Lights

The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Timothy Keller

The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness 

by Timothy Keller 

What are the marks of a heart that has been radically changed by the grace of God? If we trust in Christ, what should our hearts be like? It is not simply a matter of morally virtuous behaviour. It is quite possible to do all sorts of morally virtuous things when our hearts are filled with fear, with pride or with a desire for power. We are talking about hearts that have been changed, at the root, by the grace of God - and what looks like in real life. 

We will be focusing on a section of Paul's first letter to Corinthians - 1 Corinthians 3:21 - 4:7. 

So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future - all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God. So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God. Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hide in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God. Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, "Do not go beyond what is written." Then you will not take pride in one man over against another. For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? 1 Corinthians 3:21  

The Corinthian church was filled with division. It has originally been planted by Paul. But, as we see from the references to Apollos and Cephas, other evangelists had come to the Corinth later on. As a result different people had connections with different prominent ministers. So one person was mentored and disciplined by Paul, another was mentored and appointed leadership by Apollos (another great teacher) and so forth. Instead of everybody being happy they had a relationship with Paul or with Apollos, these relationships are now the basis for power-play. Parties have arisen and visions are tearing the church up. One person argues that he should be the leader because he was discipled by Paul, the Saint Paul. And another lays claim to a particular relationship with some other prominent minister. And so on.

  In this passage, Paul shows that the root cause for the division is pride and boasting. That is the reason we cannot get along, the reason there is no peace in the world and the reason we cannot live at peace with one another. Have a look. Verse 21 starts off 'no more boasting'; chapter 4:7 says 'why do you boast...?'; and note verse 6 especially where he urges them not to 'take pride in one man over against another'.

  'No pride, no boasting,' says Paul. So we after the trait of humility. And that means we get into the very interested subject of self-esteem.

  Up until the twentieth century, traditional cultures (and this is still true of most cultures in the world) always believed that too high a view of yourself was the root cause of all the evil in the world. What is the reason for most of the crime and violence in the world? Why are people abused? Why are people cruel? Why do people do bad things they do? Traditionally, the answer was hubris - the Greek word meaning pride or too high a view of yourself. Traditionally, that was the reason given for why people misbehave.

But, in our modern western culture, we have developed an utterly opposite cultural consensus. The basis of contemporary education, the way we treat incarcerated prisoners, the foundation of most modern legislations and the starting point for modern counselling is exactly the opposite of traditional consensus. Our belief today - and it is deeply rooted in everything - is that people misbehave for  a lack of self-esteem and because they have too low a view of themselves. People used to think it was because they had too high a view of themselves and had too much self-esteem. Now we say it because we have little self-esteem.

  A few years ago, there was an article in the New York Times magazine by psychologist Lauren Slater called 'The Trouble with Self-Esteem'. It wasn't a groundbreaking article or a bolt out of the blue. She was simply to beginning to report what experts have known for years. The significant thing she says is that there is no evidence that low self-esteem is a big problem in society. She quotes three current studies into the subject of self esteem, all of which reach this conclusion and she states that 'people with high esteem pose a great threat to those around them than people with low self-esteem and feeling bad about yourself is not the source of our county's biggest , most expensive social problems. [1]

  It would be fun to explain how that works and why that works and so on. But, for now, let's say that she is right when she says it will take years and years for us to accept this. It is so deeply rooted into our psyche that lack of self-esteem is the reason why there is a drug addiction, the reason why there is crime, wife beating and so forth. Slater says it is going to take forever for this view to change.

  You see, the thing about the 'low self-esteem theory of misbehaviour' is that it is very attractive. You do not have to make any moral judgements in order to deal with society's problems. All you have to do support people and build them up. In traditional cultures, the way you dealt wht these problems was that you clamped down on people and convicted them and called them bad!

  What is intriguing about this passage in 1 Corinthians is that it gives us an approach to self-regard, an approach to the self and a way of seeing ourselves that is absolutely different form both traditional and modern / post modern contemporary cultures. Utterly different.

The three things that Paul shows us here are:

1. The natural condition of the human ego. 
2. The transformed sense of self (which Paul had discovered and which can be brought about through the gospel).
3. How to get that transformed sense of self. 

To be continued...

