Brett's faith summary

Ok, so it's been awhile since I've really explicitly stated where I am. Actually, maybe I've never really done this. This is where I am in my beliefs as of 5/22/08.

1.) I am a Christian. That means that yes, I love Jesus and I stand in awe of the man He was. It baffles me how much the all-powerful God of the universe loves me.I am pretty well convinced of the case for the Christian faith. I do still have many doubts and, to be honest, issues with God. Most of this stuff, however, is within the realm of THEOLOGY, not APOLOGETICS. Picture Christianity as an island. I've struggled through some stormy seas to get myself onto the island. Getting onto the island was a matter of apologetics/truth seeking. Now that I'm on the island, I've got some issues with the island itself. It's like I've finally decided I can really swallow Christianity, but although Jesus is easy to swallow, there's some stuff that doesn't go down quite as easy. However, I am starting to even find light shed on some of these tough questions (hell, for example is something that I can actually stomach now).

2.)Other religions: It turns out I was nearly correct as a naive high schooler thinking that there was either Christianity or atheism may be right(I was blind to the idea that OTHER religions/philosophies may be right). Now I feel that really there are two worldviews that I could really accept: Christianity and Skepticism ("I don't know") Actually, maybe I'd throw Deism in there too. Islam, Judaism, even my beloved Buddhism just cannot compare to Christianity in terms of intellectual viability. A historical study of Islam or the Koran is impossible. Buddhists will tell you to leave reason at the door. Judaism is of course Christianity without the most powerful reason for belief (and the most appealing part!!).
I can't go much deeper in one paragraph, but let's just say that if any other worldview had to withstand the scrutiny that Christianity has had to for the last two millenia, they would absolutely dissolve. They would disintegrate!

3.) My faith is not extremely strong. It goes in waves, just like everything else. What's the most disturbing is that my faith hinges more on my my emotions/circumstances than anything. Even though I've got a solid intellectual case for what I believe, I still find myself doubting God or his goodness. It's always when I'm anxious about something or down in the dumps or just lonely that my doubting starts. I think this is most interesting when thinking in context of what people believe and why. (C.S. Lewis knew this more than anyone).

4.) I still refuse to believe something because someone says it's so. Every step up the ladder of orthodoxy has been questioned scrupulously. I also believe in and take comfort from Kierkegaard's view on doubt (that without doubt, faith is not really faith).

5.) I write now as a Christian who is still open to ideas that say Christianity is false, but that door closes more and more daily as I continue to assault my own faith with every argument I can dream or find in a book (I still find that it's very hard to prove something wrong if it is indeed the truth!!) As I come upon situation after tough situation personally, I find that all this testing and all of this questioning merely serves as a fire that tempers the steel of my faith even more, making it even stronger.

6.) I do have enough faith to attempt to carry out Jesus' commands (things like be holy, spread the gospel, etc. although this is tough with my sort of ad-hoc agnostic theology). Thankfully I do have, I feel, all I need to know and that is: We are made for relationship with God, We need to repent, God loves us, Jesus is the KEY to it all- the piece that makes the whole puzzle understandable). I'm not quite up to a mustard seed, but with God's help...

In any case, as I like to do, I'll leave you off with Chesterton's self-deprecating introduction to Orthodoxy that I feel fits nicely. To me, Chesterton is always brilliant, always paradoxical, but never dull- his humor is that of another age.

As always, I wish you the best in your journey of faith, whatever that looks like.
-Brett



For if this book is a joke it is a joke against me. I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before. If there is an element of farce in what follows, the farce is at my own expense; for this book explains how I fancied I was the first to set foot in Brighton and then found I was the last. It recounts my elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious. No one can think my case more ludicrous than I think it myself; no reader can accuse me here of trying to make a fool of him: I am the fool of this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from
my throne.

I freely confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end of the nineteenth century. I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I was eighteen hundred years behind it. I did strain my voice with a painfully juvenile exaggeration in uttering my truths. And I was punished in the fittest and funniest way, for I have kept my truths: but I have discovered, not that they were not truths, but simply that they were not mine. When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculous position of being backed up by all Christendom. It may be, Heaven forgive me, that I did try to be original; but I only succeeded in inventing all by myself an inferior copy of the existing traditions of civilized religion. The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.

