Thomas Paine and the Bible, Third Part

Readers of the Age of Reason should not assume that Paine is in step with all positions of modern critical scholarship. One way that he is out of step with the results of modern scholarship is his view of the canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Judging by the current state of scholarship, Paine correctly understood that the gospels were anonymous and that their authors were not eye witnesses; that they contradicted one another in many ways both large and small; that they were written many years after the times they describe by persons he described as “half-Jews”¹⁶ (meaning, I gather, that they were from a mixed culture); that they were not written by apostles.¹⁷ He thought, however, that the canonical gospels were independent of one another,¹⁸ whereas the dominant position in modern scholarship postulates that a literary relationship exists between Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source drawing on another source no longer extant (Quelle, “source”) for material Matthew and Luke shared but does not exist in Mark. The dominant position on the Gospel of John is that John was written independent of the other three gospels.

            Paine, however, was not really interested in advancing the cause of critical scholarship of the Bible. He was primarily interested in the Bible only as a means of debunking Christianity as a religion of revelation, for Christians argued that the Bible was the word of God, God’s revelation to the world. Paine, on the other hand, argued that it is “fraudulent” to classify the Old and New Testaments as “being all revelation”:

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrible cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the divinity, the most destructive to morality, and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist. It is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such imposter and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit among us. Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Old Testament is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious wars, that have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man? The lies of the [Old Testament] have been the cause of the one, and the lies of the [New Testament the cause of ] the other.¹⁹

Nevertheless, Paine should probably be regarded as something like an “independent” scholar in the history of biblical scholarship. In contemporary language the term means that the individual so designated is not connected to an institution of higher learning, but has the requisite credentials and demonstrated learning to be included among the “guild” of scholars. In Paine’s case he would qualify as a scholar who demonstrated sufficient knowledge of the subject to be taken seriously by others in the field of the critical study of religion. “Layman” is an ecclesiastical term, meaning that that an individual is not ordained clergy, and hence would not be familiar with the professional knowledge of clerics. This term is surely not appropriate for Paine because of his demonstrated hostility against both the church and members of the clergy. As a deist, he would not want to be associated in any way with traditional Christianity.

Although his writing does not reflect the discipline of a mind academically trained, his insights were original for his day. He deserves to be included among the vanguard of modern critical scholarship and required reading for theological seminaries.

Paine deserves the last word. To close this essay, here is a challenging comment from Thomas Paine completely dismissing the entire theological enterprise as practiced in a Christian context, which relies on the Bible for its data:

The study of theology as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no conclusion. Not anything can be studied as a science without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.²⁰

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹⁶Paine Collection, 217, 219.

¹⁷Paine Collection, 210-16.

¹⁸Paine Collection, 212, 216.

¹⁹Paine Collection, 222.

²⁰Paine Collection, 225.

Thomas Paine and the Bible, Second Part

It is surprising to me that, although my graduate education was in the critical study of the New Testament literature in its historical context, I never read Paine’s Age of Reason. I cannot recall offhand that anyone ever cited Paine as a part of the history of biblical criticism. Because of the character of his book, one would think that at some point I should have encountered Paine’s work since he preceded both D. F. Strauss and F. C. Baur in describing the importance of mythology and its influence on Christianity and was interested in the historical Jesus before Ernst Renan.¹

Paine’s writings reflect a better than competent knowledge of the content of the biblical texts. Although he lived at a time when public education was not compulsory, on his own initiative he read in translation many of the Greek and Roman classics, especially in the sciences.² He was basically self-educated with respect to the biblical texts yet he anticipated many of the positions that critical scholarship has come to hold today.

            For example, Paine anticipated the necessity for textual criticism, a basic approach to the Bible in modern criticism, but did not have the requisite skills or training to follow it through. Textual criticism is an investigation of the ancient manuscripts of the Bible with a view to producing a version of the biblical texts that restores the readings of the originals.³

It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as they now appear under the name of the Old and New Testament, are in the same state in which those collectors say they found them; or whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up.⁴

The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of a universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of willful alteration, are of themselves evidence that human language, whether in speech or in print cannot be the vehicle of the Word of God.—The Word of God exists in something else.⁵

Paine’s Age of Reason is a part of the Quest for the historical Jesus, an attempt to separate what can be known of the historical man from the Christ of early Christian faith. Paine viewed Jesus as the son of God “in like manner that every other person is; for the Creator is Father of All.”⁶ The canonical gospels do not present a “history of the life of Jesus Christ but only detached anecdotes of him.” Little is known of his childhood.