The Natural Condition of The Human Ego 

**

Santos City Lights

George Saunders’s Advice to Graduates - New York Times

By JOEL LOVELL

It’s long past graduation season, but we recently learned that George Saunders delivered the convocation speech at Syracuse University for the class of 2013, and George was kind enough to send it our way and allow us to reprint it here. The speech touches on some of the moments in his life and larger themes (in his life and work) that George spoke about in the profile we ran back in January — the need for kindness and all the things working against our actually achieving it, the risk in focusing too much on “success,” the trouble with swimming in a river full of monkey feces.

Damon Winter/The New York Times George Saunders

The entire speech, graduation season or not, is well worth reading, and is included below.

Down through the ages, a traditional form has evolved for this type of speech, which is: Some old fart, his best years behind him, who, over the course of his life, has made a series of dreadful mistakes (that would be me), gives heartfelt advice to a group of shining, energetic young people, with all of their best years ahead of them (that would be you).

And I intend to respect that tradition.

Now, one useful thing you can do with an old person, in addition to borrowing money from them, or asking them to do one of their old-time “dances,” so you can watch, while laughing, is ask: “Looking back, what do you regret?” And they’ll tell you. Sometimes, as you know, they’ll tell you even if you haven’t asked. Sometimes, even when you’ve specifically requested they not tell you, they’ll tell you.

So: What do I regret? Being poor from time to time? Not really. Working terrible jobs, like “knuckle-puller in a slaughterhouse?” (And don’t even ASK what that entails.) No. I don’t regret that. Skinny-dipping in a river in Sumatra, a little buzzed, and looking up and seeing like 300 monkeys sitting on a pipeline, pooping down into the river, the river in which I was swimming, with my mouth open, naked? And getting deathly ill afterwards, and staying sick for the next seven months? Not so much. Do I regret the occasional humiliation? Like once, playing hockey in front of a big crowd, including this girl I really liked, I somehow managed, while falling and emitting this weird whooping noise, to score on my own goalie, while also sending my stick flying into the crowd, nearly hitting that girl? No. I don’t even regret that.

But here’s something I do regret:

In seventh grade, this new kid joined our class. In the interest of confidentiality, her Convocation Speech name will be “ELLEN.” ELLEN was small, shy. She wore these blue cat’s-eye glasses that, at the time, only old ladies wore. When nervous, which was pretty much always, she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it.

So she came to our school and our neighborhood, and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased (“Your hair taste good?” – that sort of thing). I could see this hurt her. I still remember the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked, as if, having just been reminded of her place in things, she was trying, as much as possible, to disappear. After awhile she’d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth. At home, I imagined, after school, her mother would say, you know: “How was your day, sweetie?” and she’d say, “Oh, fine.” And her mother would say, “Making any friends?” and she’d go, “Sure, lots.”

Sometimes I’d see her hanging around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it.

And then – they moved. That was it. No tragedy, no big final hazing.

One day she was there, next day she wasn’t.

End of story.

Now, why do I regret that? Why, forty-two years later, am I still thinking about it? Relative to most of the other kids, I was actually pretty nice to her. I never said an unkind word to her. In fact, I sometimes even (mildly) defended her.

But still. It bothers me.

So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it:

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. 

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?

Those who were kindest to you, I bet.

It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.

Now, the million-dollar question: What’s our problem? Why aren’t we kinder?

Here’s what I think:

Each of us is born with a series of built-in confusions that are probably somehow Darwinian. These are: (1) we’re central to the universe (that is, our personal story is the main and most interesting story, the only story, really); (2) we’re separate from the universe (there’s US and then, out there, all that other junk – dogs and swing-sets, and the State of Nebraska and low-hanging clouds and, you know, other people), and (3) we’re permanent (death is real, o.k., sure – for you, but not for me).

Now, we don’t really believe these things – intellectually we know better – but we believe them viscerally, and live by them, and they cause us to prioritize our own needs over the needs of others, even though what we really want, in our hearts, is to be less selfish, more aware of what’s actually happening in the present moment, more open, and more loving.

So, the second million-dollar question: How might we DO this? How might we become more loving, more open, less selfish, more present, less delusional, etc., etc?

Well, yes, good question.

Unfortunately, I only have three minutes left.

