Man of Thought

"Mark this well, you proud men of action! you are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought." Henrich Heine 

A card with this quotation written on stands proudly on my desk next to the picture of my wife. It was given to me five years ago before I embarked on the beginning of my University education. As I eagerly await to begin another three years of Philosophy, it has become somewhat of a mantra for me.

In today's world it seems increasingly the case that the 'men of action' are the ones who receive the praise. It is those who get things done that inspire, those who are quick to act, pragmatic and useful to society. And in some capacity, this is understandably fair; it is the men of action, the doers who change things, who make a difference. But for me, it is the men of thought, the writers, the thinkers, the slow movers, who have inspired me, who get my heart racing. And perhaps they are in danger of being overlooked. 

Men of thought have the power to change how people think, to challenge presumptions and question the norm. And more than anything, it is how and what people think that influences what people do. I like to think that thinkers set the tone for how we march, they ask the questions no one else thinks are important. Most importantly, they get to the root of things, they establish the very point and purpose of why we do what we do. 

For me, it has been thinkers who have readjusted how I see my world and my faith. I think of Kierkegaard, Tom Wright, Sartre. These men have made me question realities I took for granted, to ask questions I didn't know were even questions. And ultimately these challenges have affected how I have lived. It was Tom Wright's challenge to me as a 17 year old boy that made me think for the first time about the Kingdom of God as a present reality. This has shaped how I have seen Christianity ever since. It was the words of Sartre, as an undergraduate student that challenged me to see the nothingness of a life without a God, and the constraints we put upon our own freedom. And as a Master's student, it was the words of Kierkegaard that challenged me to see faith as a constant leap, a living, breathing, active thing that is far beyond a doctrine to ascribe to.

As I begin my PhD in a few weeks time, it is this challenge I look to: not to be a useless thinker who sets himself apart from others, who cares about problems that have no bearing on reality, but to be a man of thought who can relate to the world, who can ask meaningful questions of his friends, who can challenge those around him. I believe that thinkers can make a difference, and it is to this task that I am committed to. I don't know how the next few years of my life will pan out, but by the faithfulness and goodness of God I have been given an opportunity to stretch and sharpen my mind, and I intend to do it for his glory. 

Of course Heine's claim is somewhat of a false dichotomy that will rightly annoy some of you. Being a man  of action by no means excludes you from being a man of thought. If you read the books of the New Testament written by Paul, you cannot but be blown away by his structure, the beauty and power of his writing. But Paul is unmistakably a man of action; he not only changes how people think, he tells people to: 'follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.' Paul is a great doer, bringing power and momentum to the good news of Jesus.

Inside the card is written the simple words: 'To Josh, a man of thought and a man of action'. I admit that I by no means live up to this recommendation. But it is this challenge that I strive towards.

Limit to Your Love

I've suddenly realised of late that it's all about love. If it wasn't for love, I would have no faith, the words of the Bible wouldn't move me, the evidence for the existence of God wouldn't convince me. Love is so central to faith, that without it, I think faith is utterly inconceivable.

I've just graduated from three years of studying philosophy; it's been such an interesting, challenging three years. I've read so much, I've been exposed to so many different ways of thinking. I've learnt to think differently, to structure arguments well, to read the densest texts, to pick apart worldviews, ideas and concepts. I honestly think that philosophy is such a useful subject for any human being, the ability to think is vital to a life lived to the full. And philosophy is something that the Church needs to learn how to use; as theism becomes a less and less fashionable intellectual position, we need to be able to show that we believe because it is true, not just because.

But I realised something the other day, I was having a late night whisky with my housemate who also studies philosophy. And I asked him “Do you know anything now that you didn't know when you started? Are you any closer to the truth?”. And I realised, actually philosophy hasn't brought me closer to the truth. I might be able to argue why I'm a naive realist, or why I think scepticism is an incoherent position, but it has little bearing on reality. Don't get me wrong, I think those things are useful to think about, I think reason and argument is so useful to our society, but I'm not sure they bring me closer to truth.

