Ever since Rebecca told me that her boyfriend was coming in May, I have periodically suggested to her that she may have misheard him. Instead of "I'm coming in May", he may very well have said "I'm coming in maybe". It was a lame joke, but it made me laugh. Similarly, I set a goal to write a blogpost in the month of May. In the end, Rebecca's boyfriend did come in May, but my blogpost did not. I would like to use the excuse that I said "maybe", not "May", but that would not be true. Sadly, I failed in reaching my goal last month.
But no need to dwell on past failings! Despite my increasing workload, I am setting apart enough time to right my wrongs this month. In fact, I already did so several weeks ago. The reason you not are reading that blogpost instead of this one is because I deemed the former to be far too dry for public consumption. It was an outline of my personal theory of human personality. If you happen to be interested in such a thing, let me know. Otherwise, I think it will forever remain on my unposted list (and rightly so, quite likely).
There is a question that I have been pursuing for some time now, and the pursuit has proven to be important in the develpment of my thoughts about life in general. I have discussed the question with close friends, posed the question to people I consider wise, and opened the question to public debate. I have searched for an answer in books, in reasoning, and in prayer. The question is about the nature of the Bible.
When a friend of mine questioned the authority of the Bible near the end of last summer, I realized that I had never seriously considered such a question. If the question had ever arisen before, I would mindlessly subdue it with a Bible verse that stated that the Bible is truth. In essence, my reasoning was cyclic: I believed the Bible was truth because it said it was truth. When I realized the error in my argument, I lost the grip I once had on everything I had ever believed. Put more accurately, I realized that I never had a grip on what I believed. I simply believed it.
In this way, a simple question about the reliability of the Bible removed the foundation of my beliefs, or at least something close to the foundation, and I was left to wonder if I really knew anything at all. My first conclusion, which seemed self-evident at the time, was that there must be one thing that I could never deny by which I can reason other things. In order to prove anything, something must first be known. In order to know that first thing, something else must be known in order to prove it. Essentially, I realized that I must believe one thing for which I can provide no proof. In this way, I might be able to prove other things, and, in so doing, begin a quest for knowledge.
And so I was faced with the difficulty of determining which one fact must be my starting point. I considered, among other things, my own existence. After deliberating over the possibilities for some time, I concluded that I could not freely choose the 'starting point fact' at all. No matter what I chose for my starting point, that fact would remain my starting point forever; I could never call it into question, because it would always remain the one fact which required no proof. Meditating on this thought made me realize that my 'starting point fact' was chosen when I was born, or else when I first thought my first thought. It was the basis for which I was able to call things into doubt at all, and it was also the foundation for all the knowledge I ever gathered, though I had never thought long enough about it to realize it.
Having determined that I could not choose my 'starting point fact' because that it had already been chosen for me, I attempted to discover what it was. If I could be certain of nothing else, there must be one thing that I would still believe, independent of any proof. My immediate response was that Love must exist. My knowledge of Love as an entity was (and is) too real to doubt.
I must stipulate here what I mean by the term "love". The term has been much maligned in various cases, and numerous definitions have been attributed to it. Perhaps the most depressing usage of the word is when it is a synonym of "attraction". Attraction is a wonderful thing, but it is such a separate concept from the most important definition of love that to use the same word to describe both seems ludicrous. Neither am I referring to the emotion that is often called love, which could alternatively be phrased "the enjoyment of". When I normally use the word "love", I am using the following definition, as written by CS Lewis: "Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained." Now take this definition of love, and imagine it as an entity in its fullest and purest form. If I'm right, you won't even have to think that far. The image of that entity is so impressed upon my soul (and, as I now believe, on every soul) that I would have to deny my own existence before I could deny that it exists. I call it God.
This is what I mean when I say that I don't believe in athiests (and Melissa laughs). Because my mind seemed able to call everything into doubt except for God, I determined that He must be my starting point for the re-establishment of my body of knowledge. Daniel was later to tell me that the philosophical term for this 'starting point fact' for which I can have no proof is "axiom".
