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My post this week is out of character for me, so please be patient and forgiving with my seemingly negative attitude for what begins with judgment ends with appreciation and grace.\u00a0 This week\u2019s reading and writing led me down a very unexpected path, one that I hope, will also be an encouragement to my readers.<\/p>\n
I have taught writing for many years and although I still have a lot to learn about this subject, I know that there are some basic principles that make for good writing.\u00a0 The best suggestions I have ever seen in this regard came from the pen of William Zinsser.\u00a0 Zinsser says that there are four elements of good writing:\u00a0 clarity<\/em>, brevity<\/em>, simplicity<\/em>, and humanity<\/em>.\u00a0 We must be clear<\/em> with our meaning to our readers.\u00a0 We must say things in a concise<\/em> manner.\u00a0 We must not attempt to not shoot over the heads<\/em> of our readers.\u00a0 And, we must connect<\/em> with our readers on a human level.\u00a0 Although Zinsser was referring primarily to popular literature, I think these principles should also apply to academic writing.\u00a0 Murray Jardine, the author of this week\u2019s reading, The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society,<\/em> did not appear to heed Zinsser\u2019s advice.\u00a0 Suffice it to say that for me, this was overall an uncomfortable read.\u00a0 Jardine\u2019s writing was at times confusing, rambling, complicated, and unrelateable.\u00a0 His writing got in the way of his thesis.\u00a0 His own voice seemed to water down his arguments, even though he continuously reminded his readers what he was \u201carguing.\u201d\u00a0 Suffice it to say that this text was not my favorite reading the semester.\u00a0 However (and there is always a however), there were some good ideas in the text, and one of those was the notion that since humankind is created in the image of God, one of the attributes of being human is creativity<\/em>.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 This is true.\u00a0 But unlike God, who is holy and who creates only \u201cgood things,\u201d human creativity can sometimes be a dangerous quality to have, since humans have the capacity to create both good and evil.\u00a0 Humans are powerful.\u00a0 They are also free \u2013 free to create, free to destroy.\u00a0 History is filled with these stories of creation and destruction, and we must never forget these stories because our stories often become our realities.<\/p>\n A few years ago, I decided to join a class that was taught by a close friend.\u00a0 Although I was a teacher at the same college, I decided to join this class as a student.\u00a0 It was an amazing semester.\u00a0 I learned far more than I had expected.\u00a0 As I was a participant\/student in this class, Dr. Plies included me in the presentation assignments.\u00a0 One of the assignments was reading an article and then doing a ten-minute presentation to the class on that article.\u00a0 The professor had handpicked the readings for his students.\u00a0 The article he gave me was written by a Russian philosopher names Nikolay Alexandrovich Berdyaev, someone I had never heard of before that day.\u00a0 I was excited to read the article because it was written by a Russian philosopher\/theologian, and being Russian myself, I assumed that it would be an easy read.\u00a0 But I was wrong.\u00a0 The piece was dense.\u00a0 I had to read it again \u2013 and again \u2013 and again.\u00a0 Finally, after reading and reading, I had a breakthrough.\u00a0 In a nutshell, this article rocked my world.\u00a0 On the day of my ten-minute presentation, I was scared to death to share with a class full of students (my peers) and in front of one of the finest teachers I had ever known.\u00a0 But as I began to share, what I learned from Berdyaev came pouring out of me.\u00a0 It was as if time stood still.\u00a0 I found out later that I had gone for forty<\/em> minutes.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember how the class received my piece; all I know is that something happened in me that day.\u00a0 It was one of the highlights of my teaching and learning career.\u00a0 I will never forget that day.<\/p>\n Of creativity, Berdyaev writes, \u201cCreativeness always rises above reality.\u00a0 Imagination plays this part not only in art and in myth making but also in scientific discoveries.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 This idea of imagination caught my attention.\u00a0 Berdyaev continues, \u201cIn moral life the power of creative imagination plays the part of talent.