On Coming to Know

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, mostly because of a busy school and family schedule, but spring break has come, and with it a bit more time to reflect and write.

I am not a philosopher and this is not a blog about philosophy. But I am a learner and a teacher, so I occasionally ponder on the process of how we come to know things (what philosophers call epistemology). I woke up way too early Friday morning, thinking about how we move from knowing what other people know and tell us, to knowing for ourselves.

My students and I are have been exploring some faith traditions with which we share a largely common worldview, but also have divergent belief and practice. For the last few weeks, we’ve been engaging Catholicism. I’ve been doing my best to represent a Catholic view of the Eucharist, drawing largely on Brant Pitre’s stimulating book, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist. Pitre argues that when we view Jesus words and deeds in light of ancient Jewish history and custom, and first-century messianic expectation, we see him teaching that his real presence would be conveyed through the Eucharistic bread and wine.

As we process these unfamiliar ideas, both from Pitre and the guest speakers who have shared with us, I get a number of responses. Some say, “I don’t like that” and basically check out. Others listen and process, but respond that it doesn’t make sense to them. This is an honest response because it truly doesn’t fit into the plausibility structure they have inherited and developed; its strangeness makes it sound senseless. These students often make counterarguments, which rest on prior assumptions about what the Bible says. But they are listening and thinking, and this is great! Still others listen, weigh, question, dialogue and seek to understand and evaluate whether the position presented is what Jesus actually meant. I received an encouraging email from one of these students. He said:

One point that you made that made an impact on me was that the Passover lamb was sacrificed and then consumed. . . I was not completely sold on what you were saying about the spiritual presence of God in the element, but the fact that Jesus is our Passover lamb seemed to be a very convincing argument for a more literal point [of] view. . . As I was pondering this on my own I thought about the Passover lamb that Jesus is compared to. . . Were not the sacrificial lambs merely symbols, representations, and placeholders for the real sacrifice that was to come in Jesus? When the Jews would eat the lamb they would not be eating the real sacrifice but a symbol for that true sacrifice. That would then imply that we are as well eating a symbol for our Passover Lamb. 

I am by no means convinced one way or the other and our discussion have opened my mind to the issue. . . I thank you for having these days in class.

I was so encouraged to hear how this student was not disparaging or dismissing, but processing and evaluating what he was hearing. I wrote back sharing my own process of thinking through these concepts, which has been going on for some time and stimulated by our current study:

You bring up a good point about OT sacrifices being symbolic pointers to the Reality that was to come. Your line of thought makes sense: that because they were eating a symbol, we are too when we eat the bread and wine/juice. Another way to think of it is that because lambs/animals were symbolic foreshadows and Christ is the greater reality, so they consumed a symbol and we consume the reality. That reality, in my provisional view at this point, is the spiritual presence of Christ (i.e. the Holy Spirit; though I appreciated what Father Barnett said about the Trinity all acting together and the HS being like the leading point of the triune triangle). Thus, we feed on Christ’s presence by receiving His Spirit.

Granted, I have not thought through this with respect to every text that might be brought to bear on the question, nor in dialogue with systematic theology. That’s why I used the word provisional above. I think I’m at a point where I want this to be true, because I want Communion to be more meaningful and mysterious than it has been for me in the past, and there seems to be some solid scriptural basis for at least the idea of a spiritual presence, so, in light of this recent engagement with the [biblical] text [i.e., John 6] and Catholic theology, I’ll let that simmer in my mental stew pot and see if it continues to ring true as I keep studying and growing.

This kind of discussion is why I love teaching biblical studies. Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts.

This exchange, I think, is what prompted my early morning musing about epistemology and the following insight. (For those who really are philosophers, this insight is obviously nothing new; I’ve just seen it play out recently and so “discovered” is personally.)

When we’re young, we know because we’re told. This knowledge comes largely from our parents and teachers. Right or wrong, we’ll die on the hill saying, “My dad said so!” Some never really move beyond this point. Adults often live on a basically borrowed belief system. Many blindly believe what reporters say. Academics often accept the ungrounded claims of scholarly “experts” without considering their arguments or their bias. Similarly, grown-up Christians regularly appeal to what “the Bible says,” which is really nothing more than what their pastor or teacher says; they never consider the complexities of interpreting and applying ancient texts or recognize that there are credible alternative readings.

