Ideas That Have Ruined Me: Criticality and Doubt

1.5 weeks without a post? Beginning a sentence--nay, a blog entry--with a number? It must be mid-term...

I posted earlier that one of the ideas that have ruined me is the importance of criticality and doubt in thinking.

I discovered this importance in Pascal's reason-based doubt-proof-submission paradigm outlined in the Pensees. He argues that reason employs the tactics of doubt (trying to disprove something that seems dubious or potentially dangerous to believe - the tool of the skeptic), proof (trying to concretely and inescapably affirm something that seems intuitively reasonable or advantageous to believe - the tool of the mathematician), and submission (accepting a truth by faith - the tool of the theist); to abandon one or two of these tools would result in philosophical shipwreck.

(Note: Given this scheme, "doubt" is not equivalent to "unbelief"---which the Bible identifies as the root of all sin---but simply a questioning of validity. A Christian would certainly want to "doubt" a heretical statement, in that sense. It's more closely akin to modern-day "critical thinking.")

What has struck me as I thought about this paradigm over the last few years is that I have neglected the discipline of doubt for most of my life. (I always dreaded those "critical thinking" questions in English class growing up.)

Now, I can't stop questioning ideas, be they about physics, theology, or how to best carry my books on my way to class!

Even this week, I've spent a good three hours brain-dead over how to prove to my class a simple physics principle used in every introductory textbook. (I'm omitting the particular details here partly out of a desire for relevance and partly out of embarrassment.) I keep reexamining the argument critically, and can't seem to escape!

But this is where the submission comes in: Because of God's commitment to me, I believe I will escape the circle of doubt. (Well, at least over important things; I suppose it doesn't matter if I swim in doubt over unimportant things. --> There - I doubted my own statement again!)

Which tool of Pascal's trifecta have you ignored? Which have you overused?

Ideas That Have Ruined Me: "Going to Heaven"

I blame Andy Crouch for forever ruining my ability to not cringe when Christians refer to what will happen when they "go to heaven."

It was while reading his discussion in Culture Making of the end of the narrative in Revelation that it first really struck me that the end of the story takes place on the renewed earth, complete with a renewed city, renewed trees, gates leading out into the big wide world and letting the nations--still identified as nations--enter. It is to this renewed earth, John describes, that heaven comes down. At the end of the story, then, we don't go up to spend eternity with God in heaven; He comes down to spend eternity with us on earth.

I also blame Andy Crouch for the number of times I've kicked myself that I didn't see this sooner. After all, that's the story of the entire Bible! In Genesis 2 & 3, God comes down to visit Adam & Eve--they don't have to leave the earth behind. In John 1, Jesus comes and "pitches His tent with us" (literal wording for "dwelt among us").

So, why, I've wondered for the last couple years, do we sing so much about what will happen "when we all get to heaven," and how "this world has nothing for me," or even, "this world is not my home?" Granted: The second is likely referring to the world as the system of sin that governs human culture (at least, that's how I sing it--but even then, Crouch argues, we still need culture), but when I hear statements like the third, I can't help but conclude that the writer somehow thinks that this big 6000-km-radius ball of mostly molten iron with a surface gravitational acceleration of 32 ft/s^2 and atmosphere of primarily nitrogen is the wrong place for us. "This is my Father's world"--I want to shout--"and it's also mine!"

This earth is our home--and it will be, for all eternity. That's what makes it so amazing that God would move heaven here to be with us.

Granted, if you see me in church, I'll still sing most of the lines about "heaven," but only because "new earth" just doesn't fit rhythmically.  :-P

Ideas That Have Ruined Me

Below is a list of ideas that have "ruined" me--i.e., ideas that have forever altered my way of perceiving and thinking about the world around me and how I interact with others' perceptions and thoughts. I hope to write more about each in the coming weeks.

1. At the end of the Bible's story, believers spend eternity on the renewed earth, not "in heaven." This has forever changed my reaction to much Christian music and thinking.
2. The importance of criticality and doubt in thinking, thanks to Pascal's reason-based doubt-proof-submission paradigm.
3. "All truth is God's truth," thanks to Calvin.
4. "Calling is the truth that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we do, everything we are, and everything we have is invested with a special dynamism and devotion lived out as a response to His summons," thanks to Os Guinness. (My apologies if the wording is out of order, as I'm writing from memory.)
5. "An intellectual is someone who loves ideas... A Christian intellectual is [one who does so] to the glory of God," thanks to James Sire.
6. "Learning results from what the student does and thinks and only from what the student does and thinks," thanks to Herbert Simon. In my mind, this idea has spent the last six months in an intergalactic collision with the idea that the way we "do church" is not specifically prescribed in either the Old or New Testament.

What ideas have "ruined" you?