On the Certainty of Gravity
Even while I was writing Tabula Spurca, I quickly realized something pretty important was going wrong. I mean, one doesn't reject all possibility of gaining knowledge about reality with ease, especially when one has been obsessively occupied by this business for the near entirety of their life. I have learned, though, that great big emotional breakdowns are normally not the most functional path in regaining one's footing... Existential crisis comes much too frequently, and then it goes, and life must simply go on in the meantime. So instead of freaking out because I had just reasoned my way into believing my entire life was meaningless, I posted the link to Tabula Spurca on Facebook with an invitation for discussion. Some discussion came, and I generated still more of it, until last night I think finally I ran the pathetic little heart of this issue to death.
What I could not recognize in the first paragraph of endless "not-so-rhetorical" questions, as one friend put it, is that there is a difference between being incomplete and incorrect. This little flaw in my way of thinking dates back nearly a year, all the way to The Platonic Cannon. It's a hard one to let go of, because it makes so much sense. When things are very complicated and we use a simplified label to understand it with, we do sometimes get confused about the nature of the object we're describing it with. But the thing is, language works differently in regard to these matters than I originally thought: it does not inhibit thought, but thought inhibits it. When ideas expand, words expand to meet the ideas. The language is not stagnant enough to keep thoughts from growing beyond them. The fact that our language can only contain our thoughts and nothing more is indicative of the greatest possible volume our thoughts can currently fill, not of some limit we must be contained in. I have no reason to worry that my understanding be affected by the simplicity of language, because my understanding is so pathetically small that there is no reason to worry that my thoughts might even hit the outer rim: and if they happen to, they will simply burn more room to dwell in. If language has served as a box in which to keep God, then it's only an indication that my understanding is not yet bigger than the language; not vice versa.
But there were more issues contained in that first paragraph than regular dispair in regard to the folly of language. One, that we might not know something is sin if we are raised into believing it is not so. Well, Romans clearly speaks against that, in 1:20 and in 2:14-15. Something different happens when people have not been brought up in Christian mindspaces; I cannot say what, but it is that I cannot with good reason.
It is also not a sin to understand the world partially through things like Disney. Everything is a process of faith and discovery, everything: Science, Math, Language, History, kids' movies. Just because something like Disney was part of the formative process of a child does not mean that their view of God has been irreparably corrupted: once flaws are discovered, they may be corrected if they stand in opposition to the way God truly is. But this begs the question, How deeply can these false ideas be rooted and still be pulled up without remnants being kept underground? Is it possible to rid oneself of all the unfounded misconceptions we have been brought up with? And the answer is, No. These unfounded misconceptions are merely simplified versions of the world that appealed to a six-year-old child and continued to make sense to the adolescent. It is not incorrect, though it may be incomplete. It is the same with the entirety of Jesus' understanding: he did not see the world completely. This is the enormity of the sacrifice that God made for mankind. For all we know, he might have heard fairy tales as a child and seen the world partially through their characters and morals. Is God's story ruined by fairy tales? Hardly.
I fall back continually to the only statement I can make comfortably in regard to salvation: I know that Jesus saves, but many people that have not known Jesus have also known God. Does the latter part say anything about salvation directly? No. But I do not believe it right to live in pursuit of salvation; instead, in pursuit of God.
There is something transcendent about the pursuit of metaphysics that is identical to the pursuit of hard science: there is a Truth out there, and no one would be stupid enough to think they understand the whole of it, but there are pieces which are ascertainable. Only the downright foolish would think to say, "Yes, I know everything there is to know about Math and Science." Why do people act as if they know everything there is to know about God? It is unnecessary to know everything about Math or Science to know little bits of it certainly (even though many mistakes are made while learning), and it is equally unnecessary to know everything about God to know "the Gospel." That he is, that he was in some way present as Jesus, that he was killed injustly, that by some strange, incomprehensible process, he came alive again, that he is still alive, albeit in some form we don't understand, and that God did all of this because he loved us enough to die so that we can live instead.
With this, I've arrived at the second paragraph of tangled not-so-rhetorical questions.
Having faith in God, in that story I have just related, is the same type of faith I have in gravity when I jump over a little hill on my snowboard. I am royally screwed if gravity doesn't carry out its end of the bargain, but then, it always seems to. I don't have to become ashamed of my moral iniquity if I happen to leave the snow slightly off-balance and land on my face; I was trying, we all fall. The sting I feel on my face is an indicator that gravity has not given up on me, not that it is angry that I left the ground sideways. Gravity is angry? That's pretty ridiculous. We might feel like it's angry with us if on our second run we try going off double black diamonds and wipe out every few seconds or break an arm, but it remains a ridiculous concept. Though falling on the slopes might come with time to be labeled "gravity's wrath," that doesn't mean it's the same wrath we might call a sin. The pursuit of God, of truth, of reality, is like making your way down the mountain: testing out the little lumps and mole hills to see how you interact with gravity is not the same as sitting down in the middle of the run and asking gravity to make a tree fall over so you'll be sure the forces of nature will still work when you get up and keep going. The tree might fall, and you might be incredibly moved by the idea that gravity still works, but it's not as if it would've vanished if you hadn't wasted your time and risked the safety of fellow skiers' faces by sitting in the middle of the run.
