A Hopeful Heretic

3: Fear and Loathing in the Subcultures

I have always been puzzled by the energy with which Christians react to interactions with our society. For example, I remember the angry rant of an otherwise sweet woman who was incensed at “yet another judge ruling against Christian’s right to pray in schools.” She said, “We need to wake up. We’re really living under persecution in this country.” I was stunned.

However, reading Daniel Taylor’s The Myth of Certainty has given me a new insight into this kind of thinking. “The secular world is not so much a threat to God and His ways as it is to us and our ways,” Taylor writes. This makes so much more sense to me. Why would we believe that God needed our defense? Maybe more important, how can we be so certain that what we are defending is really “of God?” I wonder if we would be wise to more often heed the advice that Gamaliel gave to the Sanhedrin.

Yet, as Taylor points out, our fear of the secular subculture is not completely irrational. We are, after all, strangers in a strange land, in our own land. While the secular subculture is not a threat to God it is not exactly friendly to us. Taylor’s insight on why is what I find truly illuminating.

The belligerence of the secular subculture toward faith is really based on the same fears that we experience toward their lack of faith. We stand in competing worldviews, each one a perceived threat to the other because each one is perceived to reject the central tenets of the other. The secular subculture rejects faith as “unreasonable” because faith threatens one of the central tenets of “contemporary intellectual orthodoxy,” that is: doubt everything.

What many Christians find enraging is not “attacks” by this secular subculture but rather their dismissal. Faith does not so offend the secular world in and of itself. It is when faith is seen to intrude where “it does not belong.” In particular, when one’s faith gives off the impression that you are privy to insights not available to non-believers.

But Taylor is not shy about challenging three myths of the secular intellectual world. The first is that their worldview is based on reason and analysis. This assumption asserts that all people can come to the same conclusions if they will only apply some universally available thought process. This myth misunderstands the tool of reason in a manner that any politician or high school debate team would challenge. Following any particular chain of reasoned thoughts does not guarantee that there is no other way to look at the evidence.

Another myth is objectivity. This assumes that human beings are capable of setting aside all bias and experience and seeing circumstances through the same eyes, neatly and cleanly. But Taylor clarifies that his point is not to argue that reason is useless or that objectivity is not worth pursuing. He simply rejects the assumption that these tools give the secular world superiority over the person of faith.

Finally, Taylor asserts that the most fundamental tenet of secular orthodoxy is tolerance and it is often the most violated. Pluralism, Taylor writes, is the “orthodoxy of the day.” Yet pluralists are only tolerant of worldviews that affirm pluralism. Holding out the possibility of higher truth, even if it is inaccessible to humans, is heresy to that orthodoxy.

Ironically, these two different subcultures have a great deal in common in that neither will seriously consider the other and both are tremendously confident. As Taylor writes, “The end product of ignorance plus confidence is smugness, and both subcultures are bountifully supplied.” Unfortunately, reflective Christians often find themselves damned in both subcultures. Believe me, between is just not a fun place to be.

2: Navigating the Christian Subculture

When Daniel Taylor writes about “the church” he admits that his own experience is with the modern, western, primarily evangelical and fundamentalist brand of Christianity. That is an important context to hold in reading his book, The Myth of Certainty. In this, Taylor admits his own bias. He recognizes the “great plank in his own eye” as he examines the specks in the eyes of others.

But that said, Taylor points out that the church, although “God-ordained and God-inspired” is nonetheless prone to act as nearly all other human institutions. This is particularly true when it comes to responding to questioning. For members of an institution, questioning the institution is synonymous with attacking it. When it comes to questioning the church it is often seen as questioning God.

Like Taylor, I find this odd. It is as if defenders of God believe that He requires their defense. Now that’s just plain silly. However, Taylor notes that it is not really God they are defending but rather their own worldview. Recalling his discussion from chapter one, this is a necessity for the purposes of personal security.

