A while ago, author and internet celebrity John Green made a video about religion. The video was very respectful and it reflected great care and thought. However, as a Christian, I felt that John had really missed the point of the whole issue. The part at which this became most apparent to me was when he compared religion to a voice shouting at a person that their house was burning. His point was that it doesn't really matter whether the voice came from God or a fireman so much as it matters that the person get out of danger, and he ended the video by saying that he felt discussions about God were not as important as the issue of trying to find purpose in life. As far as I could tell, the basic disagreements between myself and John were centered around two points, namely the nature of purpose and the nature of God.
First off, the issue of purpose has been a major question in my life and when I became a Christian, the answer I found in that doctrine became one of the foundations of my faith. Until that point I had found every answer wanting: science, while being highly admired in our culture, simply didn't seem to cut it; happiness was no good because it wound up saying that we were our own reason for existence and if that were the case then it wouldn't make any sense for us to keep looking for something outside ourselves; and being good to people and helping one another failed because when serve one another we do it out of love, but love involves desiring the loved one's happiness and so that led right back to the failed answer of happiness. But I am getting ahead of myself.
The important issue is the nature of purpose. The chief of these characteristics are goodness, transcendence, and timelessness. Goodness is an obvious characteristic and does not need to be discussed the other two are worth a moment of explanation. The transcendent nature of purpose means that it is above us in some metaphysical sense and is of greater value than us. A man may dedicate himself to the cause of an injured animal, but he must do it in obedience to moral law and not in obedience to the animal. In the same way, whatever we derive our purpose (if we have it at all) from must have natural authority over us and the right to demand our obedience. The timeless nature of purpose means that purpose does not perish; when a person on the verge of death is trying to find meaning, they are trying to find something that will not simply outlast them but something that is entirely outside of mortality, outside the power of death.
Next there is the nature of God. In John Green's view, God seems to be simply a human who happens to be all-knowing and all-powerful and always does the right thing. This view is really not that different from pagan mythology except that instead of many gods there is only one, and I assure you that paganism did not perish simply because its mathematics were unappealing. All three of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) agree that God is good not simply because of what He does, but because of who He is. To really understand this idea, the best place to turn is to Plato.
Plato's philosophy was founded on the simple principle that we cannot have knowledge of things that do not exist (even with stories and myths we find that every individual component of the tale is rooted in reality) and that things like the laws of logic, beauty, and goodness must be as objectively real as the ground we walk on. Really, this is not that big a claim, but it is one that our Naturalist conditioning is quick to reject. What Plato ultimately concluded from this premise was that when we say that something is good, it is such because it reflects some ultimate reality called Goodness Itself. After all, if a morning is beautiful, that morning is better because of the beauty and as such it is nonsense to say that the beauty arises from the morning since the morning is clearly the inferior of the two. Or, to give another example, when someone like Martin Luther King does something good, his goodness comes from his obedience rather than from his own inner nature; his own goodness comes from the fact that he tries to make his choices according to a higher standard which is outside of himself. While it is not good to accept all of Plato's ideas, the concept of God's identity being that of Goodness Himself is not in any way at odds with the Bible. In fact, scripture actually provides a lot of support for this idea as it holds that all good things come from God, that our own abilities and goodness are derived from Him, and that "God is love."
Now that we understand the nature of purpose and the Christian understanding of God, we are able to see how John Green's statement misses the point. First off, the claim that we are trying to create meaning in this life may not be wrong, but if it is true then it is also true that we are engaged in a futile venture. Purpose is above us and therefore cannot come from us. Second, there is the idea that God and purpose are two separate issues. If either of these two exist, then that cannot be the case. God is the only possible reason for existence that makes any sense (look back at what I said earlier about my own search for meaning and see if you can come up with another workable option) because in order for there to be any meaning there must first be something which is good in and of itself simply for what it is, just as in logic there must be a premise which cannot be explained because it is itself an ultimate explainer.
In short, the voice in the fire does not simply tell us to escape. The voice in the fire is the escape.
No comments:
Post a Comment