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April 20, 2005
Hello everyone,
I am branching out in the world as a fishtree, which, when all the dust is settled, brings us no closer to an understanding of why that particular combination of letters jumped in my head. Actually, if we are to be exact, it was not that precise combination of letters, but rather the following combination of letters that sprang to mind: treefish. But treefish was already taken so fishtree it was to be. By now, perhaps you are thoroughly confused. Let me lay your troubled mind to rest: it seems that a particular friend of mind, a subscriber of this very newsletter no less, has a blog on Xanga where he shares with the world those things that pass through his mind. He is known there as “the_sentry,” and I decided to drop in and pay him a visit. I even tried to sign his guestbook, but to no avail, for one must be a Xangan to participate. No bother: I dropped him an e-mail instead. A week later, a second friend, also on this mailing list and also a Xangan, tempted me from my homework with his blog jellonailer. Forgetting all I had learned from my experience with the_sentry, I tried signing his guestbook. My reply was hardly the stuff of dreams, much less golden ones, but I had signed his book and I was going to see it through to completion if it was the last thing I did on earth, so I created an account.
When I created an account I suddenly realized “I have a blog!” But, failing to be bowled over by this revelation, I thought to myself: “Well, I will at least create a single blog entry, a shameless plug to promote my site.” Five entries later, fishtree had officially taken the bait and I now see it as a wonderful place to post just such lighthearted banter as the words you are currently feasting your astonished eyes upon. (Which raises the deep philosophical question: is it your eyes that are astonished or merely you?) So, why don’t you go over and check out what fishtree has to say—if you read his posts from bottom to top, you will see how the man of many names gradually began to see an opportunity to dodge his homework and park the prattle he would not dare let tarnish his own prim and proper site. Oh, and just so you will have a mnemonic and do not confuse me with treefish who stole my first inclination (never mind the fact that he came first), recall that in the English alphabet, the letter f comes before the letter t, thus I am a fishtree, apparently more wooden than wet.
Now then, in The Woman Born Beautiful (Ichi, Ni, San, Shi, Go), we, along with five foolish kittens, learned how to count to five in Japanese. That was a rather drastic departure from the previous two issues—Degrees of Knowledge and Layers of Truth and Eternal Verity, Faithful and True—in which we took a very close, philosophical look at the nature of truth and falsity. What we will examine today will perhaps fall somewhere in between the two, focusing much more on the balance between “apologetics” and “Christian living” referenced in the subtitle of the Le Penseur Réfléchit newsletter.
This past week, I finished quite a grueling paper for my graduate-level drama course. The class has been quite challenging—at times maddening—but I have learned a great deal. In particular, we have been studying two Modern playwrights who held similar views of the world, though they conceived of their art rather differently. These two playwrights are none other than Bertolt Brecht, the German Marxist who wrote beautiful plays, and Samuel Beckett, the Irishman who felt that the artist could say almost nothing about the world, perhaps best known for his controversial play Waiting for Godot. As we were gearing up to write our papers, our professor suggested to us that contrary to what we had typically been taught in college, our papers would only be truly good if we were focused and if we wrote from a specific literary perspective, be it feminist, new criticism, poststructuralist, or any other. Besides reminding me of some of the reasons why I am hoping to find my wings in philosophy instead of English literature, he made a further comment that I found particularly interesting. He told us that we would do well to find a particular viewpoint that fit what we believe about the world and then commit ourselves to it. He went on to suggest that he learned far more about all the other types of criticisms after doing this very thing: far more so in fact than he ever did when he tried to be “a mile wide and an inch deep,” as he described his previous broad-minded approach. The reason, of course, was because in learning to defend your perspective, you learn to anticipate counter-perspectives, which some styles of literary criticism are bound to invoke. He was suggesting that if we found a style of criticism that agreed with our values, we would then have a stable base that would also flesh out all the other perspectives more clearly as well as our own. He further suggested that all professors have some kind of agenda or world view that they believe in and promote, even if they never tell you what that perspective is and you fail to realize it is there.
