christianity | Mohammad Moshtaghi

All That Is Made

Tue, 09 Jul 2019 12:00:00 -0700

This book is a celebration of the Creator God who created all that is made and invites us as humans into a continual process of co-creation. It is a purposeful urge to reorient our making away from idols of productivity or self-promotion and towards others and the world. It is a gentle reminder that God has delighted in our existence since before we knew him, and continues to delight in what we bring, albeit imperfect, broken, and lacking. We do not earn our keep; it is lavished on us. So we, in turn, pour ourselves out for others through our making, trusting the perfect Creator to use our humble gifts in magnificent ways.

Jesus invites us into a generous creating—a creating that does not fear, that is not self-conscious, and that is generative in purpose… ultimately our art should be generous. A gift. A thing given over and over and over because we are called to be love to the whole of the Earth.

— All That Is Made, page 22.

All That Is Made is a guiding hand in reimagining creativity as an aspect of all humans instead of an elite few. We are all made in the image of God, so we all carry the desire to create, to make, and to build. This frees us from constructs of who is creative and who is not, and the pressures that come with each (the pressure to produce and the feeling of inferiority, respectively). And in that freedom, All That Is Made argues that we should all take part together in boldly reimagining the world as it should be, on earth as it is in heaven, with all the elusive stepping stones between here and there.

It is our artists, our poets, and our entrepreneurs who remind us that how it is right now, is not how it always will be. It is creatives that remind us that the arc of the universe bends towards God’s justice. It is creatives that both give voice to our suffering and imagine a world in which it is not wasted.

— All That Is Made, page 15.

If nothing else, All That Is Made did for me what it advocates for all creativity to do: to bring healing, restoration, and hope. As a mathematician and computer scientist, I’ve endured a lot of boxes being put around me in how formulaic or robotic my thinking and work must be. Against the backdrop of tech culture, passion projects feel worthless without a monetization strategy. I’ve been afraid that I don’t know what I need to know to make an impact.

But I know that this work is creative. I know that it is generative in purpose. And I want my making to be a gift to those around me: I want to give it all away. Open-source, easy to use, and out in the world to be used however God and others might use it. This has always been true in my heart of hearts. To see my desires spelled out on beautiful pages was both relief and clarity. Reflecting on it invokes something deep and emotional in my soul.

Creatives who follow the way of Jesus are called to give away every last trade secret, every lesson learned, every skill set acquired, and lots and lots of art.

We are blessed to be a blessing.

We are creative, not for ourselves, but for the flourishing of humanity. We start companies, not for personal gain but to reimagine the marketplace as a place of generosity. We make things so that our communities are filled with the creative energy of God, allowing the next generation to join in the work of ushering in shalom.

— All That Is Made, page 29.

Hallelujah. Amen. May it be so.

Notes

Geoff Gentry gifted this book to Annie and I, hoping that it would be something useful to reflect on. He was right.

Mapping Your Academic Career

Fri, 29 Sep 2017 12:00:00 -0700

I had set myself on the path of a PhD when I picked this book up at Urbana 2015, and hoped to read up on some guidance. When finally getting a chance to read it a year later, however, I found myself flipping through the life of professor — not a discussion of how best to center my life around Jesus while navigating graduate studies! In a conversational but direct manner, Burge describes the life trajectory of a faculty member in three main stages, each with their own goals, challenges, and successes. Taking the position of an amateur developmental psychologist (himself a professor of New Testament theology), he divides the three main cohorts of professors not by age, but by maturity.

Cohort 1 is concerned with finding security, Cohort 2 with finding success, and Cohort 3 with finding significance. Burge fills out a structured outline for each in his short text, first discussing the marking characteristics of each group, then warning against a series of common failures and difficulties, and concluding with the moments that define the closing of a cohort. It’s a helpful collection of list-like information, which makes searching for information easier.

Coupled with conversations with my advisor on the academic life, Burge provides a good framework for understanding a faculty’s personal and professional progression. While not all of it is anywhere near relevant to me right now, it acts as a high-level road map for understanding what’s to come.

The Meaning of Marriage

Sat, 01 Jul 2017 12:00:00 -0700

This book is an informative, gospel-based discussion of marriage based on a sermon series Keller gave in 1991. Rooted in equal parts theology, pastoral experience, and lives lived as husband and wife, the Kellers address topics ranging from the vision of a Christian marriage to spouses' individual relationships with Jesus to singleness to sex and beyond. Their clarity and simple speech make accessible the depth of their study and wisdom, while their anecdotes offer the humor and practicality necessary to understand these truths against the backdrops of our own interactions with married life. The main text is well attended by footnotes, which often point to helpful resources and candid insights. But underlying every discussion is the constant call back to the very nature of God, and that focus allows anyone — teens, singles, marrieds, widows, or divorcees — to learn something from this book.

I came to this book during a time of pre-engagement, searching for answers I didn’t have questions for, laden with a sense of how much I didn’t know but needed to know before diving into a lifetime of relationship. The Kellers' focus on the gospel, though elementary, provided the logical, relational, and structural basis I could plant myself on while seeking answers in the rest of their writings. While “Some Practical Counsel for Marriage Seekers” (p. 237–249) offers a comprehensive list of things to think about when one finds themselves in the stage I’m in, I found myself gravitating more towards the theoretical, conceptual constructs around marriage: the commitments to sacrificial love with justifications fleshed out beyond “because Jesus sacrificed”; a discussion of gender differences while using scalpel-like precision to cut away the cultural baggage in tow; and a beautiful image of striving towards our true selves as an answer to the day-to-day frustrations encountered in living so intimately with another messy, broken human.

