, talk with you, and learn with you as we joyfully serve our Lord with full devotion each day. In Christ,
Christos Makridis Christos Makridis
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Searching for Home: An Exile Story Jiaming Zeng
It was my first day of kindergarten in America. As the new student, I stood in the front while the teacher introduced me in a language I barely understood. Then she turned to me. “Why don’t you write your name on the board?” she must have said. I picked up a marker and turned to the board. But then I froze. What is my name? I knew my Chinese name, but should I write Chinese on the board? Did my parents give me an English name? If yes, they didn’t tell me.
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that I’ve never heard about, and played games that I didn’t know the rules to. At first, I would ask them about the games or cartoons. Yet every time, my questions were met with gasps of “What? You’ve never seen that show?” and “What kind of childhood do you even have?” Of course, to children my age, those weren’t meant as malicious comments. But to me, they left a deeper impression than intended. In those moments of cultural barriers and loneliness, I longed for the city across the Pacific where the children watched the same shows and played the same games as me. In a childish way, I grasped onto Beijing as a haven and the place where I truly belong.
I stood there until she picked up another marker and wrote But that’s the problem with putting your identity in for me: Jiaming. Ah, that makes sense. It’s the pinyin of my things – be it places, objects, or even other people. One Chinese name. I guess that’s my English name now. day, they might not turn out to be what you imagined them to be, and it will be devastating. Because, often“Let’s welcome our new friend!” she smiled. times, places change, things change, and people change. And most importantly, you might change too. Identity is a simple word that tries to summarize the complicated essence of who we are; it’s what we are called, It all hit me when I returned to Beijing the summer of where we live, where we grew up, what languages we speak, freshman year. The city of my childhood had completely what we studied, who we support, who and what we love, transformed in the past ten years. Towering glass-covered and more. For many of us, home is a major part of identity; skyscrapers replaced the plain gray buildings that used it’s where we feel stability and safety. That’s why, when you to line the streets. Old neighborhoods were torn down to meet someone, the question after “What’s your name?” is give way to beautiful upscale apartments. Fancy shopping usually, “Where are you from?” malls and department stores rose around the city. While the street and region names were familiar, the landscape Having moved between six states and two countries, I and layout had completely changed. I found myself navistruggle with the concept of “home” a lot. When people gating the city like a tourist. ask me where I’m from, I usually politely answer a different question, “My family lives in Missouri.” However, the landscape change wasn’t what struck me. What I found most challenging were the changes in the For a long time, Beijing was my home. I was born and people and relatives I used to know. My favorite aunt, raised in Beijing for most of my childhood. At the end of who used to tell me silly jokes and host boisterous parelementary school, my parents decided to permanently ties, is now a calm mother and loving wife. Every day, move from one of the busiest cities in the world to a tiny she goes to work at the university, cooks for her son, and town in Mississippi. You can only imagine my shock and cleans the house for her family. Gone was the exuberance chagrin. of her college years and what remains is the Chinese opinion of a classical wife. My childhood best friend, my In America, the children cracked jokes I didn’t understand, favorite cousin, also felt miles away. As kids, we snuck giggled at my heavy Chinese accent, talked about shows into rundown car factories and pulled pranks on our
neighbors. However, now, he prefers studying for his exams to believe. Where you feel at home can change. In fact, and watching TV with his family. many things that we like to believe in are transitory, such as fame, success, and prestige. They may be gone in the I was a foreigner and outsider in the place I’ve always called blink of an eye, much less last for a lifetime. But that’s home. I felt betrayed – by Beijing, by my relatives. Now, okay. It’s part of growing up; it’s part of life. The missing where do I belong? pieces of our transitory longings simply points us to a more profound reality. I didn’t read the Bible back then. If I did, I would have been reminded of the story in the book of Ezra. After 70 years of My exile story is still continuing. I don’t know where it exile, the Israelites finally returned to their home in Jeruwill take me, but I trust that Jesus will walk along with salem. Filled with nostalgia and hope, they attempted to me. There is nothing to fear. After all, we do know the restore the city and the temple. However, when the restoway home. By heart. ration was complete, the older priests and families wept because the temple was nothing compared to its former “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is de1 glory . Despite all they had hoped and dreamed for, home stroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house was not home. The return home did not bring them peace in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we and joy; instead, it brought them even more intensified groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly longing. Longing for the home they imagined, longing for dwelling.” their true home. In a way, they were still in exile. 2 Corinthians 5:1-2 Ezra 3:12-13 NIV Isaiah 32: 18 NIV 3 John 14: 1-4 NIV 1
In Christianity, exile is a description of the human condition. It describes how we still feel lonely in the most boisterous rooms, how we feel lost in the most fortunate circumstances, how we manage to feel alienation and longing no matter where we live or where we are. In the end, we are in exile from our idealized and perfect home. Perhaps you don’t believe in the existence of such a home, or you have convinced yourself you have found it. However, deep down, we all long to “live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of peace.”2
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Jiaming Zeng is a PhD student in Management Science and Engineering. In her free time, she likes to rock climb, travel, and listen to people’s stories. On Sundays, you can find her worshipping at the Palo Alto Vineyard Church.
For me, God has promised the ultimate home through Jesus. He promised us an eternal home that will not fall short of our expectations, where we will feel peace, contentment, joy, and belonging. Perhaps it sounds like a difficult concept to believe. After all, we have never been there. How do we know if it truly exists? But as Blaise Pascal said, “We know truth, not only by reason, but also by heart.” Sometimes, our heart and its desires reveal more to us than we can ever imagine. The things that trouble our heart speak to the truth that cannot be defined by reason or logic. Therefore, as Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? … You know the way to the place where I am going.”3 Back to my exile story. I can’t say I’ve answered the question of home, or ever will. But I did eventually make peace with Beijing. I also made peace with the fact that my name will always stand out. I have come to realize that home in this world is a much more transitory concept than I want
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A WHOLE NEW WORLD: Reconciling the Personal & External Identities
Aladdin met Princess Jasmine as she was walking through the streets of Agraba in disguise1. He knew her as someone smart and funny and beautiful. But he did not know that she was the daughter of the sultan. Neither did the palace guards until, at one glimpse of her royal headband, she was transformed in their eyes from a street rat into a princess and they immediately bowed at her feet. When I think of identity, two distinct concepts come to mind. On one hand, there is a personality and the individual characteristics we associate with ourselves. This is the side of Jasmine that first dazzles Aladdin. On the other hand, identity emerges from who we are in relation to others. The palace guards did not bow to Jasmine because of her leadership skills but because they suddenly realized she was the princess. Identity is a coin with two sides: personality and our social context. Sometimes we struggle with integrating these two aspects of identity, trying to distance ourselves from one so we can live out the other. Queen Elizabeth II had a similar experience, portrayed in the The Crown, in which she wrestled with her personal opinions versus her duty as a queen. In her grandmother’s words, “Elizabeth Mountbatten has been replaced by Elizabeth Regina. The two Elizabeths will frequently be in conflict with one another. The fact is, the crown must win, must always win.”2 In our current culture, that sounds very harsh – we encourage individuals to find their own way by letting go of external expectations. But do we lose anything in throwing off the weight of these external ties and relinquishing the identity that comes through them? The military is an example of an organization that redefines its members’ identities. There are constraints on servicemembers’ time, behavior, and even appearance. But I have often heard people say that the military “made” them; that the skills, discipline, and confidence they developed are invaluable to them, long after their service has ended. In that light, what is the role of a collective identity in developing one’s personal identity?
