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Parallel Straight Lines: Connection through Contradiction

Parallel straight lines, Denis reflected, meet only at infinity. He might talk forever of care-chamber sleep and she of meteorology till the end of time. Did one ever establish contact with anyone? We are all parallel straight lines (Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow, p. 18).

I mentioned in my post on Crome Yellow that I would comment on a couple of quotes from the book. This is the first of those quotes.

I do not want to get into the mathematical idea of parallel lines meeting at infinity. I had to take an intermediate algebra class in college. Let’s just say it’s not my forte. But the idea itself is intriguing.

Tim Keller regularly uses The Stepford Wives as an illustration of our need for contradiction. When you have a wife that cannot contradict you, then you have no possibility for an actual relationship. The same, he says, goes for God. We hear things like, ‘I could never believe in a God who would do X.’ We want God to conform to our own moral norms. We want to mold him in our own image. But, says Keller, if God cannot contradict you, then you have no real basis for a relationship. There are some holes in this logic, I think, but the point is well taken nonetheless.

The parallel lines idea makes this point in a more logical way. If you are on a parallel line with someone, if you are exactly the same, then you do not meet in this life. In order to have connection we need contradiction. In order to meet someone there needs to be some sort of perpendicularity. Hence the need for a God who contradicts us, who calls us out on our differences. I can see the case being made for people as well (not just for God).

Looking for the Obvious Things that aren’t so Obvious: Smuggling Wheelbarrows

In The Cultural Paradox of the Global Village, Mark Federman tells an interesting little parable. Allow me to paraphrase At some obscure bordertown, for years, a man crosses the border almost daily with a wheelbarrow full of dirt. Each day border security digs through the dirt looking for contraband; and each day it’s the same story – it’s just dirt. He’s filling up a hole. Years later, a retired border patrolman runs into the wheelbarrow man in a social setting. He’s just got to know the real story behind the dirt. “There’s no way you were just bringing dirt across the border; what were you really doing?”

The reply: “I was smuggling wheelbarrows, of course.” ______________________________________

The point of the story is that the obvious isn’t always so obvious. I’ve heard someone say that the Father Brown stories of G.K. Chesterton point out much the same thing. Father Brown is always asking the most basic question that no one else seems to be asking. This is how he solves crimes when others can’t. A Christian critique of our culture, whether it regards social-moral issues or media ecology, is going to have to come to grips with the fact that we are often missing the obvious. We need to train ourselves to look for the obvious things that aren’t so obvious. Often we’re so busy rifling through the dirt that we miss the wheelbarrow. Federman’s solution, based on the work of Marshall McLuhan, is as follows:

The challenge in achieving the awareness to notice the formerly unnoticed – what we call achieving ‘integral awareness’ of our total environment – is to create an appropriate ‘anti-environment.’

The fish in the water doesn’t notice the water. He has to get out of the water. The church should provide the greatest of all anti-environments. Yet, as we engulf ourselves in worldliness, and manage simply to mirror the world, what we are really doing is crippling our ability see the obvious all around us. We cannot critique the music of the world because we are too busy humming along.

Does God Exist?

A little quirk happening made me think of a quote by G.K. Chesterton from The Everlasting Man:

One of my first journalistic adventures, or misadventures, concerned a comment on Grant Allen, who had written a book about the Evolution of the Idea of God. I happened to remark that it would be much more interesting if God wrote a book about the evolution of the idea of Grant Allen. And I remember that the editor objected to my remark on the ground that it was blasphemous; which naturally amused me not a little.

I was watching a debate on YouTube and saw the title of a video which began, “Does God Exist?…Dan Barker Debate” But in my first (very quick) glance, I actually thought it said, “Does Dan Barker Exist?” I think that would be a much more interesting video and topic of debate.

