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Two Musings
Friday, 19 June 2009 09:14 pm1. The Wonderful Complexity of Human Persons
Nate said at P.M. (as he usually does) that we should take our thoughts which we didn't get to express at P.M. back to Cell, but our cell isn't meeting this week--S.H. and S.H. are graduating a kid, and apparently Andy was at an amusement park or something? IDEK. I emailed these thoughts to Britani (as part of our cell homework to keep connected), but I thought I'd share them here, too.
For context, Nate said at P.M. that he felt that on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 was someone who hated Christianity and 10 was someone to devoted to Jesus, most people a few decades ago who weren't Jesus followers (a question-begging term, but we won't go there tonight) were 7's or 8's--just needing a gentle push--but that today they might be 2's or 3's.
It is important to remember how wonderfully and beautiful complex creatures we humans are--I have no doubt at all that it's a crucial part of our imago dei. We are not unidimensional beings, and (and I am sure Nate would agree) we cannot be placed on a simple spectrum.
A 1 to 10 scale just can't capture all of the nuances and subtleties expressed by real, living people. What would one do with the devout Buddhist monk, or the prideful Christian preacher?
I think instead most people may end up being an "8 or 9" on the Jesus-follower scale in some ways and a 1 or a 2 in others--and so, in addition to everything Nate said, it is important to engage with them on those points of connection: to focus on what we have in common with others, and not on our differences (although there is certainly a time for celebrating our differences as well!). It's rare when we can't find any point of mutual understanding with another person--as violent as Nate may have found the ecounter, as frustrating as it must have been for both sides to find the other's brand of Christianity to be strange and dangerous--such even happened during Britani's engagement with her Chicagoan interlocutor.
2. The Power of Bad Arguments to Convert
Even though we didn't have cell Wednesday, I did get to join Bryce's cell on Thursday, partly in virtue of the fact that it's held in the house in which I live. (I've let them have their own space in previous weeks, though.) Bryce's father, Mark, said something which had me thinking since last night, and I thought I'd share it with you.
I recounted the story of the young--and I mean young; she was probably a freshman, but she seemed impossibly childlike to my grad student self--Campus Crusader for Christ who approached me in the Commuter Lounge at NYU one night when I was checking my email on my laptop after a grad class. She asked me if I would be interested in a "survey," but the true purpose of the encounter quickly was made clear.
Of course, I derailed her script by almost immediately deconstructing her questions--I don't remember, but I like to think it was something basic, like "Do you believe in God?" I even had my laptop on hand, so I pulled up my favorite Leonardo Boff quote and read it to her, trying to explain to her the difference between belief and faith:
Mark's comment was that it wasn't always necessary to know a lot to witness, that one could still win converts even without being deeply schooled in theology. Now as an empirical matter he was clearly right, but still I pondered it over and over until this afternoon when I realized: I object in principle to people being converted--even to a position which I think is correct--based on bad arguments. The very idea that someone could go on to become a Christian (or, more generally, a theist) after hearing, say, the outright absurdity which is the ontological argument ("A perfect being must exist, because if it didn't exist it wouldn't be perfect"), sends cold shivers down my spine.
This is related to my arguing-on-the-internet philosophy I described at the beginning of the cell: my purpose is rarely to persuade my intelocutor (something which usually promises to be a hopeless task) but rather to argue my position with as much intellectual rigor as possible so that someone reading the exchange with an open mind would know at once whose was the better argument.
There's clearly an element of intellectualism elitism at work in my response to Mark's comment, and insofar as that is the case, Mark's words stand as an important corrective that I would do well to remember. It doesn't require a scholasticized faith for the experience of and friendship with Jesus to provide solace and direction, and when Christianity does such, it is a source of good.
But I do think Mark's comment loses track of the fact that Christianity isn't always a source of good in our world, and the less well-reasoned and more unthinking a person's understanding of Christ is, the more easily it is able to be used for evil ends, to support injustice, hate, and oppression.
If one follows the path of self-reflection, the morals of one's innermost self will shine through. If one falls for a cheap apologetic trick of the sort being peddled by my overwhelmed (if adorable) CCC freshman--well, then you're at the mercy of your persuader. And if you're the one persuading others using those same cheap tricks--well, then how can you claim to follow the God of Truth?
Nate said at P.M. (as he usually does) that we should take our thoughts which we didn't get to express at P.M. back to Cell, but our cell isn't meeting this week--S.H. and S.H. are graduating a kid, and apparently Andy was at an amusement park or something? IDEK. I emailed these thoughts to Britani (as part of our cell homework to keep connected), but I thought I'd share them here, too.
