Faith: Part 3 (Originally posted Aug. 27, 2007)

Let me preface my response by telling you that C.S. Lewis has already discussed this issue at length in the first chapter of The Abolition of Man. By the end of my post, I hope to have provided what I have just asked AS for in my last post - that is, the “shape” of supernatural discernment. But so that we are first all agreed in my general premise, let me describe the “real world” correlative as referenced in Plato’s Republic (pgs. 122-125):

“It would seem…that the direction in which education starts a man, will determine his future life. Does not like always attract like?…Until some one rare and grand result is reached which may be called good, [or] may be the reverse of good?…[so then,] shall we condescend to legislate on any of [the] particulars? I think…that there is no need to impose laws about them on good men; what regulations are necessary they will find out soon enough for themselves…”

“…[but] without divine help…they will go on forever making and mending the laws and their lives in the hope of attaining perfection…[such men] are always fancying that by legislation they will make an end of frauds in contracts, and the other rascalities which I was mentioning, not knowing that they are in reality cutting off the heads of a hydra…” (pg. 122-124)

(If it is not clear what Plato is describing, think of these individuals as the ethical equivalent of a hypochondriac. The person is always troubling himself with trivial matters, when it is his general character which he should attend to. They “strain out a gnat but swallow a camel (Matt. 23:24).”)

“…the true legislator will not trouble himself with this class of enactments whether concerning laws or the constitution [of a State]…many of them will naturally flow our of our previous regulations.”

In the book, Socrates returns later to describe what is to be the emphasis of sound instruction with this illustration:

“You know…that dyers, when they want to dye wool for making the true sea-purple, begin by selecting their white color first; this they prepare and dress with much care and pains, in order that the white ground may take the purple hue in full perfection. The dyeing then proceeds; and whatever is dyed in this manner becomes a fast color, and no washing either with lyes or without them can take away the bloom. But, when the ground has not been duly prepared, you will have noticed how poor is the look either of purple or any other color. Then now…you will understand what our object was in [educating our citizens]; we were contriving influences which would prepare them to take the dye of the laws in perfection, and the color of…every opinion was to be indelibly fixed by their nurture and training, not to be washed away by such potent lyes as pleasure - mightier agent far in washing the soul than any soda or lye; or by sorrow, fear, or desire, the mightiest of all other solvents.” (pg. 128-129)

As C.S. Lewis comments:

“In The Republic, the well-nurtured youth is one ‘who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart. All this before he is of an age to reason; so that when Reason at length comes to him, then, bred as he has been, he will hold out his hands in welcome and recognize her because of the affinity he bears to her (see Republic, pg. 95-96).’” (The Abolition of Man, pg. 16-17)

Up to this point, we have considered only Plato’s philosophy of education, and it seems to me a good one. Now, is there any reason preventing us from applying the same principles to God’s approach with man? I think, rather, that the Bible supports this principle, as evidenced in the verse below.

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - His good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Rom. 12:2)

The concept is that the heart is like an instrument requiring fine tuning if it is to resonate in harmony with God’s heart. Or perhaps it is better thought of us an antennae which must be regularly tweaked in order to tune in to God’s frequency. Or it could even be thought of as the helm of a ship. This is my personal favorite because it treats the heart as a fixed mechanism with an explicit purpose: to direct the ship. (Furthermore, it isn’t as accommodating of those cutesy clichés as my previous illustrations, and the fewer cutesy phrases I have to use, like “quiet time” for instance, the better.)

People - particularly academia - often ridicule someone who “follows their heart” or “trusts their gut” (by the way, the Israelites also placed the heart’s activities in the bowels and the kidneys, so the terms are interchangeable). Thomas Jefferson says it best:

“'Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity (The God Delusion, pg. 34).’”

Jim Watson, founder of the Human Genome Project, commented: “I’m a bit embarrassed [laughs] because, you know, I can’t believe anyone accepts truth by revelation (The God Delusion, pg. 99).”