\u00a0 By the side of the self-contained moral world of laws and rules, to which nothing can be added, man builds, in imagination, a higher world, a free and beautiful world, lying beyond ordinary good and evil<\/em> [italics mine].\u00a0 And this is what gives beauty to life.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Ordinary good and evil?\u00a0 These bring beauty to life?\u00a0 I could understand the good part\u2013but the evil part?\u00a0 What was Berdyaev trying to say?\u00a0 I had to dig deeper.\u00a0 Berdyaev then begins to talk about law and freedom, of perfection and of imagination:<\/p>\n Life can never be determined solely by law; men always imagine for themselves a different and better life, freer and more beautiful, and they realize those images.\u00a0 The Kingdom of God is the image of a full, perfect, beautiful, free, and divine life.\u00a0 Only law has nothing to do with imagination, or rather, it is limited to imagining compliance with, or violation of, its bequests.\u00a0 But the most perfect fulfillment of the law is not the same as the perfect life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Imagination may also be a source of evil; there may be bad imagination and phantasms.\u00a0 Evil thoughts are an instance of bad imagination.\u00a0 Crimes are conceived in imagination.\u00a0 But imagination also brings about a better life.\u00a0 A man devoid of imagination is incapable of creative moral activity and a building of a better life.\u00a0 The very conception of a better life, towards which we ought to strive, is the result of creative imagination.[4]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n As I read these comments again this week, I was instantly drawn back to some of our early readings from the term.\u00a0 Creative social imaginings?\u00a0 Why not?\u00a0 Imagination is a huge part of our lives.\u00a0 But left to our own devices, our imaginations can also create evil, hurt, and destruction.\u00a0 So was it worth it to God that He took a risk on humankind by making them in His own image, even though He knew the limits of their creative capacities?\u00a0 I think this is an important question, one that is not often addressed.\u00a0 Berdyaev helped me to think this through.\u00a0 He says that it is not the law that will free us, even though the goal of the law is to stand in the way of evil.\u00a0 Berdyaev says that we must \u201ctranscend the morality of law.\u201d[5]<\/a>\u00a0 But how?\u00a0 By \u201cputting infinite creative energy in the place of commands, prohibitions, and taboos.\u201d[6]<\/a>\u00a0 This might seem obvious, but it is not easy.\u00a0 How does one tap into this infinite creative energy?\u00a0 I think the first step is simply to acknowledge that God has actually given us such capacities.<\/p>\n Berdyaev then goes on to talk about beauty, time, the anxiety of future, and the \u201cethics of creativity.\u201d[7]<\/a>\u00a0 On pages 424 and 425 he then makes three claims.\u00a0 The first, \u201cEvery creative act which we perform in relation to other people \u2013 and act of love, of pity, of help, of peacemaking \u2013 not only has a future but is eternal.\u201d The second, \u201cGrace acts with liberty and cannot act upon anything else.\u00a0 A slavish mind cannot receive grace and grace cannot affect it.\u201d And the third, \u201cCreativeness is the gracious force which makes free will really free, free from fear, from the law, from inner dividedness.\u201d\u00a0 These claims took me back to readings from the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans, but in a new and fresh way.\u00a0 Then, Berdyaev drives home his major point.\u00a0 I would like to quote the author here since my own paraphrase would not do it justice (I asked you to be patient with me).<\/p>\n The paradox of good and evil \u2013 the fundamental paradox of ethics \u2013 is that the good presupposes the existence of evil and requires that it should be tolerated.\u00a0 This is what the Creator does in allowing the existence of evil.\u00a0 Hence, absolute perfection, absolute order and rationality, may prove to be an evil, a greater evil than the imperfect, unorganized, irrational life which admits of a certain freedom of evil.\u00a0 Absolute good which is incompatible with the existence of evil is possible in the Kingdom of God, when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and God will be all in all.\u00a0 But outside the Divine Kingdom of grace, freedom, and love, absolute good which does not allow the existence of evil is always tyranny, the kingdom of the Grand Inquisitor and the Antichrist.\u00a0 Ethics must recognize this once and for all.