It's hard to explain why I am committed to Jesus, why I have surrendered my life and my will to a deity that seems unknowable at times. It's hard to explain why I can believe in things which I think are genuinely contra to reason and logic, like the doctrine of the trinity or the incarnation. But I do. And I sleep intellectually sound at night. I'm not a deluded fool. I think, I debate, I argue. But I firmly believe there is more to life. I firmly believe that I am created by a loving God. The evidence supports my beliefs; the historical evidence for Jesus the Messiah and his resurrection, the arguments for theism, the change I have seen in the lives of my friends. They're all perfectly reasonable 'reasons' to believe. But it doesn't convince me beyond doubt.

“The one who does not love has not known God, because God is love” 1 John 4:8

I've realised recently that it's all about love. I can't explain love, I can't pin it down, I can't argue for it, I can't argue against it. But honestly, I can't deny it. In my mind, the biggest failure of reductionism and humanism is that it provides a thin vision of humanity. You can tell me that love is a sequence of chemical reactions and releasing of endorphins. But it just doesn't cut it for me. That's such a limit to my experience of love. I don't understand what love is, I don't understand why. If all that exists is this universe, matter, energy and decay, this is all meaningless. There is no love in that world view. But I cannot live without love. It is so undeniable to me. The spirituality of mankind is such a reality to me; the way a piece of music can move me to tears, the way a close friend can hurt me so deeply, the bond between me and my parents, the longing I have for justice. I can't deny that love is central to who I am.

Love moves me to faith. The bible says that God is love. If that's true, it makes so much sense that love is such a tangible reality, but such an irreducible concept. The bible says that everything else in this world will cease, religion will die out. It says that I can be the most moral person, the most intelligent, the most faithful person but if I lack love in my life, it's all pointless.

I know, more than anything else in this life, that love is real. It is inexplicable and it is undeniable. It is all about love. And because I know this, I know God. I know more than any argument could ever show me that there exists something more than what we see, something more than what is reasonably evident. I cannot stop believing until I stop loving.

Believe

I'm finding it difficult to believe recently.

Jesus doesn't offer us a theory or a proof to be grappled with and criticised. But I have a tendency to think like that. Probably something to do with studying philosophy for the last five years. The problem I find with philosophy is that it does not offer us a firm foundation to anchor ourselves on- I can spend three months debating, reading and thinking about the best model of consciousness- but my conclusion doesn't seem to have any bearing on my actual life. Outside of the philosophy classroom determinists, libertarians, sceptics, realists, logical positivists, empiricists- they all act the same. There's huge differences in their arguments and their perspectives, but it doesn't alter how they spend their Saturday afternoon or their bank balance. At least in my experience philosophy rarely has any bearing on my actual life, yet it makes some strong and demanding claims. On every level of life, soceity, medicine, science, art, perception- it has something to say. Somehow I find it difficult to ever really apply. As a philosopher I'm an ardent supporter of common sense realism, anti-scepticism, compatibilism and monotheism. None of these things change or have any effect on how I live.

Jesus claims that he comes to bring life, and life to the full. Jesus doesn't offer us a doctrine to leave in the classroom, a theory to grapple with and then get busy living. Unless belief infiltrates every aspect of who you are- how you spend your Saturday afternoon, what you do with your money, how you think, how you act- then it's not true what Jesus says.

The Church in the UK has been dormant for the last century in some cases, and despite being a 'Christian country', we're on the whole a nation of apathetic non-believing agnostics. Partly I think, because we're have been fascinated with Christianity as a concept- as basis for our laws, as a basis for state, as a concept. But Jesus doesn't give you that option. That's not Christianity.

I'm struggling to believe because I'm stubborn, because I'm lazy, because I don't allow Jesus to radicalize my very existence, to transform everything I have. It's easier to think of this is a concept to be grappled with, as an argument to be won. But let me ask you, do you really believe? Do you really believe that a God made you in his image and sent himself as a human to die? Do you really believe that the world will be restored and reconciled with its creator, and that you'll be resurrected into a perfect eternity? I'm sorry but if you really believed that, you'd do more; it wouldn't be something to be grappled with, something to prove or disprove- it would be something that would radically upset my me-centered universe.