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Anne Hulsey
The external identity that has most influenced my own personal identity is that of having been adopted into the family of God as his daughter (John 1:12, Romans 8:16). The gift and value of this identity was solidified for me again as I was working toward my PhD qualifying exams. I have always struggled with imposter syndrome, the fear that I’ve gotten to where I am by accident or that I am not worthy of the opportunity I’ve been given. This struggle reared its head again as I tried to define my research topic to enter the next phase of my graduate studies. When I focused on my personal identity, I would get so caught up in wondering whether I was sufficient. Would my advisors regret accepting me into the program? Did I have anything new to offer to the academic discipline? These questions paralyzed me and stifled the creative ability I needed to move forward. Eventually, I was able to refocus and remember that my identity is in God. The fact that I am his beloved daughter is unshakeable and completely independent of my performance in grad school. In this identity, I am free to move forward without the crippling weight of maintaining my personal identity. The fact that our identity does not ride on how we perform, but rather is derived from God having claimed us as his children, means that we can act without fear of falling short or being found lacking. However, belonging to a family does not just provide a free sense of security – there is also an expectation that our individual identities will resemble the family identity. Sometimes this expectation is characterized by judgment (i.e. “toe the line or else”), but I don’t see this in the family of God. Despite being familiar with our weakness and our failures, Jesus is not ashamed to claim us as his siblings (Hebrews 2:11). Similarly, in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), when the son dissociates himself from the family, the father does not distance himself from his son but is overjoyed when he returns. So if the intent of the familial expectations is not to weed out the unworthy, what is it? I believe that the expectations God has for us are inherently the best, most
life-giving way to live so they represent an invitation rather than a measuring stick. Moreover, we don’t conform out of obligation but rather as a natural response to the incredible mercy God showed us in providing a way to enter his family and to the honor of representing him as one of his children. The reason why God knows what is best for us is because he created us. The expectations associated with being in God’s family are not arbitrary or overly constraining so that we can’t “be ourselves.” He knows how we, as the human race, are meant to thrive – how we are designed to relate to him, to others, and to ourselves. If we do not align ourselves with the family identity in this regard, we are like the prodigal son who set off to find his own way, only to discover that it led to misery. In a more personal sense, God knows each of us and gave us unique characters and abilities. He knows how we can best engage and refine these traits for the joy of both ourselves and those around us. Having him direct our transformation into the people we were meant to be is much more reliable than our own fumbling in the dark. For example, one of my friends is passionate about defending the truth, especially when the people around her start to believe lies about their worth. Yet this powerful, God-honoring trait has a darker side that made her very angry when her young son started telling lies. Initially, she feared that she would have to cut off this part of her identity in order to mitigate the accompanying anger. But God, who placed the passion in her, has been gracious and faithful in refining her such that she can offer her passion to the world without the weight of the anger. God’s guidance has been a more reliable way of staying true to herself than if she shirked his influence and tried to find her own way. Just like in my friend’s case, we can each rest in the fact that God has already begun a good work in us and will carry it on to completion (Philippians 1:6). The freedom this provides is similar to what I described earlier – this kind of assurance means
that we don’t have to frantically try to “find” ourselves or, alternatively, “fix” some part of ourselves because God is already directing the process. I believe that in the context of God’s family, the personal and the collective sides of identity are complementary. The expectations of the familial identity are not so heavy and at odds with our personal identity that we have to run away to be ourselves, like Jasmine tried to do. In fact, our unshakeable identity as God’s children gives us the freedom to take risks, without needing to fear that we will lose everything if we are found lacking. Moreover, as our creator, God is the one who has the clearest view of our unique potential so the best way to “be ourselves” is to let him carefully, patiently strip away everything that obscures the person he intended us to be. How freeing it is that our Father is competent, loving, and faithful so we can trust him in this process. In the end, Jasmine was able to reconcile the two parts of her identity – fully claiming her role as a princess while retaining her innate sense of independence and adventure – in a way that she had never anticipated. If we lean in to the possibilities of what God has for us as his children, I think we also will discover that there is “a whole new world, a whole new life, for you and me.” Aladdin. Walt Disney Films, 1992. Film.
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“Hyde Park Corner.” The Crown, season 1, episode 2. Netflix, November 4, 2016.
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Anne Hulsey is pursuing a PhD in earthquake engineering in order to complement her completely unrelated undergrad in Humanities. Her mornings start with running or rock climbing to ward off academic stress. Anne is part of Palo Alto Vineyard Church.
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TWO STEPS BEYOND What do Mahatma Gandhi, J. K. Rowling, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and I have in common? Given this article’s title, the answer may be obvious: we all have the same Myers-Briggs Personality Type, at least according to most sources. Which type? Keep reading. A Myers-Briggs type is a four-letter word corresponding to an individual’s preferences along four spectra: 1) introversion vs. extroversion 2) sensing (“what is?”) vs. intuition (“what if?”)1 3) thinking vs. feeling when making decisions 4) judging (planning) vs. perceiving (going with the flow)
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“ungainly,” and “skin problems,” although the description fails to mention how extroverts describe generic extroverts7. In addition, the ICD-10 CM, the “standard international diagnostic classification system for documenting all general epidemiological conditions,” actually includes “introverted personality” as a disorder.8,9
Cain claims much good has been accomplished through introverts, not in spite of their introversion, but because of it. For example, Eleanor Roosevelt traveled the country listening to Great Depression stories people would not have told her charismatic husband FDR. Those stories moved her to press Thus, with two options in four dimensions, there are sixteen FDR to act on behalf of the dispossessed, sealing his legacy as “types” of people – plus countless others in the middle of the one of the most compassionate presidents. Al Gore’s focus on spectrum for at least one dimension. a single passion and sensitivity to the statistics he learned as an undergraduate allowed him to understand the dangers of The Myers & Briggs Foundation claims no type is better than global warming far better than any other congressman, and any other.2 Yet I will be the first to admit the grass often seems consequently release the 11th highest grossing documentary greener on the other side. I have been at conferences where I lose An Inconvenient Truth10. And Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak all my energy when surrounded by strangers; in conversations spent his childhood developing engineering skills (because where I want to dream about the future rather than observe the he did not want to leave the house), giving him the expertise present; at forks in the road where I know which choice is more to create the first personal computer11. We need to value and logical but go with my faulty gut anyway; and on trips where I am utilize introverts and extroverts, ISTJs and ENFPs, because all frustrated by the lack of a finalized itinerary. In these scenarios, I personality types bring something different to the table. wished I had a different personality. As a Christian, I believe all people are made in the image of But the more I interact with all kinds of people, the more I realize God, which means humans have inherent worth in God’s 1) the value of every personality type, including my own, and eyes and are created to reflect his character. This is our truest 2) that personality is only one of many dimensions to a person. identity; because unlike what we do, have, or desire; it cannot change12. If God created people of all personality types, and all I will use introversion vs. extroversion as a case study for why humans have inherent worth in his eyes, we too should value we need to value all personality types. The introversion-extroall personality types. version spectrum is the most robust: there is a neurobiological difference between introverts and extroverts, and today’s mainBecause God values all types of people, he utilizes all types of stream personality framework, the “Big Five,” includes introverpeople. Peter, a pillar of the early Church, practically jumped sion-extroversion as one of its five factors.3,4 In my experience, into the Sea of Galilee to walk on water with Jesus and cut off a this dimension most easily separates people into two boxes, and man’s ear when Jesus was arrested; he was impulsive.13,14 Moses has the greatest potential to lower one’s self-esteem. I have heard asked God to pick someone else to deliver the Israelites from off-putting comments about introverts in nearly every setting: Egyptian enslavement and described himself as the meekest the classroom, the dorm, the Bible study. man on earth; he was hesitant.15,16 And yet both played crucial roles in biblical history. According to Susan Cain in her bestseller Quiet, introversion is stigmatized5,6. I personally once believed extroversion was suIf God uses people of all types, then in all slivers of society, perior, and was flattered to be mistaken for an extrovert. Studies including companies, student organizations, and churches, we show I am not alone in this belief: in an informal poll, introwould benefit from the contributions of all types of people. verts describe generic introverts as “not particularly attractive,” And if God says I have inherent worth apart from anything I do, have, or desire; then I will choose to value my personality type: INFJ.
MYERS-BRIGGS
Lisa Ann Yu
However, although we should value everyone regardless of personality, we should also recognize there is more to a person than his personality. Different societies have prized different qualities to differing degrees. In ancient Greece, logic and athleticism were celebrated. Think of Plato and Socrates, the Olympic Games and the Spartan wars. In the pre-1900 modern world, discipline was celebrated, since hard work (i.e. producing food or tradable goods) meant having enough to eat17. But in the early 1900s, as people moved out of towns where everyone knew them and into cities where first impressions mattered, the emphasis changed from character to personality. In fact, “the word personality didn’t exist in English until the eighteenth century, and the idea of ‘having a good personality’ was not widespread until the twentieth.”18 Today, personality continues to be prized; although logic, athleticism, and discipline are still valued.
“gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”22
Why is the heart so important? In the Bible, the heart refers to the “center of hidden emotional-intellectual-moral activity,” and is the essence of one’s identity, for “the heart of man reflects the man.”20,21 Although the qualities society prizes have changed over time, throughout history God has cared most about the heart. He wants hearts that reflect his character:
Lisa Ann Yu recently graduated from Stanford with an MS in Statistics. A classic INFJ, she enjoys reading, knitting, playing with data, and overanalyzing situations. Now a Los Angeles resident, she attended Peninsula Bible Church and was involved with IVgrad while at Stanford.
https://introvertdear.com/news/why-intuitive-people-feel-lonely-in-this-practical-world/ 2 http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/take-the-mbti-instrument/no-right-or-wrong-answers.htm 3 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/199907/the-difference-between-introverts-and-extroverts 4 https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/big-five-personality-theory/ 5 https://www.quietrev.com/media-kit/ 6 Cain, Susan. Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. London: Penguin, 2013. 7 Laurie Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life is Your Hidden Strength (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2008), 3-4. 8 https://www.aapc.com/icd-10/icd-10.aspx 9 http://www.icd9data.com/2012/Volume1/290-319/300-316/301/301.21.htm 10 https://theconversation.com/ten-years-on-how-al-gores-an-inconvenienttruth-made-its-mark-59387
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Where do we find the strength to reflect God’s perfect character and to value both others and ourselves regardless of personality? From the one who believed his truest identity. Only God’s son Jesus perfectly reflected God’s character and believed in his inherent worth, even before speaking to ten thousands and carefully executing his discipleship strategy. Because of Jesus’s God-like character, he died so others could one day perfectly reflect God’s character, and one day see God, face to face.23 Jesus, who is alive today, will himself renew our hearts until the day we enter into our truest identity.
