Exploring the Matrix: The Perception Axis—Knowledge, part 1
"From a
drop of water. . . a
logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having
seen or heard of one or the other. So
all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a
single link of it.”[1] Sherlock
Holmes, A Study in Scarlet
The
connection between faith and knowledge may seem obvious, but not to everyone.
Existentialists and Postmodernists reject the idea of objective truth, since we
are so trapped within our cultural worldview that if “real” truth exists at
all, it is unknowable. Hyperreal
religions argue that faith can exist without truth, and that our commitment to
a narrative is all that matters.
Reality
does matter. There’s a story told about when the Christian apologist Francis
Schaeffer sat in the home of an existentialist discussing philosophy. The
existentialist argued that they could never fully communicate, since each
person’s perception of reality is different.
Schaeffer interrupted him and asked if he could have a cup of tea. The
man graciously poured him some. Between
sips, Schaeffer declared ‘Now, sir, we are communicating.” Our interaction in the real proves there is a
common ground of truth.
Faith must stand up to reality. That’s
why we must use our minds to fully believe.
Christians have often justly been
accused of mental laziness. Mark Noll described well the evangelical church:
The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of
an evangelical mind. An extraordinary
range of virtues is found among the sprawling throngs of evangelical
Protestants in North America, including great sacrifice in spreading the
message of salvation in Jesus Christ, open-hearted generosity to the needy,
heroic personal exertion on behalf of troubled individuals, and the unheralded
sustenance of countless churches and parachurch communities. Notwithstanding all their other virtues,
however, American evangelicals are not
exemplary for their thinking, and they have not been so for several
generations.[2]
This mental lassitude comes from our overindulgence
and lack of mental exercise. We gorge
ourselves on useless information, without digesting it, until we cannot tell
what is trustworthy and important.
Critical
thinking is hard but important work. It yields three kinds of fruit-- knowledge
of God, self, and the world around us.
Knowledge
of God comes through study of the Scriptures. Not everyone is gifted in study, but all of
us can apply ourselves more diligently to reading and studying for
ourselves. The more time we spend in the
Bible, the more we will understand its meaning.
Knowledge
of self comes from our own objective self-assessment. We must have a clear, well-defined set of
personal values based on good judgment and careful thought. With these virtues
in place, we are able to let reason guide us even in tough situations.
Knowledge
of the world around us yields an understanding of the times. 1
Chronicles 12:32 says “The men of
Issachar. . . understood the times and
knew what Israel should do.” Understanding the times is necessary for
success.
Study may be hard work, but can also
be fun work. In Habits of the Mind, James Sire gives this definition of a Christian
intellectual:
“An intellectual is one who loves ideas, is dedicated to
developing them, criticizing them, clarifying them, turning them over and over,
seeing their implications, stacking them atop one another, arranging them,
sitting silent while new ones pop up and old ones seem to rearrange themselves,
playing with them, punning them with their terminology, laughing at them,
watching them clash, picking up the pieces, starting over, judging them,
withholding judgment about them, changing them, bringing them into contact with
their counterparts in other systems of thought, inviting them to dine and have
a ball, but also suiting them for service in workaday life—
--A Christian intellectual is all of the above to the glory of
God.” [3]
Children have a natural love of learning. The instinctively want
to use their minds to learn and grow. Just as a person cannot be happy without
some physical exercise, so we cannot be happy without exercising our
minds. Whenever we discourage thinking
and exploration, we cut ourselves off from the greatest characteristic of our
nature that makes us the most like God-our capacity to understand the world
around us.
Doubt is not the enemy of faith—it is faith’s ally. Questioning
makes faith stronger not weaker. In order
to get stronger in our intellectual understanding of God, ourselves, and the
universe, we need to develop four cardinal virtues of the mind. They are:
1.
Curiosity. Thinking
believers are not content to be generally correct about the truth. Curiosity should never be suppressed. We
should never fear learning the truth.
Truth can only help us in the end.
2.
Humility. Thinking believers listen when other people
talk, and pay attention to new ideas. They realize that truth is larger and of
greater importance than proving our own opinions.
3.
Persistence. Knowledge
is not an easy quest; anyone who has suffered through college or graduate
school knows this. But the rewards are worth it, if we continue to seek the
truth.
4.
Clarity. Whatever we know, we should strive to express
clearly. A knowledgeable person does not
just work at knowing, he also works at expressing knowledge. A person, who cannot explain clearly what
they believe, is not as smart as they think.
We must work just as hard at putting knowledge in simple language as we
do as discovering it.
Why is the
study of theology important to people of faith? Is it possible to think
Biblically without thinking theologically?
What is the difference between being intellectual and
intellectualism? Is it easy to tell the
difference? How can you tell a real
intellectual from one who simply acts like one?
Write what
you think about it in the comments below.
[1]
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle A Study in Scarlet Electronic Text Library, University of
Virginia Library, 1995, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DoyScar.html,
p. 16.
[2] Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, p.
3.
[3]James Sire, Habits of the Min d (Intervarsity
Press, Downers Grove, Ill) 2000, p.
27-28.
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