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The Truth Is Out There—Living with Unanswered Questions, Part 3

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In my last post I noted that my questions often leave me perplexed, and even confused. But I’m not in despair.

Like Mulder of the X-Files, I believe “The truth is out there.”

That doesn’t mean that I will find it; but I’m sure going to try. I’m on a quest, and this quest has led me to try to puzzle out this world, and in the process to study theology, philosophy, and the Bible—as well as to take human experience seriously.

The Need for Faith

I’ve found that the quest for truth requires two things.

First, it requires a certain faith. You have to believe that it is a worthwhile quest and that you won’t come to the edge of the world and fall off; you won’t fall into the unknown, never to return. This means that the fearless quest for truth—motivated by doubt, by what you don’t know—is nevertheless undergirded by trust or faith. (Is this faith in God? It is at least faith in the trustworthiness of reality.) The quest for truth (to use Augustine’s idea, made famous by Anselm) is “faith seeking understanding.”

However, there is no guarantee that throughout this quest for understanding your faith will remain unchangeably the same. Hopefully it will deepen and become more mature.

The Need for Humility

The other thing the quest for truth requires is the humility to realize we don’t have all the answers, and might never find all the answers. There are no guarantees for success in the quest.

Plus, we could always be wrong—in anything we currently believe. This is not a matter of psychological doubt (of actually doubting any particular belief), but simply the logical possibility of being wrong. There is no belief that I currently hold that is strictly “indubitable,” that I can’t doubt, that isn’t subject to the possibility of change.

Of course, I would need to be shown (in a manner that convinces me) that I need to change my belief on a particular matter. But I have to be open to that, in principle.

The Problem with Fundamentalism

The alternative to acknowledging the possibility of being wrong is fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism isn’t a matter of any particular beliefs, but rather a way of holding to beliefs. A person who doesn’t actually think they could possibly be wrong (not that they are wrong, that they could ever be wrong)—that person won’t give another person’s viewpoint the time of day. They might even believe the other person has no right to their beliefs, since they contradict what is obviously true.

Fundamentalists of a philosophical type (typically called foundationalists) tend to label people they disagree with as irrational. I’ve met such people and been so labeled (when I was in grad school).

Fundamentalists of a political or religious type tend to regard people they disagree with as evil. In its mild form, such people are thought to have ulterior motives; in its extreme form, they are “of the devil.” I’ve encountered religious fundamentalists and had the latter phrase applied to me (by a prominent church leader, in public).

Given the problems of fundamentalism, I’m fine with the possibility of being wrong; I’m even fine with doubt.

I’ll talk about the positive role of doubt in my next post.

The Church’s Mishandling of the Gospel—Living with Unanswered Questions, Part 2

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In my last post, I raised some of my questions about what the Bible teaches—especially where this teaching seems to contradict human experience, modern science, or other things the Bible teaches.

But not everything the Bible teaches is difficult to understand. Some of my questions have to do with why the church distorts biblical teaching that seems to be quite clear.

To put it another way, why do Christians do such a terrible job of living out the gospel, or even of grasping what the gospel is about? This leaves me utterly perplexed.

The Church’s Reduction of the Gospel to the “Spiritual”

To start with, there is the common reduction of the gospel to some small “spiritual” area of life, as if our faith doesn’t embrace the entirety of life in the world God has made. This other-worldliness in the Christianity I was raised with (this division between the “secular” and the “sacred”) makes no sense, given what the Bible teaches.

The Bible teaches that this world is God’s creation and he loves and cares for it, despite the sinful brokenness we humans have introduced. In fact, he loves the world so much that Jesus came to die on the cross for our sin, and now forgiveness and new life are offered to all who want a part in the restoration of the world.

The Church’s Blindness to Present Evil in the World

But the sacred/secular division not only blurs our vision of this good world, it often leads to our ignoring—or even buying into—the present evil in the world (in the so-called “secular” area), since it offers us no resources for challenging that evil on the basis of how the world should be.

One egregious example of this is the unholy mixing of the gospel, especially in the United States, with secular ideologies. This results in sincere people who claim to be disciples of the Crucified One advocating military action and even torture against people whom they think of as their enemies (without any pangs of conscience or struggle about how this relates to the teachings of Jesus).

It is paradoxical that the National Association of Evangelicals in the 1980s put out a position paper on war, in which one of the positions they rejected as “sub-biblical” was labeled the “love your enemies” position! It just doesn’t make sense to use Jesus’ own words to label a position you think is unbiblical.

Perplexed but Not Despairing

But I guess I’m in good company with my questions.

The writer of Ecclesiastes long ago had “applied [his] mind to know wisdom and to observe the labor that is done on earth,” including “all that God has done.”

Yet he ended up with the conclusion: “No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it.” (Ecclesiastes 8:16-17; NIV)

Questions like the ones I’ve mentioned leave me quite perplexed, and even confused. But not in despair.

In my next post I’ll explain why I haven’t given up on my quest for answers.

Living with Unanswered Questions, Part 1

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I have a lot of unanswered questions.

As a person who loves to study and teach the Bible, it’s probably inevitable that some of my questions come from trying to makes sense of what the Bible teaches.

Questions about the Bible and Human Experience

Sometimes I wonder about how what the Bible teaches relates to our human experience.

For example, how does the goodness and love of God (which the Bible proclaims) relate to the fact of evil and suffering in the world?

Why would a loving God allow such massive suffering—some of it related to human evil (such as the trafficking in sex slaves—many of whom are young girls—in countries around the world today)?

And then there is the so-called “natural evil” God allows (like terminal diseases and horrendous earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, and tsunamis in Asia, which take a massive toll in human suffering).

Questions about the Bible and Modern Science

Some of my questions are about how what the Bible teaches relates to the findings of modern science.

For example, how does the evolution of life on earth—prior to human beings—relate to the biblical idea that evil arose with human beings? Doesn’t the pervasiveness of death that evolution assumes contradict the biblical idea of the human origin of evil?

Or maybe biological death isn’t itself evil; after all, the Old Testament notes that certain saints lived a long full life and were gathered to their ancestors in peace. Maybe Paul is right that the sting of death is sin (1 Cor 15:56), which suggests that without sin death might not be regarded as an evil.

I am actually coming to the position that biological death, animal predation, and natural disasters are not technically “evil”; they are simply part of the wildness of the glorious cosmos that God made. I plan to post on that another time.

Questions about the Bible’s Internal Consistency

Some of my questions have to do with seemingly blatant contradictions between things the Bible teaches and other things the Bible teaches, that is, internal contradictions, within the Bible.

For example, how does the command—supposedly from God—to his people (Israel) to utterly exterminate the Canaanites relate to the purpose for which these very people were called—that is, to bring blessing to the nations? Isn’t extermination the opposite of blessing?

In my next post I’ll comment on questions I have about the church’s mishandling of the gospel.