Where he lived, or how he employed himself during this interval, is not known. Most probably he was working at his father’s trade, which was that of a carpenter. It does not appear that he had any school education, and the probability is that he could not write, for his parents were extremely poor, as appears from their not being able to pay for a bed when he was born…Jesus Christ founded no new system. He called men to the practice of moral virtues and the belief of one God. The great trait in his character is philanthropy.⁷

The public career of Jesus was short, lasting “not more than eighteen months.”

            Paine raises the issue of traditional material being found in the Bible, meaning that it was not invented by the author in composing the text in which it appears but was material passed down until its inscription. For example, he says of the Genesis account of creation:

[I]t has all the appearance of being a tradition which the Israelites had among them before they came into Egypt; and after their departure from that country, they put it at the head of their history, without telling, as it is most probable that they did not know how they came by it.⁸

The canonical gospels he regarded as “founded upon tales, upon vague reports, and put together by I know not what half-Jews, with but little agreement between; and which they have nevertheless published under the names of the apostles of our Lord…”⁹ The recognition that the Bible contains traditional material anticipates at least two contemporary critical approaches to the biblical literature: Form Criticism (the attempt to identify oral forms in Old and New Testaments before they became incorporated into the biblical texts),¹⁰ and Tradition Criticism (the study of Hebrew and Christian oral traditions).¹¹

            Here are a few of the conclusions that Paine shared with contemporary critical scholarship: Moses did not write the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible);¹² the Book of Proverbs was not written by a single author but it is a collection;¹³ David is not the author of the Psalms; they are rather a collection;¹⁴ and the canonical gospels were not written by eyewitnesses.¹⁵ It seems clear that Paine shared the critical spirit of modern scholarship.

            The third part of Thomas Paine and the Bible will follow.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹Paine Collection, 148, 153, 156, 161, 170. See Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1968) 1968. For Strauss, pp. 68-77; for Renan, pp. 180-92. For F. C. Baur see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Christian_Baur

²Paine Collection, 172, 186.

³W. Randolph Tate, “Textual Criticism,” in Interpreting the Bible. A Handbook of Terms and Methods (Hendrickson: Peabody, MA, 2006), 368.

⁴Paine Collection, 158.

⁵Paine Collection, 160.

⁶Paine Collection, 161.

⁷Ibid.

⁸Paine Collection, 158,

⁹Paine Collection, 217.

¹⁰Tate, Interpreting the Bible, 137-38.

¹¹Ibid., 374-75.

¹²Paine Collection, 186.

¹³Paine Collection, 159.

¹⁴Paine Collection, 200.

¹⁵Paine Collection, 216.

Thomas Paine and the Bible, First Part

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was an English-born American. As a youth he attended an English Grammar School (Thetford) for five years (1744-49) before he was apprenticed to his father as a corsetmaker at age thirteen. Later as a master corsetmaker he opened his own shop in Sandwich, Kent in England. He emigrated to America in 1774 at age thirty-seven, where he blossomed into a political activist, philosopher, political theorist, revolutionary, and Bible critic. He is best known for his political pamphlet (1776) Common Sense that had a profound influence on the common folk of the American colonies leading them to support the cause for independence from England.¹

            He was born into a religious family (his father was Quaker and his mother, Anglican), but he himself in his maturity described himself as a Deist, which meant the following to Paine:

I believe in one God, and no more, and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.²

The true deist has but one Deity; and his religion consists in contemplating, the power, wisdom, benignity of the Deity in his works [i.e., nature], and endeavoring to imitate him in every thing, moral, scientific, and mechanical.³

When we behold the mighty universe that surrounds us, and dart our contemplation into the eternity of space, filled with innumerable orbs revolving in eternal harmony, how paltry must the tales of the Old and New Testaments, profanely called the word of God, appear to thoughtful man.⁴