So let me just say this. There are ways. You already know that because, in your life, there have been High Kindness periods and Low Kindness periods, and you know what inclined you toward the former and away from the latter. Education is good; immersing ourselves in a work of art: good; prayer is good; meditation’s good; a frank talk with a dear friend; establishing ourselves in some kind of spiritual tradition – recognizing that there have been countless really smart people before us who have asked these same questions and left behind answers for us.

Because kindness, it turns out, is hard – it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include…well,everything.

One thing in our favor: some of this “becoming kinder” happens naturally, with age. It might be a simple matter of attrition: as we get older, we come to see how useless it is to be selfish – how illogical, really. We come to love other people and are thereby counter-instructed in our own centrality. We get our butts kicked by real life, and people come to our defense, and help us, and we learn that we’re not separate, and don’t want to be. We see people near and dear to us dropping away, and are gradually convinced that maybe we too will drop away (someday, a long time from now). Most people, as they age, become less selfish and more loving. I think this is true. The great Syracuse poet, Hayden Carruth, said, in a poem written near the end of his life, that he was “mostly Love, now.”

And so, a prediction, and my heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love. YOU will gradually be replaced by LOVE. If you have kids, that will be a huge moment in your process of self-diminishment. You really won’t care what happens to YOU, as long as they benefit. That’s one reason your parents are so proud and happy today. One of their fondest dreams has come true: you have accomplished something difficult and tangible that has enlarged you as a person and will make your life better, from here on in, forever.

Congratulations, by the way.

When young, we’re anxious – understandably – to find out if we’ve got what it takes. Can we succeed? Can we build a viable life for ourselves? But you – in particular you, of this generation – may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can….

And this is actually O.K. If we’re going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously – as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves.

Still, accomplishment is unreliable. “Succeeding,” whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there’s the very real danger that “succeeding” will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.

So, quick, end-of-speech advice: Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now. There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness. But there’s also a cure. So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf – seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life.

Do all the other things, the ambitious things – travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness. Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial. That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality – your soul, if you will – is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Teresa’s. Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.

And someday, in 80 years, when you’re 100, and I’m 134, and we’re both so kind and loving we’re nearly unbearable, drop me a line, let me know how your life has been. I hope you will say: It has been so wonderful.

Congratulations, Class of 2013.

I wish you great happiness, all the luck in the world, and a beautiful summer.

Day at the Park

Day at the Park

I don't think I have ever seen a strip more profound.

Source: a day at the park

Jake Nauta - Here With You

Jake Nauta - Here With You

Why politicians are making morality fashionable again

David Gauke … resetting our moral compasses, or deflecting attention from bankers? Photograph: Mark Pinder/UNP

Not so long ago, it seemed that "morality" was a dirty word, or rather a word whose function was to make sex look dirty. Its primary associations were with groups such as the the Moral Majority in America, which seemed obsessed by the horrors of homosexuality, teen sex, unmarried couples and working mothers. In Britain, the archetypal image of a moral crusader was Mary Whitehouse, a Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells for the nation.

Now, however, it seems morality has been taken back from the moralisers and has once again become the high ground from where public figures look to command. On Monday Treasury Minister David Gauke said it was "morally wrong" to pay tradesmen in cash to avoid tax, following in the footsteps of his party's leader, David Cameron, who called Jimmy Carr's tax avoidance "morally wrong". Cameron made his remarks having himself been recently tainted by the charge of immorality by Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who said it was "not moral" to ignore victims of recent financial disasters "while the rich can go sailing along in their own sweet way".

Over recent weeks, we have heard the Labour MP Margaret Hodge tell the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee that the BBC allowed tax arrangements which were not "morally right" and political activist Peter Tatchell claiming that the International Olympic Committee had "abdicated its moral responsibilities" by not agreeing to a minute's silence for the 40th anniversary of the murders of Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympics. We have seen François Hollande set up a cross-party government committee to look into putting more morality into French politics, read Anthony Seldon, Wellington College's Head, bemoan the lack of a "moral compass" in British public schools, and heard leading American public philosopherMichael Sandel continue to decry the moral limits of markets.