As our hearts are changed, we strive to create a world that values all personality types. In this world, introverts and extroverts are comfortable, and little details and the big picture are celebrated. In King David’s time, warrior abilities and physical attractiveWhen others are not willing to enter our preferred spaces, we ness were celebrated. When the prophet Samuel was sent to enter theirs. This world is exemplified by Paul’s command to “… anoint the next king from among Jesse’s sons, he was impressed in humility value others above yourself, not looking to your own by the oldest son’s appearance and height and thought he was interests but each of you to the interests of others.”24 surely the next king. But God rejected him and Jesse’s next six sons. God selected David, Jesse’s youngest son and the keepThis world is two steps beyond Myers-Briggs: one step from er of the sheep. For as God told Samuel, “the LORD sees not four-letter words to personalities, and one step from personalities as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the to the hearts that remind us of our truest identity. LORD looks on the heart.”19
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Cain, Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World That Cant Stop Talking. Lomas, David, and D. R. Jacobsen. The Truest Thing about You: Identity, Desire, and Why It All Matters. Colorado Springs, CO: David C Cook, 2014. 13 Matthew 14:28 14 John 18:10 15 Exodus 4:13 16 Numbers 12:3 17 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1986/01/05/character-takes-on-personality/d15aeae3-d266-4c8b-a7c2-77cbcbdcb3b6/ 18 Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking. 19 1 Samuel 16:1-13, ESV 20 Proverbs 27:19 21 https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/heart/ 22 Joel 2:13 23 Revelation 22:4 9 24 Philippians 2:3-4 12
Religious Identity at Stanford KevinKevin Khieu Khieu I committed my life to Jesus during my junior year after having been an atheist most of my life. I’ve witnessed God’s works both from the lens of an outsider, as well as from the lens of a follower, and through these years at Stanford, I’ve gradually rooted my identity in Christ.
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that happened to lead to the exclusion of dialogue regarding religion. In this class, if you rooted your identity in your race or gender or any of the other aspects of identity Stanford is comfortable with, this class made you feel heard, understood, and appreciated. But if you were a student that viewed religion as central to your identity, and especially if you were Christian, And yet, all of this came as unexpected to me, however… because then this class made you feel overlooked and marginalized. I’m at Stanford. Don’t get me wrong—PSYCH103 is a great class, and I honestStanford prides itself on freedom of thought, with its mantra ly think students should take it if for no other reason than to being “The Wind of Freedom Blows”. This becomes ever-more experience what the class is like. However, the facets of identity apparent in how the university greets its incoming frosh, who that it doesn’t consider reveals something fundamental about go through their first years here learning about identity and the life at Stanford. plethora of things it means for their lives. However, Stanford largely focuses on a select number of facets of identity – specifiAs you read this, the question popping into your head right cally race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and class – which now might be “Why does this matter?”. Regardless of your is to say, everything except religion. worldview, college is a time for us all to develop critical thinking skills—to listen, learn, and sometimes challenge competing Stanford largely ignores religious identity despite the fact that viewpoints. Having the opportunity to discuss religious identity religion has, is, and will always be a driving force in global affairs. enriches our understanding of one another and, potentially I’ve been through orientation (twice - once for undergraduate even more important, our own worldview so that we can more and once for graduate), I’ve been in two dorms, I’ve been a part effectively serve and connect with others. This is the same of three student groups, I’ve been through RA training, I’ve been reason for why we also make space for other important facets in a handful of classes that focus on identity, and on top of that, of identity, and I truly feel that these same reasons should espeI’ve just generally “been” here for four years. In each of those cially apply to religious identity, which is at least as important settings, the topic of identity has come up - sometimes with great since it provides a systematic framework for decision-making. emphasis - and yet religious identity is rarely acknowledged or explored. The lack of discourse on campus regarding religion Creating opportunities for discussing religious identity is admakes it seem like religion is a topic that the Stanford communi- mittedly a challenging task especially in a university setting (as ty is either uncomfortable with or unprepared for discussing. illustrated by my experience in PSYCH103), but that’s one of the reasons universities exist. These conversations are integral The epitome of my experience regarding this issue came during to students having a better understanding of different views my junior year when I took a class called PSYCH103: Intergroup and how each of them affects the world we live in. Additionally, Communication. The class revolved around the structure of having space for conversations about religion also enables us to splitting into identity groups each week and, in fish bowl format, clarify misunderstandings and learn more about others without asking other identity groups questions in hopes of better under- fear of condemnation. At least for me, that’s something that I standing them. The identity groups we were split into were based wish had been more embedded in my experience at Stanford. on class, gender, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity, with religion not being included in the class. When I asked the TAs why Kevin Khieu graduated Spring 2018 with both a B.S. and this was the case, I was told that the class did not have enough M.S. in Computer Science and is from Eden Prairie, Minnetime to consider that particular aspect of identity – which is sota. On campus, he was a part of the Chi Alpha Christian fair given that tackling all aspects of identity in ten weeks is Fellowship and CS+Social Good. He now works at quite a daunting task, but it felt like another instance at Stanford Microsoft.
PROBLEM OF EVIL Jonathan Wheeler
While each religion is different, they all start at the same place: there is something in the world called “evil.” From here, each religion differentiates itself, primarily in its history of good and evil and its prescription to live a “righteous” life. At first glance, Christianity has a philosophical problem, because it asserts the existence of a loving and powerful God in an evil world. The “Problem of Evil” can be summarized thus: 1. If God is unable to prevent evil, then He is not all-powerful. 2. If God is not willing to prevent evil, then He is not all-good. 3. If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?
Richard Dawkins, another renowned atheist, writes: In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” – A River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (emphasis supplied)
I want to share several responses that could be given to this line of thought, and conclude with what I believe Jesus would say were we to ask him directly about the evil in the world He created.
RESPONSE 1: GOD DOES NOT EXIST First, let’s assume that the Problem of Evil disproves the Christian God, and see where that gets us. Much of Friedrich Nietzsche’s life work was to present a framework in which mankind could operate without invoking the existence of a God. He writes: “When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet... Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one’s hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it... it has truth only if God is the truth — it stands and falls with faith in God.” – Twilight of the Idols
To recap the train of thought thus far: 1. Evil exists. 2. An all-loving and all-powerful God would prevent this evil if He existed. 3. Thus, God does not exist. 4. Because God does not exist, there is no such thing as good or evil. 5. Thus, evil does not exist. Given this line of reasoning, the existence of evil is problematic for its own existence. When we assert the non-existence of God, we waive the right to call anything evil or good. We can merely prefer some things over others. For example, I really dislike a fruit called durian, but I know others really enjoy it. Someday I might acquire a taste for it, especially the more I’m exposed to it. In addition to durian, I also dislike the notion of my friends getting raped. But here too, maybe
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my preferences might also change if I were to hang around rapists, and try it out for myself a couple times. After all, absent of God who imposes objective moral standards, good and evil are merely what society agrees upon. I find myself shying away from this conclusion. The way my gut clenches when friends share personal stories of abuse suggests the difference between rape and durian is not quantitative, but qualitative. No matter how big the pile of durian is, it will never be as “evil” as a single rape.
If this is the God that Christians serve, why don’t preachers murder converts the moment they accept Christ? One reason this doesn’t work is because it’s illegal. But the deeper reason is that such behavior paints God as small and insecure: that if God gives His followers enough time, they’ll realize what a sham He really is. And even if such a God does manage to save some, what mechanism guarantees their Christianity for eternity? Must God perpetually murder and recreate those who are on the brink of deconversion in heaven?
Whether or not we believe in God, we still want to call things evil. Nietzsche reasons that in order for there to be evil, there must exist a divine Entity that declares it to be such. Thus, evil’s mere presence reinforces the belief in God.
This usage of evil on God’s part seems more like procrastination than solving the problem of evil–a problem He is ultimately responsible for in the first place according this model.
RESPONSE 2: GOD USES EVIL TO SCARE US INTO HEAVEN
RESPONSE 4: GOD USES EVIL TO TEACH US TO AVOID IT AND CHOOSE GOOD INSTEAD
Jesus: Knock knock Human: Who’s there? Jesus: It’s Jesus. Please open the door. Human: What do you want? Jesus: I want to save you. Human: Save me from what? Jesus: From what I’m going to do to you if you don’t open the door. Does God permit evil in the world to scare us into obeying Him? Such a God is worse than Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king that demanded, “Bow down to me, or I’ll throw you into a burning furnace.” But God requires more; He requires our hearts, our minds, our souls, and if we don’t give it to Him, we get eternal hellfire. Regrettably, this version of God gives Christians a bad rep because they look like the hundreds who bowed to Nebuchadnezzar merely out of fear.
Some assert that God allows evil circumstances to pave the way for a greater good. A similar treatment is espoused in the Star Trek notion of the Prime Directive: to refrain from interfering with any civilization until it can travel faster than light. Several Star Trek episodes portray planets on the brink of committing massive evil to the point of self-annihilation, and yet starship captains who are both willing and able to prevent the evil cannot interfere. Each civilization must endure its own growing pains in order to properly mature.
The God of the Bible doesn’t use evil as a scare tactic. Those who refused to bow before Nebuchadnezzar were actuated by something more noble than fear that “our boss is going to punish us more than you can.” In the midst of the blazing furnace, these Hebrews evidenced a side-by-side companionship with their Savior and Friend. RESPONSE 3: GOD HAS TO USE EVIL TO ENSURE OUR ETERNAL HAPPINESS AND SALVATION
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One of my friends left the church in his early teens when his mother died. In an attempt to console him, his well-intentioned church explained, “God knew that your mom wouldn’t always be a Christian, so He took her while she still believed.” It wasn’t the premature death of his mother that pushed him out of the church, but the depiction of God as so desperate to save you that He would violate her free will and twist her fate to do so.