And, here comes the slippery slope, we all probably agree that reliance upon feelings is unwise (reminiscent of the Fact-Faith-Feeling train from certain Christian tracts). But telling someone not to follow their heart is, relative to Biblical principles, the equivalent of telling someone not to navigate their ship at the helm. To further illustrate this point, consider Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees:

“You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” (Matt. 12:34)

“The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45)

What I like about the concept of living from the heart - well, one thing anyway - is that our hearts are capable of inspiring actions that we would not have otherwise made intellectually. It allows such experiences as falling in love, bearing someone else’s burdens, or even laying down our lives for someone else. I like that we describe this kind of inspiration in terms of being “swept up” into something “bigger than ourselves.” It seems to reestablish our position in relation to God - we recognize in we do are not doing the work, but participating in the divine nature. It distinguishes us from other creatures, even from ourselves when we are acting as mere creatures, and makes us feel truly human. “…for in the image of God has God made man.” (Gen. 9:6)

But back to the attitude of academia toward what Jefferson would call “unintelligible propositions”, that is, those that are based on some subjective intuition of the heart, let me clarify what is really being debated. What most critics mean when they call a proposition unintelligible is that it can’t be assessed empirically. And to further clarify, let me provide a definition. Empiricism is defined as the way we assemble what we know of ourselves and our world from the "association of ideas" that come to us from our five senses. Sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. But is that all there is? Are the “five senses” really the only contributing constituents to what we acknowledge in our minds as sound reason? Philosophy would not exist if it were. But when we’re studying the natural world, that one side of what many acknowledge is a two-sided coin, all voices besides those coming from our five senses are silenced. And this is what we call being empirical.

And you know what, this is a perfect standard for the field of science. Science is only concerned with the natural, therefore it only makes sense to exclude non-empirical data. The problem comes in when someone becomes so habitually dependent on the natural, that he/she forgets its limitations. It is nothing but a case of nearsightedness. Narrow-mindedness. Bias. None of the terms are meant to offend, only to remind anyone who has forgotten that such a state of mind is quite common. We all do it. But every once in a while, we need to expose ourselves to the many correctives this world has made available. We are acted upon by reality in the same way our government is acted upon by the system of checks and balances. As C.S. Lewis has said, “All reality is iconoclastic (A Grief Observed, pg. 66).” There are experiential counter-weights everywhere, if only we are open to them.

In the illustration below, we see the potential consequence of a life lived shut off from the reality and its iconoclastic nature. As you read it, keep in mind that we are sometimes kept from the reality by forces outside ourselves (as is the boy in the story); but at other times, we are our own imprisoner (as we have just discussed).

“Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon. There she bears and rears a son. He grows up seeing nothing but dungeon walls, the straw on the floor, and a little patch of the sky seen through the grating, which is too high up to show anything except sky. This unfortunate woman was an artist, and when they imprisoned her she managed to bring with her a drawing pad and a box of pencils. As she never loses the hope of deliverance, she is constantly teaching her son about that outer world which he has never seen. She does it very largely by drawing him pictures. With her pencil she attempts to show him what fields, rivers, mountains, cities, and waves on a beach are like. He is a dutiful boy and he does his best to believe her when she tells him that the outer world is far more interesting and glorious than anything in the dungeon. At times he succeeds. On the whole he gets on tolerably well until, one day, he says something that gives his mother pause. For a minute of two they are at a cross-purpose. Finally it dawns on her that he has, all these years, lived under a misconception. ‘But,’ she gasps, ‘you didn’t think that the real world was full of lines drawn in lead pencil?’ And instantly his whole notion of the outer world becomes a blank. For the lines, by which alone he was imagining it, have now been denied of it. He has no idea of that which will exclude and dispense with the lines, that of which the lines were merely a transposition - the waving treetops, the light dancing on the weir, the colored three-dimensional realities which are not enclosed in lines but define their own shapes with at every moment with a delicacy and multiplicity which no drawing could ever achieve. The child will get the idea that the real world is somehow less visible than his mother’s pictures. In reality it lacks lines because it is incomparably more visible.” (The Weight of Glory: "Transposition". pg. 109-110)

Needless to say, we have all had personal experiences with individuals who affirm - and under no compulsion - certain feelings or experiences which Christianity presents as evidence of our origins but which science (or more strictly, the monist perspective) disregards. One of the most wide-reaching examples of this kind of experience which I have found is that which Lewis describes as Joy. This experience, when understood as Lewis intended, is to me one of the strongest arguments on the side of Christianity and deserving of a separate discussion all its own. For now, suffice it to say that even atheists are sometimes caught off guard with experiences that draw them outside themselves.