If you had fallen asleep, Rip Van Winkle-like, a decade or so ago, all this talk of morality might well strike you as, well, wrong. Inspired by respect for diversity, fear of "cultural imperialism" and a kind of democratic relativism, for some time it was considered arrogant to judge the morality of others. Who are you to say what's right and wrong? Isn't that just your opinion?

What has changed is that it has finally been accepted that we can't function without values. (Indeed, the very project of avoiding moral judgments itself rests on the firm belief that they are wrong.) But the suppression of morality-talk has served another very good purpose: the language itself is being used differently, as if it needed time in retreat in order to purge itself of its puritanical associations. It left the stage muttering about people shagging each other and strode back on later lamenting how the privileged are screwing the masses. Look at how the uses of moral language have been pressed into service in recent weeks and you'll find that they do not concern mere private behaviour but the point at which individual actions have consequences for wider society. Morality has recovered its political dimension.

So why is this happening now? There are several possible reasons. One is that moral shoulder-shrugging is much easier when times are good. "Each to his own" is an attractive philosophy when you own plenty and fully expect to get even more. Similarly, it's less distasteful to see people getting filthy rich if you're getting more comfortable too. But when the economy came crashing down, the scales fell from our eyes and we saw more clearly that society's spoils are not being fairly shared, and that many of the rich are simply high-rollers gambling with our cash. The only reasonable response to this is a moral one. The only language that is up to the job is moral language.

However, even before the crash, the ground was being prepared for the return of morality. As far back as the 1970s, the sociologist Ronald Inglehart suggested that as material wealth increased and people became more economically secure, their attentions would turn to their non-material needs, such as for autonomy and self-expression. He saw us entering a period of post-consumerist disillusion, where we look for things that are meaningful, not just fun, expensive or fashionable.

Inglehart possibly underestimated the extent to which people would continue to lust after ever more unnecessary consumer goods, and the ingenuity of capitalism to encourage them to do so, but there was clearly some truth in his hypothesis. There is widespread dissatisfaction with rising material prosperity as a goal in itself and a yearning for something more.

Hence the boom years created their own moral unease, a discomfort with our material comfort. Among the "something mores" people looked for were experiences rather than objects, and various vague forms of spirituality. Few were explicitly looking for a greater sense of moral purpose, but once people start looking for the deeper, more serious things in life, eventually they are going to have to grapple with the distinction between what is good and true and what is corrupt and false. At that point, morality enters the picture.

We have also needed to revert to moral ways of talking to do justice to the major global issues facing us. There are many examples of this. Take poverty and disease in the developing world. When I was growing up, the main lens through which to see these issues was charity. Helping others was good, but it was voluntary and individual. But as decades of aid failed to end poverty and eradicate disease, it became increasingly obvious that there were structural issues at work, that debt and trade restrictions were core parts of the problem. There was no other way to describe this than injustice. The morality of global inequality stopped being purely a matter of the individual charitable donor and her conscience and entered public discourse with a political dimension.

Or take the environment. There has always been a moral aspect to green thinking, but for years, in perception at least, it was based around rather nebulous and dubious ideas such as respect for nature as a thing valuable in itself. When people thought of greens they thought of Friends of the Earth, with its suggestion that the object of concern was the big rock we live on, not the people who inhabit it.

Over the past decade or so, however, green politics has been based more on tangible harms to real people, present and future; from the poor who will bear the brunt of rising oceans, to our generation's children, who may have to cope with food scarcity and a harsher climate. And once again, if you want to articulate what is wrong with all this, only moral language is up to the task.

Much as the return of morality is to be welcomed, it does carry with it certain risks. One is that when governments find themselves unable to control the economy and run public services, they look to present themselves as guardians of other things: if your vote cannot halt economic decline, perhaps you can be persuaded to use it to prevent moral decline instead. It is perhaps no coincidence that the longer the coalition has been in power but apparently incapable of turning the economy around, the more moral rhetoric we have seen coming from it. Much as we might complain that politicians are not just there to increase national wealth, the idea that their main role is to protect our moral virtue might seem even scarier. As the Labour MP Austin Mitchell said about the kind of low-level, cash-in-hand tax avoidance condemned by Gauke: "There would have to be large-scale surveillance to stop it. You can't control people's morals like this and it is best not to try."