\u00a0 So long as there exists a distinction between good and evil, there must inevitably be a struggle, a conflict between opposing principles, and resistance, i.e., exercise of human freedom.\u00a0 Absolute good and perfection outside the Kingdom of God turns man into an automaton of virtue, i.e., really abolishes moral life, since moral life is impossible without spiritual freedom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hence our attitude of evil must be twofold: we must be tolerant of it as the Creator is tolerant, and we must mercilessly struggle against it.\u00a0 There is no escaping from this paradox, for it is in freedom and of the very fact of a distinction between good and evil.\u00a0 Ethics is bound to be paradoxical because it has its source in the Fall.\u00a0 The good must be realized, but it has a bad origin.\u00a0 The only thing that is really fine about it is the recollection of the beauty of Paradise.\u00a0 Is the struggle waged in the name of the good in this world an expression of the true life, the \u201cfirst life\u201d?\u00a0 And how can \u201cfirst life,\u201d life in itself, be attained?\u00a0 We may say with certainty that love is life in itself, and so is creativeness<\/em>, and so is the contemplation<\/em> of the spiritual world.\u00a0 But this life in itself is absent from a considerable part of our legalistic morality, from physiological processes, from politics, and from civilization.\u00a0 \u201cFirst life,\u201d or life in itself, is to be found only in firsthand, free moral acts and judgments.\u00a0 It is absent from moral acts which are determined by social environment, heredity, public opinion, party doctrines \u2013 i.e., it is absent from a great part of our moral life.\u00a0 True life is only to be found in moral acts in so far as they are creative.\u00a0 Automatic fulfillment of the moral law is not life.\u00a0 Life is always an expansion, a gain.\u00a0 It is present in firsthand aesthetic perceptions and judgments and is a creatively artistic attitude to the world, but not in aesthetic snobbishness.[8]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Finally, Berdyaev closes his piece with the following claim: \u201cTheologians have not sufficiently understood that freedom should not be forced, repressed, and burdened with commands and prohibitions.\u00a0 Rather, it ought to be enlightened, transfigured, and strengthened through the power of grace.\u201d[9]<\/a>\u00a0 So how does all of this apply to our lives?<\/p>\n We are creative creatures.\u00a0 Jardine and Berdyaev agree on this point.\u00a0 But Berdyaev takes this creativity and turns it into freedom.\u00a0 He indicates that it is our greatest strength and should be the focus of our lives in a sinful world and in our sinful selves.\u00a0 Our connection with creativity is a direct connection with God.\u00a0 And rather than spending our time in legalistic wrestling matches with evil, we should be creating a world that is reminiscent of Paradise.\u00a0 All around me I see Christians caught up in grumbling, in dissatisfaction, in anger, in self-centeredness, and in frustration.\u00a0 But I also see others who have chosen to use their creative imaginations to build a better world \u2013 in spite of the inherent evil in the world.\u00a0 Perhaps it is time that we heed the call back to \u201cfaithful presence,\u201d to \u201csocial imaginings,\u201d to \u201cgood religion,\u201d and to optimistic and creative spirituality.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd God saw all that He had made (created) and said that it was very good.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n __________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n I would like to close with the three questions I posed to the class on the day of my Berdyaev presentation.\u00a0 Perhaps these questions will take you deeper in your own thinking on the Berdyaev commentary.<\/p>\n 1. \u00a0How are you like God?\u00a0 What good things can you create with your imagination?<\/p>\n 2. \u00a0Why do we worry about the future?\u00a0 Can I change the future?\u00a0 How?<\/p>\n 3. \u00a0Can I understand good without having an understanding of evil?\u00a0 Should we get rid of all evil or is evil a \u201cnecessary evil\u201d in our lives?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Murray Jardine. The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society: How Christianity Can Save Modernity from Itself<\/em> (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004) 234.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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