I'm the sort of person that can't pretend very well. I don't do the whole 'Christian' thing very well I don't think. If I look like I'm not engaging with 'church', I'm probably not. If I look like I'm ready to give my life for this, I probably am.

I'm trying to challenge myself to go beyond belief. Belief is a philosophers game that can be argued for and against eternally but eventually makes little difference. I'm striving to be Christ like at the core. That's really difficult.

The man who knew too much

There’s always a bit of an awkward momentum when someone asks me what I do. There’s usually one of two responses to telling someone that you’re studying philosophy. Either people don’t really know what philosophy is; maybe they’ve heard of it, perhaps it rings a bell thanks to a famous duet from a singing meerkat and warthog: “it’s our problem free....philosophy”. And even when you explain to them that philosophy is all about studying ideas and asking difficult questions, or perhaps more pretentiously “the pursuit of truth and wisdom”, they still don’t really get it. Or, even more commonly they think it’s a bit of a pointless exercise. My brother for instance tells me that I’m doing a degree in ‘bull***t’. The other group of people understand what philosophy is, find philosophy really interesting, perhaps they’ve dabbled in a little part time philosophy and generally like to take the opportunity to have an interesting conversation with me. It’s fair to say I like meeting the second group of people a little more.

I remember once talking to a woman in my Church back home before I left to go to university. She asked me what I was going to be studying, so I told her. She told me that I should be careful; she’d known someone who went off to study philosophy and ended up coming back without believing in God. “Philosophy is dangerous”, she told me. Apparently there was a chance that I might suffer the same fate if I wasn’t careful. I found this quite amusing; as I saw it, Philosophy was the quest for the truth and if it turned out that Jesus wasn’t really the truth then I didn’t really want to believe in him.

I spent a lot of time in my first year trying to ‘seek the truth’, to get to the bottom of my belief. I doubted a lot and went through a similar process to Descartes of starting at the foundations of my beliefs and working out was actually ‘true’. I’ve got a lot of scraps of paper stashed away into my draw with flow charts of beliefs, I’ve got files on my computer titled “why I believe in God” and “can I really be a Christian?”. Honestly, its great fun, you should try it some time. But it’s not an easy ride. As I wrote in my blog last week, I would really struggle to believe anything very well at all if I hadn’t confronted my doubts, sought answers to my questions.

Needless to say, I’m now more than two years through my philosophy degree and it hasn’t really destroyed what I believe, the woman at my Church wasn’t completely right. But I am a very different Christian today than I was this time two years ago. I think about things very differently, I like to think that my faith is more reasonable than it was.

In a sense the woman was right; philosophy can be dangerous to faith. Before I came to university I was very much a Christian who ‘experienced’ God. I was the guy that would shake ferociously when people prayed for him, when I was meant to be playing keyboard in the worship band I would be so ‘lost in worship’ that my hands spent more time in the air than they did on the keyboard. I had ‘words’ and ‘pictures’ for people all the time, I spoke in tongues. I felt very ‘close’ to God. Some of the time, I’m still that person, but not very often. I’ve lost some of that experiential side of my faith since I’ve questioned it more. Instead of closing myself off and flailing my hands around when they play worship songs at Church, I find myself screening the songs for decent theology. Whenever someone gives me a ‘word’ from God, I am very doubtful that it didn’t come from their own head. It’s fair to say philosophy has changed me and my relationship with God.

It leaves me with two options. If philosophy is the seeking of the truth and some of my beliefs and my behaviour won’t stand up to the scrutiny of investigation then they’re irrational and I should abandon them. Or the other option is that my beliefs are the firm truth and philosophy is somehow defective in getting to the ‘real truth’. Honestly, I think there’s a bit of both going on.