God is not to be discussed or debated. God is not a subject for debate, because He is Who He is. We are told that the unbeliever, of course, does not agree with that; and that is perfectly true; but that makes no difference. We believe it, and it is a part of our very case to assert it. Holding the view that we do, believing what we do about God, we cannot in any circumstances allow Him to become a subject for discussion or debate or investigation…God is always to be approached ‘with reverence and with godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire’…

We believe in the almighty, the glorious, the living God; and whatever may be true of others we must never put ourselves, or allow ourselves to be put, into a position in which we are debating about God as if He were but a philosophical proposition (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, pp. 46-47).

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!

Augustine, Scientism, and Blind Faith: This is Not a New Fight

I have been reading and writing about Scientism (which I briefly define below) a good bit lately. The reason for this is that I am in the process of studying Evolutionary Psychology in my university studies. I will not get into that in this post (I’ve written about it ELSEWHERE), but only mention it as the primary reason for my interest here. I gained insight from an unlikely place today:

A while back when I was reading The Everlasting Man, by G.K. Chesterton, I took note of this quote about Augustine of Hippo:

The war upon life, the denial of nature, were exactly the things he had already found in the heathen world outside the Church, and had to renounce when he entered the Church (p. 225-226).

Chesterton’s point is that Augustine’s Manichean asceticism was something that he would come to repent of. Let me say that again, he had to repent of his worldly asceticism. But that was not all he had to repent of.

He saw, in the Manichaeans, a tendency to scoff at those who believed without hard proof, while at the same time demanding that people do just that in order to buy into their system. In this he came to see the inherent contradiction:

I thought that the Church was entirely honest in this and far less pretentious than the Manichaeans, who laughed at people who took things on faith, made rash promises of scientific knowledge, and then put forward a whole system of preposterous inventions which they expected their followers to believe on trust because they could not be proved.

The honesty of the church, of which he wrote, was her willingness to confess that existence of mysteries that were beyond human explanation. He continues,

I began to realize that I believed countless things which I had never seen or which had taken place when I was not there to see – so many events in the history of the world, so many facts about places and towns which I had never seen, and so much that I believed on the word of friends or doctors or various other people. Unless we took these things on trust, we should accomplish nothing at all in this life (Confessions, 6.5).

From here, Augustine would go on to formulate his famous stance of ‘I believe in order to know.’ But I say this as an aside.

The issue that I want to ponder for a moment is that Augustine’s original contention with the Manichaeans is very much like that we face with modern Scientism. I do not say science, I say Scientism (the elevating of science to the point that it, and it alone, has all the answers, and that all reality is essentially physical). You can call it scientific materialism if you like – scoffing at those who take things on faith, but, at the same time, demanding precisely the same thing. So often, they deny the existence of the soul because it cannot be seen while speaking of the Big Bang as if they were there when it happened, or speaking of Evolution as if the spawning of the first primordial ooze was broadcast on CNN.

From Michael Polanyi to Cornelius Van Til to John Frame such nonsense has been answered for years – we all take things on faith. The ultimate issue not whether we take things on faith, but on what authority we base our faith. Augustine’s answer was the Scriptures. Scientism’s answer is man.

But that is not really my point. What struck me as I was reading the Confessions today was that this is not a new fight that we are engaged in. Scientism has reared its ugly head in various forms for centuries. But who would of thought the Manichaeans fell in this group? Chesterton pointed out that Augustine had to renounce worldly asceticism. It seems too that Augustine had to renounce worldly ‘blind faith’ as well – deciding that if he were to ‘take things on faith’ he must find a firmer foundation than the observations of the Manichaeans provided. He found that foundation in the Holy Scriptures.

Recent Reading: The Narnian, by Alan Jacobs

Let me warn you up front that this is not a review. I only write on points in books that strike me and that I want to think about and record for future reference. This is mostly some very vague thoughts about one particular issue that came up in the book.

I will skip some general thoughts on the book I considered writing. It suffices to say that I did not find it to be a great biography. It was alright, but certainly not one of the best I’ve read.

I still appreciate the book and am thankful for the author. I came away with one point that made the reading worthwhile (because it made me think) – Lewis’ experience with apologetics.