Before closing, I would like to discuss the thing which takes the conversation full circle…I have already suggested that faith is a reliance upon those things which God has made known to us intuitively, in our hearts. But this is a double-edged sword, because as intangibility protects intuition from being ruled out by science, so it also prevents us from making empirical judgments about its conclusions. It, perhaps unfortunately, introduces a measure of subjectivity into the discussion, allowing not the accountability to peer review as does science, but personal accountability to one reviewer: God. As the Bible affirms, “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him?…The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment (1 Cor. 2:11).” But if you think about it, is this not a much more appropriate type of accountability for intuitive knowledge, since morality (or better, right standing with God) is at its heart? Morality really goes no further than the heart (as in, there is no prior source). Actions in themselves are morally benign; it is sin in the heart that brings death to the soul. “…but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death (James 1:14-15).”

For all these reasons, I am inclined to agree with A.W. Tozer’s assessment (I think this is Tozer?) that “God’s voice must speak from within to bring enlightenment. It must be the Spirit of God speaking soundlessly within. That is what brings in man and makes him accountable to God.” (Peter Lord, Hearing God, pg. 20) And if all this is true, true of Christianity at least, then I’m afraid I’m going to have to return to my position as devil’s advocate for a while…the consequence of establishing a system of such immense expectation - that of God entering into intelligible dialogue with man - creates the potential for deep emotional / spiritual wounds to develop. It is as if God signs on to what is very largely, in our experience anyway, a human enterprise, where the rules of engagement are well-agreed upon. How does the God who reveals Himself to Job as an unpredictable, uncontrollable whirlwind (Job 38:1) condescend to such a position? How does He then borrow such emotionally-infused qualifiers as friend, brother, father, and lover to describe His relationship with us? God was not wary, not the least bit cautious, in building up the incredible expectation that exists around Him today. And I find this is a frustrating, an exasperating, promise of scripture that demands our deeper exploration.

(Suggested reading on this subject includes John Eldredge’s Journey of Desire; Peter Kreeft’s Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing; C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man (Chapter 1: Men Without Chests); Peter Lord’s Hearing God, and of course all of the context implied by quotes included in this response.)

The Divine Dialogue: Part 1 (Originally posted June 4, 2008)

I. Subjection

“O you who hear prayer, to you all men will come.” (Ps. 65:2)

This verse sets the stage for the whole drama surrounding our participation in the divine dialogue. The first part of the verse introduces the reality being offered: Here we have a God who hears our prayers!; the second part, the natural result: “to you all men will come.” The expectation that was built up in our hearts when God first revealed Himself as “Immanuel” (God with us) was no accident. And neither are the countless expectations that have since arisen upon having His nature revealed to us in Christ and through the scriptures. Far from being accidents, The Bible teaches that we were subjected to what we now call the “natural order” of creation by “the will of Him who subjected it”. We are, as Zec. 9:12 puts it, “prisoners of hope.”

“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” (Rom. 8:20-25)

If you’re familiar at all with Lewis’ writing, you’ll notice he sometimes complains that he was not consulted before being brought into existence (see Surprised By Joy, pg. 96 and 166). He felt that this presumption on the part of God was a great injustice. Though this is not a sentiment I have ever shared, I am coming to understand in what way he might count it as such. In the below quote, Lewis refers to this phenomenon called consciousness, which we were “awoken into” quite separate from any choice of our own. It goes farther than existing physically; our awakening into consciousness was the precise moment in our natural history at which we became subjected to the fullness of reality - that is, to both the material as well as the immaterial. And now that we are here, the only worthwhile question is, what are we to make of it? (The box has been opened, the cat is dead.)

“Come, what do we gain by evasions? We are under the harrow and can’t escape. Reality, looked at steadily is unbearable. And how or why did such a reality blossom (or fester) here and there into the terrible phenomenon called consciousness? Why did it produce things like us who can see it and, seeing it, recoil in loathing? Who (stranger still) want to see it and take pains to find it out, even when no need compels them and even though the sight of it makes an incurable ulcer in their hearts?” (A Grief Observed, pg. 28)

The tragedy of our subjection is echoed in Ecclesiastes:

“I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Ecc. 3:10-11)

