Exploring the Matrix: The Limits of Knowledge

The mind, like every other part of us, can be deceived.  For that reason alone, a study alone is not sufficient for us to know God. Intellect without a deeper purpose becomes intellectualism—the worship of knowledge as god.  If knowledge is our ultimate concern, then it is our god, a hindrance to our faith as surely as the worship of Baal or Dagon.

The problem with and overly intellectual approach to God that it leads to a kind of  deism.  Deism is the belief that God exists, but has nothing to do with his universe. He set the universe in motion according to immutable laws.  He may have even revealed His will though ancient prophets,  but then He stopped becoming involved with us personally, but instead leaves to discern His solely through reason.  Instead of a personal God, He is seen as distant and remote.

God in this view is like a dignitary on a float in a parade. We look to Him and praise Him but from a distance. He sees us as just part of the crowd.  But the real God of the Bible is not just a distant Law-Giver but Someone who is personally involved in our lives,  capable of revealing Himself directly to our hearts and minds.  We do not simply see Him with the distant eyes of reason, but He reveals us in our inner hearts and feelings.

Last month, my wife and I bought a new robot vacuum cleaner. It came with a large, complicated instruction book, which was a great help to getting it to work properly.  Even so, neither of us saw any reason why we needed to know who wrote the book.  It made no difference if the book was written by a friend or a stranger.  The instructions were all we needed, not the writer.

Sadly, this is true of a lot of intellectually-oriented believers. They are content to know about Him, but have no need for a personal relationship with Him. If we only see God though logic, we do not need a relationship with Him--we only need His laws.

important to study the Bible with the mind. But we should not stop there.  The great teachers of the church have all been men and women of passionate faith as well as scholarship.  It was their goal not only to introduce us to the Bible, but to challenge us to look for behind the pages to the Person. 

Knowledge isn’t faith.  It is a great tool for bringing us closer to God, but it cannot by itself bring us closer to Him.  He is greater than our mere understanding   He is invites us to seek Him in every part of us,  until we come to experience with every part of our being His full splendor and glory.  Then we will find the One who has called us, not only with the mind, but with our heart as well.

In the next article, we will explore the question—how do we seek God with passion?

Do you experience God more as an intellectual concept or an emotional lover?  Is your faith more of the head or the heart?  Let me know in the comments below.

Exploring the Matrix: Knowledge, part 2

Exploring the Matrix: The Perception Balance—Knowledge - Developing your Mind.

 

To grow in knowledge, we need to deliberately seek to add to our character the virtues of the mind—curiosity, humility, persistence, and clarity.  These virtues are necessary for anyone embarking on the process of learning in faith.  This process contains four steps--studying, imagining, discerning, and relating.

1.  Studying. Studying is the accumulation of information.  Facts are to knowledge what bricks are to walls.  Every piece of data is a part of the truth and can be useful to understanding the whole. 

We gather facts by asking questions.  The more questions we ask, the more facts we accumulate, the more answers we find, along with deeper questions.

When it comes to facts, the rawer the better.  Don’t take someone else’s word for what is true—find it out for yourself.  If someone says “The Bible says ”. . . “,  your response should be to ask “Where does it say it?”  If someone drops a statistic on you, ask where it came from. Rely heavily on the six friends of any curious person, “Who?” “What?” “When?” “Where?” “How?” and especially “Why?”

Jesus rebuked his disciples many times for their lack of faith, but He never rebuked them for asking questions. Instead, He gave answers.  Doubt isn’t the enemy of faith—only doubt that isn’t openly and honestly explored.  The answer to doubt isn’t blind faith, but seeking and receiving answers.

 Christians regard the Bible as a primary source of revealed truth.  It is a huge book—over fourteen hundred pages long, containing sixty-six books written by over forty authors covering a period of thousands of years in non-chronological order. When we first begin to study it, we hardly know where to begin.  Suffice to say that any Bible study method is better than no Bible study method.   Start with whatever version you feel most comfortable and just read.  We may start reading anywhere, and keep reading forever.  There is always more truth and wisdom to discover in its pages.

 Albert Mohler wrote; “Fewer than half of all adults can name the four gospels.  Many Christians cannot identify more than two or three of the disciples.  According to data from the Barna Research Group, 60 percent of Americans can’t name even five of the Ten Commandments.  .  .  .  The bottom line? Increasingly, America is biblically illiterate.”[1]  George Barna of the Barna Research put it this way.  “No wonder people break the Ten Commandments all the time.  They don’t know what they are.” [2]

Good Bible study isn’t haphazard—it requires mental discipline and determination.  A person who thinks that he or she can simply pick up a Bible and understand it without consulting others who have studied it all of their lives is just lazy.  They refuse to benefit from the thousands of years of scholarship and debate that preceded them.  We cannot just rely on the Spirit to lead us—our ability to discern the Spirit’s voice and tell it from our own is just as damaged by sin as our reason.  Neither the mind nor the heart can be trusted alone.   

 2. Imagining. Knowing the facts is only “step one” of understanding the truth.  Step two is analysis the ability to put the facts into a consistent whole. We do not know something until we can explain it in our own words.  Facts and understanding are related together like bricks to a brick wall. Facts must be fitted together.  For this, we need more than the ability to accumulate facts. We must be able to apply our imaginations.

C. S. Lewis said that while the mind is the organ of knowing, the imagination is the organ of meaning.  “Imagination” comes from the word “image.” An image is not reality in itself, but a model in our minds. An image is an approximation of the whole. A theological confession or creed is a model of truth, and how truths come together. Such models are never perfect, and are always being remodeled and refined.  Often our models differ from each other. The differences give us reasons to debate.   But the act of making the model is important for us. As we struggle with how information comes together we are better able to grasp the truth behind the models. 

