I was listening to this short video of Khaldoun Sweis on the philosophical issues of truth, a great primer on some introductory epistemological issues well worth Christians thinking about. He makes the statement all Christians are familiar with, that Jesus claimed to be “The Truth.” The full statement in John 14:6 was Jesus’ reply to Thomas (that one given to doubt) when he told the disciples that they knew the way to the place where he was going. Thomas said they had no idea where Jesus was going, so how could they know the way. Jesus replied, ” “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Given that I’m sort of obsessed with defending the truth of Christianity, the first thought that struck me was, What kind of person says something like that! No one in all of recorded history has said anything like that, or many other things Jesus was recorded as saying. Unless they were stark raving mad. Jesus of Nazareth most certainly was not. (more…)
I came across this video at the The Ten Minute Bible Hour of the proprietor, Matt Whitman, giving his de-conversion, and back, story, and at the end of the short video he critiques the now common deconstruction stories, as I discussed in my last post. Growing up a Christian he thought he had this whole Christian thing nailed down, until he didn’t. Around the age of 29 having moved away from his faith, he made an incredible discovery: Christianity wasn’t about him! He did something radical in response to his doubt: he actually read the Bible! From the beginning. At about the six minute mark he describes the discovery that brought him back:
The plot of the bible can’t be the improvement of people’s behavior, and the increased accuracy of people’s thinking about God. It’s gotta be the story of God redeeming things that are broken and messed up, creation, people, everything. That’s a completely different religion.
Most Christians, not to mention non-Christians, have no idea how epistemology, the study of our knowing, affects our faith. Even to say, “affects our faith” has some people automatically think, what does knowing have to do with faith! Lots. This consequence of the so-called Enlightenment, almost 400 years after it entered Western intellectual tradition, is ubiquitous, invisible, and pernicious. It is, and always has been, at war with Christianity, and it is imperative for Christians to understand this. You don’t have to be an “intellectual” either; just grasping the inescapable power of assumptions is all you need. That is, whatever is assumed to be true is accepted as true without question, things taken for granted instead of articulated. I’ll explain one of the most harmful in a moment, but I was struck just how harmful when I heard the story of two famous online guys I’d never heard of who had something now called, I gather, a deconstruction of their faith. Well, I’m going to deconstruct their deconstruction. (more…)
I had a dream recently, like I do every night, but this one was inspiration for a blog post. Most of my dreams are way too bizarre for the word bizarre, but this one was very specific. I made a friend when I got out of college and was involved in the Navigator ministry at USC, and had some part in leading him to Christ. We stayed friends after that, and he even attended Westminster Seminary with my wife and I for a time, but we lost connection with him somewhere in the mid-90s. The dream was simple. He showed up in the dream, and let me know he was no longer a Christian. I asked what he was, and he said nothing. I told him that wasn’t possible, that he had to believe in something! Then it was over. When I woke up I said to myself, I have to write something about this!
Most people are under the impression when they don’t believe in Christianity, or reject it, they are in some neutral place where belief or faith or religion isn’t required; they’ll just sit this one out for now. That, of course, is impossible, as I’ve argued here before. There is no metaphysical neutrality. As Dylan sang in his Jesus phase, you gotta serve somebody, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody. (more…)
We live in very strange times, as you may have noticed. Nobody knows who or what to trust, witness masks and gloves when you go to the store, or those who choose not to wear them (me!). Which “experts” should we trust? Politicians? A lot of people are fed up with their dictates. Media sources? No need to laugh. We’re seeing the profound implications of what happens to a society when trust breaks down, and it isn’t pretty. Civilization is fragile, and trust the glue that holds it together. Which brings us to the issue of certainty, how it’s related to trust, and how the expectation that absolute certainty is possible makes trust impossible. The problem is that if absolute certainty is possible, which is isn’t, then trust is unnecessary. To get the connection, we must understand something about epistemology, the study of knowledge, how we know things. You might wonder, what that six syllable word has to do with anything. Pretty much everything. To understand why will require a brief history lesson. (more…)
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