This also points to the danger of skewing moral priorities. Mitchell said that Gauke was "unnecessarily moralistic" and focusing on "petty stuff" rather than massive tax avoidance. That does not necessarily mean that Gauke was wrong to say tax evasion is immoral, merely that in a world of much bigger sins, it is not so immoral as to be a major priority. And there is always a risk that governments, or even lobby groups, can create a kind of moral panic about an issue which is not critical, but which diverts our attention away from more serious wrongs. Cynics might think that trying to turn the spotlight on builders and plumbers is using just this kind of tactic to take the heat off financiers and politicians.

The most fundamental problem with morality's return, however, is that society still lacks a sense of where it comes from and who is qualified to make claims for it. Not coincidentally, the decline of morality in the latter part of the 20th century paralleled the decline of respect for the authority of the church, as we stopped looking up to clerics as moral authorities. Now that we find ourselves compelled to talk about morality again, it does not seem clear to whom we should turn for guidance. Public reaction to recent pronouncements by politicians suggests that we are deeply sceptical about their claims to speak for what is moral. "Can't quite believe I am reading about a politician saying the words 'morally wrong' out loud," is typical of the online responses to Gauke's comments. Scientists are sometimes treated as though they are qualified to pronounce on the morality of what they do, but their expertise is not ethical and in any case, there is now as much suspicion of the horrors science and technology might unleash as there is respect for the white lab coat.

One reason why we are not sure about where to find moral wisdom is that there is no clear, shared understanding of what exactly morality is. The idea that it is a set of rules prescribed by an authority, usually religious, has been understandably rejected. What should take its place is the idea that morality concerns the ways in which our social interactions affect the welfare of others. If what I choose to do is not in my own best interests, that may be imprudent but it is not morally wrong. But if what I do makes life worse for others, merely for my own gain or for no good reason at all, that is immoral.

It may sound obvious but, in one important respect, it radically changes how morality has often been understood. Morality becomes essentially social, not personal. And because it is social, that means the only way to deal with it is socially. So we shouldn't be looking for new moral authorities to replace the church. Rather, we should see public moral issues as requiring a negotiation between all of us. That conversation does not value every voice equally, but for final decisions to stick, they have to reflect a kind of social consensus.

However, if radio phone-ins, online comments and tweets sent to television programmes are anything to go by, we are nowhere near ready and able to raise public discourse to the level required for this. And so the danger is that we will either fall back on the old authorities or allow new moral leaders to emerge who may well base their pronouncements on little more than populist sentiment. Angry mobs are most dangerous when manipulative rabble-rousers make them feel that every drop of their indignation is righteous. We have remembered that a proper sense of morality is essential, but we also need to be mindful that a misguided one can be deadly.

Source: The Guardian 

Star Dust

You and I are star dust.

All the spirituality within this world manifests itself through what we see around us. The feeling of connectedness to one's surroundings on a deep intellectual level, is the core of religiosity. Nature is God and God is nature. That is not to say that we should deny our benevolent systems of beliefs, for they bring power, hope, happiness, joy and morality, and provide us with such an unexplainable experience, an eternal desire to feel spiritually connected to this world and this universe.

Deus sive Natura, says Spinoza.

The Integrity of a Truth Seeker by Toby Johnston

The Integrity of a Truth Seeker

by Toby Johnston

There is no such thing as a postmodernist. If you were to walk around Stanford University or Berkeley, you would probably not find a single student or professor (except, perhaps, the occasional art undergrad) who would know what you were talking about. “Postmodernist” is a misnomer, a slur, like “fundamentalist Christian” or “bleeding heart liberal.” It is a label invented by an opposition sub-group so that they might easily identify and dismiss the viewpoints and ideas of another sub-group. It is a moniker Christians have invented to classify a particularly stubborn and well-read group of secular intellectuals who do not take capital “T” Truth as a given in their axioms.

This group of thinkers is a diverse population of scientists, linguists, physicists, philosophers, and artists who speculate outside the boundaries of universals. For one reason or another, they have identified with the uncertainty of existence rather than the certainty. They classify and make distinctions. They place as the sun and moon of their intellectual sphere empirical evidence and cultural relativism, and they disdain any concepts that are not verifiable, repeatable, and factual.