For context, Nate said at P.M. that he felt that on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 was someone who hated Christianity and 10 was someone to devoted to Jesus, most people a few decades ago who weren't Jesus followers (a question-begging term, but we won't go there tonight) were 7's or 8's--just needing a gentle push--but that today they might be 2's or 3's.
It is important to remember how wonderfully and beautiful complex creatures we humans are--I have no doubt at all that it's a crucial part of our imago dei. We are not unidimensional beings, and (and I am sure Nate would agree) we cannot be placed on a simple spectrum.
A 1 to 10 scale just can't capture all of the nuances and subtleties expressed by real, living people. What would one do with the devout Buddhist monk, or the prideful Christian preacher?
I think instead most people may end up being an "8 or 9" on the Jesus-follower scale in some ways and a 1 or a 2 in others--and so, in addition to everything Nate said, it is important to engage with them on those points of connection: to focus on what we have in common with others, and not on our differences (although there is certainly a time for celebrating our differences as well!). It's rare when we can't find any point of mutual understanding with another person--as violent as Nate may have found the ecounter, as frustrating as it must have been for both sides to find the other's brand of Christianity to be strange and dangerous--such even happened during Britani's engagement with her Chicagoan interlocutor.
2. The Power of Bad Arguments to Convert
Even though we didn't have cell Wednesday, I did get to join Bryce's cell on Thursday, partly in virtue of the fact that it's held in the house in which I live. (I've let them have their own space in previous weeks, though.) Bryce's father, Mark, said something which had me thinking since last night, and I thought I'd share it with you.
I recounted the story of the young--and I mean young; she was probably a freshman, but she seemed impossibly childlike to my grad student self--Campus Crusader for Christ who approached me in the Commuter Lounge at NYU one night when I was checking my email on my laptop after a grad class. She asked me if I would be interested in a "survey," but the true purpose of the encounter quickly was made clear.
Of course, I derailed her script by almost immediately deconstructing her questions--I don't remember, but I like to think it was something basic, like "Do you believe in God?" I even had my laptop on hand, so I pulled up my favorite Leonardo Boff quote and read it to her, trying to explain to her the difference between belief and faith:
( First of all comes the experience of God. )In the course of our encounter, it became clear that I was much more deeply schooled in my theology than she was in hers (and while I don't know--and I have doubts whether she knew--what exactly it was she believed, I suspect the two theologies had deep differences). Now I tried to be polite, engaging with her honestly and critically but never antagonistically--but I have to wonder how she'd respond to an atheist willing to engage with her armed with some of the more potent objections to theism (many of which I think are partially right: after all, there are plenty of stupid varieties of theism). My goal wasn't to destroy her faith--but what of those who would be perfectly willing to tear her beliefs to threads.
Mark's comment was that it wasn't always necessary to know a lot to witness, that one could still win converts even without being deeply schooled in theology. Now as an empirical matter he was clearly right, but still I pondered it over and over until this afternoon when I realized: I object in principle to people being converted--even to a position which I think is correct--based on bad arguments. The very idea that someone could go on to become a Christian (or, more generally, a theist) after hearing, say, the outright absurdity which is the ontological argument ("A perfect being must exist, because if it didn't exist it wouldn't be perfect"), sends cold shivers down my spine.
This is related to my arguing-on-the-internet philosophy I described at the beginning of the cell: my purpose is rarely to persuade my intelocutor (something which usually promises to be a hopeless task) but rather to argue my position with as much intellectual rigor as possible so that someone reading the exchange with an open mind would know at once whose was the better argument.
There's clearly an element of intellectualism elitism at work in my response to Mark's comment, and insofar as that is the case, Mark's words stand as an important corrective that I would do well to remember. It doesn't require a scholasticized faith for the experience of and friendship with Jesus to provide solace and direction, and when Christianity does such, it is a source of good.
But I do think Mark's comment loses track of the fact that Christianity isn't always a source of good in our world, and the less well-reasoned and more unthinking a person's understanding of Christ is, the more easily it is able to be used for evil ends, to support injustice, hate, and oppression.
If one follows the path of self-reflection, the morals of one's innermost self will shine through. If one falls for a cheap apologetic trick of the sort being peddled by my overwhelmed (if adorable) CCC freshman--well, then you're at the mercy of your persuader. And if you're the one persuading others using those same cheap tricks--well, then how can you claim to follow the God of Truth?