There is no point in delving into the woods to find the most comfortable little spot under a branch to freeze and die. We've got to keep moving to stay alive. I'm not going to pretend that I know exactly how the snow interacts with my board when I move over it, or how all the different angles of contact work when I leave the earth, but that doesn't mean I should quit boarding altogether, that doesn't mean I don't know that I'll eventually touch back down. Don't compare yourself with other people, you don't necessarily know that the ones wiping out on Green runs are the ones that misunderstand gravity. Often, the ones jumping off cliffs are genuinely the ones testing their luck.
What I could not recognize in the first paragraph of endless "not-so-rhetorical" questions, as one friend put it, is that there is a difference between being incomplete and incorrect. This little flaw in my way of thinking dates back nearly a year, all the way to The Platonic Cannon. It's a hard one to let go of, because it makes so much sense. When things are very complicated and we use a simplified label to understand it with, we do sometimes get confused about the nature of the object we're describing it with. But the thing is, language works differently in regard to these matters than I originally thought: it does not inhibit thought, but thought inhibits it. When ideas expand, words expand to meet the ideas. The language is not stagnant enough to keep thoughts from growing beyond them. The fact that our language can only contain our thoughts and nothing more is indicative of the greatest possible volume our thoughts can currently fill, not of some limit we must be contained in. I have no reason to worry that my understanding be affected by the simplicity of language, because my understanding is so pathetically small that there is no reason to worry that my thoughts might even hit the outer rim: and if they happen to, they will simply burn more room to dwell in. If language has served as a box in which to keep God, then it's only an indication that my understanding is not yet bigger than the language; not vice versa.
But there were more issues contained in that first paragraph than regular dispair in regard to the folly of language. One, that we might not know something is sin if we are raised into believing it is not so. Well, Romans clearly speaks against that, in 1:20 and in 2:14-15. Something different happens when people have not been brought up in Christian mindspaces; I cannot say what, but it is that I cannot with good reason.
It is also not a sin to understand the world partially through things like Disney. Everything is a process of faith and discovery, everything: Science, Math, Language, History, kids' movies. Just because something like Disney was part of the formative process of a child does not mean that their view of God has been irreparably corrupted: once flaws are discovered, they may be corrected if they stand in opposition to the way God truly is. But this begs the question, How deeply can these false ideas be rooted and still be pulled up without remnants being kept underground? Is it possible to rid oneself of all the unfounded misconceptions we have been brought up with? And the answer is, No. These unfounded misconceptions are merely simplified versions of the world that appealed to a six-year-old child and continued to make sense to the adolescent. It is not incorrect, though it may be incomplete. It is the same with the entirety of Jesus' understanding: he did not see the world completely. This is the enormity of the sacrifice that God made for mankind. For all we know, he might have heard fairy tales as a child and seen the world partially through their characters and morals. Is God's story ruined by fairy tales? Hardly.
I fall back continually to the only statement I can make comfortably in regard to salvation: I know that Jesus saves, but many people that have not known Jesus have also known God. Does the latter part say anything about salvation directly? No. But I do not believe it right to live in pursuit of salvation; instead, in pursuit of God.
There is something transcendent about the pursuit of metaphysics that is identical to the pursuit of hard science: there is a Truth out there, and no one would be stupid enough to think they understand the whole of it, but there are pieces which are ascertainable. Only the downright foolish would think to say, "Yes, I know everything there is to know about Math and Science." Why do people act as if they know everything there is to know about God? It is unnecessary to know everything about Math or Science to know little bits of it certainly (even though many mistakes are made while learning), and it is equally unnecessary to know everything about God to know "the Gospel." That he is, that he was in some way present as Jesus, that he was killed injustly, that by some strange, incomprehensible process, he came alive again, that he is still alive, albeit in some form we don't understand, and that God did all of this because he loved us enough to die so that we can live instead.
With this, I've arrived at the second paragraph of tangled not-so-rhetorical questions.
Having faith in God, in that story I have just related, is the same type of faith I have in gravity when I jump over a little hill on my snowboard. I am royally screwed if gravity doesn't carry out its end of the bargain, but then, it always seems to. I don't have to become ashamed of my moral iniquity if I happen to leave the snow slightly off-balance and land on my face; I was trying, we all fall. The sting I feel on my face is an indicator that gravity has not given up on me, not that it is angry that I left the ground sideways. Gravity is angry? That's pretty ridiculous. We might feel like it's angry with us if on our second run we try going off double black diamonds and wipe out every few seconds or break an arm, but it remains a ridiculous concept. Though falling on the slopes might come with time to be labeled "gravity's wrath," that doesn't mean it's the same wrath we might call a sin. The pursuit of God, of truth, of reality, is like making your way down the mountain: testing out the little lumps and mole hills to see how you interact with gravity is not the same as sitting down in the middle of the run and asking gravity to make a tree fall over so you'll be sure the forces of nature will still work when you get up and keep going. The tree might fall, and you might be incredibly moved by the idea that gravity still works, but it's not as if it would've vanished if you hadn't wasted your time and risked the safety of fellow skiers' faces by sitting in the middle of the run.
There is no point in delving into the woods to find the most comfortable little spot under a branch to freeze and die. We've got to keep moving to stay alive. I'm not going to pretend that I know exactly how the snow interacts with my board when I move over it, or how all the different angles of contact work when I leave the earth, but that doesn't mean I should quit boarding altogether, that doesn't mean I don't know that I'll eventually touch back down. Don't compare yourself with other people, you don't necessarily know that the ones wiping out on Green runs are the ones that misunderstand gravity. Often, the ones jumping off cliffs are genuinely the ones testing their luck.
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