I was satisfied with my axiom because it was singular and I could not question it. My subsequent thoughts remained less systematic for a long time, namely because my initial troubling question was not about the existence of myself or my surroundings, but rather about whether I was leading a proper life. For all you philosophically-savvy readers out there, I was not seriously asking an ontological question at this point. For the time being, I more-or-less assumed that my belief in God justified my believe in the existence of myself and the rest of the universe. It was not until I took a philosophy course three semesters later that I wrote a formal proof that God must be my axiom and that my existence and ability to reason all other knowledge must necessarily follow from that axiom.
Ignorant of my far-off future philosophical treatise, my thoughts then turned back to the reliability of the teachings found in the Bible. If I lived my life according to Biblical standards, would I be living the life I should be leading? Was the pursuit of God's purposes and the development of my relationship with Him the proper focus of my existence? The longer I struggled with this concept, the deeper my questions dug, even to the point of my questioning the reality of my relationship with God. These questions became supremely important to me, namely because I considered my relationship with God the most important aspect of my life.
I began asking these questions to others. One of the first answers I received was something to the effect of "The loving God I know intimately is clearly found within the pages of the Bible." This was true; the depiction of God in the Bible did seem consistent with my foreknowledge of God. Still, the Bible said that God did a lot of things I didn't understand. Also, I knew of plenty of other books whose depictions of God were also consistent with my foreknowledge of Him. While most of these books were based on the Bible or were at least written by people who believed in the truth of the Bible, I could not see any reason for believing the Bible to be more truthful than, for instance, "The Purpose Driven Life." People often say that books present truth, but only the Bible is Truth. How is "being truth" different from "presenting truth"? There must be a difference, or else I could call "The Purpose-Driven Life" Truth.
In this way, my question switched from being "Is the Bible true?" to "In what sense is the Bible Truth?" I had rephrased the question for three reasons:
1) I had accepted that the Bible was at least true in some sense. If it was true in no other way, it was at least true in that it states that God exists.
2) I knew of other sources that were similarly at least true in some sense.
3) I wanted to determine whether or not (and how) the Bible being true is different from other sources being true.
So I began to ask people who believed that the Bible is truth what they meant by that. I posted the question on my Facebook profile page. I asked my Bible study leader and fellow students. I even sent the question to an online Christian magazine.
A pattern started to emerge. Almost every time I asked someone this question, they would bring up the allegory-versus-literal question with examples like seven-day creation and Noah's world-wide flood. But that wasn't the question I was asking. Some parts of the Bible are obviously allegorical, such as Jesus' parables. I have never heard anyone claim that they are literal. On the other hand, some parts of the Bible are obviously literal. The existence of a historical Jesus, for example, is not seriously doubted by the vast majority of non-Christian historians and scholars. The statement that the Bible is either allegorical or literal was too simplistic to be helpful.
I began listing specifics: Why are the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke different? Is the order of events in the gospels strictly accurate or used as a literary device? Are the dialogues and monologues exactly what the historical people said or are they summaries of a general concept expressed by their lives? Are the things that Paul tells his specific audiences to do absolute moral truths that we should all live by? Essentially, what does it mean to call the Bible Truth?
This is the question I wrestled with for a long time. Neither my Bible study leader, nor my friends, nor the online magazine ever got back to me with a satisfactory answer, but many told me that they would pray for me. Interestingly, some of them said that they would pray that God would give me the answer to my question, while others said that they would pray that He would help me through this period of doubt.
Because I was not getting an answer from my discussions with others (and because I thought I would annoy them if I brought it up anymore), I stopped asking people whether or not they thought the Bible was Truth and started asking God the question instead. You might think that this is the obvious turning point in the story. Once I brought the question to God, the answer must have seemed clear, right? It's the promise God made to Jeremiah: "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know."
As Natalie is apt to say, no dice. I began reading through the book of Job, hoping that his struggle with God would help me with mine. I read one chapter each night, each time bookending the reading with the prayer that God would teach me what the Bible was. He didn't tell me. Some nights, I would wait up for a while after I had read my chapter and listen intently to the silence. His voice was not on the whisper in the wind. In time, I finished the last chapter in the book of Job, and while I had learned plenty of things along the way, I felt no closer to having an answer to my question of Biblical truth.
