Rauser You're Not As Crazy As I Think

Dialogue in a World of Loud Voices and Hardened Opinions
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8308-5979-5
Verlag: InterVarsity Press LLC
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 210 Seiten

Would you choose God over truth?If we Evangelicals are known for anything, we are mostly known for our opinions-opinions we are not afraid to express and express with much gusto and volume. But what if passion for truth is found not in the loudest voice and most unshakable convictions, but rather in the resolve to listen to and learn from others? What if that passion is found in a willingness to rethink our most cherished beliefs? What if it is found in a refusal to embrace simple black and white categories when the world offers a bewildering array of gray? What if it is found when we refuse to dismiss those who disagree with us as simply stupid or wicked? What if it is found when we seek to learn from others through open and honest dialogue? In You're Not As Crazy As I Think, Randal Rauser presents a very different picture of the passionate pursuit of truth from those who seek to stand on unassailable and unquestionable foundations. This pursuit begins as we rethink not only our truth paradigm but learn how to listen, to hear, and learn from groups so often marginalized by our biases. Could it be that those who we have dismissed or ignored, like liberal Christians, Darwinists, atheists, and animal-rights activists, are not that stupid or wicked after all? Could it be that they might even have something important to share about the truth?

Randal Rauser is associate professor of historical theology, teaching in the areas of theology, apologetics, worldview and church history, at Taylor Seminary in Edmonton, Canada, where he was granted Taylor's first annual teaching award for 'outstanding service to students' in 2005. He earned his Ph.D. at King's College, London, where he focused on the doctrine of the Trinity. Rauser is the author of several books, including Faith Lacking Understanding, You're Not as Crazy as I Think, Finding God in the Shack and Theology in Search of Foundations.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Rauser, Randal

Leseproben

1

WHO NEEDS
TRUTH WHEN
YOU’VE GOT
JESUS?

Woody Allen’s film Crimes and Misdemeanors tells the disturbing story of ophthalmologist Judah Rosenthal (Martin Landau). Although Rosenthal has a serene life, it begins to unravel when he has an affair with a flight attendant. Rosenthal thinks he can lead a comfortable double life—until his mistress resolves to tell his wife of the affair in a move that will ensure the destruction of his family. When all attempts to keep her from talking fail, Rosenthal resorts to hiring a contract killer in order to have her murdered. After the dark deed has been completed, he surreptitiously returns to her apartment. As he gazes on her lifeless body, the gravity of his crime begins to sink in. Some weeks later the growing guilt Rosenthal struggles with drives him back to the home of his youth in search of some kind of solace and guidance. As he wanders through the house, he pauses at the dining room while memories of a busy Passover Seder from his childhood begin to flood back. As the scene unfolds in his memory, Rosenthal’s father, Sol, is dutifully leading the service when his secular aunt May rudely interrupts the “mumbo jumbo” proceedings. May’s condescending dismissal of Sol’s piety prompts a debate among the guests concerning the rationality of belief in God in the modern world. When one of the men at the table asks Sol what he would say if it turned out that his faith was wrong, Sol resolutely replies that even if he is wrong, he will still have lived a better life than the unbeliever. This prompts an indignant retort from May: “Wait a minute. Are you telling me that you prefer God to the truth?” Sol’s answer is instant and resolute: “If necessary I will always choose God over truth!”1

I believe that this little story provides a sobering parable for the state of much of contemporary evangelicalism. The dining room table represents the public square of debate and discourse, a table that bustles with the views of secularists, atheists, humanists, Muslims, pluralists, Buddhists, and many others. Evangelicals have long seen their role at the table in much the same way that Sol views his, as defenders of the one truth against a world of error and skepticism. In the midst of the cacophony of civil and uncivil exchange, the evangelical soldiers on. Even as he faces critique and occasionally even mockery, still he strives valiantly to defend the gospel. The commitment of evangelicals to this fight has occasionally waned as they have been drawn by the lure of more worldly pursuits.2 However, in the last decade a number of evangelical voices have expressed a renewed dedication to the importance of truth for the wider community. For evidence of this trend, consider the spate of recent books evangelicals have published on truth in the last decade, including The Truth War; Culture Shift: Engaging Current Issues with Timeless Truth; Total Truth; Evangelical Truth; Time for Truth; Truth Decay; Whatever Happened to Truth; The Wedge of Truth; Truth and the New Kind of Christian; and (my favorite title) True Truth.3 And to cap it off, in 2006 Focus on the Family released a complete worldview curriculum entitled Focus on the Family’s The Truth Project®, a watershed of unprecedented scope and ambition intended to ignite the church’s passion for truth. All told, the evidence suggests that evangelicals are showing clear signs of Sol’s dedication to standing for the truth.

