The Independent Variable - Matt Haugland


Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Evangelism, who needs it? (Part 2)

I think there's an inherent problem with evangelizing people who've already heard and don't believe. Usually there's an assumption on the part of the evangelist that "I'm right, you're wrong. You need to believe what I believe." I'm not saying it's wrong to believe you're right and others are wrong (that obviously goes along with believing anything). But I think there's something wrong with expecting people to be open to (i.e., willing to objectively consider) your beliefs if you are not open to theirs. Someone who's convinced they're right and the other is wrong is not going to be very open to the other's beliefs.

This wasn't such an issue during the 1st century -- they were telling news that people hadn't heard yet and sharing beliefs that were relatively unknown. It wasn't "I'm right, you're wrong" but "I've heard the news, you haven't yet", which is much different from the context involving people who've heard and rejected.

It's sad that Christians today are known for being arrogant and closed-minded. Sad, but not surprising considering our attitude toward non-Christians. And I know I am just as guilty of this as anyone.

25 Comments:

At 6:54 PM, Anonymous Andy said...

Right on Matt!!

 
At 10:43 AM, Anonymous marcian!!! said...

I'm wondering why you're dwelling on Christians who are closed-minded. What kind of example do you set on a daily basis? What reaction do you get from people that indicates they see Christ in you?

 
At 2:30 PM, Blogger Joel said...

I always figured Christians being close-minded and disliked was part of the idea in the beginning - 'the world hates me because I testify against it, that its deeds are evil' ... 'the servant is not greater than his master, is he?'.

I am also confused about what you mean. Whenever I'm unclear about your meaning I inevitably guess awry, so this time I'm just going to state my confusion and basta. So... how are we supposed to talk to people? Is being open to someone's beliefs different from holding said beliefs to be utterly wrong? What's the problem in your view with the way that Christians interact with the world? You already said that you don't have a problem with Christians believing that they are right and others wrong... little help here?

 
At 2:41 PM, Blogger Matt said...

Joel - thanks for the comment. What I mean is, it's not fair for Christians to expect non-Christians to be open to Christianity if the Christians aren't open to what the non-Christians believe.

I think Christians often don't treat non-Christians with enough respect. I think part of being loving to people includes not automatically dismissing whatever they say/believe because it doesn't happen to be what you believe.

As for what to do about it... I think we should listen more and be more objective regarding other people's beliefs. Have more of a "let's find the truth together" mentality as opposed to an "I'm right, you're wrong, you need to believe what I believe" approach that many Christians seem to do.

 
At 3:47 PM, Anonymous Marcian!!! said...

Matt,
Doesn't approaching others' view with an objective mindset inevitably result in a right/wrong dichotomy? It just seems to me that there is no reason to not continue to evangelize to those who reject Him. I see not reason not to be militant (to an extent) about one's beliefs. I don't believe in brandishing swords (and storming college campuses seems a little ineffective in today's society of iPods and cell phones), but I DO believe in clinging to my faith with everything I have. Christ Himself did this. He was hated by those who spent their entire lives immersed in "the truth" (the Pharisees). And He was ultimately killed. I'd say that if we are not one step away from death most days, we're just not being vocal enough.

Matt, stop me if I'm wrong, but it APPEARS to me that you are looking for an alternative to evangelism that doesn't step on toes or make others uncomfortable. And if that is the case, then I think you've missed the point.

 
At 4:40 PM, Blogger Matt said...

marcian -- I don't think so. I think it's a matter of loving, respecting, and treating people fairly. And I think Jesus would want us to do those things.

Clinging to your faith with everything you have -- that's not really related to my post, but I'll comment on it anyway. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It can be good sometimes. But if someone asks you "Why do you believe that?" and you can't come up with much of a reason, it can be dangerous to cling so much to it. I think generally it's best to be open to all possibilities and not assume you're always right.

 
At 6:19 PM, Blogger Norman said...

