(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Therefore I Am, originally shared on September 21, 2020. It was the forty-ninth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
How do you know you exist? It seems obvious,
but we are increasingly in isolation from our society, from one another, and
from even ourselves. Who am I, and how can I know? We’re going to give you some
tools for not only being certain of who you are, but more importantly your
great value in whose you are, and why!
A horse walks into a bar and says to the
bartender, “Bring me a bourbon, and keep ‘em coming.” The bartender says, “Hey,
aren’t you the same horse that’s been coming in here, ordering the same thing
every day? Don’t you think you might be an alcoholic?”
“No,” the horse says, “I don’t think I am.”
And he disappears.
Now to understand this joke, we’ve got to go
back a few years, first to my Junior year in high school. OK, more than a few
years. Mr. Carlton Lewis taught world history. Mr. Lewis is certainly among my
top 10 best teachers (not necessarily my favorite teachers. I’ve found that my
best teachers have not necessarily been my favorite teachers). I have had few
teachers since then who have exposed me to more new ideas than Mr. Lewis.
Each of us in the class had to choose an
aspect of life in some century and bring a report to the class. I chose 17th
Century European Philosophy.
One of the philosophers of that era that
made a deep impression on me was a French philosopher named Rene’ Descartes. He
is most famous for his statement, in Latin, “Cogito ergo Sum”, or in English, “I
think, therefore I am.”
This is a well known answer, but what is the
question? Well, thanks for asking.
But first, let’s get back to the horse. I
could have explained who Descartes was, and what he said, before I told that
joke. But that would have been putting Descartes before the horse. <laugh
button>.
“I think therefore I am” is Descartes answer
to some basic philosophical questions. Like, how do I know that I exist? How do
I know that I am not just a character in someone else’s consciousness? Answer: “I
think, therefore I am”. And, is there
any idea of which I can be certain? Answer: “I think, therefore I am,” because
even if we doubt that statement, we know that we are doing the doubting. Therefore
we exist.”
We’ve had a lot of time lately to ponder
these kinds of questions, haven’t we? What insights have helped you solve a
problem, or sustained you during the pandemic? Share your answers below.
The pandemic seems to be getting worse in LA
county again, with a spike in cases that some attribute to a lack of
precautions taken over the Labor Day Weekend, and some saying is because we are
doing more testing. But, either way, there are more cases that we know of.
We’re at a point now where our social
isolation is taking an increasing toll on how we function as a society and how
we see ourselves within our society. We are losing the ability to live together
in any kind of diversity.
We had, on top of everything else happening
in 2020, an earthquake in our area last Friday. And, before we could absorb
that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died over the weekend, creating
a vacancy whose filling will even further polarize the national dialogue.
One of the many things for which Justice
Bader Ginsburg is being praised is her friendship with Justice Antonin Scalia,
a conservative, on the other end of the ideological spectrum, serving on the
same court. That kind of collegiality is rare today, and we are the poorer for
its absence.
Video calls and Zoom meetings are better
than nothing for learning and practicing how to live within a community. You
know, Covido ergo Zoom.
And, I have to say, I think either we are
getting used to them or they are getting better. Last night’s Emmys show was
actually mostly funny and entertaining. But, for those of us of the Christian
faith, who believe our lives are lived in relationship, to God and with
one-another, the absence of the “with one another” life can become a challenge.
The answer is a mystery. Not a mystery in
the sense that it is a problem to be solved, but as a reality that can’t be
resolved. We can only receive the answer to that mystery as a gift. It comes as
a gift of God’s love, love shown to us on the cross. Love, in relationship with
the one true living God, that mysteriously binds us together with all the
baptized believers who have every existed, all who are alive today, and in a
really weird way, with all those who have yet to be born. We are given the gift
of faith. That is, a living relationship with the living God. There is no time
in God.
*Psalm 8
We are loved and valued by the one true
living God! That is a wonderful thing to ponder.
I remember going to visit an older member of
the congregation I served in San Dimas who lived to be 98 years old. I came to
see her one day when she was in her mid-nineties. She said that she had been
spending a lot of time pondering.
She remembered that when her father had
become quite full of days he would sit in a chair and, when people asked him
what he was doing he would say, “Pondering”. Our member said that she pondered
many things, but recently she was pondering toothpaste. She was trying to
remember when it was that she began to use toothpaste. She said that she
thought it was some time during World War II.
We’ve had a lot of time to ponder. How do I
know I exist? What are human beings? Mere mortals?
*Genesis 1:26-27
Here
is how I know that I exist, and who I am, and that the answer is not centered
on me. God created me. Therefore I am.
Why
did God create me? that is the question. The answer is for a living
relationship with the one true living God. Among all the things being created in
God's image means, that is the most important, because it gives me the answer to
another question. Who am I? We answer it with another question, “Whose am I?”
I
am created by God. I am God's son or daughter, I am beloved by God.
*John 3:16
We
have a common identity even in our separation from one another. Nothing can
separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. That is our identity.
*Romans 8:31-39
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