Front Cover
I’m reading a book a friend loaned me entitled, “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind”, by Mark A. Noll. It is a very interesting read, and I’ll have to apologize to my friend upfront – it has taken me far too long to read this!
I’m approximately two-thirds of the way through and have just just finished a couple of chapters of note: the first, “The Intellectual Disaster of Fundamentalism”; the second, “Political Reflection” (en-light of the previous chapter).
Let me say this: this author is about 1.5 notches above me when it comes to being smart and, even more critical, when it comes to articulating his points. So, I’m not even going to pretend to reconstruct any of his arguments and just say that he has hit-the-nail-on-the-head with the frustrations that I’ve felt toward the church. I find it interesting that he points the blame not only at fundamentalist, but at pre-millennial dispensationalists in particular (the dogma, the theology I was taught). And why not, so many of our politicians have acted in ways according to such teachings, to such apparent biblical prophesies that have been ‘foretold’ to occur in our lifetime (I have ALWAYS been skeptical, let me say this) – and when have they ever been right?
I digress. At the end of the chapter “Political Reflection” he says,
“Both prophetic speculation and conspiracy thinking depend preeminently on the mind of the observer for their understanding of the world. Prophecy buffs apply a grid from Scripture to their understanding of the world; conspiracy theorists bring a similar grid from what they know to be true in general to what they are experiencing about the world. Neither takes seriously the information presented from the world itself. Both have much more confidence in their minds than in the evidence of their sense. This situation, however, reverses the scale of confidence communicated by Scripture, where we are taught, first, to respect God and what he has done (including his creation of the world, his guidance of all human affairs, and his preservation of the human ability to learn something about the world) and, second, to mistrust our own deceiving hearts.”
I would go a bit further and say that not only does this apply to ‘prophetic speculation’ and ‘conspiracy thinking’, but also those who wrote the Bible in the first place, and to those who taught this author, Mark A. Noll, about the ‘scale of confidence communicated by Scripture’. The words of the Bible were written by men who claim their understanding of god is the accurate understanding. Furthermore, these writings originated as oral stories passed down from generation to generation. They were finally carefully written, and later copied by men, translated by men into languages foreign to the source language. In these words the faith of so many is placed. In these words the understanding of god is for so many found. Those speculating about prophesies and conspiracies have always gotten it wrong – they used the same text, the Bible. Who is to say that others do not fall into the same erroneous thinking about god when using the exact same text, the Bible? The difference is, unlike time and events, god apparently has chosen to not reveal himself and therefore the true standard of who god is remains veiled.
I grow more and more confident that I know less and less about god. Do not misunderstand me, less and less is a good thing.