What I Write About

I write about the infinite number of intersections between every day life and the good news of the God who has come to get us.

Monday, December 29, 2008

No Doubt Part 3: The Great and Terrible Exchange

In the end I want to humbly propose that Shanley has exchanged a greater good (humility) for a lesser good (doubt) in order to achieve a certain set of ends that are admirable and good (community).

And what I want to say is that this is simply a small and specific but very concrete picture of what all of us do just about every day on this side of the great and terrible exchange described in the Scriptures.

Our lives, lived here among the land of the ruins, are a shadow of what they might have been. This comes about as the result of the first great and terrible exchange, and it is perpetuated and exacerbated by the ways that we re-enact that same exchange in our daily lives: doubt in place of humility, revenge in place of forgiveness, lies in place of truth, cheating in place of integrity, cynicism in place of hope, walking in the shadow rather than living in the Light, self-determination rather than submission and trust.

The work of Jesus and the power at work in the gift of his Holy Spirit are the gifts given to us to roll back that exchange "far as the curse is found." To make right choices again, stumbling and fitfully, is the opportunity offered us as we are invited to live our lives following the One who made us.

5 comments:

Macon said...

Thanks for a great series of posts, Alex!

Doubt has a long philosophical tradition, some of its practitioners being no less than Plato and Descartes.

But it was never a place in which to live (where you describe Stanley), it was only a means by which they were trying to actually know something. Most of the great philosophers up until the late Modern period still explicitly believed that they could know things. :-) Late Modern to PostModern philosophers aren't so sure. (Which, of course, is something that they know! Which is why this is such a fun thing to giggle about, intellectually speaking. Naturally, I'm laughing *with* them, not at them. Mostly.)

I wonder if your distinction between "doubt" and "humility" goes even deeper. (Just riffing here, it's 6am and I'm waiting for my coffee to finish brewing.)

You could (perhaps?) look at it like this:

One can say the phrase: "I know X"

Humility might follow it up with, but "I" may be wrong. Sometimes I am wrong. My ability to perceive X is all too often shaded by my desires about X.

Doubt might follow it with, but "knowing" is really not possible now, is it? We can't ever know X, at the end of the day.

The former places the weakness in one's self, the latter places the weakness in an external place: the universe/world.

Or, finally, Humility allows for questioning X while still holding to a epistemological view that things are knowable. Doubt (at least as it's practiced by Stanley, and friends of his that I know) is closer to an epistemological posture that one simply cannot know things.

The former is a Biblical view, the latter is a view you can find the Genesis Serpent advocating.

Ah! Coffee is ready!

Alex said...

Macon,

spectacular, as usual! newbiggin sternly takes descartes to task in several of his books, particularly "a proper confidence" where he deals with this whole idea of doubt that is helpful and doubt that despairs of every knowing anything.

i definitely agree that "doubt" under the broader umbrella of humility is a good thing. that i am open to hearing other options and i could be wrong about X is precisely the better option that i think needs to be considered.

further, i think ultimately that stanley's permanent posture of doubt is simply a thinly veiled pride. it looks open and eager for conversation but again in actuality it means that i might listen to you but have no responsibility to take you or your ideas seriously. i am the final arbiter of truth, and doubt very much that it could ever possibly be discovered.

whereas true humility as you've described it here (since, of course, you know it so well and live it so perfectly) actually requires me to take your thoughts and you seriously.

Macon said...

Thank you for your kindness, Alex.

Yep, Stanley-Doubt is a socially acceptable way of having intellectual pride.

I don't doubt that at all. :-)

[aside: have I mentioned that I really really enjoy thinking about knowing? I confess to completely geeking out about epistemology and ontology. Not that I'm an expert in any way, just a big big fan. /aside]

Another thought on knowing:

I believe that knowledge is a full-human experience/event. That is, knowing is not just an intellectual exercise.

The Bible treats knowledge in this way, and my feeling is that non-Biblical post-moderns would also agree. (Sounds like a good subject for an essay.)

What I mean by a "full-human event" as knowing, is that true knowledge only comes when both the mind and the body are involved in the activity of the true thing. (maybe a better way to say it is the "whole self" is involved in knowing.)

I'm not talking about proving to someone that you believe something by them seeing you act on it. I'm talking about the existential event in a person that happens when one both intellectually believes X and they participate in X.

I'm also not saying intellect precedes participation (ooh, that'd be way too modern). Often they happen at the same time, sometimes participation in X happens prior to intellectual belief, and finally your head catches up to it. (like, say, the reality of Gravitational Forces.)

Anyway, Back to Doubt.

Stanley-Doubt cuts off the path towards participation, and therefore cuts off the path towards any true knowledge.


Maybe? Hmmm. Now I'm thinking I should have quit while I was ahead. :-)

At any rate, more grist for the Piebald Mill.

Happy New Year!

Alex said...

Great thoughts, Macon.

I totally agree on the full-bodied embracing of knowledge. This is the helpful corrective of post-modernity over/against modernity that put all knowledge in the lab of the intellect only.

Of course, the problem is that the correction in some circles has over-corrected. So it is assumed in some circles that since all knowledge is filtered through a person with biases and warts then it's impossible to know anything with any degree of certainty.

I look forward to your book on this stuff coming out in the next couple of decades. Just don't forget us little people when you're a rock star. oh, wait, you already are a rock star.

okay, so just don't forget us little people then.

one other thought in the shower this morning (where all good thoughts happen).

studying James with our small group, it's striking how important stability is as it's connected to wisdom in almost all the biblical wisdom literature. Looking at James 1, all the "bad stuff" is passing, shifting, tossed hither and yon, changing all the time.

The contrast is to the "Father of Lights" with whom there is no changing, who doesn't move around like shifting shadows; and those who are wise persevere, stick with it, hang on, are themselves also stable.

It strikes me that such a place of stability is impossible from a center of doubt. Stability requires some degree of confidence and certainty. Faith, "being certain of what we hope for." And thus, true wisdom and character cannot possibly be attained in the way of "Shanley-post-modern doubt."

Macon said...

oh, man, I have some of my greatest thoughts in the shower. I think it's because it's one of the few places in the world where one is uninterrupted by others, or tempted to interrupt one's self.

As for the over-correction, it's kind of like this:

So there's a group of people who keep their right eye shut and only look through their left eye. Usually, it's ok, but sometimes they run into things because they have no depth perception. But there's alot of great talk about how wonderful the left eye is, and we have some great tools to help you avoid bumping into things.

[For instance, I have this stick I can sell you that you can use for poking things. The stick is exactly one meter long, so you can know just how far away things are! It's usually on sale for $50, but for you, friend, $49.95!]

And there are times when these folks look at things through their left eye, and just mis-understand what they see. ("Oh! I looked over there and saw Sally! But later I saw it was actually Jane.)

One day, a stranger wandered in, who happened to use both eyes.

It was amazing! He didn't run into things!

Gradually, some folks started opening their right eyes, and found it made great improvements to their way of understanding the world.

But the really smart ones started thinking. They thought about all the times that they'd gone wrong with just their left eyes . . . all those things they'd bumped into, all those times they mis-saw Jane for Sally. All those mistakes really frustrated them.

And they had a really, really great idea: "If things were terrible (oh! so terrible!) when we used our left eyes, and then using our right eyes improved things, then we should stop using our left eyes completely! The left eye was the problem the whole time!"

It made so much sense! There was a clear correlation!

And so the little community thanked the stranger and sent him on his way, and proceeded to only use their right eyes from then on.

And the moral of the story?

Don't talk to strangers.