Wednesday, May 10, 2006
John Patrick came to town last night.
My buddy John Patrick, MD came to town last night and we had a terrific get-together, with around fifty docs, spouses, students, residents, etc. in attendance.
He started out with a statement by a friend of his who is on the road to conversion from atheist, to theist, and perhaps someday to Christian. "It's very difficult for you Christians to fight an enemy that has an outpost in your head."
He spent some time discussing the conversion experience and how personal it is. It differs for each of us. John suggests taking the time to write your personal story down, and to note that yours will be different from anyone else's. The four steps of confessing God, confessing Jesus, confessing sin, and accepting grace are a nice formula and are useful, but don't explain the experience for anyone really. It is a form of "real knowledge" that defies clear verbal expression. It is like describing your spouse so someone else can recognize them, vs the instant recognition that we experience across the room. It is like the expert cook (DenverDocWife comes to mind) who just knows the right feel for dough, the surgeon who just does an operation better, the violin maker who knows exactly how much wood to take off. Acknowldege the mystery, the metaphor, the poetry.
There was an aside about science and faith. It is an article of, well, faith these days that science and faith are enemies. But John mentioned the story of Michael Faraday, the great electrical physicist, who had strong Christian faith and never missed his prayer meetings. He also mentioned that scientists work with metaphors all the time: an atom is not a tiny billiard ball, or a miniature solar system, but that metaphor works for us. Despite 80 years of trying, however, we don't have good metaphors for Quantum physics. An electron is not a "wavicle!"
(Oh, cool, a whole page of CS Lewis quotes!)
He then moved on to talk about what church and repentance are for. He began with the famous Lewis quote from Mere Christianity, which I can't find exactly right now, but which basically says that repentance is NOT something that God demands and could do without if He chose, but is really a description of what coming to God is actually like. There is the quote from John 14:15, "If you love me, you will obey what I command." So, it begins to look like we should worship NOT to FEEL better, but to THINK better. (And when you think better, sometimes you feel worse!)
The talk transitioned to recognizing moral relativism. Orwell (1984) thought the government would be able to control all input to people, but that could not be achieved. Huxley (Brave New World) thought people would come not to care about the truth. Huxley had Soma, the drug; we have Television. John read from Peter Kreeft's book, A Refutation of Moral Relativism. Note: I love Kreeft's work. He is a philosophy prof from Boston College. His webcast on evil, using Lord of the Rings as a backdrop, is terrific. He can write clearly and simply, and is a great model of strategic question-asking. Other books of his I have read include Making Sense of Suffering (something all physicians should read) and The Best Things in Life, dialogs with some college students and professors.
John suggests that we read the Kreeft book at a desk, and outline the arguments after each page, so that we too can deal with this problem in the doctor's lounge or with our teenage kids. He thinks writing a Precis is a great skill to cultivate in this regard.
He went on to suggest books by Annie Dillard. She gives a nice 4-part answer to the question, "why do you believe?" (Unfortunately I did not get the exact book for this one.)
1. The rare subjective experience of God, perhaps 2-3 times in a lifetime. (I have one such and it is amazing.)
2. Knowing other people who know and love God
3. Beauty, appears to be a gratuitous gift to humans.
4. The absolute lack of mercy in Nature, and our abhorrence against that fact.
From a medical point of view, he discussed his talk on abortion that he has given dozens of times now at medical schools across the land. He says whenever you are tempted to make a statement, bite your tongue and consider a question instead. His talk on abortion is available on line.
He also discussed a child he met who had cystic fibrosis and was a willing subject in some of his nutritional experiments. (John did work on malnutrition in Africa, and extended the work in Canada to kids with CF.) This child asked him why, if he prayed for recovery, he didn't get it? Instead of just blowing the kid off, which several other people had done, John told him that if he believed, and believed that God truly had his best interests at heart, that maybe he had coughed enough and it was time. Brings tears to my eyes today. But he said the child and his mother relaxed, and in turn, John began once again to live his faith with his patients.