Now, I should admit that all knowledge is in some sense inherited. We will never escape learning from others, nor should we try. But the hope is that people learn to choose their teachers wisely and honestly evaluate both messengers and their claims. We want to seek the truth, not just what confirms our prior beliefs. And one goal of education (at least one of my goals as an educator) is to help people move from knowing because they’re told to knowing because they know, that is, because they’ve come to “own” a belief. We own a belief when we understand its ins and outs, its whys and wherefores. Ownership comes through reasoned thought, experience and engagement with opposing viewpoints.

When we come out the other side of this long and arduous process, our knowledge is, paradoxically, both more and less certain. On the one hand, we know the reasons beneath our beliefs and, therefore, why they’re worth holding. On the other hand, we see a bigger picture and gain a deeper understanding of alternate beliefs. If these beliefs are groundless, our own are confirmed. But if they are reasonable, we may discover some value to be appreciated and learned from them. We may find, as I have with the Catholic view of the Eucharist, that they add more to the beliefs we have, without diminishing what we already knew. We, therefore, gain respect for alternate ideas and those who hold them. We have learned to listen and to learn. We emerge with a more personal knowledge and with humility – a combination which amounts to wisdom.

Although, as I said above, I’m not a philosopher in the professional sense, I hope I still am in the etymological sense. For the philosopher is a “lover of wisdom.” He knows how much he doesn’t know and therefore invites new and challenging ideas. He listens and ponders, and processes and evaluates, develops and strengthens his personal knowledge. I hope my students see me doing this kind of philosophy, under the authority of Christ, and that they too will come to “own” their knowledge, so they can live the truth wisely in the world.

What ideas are you currently processing? What beliefs are you coming to own? Do you have insight on how we move from inherited knowing to personal knowing?

Baby Spoons or Silverware

I’ve spent all my life in Christian education. I attended a wonderful Christian K-12 school nearly all the way through, went to a Christian college, spent four fantastic years in seminary, and now I teach high school Bible in a Christian school much like the one I grew up in. Sitting in chapel last Wednesday, a question came to my mind. Are we, in American evangelicalism, spoon-feeding our kids (and adults) or are we teaching them to use silverware so they can feed themselves?

Many of the students in the chapel go to church and youth group regularly, come to my bible class daily and attend chapel each week. In all these contexts, they are “spiritually fed.” But as I observe some of them in the classroom, I notice that for all the spiritual nourishment they receive, there is relatively little corresponding appetite. And some who are hungry are nearly helpless to feed themselves, let alone prepare and cook their own meal. These trends seem to repeat themselves in the broader church.

The day after chapel, I engaged a couple of my classes on this issue. I started with an analogy. Newborns have a sucking instinct and an intense desire to eat; they are serious about this (and they remain serious throughout childhood, needing nourishment to support rapid growth and development). At around six months, they learn to take food from a spoon. Then we introduce finger food. A few months later parents take the plunge and hand the spoon over to the baby. This is tough at first. Their uncoordinated attempts make a mess of table, bib and face. They often revert to using their fingers. But they keep at it. Soon they can control the spoon and eventually they can get food from plate to mouth without getting it in their hair. As they grow, they learn to master fork, knife and napkin and eat like adults. Many Christians seem stuck in the early stages of this development, depending on others to feed them. Why? My students’ responses were interesting. I can divide them into two categories: blame the restaurant (the church/school) or blame the eater (the Christian). Most fell in the former category. Here I’ll reflect on a few of them.

