Thursday, 23 April 2009

• The Weight of Ideas - A Cross to Carry

  Philosophy is exhausting.  Before I decided to invest my mind into what the philosophy department at a secular university had to offer, I knew days would come where I would feel inadequate and isolated in the face of intellectual sophistry, which admittedly sounds so much more convincing on those days that I withdraw from my walk with God.  When people ask, "What is your major?" and I reply "Philosophy,"  they don't get it, which is understandable as there are days when I don't get it either.  Nonetheless, it is frustrating when people view the philosopher in cliches, and fail to appreciate the power of ideas in relation to their own worldview and empathetically feel the anxiety that burdens those who fight for such ideas in the trenches of academia.
  
  Although I don't think it is my calling to bear arms with those brave born again Christian philosophers or rather scholars in the secular battlefield of ideas, I appreciate their cross to carry so much more as I have felt the weight of carrying such polemical ideas in my own undergraduate studies.  For those Christians who desire to counter the hard-hitting ideas of postmodernism and naturalism in the professional world of academia need not only a scholarly mind, but a Spirit-empowered one, or else their so-called faith will snap like a twig in the name of tolerance.  And if pandering does not immediately reveal what they never had in the first place, one can count on the endless storm of ideas to further test what their faith is built upon - rock or sand.
  
  Although I don't want Christians to develop a persecution complex, I think it is accurate to say that evangelical scholars have taken up the defensive position because, as C.S. Lewis says, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”  This is no new-age, powderpuff philosophy because if it is true, it will be beautiful for those who have faith in Christ and terrible for those who do not.  There are no soft spots or feel good nothings scattered in the message of the Gospel.  It is all or nothing.  It demands your entire being and anything less is not of the Spirit.  If we have the truth and the Holy Spirit has supernaturally connected us to Jesus Christ through faith, in a certain sense, we move beyond good and evil and operate in virtue of grace.  We are new creatures who are once and forever more - truly alive.  And all who operate outside of grace are subject to the wrath of God for all of eternity.      
  
  And this is why so many brilliant scholars understandably target the Christian worldview because its implications are extreme, particularly for themselves.  But the question is "Who is willing to jump in a foxhole with merely a band of brothers (and sisters too) and face the massive army of skepticism with only a slingshot of truth and a mustard seed of faith?"  Many would rather retreat and hightail it back to camp and shelter themselves where they remain comfortably ineffective.
  
  I thank God  that "faith" and "truth" are not scaling adjectives in the sense that they are absolute.  You either are redeemed or you are not.  Your proposition is either true or it is false.  There are no degrees.  Your proposition cannot be truer than mine for it is either 100 % true or 100% false.  And when it comes to faith,  I am either 100% justified by the blood of Christ or am 100 % subject to the wrath of God.  Your faith does not save you more than my faith for the atoning work of our God upon that cross is sufficient to cover all sins, and to to believe otherwise is to deprecate the power of his deity. His grace is sufficient.  You are forgiven.  Be rejoiceful.
  
  What danger lies in the future of evangelicalism if we choose to be content with our ignorance and not disciplined in our studies of all that concerns our God.  What danger lies ahead of us if we dismiss theology and philosophy (and for that matter, all natural sciences and humanities) as being important only for professors and members of the clergy and not for laypersons.  Let us not become empty selves who have the capacity to learn and yet willingly choose to be content with our ignorance since it is the easy thing to do.  May we always be restless in our intellectual endeavors and rest firmly upon the cornerstone of our being -- Jesus, when the weight of ideas becomes too much to carry.
  
  Because it seeps into all other disciplines, philosophy will always be necessary.  Although it rightfully bows down to revelation as it's queen (at least it should), it defends her and remains her faithful servant who now fights the good fight in Western universities where theology has been exiled.  It is not deserving of cliches or superficial thinking or being dismissed by many churches as being unnecessary and even "evil."
  
  C.S. Lewis once said that "to be ignorant and simple now -- not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground -- would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defence but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen.  Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered."
  
  
  

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