            Paine was severely critical of organized religion of any sort⁵ and particularly harsh in his condemnation of Christianity and “revealed religion”:

The Christian mythologists, calling themselves the Christian Church, have erected their fable, which for absurdity and extravagance is not exceeded by anything that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients.⁶

As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of atheism; a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of man-ism but with little deism, and is near to atheism as twilight is to darkness.⁷

[T]he church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and revenue in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.⁸

            He had no documented formal training in biblical criticism and did not know Latin or the biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew.⁹ Nevertheless he wrote several pamphlets critical of the Bible, which were collected to form the Age of Reason¹⁰ by applying what scholars have later come to know as “literary criticism” in analyzing the biblical texts. Basically his analysis relied on human reason and common sense in reading the texts. What is surprising is that he claimed to have written Part One of the Age of Reason without access to a written Bible at the time of writing but rather he was writing from memory.¹¹

Paine was arrested in France on charges of treason and jailed in the French prison at Luxembourg on December 28, 1793.¹² His release was secured by his friend James Monroe on November 4, 1794.¹³ Before he was arrested, he hurriedly finished Part One of the Age of Reason, and entrusted it to a friend, as he was on his way to prison.¹⁴ While he was in prison, Part One was translated into French and published without Paine having proofed it.¹⁵ Not knowing what might happen to him or the manuscript he had written, Paine says he committed it through his friend Joel Barlow “to the protection of the citizens of the United States.”¹⁶ Part Two of the Age of Reason was written in the home of James Monroe while he was recovering from his incarceration of nearly a year. Monroe found him in prison “more dead than alive from semi-starvation, cold, and an abscess. It was not supposed that he could survive.”¹⁷

After his release from prison, he acquired “a Bible and a Testament,” and commented “that I have found them to be much worse books than I had conceived. If I have erred in anything, in the former part of the Age of Reason, it has been by speaking better of some parts than they deserved.”¹⁸

Much of Paine’s critique of the Bible in the late 18th century surprisingly parallels many of the insights of contemporary critical biblical scholarship. Paine’s critique of the Bible and modern critical scholarship will be the subject of a second essay to follow.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine

²Thomas Paine, Thomas Paine Collection. Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, An Essay on Dream, Biblical Blasphemy, Examination of the Prophecies: Age of Reason (1793-94), 152. [No editor or publication information given.]

³Paine Collection, 173.

⁴Paine Collection, 233.

⁵Paine Collection, 152.

⁶Paine Collection, 156.

⁷Paine Collection, 167.

⁸Paine Collection, 162.

⁹Paine Collection, 169-70, 172.

¹⁰Age of Reason consists of two parts and a never published third part, consisting of several essays: an Essay on Dream, Biblical Blasphemy, Examination of the Prophecies, Appendix; and an essay entitled, My Private Thoughts on a Future State: Paine Collection. Table of Contents.

¹¹Paine Collection, 183.

¹²Luxembourg Prison was formally a palace but turned into a prison during the French Revolution:  https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/thomas-paine-is-arrested-in-france#:~:text=Thomas%20Paine%20is%20arrested%20in%20France%20for%20treason.&text=Paine%20moved%20to%20Paris%20to,for%20crimes%20against%20the%20country.

¹³Paine Collection, 149.

¹⁴Paine Collection, 183.

¹⁵Paine Collection, 145, 183.

¹⁶Paine Collection, 183.

¹⁷Paine Collection, 149.

¹⁸Paine Collection, 184.

CHRISTMAS IN AMERICA

               Christmas in America has something for virtually everyone—even Scrooges and Crachits.  Ancient customs (Christian and non-Christian) and modern secular traditions have become so intermingled that it is difficult to distinguish the individual trees from the Christmas forest.  Christmas in the marketplace now begins before Thanksgiving and ends sometime after the beginning of the New Year (or whenever you take down the tree).  Merchants capitalize on every aspect of Christmas from Rudolph to the crèche, and entertain our shopping with both secular and religious Christmas music. Marketing at Christmas is highly successful, and we all have the mood to be separated from our money—gift giving and/or donating to obscure charities (after a second trip to the wassail bowl, perhaps). Commercialism is not all bad, however.  In many ways, what is good for the marketplace is good for the country, and what is good for the country generally translates into chickens in our Christmas pots.

