UNenlightenment is the undoing of our Enlightenment presuppositions, which in my opinion, prevent us from understanding the Gospel and thus living properly in the world. Nearly everything within our Christian experience has been influenced by the Enlightenment – from the way we do church, to the theology we teach our pastors and the behaviors of Christians in the culture at large. UNenlightenment is the process of undoing our bad habits, re-understanding scripture and faith, and using that information to live anew the Gospel in front of the world.
One such principle necessary for us to unlearn has to do with our dependence upon objectivity and our addiction to the certainty that it seemingly provides. This is not a total annihilation of objectivity, but a reframing of its exclusive relationship to truth.
The reason I chose this particular principle to discuss is that so many Christians believe that the truth of Christianity has to be objective and absolute, in order for it to be true. This is a fallacious way of thinking that is so ingrained in our churches that this belief is axiomatic to many.
When confronted with the logic of this proposition we have to ask the question, “How do we prove a metaphysical reality through an exclusively physical system?”
Our Addiction to Certainty
When I was in college, I really got into the whole apologetics scene. I found it energizing to engage in rational debate with those who disagreed with my worldview. I loved listening to debates and memorizing good arguments that I could later use as ammunition in my own conversations.
This version of Christianity fed my desire to have an “objective” faith. That is, a faith that could be proven instead of assumed to be true. If God was “provable” in some objective way, then I could convince skeptics that God existed.
However, this version of Christianity is not about sharing the Gospel, or even proving God. In fact, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with God, but is more a reflection of one’s own need to be “right”. Soren Kierkegaard said it nicely in his journals:
“…And what would it profit me if I discovered a so-called objective truth; if I worked my way through the systems of the philosophers and was able to parade them forth on demand; if I was able to demonstrate the inconsistencies within each individual circle…-what would it profit me and for my life?… What would it profit me if the truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I acknowledged it or not, calling forth an anguished shudder rather than confident submission? I will certainly not deny that I still believe in the validity of an imperative of knowledge that has an influence upon men, but it nonetheless must become a living part of me, and this is what I now understand to be the heart of the matter. IT is for this my soul thirsts, as the deserts of Africa thirst for water.”
Was I trying to convince others of God’s reality or myself? I quickly learned that being able to memorize and recite an argument on command does not “deepen” one’s faith. Instead, it feeds one’s addiction to certainty. Moreover, what fuels our addiction to certainty is our need for absolutes and the security we feel with them. Unfortunately, I think this is largely due to our inability to understand what it means for God to be “absolute truth”. Or perhaps it has something to do with our arrogance to think we can apprehend such a truth completely.
The Incarnation was a demonstration that truth cannot be located solely in the axioms of doctrine but it required the overall “speech-act” of Jesus to be fully realized. That is, truth is to be demonstrated; it is to be acted upon before it can have a life of its own. Just as Jesus demonstrated the kingdom to us, so are we to demonstrate it to others. This demonstration is relative to the creative acts of the individual who lives out the message of Jesus’s love on the world stage. This demonstration by the individual is performed as one who stands subjectively before the truth they proclaim and the people they proclaim that truth too.
At some point, I realized my ability to craft a clever argument really had nothing to do with the truth about God. I had bought into this idea that things like proof, truth, and fact existed only in the “objective sense”. But, why did I think this way? What “proof” was there that this way of thinking was true to begin with? It was not long before I realized the whole idea of objectivity as a system collapses when we believe that it is the only means of true knowledge. (Perhaps the most significant reason for this is that objectivity cannot hold up under the weight of its own scrutiny. In other words, objectivity fails to be objective.)
Throughout my time within various evangelical churches, colleges, and seminaries ideas like subjectivity and relativism were looked down upon as intellectual hokum. Anyone who would consider such philosophies within their Christian walk was either labeled “liberal” or not considered “evangelical” – and…where I came from, if you’re not evangelical, then you’re not “Christian”.
However, even more, troublesome to me, was that my experience of the Christian faith did not correspond with what I heard people say about it. My faith has always been a subjective experience. For example, I speak to God through prayer; I interpret how He responds to me; I interpret what the Bible says and what it means; and I (as everyone does), experience something unique when I worship, etc.
Not only did my faith seem almost completely subjective, but it appeared to me as though the Church also practiced this (despite the fact that they claim they don’t believe in it.) Perhaps Evangelicalism is largely in denial about this, but the facts seem to corroborate the conclusion.
In fact, don’t we laud creative preachers who have interesting interpretations? Don’t we seek them out in droves? If a preacher always preached the same message wouldn’t we get bored? Wouldn’t we seek out a new preacher that was “fresh and exciting”?
If Christianity is supposed to be objective, then why do we define faith as “having assurance in that which is unseen”? (Hebrews 11:1) By this definition, faith is very much subjective.
So, I return to the question, “Why does Christianity have to be objective to be true?” Simply stated: it doesn’t! Neither “proving God’s existence”, nor “justifying the miraculous” make God any more “real”. In fact, it could be argued, an individual’s subjective experience of God is more real than what anyone can posit about Him objectively.
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