The trouble is that the church generally responds to questions (read attacks) from within like any other human institution: with power. In this context, power can best be defined as the ability to impose sanctions. When sanctions are imposed the reason given is often the pursuit of unity. Yet, as Taylor points out, there is a big difference between unity and unanimity. The former is mystical, internal and perhaps, beyond the capacity of human beings to achieve on their own. The latter is measurable and enforceable. The goal of unanimity is correct behavior while the goal of unity is a right spirit. Taylor acknowledges that only the most extreme elements of Christianity require uniformity but the entire subculture insists on it to some degree. Taylor points out that an institution that seeks unanimity through authoritarian measures will naturally view every question as a “mini-crisis.”

But Taylor turns his own arguments upside down when he notes that the questioners can become like the Pharisee in Luke 18 who looks at the tax collector and thanks God that he isn’t like him. This is something deconstructionists (myself certainly included) must bear in mind. We cannot stand in criticism of the subculture as if we were not part of it and, therefore, bearing at least some degree of responsibility for its excesses.

Taylor closes with advice to reflective Christians that is worth repeating and remembering. We should whole-heartedly embrace the elements of church that appear to be sincerely doing God’s work, at least as we understand it. Yet we should feel no remorse about shying away from the “inevitable distortions that come from any collection of human beings.” The challenge, of course, is to know the difference. But that is what reflection is meant to help us navigate, is it not?

1: How We Believe

I am going to embark on a multi-part series blogging through Daniel Taylor’s book, The Myth of Certainty. I’m doing this in part because I’m lately I’m having a hard time being disciplined to read because of some new and rather pleasant distractions in my life. But it’s also because I’m finding myself facing a massive writer’s block (maybe for the same reason) so I am welcoming an opportunity to synthesize and analyze someone else’s ideas instead of trying to squeeze a few of my own out of my head.

I picked up Taylor’s book after reading it recommended on another blogger’s site (I don’t remember which) and it sat on my desk for a couple months while I finished some other projects. Now that I’ve started reading it in earnest I’m wishing I had done so years ago. I think it might have save me a great deal of angst.

I suppose that I like to think of myself as one of those “reflective Christians” about whom Taylor writes. This has caused me no small amount of trouble over the years and I’m fairly convinced that it has cost me a couple job opportunities. When a friend questioned me about my choice of titles for my blog I had to confess that I don’t enjoy being a “heretic” and I take no pride in it. I just can’t help questioning things that others seem to accept with so much certainty.

However, I’m not sure that my questioning rises to the degree that Taylor describes. For one thing, I’ve never reached a place of “paralysis” through ambivalence. I do find that I am able to commit to ideas, faith in Christ being undoubtedly the most important. On the other hand I can completely relate to the desire expressed by a young woman Taylor describes in the first chapter, a desire to return to days of ignorance and naiveté even though I recognize as she did, there’s no way to “unlearn” what we’ve learned.

But what I find most captivating in the first chapter of Taylor’s book is his discussion of the psychology of belief. There, he focuses not on what we believe but on how we believe. Human beings, he writes, are “explanation generators.” We develop worldviews because we need to in order to survive. Apparently we have a basic instruction set programmed into our being that requires each of us to make sense of the world around us.

Moreover, Taylor says, we do not do so in vacuums. Generally, we subscribe to worldviews of subcultures which are essentially sense-making communities. Once in operation, our worldviews become the lenses through which we process all information. We keep that which verifies our outlook and defuse or ignore that which does not. For the reflective person this process is less prevalent but it is still present.

The really interesting part is Taylor’s that subcultures are frontloaded with defenses against competing worldviews. This is a matter of security because the existence of competing belief systems threatens the security of our own. Their mere existence is an accusation that our own worldviews are based on falsehoods, illusion and ignorance. When people defend their world view they are not defending God or truth or some abstract system, they are in fact defending their own sense of security and self respect.

Taylor concludes the chapter by noting why it is important to understand the psychology of belief: it is to assure a reflective person that he or she is not crazy. When reflection drives us to question the beliefs of the subculture to which we belong the subculture does not suffer this quietly. Rather, there are all kinds of attempts to bring us back into the fold, to convince us of “the truth” or, failing that, to expel us using whatever means necessary.