Grokking Gordon

To all who suffer,

Freedom is found in the futility of this world. So is despair. It is one of the enemy’s greatest weapons. It is most effective right before we would shrug off our woes and move into a true lifestyle of faith. Then, we are told we are ungrateful. We are told we are irresponsible. We are told we are behind schedule. We are reminded (as we often also remind others) of the imperfections we possess which are defined by temporal circumstance. We then withdraw back to the world experiencing a temporary reprieve as we are praised by its acolytes.

Am I suggesting that we put off worldly responsibilities so that we may better serve God? No. What I am saying is that we live with an attitude untouched by its burdens!

Alas, the trick is in the doing I suppose.

I think sometimes we forget that God is real. We then place our faith right below what is important. You see, faith doesn’t buy groceries. It also hasn’t helped the woman of my dreams find my doorstep (or maybe she’s really bad with directions). After I grab some food, marry the waitress, have some kids, and put the finishing touches on my kingdom then I’ll worry about faith. Until then I’m just too lonely and depressed. Oh, it’s true, many of us are too lonely and depressed. It’s because we flirt with the futility of mortality and therefore with freedom. We hold such knowledge at bay for certainly its embrace means destruction, right? No. Its embrace means freedom. In this freedom we fulfill our responsibilities but we also find eternal relief from despair. All the while we worship.

Oh, but again the problem isn’t in the understanding. It’s in the doing.

Have heart my friend — you are not alone.

Sincerely,

Gordon

Our world is not filled with answers.  It’s filled with patterns.

Therefore, there is freedom of choice.

You choose to believe nothing, or you choose to believe something.

What do you choose to believe?

Are they the same thing?  When filtered through a dark heart (mine is) are they the same thing?  When we seek one are we truly seeking the other?  Is there a semantics problem here?  How does culture come into play?  I want your thoughts.  Actually, in this case, I covet your thoughts.

*Bonus points for answering in haiku format.

*Double points if you actually reference a bible verse.

“But you know, God did put me there. It wasn’t a change I could see right away, but it turns out the change was in me.”

– The Stylist, Noticed

…but, until then these are two of my favorite people.  Let us stand together and raise a glass to crazy friends!

This is totally something my Mom could pull off.  If only she wasn’t so ethically sound.  Sigh.  Love you Mom!

You used my middle name to find Grokking Gordon on Google.

You spent over 10 minutes looking at what I have written.

You looked at “Letter from David” but neglected “Letter from Matt” and “Letter from Aaron.”

10 minutes?  I can’t get my good friends to pay attention to me for that long.

What did you think?  Did you find it entertaining, insightful, perhaps just a bit strange?

You now know so much about me, and I know so little about you.  Well, except that you use Google Chrome.

Very curious.  Curious indeed.

I’m just a normal guy struggling with his own existence, or I’m this thing…

I put on my leather jacket and drove to Barnes & Noble to hang out in the vampire section and pick up chicks (because that’s where they go.)  When, a brightly colored yellow binding caught my eye in the Christian Inspirational section.  I diverted my path and quickly started to read what I would later learn was a giant yellow Bible.  That is how I became a Christian — not really though.  I am lying.

– The End

I consider this the existential version of testing the strength of your confines:  To be stopped in mid stride by the breath taking realization that perhaps it is unnatural that you exist.  To stretch and twist your perceptions in a vain attempt to catch a glimpse of what you’re missing.  After all, you must be missing something.  Right?  Some recognize this struggle in an intellectual way.  For instance, through the study of probabilities and science.  Others actually experience it, feeling it in such a way which cannot be properly expressed to another. 

In Ludwig Wittgenstein:  A Memoir, Norman Malcolm writes:

Wittgenstein says in the Tractatus: ‘Not how the word is, is the mystical, but that it is.’  I believe that a certain feeling of amazement that anything should exist at all, was sometimes experienced by Wittgenstein, not only during the Tractatus period, but also when I knew him.  After writing this sentence I learned that Wittgenstein once read a paper on Ethics (at a date not known to me, but probably soon after his return to Cambridge in 1929) in which he said that he sometimes had a certain experience which could best be described by saying that ‘when I have it I wonder at the existence of the world.  And I am then inclined to use such phrases as “How extraordinary that anything should exist!” or “How extraordinary that the world should exist!”[1]

Such an experience is to reach the limits of ones possible understanding and perspective. 

How extraordinary indeed.

[1] N. Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (London: 1958) 70.