This argument might justify why our parents allowed us to touch a hot stove while we were children. As Nietzsche said, “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” But what about the evil that does kill us? Did we become better as a result of the Holocaust genocide? Some may argue that we learned our lesson, but survivors of genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Yugoslavia might disagree. If this is God’s model of evolving our civilization, how much genocide does God need to permit before He finally proclaims us good enough? Conversely, how much genocide will God permit before we stop calling him “good”? RESPONSE 5: GOD DOES NOT USE EVIL. EVIL IS AN INTRUDER When asked where evil came from, Jesus supplied the following parable: The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou
sow good seed in they field? From whence then hath it tares? If God created you with a freedom-limiting-evil-preventHe said unto them, An enemy hath done this. ing-circuit (FLEPC) in your brain, such that it would be -Matthew 13:24-28, KJV impossible for you to commit evil, would you really ever be free to love with your whole being? Almost—you’d be able to In the first chapter of the book of Job, this adversary is idenlove God with everything except for that FLEPC. In Genesis tified as Satan. The second chapter describes Satan causing 2 God made man perfect (no FLEPC), then warned him of this evil, and even framing God as its author. In Chapters 3 to evil (v. 17), then provided companionship to help resist evil 34 Job’s friends produce human explanations of God’s use of (v. 18). So why is sin in the world? The answer: Because the evil. These chapters are difficult to understand because man’s omnipotent, yet patient host respected our informed, and explanation of a good God who uses evil do not make sense. autonomous choice when we invited snakes to the party. Since ancient times, we have known there is evil in the world, but we have never come up with a satisfying justification. He who plays with snakes gets bitten. Knowing the full Perhaps it is because there is none. And if there’s no reason for wages of snake bites, God volunteered to take the full preevil to be here, we should get rid of it once and for all. scription of venom in our place. A simpler God could have zapped our first parents while they were still loyal, or played To illustrate this, let us suppose that there was a party, and the hands-off starship captain while we tried to manage evil Jonathan (me) shows up. Now, whenever Jonathan shows on our own. Instead, throughout history He has stood beside up at a party, he is awkward, obnoxious, and makes a real His people in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace to demonstrate mess of things. Some of the guests at the party start asking, solidarity over and against evil. Revelation 20 explains that “Why is Jonathan here?” On the one hand, suppose someone history concludes when God lays hold on the snake intruder explained that Jonathan is here because the host invited him. and kicks him out once and for all. A God who treats the Jonathan’s presence is justified, and guests have to put up with Problem of Evil in this way is a God I want to befriend, and I him even though they are miserable. On the other want others to come to know as well. hand, suppose after a diligent investigation, no explanation for Jonathan’s attendance This article is part of a mini-series on Evil. could be discovered. Then Jonathan would This article seeks to address the “Problem be an intruder and the guests would unaniof Evil.” A companion article addressing the mously and promptly kick Jonathan out, and “Origin and End of Evil” will be published in he would never be welcome at this journal at a later date. that party again.
If evil is an unwelcome intruder, the question remains: why did an all-powerful, all-loving God allow evil to intrude in the first place? May I suggest that evil was not God’s choice, but ours? John Milton, on the fall of man writes:
References 1 Twighlight of the Idols: p.58 2 A River Out of Eden reference also appears here: Richard Dawkins in “God’s Utility Function,” Scientific American, November 1995, p. 85. 3
Whose fault? Whose but his own? […] He had of me all he could have; I made him just and right, sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. Such I created all the etheral powers and spirits, both them who stood and them who failed. Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell. –John Milton, Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost, book 3, lines 96 – 102.
At Stanford, Jonathan Wheeler’s PhD research considers how light can be used for inertial navigation of aircraft. Similarly, He enjoys spending time sharing how Jesus, the light of the world, plays a central role in steering us through this life and the life to come. Jonathan is a Christian songwriter, blogger, former missionary to Lebanon, and is very active in leadership at the Mountain View Japanese Seventh-day Adventist Church.
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Adopted Into God' 's Family Taylor Seaton
“...he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will” Ephesians 1:5 As Christians, the greatest identity we can ever claim is to be a son or daughter of God. Until Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, no person had ever been called a son or daughter of God. The great prophets of the Old Testament such as Abraham, Moses, David, and Isaiah were called servants of God. Abraham and Jesus’ disciples even had the privilege of being called friends of God (James 2:23, John 15:15), but no one was ever called a son or daughter of God. That would’ve been impossible, for the Bible says Jesus was God’s only son (John 3:16).
First, becoming a part of another family means we adopt a whole new set of relatives. We already know who our new Father and older brother are, but who are our mom, our other brothers and sisters, our aunts and uncles, or the rest of our new family? The Bible says that our new family consists of “those who hear the word of God and do it” (Luke 8:21). This was Jesus’ very own definition of all those who are in God’s family. It’s good for us to use this definition as a check for anyone we consider to be in God’s family, including ourselves.
However, we read something very peculiar in the Gospel of Matthew right after Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary and said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me” (Matthew 28:10). This is the first time Jesus called the disciples His brothers. He wasn’t just calling His friends “bros” trivially like many guys do today. Jesus was intentionally declaring that the disciples were now a part of God’s family!
Many Christians are held back from living a full Christian life because they are more loyal to their earthly family than to their spiritual family. In some cases, our earthly family may not be Christian at all or may not approve of us when we make decisions to live a radical, wholehearted life for Christ. They may try to influence us and lead us away from following Christ. This is where we are tested and when we must ask ourselves where our loyalty lies. Jesus says in Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” This means that in comparison to our love for Jesus, our love for our earthly families must be very small. Of course, this doesn’t mean we ignore our earthly family. Clearly not! The Bible says to honor our mother and father. But, when our earthly family asks or influences us to do something contrary to Christ, we must always choose Christ.
Today, Jesus is no longer God’s “only son.” The Bible says that He is now the “firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (Romans 8:29). As Christians, we are the younger brothers and sisters of Christ—that is, children of God, just like Him! 1 John 3:1 says, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” You may not come from a family that loved you or had parents that were always there for you, but whatever your past, God has shown His love for you by adopting you into His family. This is what Ephesians 1:5 means when it says, “...he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ…” Jesus paid the price for our sins, and because of this, we have the right to be called children of God. But, what does being a child of God actually mean for our lives, practically speaking?
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Second, as God’s children, we should start to increasingly resemble our older brother, Jesus. Oftentimes, others can recognize who our family members are because we act similarly to them or we look like them. Maybe you have the same nose as one of your parents or you copy how your older brother/ sister dresses. We all resemble our families in one way or another. You’ve probably heard the sayings “The apple doesn’t
fall far from the tree” or “He’s just a chip off the old block.” Even someone who is adopted and doesn’t look at all like their adopted family will begin to resemble their new family over time in their behaviors and tendencies. The same thing will happen to us when we are adopted into God’s family. The Bible doesn’t just say that we are predestined for adoption into God’s family. It goes a step further and says we are predestined to be conformed into looking like Jesus (Romans 8:29). Once we are adopted into God’s family, we’ll begin to resemble Him as we spend more time with Him and with other believers. Resembling God starts by imitating Him. This is how our sinful character can begin to shape into God’s very own character! We are told in Ephesians 5:1 to be imitators of God, as His children. We can do this as we discover what God’s character is through reading the Bible and observing the life of Jesus in the gospels. As we seek to apply what we read, we’ll begin to see our character take the shape of God’s. Ephesians 4:24 says, “Put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (ESV). God is righteous and holy, and as His children, we should always be growing in righteousness and holiness. This is what it means to put on the new self which is created after the likeness of God. The more we grow in righteousness and holiness, the more we will resemble God. It goes on in Ephesians 4:25-32 to explain some practical ways we can grow in righteousness and holiness. First, we must always tell the truth (v25). Lying starts when we are children and it takes on many forms as we get older. As adults, we start to lie in more subtle ways. We give people wrong impressions, exaggerate, add or subtract from the truth to give someone a biased opinion, quote unreliable statistics, engage in pretense, etc. These are all forms of lying which we must watch out for. When we lie, we are not acting like children of God at all. We are actually acting like children of Satan, because Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44). Secondly, we are told not to steal, but to do honest work with our own hands (v28). This means that we shouldn’t plagiarize our work or
copy someone else’s work. We should do our own work honestly. This is another way we can imitate God. The last verse (v32) tells us to be kind, tenderhearted, and to forgive others. Why? Because God has shown these things to us first. God never asks us to do anything He doesn’t do Himself. Whenever we see God’s commands in the Bible, we are actually getting a glimpse into what God is like. So, as we imitate the Lord and obey His commands, we’ll start to take on His character and have some family resemblance! It’s a great honor to be a part of God’s family, because God paid such a high price to adopt us. As children of God, we can always have security and self-confidence simply because we know our Heavenly Father is on the throne. The earth is His footstool! There is nothing that He doesn’t have complete control over. This is the confidence we have day to day knowing we are sons and daughters of a King. As a child of God, don’t just sit back. Get to know and love your new family members. Continue to grow in righteousness and holiness every year. Have it be your goal to be a chip off the old block or an apple that falls right underneath the tree. Imagine if others were to see our character and say that about us! May God help us to shine forth His character in our lives and live as faithful children of the Most High God. Taylor graduated from Stanford in March 2018 with a degree in Management Science and Engineering. He was on the gymnastics team during his time at Stanford and was an All-American on the horizontal bar and vault apparatuses. He recently moved back to his hometown of Dallas, Texas and will be working for Grant Thornton in the Fall.
