The Eagle & Child

Archives: Theology, doctrine, philosophy

Bibliography for "Life 101": The Myth of Certainty

If I were to write the syllabus for life (my life, anyway), it would include reading The Myth of Certainty: The Reflective Christian & The Risk of Commitment by
Daniel Taylor.  I don't particularly care for back cover "blurbs"
(and yet I consistently read them), but this one seems like it was
written for me: "Do you resent the smugness of close-minded skepticism
on the one hand but feel equally uncomfortable with the smugness of
close-minded Christianity of the other?"  And then it goes on to
say that if you say "yes", then this book is for "you".  It certainly is.

Taylor begins the book with a series of questions directed reflective Christians:

Do you ever
think, "Those close to me would be shocked if they knew some of the
doubts I have about my faith?"  Do you even scare even yourself
with your doubts?...Have you ever felt like walking out of a church
service because it seemed contrived and empty?...Have you ever felt
intellectually embarrassed to admit that you were a Christian?...How
often do you find yourself at odds with your
surroundings--intellectually, socially, spiritually?  Is there
part of you which feels out of place no matter where you are?...On a
controversial issue are you more likely to agree totally with one side,
find all side partially persuasive and attractive, or find yourself
saying, "A plague on all your houses"?...How confident are you that you
know God's desires regarding the specific political, social, and moral
issues which face our society?

Sometimes I feel like
transcribing this entire book onto this blog--that's how much I like
it--but that would be a huge waste of time (and illegal), so
here is a small selection of gems from the book:

Even the most ardent pluralist…appears tolerant of many different outlooks only because they are allowed for
in his or her point of view….He or she is likely to feel offended, even
threatened…by the person who claims there is only a single correct
explanation of reality or a single right answer to a social
problem.  As the current wailings of doctrinaire plualists about
the political and social activities of the new right in America demonstrate, most pluralists are no more tolerant of truly divergent points of view than those they criticize for intolerance. (24)

                                                          
* * *

    
We fend off competing world views because by threatening our present
understanding of reality they threaten our essential security.  An
unbeliever presented with the claims of God, for instance, or a
believer confronted with the view that God is mere wish-fulfillment are
both being told that any meaning and security they have derived from
their explanation of the world is spurious and illusory. 
Confronted with radical disorientation, the initial response is to
preserve the self and the status quo....

    
When people defend their world view, they are not defending reason, or
God, or an abstract system; they are defending their own fragile sense
of security and self-respect. (25)

                                                         
* * *

...my reason is operating best when it makes clear to me what it can and cannot do.

…No Christian
makes any greater leap of faith than does the typical liberal
secularist who claims that a sufficient dose of reason (education) will
rid us of [the world's] maladies. (69,70)

                                                         
* * *

Normally doubt
is seen as sapping faith's strength.  Why not the reverse? 
Where there is doubt, faith has its reason for being.  Clearly
faith is not needed where certainty supposedly exists... (81-2)

                                                     
  * * *

A naïve conception of absolutes offers a truth packaged in an illusion accompanied by a danger.  The truth, which I affirm by faith in response to evidence, is that the essential Christian claims are actually so.  The illusion is that I can be certain that they are so.  The
danger is that my eventual discovery that certainty is an illusion (one
that never should have been offered in the first place) may lead me,
mistakenly, to disavow the truth it enveloped.

…The reflective
Christian must steer between unfounded claims of certainty on the one
hand and an equally spurious absolutizing of relativism on the other.

…An awareness
of the slipperiness of truth, the subtlety of error, and the human
appetite for illusion does not mean one cannot believe and act with
intensity.  Acting with less than perfect knowledge is part of the
risk of being human. (91-2, 127)

                                                      
* * *

The goal of
faith is not to create a set of immutable, rationalized, precisely
defined and defendable beliefs to preserve forever.  It is to
recover a relationship with God. (123)

                                                     
* * *

Seek more
vigorously the distortions and shortcomings in your own vision of
things than in those you might seek to overcome.  Questions of
doctrinal purity, correct theology and behavior, and so on are most
helpful in an assessment of oneself before God (on a concrete rather
than abstract level), not as a club for bludgeoning others.  Much
has been forgiven you; you should forgive much in others. (130)

                                                   
* * *

We should avoid
being sucked into negative struggles that are charactarized primarily
by what they are against, depending often on fear, suspicion, and even
hatred for their primary motivation.  Seek out, instead,
constructive tasks that bring healing, enlightenment, and encouragement
rather than bitterness and enmity.  Organize meetings against
abortion clinics if that is what you feel God asks of you, but organize
two more for aiding unwed mothers and single parents.  Criticize
the church when such criticism is called for, but also seek ways with
your own life to make it what it should be. (136)