And today is Sabbath. And I’m not sick. And the sun is already so hot outside that everything’s all bleached and wobbly-looking, as if the whole world was just an overexposed home movie God was showing Jesus up on their living room wall. And whenever it’s really hot Elder Babcock’s sermon — even if it starts out being abut some nice quiet thing like the poor or meek or weak — will sooner or later twist like a snake with its head run over to the unquiet subject of heaven and hell, and who all is going to which, and how long you’ll have to stay, and what all will happen to you when you get there, and he goes on so loud and long and the air gets so used up and awful that bit by bit you lose track of any difference between his heaven and his hell and would gladly pick either over church. Then the sermon ends, and the long prayer after it, and it comes time to belt out the big hosanna that means it’s almost time to go home. Except that last hymn always has about fourteen verses. And when you stand up to sing it you discover your blood has got stuck down in your feet. And all through the sermon every grownup in the place has had their mouth clamped shut trying not to yawn, so when the glad voices suddenly upraised this tidal wave of pent-up halitosis comes swashing out of them and up your nose and all through the parts of your head where the blood that’s in you feet should have been, till your brain feels like it’s going to barf.
Moreover, a dialogical posture is one that listens as well as shares. Faith in God is open to truth wherever it is encountered; it takes both the questions raised and the answers given by unbelievers extremely seriously. To put all this another way, authentic Christian faith, as I
understand it, has nothing to fear from interchange with those of differing points of view. One must have confidence that God’s truth will vindicate itself to those who seek it sincerely; it does not need to be defended. A faith based in fear is like a faith without works; it is not faith at all.
As I understand it, a dialogical posture is one that takes the matters of religious reality and truth so seriously as to require extreme openness to and growth toward them, as well as radical sincerity and commitment to them. Thus, all sides and aspects of an issue must be
explored with humble thoroughness, and whatever is deemed worthy of commitment must be incorporated into one’s life with integrity.
Go
I can promise you none of these things. No atmosphere of inquiry, for I
will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you
shall see the face of God. "Ah, but we must all interpret those
beautiful words in our own way! For me there is no such thing as a
final answer. The free wind of inquiry must always continue to blow
through the mind, must it not? Prove all things, to travel hopeful is
better than to arrive." If that were true, and known to be true, how
could anyone travel hopefully? There would be nothing to hope for. "But
you must feel yourself that there is something stifling about the idea
of finality? Stagnation, my dear boy, what is more soul-destroying than
stagnation?" You think that, because hitherto you have experienced
truth only with the abstract intellect. I will bring you where you can
taste it like honey and be embraced by it as by a bridegroom. Your
thirst shall be quenched.
Go
We begin from the idea that there is some way the world is, and this, I
believe, is an idea to which there is no intelligible alternative and
which cannot be subordinated to or derived from anything else... [E]ven
a subjectivist cannot escape from or rise above this idea. Even
if he wishes to offer an analysis of it in subjective or
community-relative terms, his proposal has to be understood as an
account of how the world is and therefore as inconsistent with
alternative accounts, with which it can be compared for plausibility.
Reason, if there is such a thing, can serve as a court of appeal not only against the received opinions and habits of our community but also against the peculiarities of our personal perspective. It is something each individual can find with himself, but at the same time it has universal authority. Reason provides, mysteriously, a way of distancing oneself from common opinion and received practices that is not a mere elevation of individuality… not a determination to express one’s idiosyncratic self rather than go along with everyone else. Whoever appeals to reason purports to discover a source of authority within himself that is not merely personal or societal, but universal… and that should also persuade others who are willing to listen to it.
When I first began to draw near to belief in God and for some time after it had been given to me, I found a stumbling block in the demand so clamorously made by all religious people that we should “praise” God; still more in the suggestion that God himself demanded it. We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence or delightfulness; we despise still more the man who crowd of people round ever dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that demand. Thus a picture, at once ludicrous and horrible, both of God and of His worshippers, threatened to appear in my mind. It was hideously like saying, “What I most want is to be told that I am good and great”. Worst of all was the suggestion of the very silliest Pagan bargaining, that of the savage who makes offerings to his idol when the fishing is good and beats it when he has caught nothing. More than once the psalmists seemed to be saying, “You like praise. Do this for me, and you shall have some.”
Go
We believe the proposition we are ready to act upon. Full belief is
willingness to act upon the proposition in vital crises, opinion is
willingness to act upon it in relatively insignificant affairs. But
pure science has nothing at all to do with action. The propositions it
accepts, it merely writes in the list of premises it proposes to use...
Belief is the willingness to risk a great deal upon a proposition. But
this belief is no concern of science, which has nothing at stake on any
temporal venture, but in pursuit of eternal verities, not semblance to
truth, and looks upon this pursuit, not as the work of one man's
life, but as that of generation after generation indefinitely... The
only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe
has to teach it. In Induction it simply surrenders itself to the force
of facts. But it finds that this is not enough. It is driven in
desperation to call upon it inward sympathy with nature... and nature
is something great, and beautiful, and sacred, and eternal and real,
the object of its worship and its aspiration.
True, we are less courageous, less honest with ourselves, less self-disciplined, cruel, intolerant, snobbish, and inhumane than they were. They were better at the hard virtues; we are better at the soft virtues. The balance is fairly even, I think… When we act morally, we are better than our philosophy. Our ancestors were worse than theirs.