But what about the negative side of Sol’s witness? Is there evidence that evangelicals have abandoned the virtuous pursuit of truth for the sake of defending their own beliefs, true or not? Certainly this appears to be the widespread assumption among non-evangelicals, as Joel Kilpatrick suggested in his satirical book A Field Guide to Evangelicals and Their Habitat: “The purpose of evangelical education, like the purpose of Fox News, is to dispense with contradictory ideas with as little thought as possible, resulting in eighteen-year-old biblically literate virgins who vote Republican.”4 Whether or not this is a fair characterization of evangelical education, Kilpatrick’s satirical description accurately reflects a common perception about it. Despite all this talk of truth among evangelicals, many others at the table suspect that they are really more concerned with perpetuating their own sectarian ideology.5 So despite the fact that evangelicals loudly proclaim their fidelity to truth, critics suspect that they reflect nothing more than Sol’s misguided piety: “If necessary I will always choose God over truth!”

Even if people have the impression that evangelicals are willing to sacrifice truth for the sake of their beliefs, surely the deeper question is to ask whether this is in fact true. In this book I will argue that it is indeed often true, certainly more so than evangelicals are typically willing to admit. Time and again we have revealed ourselves to be more interested in defending and perpetuating our beliefs on a given issue than in discerning where the truth really lies. Often we have preferred to secure our present beliefs against challenge rather than to embrace the open risk of real dialogue. Even if we would never come out and say that we choose anything, even God, over truth (after all, what would that even mean?), our actions often suggest otherwise. As a result, actions that may have been intended to secure the faith from attack instead undermine our witness to others gathered at the table, leaving them to conclude that we are not that serious about truth after all but are simply pushing an “agenda.” And this ultimately leaves the evangelical’s stance looking as ironic and pathetic as the beleaguered rabbi in Allen’s film.

This brings me to the second part of my thesis. If we have often shown ourselves to be less than diligent pursuers of truth, the solution is straightforward, if not simple: we need to be doers of the truth and not hearers only. And this means developing the character and traits that always seek after truth in all things. With that in mind, my goal in this book can be stated as follows: to challenge evangelicals, other Christians, and everybody else to develop characters of truth that are in harmony with their proclamations of truth. At a pluralist table crowded with various opinions, where reasoned civil discourse is often trumped in favor of quick sound bites, we need now more than ever to be faithful disciples of truth.

Since it is important to keep this kind of discussion grounded in concrete reality, I will link my frequent engagement with evangelical attitudes toward truth with respect to a very real, even if fictional, evangelical who embodies both the nobler characteristics and attendant weaknesses of the tradition. His name is Ted, and he is a forty-something evangelical who lives somewhere in the Bible Belt, USA. Ted converted to Christ while attending a university twenty years ago; he is married, has two children in college, and owns his own sporting goods shop. Ted regularly takes the family out to Dairy Queen after Tuesday night Bible study, ushers twice a month, and is a genuinely nice guy. He also reads widely, especially in areas like apologetics and evangelism. While he loves his work, he views his primary calling as that of an evangelist, though his style is typified more by soft conversations that lead into matters of eternal significance than by in-your-face questions like “Do you know where you’d go if you died tonight?” Ted may love sports, his country, and his family, but he’ll tell you that he loves the truth most of all. All this is important because, far from being a caricature of our weakest link, Ted is a thoughtful, educated, and amiable Christian. Indeed, he is just the kind of individual most pastors would love to recruit as a deacon or adult Sunday school teacher (Ted is both). So, to the extent that Ted comes up short in the rigorous pursuit of truth, it is a reflection on, and indictment of, the wider evangelical community. With this in mind we will often return to consider Ted’s opinions at various points in the book. But before we get started, I will take a few moments to provide a brief overview of the road ahead.

Getting Serious about Truth

Our inquiry into truth shall unfold in two parts. In chapters two through six we will seek to identify core assumptions and practices that tend to inhibit our pursuit of the truth, as well as those that aid us in realizing the pursuit of truth. This will provide the foundation for the series of four dialogues that we will undertake in chapters seven through ten.

The discussion shall commence in chapter two, “Truth Is Who You Are,” where we will begin by considering the concept of truth as a quality that applies not only to statements but also to persons. Sadly, evangelicals have often had the wrong idea about what a character formed by truth looks like. For instance, they have often located the truthful character in the voice that speaks with the greatest passion, conviction, and simplicity or clarity of vision. But if we have passion, conviction, and simplicity without the subtler virtues to be examined in chapters three through six, our advocacy for truth could be subverted even with the best of intentions. And this would leave us perilously close to Sol’s dogged defense of his beliefs.

It can be unsettling to admit that our grasp of truth is always a work in progress. Especially disconcerting is the notion that part of the commitment to pursuing truth is the willingness to rethink...