Which isn't to say it's right. Let me amend that: Phenomenologically, he's probably right about the appeal of religion to the majority of believers.
One gets the impression he has yet to speak to someone who has made an intelligent case for the historical claims of the faith. It would likely change his view to read N. T. Wright's excellent essay "Can a Scientist Believe in the Resurrection?"
This should be our mission: To model a belief in which faith is based on evidence, and which provides a coherent framework for understanding the body of evidence around us (to adapt a phrase from Deb Haarsma). A faith in which hypotheses are not, as Crane puts it,
...ad hoc, ...arbitrary, [and] ...rarely make predictions and when they do they almost never come true.We need to model and speak of a faith which does a *better* job of explaining the universe than atheism.
If we fail, we are consigned forever to hear this appalling conclusion: "The religious attitude... does not seek to minimize mystery. Mysteries are accepted as a consequence of what, for the religious, makes the world meaningful."
Paul uses the Greek mysterion to mean something now revealed. Christianity distinguished itself from the mystery religions of its day by eschewing secret knowledge. The Father of Jesus is not the inscrutable God of Islam--He reveals himself in his Son by design, and wants all to know Him and his truth.
The Christian knows there are times when one must simply trust. But the goal of our faith is not eternally blind, ignorant trust, but complete knowledge of the Father (cf. Jn 14, and in fact the theme of knowledge, light and darkness running through Jn).
I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. (Jn 15:15)
In our culture, ironically, this is the secret knowledge--that ours is a faith of reason and truth, not mystery. This is the gospel we must spread: that our belief in Jesus as Lord isn't our accepting or even embracing mystery in order to enjoy what Crane calls the "meaning or significance in things,... the mystery of God’s presence." We are Christians first and foremost because we believe the Gospel is true.
Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.C. S. Lewis
4 comments:
I can't believe how long it took me to see this!
And yet, I have learned to live with a certain amount of mystery about my Christianity, about certain points of doctrine which are just not crystal clear, and won't be this side of the grave. And my apologies to Lewis, but I find great consolation in the fact that even though I don't understand everything, the One who matters does, and some day He will indeed make it all clear.
Just typed in a long response and then the computer ate it. Arg. So everyone wins--my response will be shorter, and the computer gets fed.
I agree with what you say, which leads me to believe I have expressed myself unclearly.
Your have learned to live with more mystery the more you have grown and matured. And so, in a sense, your growth and experience represent data, or evidence, supporting God's (and Scripture's) trustworthiness. Your willingness to tolerate mystery is a mark of your being convinced, by walking with God, that he is trustworthy. This is admirable in a mature believer. It wouldn't be admirable in a new convert. If a new convert trusted all without the basis of years of learning and experience, we might wonder why--and whether the same person would be just as willing to trust the words of the Buddha, of Mohammed.
I think Lewis, btw, wasn't so much saying religion doesn't ever offer consolations, but was trying to dismiss the idea that Christianity is all about warm feelings, and not about sacrifice, not about the truth.
To the meat of your comment and the post: Crane is saying that Christians tolerate a worldview which explains little to nothing--what he refers to as tolerating mystery--because what we really value is the sense of meaning we get.
It makes me imagine astronomers discovering that a large asteroid is going to just barely hit the earth. Let's say in their alarm they go back, carefully observe its trajectory and discover it will miss the earth. Phew. Disaster won't occur.
Of course, they have error bars on their observations. If they are small, then we would all think their conclusions reasonable. If they were larger, large enough that it's no longer sure we will survive, we wouldn't laud them for trusting in our survival anyway. And in the limit the error bars are quite large and they can't say at all we are safe, we would think them crackpots for saying they still trust that it will be okay.
This is analogous to Christians. We claim the world is destined for judgment. We also claim we are safe. If we claim this on the basis of little or no evidence, should we be proud? Yet in the world's eyes the strongest believer is he or she who trusts in salvation even with less evidence.
The astronomer's observations carry uncertainty. He or she knows this, and is always seeking to minimize the uncertainty. Uncertainty is a fact of science, like death and taxes. A good scientist neither embraces uncertainty nor ignores it, but rather lives with it and uses it to guide him or her to better experiments and deeper understanding. The scientist who refuses to do experiments for fear of error bars learns nothing. A balance is struck and the best scientist moves forward, pushing the limits but not credulously believing results where the uncertainties are too large.
The believer must endure mystery. At times he or she values it as a way to stretch, and not live too conservative a life with God. The more he or she walks with God, the more evidence--in the form of experience and understanding of Scripture--he or she accumulates, and the more he or she is able to step out further and learn more. Is mystery bad? It has its pluses. But the world's characterization of the true believer as opening his or her arms wide and believing despite vast uncertainty... there are believers like this. But they aren't to be imitated and more than Pons & Fleishman, who claimed success with cold fusion.
Having said this, I will admit that many or most of the responses I've gotten have been in support of mystery. Maybe I am in the minority. What do you think? After all, "blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe."
Who knew you can't edit a comment?
Didn't mean to say that because I agree with what you said I must have been unclear! But I do think I was unclear.
Also: I didn't mean to say the astronomers initially discover an asteroid which will just barely hit the earth. Scratch the "just barely." What an odd idea.
Sorry too for the multiple comments! For some reasons blogger.com rejected my comments as too long until I broke them up, and then retroactively accepted the whole huge comment! Took a while to delete the redundant ones, since sometimes blogger.com doesn't offer you that as an option.
It's anybody's guess whether I'll be able to post this comment!
Yes, all that. And I have to admit that while I have learned to live with more mystery, it kinda drives me nuts. I want to KNOW, dagnabbit!
It really is unreasonable that y ou can't edit your own comments, but just this once technology really imitates life, eh?
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