 

               True, the season has deep religious roots—a lot of different ones, in fact.  We are reminded of a Judean lad born in Bethlehem.  But before Christians started celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25th (in the 4th century!), the Roman Empire had long celebrated Saturnalia, an agricultural festival incorporating many of the same customs we still observe today at Christmas.  Saturn was a venerable deity in Italy fabled to have reigned during a period of peace and happiness.  December 25th was also celebrated both as the birth of the Unconquerable Sun and Mithras, the Persian deity of light.  The ancient Jewish Feast of Hanukkah (the festival of lights) celebrating the rededication of the temple and Judean political independence also falls in December.  The customs and symbols of these non-Christian festivals have merged with the Christian, and we Americans celebrate them all during the winter solstice season with lights, candles, gift giving, family gatherings, shopping, evergreen trees, and garnishes of holly and mistletoe.  Somehow it all seems to make sense—even to largely Christian America.  There is something distinctly egalitarian and democratic in our celebration.  The "huddled masses," the "wretched refuse" from foreign shores, brought their religious customs with them, and we later generations have woven them all together (menorah, piñata, wassail bowl, parties, Santa Claus, Saint Nikolas, babe in Bethlehem, Christmas tree, midnight Mass, and yule log) into one textured tapestry of solstice traditions.

 

               I like the diversity.  The commercialism enriches the complexity of the season.  But it is difficult to know if it all truly fits together.  What meaning do we find in the collage and clash of our Christmas customs?

 

               We make little distinction between the secular and the religious.  We enjoy the secular festivities of the season, the cycle of parties and receptions, the tinsel and colored lights, foodstuffs and spirits; with equal gusto we sing "White Christmas," "Have a Happy Jolly Christmas" and "Little Town of Bethlehem." Yet lurking in the back of many minds is the sobering claim that some 2000 years ago the secular was invaded by the holy, and recalling that often occasions a momentary reflective pause in the festivities.

 

               Making sense of the diverse symbols and customs, and finding a comprehensive reason for the Christmas season is challenging.  Of course, some people have all the answers and dismiss the significance of everything except the lights at the end of their own myopic tunnels.  I, however, try to embrace all the diversity of the season.

 

               In reflective moments I see the American winter solstice season symbolizing a primal search for stability, happiness, and security in the world.  Faced by the uncertainty of our future, these traditions, as different as they are, serve to anchor the spirit.  We return to them annually because of the emotional comfort they bring.  They nourish a deep-seated hope in Western culture, best expressed for me by the ancient Israelite longing for the advent of an ideal ruler, whose eternal reign will be characterized by peace, justice, and righteousness (Isaiah 9:7).  All people of good will (Luke 2:13-14) share such a hope, and celebrating it in an American Christmas seems appropriate for a nation of immigrants.

 

Charles W. Hedrick

 

This essay appeared in the Springfield News-Leader sometime before 2006 and was later published in Hedrick, House of Faith and Enchanted Forest. American Popular Belief in an Age of Reason (Cascade, 2009), 70-71. It appears here in revised form.

Pondering the Repeal Election

This essay on the recent repeal vote on Springfield city ordinance 6141 was published in the Springfield News-Leader on April 13, 2015.

 

In the days and weeks leading up to the repeal election I was surprised and disappointed at certain voices publically raised in behalf of the repeal: a bishop, a mega-church pastor, a leader of an international religious denomination, as well as numerous pastors of local churches.  These religious leaders urged their memberships to vote to repeal city ordinance 6141, which extended anti-discrimination protection to lesbians, gays, bi-sexual, and transgender (LGBT) citizens in the city of Springfield with regard to housing, employment, and public accommodation.  They succeeded in convincing many of us that the election was about religious freedom rather than simple fairness.