I took a break. Several weeks passed, and there were no developments. Then one night, I was invited over to the Williams' house for a casual group get-together. After several rowdy games of Smash Brothers and James Bond, someone's estrogen attempted to burst free from the night of testosterone endulgence with the suggestion that we watch "Enchanted". Somehow, the bill was passed, the video games were put away, and we spent the rest of the night watching princesses and frills dancing across the screen.
Needless to say, I was not at this time dwelling upon the deeper epistemological questions of life. I was not petitioning God; I was passively watching a movie. It wasn't even like I was watching a profound movie like "The Matrix" which might have raised questions about the meaning of life. Quite the opposite: I do not hesitate to say that "Enchanted" is the lightest, sappiest, girliest film it has ever been my experience to encounter. And this was the medium by which God chose to speak to me.
If you haven't seen the film, this is the general premise: a fairytale princess is thrust into the real-world city of New York. A man reluctantly takes care of her in her distress, is discovered in an innocent but compromising-looking situation with the 'princess' by his fiance, Nancy, and Nancy becomes quite angry and leaves. In a show-stopping number, the fairytale princess sends a gift to Nancy on the man's behalf, and upon receiving the gift, Nancy forgives the man, saying "If you say nothing happened, nothing happened. I trust you."
My two favorite images that express my relationship with Jesus are brokenness and freefall. Both images were particularly evident to me in the moment I heard that line. I was broken because I realized that, no matter how much I try to put God in a box so that I can label the things He does, He is never contained and therefore often does things in a completely new and unexpected way. I spent weeks reading the book of Job and searching for God's voice, and after all that, God decides to speak to me through a sappy line in a girly movie like "Enchanted"? I love my God. His message was for me to freefall: not to abandon my questions or ability to reason, but to trust that He will grant me the discernment and wisdom to understand what He wants me to understand if I seek Him in everything. That's why I say 'grace' over movies and television shows before I watch them (thanks for the idea, Mara).
And so, I will trust the Bible as the only explicit guide to life that God has presented to me. While many of the other questions that I posed are still left to be answered, I do not believe that God would be satisfied with my struggle with Him if I stopped searching for the answers now.
But no need to dwell on past failings! Despite my increasing workload, I am setting apart enough time to right my wrongs this month. In fact, I already did so several weeks ago. The reason you not are reading that blogpost instead of this one is because I deemed the former to be far too dry for public consumption. It was an outline of my personal theory of human personality. If you happen to be interested in such a thing, let me know. Otherwise, I think it will forever remain on my unposted list (and rightly so, quite likely).
There is a question that I have been pursuing for some time now, and the pursuit has proven to be important in the develpment of my thoughts about life in general. I have discussed the question with close friends, posed the question to people I consider wise, and opened the question to public debate. I have searched for an answer in books, in reasoning, and in prayer. The question is about the nature of the Bible.
When a friend of mine questioned the authority of the Bible near the end of last summer, I realized that I had never seriously considered such a question. If the question had ever arisen before, I would mindlessly subdue it with a Bible verse that stated that the Bible is truth. In essence, my reasoning was cyclic: I believed the Bible was truth because it said it was truth. When I realized the error in my argument, I lost the grip I once had on everything I had ever believed. Put more accurately, I realized that I never had a grip on what I believed. I simply believed it.
In this way, a simple question about the reliability of the Bible removed the foundation of my beliefs, or at least something close to the foundation, and I was left to wonder if I really knew anything at all. My first conclusion, which seemed self-evident at the time, was that there must be one thing that I could never deny by which I can reason other things. In order to prove anything, something must first be known. In order to know that first thing, something else must be known in order to prove it. Essentially, I realized that I must believe one thing for which I can provide no proof. In this way, I might be able to prove other things, and, in so doing, begin a quest for knowledge.