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IDENTITY-ING: EMBRACING IDENTITY IN FLUX Liz Cooledge Jenkins I have a good friend who went through what one might call a minor identity crisis during her junior year at Stanford. We would go jogging around Campus Drive and she would tell me things like, “Liz, I don’t think I like boba as much as people think I do.” As an avid boba lover, I tried not to be offended. But of course, it wasn’t about the boba. My friend’s boba epiphany had caused her to reflect on the ways in which she had constructed an identity for herself and built relationships at Stanford by communicating her interests to others and learning about their interests in turn--all good things, except now, two years later, she found herself discovering that some of the things about which she had formerly expressed strong opinions (e.g. “I love boba!”) were no longer as true as they had been, or perhaps that her statements had been interpreted more strongly than she had intended. What else did people think or assume about her that didn’t actually reflect the realities of her life? What interests had she pursued because others were excited about them rather than because they expressed a good and true part of her identity? These reflections were disorienting. What do we do when we find--suddenly or gradually, in relatively trivial things like boba or in weightier things--that we are not who we used to be, or we are not who others think we are? An identity formed in high school around a sport, musical instrument, or debate team crumbles when that interest is left behind upon arrival at Stanford. A major or career path turns out not to be everything we hoped, and we feel confused and perhaps make a change, and that part of our identity is altered. We experience a profound loss--the death of someone close to us, or the end of a relationship, or the loss of our own health--and what we thought was sure footing feels as though it is shifting and sinking beneath us. Identity is sometimes not as stable as we like to think, and we are less in control of it than we want to imagine, and the process of its flux is often jarring and sometimes deeply painful. I would like to suggest that this disorienting experience of identity in
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flux is something we can embrace rather than avoid or feel ashamed of; when we are attentive to the confusion and loss associated with the ways in which our sense of identity changes over time, we are attentive to the God who does not minimize this loss but yet promises that there is something new in the making. Theologian Sarah Coakley approaches Christian thought about God as “theology in via”--theology on the way, rooted in “spiritual practices of attention that...simultaneously darken and break one’s hold on previous certainties.”1 Coakley sees theology as a quest not necessarily for a complete and static set of truths, but for a “new perspective” that “recapture[s] the contemporary imagination for Christ” and “reinvite[s] reflection on the perennial mysteries of the gospel.”2 Perhaps our identities, like our thinking about God in general or our understanding of our own religious faith in particular, are identities in via--on the way, not ever quite fully formed. Perhaps identity is most authentic and alive when it is open to radical disruption from some new truth discovered or old half-truth discarded. From another angle, according to Sharon Daloz Parks, our faith is a faith in flux, described better as a verb than a noun--as “faithing,”3 if you will. Faith is not so much a commodity to be obtained, measured, or lost, but a process of formulating and reformulating the ways in which we make sense of the world--a process in which healthy adults, and particularly young adults, engage on an ongoing basis,4 both in response to crisis experiences and as a part of everyday life. If we engage in a process of “faithing,” perhaps we may engage in a similar process of “identity-ing”: not so much trying to establish a set identity that we cling to at all costs, but developing, reflecting on, and readjusting our sense of self as we continue to encounter new experiences and ideas. For Christians in particular, we might even say that our original religious identity, historically speaking, was that of people of the Way. (According to the book of Acts, this is
what the early believers in Jesus were called before they began to be known as Christians.5) At its best, Christianity has never been about establishing and defending a rigid identity, but about a dynamic life of following in the Way of Jesus, full of movement and adventure and sometimes-disorienting flux. Life is not easy, and its twists and turns and challenges change us deeply. Christians believe that Jesus, who is consistent and faithful in character but always more complex and multifaceted than we can wrap our minds around fully, invites us to walk with him through times when everything is going well and times when our worlds and identities are falling apart. The times when our sense of identity is unstable are opportunities to stumble around to find a rock to stand on that is more solid than ourselves. Identity in via is not something to be feared but something to be embraced, in the context of the all-encompassing, gracious-without-condition, love of God. How might such an “identity-ing” process work in our lives? In John 15:1-11, Jesus claimed to be the “true vine” in which we, the branches, must abide in order to bear fruit. In this metaphor, God is the vinegrower who removes some branches because they do not grow fruit and prunes other branches so that they will be able to grow more fruit. Maybe parts of our identity are pruned by God like a gardener prunes a tree so that it will grow more healthily and produce more fruit in the future--even though sometimes this pruning leaves the plant looking for a while like a sad, bare stump. In 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 the apostle Paul writes that those who seek to know and see Jesus are gradually transformed to be more and more like Jesus, “from one degree of glory to another”; perhaps sometimes this transformation feels glorious, shining and joyful, and other times it just feels like being pruned, painful and confusing. To draw a similar analogy from something closer to my own daily experience than vine pruning, last fall I joined a swim team, and more recently I started doing “dryland” workouts with the team (which is what swimmers call a normal workout outside of the pool). It might not be visually obvious--which is fine, since my goal is good health rather than swoleness--but it’s clear to me that I’m quite a bit stronger now than when I first started. However, on any given day it doesn’t necessarily feel like I’m
getting stronger. Working out a particular muscle group forms micro-tears in those muscles, which eventually leads to the body adapting and making the muscles stronger so as better to handle similar stresses in the future--which is great in the long term, but in the short term it often just feels stiff and sore. What if the painful ways in which our identity morphs and twists over time are like micro-tears in the fiber of our being that offer the opportunity to heal stronger? If our identities are in process rather than static--being pruned and torn, alive and growing, but not without angst and confusion--then the times in which we find, sometimes painfully, that our identities are being continually formed and re-formed, need not surprise us. Jesus said that those who mourn will be comforted,6 and so Christians believe that God enters into our times of grieving former identities lost and current identities confused and calls us blessed in the midst of it because God is present with us. If we push into this process of identity-ing and the often-accompanying sense of loss and disorientation with courage rather than push it aside with embarrassment--if we embrace the fluxes of our identity as God-given gifts rather than rejecting them as shameful or undesirable or too confusing--the shifts in our sense of identity can lead us to a deeper understanding of and relationship with the God who knows us better than we know ourselves, our Creator and re-Creator. Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 33. 2 Coakley, 40-41. 3 Sharon Daloz Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams: Mentoring Emerging Adults in Their Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Faith (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011), 29. 4 Parks, 28-29. 5 Acts 9:2; 19:9,23; 22:4; 24:22 NRSV 6 Matthew 5:4 1
Liz Cooledge Jenkins studied Symbolic Systems at Stanford a while ago (class of ‘10). She attended Peninsula Bible Church for eleven years before moving to SoCal to work on a Master of Divinity degree at Fuller Theological Seminary. She enjoys chocolate, the beach, making music, and, as you may have guessed, swimming and boba.
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Secret Identity Glen Davis
On a visit to Leningrad in August 1968 — during the week of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia — I consulted a map to find out where I was, but I could not make it out. From where I stood, I could see several enormous churches, yet there was no trace of them on my map. When finally an interpreter came to help me, he said: “We don’t show churches on our maps.” Contradicting him, I pointed to one that was very clearly marked. “That is a museum,” he said, “not what we call a ‘living church.’ It is only the ‘living churches’ we don’t show.”1 In 1968 Leningrad, churches were not shown on the map. In 2018 Stanford, religious identity is rarely shown on the map. Ethnic identity, gender identity, cultural identity - not only are these items displayed on our collective cultural map, they are clearly identified in the legend. But when it comes to religious identity, the maps are curiously smudged and hard to read.