Jacobs makes the case that Lewis felt that his work in apologetics was actually damaging his own soul. When he bested opponents (as was usually the case) he came out of it prideful. When he was worsted he came out dejected (that might be too strong a word). But all in all he felt that his endeavors in apologetics were not improving his spiritual state or aiding his sanctification. Perhaps, Jacobs suggests, this is why he spent some of his later years writing children’s books and fiction. For it was in the flourishing of his imaginative life that his soul prospered.

This sounds parallel to Chesterton’s point in Orthodoxy that it is usually the strict logician who drives himself mad. Imagination never drives a man to insanity, but logic does. Even good logic. I don’t have time to flesh this out, but if you’re familiar with Orthodoxy you know the argument.

I have studied apologetics a good deal. I’ve read Van Til and Frame and Keller, and Sproul and Gerstner, even Lee Strobel (not to mention a great deal of Lewis). I’ve watched too many debates between Christians and Atheists (I’ve probably watched Wilson vs Hitchens alone in various venues at least a dozen different times. I have never heard one that was good for my soul (no matter who got the better in the debate). I know about Classical Apologetics and Presuppositional Apologetics. I find myself doing apologetic work in sermons quite often. But I’m always drawn back to the words of Martyn Lloyd-Jones from Preaching and Preachers:

God is not to be debated. God is not a subject for debate, because of who He is and what He is. Allowing what we believe about God, we can not allow Him to become the subject of debate. God is holy and a consuming fire; He is not a philosophic act or a concept. We believe we are dealing with the Living God. We must never allow ourselves to be put into a position where we are debating God as if He were a philosophical proposition.

Lloyd-Jones is not saying that we cannot debate anything, but that the existence of God should be off-limits. God is the living God, the I AM – not a philosophical idea, not a proposition up for debate. But the Doctor had certainly engaged in apologetics of various forms in his life, even if he would not debate the existence of God. Near the end of his life, in a talk entitled ‘the Living God’ (which you can find in its entirety on my blog), he said,

I have a terrible feeling – and it is terrible, because I am one of the chiefest of the sinners – that nothing has so caused us to forget God and to forget the living, acting God, as our concern about apologetics. We have regarded ourselves as the defenders, the guardians, the custodians of the faith. We are that of course, but I am afraid that we have often stopped at that, and we have given the whole of our time and energy to defending the faith, defending the propositions – and forgetting God. Now you see, it is all a question of balance. We have got to indulge in apologetics. But what worries me, as I look back across my life, is that I have probably given too much time and attention to apologetics. Thirty years ago it was still more necessary than now. It is always necessary, but then we were still fighting the old liberalism up to a point. And quite unconsciously one could be found a sort of an apologete and no more. God was really forgotten, and one got engaged in endless discussions and debates. You were defending the truth at this point and that point, and safeguarding the whole position, steadying the ark and putting your hands on it to steady it – forgetting God! I am quite sure of it, and I plead guilty to it myself. One often indulged in these apologetics in a more or less carnal manner, and one enjoyed scoring points off the other side. But the terrible thing was that God tended to be forgotten. So let us be very careful about this matter of apologetics. Let us keep it in its place.

I think Lewis, according to Jacobs, experienced exactly what the Doctor was talking about.

I have no deep thoughts to share, only one reflection: I thank God for C.S. Lewis’ apologetical works, but I’m more thankful for his imaginative works. It doesn’t shock me that he didn’t profit from his work in apologetics as much – neither do I. Perhaps more gifted Christians, especially writers, should spend time writing good literature rather than constantly debating non-believers. After all, it was George MacDonald and J.R.R. Tolkien (fiction writers) who won over Lewis.

I realize that some folks truly loving doing apologetical work. God bless you. Do your work and do it well. We need you. But I trust the Doctor’s wisdom when he says, ‘keep it in its place’ and don’t forget ‘the living God.’ Give a reason for the hope that is in you, but not as a debater. You are a herald of good news. A living God and a glorious Christ trump a good argument any day in my book.