And so I was faced with the difficulty of determining which one fact must be my starting point. I considered, among other things, my own existence. After deliberating over the possibilities for some time, I concluded that I could not freely choose the 'starting point fact' at all. No matter what I chose for my starting point, that fact would remain my starting point forever; I could never call it into question, because it would always remain the one fact which required no proof. Meditating on this thought made me realize that my 'starting point fact' was chosen when I was born, or else when I first thought my first thought. It was the basis for which I was able to call things into doubt at all, and it was also the foundation for all the knowledge I ever gathered, though I had never thought long enough about it to realize it.
Having determined that I could not choose my 'starting point fact' because that it had already been chosen for me, I attempted to discover what it was. If I could be certain of nothing else, there must be one thing that I would still believe, independent of any proof. My immediate response was that Love must exist. My knowledge of Love as an entity was (and is) too real to doubt.
I must stipulate here what I mean by the term "love". The term has been much maligned in various cases, and numerous definitions have been attributed to it. Perhaps the most depressing usage of the word is when it is a synonym of "attraction". Attraction is a wonderful thing, but it is such a separate concept from the most important definition of love that to use the same word to describe both seems ludicrous. Neither am I referring to the emotion that is often called love, which could alternatively be phrased "the enjoyment of". When I normally use the word "love", I am using the following definition, as written by CS Lewis: "Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained." Now take this definition of love, and imagine it as an entity in its fullest and purest form. If I'm right, you won't even have to think that far. The image of that entity is so impressed upon my soul (and, as I now believe, on every soul) that I would have to deny my own existence before I could deny that it exists. I call it God.
This is what I mean when I say that I don't believe in athiests (and Melissa laughs). Because my mind seemed able to call everything into doubt except for God, I determined that He must be my starting point for the re-establishment of my body of knowledge. Daniel was later to tell me that the philosophical term for this 'starting point fact' for which I can have no proof is "axiom".
I was satisfied with my axiom because it was singular and I could not question it. My subsequent thoughts remained less systematic for a long time, namely because my initial troubling question was not about the existence of myself or my surroundings, but rather about whether I was leading a proper life. For all you philosophically-savvy readers out there, I was not seriously asking an ontological question at this point. For the time being, I more-or-less assumed that my belief in God justified my believe in the existence of myself and the rest of the universe. It was not until I took a philosophy course three semesters later that I wrote a formal proof that God must be my axiom and that my existence and ability to reason all other knowledge must necessarily follow from that axiom.
Ignorant of my far-off future philosophical treatise, my thoughts then turned back to the reliability of the teachings found in the Bible. If I lived my life according to Biblical standards, would I be living the life I should be leading? Was the pursuit of God's purposes and the development of my relationship with Him the proper focus of my existence? The longer I struggled with this concept, the deeper my questions dug, even to the point of my questioning the reality of my relationship with God. These questions became supremely important to me, namely because I considered my relationship with God the most important aspect of my life.
I began asking these questions to others. One of the first answers I received was something to the effect of "The loving God I know intimately is clearly found within the pages of the Bible." This was true; the depiction of God in the Bible did seem consistent with my foreknowledge of God. Still, the Bible said that God did a lot of things I didn't understand. Also, I knew of plenty of other books whose depictions of God were also consistent with my foreknowledge of Him. While most of these books were based on the Bible or were at least written by people who believed in the truth of the Bible, I could not see any reason for believing the Bible to be more truthful than, for instance, "The Purpose Driven Life." People often say that books present truth, but only the Bible is Truth. How is "being truth" different from "presenting truth"? There must be a difference, or else I could call "The Purpose-Driven Life" Truth.
In this way, my question switched from being "Is the Bible true?" to "In what sense is the Bible Truth?" I had rephrased the question for three reasons:
1) I had accepted that the Bible was at least true in some sense. If it was true in no other way, it was at least true in that it states that God exists.
2) I knew of other sources that were similarly at least true in some sense.
3) I wanted to determine whether or not (and how) the Bible being true is different from other sources being true.
So I began to ask people who believed that the Bible is truth what they meant by that. I posted the question on my Facebook profile page. I asked my Bible study leader and fellow students. I even sent the question to an online Christian magazine.