Although there certainly seems to be a difference between trusting a belief with nothing behind it and trusting one with a reason, in the second case aren't we just trusting Reason (or our capacity for reason) with nothing further behind it? In the end it seems to come to the same thing, just with more steps in between. A bit epistemological (and thus off topic), but I began to wonder as I read the last comment.

 
At 6:28 PM, Blogger Matt said...

Norman - No. I think empirical evidence + logic is more than just "reason" and a lot more than "nothing".

To tie it back to the topic -- if we have good reasons to believe in Christianity that non-Christians haven't heard yet, that would be more like giving "news" than repeating things they've already heard.

 
At 7:26 AM, Blogger Joel said...

This still seems awfully paradoxical to me. If one really believes that one is right and others wrong, how is it possible to approach them with the attitude 'let's find the truth together'? Is that honest?

More to the point, is it possible for a real Christian to be objective in the sense you suggest? After all, to admit oneself a Christian is to stand as a partisan in the great debate, not as some objective spectator impartially weighing all the arguments. In fact, I submit that the latter stance is Biblically incoherent ad absurditum.

Unless of course you intend by 'open-minded' something I still don't understand, like 'not being a jerk'. I'd be okay with that.

 
At 2:18 PM, Blogger Matt said...

Joel - Because I think we're talking about things that we can't know for sure. That is, after all, why it's called 'faith'. I think it's VERY possible for a real Christian to be objective in the sense I suggest. Not just possible, but I think objectivity is something that Christians should strive for, something that should set them apart.

No, I think you have the right idea of what I mean by 'open-minded' -- impartially weighing all the arguments. I think that's part of having a love for truth.

 
At 6:28 PM, Blogger Norman said...

Matt- I cannot agree with you on this matter. The modern skeptical "we can never know God with certainty" is not a mindset accepted in Scripture or the Church. Rather, confidence in our God and complete trust in the certainty of who Christ's identity IS what the gospel is all about. 'Faith' is not contrasted with 'Fact'; it is contrasted with doubt.

Further, we should not place our faith in logic + empirical evidence. Evidence can be something we trust (Deuteronomy 18:15-22), but it cannot be our sole test. Scripture is explicit about this, and you can't argue your way around it.

"If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, 'Let us go after other gods,' which you have not known, 'and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer of dreams. For teh LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the LORD your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst." Deuteronomy 13:1-5.

Placing more faith in sound thought and 'evidence' than in Jesus, whom Christians know personally and bought them with his blood, is beyond error.

 
At 6:42 AM, Blogger Joel said...

Matt, I'm sorry, but unless I have fundamentally misunderstood you I must second Norman's view: there is no such thing as 'objective human reason', at least not biblically speaking. The authority to which you are appealing simply does not exist. Rather, the choice is between native, sin-polluted intelligence, which is compared to blindness (Romans 1, etc); and the wisdom of God as revealed in Scripture. There is no independent basis on which to weigh the two; there is no middle course: faith is assurance and conviction (Hebrews 11), the polar opposite of what you seem to be saying.

 
At 9:33 PM, Blogger Matt said...

Norman - if that's the case, I'm happy to be "beyond error". I believe sound thought and evidence are my basis for believing in Jesus. Without those, what reason would there be to have faith in him?

I'm still looking for where scripture is "explicit" about how evidence shouldn't be the test.

Joel - I think you do understand my view. It's basically the opposite of everything Norman just wrote. I disagree that humans can't be sufficiently objective. They can if they don't presuppose that their religion is the "wisdom of God".

 
At 5:25 AM, Blogger Joel said...

So... doesn't that require that native human reason be infallible? How do you square that with the testimony of Jesus, for example, that 'having eyes they do not see', or of the apostle that 'the lord has made as foolishness the wisdom of this world' or other passages to the same effect?

