Causality has always been a problem for my mind, and probably every other human mind on the planet. We’re never quite sure if one event caused another or vice versa, its the “chicken and egg” dilemma. It’s hard to write off coincidence. The mere fact that things coincide is a little mysterious. I’d like to think that in some permeating way, everything coincides with everything else, which in turn coincides, ad infinitum. We just only recognize these relationships when we’re paying attention; sort of like playing six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Who knew a man could be so close to being in the cast of both “12 Angry Men” and “Home Alone 2″?
So, what brings about all this Zen talk about permeance and coincidence? Well, it happens to me all the time, and usually the causality issue is pretty easy to solve. I get introduced to some new idea, or enthusiastic about an old one and all of the sudden everything around me becomes some sort of validation of that thought. I’ll share an example from the past week. For my job, which I love, I have certain training and continuing education obligations I have to keep up with. These are usually a little bit of a pain, but for the most part informative and somewhat helpful in the long run. That is until recently. About a week or two ago, I was informed that the “class” (we rarely ever enter an actual classroom, mainly read a few books and write a few papers) that I am scheduled to begin is a class on apologetics. This upsets me on a couple of different levels. One, I’m about thirty grand in debt because of a very hard earned degree from a fine institution in the field of Philosophy and Religious Studies. After five years invested in the study of world religious thought and the philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and theology that underpins it, you could guess my reaction when asked to take an apologetics class. In the words of Amy Poehler, “Really?” Moving past my gross arrogance, there is (as promised) another reason this impending “educational opportunity” disquiets me. In evangelism, apologetics is about as useful as the office of Vice President. It’s good to know it’s there, but if we ever actually resort to using it, we know something has gone terribly wrong. Classical apologetics, while very mildly useful in evangelism, is more of a security blanket for psuedo-intellectual Christians to discuss loudly over coffee at Starbucks in hopes that some disinterested agnostic may hear the brilliance of the cosmological argument, and immediately repent from his wicked ways. As one of my professors used to say, “Apologetics is the comfort of believers, more than the stumbling block of skeptics.” This is especially true with the teleological argument (argument from design), which is the apologetic argument I seem to hear the most. It basically states that the Universe and its contents are so intricately designed that they had to have had a designer. I agree. However, I know this argument has little force to a non believer.

I know this because I don’t drink vintage wine. I consider myself a pretty cultured guy, but truth be told, if I was given a taste of Chateau Cheval Blanc St. Emilion 1989, which goes for $450 a bottle followed by a glass of Red Truck that was bought at a Chevron, I’d like to hope I could taste the difference, but even if I did, I don’t think it would seem too substantial to me. Why? Because I’m not a wine connoisseur. I don’t make comments about full bodied tastes of herb and berry, dilutions in the center palate, or oaky finishes. I don’t even know what a dilution in the center palate is. I don’t play piano either. Just like the scene in Good Will Hunting, when I look at a piano, I don’t see Mozart. I see three pedals, some keys and a box of wood. But, I am a mystic, and when I look at the world I see the design. I see it as hand crafted: the work of the Living God. And the people in it; sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father, some prodigals, some returned, most somewhere in between. This is why the teleological argument makes sense to me, because I, as every other mystic, live each day in the midst of its truth. However, to the materialist (or anti-mystic) the teleological argument is akin to a seven dollar bottle of Red Truck or a child banging out chopsticks on the piano. This is exactly why apologetics fails as an evangelism tool.
So where does John Cusack fit into all of this? Well, going back to the eerie world of causality and permeance and coincidence that I live in, John Cusack appears entirely too often in my life to bring me to new realizations. The most recent of which involves my current predicament. I just finished watching a movie called Martian Child. It’s one of those under-marketed films that most people will never see, but is still probably better than most of the movies that Warner Bros and Paramount are force feeding us. Anyway, as is just about the case with every thought I’ve ever had, there is a movie scene that can be correlated with it. For some strange reason, most of those movies star John Cusack. What’s weird, I’m not even really a John Cusack fan. I think he is very talented and an amazing actor, writer and producer, but I don’t rush to the theater every time a new John Cusack movie comes out. But in this particular film John Cusack’s character summed up what I’ve been thinking about apologetics for a while now. In addressing the eclectic ten year old he’s adopted in the film he says this:

“Right now, you and me are here, put together entirely from atoms, sitting on this round rock with a core of liquid iron held down by the force of this trouble you call gravity, all the while spinning around the sun at 67 thousand miles an hour and whizzing through the Milky Way at 600 thousand miles an hour.. in a universe that very well may be chasing its own tail at the speed of light.. and amidst all this frantic activity, fully cognizant of our own imminent demise-which is a very pretty way of saying we all know we’re going to die-we reach out, to one another, sometimes for the sake of vanity, sometimes for reasons you’re not old enough to understand yet, ..but a lot of the time we just reach out .. and expect nothing in return. Isn’t that strange? Isn’t that weird? .. Isn’t that weird enough?”

This is what apologetics should sound like. Existentialism is a bad word to a lot of people I associate with. And I must confess, if i had the same understanding of existentialism they did, I’d think it a bad word, also. They believe that being an “existentialist” means believing only in, and putting the highest precedence on your own existence and nothing else. And this is the thought of many existentialist, especially in the past few decades. But many of the fathers of existentialism held two things in common. One, they had names that were ridiculously hard to pronounce or spell, like Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard, and two, they were devout theist; Christian, at that . They were constantly wrestling with the problem and beauty of existence, all the while realizing that everything that exists derives its existence from God.

We live in a generation of existentialists, whether we are aware of it or not. Unfortunately, most of us are modern existentialist, concerned only with our own existence and unable to look outside ourselves. This would be quite tragic if it weren’t for Tolstoy (and Cusack) reminding us of Luke 17:21. “…the Kingdom of God is within you.” As Cusack’s character relates, the weirdest, craziest thing about the universe has nothing to do with atoms or gravity or astrology. The weirdest thing is that we exist for a finite period of time and we long for relationships. This is the Kingdom of God with in us. This is where apologetics should start. Relationships are the key to meaning in the universe, not the cosmological argument. No joy is every complete unless it is shared with another, and no pain is more severe than when a relationship is destroyed by sin or death. As Cusack’s character asks, “We just reach out and expecting nothing in return… Isn’t that strange? Isn’t that weird?” It is. Why do we do this? Luke 17:21. The Kingdom of God is within us. That’s why. This is undeniable to any person who is honest with his or herself. Even the brilliant atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell admitted in his personal journals that the “overwhelming passion” that had guided his life was the “longing for love”. To paraphrase Ravi Zacharias “The prodigal son did not return home because he heard an eloquent and reasonable argument of Thomas Aquinas on the existence of his father. No, the prodigal returned because he remembered the warmth of a home, the smell of a dinner table, and the embrace of a family.”