He is to be commended on that point, for practically from the first day we walked into his classroom, he told us he was a Marxist who would be teaching from that perspective. Not surprisingly, the historical materialism of Marxism and my own faith in God did not always leave me feeling the most comfortable in his class, but at least I knew where he stood and could in that way better evaluate his claims and my own reactions to them. Some of the things he said I resisted in my mind simply because of this awareness of his world view; whereas other things I found myself in hearty agreement with simply because they were so obviously true. In fact, much of my recalcitrance has gradually been replaced by a much greater appreciation of my professor and how he views his world. The truth of these particular observations regarding the merits of adopting a perspective and sticking to it would remain true no matter if he were coming from a biographical perspective, a Christian perspective, or a yellow-eyed, purple-skinned Martian perspective. Turning his simple but striking observation around in my mind, I thought of our discussion in Holy Discontent: The “God Question”:
What was it that made [the famous atheist] Madalyn Murray O’Hair feel she couldn’t place her trust in God? What was it that made her answer the “God question” the way she did? I don’t know. Maybe research would reveal the answer. But no one becomes a dedicated atheist without first considering the “God question.” We may say he has not considered it deeply enough or that he has closed his mind to its possibilities and we may very well be right in saying so. But we can rest assured that on some level he has considered this question. And it is this portrayal of the least likely candidate considering deeply the question that makes Flannery O’Connor’s stories tick. She loved to take a character who claimed a superficial faith and show it to be hollow, inferior even to the antagonist who was belligerent and sacrilegious.
An atheist has often given the subject of God more thought than many Christians, for to call himself by that name, he has indicated his commitment to that particular belief about the world. He has, as my professor suggests, committed himself. He has necessarily considered many questions about God, at least if his stance has any credibility at all. If we run into a man who calls himself an atheist but has given very little thought to the question of God, we do not tend to take him very seriously. So, my mind working the way that it does, at times making me profoundly uncomfortable, I recognize that we are often rather flippant about the way in which we approach the subject of God. Yet in another sense, maybe we are too much like the atheist in that we spend more time considering the question of God than we do developing a personal relationship with Him.
For another class this semester, I wrote a paper on Jewish author Franz Kafka’s famous book The Trial. Dr. Kaufman, whom we met in Knowledge Without Wisdom, took issue with some of the theological points I expressed, a clash primarily between my Christianity and his Orthodox Judaism. In a give and take that was actually far more civil than it might sound, he wrote very frankly, “Your view of God also strikes me as overly simple, given the biblical text. How do you characterize a God who, in order to win a bet with Satan, murders Job’s children and tortures Job himself?” With enough thought and prayer, I probably could have answered this question, for it is a good one: one for which I do not have a ready answer even now. But I felt that a deeper level of honesty was called for, not brilliant argumentation even if a thoughtful solution should present itself. Thus, my exact reply was framed as follows:
My view of God may indeed be an overly simple one, and, at the moment at least, I do not have any good answer to the question of Job. My road to God was, for lack of any better term, an experiential one. I was essentially a cynic who was knocked off his feet by an experience in which to this day I believe that I encountered God. Much like Isaiah, I had the sense of being a man utterly undone, in the presence of something so completely Other and so completely pure that I was but a speck of clay. It was not that I was down on myself—it was simply a recognition of reality, the stark contrast of being in the presence of something so completely magnificent and powerful. But there was also the sense of a love that was incomprehensible as well. Yet while the impetus for faith was given me through my experiences, such things tend to fade from the immediacy of the mind and many intellectual questions and doubts still remain. It seems to me that doubt is something that characterizes any believer’s life—Christian, Jew, or otherwise—for it is one thing to formulate intellectual arguments and often quite another to lead a certain quality of life. It seems like there is much about God that is uncertain and sometimes it seems like we here on earth blindly grope our way about, sometimes sensing His presence in and around our lives and far too often struggling to find answers to questions we may never have resolved. Sometimes not having answers to those questions can be maddening, but sometimes—in what I think of as my better moments—the questions simply cease to matter any more.