It may be that somebody will be entertained by the account of this happy fiasco. It might amuse a friend or an enemy to read how I gradually learnt from the truth of some stray legend or from the falsehood of some dominant philosophy, things that I might have learnt from my catechism--if I had ever learnt it. There may or may not be some entertainment in reading how I found at last in an anarchist club or a Babylonian temple what I might have found in the nearest parish church. If any one is entertained by learning how the flowers of the field or the phrases in an omnibus, the accidents of politics or the pains of youth came together in a certain order to produce a certain conviction of Christian orthodoxy, he may possibly read this book. But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.

My Summer Reading List

As you may know, I'm going to South Carolina this summer on summer project. From what I hear, it's quite busy and to be honest, I wouldn't doubt that I might not touch a single one of these books. Oh well, I've just read a book in the last two days that was stupendous so maybe I can finish a few more before heading out.

The List
Don't Waste Your Life, John Piper
The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
Experiencing God, Blackaby Brothers
Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich, Mark Kriegel
Wherever you go, There you are, Jon Kabat-Zinn
God in the Dock, CS Lewis
Pensees, Blaise Pascal
The Koran, Muhammad
Why I rejected Christianity: A Former Apologist explains, John W. Loftus
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Russell
Sense and Sensuality: Jesus Talks to Oscar Wilde on the Pursuit of Pleasure, Ravi Zacharias

State of Affairs

The Baffling of Brett

So here we are at the dawn of a new millenium. We live in a world that seems to be "growing out" of Christianity. Of course we still see the effects left by it here in America, but this is far from God-centered, gospel-saved culture. Why are we here? That's what I want to know. Unfortunately, it seems like very few other people want to know. That part just baffled me. It just BAFFLED me. We make all sorts of day-to-decisions (some of them big ones) without a GOAL in mind. Some might say that the goal is just to be happy but I wonder if they've thought this through (if that is our sole purpose then what do you believe about GOD?!!!)

If we've given up on God, given up on "the prize" that Paul talks about, why then do we go on? This life is hard. Full of ailments, loss, and suffering. Of course there are good moments also, but for many, especially in America, we go through life continually disappointed by the goals that we meet that we thought would make us happy. Suicide rates are going up, but to me, it seems that they are still very low given that people have lost their purpose in life and are living in the "death-denial that Kierkegaard talks about. One of my good non-believing friends recently told me that if you're not really enjoying life that it makes sense to commit suicide. Apart from the pure and unbridled selfishness of the act, I can ACTUALLY SEE WHY HE BELIEVED THAT.
Yuck.

The Answer

What then is the explanation? What keeps us in limbo between annhilation and asking the most important question (WHY AM I HERE?) and seeking our purpose with every ounce of our being?

And then it came to me. I understood.

I understood it by watching my friends and roommates. From observing my Christian AND non-Christian friends. I got it from observing myself- when I was most comfortable and when I was least comfortable.

Distraction.
Diversion.

Whatever you want to call it, there it was. The reason people don't think about why the hell they're here is because they don't have to. It is much easier and much more comfortable to turn on the TV rather then sit, think, read, and pray. It's why most people who see this article that I've written will not read it through to the end.

It's much more fun to go out with friends than to stay in and read a book. Instead of staying in and attempting to probe our experience, inspecting and introspecting, we go to the new movie and pay our 8 bucks and call it a night. We float around, deterministically consigned to our immediate volitions, moving towards an end but never questioning the "why" of that end.

I guess "I" didn't think of it

While I was thinking about this, I ran into a book called Pensées, written by a guy named Blaise Pascal, a genius of the first order.



This is what he was talking about! More than anything he wished to describe the state of affairs that we are in- to describe the world and man's place in it.

He writes:
"being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance," and being not too fond of the medicine of Christ "men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things."

"That is why men are so fond of hustle and bustle," Pascal says. "That is why prison is such a fearful punishment; that is why the pleasures of solitude are so incomprehensible."

It turns out that few words were as important to Pascal as "divertissement", which is translated into diversion or distraction. One of the most brilliant men of all time wrote about this very thing as it was the key to understanding human nature.

It baffles me that Pascal wrote centuries before the invention of TV, radio, even electricity! How much more does this apply today in our entertainment-centered culture?