He started out with a statement by a friend of his who is on the road to conversion from atheist, to theist, and perhaps someday to Christian. "It's very difficult for you Christians to fight an enemy that has an outpost in your head."
He spent some time discussing the conversion experience and how personal it is. It differs for each of us. John suggests taking the time to write your personal story down, and to note that yours will be different from anyone else's. The four steps of confessing God, confessing Jesus, confessing sin, and accepting grace are a nice formula and are useful, but don't explain the experience for anyone really. It is a form of "real knowledge" that defies clear verbal expression. It is like describing your spouse so someone else can recognize them, vs the instant recognition that we experience across the room. It is like the expert cook (DenverDocWife comes to mind) who just knows the right feel for dough, the surgeon who just does an operation better, the violin maker who knows exactly how much wood to take off. Acknowldege the mystery, the metaphor, the poetry.
There was an aside about science and faith. It is an article of, well, faith these days that science and faith are enemies. But John mentioned the story of Michael Faraday, the great electrical physicist, who had strong Christian faith and never missed his prayer meetings. He also mentioned that scientists work with metaphors all the time: an atom is not a tiny billiard ball, or a miniature solar system, but that metaphor works for us. Despite 80 years of trying, however, we don't have good metaphors for Quantum physics. An electron is not a "wavicle!"
(Oh, cool, a whole page of CS Lewis quotes!)
He then moved on to talk about what church and repentance are for. He began with the famous Lewis quote from Mere Christianity, which I can't find exactly right now, but which basically says that repentance is NOT something that God demands and could do without if He chose, but is really a description of what coming to God is actually like. There is the quote from John 14:15, "If you love me, you will obey what I command." So, it begins to look like we should worship NOT to FEEL better, but to THINK better. (And when you think better, sometimes you feel worse!)
The talk transitioned to recognizing moral relativism. Orwell (1984) thought the government would be able to control all input to people, but that could not be achieved. Huxley (Brave New World) thought people would come not to care about the truth. Huxley had Soma, the drug; we have Television. John read from Peter Kreeft's book, A Refutation of Moral Relativism. Note: I love Kreeft's work. He is a philosophy prof from Boston College. His webcast on evil, using Lord of the Rings as a backdrop, is terrific. He can write clearly and simply, and is a great model of strategic question-asking. Other books of his I have read include Making Sense of Suffering (something all physicians should read) and The Best Things in Life, dialogs with some college students and professors.
John suggests that we read the Kreeft book at a desk, and outline the arguments after each page, so that we too can deal with this problem in the doctor's lounge or with our teenage kids. He thinks writing a Precis is a great skill to cultivate in this regard.
He went on to suggest books by Annie Dillard. She gives a nice 4-part answer to the question, "why do you believe?" (Unfortunately I did not get the exact book for this one.)
1. The rare subjective experience of God, perhaps 2-3 times in a lifetime. (I have one such and it is amazing.)
2. Knowing other people who know and love God
3. Beauty, appears to be a gratuitous gift to humans.
4. The absolute lack of mercy in Nature, and our abhorrence against that fact.
From a medical point of view, he discussed his talk on abortion that he has given dozens of times now at medical schools across the land. He says whenever you are tempted to make a statement, bite your tongue and consider a question instead. His talk on abortion is available on line.
He also discussed a child he met who had cystic fibrosis and was a willing subject in some of his nutritional experiments. (John did work on malnutrition in Africa, and extended the work in Canada to kids with CF.) This child asked him why, if he prayed for recovery, he didn't get it? Instead of just blowing the kid off, which several other people had done, John told him that if he believed, and believed that God truly had his best interests at heart, that maybe he had coughed enough and it was time. Brings tears to my eyes today. But he said the child and his mother relaxed, and in turn, John began once again to live his faith with his patients.