I understand that there are those on this mailing list who bemoan their lack of personal encounters with God, such as my own described here. Yet broadly speaking, our experience with God, whether it is primarily one based on faith first and then experience or the other way around, nonetheless is the level upon which our faith has its greatest validity. Indeed, we may profitably consider the “God question” as we ought. But we also have to recognize that there is a proper time and place as well and if we are to give a reason for the hope we have within us, as we are reminded to do in 1 Peter 15–16, we should not forget the bit about doing so with gentleness and respect. In our Sunday school class, we are almost finished with the 10-part video series Building Up Bridges, Tearing Down Walls by Dr. Jerram Barrs recently mentioned in Degrees of Knowledge and Layers of Truth. A week ago from this past Sunday, we were discussing the idea of argumentation as a form of persuasion, and one of the class members brought up the point that brilliant argumentation alone was not enough; that “something more” was needed. The following is a portion of what I wrote her:
[Y]ou talked about the “something more” that was needed [this morning in class]. That “something more,” I believe, is the inner conviction that only truth brings. You have this “something more,” because you have truth. Now in my comment, which was necessarily succinct due to time considerations, I said that “argument must be in service to the truth” and that this occurred on at least three levels. I want to take just a moment to elaborate further.
On the first level, “argument must be in service to the truth,” because logic is merely a tool. If I have an algebra equation that will help me resolve how much yard seed I need to put on my lawn, it is a tool that is only going to be as helpful as the accuracy of the variables I plug into it. But if I plug the wrong data into the equation, the wrong data will come out. It is not the fault of the equation, but of the incoming data. In the same way, logic must on this first level be in service to the truth if it is to be effective. Put false premises into a logical equation—begin with false premises in an argument—and (unless by sheer happenstance) you come out with false conclusions no matter how brilliantly you have argued. Thus, an “argument must be in service to the truth”—it needs the “something more” of truth, for it is simply a tool and cannot tell in and of itself if something is true or false. It simply says, “if this information is accurate, then this is the logical conclusion,” but it says nothing one way or another about whether the incoming information is itself true any more than an algebra equation for figuring the amount of seed can tell me if I have made a mistake in inputting my variables. If my variables accurately represent the measurements of my yard, then this is how much seed I will need. So in order to come to correct answers, we have to first start out with truth even before we get to the level of argument—logic simply is the process by which we arrange our initial assumptions, which if true, result in further clarification of truth and if false (unless by sheer happenstance) result in further obscuring of truth.
On the second level, “argument must be in service to the truth,” because of the “something more” of discernable truth ... “inner conviction” or “conscience.” Deep down inside, we know what is right and wrong—what is true and false, at least most of the time. When we argue and we argue in service to the truth, we know that we are right on some very deep level and so does the other person, even if he will not admit it even to himself. Thus, we may technically lose the argument, but because the argument was in service to the truth, the truth still shines through and the other person knows it even if he never admits it. Truth is the “something more” which is manifested and made known by that deep, inner conviction.
On the third level, “argument must be in service to the truth,” because when we serve the truth, we care more about the truth than about the argument. When we serve the truth, things like wisdom happen by default. We are not then interested only in being right and winning, for we could probably win more often if we were to fudge here and there on the truth. But we care more about truth than we do winning and thus the result will be kept in proper balance. We care enough about truth that we would rather see the other person come to understand the truth than we would to merely win the argument.
So I think, with this being said, your conception of “something more” and my conception of “truth” are “two birds of a feather”—that we have effectively said the same thing, you in more abstract terms and me in more analytic. . . .