The ostensible reason for their descent into hard-knuckle political activism was to protect religious liberty.  What that means in practical street language is that business owners who shared what was touted as the biblical view of marriage (one woman to one man) would not have to participate in LGBT marriages (i.e., by providing flowers, food, clothing, and/or facilities, etc. for the ceremony).  In other words, they argued that their religious views be accepted as legal justification to deny service to those citizens who did not share their religious views.

The fact that certain business owners, with the vocal approval of certain religious leaders of Springfield, apparently intend in the future to deny service to LGBT citizens was justification for affirming city ordinance 6141.

We live in a representative democracy in a secular state, where we elect our representatives who in turn make our laws, which seek to allow the greatest amount of personal liberty to the largest number possible (that is the ideal at least); we do not live in a theocracy, where religion mandates how we should conduct our lives (as would be the case, for example, in an Islamic state, or a Christian state).  Our system of government is secular (in spite of certain "Christian" trappings), and no particular religion, even though it represents the majority, should be permitted to impose its religious views on citizens who do not share those views.

The idea that "my" religious ideas can be used as a justification for causing harm to others is insidious, for it implies that religious ideas are more important than the civil rights of all citizens in a secular state.  Perhaps they truly believe this, but, if consistently applied, it will eventually turn a secular state into a theocratic state.

The public voices of the religious leaders were less than candid with their various constituencies by suggesting that the Bible reflects one particular concept of marriage, for the Bible reflects a range of ideas on the relationships between men and women—something they should have known.  What was noticeably lacking in their common opposition to city ordinance 6141, however, was a lack of compassion for the situation faced by the LGBT community, one of the "least of these" (Matthew 25:45) in contemporary society.  Perhaps that was their greatest leadership failure on this issue (Mark 12:29-31).

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Are Religion and Science Incompatible?

          Certainly not!  Well, maybe.  Perhaps!  Probably!  In the final analysis it will depend on who you ask, and what Science and Religion are about (I capitalize the words to indicate their status in modern Western culture as iconic institutions).  Science comes from the Latin meaning knowledge (knowing) and Religion also comes from the Latin meaning piety (fear of the gods).  If I were to ask my question in terms of modern Western culture it might be something like this: is Athens (ultimately the original source of the scientific spirit in the West) incompatible with Jerusalem (ultimately the original source of religious piety in the Christian West)?

          Here are two helpful descriptions of Science and Religion I found on the internet.  They are necessarily broad.

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

On the other hand, Religion is a set of variously organized beliefs about the relationship between the natural and supernatural aspects of reality and the role of humans in this relationship.

Two other more narrowly framed descriptions from my own experience are these: Science raises questions about everything and answers them by experimentation; Religion provides answers to everything and discourages questions.  I realize that narrow definitions are easily challengeable, but from my experience these latter two catch up the spirit of what Religion and Science seem to be about. Here are several contrasting statements about Religion and Science.

1a On the basis of observable phenomena (viz. the universe is expanding) Science attributes the origin of all things to the "Big Bang," but does not speculate about what preceded it.

1b Religion attributes the source of everything to God before the Big Bang.

 

2a Religion must affirm a nonphysical spiritual world, because God is intangible Spirit and hence does not "exist" in time and space.

2b Science only investigates aspects of the physical universe.

 

3a Religion is prone to superstition and spiritual magic.

3b Science undermines any Religion prone to superstition (from the Latin: unreasonable religious belief) and spiritual magic (viz. any manipulation of the physical by spiritual means).

 

4a Religion demands faith.

4b Science demands experimentation and repeatability.

 

5a Science proceeds on the basis of natural cause and effect.

5b Religion posits God as the ultimate cause of whatever happens in the universe.

An example of a clash between Science and Religion was occasioned by Charles Darwin's book, The Origin of the Species (1859).  Darwin offered scientific evidence that plant and animal life evolve from lower life forms over time by means of natural selection.  The default explanation for the origin of the species in the Christian West is that God created all things; in short human beings did not evolve from lower life forms.  Darwin offered physical evidence; Christianity cited the Bible in response.  What counts in Science are evidence and a logical argument.  What counts in Religion in the Christian West is obedience to God, in deference to the Bible and church dogma.  Christianity will eventually lose this debate, as it did the debate about the nature of the solar system (click here to read my blog, "Down the Rabbit Hole," April 26, 2014).