It seems to me that anything (even very good things) can serve as a distraction. Things like relationships, facebook, movies, food, sex, getting drunk, jobs- all of these are laid out in front of us and all of them are much more fun and stimulating than questioning and seeking.

Breaking out of the rut

My encouragement (to whoever reads this) is to question the next big decision in their life- and to keep asking the question "WHY?"

e.g.
Why am I doing this internship this summer? Because I want to make some money and I like to do this kind of stuff.

Why do you want money? Why do you want to do what you like? Because it'll be fun this summer and the money will allow me to have fun next year.
Why do you want to have fun? C'mon, I just want to be happy and have a good life!
So your personal happiness is your chief aim. That's all we're here for?
Do you think God fits into that at all? Well, I'm a Christian, ya know?
Of course, if you're a "Christian" that's a far cry from what we're here for. Man, God-centeredness and giving up all those things to follow Christ doesn't sound good at all. Do people really try that stuff? Frankly, it sounds like it sucks. Do I really believe in all that crazy stuff, maybe it'd be better if I didn't? What if it is true though? Maybe I should look into it before I make any more big decisions...

This is simply the sort of questioning that got me on the path I'm on today. Questioning yourself and your ultimate purpose/goal eventually leads to what you believe. It's what started this blog and got the ball rolling on my insatiable seeking of truth.

Right now I do have a purpose- to bring glory to God by doing my best to be holy, love Him with all my heart, strength, and mind, to serve others (I'm terrible at this one), and of course share the gospel so that others might enter into the truth. The beauty of Christianity is the power of a transforming relationship with the Lord. For me this has been more than anything I ever could have read about or studied. I'm still baffled by 99.9% of God and Jesus, but the shred that I have experienced is worth much more than anything that TV guide could have told me about.



Perhaps finding God is as easy as turning off the TV and going into a quiet room with a pencil and a notebook. Perhaps this whole thing may be a challenge. BUT maybe this challenge is what we are here for, what we are called to do. One may ignore it, but the tragedy that we avoid is that just because we ignore something does not mean it's not there. Ignorance, in this case, fails to free us of the consequences of ignoring God.

It makes me sad to think about. Well... I'm going to go put in a movie- I'll find a happy one.

The scientific worldview

Alright, so let's hop into the scientific worldview that is becoming more and more respected everyday. This is the one that uses sound reason (and not faith) to arrive at our view of the world. Any philosopher of science will tell you though, that assumptions (that is, FAITH) must be used to create the conclusions that science does. My thought is that when someone hops into the scientific worldview, and strives to see through its lenses, that it collapses when you really follow it through all the way to the end.

Problems

1. The problem with empiricism

Empiricism can, in this context, be viewed as synonymous with the scientific worldview (for those of my readers who aren't fully brushed up on their philosophical terms- empiricism is just the idea that all knowledge comes through the senses from what we can observe.)

Empiricism (and also the scientific/naturalistic worldview) has the following at its base:
The only things we can know are those shown empirically (scientifically).

Sounds good, doesn't it? It sounds like a great epistemology right off the bat. However, think about that statement. Is there anything wrong that you notice?

The reality is that this statement fails its own claim. This fact (The only things we can know are those shown empirically) cannot be shown empirically! This statement IMPLODES under its own weight!

You could also look at it this way: we are taught that the scientific method is the ultimate means for knowing, yet why do we make this assumption? The scientific method is not something that you can really scientifically test. Empiricism is a self-refuting view.
2.The mind
Proponents of naturalism deny the existence of God. They say that we were brought about by evolution. The universe is merely a set of random processes and evolution fits this well. Let's think about the ramifications of this: the idea that everything going on is a random process and we are the culmination of this. That means that our mind is also a culmination of this.

Well when discussing reality (or God or their worldview, etc.) with an atheist/naturalist how do they come to their conclusions? They say there's no God and that everything is random. If you asked them how they arrived there, they will proudly state that reason, that logic, was the means to their end. It sounds so good doesn't it? To be on the side of reason.

Remember though, the underlying principle of the scientific worldview though ("the only things WE'RE gonna believe are things that are readily observable"

What would the advocate of pure science say if we asked him to scientifically prove logic. Can logic be readily observed? Furthermore, show me scientifically why reason can be trusted and why the world is a rational place?

