After speaking with an astrophysicist Saturday afternoon concerning string theory, what already seemed an inevitability, turned into a certainty: I shall never grow into a proficient theoretical scientist; I shall never so much as graduate to the level a shoddy theoretical scientist. The tragedy of being human is to have only one life, one brain, and a disproportionate amount of curiosity.
Alas, I am forced to construct a hierarchy of interests by the use of a little formula: Life span + Brain Capacity + Taste = psychology, religion, and philosophy. If by now you have yet to conclude that these are my primary interests, then either you’re a lousy listener and I need new friends, or I’m a bad communicator and you need new friends.
Yet despite of my frustrations, I found, to my pleasant surprise, that the astrophysicist is a Christian. And the meeting reminded me of what I think contemporary apologetics ought to look like.
If I may be permitted to repeat the platitudes of a basketball coach: sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Apologetics, I think, can no longer take a defensive form and hope to be effective. It often goes unrealized that there is a psychology to apologetics, not merely a discursive philosophy. The Modern, defensive methodology succeeded because, being the children of the Enlightenment, Western man impulsively sought for a certainty principle via which he could feel comfortable with what he knew. When apologetics defended Christianity’s first principles, it likewise appealed to the Modern comfort seeking psychology—hence the popularity of Lewis, Chesterton, Craig, etc.
I am afraid this won’t work for much longer. We are no longer Modern, and the number of people harboring this mentality dwindles with each funeral. Our generation is a stranger and more adventurous breed. We prefer novelty and eclecticism. We are diverse and autonomous. We have known the world through our laptop computers, and no longer believe in certainty nor comfort. Our psychology will be sated by nothing less than everything. Thus, or so i think, Christianity must be everywhere.
So if ever there were a time to take “and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it” seriously, now is the time. Defense apologetics now tends to have the opposite effect of making us uncomfortable. For to constantly defend is to constantly undergo attacks. It makes one wonder whether what he believes is true. The world is too big now; there are too many possibilites. One man cannot defend against Freud, Nietzsche, Russell, Sagan, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, culture etc. etc. (the list is as grand as the world), for the simple reason that he is one man.
The idea now, I think, is to appeal to the new sentiments. We must Christianize secular interests, infiltrate and manipulate; turn Freud's truth into Christian truth, take Nietzsche's wisdom and mold it. After all, whatever the sciences find, whatever philosophy articulates are little else besides instantiations of God's creation and God's truth. We must "be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.” To use Eliade's terms, we need to reintroduce the sacred into the profane.
This is why I liked my astrophysicist: here we have a Christian advancing the gospel one ridiculously complex quantum proposition at a time. We must take science and philosophy, life and culture, and resituate them under the auspices of Christ. And we can only do this by altering our reactive defenses into proactive attacks. We must no longer merely say that Christianity is right, but that the world is wrong.
2 comments:
This is good stuff. Could you expound upon your last sentence?
Sam my man,
I think i mean that merely regurgitating Christian propositions--as reactions to whatever kinds of attack-- works only to a certain degree. I think especially that it'll be less effective for our generation; i might even dub it deleterious on the psychological plain.
What attacking does, what saying 'no, you're wrong' does, is remove even the psychological door through which to FEEL under attack. One is too busy stabbing and jolting, mocking and muddling to FEEL that he his belief is in trouble.
Of course, i'm using vague metaphors to describe complex diachronic (and usually subconscious) psychological activity. But it fits with my view of a healthy psychology. Christians aren't supposed to feel under attack. We're supposed to be too excited about the truth of the gospel to notice that it might be wrong.
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