on The Quest

These last few weeks have been pretty stressful, with drama and panic at every turn. May 2012 has been one hell of a month so far, but it's not without its rewards. I've been run through the emotional gauntlet, so-to-speak, and the resulting introspection has brought several things lying deep to the surface. I'm learning more about myself than I care to learn, and The Quest hasn't been preserved from the effects of all this. Specifically regarding the Quest, these are conclusions I've drawn thus far:

(1) Belief in God is an intellectual belief that can be defended and defended well. It's not just some evolutionary misfiring or handicap that needs to be shed like a molten, useless skin as we move towards enlightenment.

(2) My greatest doubts are emotional in nature, and these doubts trace back to subsequent beliefs within Christianity rather than to Christianity's basic beliefs and assumptions. That is to say, my doubts reside in the inconsistency between "real life" and a host of secondary (rather than primary) assumptions regarding God, the world, and myself.

(3) My biggest concern is that of theodicy (not surprising, since it's a current Western obsession when it comes to theology). Regarding God and Suffering, I believe that the New Testament paints a portrait of our world in which human suffering makes sense. I believe much of our struggle with theodicy comes from, at least, (a) a failure to understand what the New Testament actually teaches regarding "this present age" as well as (b) a stubborn clinging to egotistical, solipsistic assumptions akin to the Medieval assumption that the sun revolves around the earth.

(4) Christianity, in my mind, makes the most sense of our world--from the sciences to the arts, from all the world's evil to all it's good--and by this token it is an intellectually satisfying worldview.

(5) Following on the heels of #4, the world we live in, if created, points not to an un-involved God but to a creator who cares about his world. Although I see merit in deism, it seems that the basic claims of deism--that some creator created the cosmos and then stepped back to let it all unfold--emphasize some aspects of reality while downplaying others. List the horrors of life all you want, but how does deism explain things like love, beauty, laughter, altruism, the human craving for relationships, our love of art and literature and music, not to mention things like selflessness, sacrifice, and justice? It's a decent assumption, I think, that such things wouldn't be present if an apathetic, uncaring God were behind it all. We must make sense of both the good and the bad of the world, and any philosophy or theology must make sense of both, and Christianity--with its declaration of an active God striving to rescue an evil-saturated world--does precisely that.

(6) The resurrection of Jesus is an historically plausible event, as has been demonstrated by world-renown historians. Christianity is wrapped around not so much some "divine revelation" but around an historical occurrence, and if the resurrection is true, Christianity's basic premises are, at least in some sense, validated. Although one can't go back to ancient Jerusalem and investigate the claims of the gospels, fundamental historical methods lend credence to the proclamation that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead on that first Easter Sunday.

I plan on going through all these things in more depth later on, but that's not what this post is about. My favorite Wisconsinite asked me, months ago, what the End Goal of all this so-called Quest was, and I laid it out like this: the goal has been to determine the validity of the Judeo-Christian worldview, the desired result being (a) validation of that worldview as an intellectually justifiable worldview, and (b) a renewed faith resplendent with purpose, peace, and passion. But I've found, when i'm honest with myself, that my fears regarding epistemology run deep, and I'm sort of O.C.D. when it comes to these things: I hate not knowing, I can't stand the ambiguities, I'm terrified of the uncertainty. "The Cloud of Unknowing." At what point can I say, with confidence, "This is true, and I'm plugging my life into it."? Such confidence is more akin to narcissistic epistemological arrogance than anything else, and in the words of Damien Jurado, "I have questions that lead to more questions." Or to quote a group from my high school days, "The more I learn, the more I don't understand."

Every worldview has its assumptions, a set of lens through which the world is not only viewed but also interpreted and understood. Some worldviews are more coherent than others, but all makes assumptions and perceive the world in a certain color. The beliefs of atheists have as many assumptions as the beliefs of theists, and both go through life interpreting reality by virtue of those assumptions. The search for an airtight, irrefutable, 100% certain view on reality is a quest that not only denies the very nature of epistemology but also showcases an egocentric foolishness. I'm coming to see that my ambitions in this quest have ignored the basic propulsion into this quest, that being the unfortunate circumstances of how we can't simply know things, but that which we "know" is known not on its own but when it stands on the shoulders of assumptions and beliefs.

The Wisconsinite pointed out to me a simple fact: at some point we must surrender our doubts and fears. Does "surrender" paint a portrait of defeat and submission? Perhaps. Does it show a lack of free-thinking and honest, skeptical inquiry? Maybe. (Though I have found it quite ironic how the vast majority of "free-thinkers" seem to have identical beliefs.) Yet the simple fact is that surrendering doubts and questions and fears to a worldview is something we all do. It's necessary to function in our world. It's what happens when we see our own stupidity, the limits to our understanding; it's what happens when we're honest with ourselves in admitting that we're really not that smart and at the end of the day, some questions don't have any definitive answers. Some questions can only go back to assumptions that can be neither proved nor disproved, and in the end we surrender our questions one way or another. Surrender isn't just something some beliefs demand: all worldviews demand, to an extend, the surrender of our doubts, questions and fears to a higher meta-narrative. No one is exempt: the non-religious must surrender their doubts and fears no less or more than the devout. 

Bringing all this together:

(A) The Judeo-Christian worldview is an intellectually justifiable worldview.

(B) Nevertheless, doubts remain.

(C) These doubts may very well be emotional in nature, and no amount of intellectual legwork may be able to satisfy them. These doubts, if intellectual, may have no airtight answer due to the limits of my understanding and the irrefutable barrier of my own stupidity.

(D) There comes a point, in any such quest, when the doubts, fears, and concerns must be surrendered in lieu of the fact that we are dumb, and by that token some questions have no definitive answers and must be answered "by faith" (or, in more technical terms, by placing confidence in an assumption): we appropriate to ourselves answers to the questions stocked by our worldview, and we trust in these answers in light of the grander scope of the worldview's tradition.

I hoped to come to a point where all my questions were answered, where my doubts were eradicated and my concerns put to rest. And, if I'm honest with myself, I still hope for this. But I'm seeing that any movement within this quest is dependent upon assumptions, and any answers found rest not on their own prowess but on the foundation of all those assumptions holding it up. Assumptions under-gird everything; some are good, some are bad; some make senses, others are inconsistent; but assumptions lie in everything, and at a certain point I must surrender some of these things to the assumptions. Christianity, I honestly believe, is a worldview that is based on justifiable assumptions about the nature of reality. It makes more sense to me now than it did months ago, and I stand on the brink, so-to-speak, summoning the courage to admit my own limitations not just "on paper" but in my own heart, surrendering these doubts to God or to the worldview, however you may take it.