Epiphany II: The Platonic Canon

I recently discussed the ideas I was developing in Solids with a friend of mine, sitting in my room late one night, on the phone. For those of you who don't personally know him, I'll let you know that Michael Chang is an interesting guy, and there is a large number of great stories to tell with him as the subject, but I'll include only the one which is directly relevant to the explanation of the inspiration of this particular 'Epiphany': it's a 'story' that's about what he is much more than who.

Although it's impossible to guess so by reading his name, Michael Chang is Korean. He's lived in the States most of his life, as he moved to the Seattle area around second grade. So he doesn't have an accent, and besides the fact that he likes Kimchi, much of the time one wouldn't be able to tell he isn't American. It has a pretty large impact on his worldview, though, which is interesting upon inspection.

One thing I have always admired about Michael is that he is able to appreciate clichés. As his family is full of Atheists (as the majority of Koreans are) and he had little or no exposure to Christianity until about the eighth grade, he had the rare (relative to my own experience) opportunity to experience a deep, genuine realization of Truth when he was first told "Jesus loves you." See, regardless of the truth of this statement, I would have laughed anyone off that tried to tell me something like that in the eighth grade. I suppose I would now, too. It seems a pity, because the statement in and of itself might have been so meaningful.

In the same way that clichés are new to him, just about all rudimentary theological teaching is new to him as well. The ideas and opinions that flow out of him (in large quantity) when discussing theology (and nearly every other subject in existence, at that) are new and often very naïve, but they're honest. He hasn't had Sunday School lessons and felt boards and coloring pages or any sort of church community at all surrounding him his entire life. (Yes, when one attends a Christian school, this is strange.) It is for this reason that what he said on the aforementioned recent night took me by complete surprise: he doesn't often make quite so much sense. Besides, the idea was so much more liberal than anything I had ever heard on the topic, at least from a Bear Creeker, that it would have drawn my attention regardless of the speaker. Kudos to Michael for the content and/or inspiration of the following ideas.

To be honest, the 'epiphany' was no more than a continuation of the half-resolved realization I had come to on the 2nd. I kind of think of it as if the issue were one of those blocks or silly little mushrooms in video games that only goes down halfway the first time Mario jumps on it, but vanishes into the ground on the second, giving Mario a gold coin, or something to that extent. Not sure if I've picked up the gold coin yet, but the mushroom is certainly gone.

The piece of block that was left after last time was the question, What makes the Bible absolute infallible Truth?

Here's the answer: It's not.

It depends on how Truth is defined, I suppose.

truth (trooth)
n. pl. truths (trooz, trooths)
5.
a. Reality; actuality.
b. That which is considered to be the supreme reality and to have the ultimate meaning and value of existence.

The latter is the definition I have always applied to my perception of the Bible, and I believe most everyone I know does as well. The flaw regarding not the fact of this thought, but the rut in which it is thought, is this: that for truth to be Truth, it must be the whole Truth: the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Since no human document or understanding can grasp the entirety of truth, near all truths we as humans think have been contained are simplified, and therefore bound to creating lies.

I say "near all" because there are certain truths which are entirely too simple to misunderstand. For example, the statement "God exists." "To exist" is a very simple concept to grasp; either something IS or ISN'T. No human may ever grasp the way in which he exists, why he exists, why he exists in the way he does, etc, but those are entirely different questions: whether or not he exists can be answered with a single word and there is nothing more to be said or explained. It is not a multifaceted issue. But human language is simple language, independent of which of the many is used, and therefore cannot contain Truth in regard to the expression of those truths which are, indeed, multifaceted. The Bible is written in a simple, human language, and is therefore incapable of expressing Truth even if the writers had, hypothetically, been able to comprehend this Truth.

Beyond the fact that the language is limited, the people writing the Bible were all limited people. Sinful people. This is is evidenced in their writing. I am referring to the state of sin I have previously discussed: the idea that sin is not merely an action but a condition, a state of mind, the flaws and perversions of human thought. The evidence sin nature has on the authors' writing is merely an incapability to express Truth with any objective depth, and in a way that might lead those who read it to misunderstand Truth in the same simplistic way.

It is important to note that I intend to draw a distinction between the terms "flawed" and "containing errors." Anything and everything we think, feel, see, touch, speak, read, etc. is flawed because it is of human authorship and therefore cannot contain, in and of itself, Truth. The way in which anything at all (regarding multifaceted issues) is expressed will be conducive to some simplistic pattern of thought, because that is the way in which it was composed. However, this does not mean it contains errors; it is not that black and white.

I remember that as a four- or five-year-old little girl, my mamma bought me these body books that explained how babies got made. It explained that mommys and daddys share cells and those cells make more cells and grow until they have an entire baby. I remember once asking my mother if I was made because she and my pappa loved each other and wanted to love me, too. Of course, my mother answered Yes. Why? By the technical definition, all of the above is a lie. "Share" is at the very least an oversimplification, as was my understanding of my parents' desire to have a child. The only way the question could technically be answered is Mu, followed by a lengthy explanation. Here the analogy fails already, because my mother could probably have expressed in human words nearly the whole, if not its entirety, of her motivation to have a child, even if no part of the explanation would have been understood by me. The real Truth surpasses all such words. My mother's telling me that I was made because she and my father loved each other and me is the analogous equivalent of the Bible; her hypothetical Mu, the promise that we cannot understand God; the lengthy explanation, the entirety of the course of life, the story each of us lives, the Lovestory I so fondly and frequently reference. I would argue that there is a Truth greater and more relevant and applicable and more true than the Bible, even if nothing in it contains error.

The Bible is no more than the shadow on the wall; Truth is something more Solid.

But why does it even contain a limited, human reflection of Truth? Hasn't this been my question all along?

Because I don't believe that those people writing the Bible were lying. To be lying, they would have to be malicious, insane, or unusually stupid (even on human terms). (This is the same argument used by C.S. Lewis.) Because I believe the apostles to have been relatively regular people in terms of intelligence (or perhaps slightly more intelligent), because their arguments and explanations and orders make more sense than they would if they were insane, because their message is definitively benevolent, and because the compilation of early descriptions of Christ's teaching, reactions to Christ's teaching and his friends'/acquaintances' teaching on subjects in the same vein as Christ's own teaching are both in accordance with the spirit of those documents available to us containing Christ's own teaching and are internally complimentary (despite differing emphasis and personally characteristic methods of simplistic explanation), the Bible, though perhaps it may not be described as "Holy," is certainly worthy of a position of central importance to Christianity and a document well worth reading and respecting in regard to universal Christian doctrine.

How 'bout I end that with a gigantic run on? I like that idea.