And yet, a logistical paradox (or perhaps just simple irony) presents itself: the human mind cannot be certain of uncertainty. No one will ever know perfectly that there is no God. Nor can one claim that there is no Truth. Perhaps this paradox is more the limitation of linguistics than reality, but despite the present intellectual and cultural bias against universals, ideals, and especially imperatives, Truth is the foundation of human knowledge and plays a necessary part in transferring information. I write words to an audience I believe exists. I write words I believe represent things that can be represented. I communicate assuming I will be heard and with the goal of being understood. Knowing, teaching, and dialogue assume a common Truth, require a shared objective point of reference, without which knowledge is highly suspect—if not completely untenable.

Despite the skepticism toward Truth, adaptation exists. No one claims that human beings are incapable of mistaken assumptions, error, and erroneous belief. Yet, everyone acknowledges that human beings learn, adapt, and grow in knowledge. The acquiring of knowledge through correct and incorrect beliefs testifies to Truth. Take, for example, a man who keeps bumping into a piece of furniture in a dark room. He does not doubt the existence of the offending sofa or loveseat, even if he is unable to identify it as one or the other. He cannot doubt the presence of something else in the room. In our error, Truth bumps back, teaches us of itself. And yet like men who leave a mirror and forget their reflection, skeptics are quick to denounce Truth, God, and objective reality despite consistently and habitually acting in accordance with just such assumptions. From the cultural relativists who believe in the evil of human cruelty to the scientists who believe the universe is real, knowable, and worth understanding—skeptics cannot get away from Truth. The universe’s truthfulness exists in conformity to its realness, and we exist in conformity to Truth.

We must be careful to keep in mind that skepticism does not birth from barren minds. We live in a society, we participate in a culture, we are heirs of a tradition whose meaningful attempts to understand the world have created this failed position. The question for us who believe in Truth, God, and objective reality is this: How do we understand this climate of intellectual uncertainty and convey to the skeptic the conviction of a real world? How do we convince others that the unexamined life is not worth living? How do we compel others to take up the mantle of Truth, to become Truth seekers and identify themselves accordingly?

Almost immediately, the seeker of personal truth objects, “I am a truth seeker sojourning toward my truth. Your journey and your truth are different.” This objection reveals a complete misunderstanding of the word “Truth.” Truth is an understanding of the real universe, and it is anything but subjective or personal. The Real, the True—by its existence and by its being perceived—convinces, instructs, and edifies the perceiver. Truth is not at the whim of the individual, but rather the individual is at the whim of Truth. By denying anything more substantive than his opinion, that personal-truth seeker exists within a broken narrative, a false relationship to Truth. If Truth is merely preference, then that personal-truth seeker is incapable of change or adaptation because he already exists in a state of harmonious agreement to “his” truth. Because he already has what is true/good for himself, a personal-truth “seeker” no longer seeks and no longer learns.

Of course, this intellectual stagnation can never exist except in a mind determined to be deranged. Every thinking, rational, sane individual notices discrepancies in the cartography of his paradigm, his “map” of reality; and while he might not identify every incongruity correctly, the curriculum of existing is not wasted on him. To borrow from philosopher Michael Polanyi, we are continually adapting the map of our understanding as we find errors in it; we are continually refining and redrawing the borders and roads of our own understanding. Even as the vigilant relativist might be passionately declaring dubious the existence of capital “T” Truth, he no doubt continues to learn every day—even at the moment of his fallacious declaration. What is the wellspring of this learning if not an unavoidable dialogue with the objective reality of the world? Truth, our greatest teacher, finds us in our darkness and bumps back.

Learning and adaptation are the hallmarks of every rational being. Something else, though, distinguishes the Truth seeker from the personal-truth seeker. The person claiming to be a Truth seeker also seeks to conform himself to that which is real and true. The Truth seeker does not just ask questions; he does not just expect answers from the real. The Truth seeker, unlike the personal-truth seeker, is willing to be held accountable by those answers. The Truth seeker takes Socrates’ project upon himself: he endeavors to develop a closer and closer approximation of what is real, of what Truth is; he devotes himself to knowing what is true. Those who have failed in their responsibility as Truth seekers cease striving toward a more complete understanding of themselves, their narrative, and their world. Like those grotesque cinematic Zombies known as the living dead, those indifferent to Truth become the rational insane. Their willingness to accept lies in the place of truth has deformed their reason. They have come to value self-deception above intellectual integrity.