ance, and help. That we should forget His love and mercy and be indifferent as to the Christian influence to be used among the students, it would be an impossibility.”2 And this was not merely Jane’s perspective. In Leland Stanford’s charge to the first class of students he taught that “...learning should not only make you wise in the arts and sciences, but should fully develop your moral and religious natures. The humanizing influences come from a proper understanding of the rights of man and his duties to his Creator.” And the senator concluded his speech with a challenge from the Bible: “...as a foundation for the whole superstructure we would suggest to each young man and young woman to bear in mind the admonition of the wise king, “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.”3
For example, when Stanford University discusses its founding, the founders’ religious beliefs are rarely mentioned. If they are brought up at all, it is usually to emphasize that they did not want their university to be linked to any specific denomination, there- Though the Stanfords hoped to see a deep Christian faith take by hinting that they were not particularly religious and held the root in the students, today the bulk of religious worship and enlightened view all religions are interchangeable. formation is done through student VSOs - as though religion were a hobby like chess or juggling. Some people are into UltiIt is almost enough to make you overlook the fact that there is a mate Frisbee, other people are into ultimate reality. Religion is Christian church in the center of campus with a giant picture of at least on the map, but it is not drawn to scale. Jesus staring down at the thousands of students who walk across Religion is a powerful force around the globe and is the the quad each day. It dominates the surrounding buildings and foundation of identity for many Stanford students, staff, and was at the heart of the original campus layout. This was not done professors. If we desire to understand our community, we have by accident; rather, it reveals the Stanfords’ conviction about the to understand religious identity and why it is so central to the centrality of Christian faith to the life of a university student. lives of so many. In a speech she wrote for the university’s opening ceremony, Mrs. Stanford explained:
Religious identity is special because it is primal. On the positive side, religion has built a seemingly endless array of universities and hospitals. Other identity categories such as “An impression has gone forth that we were indifferent to relisexual attraction and gender have not. On the negative side, gious influences and instructions being taught here.... the Creator religion has given rise to war. This latter is particularly instruchas led us through the deep waters out into the sunshine of faith tive, for I am unaware of any wars being fought between men and belief in a future life; [know] that we have wholly and entire- and women, or between people of different sexual attractions, ly as far as possible given our lives to Him; and only ask that He or between people who prefer math to literature. Important will guide us to do His will; that every stone that has been laid as they are, they lack the power of religious identity. They are into the buildings of this University but numbers the prayers that capable of inspiring interpersonal violence, but they lack the have been offered up to our Heavenly Father for strength, guidpower to simultaneously divide and unite people on the scale
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needed for armed conflict to ensue. Religion is primal in a way that very few other things are - its only serious rivals in this regard are race and nationality. Religious identity is also special because it has built-in obligations. Being Asian or Black or White or Hispanic does not come with a manual to follow. A black man in America can pursue the route of Martin Luther King, Jr or he can emulate Malcolm X or he can forge his own path. But being Christian or Muslim or Hindu comes with a set of expectations that are central to the identity. To betray them is to compromise the identity, and these expectations tell us more than how to pray or how to worship -they also tell us how to live. This is one reason religious freedom is protected in the Constitution when so many other identity categories are not - religions obligate their adherents to both do things and to refrain from things even when those obligations violate cultural norms. Perhaps most importantly, religious identity is special because it is a chosen category. Most other categories are imposed upon us. We are raised in a certain culture. We have a certain skin tone. Our chromosomes end with XX or XY. But our faith is something that we can change. Unlike the other components of identity, we can change not only its appearance but its substance. This makes my religious identity a deeper revelation of my true self than my gender, my race, or any other category. Religion emerges from the core of
that seemed to me to be of the greatest possible importance for the conduct of my life. I remembered that for many years my perplexity was complete; and no interpreter came along to help me. It remained complete until I ceased to suspect the sanity of my perceptions and began, instead, to suspect the soundness of the maps. College is an ideal time to reexamine your maps. You study at Stanford, where “the wind of freedom blows.” You may not be aware that this is a quote from Ulrich von Hutten defending Martin Luther’s right to dissent from the Catholic Church. The wind of Stanford’s freedom is actually the wind of religious freedom. Let the wind blow! Think deeply about religion and explore your own religious identity. And if you don’t know where to start, begin by investigating Jesus. It is fitting that Stanford students gaze upon the One who looms over the quad. He once said, “You must be born again. The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:7b-8)
“...learning should not only make you wise in the arts and sciences, but should fully develop your moral and religious natures. The humanizing influences come from a proper understanding of the rights of man and his duties to his Creator.” -Leland Stanford
who I am. Particularly in Christianity, all the other forms of identity are brought together by faith. As Paul said in Galatians 2:26-28, “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Racial identities, economic identities, and gender identities all come together in Christ. This means that Christianity integrates other identity categories and also puts them in perspective. It frees us to celebrate other aspects of our identity without allowing them to divide us.
E.F. Schumacher, A Guide For The Perplexed 2 http://125.stanford.edu/janestanfords-speech/ - click through for the link to the original 3 Also linked at http://125.stanford.edu/jane-stanfords-speech/ 1
Glen (@theglendavis) and his wife Paula have ministered to Stanford students through Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship since 2002. He blogs at glenandpaula.com and you can learn more about Chi Alpha at xastanford.org
After being informed that his map of Leningrad did not show living churches, Schumacher reflected: It then occurred to me that this was not the first time I had been given a map that failed to show many of the things I could see right in front of my eyes. All through school and university I had been given maps of life and knowledge on which there was hardly a trace of many of the things that I most cared about and
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Love, Light, and the End of a Life Aldis Petriceks
It was just the two of us. I sat, somewhat inquisitively, on the chair beside her bed. We had met just weeks before; but in a moment, pretense was dropped. The woman spoke, or rather mumbled through dampened groans, bridging the distance between us. I placed my elbows on my thighs, giving a confused squint. Her words seemed to come out of nowhere. In reality, they came from her truest self: “I don’t want to die alone. Please, don’t let me die alone.” Tears followed shortly, and I placed my hand on hers. In tragedy, confusion, and love, we were walking through that uncharted region of her very humanity. This woman I will call Jane, though her name and identifying details have been altered for privacy. I met Jane some months ago, as a diffident new hospice volunteer. Jane, as you may have inferred, was dying. She was facing terminal metastatic cancer, with little treatment left to give. As an aspiring physician, to be with her was nothing short of a privilege; and as a young, status-obsessed person in the modern world, it was a humbling education on what defines a life.
today’s modern vision of the self – for both Christians and non-Christians alike – has become saturated with blaring luminescence. I wonder if our love for recognition, for success, for things, has washed over the subtle, yet definitive hallmarks of human identity. Amidst the flashing lights of individualism, have we lost sight of the gleam in our own identities? Have we climbed mountains upon mountains, only to lose track of the sun on the horizon? It was a Saturday afternoon, drenched in heated daylight. Jane had been seeing visitors all day and was exhausted (if lovingly so) as the afternoon waned. I entered her room, catching the last utterance of a friend’s parting words. “I hope I didn’t tire you out today,” said the ebullient friend, “but I guess that could be a good thing – some people don’t have any visitors to be tired of.” “Really?” Jane inquired softly, eyes wondering widely. Her companion nodded sadly. She gave Jane a hug and left the room.
That moment, I must admit, was rather confusing. This woman was in pain, dying of cancer with just weeks to live. Her career, When I first met Jane, she had only recently entered hospice her activity, her soothing vitality were all at their dusk. What care. A delicate, defined aura still shined through her paper-thin did she care of some hypothetical patient’s visiting schedule? skin. The room in which she stayed, in contrast to her disease, Why not mourn for her past achievements, or yearn longingly was quiet and at rest. I often entered that space to sit with Jane, for ambitions yet unreached? Jane stared wide-eyed at the wall, discussing a great many things with the woman: her family, her as if trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. She did not career, her pain which waxed and waned. But always, as if drawn yearn for those achievements, those fickle extravagancies which by some elliptical pull, we returned to a different space – one define a life full of potential. Her own life had weeks to go; the where, sheltered from the light of life’s high noon, Jane motioned only potential she cared for was that of a good and restful day. toward a subtle source for human meaning. As the gravitation of Young and healthy people, perhaps, can entertain ideas of granmortality pulled us round, she revealed a new and emboldening deur, pursuing to death the luxury of ambition. Career statuses, lens through which to interpret life: love. worldly victories, all turn out to be burdens of excess, dropped In the mid-20th century, C.S. Lewis, the Christian thinker and like pocket change when mortality becomes lucid. Jane’s author of The Chronicles of Narnia, gave light to his own vision experience, however, turned off those ontological floodlights of Christianity and the world around: “I believe in Christianity as to rediscover the sun: What mattered to this woman, tired and I believe the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because troubled at the end of her life? How did she see herself? What, by it I see everything else” (Lewis 1962). I wonder, however, if as a human being, did she want?
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If I myself had faced these questions, the answers would have been simple. Power, recognition, validation. Publications, beauty, the idyllic life. All these would have burst forward into the skyline of my heart, even if my conscious mind stayed on the ground. Yet as Oscar Wilde so poignantly alluded to in The Picture of Dorian Gray, such prideful identities can blackmail a life well-lived: “How sad it is! I shall grow old, horrible, and dreadful,” says Dorian Gray, upon realizing the immense but temporary nature of his own beauty. “If it were I who was to be always young… there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!” (Wilde 1993). When thinking on one’s own fragility, the reflexive tendency is to grasp for structures of security. When a person feels intellectually belittled, the mind rages back with evidence of genius. As a man feels inferior, he imagines all the ways in which he is superior. And like Dorian Gray, when we humans sense the fragility of our own self-concepts, we clench – tightly, desperately – to preserve them, in hopes that they, in turn, might preserve us. Yet what are we to gain through transitory identities? Are those sources of meaning not, like us, fading dimly each passing day? In his fascinating spiritual memoir, Leo Tolstoy asks, “is there any meaning in my life that wouldn’t be destroyed by the death that inevitably awaits me?” (Ilyich 2014). Decades later, G.K. Chesterton answers that “there is nothing which is so weak… as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success” (Chesterton 2004). And in his bestselling book, When Breath Becomes Air, the Stanford neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi – dying of Stage IV lung cancer at thirty-six – poignantly summarizes this age-old conversation: “Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past… Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed” (Kalanithi 2016). A chasing after wind, indeed. People search far and wide for meaning, these writers seem to say, but worldly promises bear little weight in the end. Like Sibyl Vane, Dorian Gray’s lover, people can live entire lives, having known “nothing but shadows and thought them to be real.” And that is exactly the point: modern culture so often entices one to chase those shadows, covering life’s meaning with vain pursuits. But at the end of the day – at the end of a life – what really matters? The answer to that question, through the suffering example of Jane, returns us back to C.S. Lewis’ revelatory sun.
Meaning, validation, and identity can be grasped at in the dark, but they are only revealed in full by the light of something greater. “Don’t let me die alone,” Jane beckoned, as she pointed toward the ontological zeitgeber of a human life: compassionate, present, steadfast and generous love. Jane did not die alone, nor did her life end in a chasing for shadows. She was cared for and loved until death. Indeed, her suffering was, in many ways, its own act of compassionate radiance: a beacon to the world of what matters in the end. Her journey through dying was a reminder – loving, yet difficult nonetheless – of what defines a life. She yearned for no last achievements in those days, no final applause from the crowd. Instead, she wanted to be known, to be cared for, to be uplifted amidst suffering, to have a life defined potently by love. In her last days, this dying woman gestured powerfully toward a human identity, made lucid as the extraneous was stripped away. To have an identity is to be defined by something; and for Jane, that something was more elegant than beauty, more potent than vitality, more rewarding than life’s accomplishments. What sustained her, what defined her, was simple and meek, and magnificently so. Even in death, Jane was encompassed, emboldened, enlivened by the stalwart presence of that deepest fount of human meaning. Generous, steadfast, self-giving love.