Until sitting down to complete this newsletter, I did not realize how closely I followed my own maxims in my response to Dr. Kaufman. I had also written to him about the internal logic of Christianity and about the idea that only a human could die to take away the stain of sin but that no human was worthy: only God was worthy for He was pure, and thus the only remedy was for God to become a man, utter purity knit into a human frame. Dr. Kaufman’s reply was not unusual, for I am certain we have all questioned in our minds how this could possibly be if we have cared to be at all honest with ourselves. His reply was straight-forward and to the point: “As for the stuff about God becoming a human being, this is something that, as a Jew, I cannot possibly comprehend.” My reply was again more interested in the truth than in the argument:
Well, that is something that is difficult for anyone to comprehend, if it is indeed true as Christians like me pin their hopes on. My views of God are frequently tested and my faith is often found lacking, though somehow it always manages to survive. If God did become flesh and dwell among us, it fits in very well with the whole of Christian theology. But theology is troublesome on the academic level, for something can be internally consistent, but how do you critique its truth claims outside of itself? That is where the value of the experiential element of a faith comes into play, I believe. Sadhu Sundar Singh was an Indian mystic who had a vision of the risen Christ to his great surprise instead of Vishnu or any other member of the Hindu trinity. In a passage that he writes in his very simple parabolic form, I believe he touches on an important insight regarding most of our philosophizing about the world, which I will italicize:
In Christ I have found what Hinduism and Buddhism could not give me, peace and joy in this world. People do not believe, because they are strangers to the experience. Once when I was wandering about in the Himalayas, in the region of eternal snow and ice, I came upon some hot springs, and I told a friend about them. He would not believe it. “How can there be hot springs in the midst of ice and snow?” I said: “Come and dip your hands in the water, and you will see that I am right.” He came, dipped his hands in the water, felt the heat and believed. Then he said: “There must be a fire in the mountain.” So after he had been convinced by experience his brain began to help him to understand the matter. Faith and experience must come first, and understanding will follow. We cannot understand until we have some spiritual experience, and that comes through prayer. As we practise prayer we shall come to know who the Father is and the Son, we shall become certain that Christ is everything to us and that nothing can separate us from Him and from His Love. Temptations and persecution may come, but nothing can part us from Christ. Prayer is the only way to this glorious experience.
I think that this observation is generally true: there are many things that we rule out because they do not conform to reality as we perceive it. But I think that often what facilitated a knowledge of God through any of the prophets was not that they were necessarily intellectually head and shoulders above their peers, but that God spoke to and through them. So I think that in order to test the truth claims of a religion, you can only fully do so from the inside. Otherwise, while you can speak of logical validity, there is not much you can say about the relative truth or falsity of the claims short of “I agree” or “I disagree.”
His reply back to me began with this simple sentence: “Eric, I appreciate your remarks.” Of course, we never did come into full theological agreement, but at the least, we left understanding one another much better than we would have had I not written that first note regarding some of his comments on my paper. Perhaps we were both initially more defensive than is truly comfortable, but in the end, greater understanding resulted and it did not feel like a competition between student and professor, but rather an intelligent exchange between two thoughtful persons. What is more, he had some interesting insights into how Orthodox Judaism perceives the statement by God to Adam and Eve in the garden that: “The day ye eat thereof, ye shall surely die.”
In any case, we should have a commitment to truth no matter where that might lead us. And as long as we are guided by truth, our words will have rare authority that makes them difficult to resist. Not interested in winning, we begin to realize the deeper wisdom that many arguments that are “won” in public are lost in private. Further, if we are committed to the truth, we should be the first to admit defeat when our own arguments are lost—in public—before we return to the private. There is much greater wisdom and honor in admitting that we are wrong when we are wrong than in pretending we are right when we know that we are not. Truth gains the ultimate prize when we practice this kind of humility and very often, no matter who the actual victor, our argument becomes far more persuasive when we show that we are not too proud to admit we have been wrong. We might even find that in such an admission, while we have “lost” the argument, we have won the battle. In short, this fidelity to truth makes us look good and the God we serve look even better.
God bless,
Eric
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