• If the baby food doesn’t taste good, why would we want more? Why to eat if we don’t een like the food? Perhaps it was providence that the day I brought this up we were covering Revelation 10, where the prophet John is commanded to eat the scroll of God’s Word, so he can speak it to the nations. It tasted sweet as honey in his mouth, but turned his stomach sour. God’s Word is like that: bittersweet. It can taste like honey and burn like fire (Revelation 11:5, 10; Jeremiah 5:11-14). Often, the truth hurts. It confronts us. When it does, we can choose to despise it or grow wise from it, to chew and swallow or spit it out.
• We’re overfed and not given time savor the food and absorb the nutrients. We get indigestion and throw up. There may be some truth to this. There is much fast-food teaching that resembles Burger King buck doubles. And these kids’ parents control their spiritual (and nutritional) diet as much or more than they do, so they can’t always change the menu. But I know there is deep and profound truth in what many of them hear each week (I know some of their pastors and listen to their chapel speakers; many are fantastic). There is much to savor if they choose to. I suspect indigestion is due not to over-consumption of spiritual food, but to other parts of their diet that prevent proper digestion: media, virtual reality (video games), and social life, both substandard encounters (facebook and texting) and authentic face-to-face relationships.
• People don’t give us silverware. There is also some truth to this. I struggle with it as a teacher. In the short run, spoon-feeding is easier. Less mess. Less work. Not to mention I’m trying to feed a table full of students with varying abilities and appetites. I fear that the hungry, who would eagerly take up the tools and eat a solid meal, sit famished or frustrated while we add jelly and raisins to the salad so the rest will eat it.
• Perhaps an equal and opposite problem is that many have not acquired a taste for nutritious food. Most Americans (to my bewilderment) intentionally acquire tastes for expensive and potentially harmful things (like coffee and alcohol), but we don’t develop an appetite for the bittersweet message of the Bible. One student said people may be turned off by intimidating or offensive parts of the message. This is certainly true; it never ceases to scandalize (1 Corinthians 1:23)! Another, when we were discussing baby food, asked why our parents make us eat mashed up vegetables when we were little. My blood immediately boiled, and I said we eat them because they’re good for us! Despite the diabolical lie that only what feels and tastes good actually is good, often the best things for us are those we like the least. My family has gone through a nutritional overhaul since my first daughter was born. My wife wanted to give her a chance at good health by building better habits from the start. I now enjoy foods I never would have imagined and find myself disgusted by food I used to like. Perhaps the bittersweet message of God’s Word is a taste we must acquire.
• One student represented this side of the argument when she stated simply, “People like candy.” It’s interesting how the spiritual mirrors the nutritional. Americans live on junk food and empty calories. We like it because it tastes good (again, it’s acquired, or rather engrained since it’s been fed to us since birth). We might know all the statistics and health risks associated with our diet, but we ignore these and keep eating because it tastes good. Until we change our appetites, truly good food will taste bad to us. It’s like my boss, Joe, who likes canned fruit over fresh because he spent years on a fishing boat without access to the good stuff. How can we penetrate the denial and convince people that healthy food is delicious. Perhaps we need to explain the difference of ingredients and share our food slowly so their tastes can change. Perhaps some people need a purging process.
• Here’s an insightful reason: The people before us don’t know how to feed themselves either (so they can’t teach us). I tend to agree. It’s no secret that most evangelical Christians are biblically and theologically illiterate. The sad part is we either don’t realize it or we don’t care. We sit in the cushy church chairs, content to eat mashed up peas and applesauce off the spoon. And some (thank God not all![1]) of my students sit in class either completely disengaged or moaning and groaning because they’d rather watch a movie than digest the life-giving, life-sustaining words of the living God.

I can’t understand it! Where is the appetite? Human children have an instinctive urge to eat. Don’t (or shouldn’t) God’s children hunger to feed their soul? We sing, “This is my daily bread / Your very word spoken to me / And I I’m desperate for you.”[2] Are these empty words? Where are the Christians who join the Psalmist in their thirst for God (Psalm 42:1) and longing for his truth (Psalm 19:9-11; 119:103)? Milk is indispensible for growth (1 Peter 2:2). Eventually we must move on to meat (1 Corinthians 3:1-2; Hebrews 5:11-14). But if we would do so, we must learn to take up the tools and eat.

 

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[1] I am extremely grateful for those students who engage in the learning process. I’m not sure if I could keep doing my work without them. They bring joy and encouragement to their teacher’s soul.

[2] Marie Barnett. “Breathe.” Mercy / Vineyard Publishing: 1995.

Redeeming Education: Imitating Your Teacher

Here's an insightful post from my friend, Jeff Haanen, explaining how Jesus taught by sharing life with his disciples and how they learned by imitating his way of life.
Redeeming Education: Imitating Your Teacher: "Jesus shocked his contemporaries with his method of teaching. He didn’t go on and on giving commentary on the law, as most of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law of his day did (and many “scholars” do today). His method was simple: gather a group of disciples, live with them, teach them the way of the kingdom of God, and most importantly, show them the way with your life..."