The most radical idea for me is a consequence of eternal commitment: in marriage, the frustrations and shortcomings of ourselves and our partners are entirely effects of sin which obscure the true nature of a person, but it is that true version which we bond ourselves to in marriage. Some scattered quotations on the matter:

Within this Christian vision for marriage, here’s what it means to fall in love. It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of the person God is creating, and to say “I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, ‘I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!'” Each spouse should see the great thing that Jesus is doing in the life of their mate through the Word, the gospel.

— The Meaning of Marriage, page 132.

If you don’t see your mate’s deep flaws and weaknesses and dependencies, you’re not even in the game. But if you don’t get excited about the person your spouse has already grown into and will become, you aren’t tapping into the power of marriage as spiritual friendship. The goal is to see something absolutely ravishing that God is making of the beloved. You see even now flashes of glory. You want to help your spouse become the person God wants him or her to be.

— The Meaning of Marriage, page 134.

…What keeps the marriage going is your commitment to your spouse’s holiness. You’re committed to his or her beauty. You’re committed to his greatness and perfection. You’re committed to her honesty and passion for the things of God. That’s your job as a spouse. Any lesser goal than that, any smaller purpose, and you’re just playing at being married.

— The Meaning of Marriage, page 135.

While I’m not entirely in agreement with the handling of gender norms in this book (though they are still more progressive than one might expect), many other ideas were very helpful. I could see myself coming back to these ideas time and time again to get a healthy dose of perspective in the midst of my laughable, honest, heart-wrenching attempts at knowing and being known, loving and being loved. But for now, this has given me a little more confidence to take the first step.

Many people have asked me “How can you tell whether you’ve got a friendship on which you can base a marriage?” The answer that Kathy and I have always given is this. When you see the problems in each other, do you just want to run away, or do you find a desire to work on them together? If the second impulse is yours, then you have the makings of a marriage. Do you obsess over your partner’s external shortcomings, or can you see the beauty within, and do you want to see it increasingly released? Then move forward. The power of truth that marriage has should hold no fear for you.

— The Meaning of Marriage, page 159.

The Bronze Bow

Wed, 18 Jan 2017 12:00:00 -0700

This story is a powerful one, using Israel at the time of Jesus not as a backdrop but as a fully manifested world. Daniel, a teenager by our standards but a grown man by theirs, makes a vow to live and to die for God’s Victory, a victory he believes can only be achieved when the despised Romans are driven from their land. His desire for his people to be free quickly and characteristically becomes marked by an intense hatred for the Romans, and this hatred becomes the very fabric of his existence. However, as his friendship with scholarly twins Joel and Thacia develops and he adopts the responsibility of caring for his sister, he bruises himself against the rigidity of his own resolve, all the while being lured inexplicably to the words of the teacher Jesus. The tension between his longing for the destruction of the oppressor and Jesus’s countercultural message of a Kingdom already come wage a war in Daniel’s mind as he gathers recruits to fight for The Cause. But it requires everything that Daniel had put his hope in — The Cause, his self-sufficiency, and his hatred — to fail him before he encounters Jesus radically and transformatively, giving him a way to be at peace with everything he had run from and with everything he would now live into.

Reading this book made me feel a kind of pained longing that I don’t usually feel. I read it in a time of my life marked by dryness: the absence of a pulsing, vibrant relationship with God. And every time Speare depicted Jesus speaking to the children, whispering to the crippled, or touching the lame, my heart ached. I began to crave that Jesus, the giver of life and hope to the lonely and rejected. I wanted so badly to see him more — much more than Daniel did most of the time, which left me frustrated in watching Daniel accidentally but continuously perpetuate the very brokenness that haunted him instead of turning to the one that breaks every chain.

As frustrated as I was with Daniel, it’s clear that the Jews of Israel were much more frustrated with Jesus. The Zealots wanted him to repel the forces of Rome, but he would not fight. The people of Capernaum wanted him, but not all understood him. The crowds wanted to crown him king, but instead he slipped away into the hills at night to pray. And yet, he upheld that the Kingdom of Heaven had come. While much of the “history” is familiar and biblical, The Bronze Bow provides a window from which to watch people grapple with their own expectations as they looked for deliverance from a situation they deemed “all wrong,” “backwards,” and “not what God would want.” I think there’s an important lesson to be learned there.

“If he is the Messiah, how soon will he lead us against the enemy?” Simon walked on for a time without answering. Finally, he spoke. “He will never lead us against Rome, Daniel. I have given up all hope of that.”

[…] “Then why do you stay with him?” All the boy’s bitterness broke through the reproach.

“Where else could I go?” Simon answered.

“What has he offered you that is worth more than Israel’s freedom?”

“He has offered me the kingdom.”

Daniel’s anger was rising. “When do you think you’ll have this kingdom?”

“You will not understand this,” said Simon. “In a way, I have it already.”

“That’s fine!” the boy’s scorn was close to tears. “You have the kingdom! You can shut your eyes while all around you–”

“I have not shut my eyes,” said Simon. “I know well enough that nothing in Israel is changed. But I know that it will be, even if I never live to see it with my own eyes.”

“Listen to me, Daniel,” he went on. “You’ve seen him caring for those people — the ones so low that no one, not I or anyone else, cared what happened to them. When I see that, I know that the God of Israel has not forgotten us. Or why would He have sent Jesus to them, instead of to the rich and learned? Like a shepherd, he says, who will not let any of his sheep be lost. I’m a poor man, and ignorant, but I know now that with a God like that I am safe.”

[…] “What has he done to prove it? How do you know you’re not risking your life for nothing?”

“We can never know,” Simon answered slowly. “God hides the future from man’s eyes. We are forced to choose, not knowing. I have chosen Jesus.”

— The Bronze Bow, pages 243–244.