Further, if you're going to reject revelation as the basis of knowledge, what are you going to substitute? I submit we've learned in the centuries since 'Enlightenment' that human reason fills the job very poorly indeed; have you another contender to fill the part, or just re-hashed modernism?

 
At 12:01 PM, Blogger Matt said...

Joel - No. Infallibility is only required for perfect certainty. We're talking about faith here. The evidence doesn't have to prove beyond any doubt or even beyond a reasonable doubt.

Special revelation (i.e., the Bible) can't be the basis of knowledge because it leaves no way to test or establish it's validity. If external evidence is not the test, you could just as validly say "The Quran is the basis of knowledge", and would find the Bible not to be true based on that presupposition.

Instead, I believe the basis of truth should be math because it is objective and infallible. 1+1=2 is always true. From math, science and logic can be defined. Those tools can be used to interpret the actual evidence -- not perfectly of course, because we're human, but well enough to have faith in things. I think many people even do this without realizing it.

I don't believe it's correct to equate the laws of logic with fallible "human reason".

 
At 1:26 PM, Blogger Norman said...

Matt- First of all, your argument for logic as objective and infallible flies in the face of pretty much all philosophy of truth and epistemology. Nobody who studies in this field has found those arguments compelling (I believe since Kant).

Your argument is not from philosophy of truth, but from a modernist philosophy of science (the sort you have been indoctrinated with at least since beginning university). When confronted with the fact that epistemology does not support it, this philosophy of science can only respond "well it has to be this way or science doesn't work." Not a good enough excuse to ignore epistemological philosophy, especially since scientific thought exsisted before these modern fanciful assumptions.

As to your proposed test of special revelation, Moses never accepted it. In fact, he offered an entirely different one. If one proposes to speak on behalf of the God the people have always known and say something new, then the test is indeed evidence (in the form of predictive accuracy [Deut. 18:15-22]). If, however, one proposes to speak on behalf of some other God, then even miraculous evidence is insufficient, and the one proposing may be rejected on the grounds that this goes against what we have always been taught (Deut. 13:1-5), a reason you seem to despise but Moses does not. Note that these are instructions to God's people, many of whom at the time had not seen the miracles in Egypt; yet they are to trust the God because he brought their fathers out of Egypt. These passages from Deuteronomy are extremely explicit.

Your view only works if God acted as creator and set all the initial conditions, but then did not interact with his "closed experiment." This is the only way you can argue pure logic based on the empirical results. However, if this is the case then you can no longer consistently cling to the following beliefs:
1. God spoke directly to Moses, as this must involve an intervention beyond initial conditions. Revelation from God then is no different than any other book, the contents of which of course were determined during the setting of the initial conditions.
2. Jesus was God, as for God to place himself in time and space within the world he created certainly alters the situation post-initial conditions. Jesus must then have been a clever superhero, but not divine.

Left with no special revelation and no Divinity in Christ, I find such a view of God completely wanting, as has the church for over 1800 years. I don't think this is a matter of seeking the truth. This is a matter of clinging to an idol that your modern philosophy of science has brainwashed you to accept and try to fit on the throne beside Jesus. Let me assure you, there is no room.

I realize this sounds harsh, but as a scientist I think it is important.

 
At 1:57 PM, Blogger Matt said...

Norman - As I understand it, the "modern fanciful assumptions" are based on scientific thought, not the other way around.

If the laws of logic are not infallible, I at least haven't seen any proof of this, and they have been known for quite a long time. Even if they are not infallible, they are certainly reliable enough to be a basis of faith.

I don't believe Moses was speaking to this issue in Deut 18. I don't at all despise "because we have always been taught" as a reason. It's not particularly compelling to me, but it is a reason and has at least some value as evidence.

Even if you are correctly interpreting Deut 18, I don't think it should be normative today. Deut 18 was in the context of illiterate people who did not have access to the kind of evidence we have now, and probably did not understand the concepts of scientific reasoning or the laws of logic. That DOESN'T mean the concepts can't apply in some way to us today, but we should be careful about tearing it out of its context as if he's talking directly to the 21st century world.