Christian Education for Christian Ethics

I am, admittedly, a nerd. Analytic. Brainy. Theoretical. Theological. I love the world of ideas. I get kicks out of learning, research and reading that many today, especially among the younger generation, probably find strange. So one could say I’m predisposed to over-emphasize education.

So let me start by stressing that I recognize the value of emotion and the inadequacy of knowledge without the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 1:7). I believe body mind and heart are fully integrated. That in fact, is the only way this argument makes sense. My contention is that for the church to cultivate Christians whose new life is expressed ethically in their bodies, we must nurture the development of both their hearts and minds.

So far so good, right? But my observation of Christian people, Christian worship and Christian education leads me to believe we’ve left the mind behind.^[1] It seems many American Christians fall into one of two categories: 1) basic unfamiliarity with the Bible, or 2) basic knowledge of Bible stories, usually learned in Sunday school, but little understanding of how the stories relate and together tell one Grand Story of Scripture.^[2] Even the second category – knowledgeable, but non-integrated – is inadequate for training disciples who actually live like Christ.

By way of illustration, consider a ladder.[3] At the top is wisdom: life lived in light of God’s truth, in obedience and service to Christ. The first, foundational rung of the ladder is a grasp of the overarching biblical story.

Wisdom

Discerning Engagement of Culture

Ethical Standards for Moral Reasoning

Worldview Formation

Biblical Story

Most Christian schools rightly aim to achieve most or all of the top four rungs. We want to create critical-thinking, Christlike disciples who have a Christian worldview. But we often fail to realize that Christian ethic and worldview grow of the Christian Story of reality, the biblical Story of reality, the grand Story of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. This story answers the critical worldview questions: Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? What’s the problem? What’s the Solution? ^[4] The Christian faith is a worldview.^[5] It’s a worldview grounded in a Story. And the Story is more than the disconnected mishmash of apparently unrelated teachings, miracles and hero stories found in most curriculum materials and children's Bibles. All of these are part of the Story. But the Story is bigger and more complex than all of these. Big and complex, yes, but not beyond us. And actually, when we boil down, no bigger or more complex than the fairy tales I read my five-year old daughter. We can teach the basic plot to our children.^[6] As they grow, we can flesh out the Story, add details, characters, subplots, etc. We can explain how the stories relate and function together, and how the Story intersects with other aspects of life. Then, when they face the challenges of an increasingly godless culture – challenges that delude, derail, and even destroy the lives of many young adults – they will be more prepared to expose these “hollow and deceptive philosophies” (Colossians 2:8) with God’s Truth from God’s Story.

May we relearn, reclaim and re-teach the old old Story with all its life-shaping and world-changing power.^[7] May the story stir our hearts to sing and our hands to serve in worship of our God and King.

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[1] Mark Noll has called it a scandal. J. P. Moreland calls us to love our God with all our mind. But calls seem largely unheard or ignored, perhaps because they’ve come through a medium (books) that misses the target audience, or perhaps because they drown in the noise of an entertainment culture. A notable exception (in a more culturally engaging medium is the Truth Project. It is terrific resource that raises the questions Christians should be wrestling with. But I wonder how well it motivates and equips Christians to pursue learning. If they view a 12-hour video series as a completed project rather than a few bricks in a building, it may do just the opposite. Let’s hope that it raises questions and opens doors to discovery that people actually pursue.

[2] D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), chs. 5 & 6.

[3] I realize this illustration focuses on the intellectual aspect of growth to the exclusion of other factors like community and the work of the Holy Spirit. But I believe these all work in harmony and the process is impaired without them all.

[4] N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 122-26. For more than what’s here, but less than Wright’s difficult chapter, check out Learning the Script and Playing a Teacher in God’s Unfolding Story: Reflections on Christian Worldview and Vocation.

[5] Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Should We Live? (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1999).

[6] The only good example of this that I’ve seen for children is The Children’s Storybook Bible. There is a raft of good, recent books for adults that aim to recover the Story and help us read it. Two that I’ve found helpful are Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen, The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004) and Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), esp. chs. 3-5.

[7] On the life-shaping influence of the stories we tell our children, see Plato’s Republic, 376d-392c.