Remember the old “connect the dots” puzzles?  By drawing a line from one dot to another, we  start to see the total picture. Our imagination fills in the gaps in our picture, enabling us to see the end result before we finish.  Analysis of the truth is like a connect the dots picture that will never be completed in our lifetime, but from which we can see a general and useful shape.

We do not make all these connections ourselves. That is why we have scholars and theologians. We can read what others have written and benefit from the constructions of the truth that they offer us. Their models lead us to think differently, asking different questions and finding different answers. 

3.  Discerning. Once we have begun to build our models of the shape of truth, we test our models.

There are three basic tests for truth.  First there is the rule of consistency.  A true statement will agree with itself.  Then there is congruency. It must agree with other things we accept as true.  Finally, there is utility. A true statement must work when applied in the real world.

4.  Relating.  When we have a working model of truth that we take as real, we begin relating it to other truth.  What does our understanding of God say about how we do business? What does it say about our choice of entertainment?  How does it relate to our political opinions? We cannot understand the significance of ideas until we see how they interconnect.  Every field of study leads to every other field, completing what is missing somewhere else.

This was the original meaning of the term “university.”  In the Medieval world, philosophy and theology were the together the king and queen of all learning. That is why experts in every field were called “doctors of philosophy” or “PhDs.”   All truth interrelated with God’s truth.  Every field of study went together like a great jigsaw, with God in the center.

This great jigsaw is infinitely complicated.  We have been trying to solve it for thousands of years, and we still have only one small corner complete.  But every new piece which falls into place, give us a glimpse of one small part of the Mind of God.

Do not dismiss a faith that has served you well because of one or two unanswered questions.  Learn to “question your questions and doubt your doubts,” as C. S. Lewis said.  Judgment is never purely logical, and logic is not sufficient in itself to lead us to faith.  Even so, a wise believer will seek answers to the basic questions of faith, and not stop entirely until he receives answers.  

How hungry are you for knowledge?  Do you tend to take what people say for granted, or do you seek out more of the truth? How do you test the truth in your own mind?  Write an answer in the comments below. 

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[1] http://www.albertmohler.com/2005/10/14/the-scandal-of-biblical-illiteracy-its-our-problem/

[2] Ibid.

Exploring the Matrix: Knowledge, part 1

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.   

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[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.

Exploring the Matrix: the Perception Balance

The eight points of the faith matrix are two-way streets.  In one direction, they lead us to connect with our object of ultimate concern, which for a Christian is God.   They are also ways that God flows out of us to God to the world. 

The degree to which God uses them in us differs from person to person, according to the will of the Spirit and our own individual personalities. Ideally, we should seek a balance though in all eight areas. A pursuit of these balances in our faith connection will help us improve our connection with God and our witness to the world.

The first balance is in the area of perception—that is how we learn about God and the world. The two ends of this balance beam are reason and passion. They are the lenses through which we come to understand God and the world.

This dichotomy can be labeled in many ways--Word and Spirit, knowledge and emotion, reason and passion.  Perhaps the best way to understand them is to think of one as objective understanding and  the other as subjective understanding.

Objective understanding is learning about our actual, material, concrete existence. It is the knowledge of the real, material universe, that we can either see, hear, taste, touch, and smell and what we can discern from it by logical or experimental means.  Observation, critical thinking, and experimentation help us test objective truth.

Objective knowledge must be based on faith. In order to apply logic, some truths must be taken as axiomatic. A Christian believes God has revealed Himself to us through Nature,  the written word, and though His physical incarnation in Christ.  These sources of revelation are taken by faith. An atheist, on the other hand, must have faith that everything that have ever happened has a rational worldly explanation. Rational thought requires solid assumptions, taken by faith. From these assumptions grow all we believe and accept about God an and the world around us.

Subjective understanding is our reaction to the objective world around us. It is made from our emotions, creativity, intuition, and imagination.  Subjective truth is not proven but felt.  It is not measured or weighed but express through symbolism and metaphors. It is not simply a factual statement of concrete knowledge, but a subjective statement of what we feel about what we believe.

An atheist or deist does not believe that subjective knowledge can teach us anything. To the atheist, the world as a closed system in which the feelings we share or the symbols we use to grasp the world are merely echoes of reality, grasped with rational thought. But for a theist, who believes that God can speak to the inner heart as easily as He can speak though nature,   subjective impressions are an important avenue through which God can speak. Things we cannot grasp with our minds can be experienced through the heart though our heart interacting with the Spirit of God.

Objectivity and subjectivity are not divided, but are points on a compass. We cannot make rational observations untainted by subjective feelings.  Neither can we accept what we feel in our heart to be true without testing it objectively.

The Bible states “the Heaven declare the Glory of God.” Though our objective observation of the universe, we see the evidence of God’s hand.  But God also God spoke to the prophets in dreams, visions and revelations, using metaphors and symbols.   A call to the ministry or some other occupation usually springs from desires that God placed inside us. But it must be tested by objective analysis and not just in subjective emotions.

Johnathan Edwards compared the head and the heart to the rudder and the sails of a ship.  The ship cannot move without the sails, but the ship cannot be controlled without the rudder. 

God speaks to us through both the head and the heart. We cannot truly perceive the world around us with out being grounded in both.

God is everywhere around us—in His Word, in nature, and in our heart.  To see him and understand Him, to really experience Him, takes more than our study or our feelings alone. It takes reaching out with both our minds and hearts together.  Without the heart, all our intellectual study of Him lacks the power to move or change us. Without the mind, we cannot know if the feelings and voices we hear in our head are really of God, the devil, or just echoes of our own mind.  But with the two together, we can experience God on earth, with all the fullness and Glory of His Divine nature.