Beginnings

I have been considering starting a blog for my spiritual musings and quandaries for a while now. Today I happened on a fantastic and encouraging community of progressive Adventist blogs, like those at Re-inventing the Adventist Wheel, Intersections and ProgressiveAdventism, that encouraged and inspired me to finally just do it. I hope to join that community with this blog, and hopefully make a worthwhile contribution. I am hoping that as I chronicle my journey I may also be helped by others along the way.

My agenda is to articulate my struggles to find the roots of faith. The pretentious way of putting it is to say that I am concerned with spiritual epistemology – how do we know what we know, how should we know, and how can those ways of knowing be justified as leading to a knowledge of the true?

I am a fledgling academic (PhD student currently), and as such I have become accustomed to approaching things critically. I have for quite a while lamented the fact that there is not much within traditional Adventism that is geared for intellectuals, and many things that cannot withstand critical scrutiny. Case in point: what academic will not be turned off by a Bible study guide that asks her to fill in the blanks after reading a Bible verse?! And when traditionalists cling to a standard liturgy on Saturday morning (because that is what has always been done, and what has always been done must be right), how can we claim that our belief system is more than just a cultural construct? In trying to think of ways that a (Adventist) Christian worldview might be defended to intellectuals, I have realized that the first thing to establish is the foundation and frame of how knowledge is acquired and what type of knowledge is considered to be valid. Hence my questions about epistemology.

In the spirit of reflexivity and to make this more concrete: How did I come to the belief that I am saved by faith in Jesus Christ, and that he will come one day to take all who believe in him to heaven? I was raised an Adventist, so the obvious answer is that I believe it because that is what I have been taught by the authority figures in my life (i.e., my parents). This only supports the ‘Christianity-as-a-cultural-construct’ argument. The other obvious answer is that I believe because the Bible says so. Now I do believe that the Bible is God’s word, and that there are many strong arguments for its validity (internal, historical, prophetic, etc.). And yet the Bible is another collection of things that other people have said – records of their encounters with God. So in a way it still comes down to what other people have told me. What differentiates these people’s accounts from accounts of interaction with, say, the Abominable Snowman, or sightings of the Loch Ness Monster? Also, I can’t say that I could rattle off all the reasons the Bible is valid, and these are reasons that I have heard from those who come from the same belief system I do; there are other experts who would disagree with them. Since I am not an expert in most of the issues I just kind of go with the side I have been taught.

Another angle to take is to say I believe because I have experienced a saving relationship with Christ in my own life. Changed lives are certainly one of the best witnesses for the power of God, but also one of the biggest vulnerabilities when Christians do not seem at all like Christ. And people can say that their lives have been changed by many things – perhaps they have become better at managing their stress by doing yoga, or made positive life changes for the sake of the baby they just had.

Another way of knowing could be by direct divine revelation. But how can divine revelation be validly distinguished from the tricks of one’s own mind, or a substance-induced altered state?

I believe (and here I go again with my beliefs!) that there are ways God makes himself known to us, and that these ways can be identified and justified. I have some initial thoughts and intuitions, but I don’t think I am at the point where I can defend my views well. That is why I am trying to sort things out here.

I should also say at the outset that I do not consider myself to be a great intellectual; half the time I feel like an idiot, and the other half I feel like a fool. My only hope is that I can be God’s fool.

The title of this blog comes from 1 Corinthians 13:12:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Finally, I am encouraged by Christ’s words recorded in John 8:32:

And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

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~ by HW on July 13, 2008.