A pattern started to emerge. Almost every time I asked someone this question, they would bring up the allegory-versus-literal question with examples like seven-day creation and Noah's world-wide flood. But that wasn't the question I was asking. Some parts of the Bible are obviously allegorical, such as Jesus' parables. I have never heard anyone claim that they are literal. On the other hand, some parts of the Bible are obviously literal. The existence of a historical Jesus, for example, is not seriously doubted by the vast majority of non-Christian historians and scholars. The statement that the Bible is either allegorical or literal was too simplistic to be helpful.
I began listing specifics: Why are the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke different? Is the order of events in the gospels strictly accurate or used as a literary device? Are the dialogues and monologues exactly what the historical people said or are they summaries of a general concept expressed by their lives? Are the things that Paul tells his specific audiences to do absolute moral truths that we should all live by? Essentially, what does it mean to call the Bible Truth?
This is the question I wrestled with for a long time. Neither my Bible study leader, nor my friends, nor the online magazine ever got back to me with a satisfactory answer, but many told me that they would pray for me. Interestingly, some of them said that they would pray that God would give me the answer to my question, while others said that they would pray that He would help me through this period of doubt.
Because I was not getting an answer from my discussions with others (and because I thought I would annoy them if I brought it up anymore), I stopped asking people whether or not they thought the Bible was Truth and started asking God the question instead. You might think that this is the obvious turning point in the story. Once I brought the question to God, the answer must have seemed clear, right? It's the promise God made to Jeremiah: "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know."
As Natalie is apt to say, no dice. I began reading through the book of Job, hoping that his struggle with God would help me with mine. I read one chapter each night, each time bookending the reading with the prayer that God would teach me what the Bible was. He didn't tell me. Some nights, I would wait up for a while after I had read my chapter and listen intently to the silence. His voice was not on the whisper in the wind. In time, I finished the last chapter in the book of Job, and while I had learned plenty of things along the way, I felt no closer to having an answer to my question of Biblical truth.
I took a break. Several weeks passed, and there were no developments. Then one night, I was invited over to the Williams' house for a casual group get-together. After several rowdy games of Smash Brothers and James Bond, someone's estrogen attempted to burst free from the night of testosterone endulgence with the suggestion that we watch "Enchanted". Somehow, the bill was passed, the video games were put away, and we spent the rest of the night watching princesses and frills dancing across the screen.
Needless to say, I was not at this time dwelling upon the deeper epistemological questions of life. I was not petitioning God; I was passively watching a movie. It wasn't even like I was watching a profound movie like "The Matrix" which might have raised questions about the meaning of life. Quite the opposite: I do not hesitate to say that "Enchanted" is the lightest, sappiest, girliest film it has ever been my experience to encounter. And this was the medium by which God chose to speak to me.
If you haven't seen the film, this is the general premise: a fairytale princess is thrust into the real-world city of New York. A man reluctantly takes care of her in her distress, is discovered in an innocent but compromising-looking situation with the 'princess' by his fiance, Nancy, and Nancy becomes quite angry and leaves. In a show-stopping number, the fairytale princess sends a gift to Nancy on the man's behalf, and upon receiving the gift, Nancy forgives the man, saying "If you say nothing happened, nothing happened. I trust you."
My two favorite images that express my relationship with Jesus are brokenness and freefall. Both images were particularly evident to me in the moment I heard that line. I was broken because I realized that, no matter how much I try to put God in a box so that I can label the things He does, He is never contained and therefore often does things in a completely new and unexpected way. I spent weeks reading the book of Job and searching for God's voice, and after all that, God decides to speak to me through a sappy line in a girly movie like "Enchanted"? I love my God. His message was for me to freefall: not to abandon my questions or ability to reason, but to trust that He will grant me the discernment and wisdom to understand what He wants me to understand if I seek Him in everything. That's why I say 'grace' over movies and television shows before I watch them (thanks for the idea, Mara).
And so, I will trust the Bible as the only explicit guide to life that God has presented to me. While many of the other questions that I posed are still left to be answered, I do not believe that God would be satisfied with my struggle with Him if I stopped searching for the answers now.