It simply can't be done.

The problem here is that this causes an implosion of another kind. If our mind was created out of random atomic collisions culminating over millions of years then our mind right now, though highly refined by the evolutionary process, is still just a natural random phenomena. Our brain (which is synonymous with mind for the naturalist) is a random combination of ATOMS AND CHEMICALS remember- the electrochemical events can't be assumed to be anything more than a statistical anomaly.

From a scientific worldview, logic and reason are impossible!!!
Let me say that again: From a scientific worldview, logic and reason are impossible!!!

We could assume logic and rationality but that assumption would be violating our base of knowledge (that the only ideas that I believe are the ones that can be shown empirically).

*Side note on the mind: Another problem is with consciousness. Where and when does conscious mind arise? I'll gladly stay in the scientific worldview and see that brain evolves over time from a simple to a complex thinking machine. Yet even after all that evolution, I still don't see the evolutionary need for consciousness. It seems to me that the brain would have kept on evolving, becoming more and more efficient but never, at any point, would consciousness arise.

I think it was Leibniz who talked of the brain. He said "Alright, so let's blow up the brain to the size of a factory. We can walk inside it, look at all the cogs that are working, belts that are turning (neurons would be the object of this analogy). Alright, now point me out the mind. Point me out what gives me counsciousness.

On faith

*This post is mainly for my venting and made without enough knowledge I feel to build a really sound argument. That being said, the plan is to think about this, read about it more, and revise it as knowledge is revealed to me.

Intro
Ok, so I had what I thought was a really good thought provoking discush last night with my roommates and have since had a fresh zeal for some of the topics that have been rolling through my head for the last year. One is the idea of faith. This has bugged me far too long to not write about. Talking with people in Florida over spring break, talking with classmates and my intelligent roommates, this idea has surfaced.

It's something to the effect of "I just don't have that kind of faith" or "I can't give my life to something on faith like that".


I just want to tell you that you ARE living by faith. No matter what you believe about God or reality or the world you are making assumptions based on faith!!! I just want to write that sentence a thousand times so that people would really consider what that means in their life. There is NO worldview that survives without faith.

An example
There are assumptions in science that your teachers will never tell you about because they don't know (because noone told them) or moral reasons (the ramifications of the subjectivity of science would detract from their stature as educators).

So here's my between-classes outline about the FLAWS AND PROBLEMS in the scientific worldview. By scientific worldview, I mean the idea that science explains reality. I mean the statement "I can't really believe something until science proves it". I'm talking about the idea that random processes rule and we are merely a product of those (through the big bang and then evolution, etc.).

Holy F

So, I was typing up this last post and then I had to peel out for class but before I did I stumbled across this article that absolutely SMACKED me across the face. This article is about a wide range of things but it amazingly synthesizes my feelings on a number of real issues that I've only been able to hint at in my blog. These are things I've thought about as well as things I see everyday as a student at the U of M. Don't read me, read this.

http://theresurgence.com/kyle_vaughn_2007_the_digital_age

Meditation on the end of logic

I am just coming out of my "Intro to Holistic Healing" class. Today's topic was spirituality and healing.
The question I've been wondering is how should we view our worldview and what we do. Is it really what the speakers today claimed? That spirituality is this abstract concept that can't really be explained?

Religion
The first speaker opened her set up into a bit of a forum and the general concensus of the class was: "I hate religion. It's stupid and it makes me feel bad and I don't like it at all."

"Spirituality" (as the new idea is defined)
On the other hand, almost everyone raised their hand when the question came up for "Are you spiritual?" This of course is doctrineless, and deep feeling-based. Along with this is the idea that no one is wrong and everything is right. Words can't explain so reasoning is pointless. Moral and cultural relativism along with acceptance is the key here.

Philosophy
And then on the other end of my mind is that I just walked out of a philosophy test. Philosophy is grounded in the idea of objective thought and reason. There is no room for emotion and especially none for "spiritually". It is a line of reasoning that leads to doctrine.

What then is our epistemology? Is it revelation, reason, or feeling?

For most people, it's a mix. Along with the new worship of science we find the lingering old wives' tales and suspicions that have been with us for centuries. Along with our unwavering reliance on our own ability to reason is a worship of sex.