I don't agree with your point (1) because these "initial conditions" include God knowing that at some point he would come speak to Moses. As for point (2), same thing.

I disagree that my view precludes belief in special revelation or the divinity of Christ, for (among others) the reasons stated above.

I think we're talking about different kinds of sciences here. I'm referring more to hard science. You're right in that some "scientific thought" can be very subjective.

 
At 2:40 PM, Blogger Joel said...

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At 2:40 PM, Blogger Joel said...

I'm sorry, perhaps there's some mistake - I didn't mean to talk about validity, I was talking about Truth.

Your argument against special revelation as the basis of knowledge is entirely incoherent: you can't test the basis of knowledge, because that itself requires prior knowledge. First principles are by definition untestable, otherwise whatever principles you use to test them would be the real first principables, and so on until you got bored or your head explodes from thinking too much.

But speaking of validity, what's the basis of these wonderful and truth-bestowing laws of logic? Intuition, I suppose? Or more logic? How does that work?

Does your definition of faith square at all with that in Hebrews 11, or are we just pretending for the sake of the argument that the passage (and the rest of Scripture) don't exist or weren't inspired? Because there have been two or three passages - that one and Deuteronomy, can't recall if there are more because I'm lazy - and you have kind of ignored them. Although you did tell Norman 'nuh-uh', which is was a good start... Is that because you reject revelation as authority prima facie on the grounds of your intellect? You certainly aren't the first - read Jefferson's new testament sometime. That's your scientific Christianity - or at any rate your science, because it bears no resemblance to the latter.

 
At 3:48 PM, Blogger Matt said...

Joel - I agree with a lot of this. You're right, we all have to start somewhere. You start with the Bible, I start with science. If we're both right, we should end up in the same place.

There's some debate about this, but I would say the "wonderful and truth-bestowing" laws of logic are absolute, transcendent, self-evident truths, and are similar to mathematics (perhaps even drived from mathematics somehow). Of course, they aren't very helpful until combined with actual evidence.

I believe science/logic is a better starting point than the Bible. This just seems like common sense to me (and to most people), but I can explain why if necessary.

I totally agree with the definition of faith as given in Hebrews 11. In fact, I believe it supports my definition of faith quite well.

I ignored Norman's passage (in Deut) because it seemed like a red herring. But I kinda addressed it in my last comment to him.

I do not reject special revelation as an authority any more than you reject general revelation. Special revelation is an authority to me, but it has to be backed up by evidence. Otherwise there's no objective reason not to also believe the "special revelation" that came via Muhammad or Joseph Smith.

Based on my (scientific) reasoning, I can't think of anything in the Bible that I would disagree with or could prove not to be true. If I desire to follow Christ and I believe everything in the Bible, it seems odd to say that what I believe "bears no resemblance to Christianity". Maybe it's different from most Christians, but I would think it at least bears some resemblance.

 
At 3:45 AM, Blogger Joel said...

So... the laws of logic are fundamental to the fabric of the universe. Nice. Prove it.

If you can't (and you know you can't), then quit talking about scientific reasoning - your epistemology is bankrupt, because it depends on laws with no authority behind them. My view, on the other hand, cedes that place to God, who has the advantage of being a first cause himself and thus avoids the unpleasantness to which your all-too-human laws are heir.

So now you're telling me that if Christianity isn't independently verified, we might as well be Muslims or Ba'hai. But verified by what standard? You cannot judge things by a standard lower than themselves, just like you can't measure an elephant with a metre-stick, so whatever standard you're employing must be by definition higher or more true or important than Christianity. Well then, screw Christianity: obviously we have here an independent source of truth that's higher than God, on the basis of which we can weigh his revelation and decide if it's correct. Grand, except that the very fact that we can judge him proves he isn't really God, so why are we wasting our time? No need to turn Muslim and give up alcohol - a toast to us in fact, the new Gods on earth!

