Religion and Science Revisited

Well, it’s time for some fresh musings on this age-old issue. In fact, it’s more of a moldly issue but bear with me because some of this is new to me, and so it still captivates my interest like a freshly opened package of extra old premium cheddar.

I was introduced to the following proverb the other day: “The object you are inquiring about will tell something about how it is known.” In other words, if you are wanting to know how the bacterial flagellum of a protozoa works, don’t go looking in a math textbook or the bible. If you want to know what Brie Cheese tastes like, don’t ask your fingers. If you want to know the meaning of life, don’t expect a microscope to give you a zen moment.

Science is only equipped to answer certain kinds of questions, and it can only give us a certain kind of knowledge. Moreover, this kind of knowledge has certain qualities and attributes that are unique, and scientific knowledge also lacks other kinds of qualities. A simple example is taste: science can never tell us what something tastes like, or smells like. That’s a different kind of knowledge to which science cannot speak much on.

One of the qualities of scientific knowledge that has befuddled me for awhile is the nature of scientific certainty. When I read web pages of dogmatic evolutionists touting the radical certainty with which we know the theory of evolution to be true, I expect to find evidence that supports that.

I look at “evidence” through the lens of a theologian or philosopher. Though this is nothing new, it has dawned on me to what extent philosophic evidence has certain qualities that are never going to be found in scientific knowledge. Philosophy and science have different descriptions of “certainty”, and it seems to me that I have been looking for a philosophic-type of certainty as I evaluate the evidence of scientific arguments. I find myself an evolutionary skeptic -having looked at a lot of evidence but yet being unconvinced. In the scientific literature I have read, I have come across frustrated scientists who accuse those who do not accept their evidence as having no other argument other than “personal incredulity”. In other words, I am being dishonest with the evidence and remaining an evolutionary skeptic is not a fault of the evidence, but my own stubborness. I take such accusations seriously, as I have my own slough of “you’re not being honest with clear evidence” with other issues and people. For me not to take such claims of “personal incredulity” would by hypocritical on my part.

The primary difference of quality between scientific and philosophical certainty is that the kind of certainty I am used to is an absolute certainty. To prove something philosophically, I regard as absolutely certain propositions which are impossible to deny. The most obvious one is the law of non-contradiction: It is impossible for A and not-A to be true. A car cannot be both red and not-red.

Further truths I think fit under this umbrella of absolutely certain absolutes because they are impossible to deny. I would also put the existence of a sovereign God under this umbrella. The bible argues for many things, but it never once attempts to prove the existence of God. Why? I think part of the reason is because a sovereign God is a necessary presupposition for the process of asking metaphysical questions. That is, the very process of inquiry assumes a sovereign God, and even must assume a sovereign God.

This was illustrated to me very powerfully once when I heard Ravi Zacharias (one of my favorite apologists) answering questions from a roomful of university students. One student boldly stood up and insisted that life had no meaning. Ravi replied; “you don’t believe that.” The student insisted he did. Ravi insisted he didn’t. The student repeated that he did. Ravi once again denied it. This was all quite comical to watch, but Ravi was right, on this principle: a person who stands up and asserts the meaninglessness of life is asserting by his actions that he finds his statements meaningful. In fact, he finds them so meaningful he’s willing to publicly proclaim them and commend such a belief in the meaninglessness of life to his fellow human-beings. This is ridiculous -if a person truly, sincerely believed in the meaninglessness of life, why would he venture into the meaningless discussion about meaning?

To state that all of life is meaningless undermines the very inquiry into what life means. I think we can reason soundly that if we are going to ask such questions, we are automatically assuming that life is meaningful: that is why we ask! Take the meaningfulness of life out which we already intuitively know, and you undermine all metaphysical inquiry.

Meaningfulness requires a sovereign Deity, for the search for meaning is a search for an objective meaning, and God is the only objective candidate for a universal source of meaning. That is, we search for a meaning beyond the taste of good cheese. Not just meaning for me, but true, objective meaning we can see, feel, discuss, and reason about. Just as our tongues search for savory or sweet food to satisfy ourselves with, so our souls search for objective truth outside of ourselves. By definition, objective meaning doesn’t come from within. However, the hunger for meaning does come from within. The thing is, you can’t be hungry for something you already have. A hungry person is in need for something external: so it is with the soul.

Most of us believe there is a reason why things are the way they are. Things just don't appear and disappear, we must and do presuppose that the universe is a rational and ordered place. This is why we ask and inquire, and is so fundamental to us as human beings that we named ourselves after this quality: homo sapiens sapiens; "wise wise man". This belief in the rationality of the world extents to more than just physical nature. Emotions and morals are rational as well. (with the exception of evil of course, but that's a topic for a different post.) If meaning is there, it didn't just appear: it's there because someone put it there. Again, a sovereign creator-deity is the only real candidate as far as I can tell. The unfortunately popular naturalist alternative, that the universe popped into being for no reason at all rubs contrary to the belief in a rationally ordered universe. Nothingness, disorder, and meaninglessness gives birth to something, order, and meaning? Someone's living by faith here, and I don't think it's me for once. :)

Coming back to the topic of science; science does not attempt to go about forming its knowledge the philosophical way. It does not analyse presuppositions, it looks for patterns of behaviour that fit with a theory. As such, scientific knowledge never has the kind of certainty that philosophical and religious presuppositions do. Since this is what certainty usually means to me, (as these are the kinds of questions I usually study and think about), I find the piling up of scientific evidence to be exciting, but rarely satisfying. I don’t understand the pompous touting of certainty by scientists about the theory of evolution, because science never arrives at absolutes. Upon reflection, I realize it never can.

On the note of peacemaking between science and religion, I see this as a point of clarity. Religious believers may indeed be scientifically ignorant, but I don’t think the accusation of “personal incredulity” is entirely fair. I think believers come to the table of science looking for the kind of knowledge they are used to -religious knowledge, which has certain qualities of certainty, certain methods of acquiring knowledge that science cannot provide. In fact, it’s not supposed to, because it’s a different kind of knowledge.

How do scientists come up with scientific certainty? I must be honest that I am coming at this question as a theoretical thinker rather than one from personal experience as a scientist, so I trust what I am about to say is taken with a grain of salt -I’m not taking myself to be speaking any ground-shattering truth here.

A scientific theory like evolution can never arrive at absolute certainty. You can pile up all the evidence you like, you can never say the theory has been “proven” in a sense that will satisfy a philosophical criteria of certainty. This is because of a law of reason: finite creatures cannot arrive at general conclusions from particular inquiries. Unless one is omniscient, no amount of brown deer will ever infallibly prove the proposition “all deer are brown”. Certainty mounts as more brown deer are found and no exceptions are found, but it seems to me that it can never arrive at an absolute certainty, because that is just impossible to know.

Visiting again the problem of “personal incredulity”, scientific theories do increase in certainty but never cross the threshold: they are always open to modification and further evidence. To deny this would be to turn science into religion. (Which I think some scientists do at times) Religious beliefs don’t have that quality: once a presupposition is reached through clear reason, it sits there unmoveable. They’re not something we can prove: they are the beliefs that make the process of inquiry and proof possible, and so sit with a greater quality of certainty than any science can ever arrive at. It’s not because believers are cocky evidence-ignorers. It’s that our focus of knowledge, knowledge of God, has different qualities to it than scientific knowledge does, and we are used to thinking in such categories of knowledge. In other words, science expects us to think in a different way than we are used to thinking, and this expectation is often not clearly laid out. At least, this idea seems to make sense of a lot of the “religion vs science” mud-slinging that goes on: people think in different ways without understanding or respecting the other’s criteria for “evidence.”

A further question is raised, and here I think I do plead guilty to a form of “personal incredulity” as regards the theory of evolution. I am skeptic, but not without good reason, and that reason is as follows. I look at the history of science, and I see the impact Newton’s physics had on Christianity. While Newton reigned, a curious heresy followed the church at every step: Deism. Deism is the belief that God started the world and just let it run, but he is not personally involved anymore.

Nowadays, Deism is rare. One may wonder what circumstances would give rise to someone considering becoming a Deist. It simply isn’t on most people’s radar. Prior to Einstein’s revolution though, the world was seen as a closed, rigid law-driven system. Evidence was piling up and piling up to buttress Newton’s physics. The more laws we discovered, the less room there appeared to be for God to maneuver His unseen providence, other than as the Great Cosmic Instigator.

Newton’s physics, and the reaction of Deism from the quarters of philosophy, challenged the church for centuries until science itself overturned Newton’s physics. In retrospect, my “personal incredulity” is an informed gun-shyness. I look back at the many people who had their faith dashed on Newton’s principles. What kind of people were they? Some were quite intelligent, and doubtless felt obligated to affirm the latest scientific findings. It turns out their faith was shipwrecked on bad science. So how do we know what good science is that we might not follow in the folly of the Deists? The only way to know personally is by a lot of scientific study. But who has time for this? I don’t think such study is a waste of time by any means -the more scientifically educated people out there, the better the world would be. It does remain true though that many scientific theories are theories “under construction”, and evolution is one of those which has been modified numerous times in the past century. Is evidence in support of it mounting? I’m still in the process of verifying that, so I’ll refrain from touting my ignorance here. It does seem to remain true though that if an object of knowledge is “under construction” it is only by a stretch of reasoning that it is obligatory for us to live in unfinished buildings.

The Courage to Protest

This week I have had the opportunity to ponder the general ethos of fear and uncertainty that exists among groups of Christians. It seems to me that many believers are struggling with a sense of identity. There is a general sense that we are standing on a shaky foundation, and the rug is about to be (or already has been) pulled out from under our feet.

I believe there is a general sadness, frustration and even bitterness amongst Evangelicals and this is caused by the loss of a place of prominence and dignity in Western society. Christianity played a crucial role in forming our world and its institutions: the ivy league schools were all Christian institutions when they began, our governments drew their principles explicitly from the bible, etc. It still says in the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms that “Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the sovereignty of God and the rule of law.” Our country’s name “the dominion of Canada” was named after a parliamentarian was inspired by a bible verse: “He shall have dominion from sea to sea.” Few people know the entirety of our national anthem: we only sing the first verse at hockey games, but as the song progresses, it becomes more expressly Christian:

“Lord of the lands, beneath Thy bending skies/ o’er field and flood, where ‘ere our banner flies/ Thy people lift their hearts to thee/ their grateful voices raise/ may our dominion ever be a temple to Thy praise/ Thy will alone, let all enthrone/Lord of the lands, make Canada thine own/Lord of the lands, make Canada thine own.”

But surveying the contemporary scene, the dominant institution of the west is no longer the church, the university has left the nest of Christianity and bourne wings of its own, and the government...well, the government does what it does best, follow the meandering river of popular opinion. I think all of this, even if not expressly known by Christians in all detail helps explain the sense of alienation among Evangelicals. We birthed much of Western culture. Now we’re empty nesters, and are left staring at each other what to do next now that our children don’t seem interested in talking to us.

Evangelicals need not be so mopey or confused. After all, our theology tells us that it is not we who did anything. All good things are from God, if any good plants grew that bore tasty fruit, all the glory goes to Him, for “a man can receive nothing unless it is given to him from heaven.” We are sowers: we plant seeds, we water “but God causes the growth.” In a sense, our mopeyness is caused by forgetting our own confession of faith.

So what is an Evangelical? Contrary to popular usage, it is not synonymous with Fundamentalism. The term “Evangelical” first surfaced around the time of the Reformation, and it was a derisive term used to refer to Lutherans. In fact, the term “Lutheran” and “Evangelical” were synonymous. It is my conviction that herein lies a powerful inspiration to re-ground those feet that feel like they are floating in mid-air. Let us not forget that the Reformers had no social trophies that hung on their walls to inspire them. Nor did the Apostles for that matter. They had one thing: the word of God.

Evangelicalism is in my mind, a term that designates a certain group of Christians within the history of Protestantism that sees itself as the inheritors of the theology of the Reformation, specifically as regards our theology of knowledge. The Reformers had a mighty foe entrenched in their day: the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. More important than the doctrine of Justification by Faith alone was the prior conviction that “the church” had departed from the teaching of the apostles. To be “protestant” was to protest, to have a heartfelt objection to the way things are going in the world. That “protest” is so profoundly believed in, one is willing to lay their life down for that truth. The protest was that the word of God, not the pope, had true authority over what is to be believed and how life is to be lived. Evangelicalism is essentially a holiness movement: calling the church and the world to fidelity to Jesus Christ through the teachings of the prophets and apostles.

Again, looking at the contemporary scene, it’s easy to see why we feel so disenchanted; Catholics and Evangelicals aren’t killing each other anymore (except in Ireland) -they actually get along to a substantial degree. But we still disagree as to the locus of authority, our “protest” still stands and hasn’t changed in over 500 years.

With the enlightenment, the protestant movement faced a new foe, ironically one that it helped give birth to: autonomous reason. Just as Protestants deemed it morally obligatory to cut ties with Roman Catholic authority, so Secularists followed suit and “protested” to the Protestant locus of authority, the bible. In it’s place “the goddess reason” was enthroned.

Protestants did not face up to the Enlightenment challenge nearly as effectively as they did to Catholicism. Shortly after the Enlightenment, Evangelicalism experienced a significant split within its ranks, and “Liberal Protestantism” was born. I would still squarely find myself within the Evangelical tradition, and I find autonomous human reason to be just as objectionable as the Papacy, if not moreso.

Reason alone makes a crappy God, because it is like the idol-worship the 1st century Christians faced down in the emperor cult. Reason is essentially a mute idol that has no eyes nor ears, doesn’t see, hear, or care. Autonomous reason gives us no content for what constitutes knowledge, just a set of propositions. By contrast, an Evangelical’s knowledge comes from a personal and loving God, not a dead principle.

Many Evangelicals are characterized not just by uncertainty and confusion, but biblical illiteracy. They have forsaken their confession, their spirituality, and really need to be awakened to what it was that gave the church such power to wield such persuasive influence and form a culture as strong and admirable as the Western world.

We now live in a post-Christian world, and I am not suggesting we sit around and mope about the glory days, nor even try to re-create them. The work to be done is ultimately God’s, and the consequences of the church being faithful to it’s mission will be played out in God’s providence. But first, we must get the basics straight, and re-discover the joy and strength that comes from having a God that speaks truth and gives us knowledge which we can live by.

The Law of Moustache

The Law of Moustache

"Nice chest hair." My wife says to me. A rather unexpected comment, considering I'm wearing a collared shirt. I brush it off and resume my work. A few minutes later; "Nice chest hair." My wife rarely comments on my appearance, (which probably says something) and why she was picking that feature didn't make any sense to me. "Whatever" I mutter as I leave the room, pre-occupied in thought with household bills.

And then I see it. My two top buttons have been undone! Now this is the bona-fide truth: I have no memory of undoing my buttons: I'm rather diligent with my buttons in fact, and this particular shirt has extra buttons that I like keeping done up, so this struck me as a surprise. The collared shirt with the low buttons and tuft of chest hair sticking out raised my sleaze factor significantly and I winced at my appearance.

I know that I didn't unbutton my shirt. This has never happened before. There is only one factor that is different in my life this month, and that is the fact that I have decided to grow a handlebar moustache. Suddenly, it all makes sense. No rational person could ever choose to create the abbhorent sleazy moustache-and-chest hair look. As I discovered this morning, The fact is that moustaches repel buttons. Sleazy facial hair begets sleazy body hair, like begets like, it all makes sense now. No one deliberately designed the sleazy look, it just kinda happens to a guy when he fails to shave his upper lip.

Moustaches can be likened to evil. Evil is the great inscrutable mystery: it defies rational explanation. Try if you will to even define evil. The greatest philosophers through the centuries have noticed that evil can only be described in terms of privation of the good. That is, evil isn't anything, it's a distortion, a lack of what the good is. Evil is disorder, lawlessness, irrationality. Evil is that which is juxtaposed to all that is good, benevolent and orderly. If evil could be explained, it would disappear, for if evil could be explained that would be conceding that it submits to rational categories and may be harmonized with a logically ordered universe. But evil is disorder, it is the very evilness of evil that defies explanation.

Moustaches are like that. They are a privation of good fashion sense, a violation of the laws of aesthetics, a senseless affront to beauty. Hence, they repel buttons and turn respectable gentlemen into perverted-looking sleazebags.

Moustaches are an evil that has chosen to bypass the female gender and afflict only males. However more depraved the world may be due to the presence of moustaches, it pales in comparison to another greater evil that afflicts only men: prostate cancer. This is why I have chosen to bear the Mo this month: to bear this unsightly burden as a reminder to the world that we men face a far greater peril than unsightly facial hair.

In Canada, 4,300 men will die of Prostate Cancer this year. For this reason, men all over the world are growing moustaches this month of "Movember" to proclaim the plight of our fellow men with oversized and diseased prostate glands.

The good news is that prostate cancer is preventable, and relative to a few other cancers, actually has a high survival rate. Possibly for this reason, it is often deemed an insignificant disease. Nevertheless, it still afflicts 1 in 6 men, and 24,600 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year alone, not including undiagnosed cases due to an unwillingness on many men's part to get regular check-ups. The worst part is, like the moustache, prostate cancer death is preventable. I encourage you, if you have enjoyed this blog post, found it informative, or at least gave you a smile, please consider donating to Prostate Cancer Canada. http://www.prostatecancer.ca/ Every cent counts. Research must continue, prevention must take place, and awareness needs to be raised. None of this can take place without adequate funding. Last year Canadian "Mo bros" raised $7.8 million for Prostate Cancer Canada. Let's keep up this generous tradition.

Even if prostate cancer isn't a visible, in-your-face evil, the moustache is, and the sooner we rid the earth of this disease, the sooner we can get around to enjoying our Novembers moustache-free.

Miraculous Maturity

I have floated around a number of denominations and churches throughout my brief Christian walk ('bout 12 years now), and no group of Christians have struck me to be quite as incomprehensible as the “miracle chaser” group. Some of you may not have met these kind of people yet, but there is a distinct Christian sub-culture out there that is kind of like...well, miracle potheads. They can't stop thinking about miracles, and spend 99% of their extra-curricular time looking for the latest miracle revival service, or trying to figure out where the Holy Spirit is going to show up in some out-of-this world way. It can pretty stupid sometimes. Well no, that's not entirely accurate. It can get really stupid. I've seen people pick up glitter off the floor thinking God has just turned some of the dust of the room into gold. Others have gotten into such a miracle-buzz that they think catching a bus has been a miraculous intervention of the Lord. They're not joking either: it's not some off-the cuff comment about their inability to manage their time, they actually think God came down from heaven and miraculously caused the bus to come by when it wasn't scheduled to.

This group has puzzled me for awhile, and not a few times I have attempted to appreciate this movement from the inside. However, try as I might, I could not get into the “swing of things” by working myself up into a miracle-frenzy. There is a temperament disconnect there: obviously this movement isn't exactly friendly to those who enjoy reflection and asking philosophical questions. More than just temperament though, I couldn't in good conscience label as “miraculous” every day events that seem entirely natural, nor could I find in the bible any support for the notion that miracles are the meat and potatoes of the Christian's thought life and good works.

But what seemed so unappealing and patently false to me nevertheless holds great appeal for many others. For many years now, I could offer no explanation for why so many people jump headlong into this movement. To that extent, I have actually had alot of doubt about my rejection of the movement: it defies rational explanation. Could it be that God really is obsessed with performing random miraculous events to make people believe in him, and I should follow suit? I feel almost embarrassed admitting that this movement has held some sort of sway on my mind, but anyone who has attended these bizarre revival-healing-miracle get-togethers probably understands what I'm talking about. The sheer social energy of these meetings and the charismatic magnetism and rhetorical skill of some of the public leaders of the movement really has a force that wants to draw you in.

Is there a rational explanation beyond “social energy”? The group dynamic can be easily explained: you see it all the time at sports arenas, political rallies, and mass public protests. It makes sense that such group dynamics would show up in religious meetings as well. But what sway does it have for an individual?

A sermon I heard a few weeks ago helped me explain this. A few facts first.

Western culture is generally Naturalistic in its view of reality. Religion is seen as something private, and the public realm is the realm of “neutral” cause and effect. The workplace is governed by economic laws, the government by legislation and party politics, our physical world is governed by scientific law. If you want to believe in God, in miracles, in something beyond what you see and can measure, do it at home please.

Christians, insofar as they are Christians at all, do not find themselves driven exclusively by economic, scientific, and political realities. They are driven by religious ones, and to the extent that they see themselves as followers of Christ is the extent to which they will want to follow Christ out in public. We want God in our work, in our political views, in our science. More than any other name, God is referred to in the bible as “Lord”. The most important Christian confession ever penned, the Apostle's creed, begins with the hearty affirmation: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” To keep Yahweh hidden away at home is a violation of the central tenets of the faith we confess.

Christians believe in a supernatural world. The universe didn't pop into being out of nothing by no one for no purpose at all. It has a Creator, this Creator is good, and He governs the universe for a purpose towards an end. Nevertheless, there is a social alienation we Christians experience in a society where we are welcome to believe whatever we want, but we are expected to behave publicly within certain generally accepted naturalistic parameters.

I think the miracle-chaser movement largely grows out of a response to this alienation. It is not just mass groups getting together in a miracle-loving frenzy. It is private, genuine believers struggling to come to terms with how their supernatural faith is to be expressed in a naturalistic society. To the extent that a Christian feels pressure to live in a naturalistic world is the extent to which he will experience doubt over whether his faith in a Supernatural God is true. He needs objective confirmation that the world is not as the Naturalists say it is.

Herein I think lies a plausible explanation. It is one thing to experience a genuine miracle, or several. It is quite another to actively hunt for them, and to get oneself into miracle-hunting thought habits. But if one's faith is weak, and the pressure from naturalism is constant, I suppose it seems “reasonable” to feed oneself spiritually with a constant diet of miraculous occurrences. Bus arrivals become miraculous, dust bunnies become gold, frenzied emotions become a supernatural encounter with God. They need to, or else faith cannot survive.

In my 12-something years of following Jesus, I believe my faith has moved from baby-stage to something more mature. Not finished, but deeper, more well-rounded, informed and more consistent in its expression. (Though still wanting in many ways in all of the above) In retrospect, miracle-hunting is an expression of a baby faith, a faith under pressure, struggling to learn to walk. Eventually, a Christian needs to give up their baby faith and move onto maturity. This is a struggle: learning to walk is very, very hard in my experience. While miracles give us a glimpse of proof that the world is not as the Naturalists say it is, miracles alone cannot bring us out of the struggle with naturalistic doubts. One of the pieces of a mature faith is knowing why naturalism is false, knowing why “God the Father Almighty” is the only God and only Reality we are to acknowledge in our hearts and minds. It is not a raw display of God's power that brings us to maturity, it is truth that brings maturity to faith. “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” (Jn 17:17)

One caveat: this is not to say that maturity is just a matter of book-learning and sorting through competing worldview arguments. Part of learning the truth is doing the truth. God gives us commands, and we are to practice them, and grow towards excellence in obedience to them. If all of our exposure to the truth of the Word is merely theoretical, we will find ourselves with the same emaciated faith of the miracle-hunters.

Shawful

There was a knock on my door a few days ago, and I opened it up to find a young man dressed in a nice suit at my door. “Oh great, more Mormons” I thought. Close. It was a cable guy. He rehearsed his introduction to me and went over his official-looking clipboard noting what services his company was providing for me. He observed that I didn’t have cable and asked if I would like that service. I calmly declined the offer, explaining that I didn’t watch tv.

The young man stared at me blankly for a moment, trying to process my response. “Oh, you must get a lot of streaming video through the internet, right?”

“No” I replied, “I don’t watch tv.” The cable guy looked at me as if I had told him I would like to discontinue my oxygen services, for I have no need of breathing.

Since this young man was clearly unable to process this notion of not watching tv, and standing in awkward silence in the doorway was a waste of both of our time, I explained “My family is more of the book-type.”

“Oh!” A light seemed to go on for him, and he scribbled something on his clipboard: apparently “book people” is a demographic the cable company recognizes?

This got me thinking about the fact that there actually are people out there who don’t read much, and their lifestyles do indeed fit in those atrocious statistics I hear of, that the average North American family spends some 4-8 hours per day in front of the tube.

I think TV has its place, but there are a few things about the very nature of the flickering box that militates against something desperately needed nowadays: a lifestyle of informed reflection. The ability to think in linear terms. The ability to identify foundational principles and competing moral visions that lurk behind our actions. The ability to formulate sound arguments and communicate one’s ideas with clarity, force, and leadership. The ability to identify when a person doesn’t have their facts quite right.

Over the years, it has struck me how difficult it is to cultivate a well-educated mind. For starters, it takes information, and lots of information. Not just superficial facts, but depth of knowledge into history and human psychology. Acquiring such knowledge takes a lot of time and energy: we need to read, we need to listen, and we need to reflect. Learning is something that comes slowly. To learn and to love knowledge requires a good amount of discipline and energy, and a lifestyle consistent with those goals. All of this sounds a tad ascetic, and I suppose it is, but there are few things as satisfying and freeing as having a good framework of knowledge with which to understand what’s going on in the world around you. It’s freeing, liberating, a source of joy and peace. It also means work: often times the world around us is not good, and we need to work to change that. Knowledge gives us the needed information to know what to do, where to go, and how one ought to go about one’s business of doing good works.

Contrasted with this is the couch potato lifestyle. Generally living a life of informed reflection and good works makes the world of the couch potato seem quite offensive, shallow, and irrational. What argument could justify a duty to subject one’s mind to screenshots that change every 3 seconds, to be berated by a host of flickering advertisements and a general proclivity to toilet humour? Again, these all have their place: a well-educated mind needs periods of rest, passivity and laughter. But there is a vast difference between a season of rest and a lifestyle of stimulated passivity.

Television has a way of sucking us into ignorance: it is awfully enjoyable and entertaining, and to that extent can even be addictive. Even documentaries, which are a little more informative in nature than the sitcom or movie, leave us passive viewers of information imparted to us in the form of a dramatic narrative. The production of most documentaries is much more concerned with the rise and fall of a story than in cultivating a deep understanding of the subject matter. It’s informational, but it’s information placed in a dramatic narrative format and more often than not, it’s information that is sacrificed to the drama rather than the other way around.

So what does one typically do if one finds oneself caught in a dearth of knowledge? It isn’t much fun to be in the dark about what’s going on: ignorance is a powerful form of bondage, just as knowledge is a powerful tool for freedom. Learning is hard, while entertainment is easy, and entertainment has a pull to it that can numb the pain of bondage too much of it can bring.

As the proverb goes: “Taking the path of least resistance is what makes men and rivers crooked.”

Knowledge

I heard an excellent sermon the other week in which the speaker introduced the concept of “double knowledge” found in Calvin and Augustine. Calvin wrote in the institutes that in the act of knowing God, we also know ourselves and in the act of knowing ourselves, we also know God. These are the two sides of knowledge, hence “double knowledge”.

True? False? I would add a third category of knowledge “the world”, so that in every act of knowing the world around us we also know God and ourselves, and so forth. This is called multi-perspectivalism, and it basically regards “the entire body of knowledge” as consisting of three perspectives: knowledge of God, knowledge of ourselves, and knowledge of the world. In knowing one of these perspectives, we know the other two. Multi-perspectivalism, like double knowledge, is a statement about the nature of knowledge.

I imagine at this point that this post is sounding like a perfect example of why so many people despise philosophy and theology. I do have a practical point, and I hope in this post I can explain the relevance and importance of these ideas. I believe it to be of great practical import not just to Christians, but anyone interested in anything to do with knowledge, be it scientific, psychological, personal, practical, or theological.

Let’s start with the two “perspectives” Calvin has pointed out to us: that to know God, we must know ourselves, and to know ourselves we must know God.

The Angst which needed Relief

The force of this idea was one of the central reasons why I found a need to accept the existence of God. My “starting point” for this was at the height of a crisis over anxiety and my personal identity: my high school years. In the midst of stoners, metalheads, homeys and immigrants, the question “who am I?” naturally weighed upon me. Not having a stable home life (my parents being in the midst of a painful separation) directed my attention to this question all the more poignantly. Like many teens, my inner thought-life was regularly characterized by a sense of loneliness and a need for personal stability and identity. In a nutshell, I needed to know myself.

Numerous options were presented to me, directly or indirectly. I could find my identity through social conformity. This was very unappealing and smacked of rank shallowness. Of course, I was a shallow person, but relieving my anxieties by wearing the latest name brands and going with whatever the majority did struck me as a whole new level of shallowness I wasn’t willing to go to. (or so I reasoned in my teenage hubris)

So if a solid sense of personal identity wasn’t to be found in conformity to the majority, where was it? Band geeks? Jocks? Some other minority? Socially, this is the direction I went in (I wisely chose to be a quasi-metalhead D&D geek) but of course, this was no real solution, for it did not lend any clarity to the mystery of the value of an individual in a group. I merely identified myself with a particular group, and my individuality seemed to just dissolve into the morass of the social mores of that one group. What made me different, or what made me, me? I still found a stark lack of understanding about myself, other than an obvious felt need to belong.

What I found necessary for any kind of certainty in knowledge of myself was to find some sort of a measuring line that did not shift and change depending on my moods, my friends, or what anyone else, including myself, thought of me. I could compare and contrast myself with my surroundings: “Who am I compared to Joe? To a foreigner?” You get the idea. Exercises in “compare and contrast” are limitless, but none of my immediate surroundings provided an answer to what my heart craved: identity. Some solid standard of measuring me, which could not be found anywhere in the world, which consisted entirely of relativity.

Does Anyone Have a Ruler I could Borrow?

What I discovered was that I could not know myself truly without God. Until God entered the picture, there was no way to attain knowledge of me other than by comparing and contrasting myself with other relative objects and people in the universe. What could not be answered were crucial things like: “Am I a good person?” “What ought I to do with my time, talents, and energies?”

You can see how inevitable shallow answers are to these questions in a world without God. Q: Am I good? A: I am better than Bob and Suzie, but worse than Douglas. Q: What ought I to do? A1: What you decide for yourself you ought to. A2: What the majority says you ought to. A3: What a certain individual (parents, a professional, a cherished friend) says you ought to.

Briefly, let me break down the unsatisfactory nature of Answers 1-3 above.