But in what way, and to what degree is being awoken into consciousness a tragedy? In the same way as if we were to put a man to sleep while happy in his home only to wake him in a stage set contrived to only look like his real home, while in fact being nothing more than moveable props, manufactured recordings of familiar sights and sounds, and actors walking around in face masks. In this world, we are offered every physical object by which to satisfy our corresponding desire (food for hunger, sex for reproduction, etc.), but still we are discontent. That is because we are dual creatures, being of both body and soul, so that even while possessing every worldly pleasure we can experience a simultaneous destitution of the soul. As John Mayer sings,

I'm not alone, I wish I was
Cause then I'd know, I was down because
I couldn't find, a friend around
To love me like, they do right now

I'm dizzy from the shopping malls
I searched for joy, but I bought it all
It doesn't help the hunger pains
and a thirst I'd have to drown first to ever satiate

Something's missing
And I don't know how to fix it

I can't be sure that this state of mind, is not of my own design
I wish there was an over the counter test, for loneliness
For loneliness like this

Something's missing
And I don't know how to fix it

(abbrev. from John Mayer, “Something’s Missing”)

Later in the song, he actually goes so far as to take an inventory of his desires, checking them off as he goes along as if searching for that essential thing that is still missing from his life. “Friends, check; Money, check; Opposite sex, check…” If we are sensible enough, it is at this point that most of us turn to God. (I mean, in the general sense, not necessarily Christianity). And certainly we believe that this was God’s intention to keep man so desperate for Him that he eventually calls on Him for salvation. And we do so in hope, because we accept with God the notion that this deeper fulfillment might now have become attainable in Him. Is that not the primary implication of Isaiah 55:1-2:

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.”

This is the context under which we first come to God: in desperation. We are motivated by appetite and encouraged by such advertisements as, “Taste and see that the Lord is good (Ps. 34:8).” So now, in the same way as we were previously subjected to our lack through the impartation of consciousness, we have also become in Christ “prisoners of hope.” We are set in a position before God as needy creatures, those who live by every word that proceeds from His mouth (Deut. 8:3). We are told to abide in Him (John 15:4) who is the very source of goodness (James 1:17). We are ushered in to a sort of bi-focal existence, walking around in this dead and deficient world and yet in constant communion with the One who is able to breath life into dry bones (Ezek. 37:1-14). He is the “living resurrection” (John 11:25), who brings to life everything He touches. And what man, who spends any significant period of his life in communion with this God, can help but be swept up into utter expectation?

“Through these He has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them [we] may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” (2 Peter 1:4)

If this is true, if God were as intentional in subjecting His children to this “living hope” (1 Peter 1:3) as I suspect He was, there are great and weighty consequences that follow. I’m going to make a lot of appeals to common sensibility here, because I think we have become too well accustomed to - and alarmingly effective at - defending God against the disparities that arise between the principles we believe about Him and the reality of our experience with Him. The entire book of Job is a testament to this fact. Thank God for Job’s unique perceptiveness, because when his friends began defending God on the basis of their established principles about Him, Job lashed back: “Will you speak wickedly on God‘s behalf? Will you speak deceitfully for Him? Will you show Him partiality? Will you argue the case for God (Job 13:7-8)?”

II. Avoidance Tactics

“Who can straighten what God has made crooked? When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore a man cannot discover anything about his future.” (Ecc. 7:13-14)

Is the attempt on our behalf to “come to God’s defense” really an effort to preserve His good name or more an effort to preserve ourselves from the prospect of being found vulnerable before Him. I suspect, for many reasons, that this behavior is not for God’s sake but for our own. We have somehow become proactive creatures, anticipating God’s movements before He makes them so that we are never caught off our guard. How do we do this? By relying on principles and precedent rather than engaging in real relationship with the “great iconoclast” (Lewis, A Grief Observed, pg. 66). We have yielded every frontier of true relationship with God with something safer, more predictable, and easier to swallow. We were invited to dance with Him and then presumed to take the lead.

The book of Job is a testament to how easily and subtly man can begin to replace the reality of God with a mere image of Him. This is the result of removing yourself, however so slightly, from the position we were given before God. “For we are only creatures; our role must always be that of patient to agent, female to male, mirror to light, echo to voice. Our highest activity must be response, not initiative. To experience the love of God in a true, and not an illusory form, is therefore to experience it as our surrender to His demand, our conformity to His desire.” (The Problem of Pain, pg. 44)

This conclusion might sound overly Calvinistic to some of you, but I can see no way around it. As creatures before our Creator, we cannot ignore the role of providence in our new existence (that is, as new creatures - 2 Cor. 5:17). We are clay in the Potter’s hands (Is. 29:16, 45:9, 64:8), gold refined by the Goldsmith (Mal. 3:2; Prov. 25:4), God’s workmanship (Eph. 2:10) and agents of His purpose (Is. 46:11; 10:5-7; Is. 41:2-4, 25-29; 44:28; 45:1, 13). And all the benefit of these things comes in our yielding to the external influence, giving way when our present form conflicts with the intent of the artist. Surely, we would gain nothing if we maintained our rigid composure. So why do so many of our theological principles insist on proactive solutions and premature defense tactics?