Forgive me for a bit of melodrama, but I hope I make my point clear: the issue with your scientific approach to Christianity is that it prima facie denies the whole basis of the Christian faith, which is God's claim to being Absolute. If this is the case, then there can be no truth apart from his word, science and our eyeballed evidence all to the contrary (this was the relevance of Deuteronomy, that the evidence of our own eyes is fallible); and if it's not, then he isn't worth our worship in the first place and we ought to find something better to do with our time than donate it to some being who isn't much smarter than we are.

Thus I say that the resemblance of what you are espousing seems very close on the surface, but differs in precisely the essential point: this unwillingness to seat divinity any place outside your own skull. To claim the right to judge revelation as you seem to do is equally to claim the right to give it. That's a problem.

So, usual disclaimers apply - feel free to tell me if you think I'm wrong, or have misapprehended something or other... cheerio et cet.

 
At 10:33 AM, Blogger Matt said...

Joel - The laws of logic have been proven by countless observations. Are you saying any of them are not true? What basis do you have for saying anything is true or not true apart from the Bible? If the Bible doesn't say the laws of logic are not fundamental truths, how can you believe that apart from your own human reason? You're already borrowing from my system in much of what you say.

The Bible was man-made, regardless of whether God inspired it. It has not always existed. It does not address every question in the universe. It has a particular historical context. It is interpreted subjectively. Thus, it is not a good foundation for all truth, especially in matters of religion (because every argument becomes circular).

Logic, on the other hand, is not man-made. It existed before humans. All humans did was discover it. It is universal, independent of context. It is not subjective. And (and here's a big part I think you've missed) God is at the heart of it. It has nothing to do with what's in my head or anyone else's. It is completely independent of human thought (unlike the Bible).

So I would go as far as to say that someone who relies on logic as a primary standard of truth is relying even MORE on God and LESS on man than one who relies on the Bible as the absolute standard.

To put it in more Christian terms, what I'm saying here is that general revelation is the standard by which claims of special revelation should be tested. Logic, scientific method, math, etc. are (in my opinion) general revelation that God gave us in order to know what's true.

This isn't just what I say. The Bible teaches it as well. I might also add that the Bible doesn't say it should be used as the ultimate standard of truth in all things. It says it is profitable for things, and I agree 100%, but it never claims to be the ultimate standard.

 
At 11:06 AM, Blogger Marcian said...

Matt, I think where you are running into problems (again) is where you are assuming that others are borrowing from a knowledge base which you believe is shared. I don't think that is the case. I think you should go ahead and assume your audience is NOT similar to your scientific peers (unless I am mistaken). I see that you are completely convinced of your stand, but you're not communicating it well because there are incredibly deep fundamentals you assume to be shared. Perhaps they are axiomatic to you, I don't know.

Just a thought.

 
At 11:16 AM, Blogger Matt said...

Marcian - You'll have to be more specific. Would you mind emailing me the specifics? I've heard from non-scientists who understand perfectly what I'm saying but don't understand why so many of the commenters are reading other things into it. I can't find anything ambiguous or hard-to-understand in the actual posts, though it's necessary to go into greater depth to respond to some of the comments.

 
At 2:52 PM, Blogger Joel said...

This is an interesting twist on the thing, and I have fifteen minutes before they kick me out of the lab here. I need to think some more about what you said, but to clarify the first bit very briefly, my contention is that the laws of logic cannot be proven logically to be ultimate unless you presuppose the existence of the very thing you're trying to prove - that is, the laws of logic, which would tend to defeat the object of the proof. But I'd be interested to hear which observations or experiments that don't assume them from the start have demonstrated to your satisfaction that they are in fact as you call them (just because I've never heard of a thing doesn't mean it can't exist). Anyhow, more later, buona notte

 

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