          Christianity's belief in a spiritual world will not be engaged by Science, since Science only investigates aspects of the physical world.  Christianity therefore wins this non-debate by default. Christianity's affirmation of the nature of spiritual reality is directly challenged, however, by the spiritual realities of other non-Christian religions. No scientific tests are available by which to prove which description of spiritual reality, if any, is an accurate description of the way things are in the spiritual universe. In the absence of objective evidence available to a neutral third party settling whose view of the spiritual universe is accurate turns out to be "my opinion beats yours." Spiritual realities do not "exist" in the physical world, for by definition they are spirit.  Spiritual realities are mental constructs in the minds of those who hold such beliefs and in sympathetic accounts in religious literature, which originally began as mental constructs in the mind of the author.  In that sense spiritual universes do exist in time and space.

          Are Science and Religion incompatible?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

What gets you up each morning...

…and keeps you going through the day?  I have in mind those things that add spice and meaning to life, rather than those daily humdrum quotidian tasks we all endure.  Several days ago I caught the tail end of a TV commercial.  The program concluded with "What are you living for?"  That question has been on my mind for some days now.  As an about-to-be octogenarian, I found it an interesting question to ponder because getting out of bed is much more difficult lately.  In the abstract the question was perplexing.  I didn't think it could have referred to health—that is, why am I still alive? There is a perfectly good generic answer to this question if it addresses health: in my case I am still alive because of fairly good genes; I exercise regularly, eat healthy, have a good health plan, and admit to being a bit lucky. On the other hand, I didn't think it was a "politically incorrect" question about a deliberate termination of life: that is, why don't I just surrender to the inevitably of death?  At my stage of life it should be no surprise that such a fleeting possibility about the question crossed my mind.

Quite logically, that left me with a purpose question to consider: what is my purpose in life—perhaps better stated: what gets me up every morning and keeps me going through the day?  I immediately wondered, however, why I should need a purpose for living—why can't I just live and enjoy being alive?  I don't know why, but it appears that in general people do seem to need some kind of a larger purpose than just "hanging out and doing the living thing."

For example, Dustin Hoffman's character Rizzo in the movie "Midnight Cowboy" lived off the grid, and had to scrabble out a meager existence on the streets of New York.  What sustained him through that difficult existence, however, was his larger dream, which was finding a way into the Florida sunshine; something he never achieved.  Lack of a larger purpose may even have had something to do with the "alarming suicide numbers" among "young veterans just out of the service receiving health care from the government."  Among those in this group suicide is "nearly three times the rate of active duty troops" (Springfield News-Leader 1/11/14).  Human beings seem to need a purpose larger than "just living."

There is no one single answer to the question about what gets one up each morning and sustains one.  The answer is unique to each one of us.  An individual may have several purposes in life at the same time, which may change over time.  It is a good guess, however, that what sustains many of us would likely be related in some way to family, work, or faith—or perhaps any number of other things.

The prophet Micah suggested that what sustained him was doing what the Lord required: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God (6:8).  For Koheleth, the rationalistic author of Ecclesiastes, the sustaining purpose of life was rather secular: What is good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in life's few days of toil—it is the gift of God (Eccl 6:18-19), so eat your bread with enjoyment and drink your wine with a merry heart (Eccl 9:7).  Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life (Eccl 9:9).  For Paul, the rather intolerant apostle of Christ, the purpose was deeply religious: for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.  If it is to be life in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me.  Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell (Phil 1:21-22).

Using these three statements as points of reference, I discover that I am not motivated by the spiritual humanism I find reflected in the statement of Micah, however worthy it may be, or by the edgy sectarian religiosity I find reflected in the statement of Paul.  I am surprised to find that my ideas at this stage of life are more akin to the mildly religious secularism in Ecclesiastes.  Specifically, what gets me up in the morning is the prospect of engaging new ideas, and what sustains me through the day is the opportunity of articulating them in a well turned phrase.  My purpose in living does not need to be some grand ideal, like "tilting at windmills," for example—just something that gets me up, adds zest to cotidiana, and keeps me engaged in life.

What gets you up every morning?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University