Something in us rebels against our position. Fear, perhaps. Distrust. Maybe even exasperation within our current situation. In later discussions, I want to explore the question of whether subjection to God can really be anything but pain, if we must always die first before we experience any of His resurrective power…But for now, suffice it to say that this existence into which we’ve been inaugurated is not always pleasant. Exasperating is often a more apt description. What emphatic silences we’d have to endure if we had not the option of consulting our principles! Lewis, amidst pondering his grief over the loss of his wife, considers:

“Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms [of grief]. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be - or so it feels - welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.” (A Grief Observed, pg. 6)

As painful an experience as this is, as hopeless a situation as it seems, should we not continue to wait on God if in fact our hope was ever truly established in Him? We cannot continue to bounce back and forth between a foundation of hope in Christ and a dependence on the hope this world offers (see John 11:9-10; Is. 50:10-11). Like the opening verse read, “Who can straighten what God has made crooked?” Therefore, should we not feel tension when He suspends His activity, endure the emphatic silence when it comes, and embrace our full capacity for emotional experience as we are acted upon by the author of our salvation (Heb. 2:10)? Isn’t that, at least, the appeal our faith makes of us? Doesn’t it beg that we face reality head on and subject ourselves fully to the Absolute. Only in this position and only within this context can we hope to understand anything God does in our lives. If we abandon our lesson before we achieve the result for which we were subjected to it, then we have abandoned the only path to resolution as well. Our lives begin to feel like one long sustained note, creating an intolerable tension until it is resolved. That, anyway, is my theory as to the origin of futility in our religion. If this is true, which I hope it is, our dialogue with God becomes intelligible again and we may answer those who profess futility in their experience with God one of two things…these I will also discuss in a later discussion.

The meeting has reconvened...

Welcome to the Meeting of the Minute Minds, the annex to a prior series of discussions occurring between 2006-2008 that went by the same name. As the annex to this prior series, this forum will feature many of the same questions and themes as the original, as well as some of the specific content which those first discussions precipitated. Most of our discussions, then, will center around issues of faith, with primary attention being given to the question of whether the tenets of faith can be conciliated with principles of reason. Discussions of the past have featured such themes as the reliability of scripture, variant interpretations of the doctrine of faith, and the possible mechanics of conversing with God.

As the reader will no doubt recognize in the course of time, none of our contributors (at least presently) are experts on the topics we are discussing. However, the vast majority of us are highly sympathetic to the plight of the critically-minded to have their questions addressed in a manner that is intellectually satisfying. Therefore, though we might often in the course of our discussion fall well below the level of meticulousness that these subjects rightly warrant, we are nonetheless committed to the ideal of scholasticism, and will do our best to produce content that has at least appreciable intellectual merit. It is my hope that whatever ineptitudes we bring to the discussion do not serve to deter potential contributors from joining in, but rather encourage them to offer their own perhaps less-than-sophisticated thoughts and opinions on what is, admittedly, very complex and difficult subject matter.

Finally, in the process of browsing through the archives of past entries (particularly that content that is original to the first series), the reader will notice that prior discussions were largely motivated by a positive desire to defend the tenets of faith before the potential critiques of reason. This motivation, however, was largely a function of convictions which I no longer hold to the same degree. As such, though I might continue at times to proffer arguments in defense of faith, it is expressly not my intention to act as its guardian, and would be happy if future discussions featured a slightly more balanced representation of views. In short, the purposes of this present forum are NOT reflected in the bulk of its archived content (that is, occurring between the years 2007-2008), in which a distinctly pro-Christian bias pervades. I hope the tone of these prior discussions, which was merely an indication of the different goals I then held, does not too greatly burden our present discussions by obscuring the fact that it is driven by its own unique set of goals and motivations.