I find it useful to think of a “pendulum of faith". There are two extremes of faith; we can be like I was pre-Philosopher; experiential, swayed by impulses and experiences. Our beliefs are built solely on experience and ‘closeness’ with God. The problem with this is, when our experiences fade, when we fail to be able to experience God like we used to, what is left is just a set of ungrounded, shallow beliefs. If we never take the time to investigate, to know what we believe intellectually, when experience fades (which it usually does), our faith goes with it. I think it’s also really difficult to know the difference between God speaking to us and what is just human ideas if we never take time to question. If every ‘word from God’ that I’ve ever heard is from God, if every spiritual instinct I’ve ever had was God talking to me, then I think God is probably in the business of contradicting himself an awful lot. And when the atheist philosopher comes knocking and tells you that your experiences can be explained psychologically, you are in trouble if you don’t know your faith very well. Like I said, philosophy can be dangerous to faith. Experiential faith is passionate, it feels ‘close’ to God, it can be exciting but ultimately it is without foundation, and often irrational. Because of this it pretty flimsy.

The other end of the pendulum is pure intellectualism. This is the kind of faith that any philosopher would be proud of, the kind of faith I was looking for when I started hacking away at my beliefs when I came to University. This kind of faith has a set of coherent beliefs; it questions everything and doesn’t believe until there are good reasons for belief. There are problems with this as well though. I think ultimately it is a failed project; we cannot ever have proof or certainty in God, we can’t ever have faith without doubting. We will never get to the kind of firm foundation I was looking for by purely intellectual investigation. Even if we do get to a place where we have some kind of ‘rational’ beliefs, God just becomes a ‘concept’, he is nothing more than a set of ideas. Intellectual faith can lack the passion, the drive, the closeness that experiential faith does. No one ever dies for a ‘concept’. I really don’t think that the philosophical concept of God is really in the business of changing the world. It can often just be a selfish pursuit for reasonableness.

I got to a point this summer where I knew that philosophy fell short of truth in some way. I cannot live my life for a ‘concept’ of God; I need to live my life in relationship with God in some way. Sometimes this involves believing things which don’t quite live up to the scrutiny of philosophical investigation. I think perhaps this is where philosophy falls short of truth. I can’t live my life for reason or intellectualism ultimately because I don’t really think it can change the world. But then I find that pure experientialism is blind and dangerous and I can never justify it from a philosophical perspective. So I’m seeking to find a happy medium in my life; to root out irrational false beliefs, to have a reasonable belief, but to seek God every day, to experience him intimately, to be in a relationship with him. It’s a very hard balance to strike.

If I lived for philosophy, for proofs and rationality then the woman from my Church would probably be right, I might stop believing in God. But ultimately I can’t live for philosophy, I think as much as I love to study it; it falls short of real meaning. I think philosophy seeks truth, and it has helped me to get rid of irrationality and falsity in my beliefs. At times it has stopped me worshipping God, stopped me being close to God. But ultimately I want to live for the truth, not for experience. At the same time I don’t think philosophy can really get me the whole way; it can tell me what the phenomenon of love is in a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, but it can’t really explain why I feel it. It can explain away my experiences of the Holy Spirit in terms of psychology and social pressure, but it can’t explain how and why these experiences have shaped my life. Philosophy is limited to the facts, to the intellect of faith; and if this is the only grounds on which I believe, then the faith that I now have is irrational and wrong.

However, I do really believe that God exists, that Jesus is bringing about kingdom transformation today, but I cannot believe this by pure intellect alone. Reason falls short of real meaning and ultimately I cannot live for it. My life has meaning in Christ but I need much more than philosophy to achieve this. To me faith is all about finding the balance between believing with my mind; doubting and questioning but still seeking relationship with God in my heart, trying to be obedient to him even when I can’t explain everything. But then again there's always the chance that I'm just wrong....

I’d be interested to know if anyone else struggles with this, how you find the balance between intellect and experience. Looking forward to reading your comments.