Socrates' Tree and Tragedy

I seem to recall something I'd heard awhile back, and now that I recall it, in the foggy shadows of my mind, I cannot for the life of me confirm the veracity of the thing I surely do recall!  In any case, bear with me reader, I'll recount and truths or half truths we'll run with it, it is a trivial observation regardless.

The thing I recall:

Socrates is walking with... well those who walked with him, taking mental notes to recount later on scrolls and the like. In any case the topic of idealism comes up, as a case for divinity, the argument from Socrates going something like this:

Close your eyes. Imagine the perfect tree.

Open your eyes. Has any tree met your imagination's ideal of the perfect tree?

The answer to the rhetorical question is of course "no". Such trees as real ones fall short of the mark in some way, shape or form. That is the nature of natural imperfection, a flaw exists somewhere, a discrepancy from the ideal. (Now I should add that this is all based upon a premise, and that premise would go something like this:           THE DIVINE = PERFECT             Simple enough eh?) So in the search for perfection, we can imagine, but we cannot naturally obtain. Nonetheless, dear Socrates demands we reach beyond the superfluous lack of evidence to something more profound. His conclusion from this little experiment is simple: our imagination of the perfect object implies something rather profound. Socrates would state (as I recall it) that imagining the tree proves two things, it's existence  and the potential for divinity  Not divinity in the natural sense of our current existence but rather the evidence that we can grasp at it, and this is key: as a characteristic of our own divine nature.

Those of you with Christian learning (I won't offend you or myself in assuming you also have belief, this digression is simply a mental exercise) Perhaps have made a connection, harking back to... or forward rather... to the Apostle Paul: II Cor. 4:18. "Ah ha!" You say, this must be a similar concept. Indeed I would purport it is. You see, the Eternal = Divine = Perfect. Paul continues with this into several further points but the above equations are only further verified. (As a note, this is a lazy exercise, so spare me concerns on the deeper inquiries surrounding the infinite and the like and keep your eyes fixed on the tree.

C.S. Lewis proffers a similar ideal in his argument for morality and a divine imperative. It's contained in the early chapters of Mere-Christianity but I can't recall exactly where, besides you should read the whole thing. It is an engaging encounter with good ideas but you need not agree with everything Lewis says. First of all he's no longer hear to condescend if you do, and secondly he was British, they're only right 99% of the time.

And finally, my own postulation: Read Matt. 18:23-35. Good? Now read Hamlet.

I for one am particularly fond of Tragedy. Perhaps one of the most stimulating aspects of such an affinity is this: Seeing the point of no return. The moment when the hero's plans, or the subject's schemes are turned onto their course of disaster. That final letter that did not make it (but what if it had?) the moment of indignation rather than grace (but what if forgiven?!) That peak of ecstasy before the battle turns (But what if the enemy line folded??) You see, the terrible, the disenchanting, the often macabre... they demand something of the audience! Especially in the second telling, the replay, the next reading. Knowing demise, all the more we reflect and strive to imagine the alternatives. The special set of circumstances that would make such stories, tales of success, of escape or of ecstasy. Anything but tragedy!

See were I with Socrates, I'd take him to a tragedy. I'd point at a bleeding heroine draped upon the heavy vase before the veneer of a throne room and say "here too is a tree, old chap". Tragedy evokes something in me, a baser nature, a desire to right the wrongness of the play and all too often of reality. It is a inherent quality of the healthy human, to desire goodness in all one's stories. (Affinity for otherwise is unedifying (and potentially unsound) and saying this by no means implies that man is not inherently evil... and that is a premise I will digress on another day)

But rightness is never perfect. Ask anyone in full candid conversation, and you will never find it. For the natural world defies our base hope for a good ending. It forces us to throw in with the tree: our base desire for deity, and now our tendency to replay a plot in our minds to get a happy ending. Socrates and tragedies have more in common than a cup of poison (I seem to recall that's how he died). They appeal to our core, a gut that demands something greater than the rotting brick of this earth; that hasn't sprouted a perfect tree since Eden  or a happy ending since the death of God's son on a tree, meant he'd rise from the grave.

Just a thought...

(If you can recount the actual article from which I pulled this reminiscence of a discourse, I would be obliged)

Delivering the harder Truths...

How does one stand against sin... and still prove they love a sinner?

When my father would punish us we knew first what we had done wrong... and also what our punishment would be.

Often it was a spanking, a firm hand smacking us on our behinds, sharp and stinging, we heard one phrase most often:

"This hurts me more than it hurts you."

No, my Dad wasn't speaking of his calloused hand's suffering upon our denim covered bottoms. He was speaking his heart. It pained him, in his love of us, to punish us. 

My parents knew right from wrong far better than my siblings and I. So the punishment was just: it was adequate to answer for the transgression. That is to say we had it coming. Still my Dad took no pleasure in delivering the penalty.

As followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we do not possess the hand which smites every ungodly act and its perpetrator. We do however hold in our hearts proof of the inescapable verdict. 

So then Brothers and Sisters. When you feel the burden of the sentence you carry. The one you've been freed of through the unwarranted suffering of the absolute Sacrifice... When you see that the unsaved demand you admit to believing the truth of God's word, that all have sinned, that many acts of the flesh, of the world and in the Devil are damning; furthermore that this belief implies they too are doomed... Remember this image:

My father crying.

He'd administered the punishment, holding me in his arms with tears of compassion, as I clung to the torso of the one man I  had but a moment before feared more than death itself. 

If we could but convey the same love for those to whom we are called to deliver the truth to! If our hearts broke not only for falleness in friends, strangers, enemies and relatives, but moreso for the pain that calling 'broken' what is broken causes us! How might this change the reactions the cracked vessels which wander this blue marble to our righteousness! If our demeanor and sincere reaction to such a task be made clear to those that stumble, perhaps they might understand the love of our Savior in our broken-heartedness! God I pray so, I hope that I might have the heart of my Dad as he punished me when I am addressing the unsaved. And I praise God that we were only given truth to be truth, not as a sword but as a constant reminder of a kingdom that is coming, and is already here in the hearts which know Jesus!

This is how we might deliver harder truths; and by God's grace not be misunderstood as bigots and righteous do-gooders. This love distinguishes wrong from wrongdoer, without pushing aside the need for grace; it is the persuasion of those that love the lost, and only under compulsion of a greater love can we utter anything contrary to the ways of the lost.

Be compelled I beg you, but show your true heart also! So that your Heavenly Father's judgement may be made manifest in all it's holy justice, working upon the hearts of the fallen, compelling them to repentance,  that more souls may be named in the book of life, and called also to spread His love for humanity in His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ!