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Faith Seeking Understanding

As the right order requires us to believe the deep things of Christian faith before we undertake to discuss them by reason.

– St. Anselm, Cur Deus Homo

This is built upon Augustine’s famous “Believe, so that you may understand.” That is, faith seeking understanding, or reason within the bounds of religion.

  • If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority (John 7:17).

Indwelling: The Presuppositional Air We Breathe

When we accept a certain set of pre-suppositions and use them as our interpretative framework, we may be said to dwell in them as we do in our body…They are not asserted and cannot be asserted, for assertion can be made only within a framework with which we have identified ourselves for the time being; as they are themselves our ultimate framework, they are essentially inarticulable.

– Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 60

A parable:

A crab walks into a bar the ocean and says to a fish, ‘Dude, you should really get out of the water sometime; it would be good for your complexion.’

‘Huh?’ said the fish.

The crab responded to the perplexity of the fish: ‘Seriously bro, you stay wet all the time; you need to soak up some sun.’

‘Blub, blub,’ said the fish, and then he began his soliloquy: ‘Crab, I have no idea what you’re talking about; I’m not wet, I don’t even know what wet is.’

‘Are you serious bro?’ replied the crab…

I could go on, but I won’t. (A while back I wrote a POEM that tries to express the same point) The point is simple: For the fish, the water becomes and extension of himself; it is his atmosphere, his ecosystem. Human minds have ecosystems as well; I suppose you could call them ego-systems. In order for a radical conversion of thought to take place, the fish (yes, back to the fish) must see, 1) that there is such a thing as water, 2) that he lives in it, 3) that the fact that he lives in it has major ramifications, and 4) that there is a possible alternative that might suit reality better.

This won’t work for a fish because water is the only environment that suits its purpose – unless of course the fish is a mermaid, like Ariel, and realizes that the seaweed is greener in another world. Come to think of it, the Little Mermaid had an epistemological crisis of the sort we’re driving at here: she saw a more suitable alternative that fulfilled her deepest longings. But, alas, we have digressed from a brilliant chemist and philosopher to a lame parable to the Little Mermaid; by all means, let’s wrap this up.

Our basic presuppositions are the air that we breathe. In order for someone to abandon them they must be made aware that they exist, see there faults demonstrated, and see that there is another, and more suitable, alternative. You won’t get the fish out of the water, in this case, by jumping in yourself. The task is to get the fish out, not to get yourself in. If you do jump in the water, it must be for the purpose of blowing up the lake (metaphorically speaking of course) so that others will come running out with you.

In Order to Wrestle You Must Embrace

If you’ve ever watched a wrestling match, you’ve seen that the very nature of the sport is grappling. The competitors hod, twist, pin, and muscle each other around until one of them gives. They are forced to embrace each other in order to wrestle.

– Anonymous, Embracing Obscurity, p. 86.

I had a long post on this quote planned, but I can’t quite wrap my head around all of the implications at this point. Hence what follows is a hodgepodge of semi-related thoughts.

As I read this passage, I initially thought of C.S. Lewis’ An Experiment in Criticism and Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book. They both stressed the need to get out of the way and let a book have its way with you. Lewis called this ‘receiving’ a narrative. Embrace the narrative before you begin to judge it. If you cannot sympathize with a story in some way you do not truly understand it. G.K. Chesterton put it this way:

When the Professor is told by the Polynesian that once there was nothing except a great feathered serpent, unless the learned man feels a thrill and a half temptation to wish it were true, he is no judge of such things at all (The Everlasting Man, p. 101).

I also thought of Jacob’s wrestling match with the Angel of the Lord in Genesis 32. Jacob was in some ways forced into this match to be sure. But as he embraced the struggle, he had to make a commitment to hang on. It was through that commitment that the event became a wrestling match rather that a mere beat-down. One must commit before the true wrestling begins.

This line of thinking picks up on clear lines of thought as old as Augustine and Anselm:

As the right order requires us to believe the deep things of Christian faith before we undertake to discuss them by reason (Anselm, Cur Deus Homo).

Another line of thought related to this quote is covenantal: commitment comes before intimacy.

Sheltering Your Kids

True story:

In a discussion, a man who works at a bar (though we were not in a bar at the time) says to me, ‘You shouldn’t shelter your children.’

I respond, ‘Well, should I bring them to your bar?’

He says, ‘Lord, I hope you wouldn’t bring them there.’

To which I reply, ‘So do you do want me to shelter my kids!’

And the subject was quickly changed (not by me).

Christianity is Just a Crutch…

This is one of the arguments you hear from time to time against Christianity. Religion is just a crutch for weak people.

But before I get to the point, let me give my disclaimer. I work in the pharmacy business. I am not against the use of prescription medication. Nor am I contending that all psychopharmacological drugs are bad. Nor am I claiming that all people who are on them are bad! They have their purposes. This is only an illustration of a point. Having said that, allow me to digress.

I was listening to a sermon by Martyn Lloyd-Jones a couple of nights ago. Though he did not use this terminology, for the terminology had not yet been developed at the time, he was doing a fine piece of presuppositional apologetics. He was demonstrating how modern detractors of Christianity contradict themselves. One interesting story he told was of what he called one of the greatest speeches he ever heard.

He listened to a political leader, before World War II, arguing that Germany had acted so immorally in the breaking of one of its alliances that it demanded war. His speech concerned the sanctity of national contracts, treaties, and alliances. Compacts and treaties are sacred, and dare not be broken. For one nation to break its vow of fidelity to another is the unpardonable political sin.

Lloyd-Jones said that this speech was eloquent and compelling. Only, in later years it came out that the man who gave this speech was in the midst of marital infidelity as he delivered it. So much for the sacredness of compacts, at least as far as wedding vows are concerned. We are walking contradictions.

Which leads me to a story. This is one ‘work story’ that I have shared several times from the pulpit. And it is a true story.

I have worked at a pharmacy for years. One day I was ringing up a customer at the cash register while she continued to talk on the phone. She had no idea that I was a Christian, much less a preacher of the gospel. She was highly emotional, and very much tuned in to her phone conversation, virtually oblivious to the fact that she was in a public place (let this be a lesson for those who talk on cell phones in public!). She raised her voice and said to the person on the other end of the phone, ‘Can you believe so and so (she said a name here) says she’s become a Christian? What a joke! Religion is just a crutch for weak people who can’t cope with life!’ She pounded her little hand on the counter as she said this.

In that moment I felt a deep sympathy for her. For as I looked down on the counter, I saw that what this lady was purchasing was a large bottle of prescription Xanax!