1. This results in using yourself as a measuring stick to form an opinion of yourself. The problem is, in going on the search for meaning and identity in the first place, you have confessed from the outset that “yourself” is in need. The very cause of anxiety is the lack of solidness within the individual.

2. With the “ought” found in the majority, we are left with the question “which majority?” At that time in my life, this was the majority of high school students. Even if one finds a majority that’s a little more mature, the question then arises “Why ought I to conform to this majority?” Simply put, there is nothing in the nature of “a majority” that makes a majority obligatory to follow. This is similar to Answer 1, where I found there is nothing in the nature of an individual that commands obligations. There is nothing in the nature of majorities that commands obligations.

3. This answer (some other individual) bears the same problems as 1 and 2.

The only answer that rings plausible for coming to some sort of knowledge about yourself is in God, for God is not relative and changing in nature. When God speaks his evaluation of a person’s goodness, he speaks with authority. Unlike any human or worldly measuring tool, it is within God’s nature to be self-sufficient. The need I experienced (and I think we all experience and need) was for something without the quality of relativity. Only God fits this description.

If Rulers are Imaginary, Why do I Want one so Badly?

To be the philosophical irritant, we may throw the entire inquiry back further: why do I even care enough to seek an answer to these feelings and thoughts? Why seek such a thing as an identity, a solid ground to form some sort of knowledge about myself? If God does not exist, if there is nothing but matter and the shifting sands of relative existence, then how could relative matter possibly give rise to a being which seeks absolutes? Again, the very nature of the quest and inquiry can only be explained by the existence of a God who seeks us, and puts such quests in our hearts that we may find Him. Without knowing God, I find it is quite impossible to form a coherent picture of ourselves and so I agree with Calvin, that in knowing ourselves we know God, and in knowing God, we know ourselves.

Love

The third and most important xian virtue is love.

When speaking of the love of God, there is something about the term "love" that is well, corny. In the midst of a hurting world that looks at suffering and corruption with such serious denunciations, God’s love can sound like a pipe-dream of rainbows and lollipops. Where is God’s merciful intervention and concern? While love sounds nice, we need real answers, not a romantic fairy-tale.

Is the love of God a romantic love? I certainly wouldn't want to suggest it isn't romantic. Contrary to the often stoic portrayals of Jesus in the church's artwork throughout the centuries, I think we ought to be comfortable with a theology that asserts God as the ultimate romantic, and author of romance itself, romantic love being part of his very nature as God.

Though we do see illustrations of God's romantic love in scripture, romantic love is not the main emphasis, and a strictly Romantic view of God's love can be very meaningless to a lot of people.

Some verses of the bible have become "theme verses": verses that sum up well the overall message of the bible. As regards God's love, John 3:16 is one of those verses. Unfortunately because of the way it is worded, it can also be prone to misunderstanding. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life." The part of this verse that is often misunderstood is the "so". I have often heard it interpreted that "for God so loved the world" is meant to be an expression of the grandeur of God's romantic feelings of love. Something like an infatuated, glassy-eyed "I love you sooooo much!"

I suspect that the popularity of this verse has contributed to abit of the uncritical use and presentation of the love of God.

In truth, the "so" of this verse is really speaking of manner, or kind. It would be more accurately (but less simply) translated as "For in this way, God so loved the world: that he gave his only begotten son."

Of course, this does not mean the romantic and emotional element of God's love is absent from the text, but the main thrust is the exemplary manner of God's love: the laying down of the life of God for the sake of a world in need of God.

I find this is a much more instructive and helpful summary of what is most important to know about the love of God: a willingness to lay down our lives for others. This is the love that God calls us to have in our hearts.

This is much more sober, practical, credible and winsome than the portrayal of this Christian virtue as a romantic fling with the Lord.

Given how frequently the Christian faith is subjectivized and privatized beyond recognition, it's important to remember the objective quality of God's love. God's love is identifiable and in some sense, measureable. So much so, it's almost unmistakeable, for it has definite qualities to it. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 cor 13:4-7) Why is this so important? Because in love there is a real, objective and practical tool to evaluate whether or not you are a good person.

The horrible temptation (I would even go so far as to label it demonic) is to delude ourselves with moral excuses. Many have an abundance of religious romance, church flings and a hodge-podge of cuddly cherub-like thoughts that never amount to any action. Not all have (or have been taught how) to cultivate genuine character.

While growing in the love of God doesn't fit into a tidy 5-step formula, the cultivation of the virtue of love must at least be wrestled free from foggy, unmeasureable notions of God's love as mere romance.