This blasphemy against the spirit of Truth is not a curse only on the lips of the personal-truth seeker. Since Christ ascended, we Christians have sought to invent shortcuts to Truth, sought to circumvent the hard work and responsibility intellectual integrity requires. All too often we find approaching truth with direct inquiry just too hard, too scary, too unnerving—and too risky. What if God is different from what we imagine? What if God causes suffering, kills people with floods and earthquakes? What if God asks us to speak in the tongues of angels and perform the laying-on of hands? What if God asks us to reject material comfort or become missionaries? What if He asks us to be vulnerable? What if God is not there? Or worse still, what if God speaks Arabic, or has an elephant’s head, or wields a trident?

In order to alleviate the suffering and insecurity of being Truth seekers, we Christians have too often sought salves. We have created canon and institutions that are ready and willing to relieve the believer of the burden of having to seek Truth for himself. We too often look to tradition as a trustworthy surrogate for our own thoughtfulness. We publish books and broadcast radio programs whose whole purpose is to tell us what we already believe. We have created a consensus of conscience. We agree with “we” that God has guaranteed our forgiveness.

Where the relativist avoids the Truth seeker’s responsibility by doubting the inherent value of Truth, we Christians too often avoid altogether the effort required to be Truth seekers. Oftentimes we seek authorities to whom we may surrender our responsibility to discover Truth. Instead of entering the darkness of personal speculation and finding out if that bump was a sofa or loveseat, we simply believe someone else’s account of the room and its contents. It matters very little whether that someone has even ventured into the room himself.

Not only are we unwilling to question the foundation of our own beliefs, but we also assume that our process of knowing truth is equally unquestionable. Even how we use the Bible too often demonstrates not a desire for Truth but rather a desire to be safe in the certainty of “right” answers without the hard work of studying difficult texts and being willing to question our own assumptions. Too often, we treat the Bible as if it were more “real” than reason or science or common sense, as if it had some mystical power to convince—a power that absolves us of our responsibility as Truth seekers and trumps our need for intellectual honesty and integrity. But surely God did not intend the Bible to trump the effort required in the careful consideration of the Truth seeker. Rather, the Bible contributes to the dialectic of our understanding. It asks us to measure, to ponder, to compare our own paradigm to its Truth. The Bible (and the God it describes) does not ask for blind allegiance but rather careful investigation. The Bible does not ask us to believe despite contrary evidence or to be irrational, but instead the Bible asks us to reason with it, to enter into conversation with its Truth.

The Bible is full of individuals whose Truth seeking was rewarded. Thomas was not rebuked for his skepticism but given evidence. Job was not denied his answer, even though it was not the comfort he hoped for. From patriarch to minor prophet, when people asked for empirically verifiable evidence, God answered. Their “doubt” and “skepticism”—unlike that of the skeptic who doubts the existence of Truth—was healthy, not sinful. They were simply being good cartographers.

But the Bible does not just provide us with answers; it asks us to live in the Truth we discover. This submission to the Truth is not a suspension of intellectual integrity or an abrogation of the Truth seeker’s responsibility; rather it is the trust that comes from the edifying relationship an individual can have with the Bible. As the Bible speaks to us through our careful interpretation, as it shows itself to be more and more truthful, our relationship with the Bible changes. We give it authority, and it becomes our instructor, our compass, and the legend to our map.

But we remain Truth seekers. The responsibility does not pass from us. The effort required does not diminish. We must remain ever vigilant, continually using Truth to measure our rationality, our experiences, our tradition, our paradigm, our reasons to believe. If in our investigation we discover error in our favorite philosopher or theologian, pastor or talk-show host, Truth obliges us to abandon that error, to make sense, to take account of our new view. As Truth seekers, we should welcome mistakes as part of the refining process and adjust our paradigms accordingly, for we know that this vigilance, this responsibility, edifies us. We know our reward is wisdom, and this wisdom, in turn, draws us closer to Truth.

Copyright August 2008 by McKenzie Study Center, an institute of Gutenberg College.