Tag Archives: Jesus

God is Gestaltian

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There’s a psychological school, theory, or effect (depending on who you talk to) known as Gestalt psychology. Gestalt is a German term meaning “essence or shape of an entity’s complete form.” Pretty heavy stuff.

The basic Gestalt effect is best summarized by the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There are a lot of different pictures and optical illusions that demonstrate the Gestalt effect. But here’s a relatively good one:

Instead of just seeing three Pacmen and three acute angles when looking at this picture, most people see a white triangle overlapping a black-outlined triangle and three black circles. That’s good ol’ Gestalt working hard.

The Gestalt effect, as a concept that was talked about, originated in the late 19th century. Until then, most people thought that if you studied a thing’s parts, you were studying that thing.

To the modern mind, ingrained with Gestaltian thinking, the idea that people didn’t consider the Gestalt effect seems absurd. I was pondering this absurdity when I remembered the words of Jesus in Matthew 18:20:

 For where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them.

And there it is. The truth of the Gestalt effect right there in the Bible. One person plus one person does not equal two people. It equals two people and God and a dynamic relationship.

Trusting Authority

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When I was applying to college, my mom made me go talk to people from a really boring small honors college at a university nationally known for being a top party school. I had my sights set on higher things, more studious places. I was going to be a real academic.

But I went, and after my first meeting with the assistant dean at the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University, I knew it was where I needed to be.

A little over three years later, I can’t imagine being anywhere else. Most of who I am today has been dependent on being part of the HTC or being a student at Ohio University. Sometimes, parents really do know what’s best for us.

When someone really cares about us and has more information than we do or a wider world view, they normally make decisions for us that we would make if we had all the information. That’s why I think my failure to not trust God is almost humorous.

God knows infinitely more than me. God cares about me infinitely. Why, then, would God want anything less than the best for me?

Sometimes I perceive God the way I perceived my mom when she was trying to get me to visit Ohio University. God wants me to give up what I really want in order to do something the way God wants it. But that’s not the way it is. God wants to stretch me so that I can consider the kind of options God considers for me.

Jesus said some stuff about this (Matthew 6:25-34):

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith? So do not worry, saying “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the pagans run after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

God is going to dress us in clothes brighter than the flowers. We have only to let Her or Him.

The Rhetoric of Evil

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Evil is around. A lot of people say that. Enough people say it that I think there’s probably some truth to it. But I often feel like I’m not actually understanding what’s evil. If you are liberal, you learn that conservatives are evil. If you are conservative, you learn that liberals are evil. And if you are in a class about rhetoric, you learn that institutions are evil.

I can speak to that last one because I am in a rhetoric course this quarter. And every week we learn how evil the American government and Hollywood are for misleading the public. Now, I’ve never been in the American government or Hollywood so I don’t know if I’m allowed to say what I’m about to say, but I’m gonna go for it anyway. I don’t think they mean to full us. I don’t think all of the producers in Hollywood get together at biweekly meetings and decide that this week they are going to use war-time propaganda to encourage war. And I don’t think the American government wastes meetings on how to best use domestication as a form of nukespeak.

I think sometimes we criticize others too harshly. How many times do we sit down and say, “I’m going to use rhetoric today to get my way?” I know I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t use it. It just means that the study of rhetoric is a useful tool for studying human behavior after the fact. It’s not predictive.

Evil exists, but it doesn’t exist in the places we most think we can identify it. It lives in all of those places where we convince ourselves that we are different than other people. It thrives on us believing that being conscious of rhetoric means that we should be put in charge of the world.

I was talking with a friend the other day, and I asked, “Why are people so confusing?” Instead of answering me (she never answers me), she said, “Isn’t it interesting that we always say that people are confusing. But it’s not like we are simple not-confusing people. I wonder what it would be like to not be confusing.”

Of course, she was correct. When a government uses seemingly rhetorical devices on its constituency, it’s doing so because it thinks it is somehow helpful. That doesn’t make it right. But it’s human. It’s something I can relate with.

Jesus said it really well back in his day and luckily somebody had the foreknowledge to get that stuff down on papyrus. “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye ” (Matthew 7:5). Why do we ever think that we have removed the log? That’s not the point of this verse. Evil laughs when we think we have removed the log.

What do you think of rhetoric?