Does God Exist?

Still Life, 1862
Henri Fantin Latour

Let's start at the most basic level of religious faith. I believe in God. There may be social and family reasons for how I got to be this way, just as there are social and family reasons for why you are they way you are. But when I try to be reasonable and test my inherited belief in God, I cannot escape His reality.


Suppose I try to go back a million billion trillion years to imagine the nature of original reality. What was it like? What I see is the stunning fact that, on the far side of reality so to speak, there was a fifty-fifty possibility that original reality was a Person rather than a gas. Just think of it. Since whatever originally was has always existed, there are absolutely no causes that could have disposed that original reality to be a gas rather than a person. Every reasonable person must admit that, from the far side of past eternity, it was, you might say, a toss-up. Maybe some undefined stuff would exist -- or maybe a Person!


Admitting the reasonable possibility that ultimate reality could be personal has a way of freeing you to consider subsequent evidence more openly. My own inescapable inference from the order of the universe and the existence of human personhood and the universal sense of conscience (moral self-judgment) and the universal judicial sentiment (judgment of others who dishonor us) -- my own inference from all this is that Ultimate Reality is not impersonal, but is indeed a Person. I simply find it impossible to believe that the human drama of the centuries, with its quest for meaning and beauty and truth, has no deeper root than molecular mutations.


-John Piper

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Ah, John Piper.

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The Paris Review에서 Roberto Bolaño 책을 통째로 준다고 해서,
2주전쯤 구독신청하고 기다리고있는 중이다.
마침 엊그제 출근길 버스안에서
The New Yorker Fiction Podcast로 그의 단편을 들었는데
뭔가 무라카미 하루키같다 생각했었다.
오늘 아침 이 글을 보면서
이렇게 생각한게 나뿐만이 아니라는 것이 반가웠다.

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어쩌다보니 Keith Jarrett 티켓이 열린지 몇시간 안되서 편리하게 예매가 되었다. thanks.

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엊그제 점심, 세종 지하 아티에서 칼국수에 마늘 오방 들어간 김치를 잔뜩 먹고나와
그 옆 스타벅스에서 커피를 주문하고 기다리면서
한 2년만에 연락하는 것 같은 녀석과 통화를 하는데
갑자기 목소리가 실제가 되어 떡하니 눈앞에 나타나는 것이 아닌가.
반갑긴 한데 이것참 민폐가 될까 입은 못열겠고.
대충 손짓 발짓으로 "안녕? 오랜만이야- 그럼 안녕-" 하고
웃기지도 않은 인사를 하고
회사에 들어와 양치를 하고 바로 전화를 걸어 내일 점심이나 같이 하쟀다.
그새 회사를 옮겼는지 바로 코앞에 있을 줄이야.

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꼬맹이들 감정 싸움에 오늘 내 등 터졌다.
쿨럭.

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who am i to cast the first stone?

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"be kind to your inner clown."