References
Chesterton, G.K. 2004. Heretics. Dover Publications (Original work published 1905). Ilyich, Ivan. 2014. The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Confession (Peter Carson Translation). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Kalanithi, Paul. 2016. When Breath Becomes Air. New York, NY: Random House Publishing. Lewis, C.S. 1962. They Asked for a Paper. London, UK: Geoffrey Bles. Wilde, Oscar. 1993. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Dover Publications (Original work published 1890).
Aldis Petriceks is an Anatomy Scholar at the Stanford Division of Clinical Anatomy (Department of Surgery), and a Research Assistant at the Stanford PULSE Institute. He enjoys long runs around campus, and you can find him on Sundays worshiping at Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto.
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a Timepiece
of
Truth Daniel Heywood
Some years ago, I rebuilt a clock. It was a rather ordinary clock, a product of the 1930s, made more for its utility than its beauty. There was some veneer of indulgence in its hardwood case and hourly chimes, but its true purpose was to tell the time, and to tell it well. After many years, though, it failed in this purpose. One of the gears inside slowly wore down until it started slipping, and when it started slipping the hands stopped turning. It took me several years to learn how to repair the clock, but eventually I did. I made a new gear and then managed to put it all back together. In the process, I learned much about the clock and what it does. A clock is an object we create which tells us something true. Its nature is to reveal time. It does this imperfectly, but in describing a clock we appeal to what it shows us, the time. The Church is like a clock. It is a collection of many people with different gifts1, much as a clock is a collection of many parts with different functions. Some parts are obvious and have a clear role—the hands display the time—while others are hidden and perhaps enigmatic. Some followers of Jesus are well known and have a clear task, while others may be less apparent with a task less clear. In both a clock and the Church, the members are defined by their membership. They are bound together by a common focus. And the Church, like a clock, is an object whose nature is to reveal something true. Even without a clock we have some sense of the time. We can tell the difference between one second and one hour, and that can bring some structure to our lives. But there is a limit to this structure. Having a clock lets us know the time in a more precise way. In a similar way, the Church gives us a more precise measure of something for which we have a general sense. The Bible and the world are filled with the idea that evil exists, as does good. We have a sense of this like we have a sense of the time. But in the Church we have a more precise measure. If we take Jesus to define good, which, I grant, is to accept much about Him, then to follow Him is to have far more than a general sense of right and wrong2. The Church announces to the world a love and truth that is specific.
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The clock I repaired is not truly a clock in the strict sense. It has all the parts to display the time, but none to actually measure it. How it works instead is to rely on the power company. To be efficient, our electrical system must be very careful of the time, and it is. What the clock does is take this time and present it in a way we can understand. In a similar way, the Church takes Christ’s love for us and presents it in a way we can understand. The idea that God loves us can be distant and abstract. The action of one of His followers going to a war zone to care for others is tangible and concrete. The Church is not the source of truth, but it is a powerful expression3. Christ reveals truth through His Church, but that is not to say the Church perfectly reveals Christ. Like a clock, it might drift out of step with the absolute truth, and it might require correction. The Church is imperfect, much as the clock I repaired is imperfect. But this imperfection does not negate its worth. Christ desires the Church, the community of those who follow Him4, and perhaps this is a difference between a clock and the Church. We might discard a clock that is broken, but Christ would not discard a people that were broken. Through His life, death, and resurrection He fixed what was broken and created the Church. In existing, it tells us about Him and His love. This is part of its nature—part of its identity. 1 Cor 12 Jhn 15:9-17 3 Jhn 13:34, 35 4 Eph 5:25-27 1 2
Daniel Heywood is a PhD Candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford. He is a proud Nevadan and enjoys hiking in the hills of the Bay Area. Daniel attends the Palo Alto Vineyard Church and has also been involved in InterVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship on campus.
Fullness of Time Michael Fitzpatrick
What governs you? A “governor” is that which rules over, that directs or makes policy for. The things that govern our lives are the things that rule us, often in a hierarchy that reflects our deepest values the further up the hierarchy a governor resides. Lots of things can play the role of a governor, from money to fears to philosophical ideas or hopes about social justice. Governors can be good, bad or even neutral. I want to discuss a governor that I suspect we all share somewhere in our respective hierarchies. The governor I have in mind is the rule of time. Dates. Deadlines. Class schedules. Windows for sleep. Play time. My life is ruled by all of these little markers in my weekly planner. These marks tell me where to be, when to be there, and how much time I have in between. If I have a paper due the following day, often times the “window for sleep” will wane to a sliver as I madly work on the paper to get it finished before the approaching dawn. I measure my year in terms of quarters, of school obligations vs. vacations. Is this linear march of calendar days the only way to measure the significance of time? CHRONOS AND KAIROS One of the many exciting aspects of the Christian life is that it pushes us as persons to plumb the depths of our lives, to ask what all these activities and relationships and goals really amount to. Christian faith is no different with respect to time. The life of faith encourages the interrogation of the meaning of time. The more familiar way of thinking about the significance of time is in a quantitative manner, where time has the significance of being a dense ordering of moments that together add up to the trajectory of our lives. The twentieth century Anglican theologian John A. T. Robinson points to the Greek word for this kind of time, chronos. Chronos has its primary significance in adverbs like “now,” “before,” “after,” and “last.” The last thing is whatever comes in the series after all the other elements in the series. When our lives are governed by chronos (quantitative time), what we really care about is, e.g., whether we have enough time
before the relevant deadline, and other similar external relationships between moments of time. But Robinson also points to a second conception of time, the Biblical understanding of time, understood in a qualitative manner. The Greek term for this conception of time is kairos, where time is understood teleologically or according to a purpose. With kairos, Robinson writes, “the point of reference is a fulfilment of purpose rather than simple posterity [of moments one after another].”1 Whereas chronos is an impersonal ordering, kairos (qualitative time) is the understanding of moments of time relative to personal purposes that are fulfilled/frustrated, or in the process of being fulfilled/frustrated. The difference between chronos and kairos is the difference between what determines the shape and meaning time has. Chronos is determined simply by the physical ordering of events between two arbitrarily chosen moments, such as there being seven days in a week. Kairos is determined by the particular purposes that are being fulfilled/frustrated. Robinson uses the analogy of writing a book to mark the contrast: “It is the difference between a book whose scope and size are determined by the fact that it has to be completed and rounded off within a certain length of [pages] and a book whose pages stop with the print because there is nothing more to add.”2 To write in order to meet a physical page limit is a very different activity than to write until the story is fully told. These are not the same kinds of limits or goals. The significance of the distinction between chronos and kairos for the Christian lies chiefly in the biblical narrative itself being told according to kairos. Robinson argues that
the fundamental assertion made about time by the Bible is that it is God’s time. He is over it as its Lord. . . . Time, therefore, is a function of the Divine purpose and only truly to be assessed by reference to it. What we call history is not merely neutral succession of event, but God’s kairoi— moments of opportunity appointed by Him and decisive for me, in which His design is either 23 advanced or retarded.3
Whereas secular or profane time tends to be chronological, concerned with the accurate measure of second, minutes, hours, etc., sacred or holy time tends to be kairological, concerned with the discrete moments of God’s action, and our relation to those actions. The biblical narrative is structured by acts such as Creation, the Flood, the Exodus, the Ordaining of the Davidic Kingdom, Building the Temple, and the Exile. All of these saving and ruling acts of God find their culmination and ultimate expression in the Atonement and Rule of the Messiah, that ultimate incarnational act in which God and history become inseparable by the fullness of God being supremely manifest in the life of a first century Jewish itinerant preacher, Jesus of Nazareth. What God expects of humankind and how humans respond to God is primarily shaped by our place in this narrative of great acts. LIVING SACRED TIME As the Holy Spirit worked in the Church over the centuries after Christ’s earthly life, the Church slowly developed a way of bringing kairos to life in the practice of the Christian worshiping community. In the Old Testament of the Bible, God led the Israelite community to adopt a calendar of marking special seasons that corresponded with certain communal rituals or divine acts. Some seasons focused on great acts like atonement, the ritual of setting right the relationship of the community to God. Others seasons focused on anamnesis, or remembrance, such as remembering God’s great act of delivering the Hebrew tribes out of slavery in Egypt.
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Trinity Sunday, and in which the acts and letters of the early apostles are carefully studied and put into practice. Ordinary time essentially is the Church’s way of living in miniature what it does and has been doing for the past two millennia. The significance of this extraordinary and comprehensive alternate ordering of the calendar is that it prioritizes and magnifies the work that God has done, and sets these rituals and remembrances as of primary importance for our personal schedules. Since the Bible (the sacred scriptures of the Christian community) is a narrative, the liturgical year transforms our reckoning of time to make God’s narrative the primary determiner of significance, including our own. Donald Baillie, the Presbyterian minister, argues for the centrality of story in the liturgical life of the Christian:
There is a special advantage in basing our preaching of doctrine on the Christian year. It enables us to present the various doctrines as making up an organic whole instead of letting them stand apart. After all, the Christian message is more than an agglomeration of separate doctrines. It is more even than a system of doctrines. It is a story that has to be told and explained. When we observe the Christian year, from Advent through Christmas and Epiphany, Lent, Passiontide and Easter, Ascensiontide, Whitsuntide and Trinity, on to an other Advent, we are in a sense living that story The Church has followed a similar pattern, developing a liturgical over again; this gives us the opportunity of explaining calendar that also remembers God’s great acts, specifically God’s its elements (its doctrines) in a temporal sequence; work in Jesus the Christ, and enacts the rituals of the Christian which is their true sequence, because the community. The Christian calendar is divided into two halves, Christian message is the Christian story.4 the first half anticipating, celebrating, and remembering the life of Jesus, from his birth to his death and resurrection, and the sec- The Christian message is essentially what God has done in ond half allowing Jesus’ life to pervade the practice and growth of history, in the lives of those who came before us, in our own the Church. lives, and in those who will live this faith after us. The Christian year creates a cyclical drama that re-tells anew this great story, Within the first half of the year the Church has five seasons: so that those who are just coming to see their lives under kairos Advent, a season of hope and anticipation that is fulfilled with can experience it for themselves. It allows the Christian person the Birth of Jesus on the first day of Christmas; Christmastide, to put different parts of the story into practice in their lives and more commonly known as the Twelve Days of Christmas, a in their community. period of great feasting and celebration that is fulfilled with the visit of the Magi on the first day of Epiphany; Epiphany, the The life of following Christ calls us to be governed by Christ season remembering the early parts of Jesus’ ministry on earth, above all. No matter how important we students at Stanford including his great teachings, which is fulfilled on Ash Wednes- may think the demands of our jobs or the deadlines of our day, which begins Lent; Lent, a period reflecting Jesus’ forty days classes may be, those chronological markers can never have in the wilderness as a time of personal reflection and penance for the same ultimate value as the actions of God to demonstrate the ways we have broken our lives and the lives of others, which his great love for us. As St. Paul writes in his letter to the young is fulfilled with Holy Week, the remembrance and re-presentachurch in Rome, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in tion of Christ’s passion, death, and on the first day of Easter, his this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”5 glorious resurrection; and finally Easter, the fifty-day celebration of Christ’s victory over sin and death, in which he appeared to his This notion that God’s love for us is expressed through a great disciples and gave them their final commands, fulfilled at Pente- historical event being brought to the fruition of God’s purposes, cost, the gift of God’s Holy Spirit to the Church. underwrites St. Paul’s understanding of “the fullness of time” in his letter to the church in Galatia: “But when the fullness of the The entire second half of the year is devoted to a single season time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born unof “ordinary time,” or the time of the Church, inaugurated with der the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the
Law, that we might receive the adoption as [heirs].”6 Here we can see the story bursting through, that when the time was right and all things had converged on this ultimate purpose, then God sent Jesus to redeem those condemned as sinners to be adopted into God’s family. The Good News (Gospel) of Jesus is that all people, everywhere, can receive this adoption by joining their story to the divine story. It’s about letting what God did in the fullness of time become the fullness of our time. KAIROS IN COLLEGE Do you feel that your life is governed by the purposes of God, or is it governed by the steady march of your scholastic deadlines and our Gregorian calendar? How would your life look if instead it was permeated with the rituals and re-presentations of the mighty works of God? The Christian life is not the negation of chronological time, but rather the pursuit of its fullness, the fullness of kairological time, God’s work in history and our lives. One way to practice kairological time is through visual aids. The University Hill Congregation in Canada has produced a remarkable calendar to help re-orient our lives around kairos, rather than chronos.7 The calendar is organized by the aforementioned seasons of the Christian year, rather than the months of the Gregorian calendar. So, the year begins with Advent, not January 1st. At Christmas, you will find an entire page taken up with only the Twelve Days of Christmas, with December and January running together on the same page. Easter gets six weeks to its page. This wonderful ministry graphically depicts the subordination of chronological time to the mighty works of God as remembered in the Church’s liturgical life. I encourage you to consider picking up one of these calendars before the start of the next Advent. But most importantly, if you’re ready to see life when God’s work governs us, rather than the impersonal march of time, find a worshiping community that ob-
serves the Christian year. Our transformation into people who live the mind of Christ was never intended to be something we accomplish on our own. Rather, this is a work of God in us that is designed to find its fullness in the Church, the living, breathing community of Christ that reflects God’s works out into the world. Nor should we miss the urgency in St. Paul’s letters that we choose God’s kairos over the world’s chronos without delay:
[Y]ou know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand!8
John A. T. Robinson (1950). In The End, God. London: James Clarke & Co., 1958, p. 44. 2 Ibid., p. 45. 3 Ibid., p. 46. 4 Donald Baillie (1957). “The Preaching of Christian Doctrine,” in The Theology of the Sacraments. New York: Scribner’s, p. 145. 5 Romans 5.8 (NIV). 6 Galatians 4.4-5 (NASB). 7 https://christiancalendar.squarespace.com/ 8 Romans 13.11-12 (RSV). 1
Michael Fitzpatrick is a Ph.D candidate in Philosophy at Stanford. He holds an MA in Literature, and enjoys studying theology whenever he can find the time. Michael worships with a number of local Anglican communities, most prominently at St. Ann Chapel in Palo Alto. He’s a liturgy nut and loves learning the theology and history behind liturgical vestments, rituals, music, and calendars.
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about
VoxClara
Vox Clara is a student-run journal of Christian thought at Stanford. We seek to provide a forum through which students can explore and discuss the meaning and role of faith in their lives. We are trying to give an account for the hope that is within us; the hope that we cherish and derive from our relationship with Jesus Christ. We engage the university community as Christian scholars, artists, thinkers, workers, students, children, parents, lovers, and sufferers. We affirm the Nicene Creed and believe the voice of Jesus Christ is the true voice, which forms the foundation of our hope and strength. His voice has impacted the way we view our disciplines, personal lives, and communities. For this reason, we have chosen “Vox Clara,” a Latin phrase meaning “clear voice,” as our name. We do not wish to impose our beliefs, but rather to serve as faithful conduits of our Christian faith to everyone at Stanford who, like us, is searching; searching for meaning, for truth and for Love.
Staff Christos Makridis, President Laura Clark, Vice President Dorothy Kang, Chief Design Officer Pablo Garcia, Financial Officer Antonio Aguilar, Staff Editor Sarah Thomas, Staff Editor Amy Wang, Staff Editor
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Augustine Collective Vox Clara is part of the Augustine Collective, a network of over twenty student-led Christian journals on college campuses across the United States. The Augustine Collective supports journals that seek to reinvigorate thoughtful conversation about faith on their campuses by showcasing an array of essays, reviews, art, and poetry inspired by the conviction that the Christian Gospel encompasses the whole of life itself. The Collective is named after St. Augustine, who serves as a guiding light because of the breadth of his intellectual projects, his commitment to the unity of truth, and his enduring legacy in many branches of Christianity and in the academy. For more information, visit augustinecollective.org. Other college campuses with journals include: Bowdoin, Brown, Calpoly San Luis Obispo, Claremont McKenna, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Middlebury, MIT, St. Olaf, Swarthmore, UC Berkeley, University of Minnesota, UPenn, UT Austin, Vanderbilt, Washington University in St. Louis, Wheaton, Williams, and Yale.
Special thanks to Carlos Armenta and Folger Graphics, Grace Ho Wang, & Lisa Ann Yu
Contributors Glen Davis, Michael Fitzpatrick, Daniel Heywood, Anne Hulsey, Liz Cooledge Jenkins, Kevin Khieu, Aldis Petriceks, Taylor Seaton, Jonathan Wheeler, Lisa Ann Yu, & Jiaming Zeng
Next Steps Would you like to engage with someone about an article you just read? We would love to speak with you about an article you read, an idea you encountered, or your experience with community at Stanford. Email us at voxclarastanford@gmail.com.
Would you like to make a submission for the next issue? We welcome submissions in the form of articles, fiction, poetry, artwork, and photography. The deadline for the next issue has yet to be determined, so please email voxclarastanford@gmail. com if you are interested in submitting a piece for our next issue; we would love to discuss your ideas with you! For more information on how we select submissions for publication, please visit https://voxclara.wixsite.com/voxclara/writersguide.
Would you like to join our staff? If our vision resonates with you, and you would like to help us engage with the campus on issues of faith and thought, we invite you to join our staff! We are always looking to expand our staff and need people to help with the editorial, design, distribution, and vision-casting processes. We also welcome one-time editors who can provide input on articles on a one-time basis. Email us at voxclarastanford@gmail.com.
Contact Us Email: voxclarastanford@gmail.com Website: voxclara.wixsite.com/voxclara
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And as You speak A hundred billion galaxies are born In the vapor of Your breath the planets form If the stars were made to worship so will I I can see Your heart in everything You’ve made Every burning star A signal fire of grace If creation sings Your praises so will I And as You speak A hundred billion failures disappear Where You lost Your life so I could find it here If You left the grave behind You so will I I can see Your heart in everything You’ve done Every part designed in a work of art called love If You gladly chose surrender so will I I can see Your heart Eight billion different ways Every precious one A child You died to save If You gave Your life to love them so will I Like You would again a hundred billion times But what measure could amount to Your desire You’re the One who never leaves the one behind
lyrics from So Will I by Hillsong Worship