Letter to a Friend (Part 1)

The following is from a letter I’ve been working on to a friend of mine. The topic is why I am a Christian, and what persuades me that the Christian vision of life is the true one. Naturally, being that this is a personalized letter, it will include parts that presuppose a constellation of other topics that my friend and I have spoken about. But, I still think the big picture will be fairly easy to find. (Also, you may also notice that, yes, I have reused sections from previously posted blogs and placed them in what I find is a more helpful overall context). So, here it is:

Hi _____, earlier in our discussion you asked me what reasons I have for rejecting empiricism, but “evidence” I have for believing in God, etc. I told you that I would get back to you, and this is my reply.  Here I’m going to broadly sketch out the reasons I have for holding a Christian worldview. I’m going to break this response up into sections, making it easier for both of us to find certain statements and themes.

The importance of worldviews

The first this to note is that the notion of worldview is key here. Technically speaking, the term worldview is looser than a philosophy, but the overlap is great. Here’s my working definition, a worldview is a spoken (or unspoken), consistent (or less consistent), often assumed, though rarely articulated, comprehensive vision of life. Here’s a more philosophical definition, A worldview is a network of guiding assumptions regarding the nature of reality (i.e. metaphysics), knowledge and truth (i.e epistemology), what we should value (i.e. value theory) and how we should live our lives (i.e. ethics).

 Here, given the definitions above, you can see that we all have a worldview. And, more importantly, we should develop their worldview. Since everyone thinks “worldviewishly,” the least we can do is to do it well. Likewise, we should strive to be more self-conscious about their worldview development. Too often- and I’m the first to admit this about myself- we passively soak up bits-and- pieces of the worldview of the surrounding culture.

For example, in our earlier discussion, you told me that you don’t accept empiricism as a complete system, because it doesn’t address ethics. So, you aren’t, in the textbook definition of the term, an empiricist. Empiricism doesn’t exhaust the totality of your worldview. Something greater is going on there. Implicitly, you have some ethic that determines and guides your behavior. You’ve said you’re a materialist. So, I’m guessing that you would seek materialist reasons for condemning certain actions and attitudes and praising others (this isn’t a criticism, I’m just trying to provide an example that’s helpful). That is, you wouldn’t self-consciously abandon materialism and seek an ethical system that contradicts the main tenets of materialism.

The problem of neutrality

This is why I reject the notion of worldview or interpretative neutrality. Since we all have views regarding the most important issues of life (What’s real? How and what do I know? How should I live? What is valuable? ), to deny this is naïve. Now, let me clarify for a second, ______. I’m not saying that we have views on every single thing. Personally, I have no views on string theory, or the status or quarks. So, if someone, like yourself, talks to me about such subjects, I’m not radically ideologically biased. But, talking about a worldview, the lens through which we integrate our entire lives, is no small thing, and on this no one is either neutral or objective. I also reject the modernist and enlightenment notion of objectivity. None of us has “God’s eye view” of reality. We’re always firmly planted in our historical contexts, with it’s biases (good or bad), and various ways of seeing things (good or bad).

Now, one might be tempted to think that I’ve opened the door wide for relativism, but I don’t think that’s the case. When I reject the notion of objectivity, I don’t mean that we cannot know truths that exist independent of our options. I do believe we can have such knowledge. What I reject as philosophically naïve is the notion that we can come to weighty matters without concern, without prejudice, and with the “cool detachment of Reason” (notice the capital R).

I think you made this very clear with you talked about solving various philosophical problems, such as Descartes’ “stick in the water” problem. Essentially, you addressed the problem with double blind experimentation, repeated testing, multiple people, etc. This doesn’t create objectivity (in the sense that I reject), but it’s important that you noted these things. In the case of the stick in the water, we learn because we’re steeped in a community that can challenge us, regardless of our detachment, feelings, or commitments. The isolated, Cartesian knower is a chimera, and it’s unfortunate that it’s taken so long for so many thinkers to conclude this. What we need is both community and great explanatory power for a system to work. This is something I’m convinced Christianity offers and delivers on.

Next we’ll talk a little bit on the “holism” of Christianity…