East End Ecclesia

Who am I? This is such an important question that too often we can’t answer. As humans we all have a sense that we are lacking something, that we need to find an identity, meaning, value, and purpose. It is ingrained in our being.  Just spend a few days with some elementary school kids, or better yet think back to your school days. It is amazing how quickly as kids we began seeking to form an identity, trying to find our place, trying to feel a sense of value.

I remember when I was in elementary school, a group of us formed a “gang”. We had initiations and everything. We were very particular when it came to who could be in our gang, and we felt a sense of superiority when we denied other kids from joining. I’m not quite sure what our gang was supposed to do, but I can tell you we were the coolest gang on the playground! We really didn’t do anything, but we all got a sense of value and identity by being a part of the cool kid gang. There were other groups, the smart kids, the goofy kids, there was always that one kid who tried to gain friends and attention by eating anything someone gave to him. It really didn’t matter what group you were in, we all shared the fact that at a very early age we were looking for someone or something to tell us who we were. We were looking to create an identity for ourselves, and hopefully gain a ton of friends, so that we could feel valued.

Now hopefully we all have matured and become more sophisticated, but then again most of us haven’t changed. In college the smart kids joined debating societies and racked up huge honors in school, the kid who would eat anything became the kid who would drink anything, and the cool kid gang, well, still tried to be a part of the cool kid gang (just no longer calling it a gang and instead calling it a frat or something like that.)

After college (if you went to college) we moved onto real life. Now we became “real adults” and no longer needed these childish groups to tell us who we are. We now have a career to tell us that, or a sweet bank account, maybe a community at our favorite bar, we have our home and family, some have a little bit of fame, and some have come to realize they have no value and spend their days trying to escape the pain of their existence. How we try to find our identity and value may be different, but one thing is the same, we are all seeking for it.

As you look at ourselves, from childhood to adulthood, you will begin to notice that there is something strange about us humans, we are the most “evolved” yet most insecure of creatures. If any species would have a sense of who they are and what they are here for it would be man. Yet we have no clue.

Each and every one of us is striving to find out who we are, striving to find meaning, value, identity, security, and purpose. This is so pervasive that an entire economic system has been created to capitalize on this reality. Just spend a few hours looking at advertising (this should not be hard because our lives are surrounded by advertising.) The ad industry is driven by the fact that all of us are trying to find an identity, value, meaning, and security, but we don’t know where to find it. This is where the ad comes in, “with a little bit of cash our product will give you what you are lacking”. They even pay people who are perceived by society to have value and meaning to promote their products, because so many of us think “if in some way I can take a bit of their identity and make it mine I will then have value like them.” We spend ridiculous amounts of money on products purely because of the brand name, because that brand has successfully promoted itself as stating to the world “hey I’m somebody”. Now time after time we see these “celebrities”, the people we see as having a meaning and value, crash and burn. But we don’t learn from it. After one star falls, destroys their life, or commits suicide, we just raise another up thinking this one has the identity I need.

I could go on and on, but I hope it is very clear that we are a people who have no idea who we are or where to find our identity and spend ridiculous amounts of resources trying to find it.

In the world of philosophy we have seen theory after theory come by trying to answer these questions. The problem is no one can come up with a legitimate answer. One famous philosopher threw a huge wrench in the road for secular philosophy. For many centuries human value, meaning, purpose was just assumed as the humanist philosophers worked toward creating a Utopian society free from the constraints of God or religion. Then came Nietzsche. Nietzsche taught that “God was dead” and since there is no god we are no longer bound by the constraints that have come with our belief in god. The problem was that according to Nietzsche this “freedom” had a price. The price we had to pay was the death of any foundation for human value, dignity, meaning, or purpose that came with the death of god. Without God calling the shots we are free to do as we please. Yet without God in the pictures we are just a product of random chance, a compilation of chemicals, minerals, and electrons. We are just carbon based life forms produced by chance. Now we are very complex carbon based life forms, but complexity doesn’t create value. So what Nietzsche realized is that ultimately we are no more valuable than any other life form (such as a cockroach). Our only purpose (if you would call it a purpose) is to continue the evolutionary process, i.e. the will to power and the survival of the fittest. (As a side note it was Nietzsche’s philosophy that led Hitler and his companions to seek to take power by executing the weak, ultimately moving evolution forward to create the “uber man” or super man.)

Since Nietzsche we have had many philosophies rise and fall trying to restore the damage that had been done. We had the existentialist who said that we don’t have any real meaning, value, purpose, but we can create value by what we do. This has greatly influenced us as Americans, we are driven to create an identity for ourselves through what we do. ( Ever notice that the first thing we ask someone when we meet them is “what do you do”.)  We also had new-age thinkers who taught that we could find our value within ourselves. The problem is that when you tell yourself you are something you aren’t, you may feel good, but in reality you are just delusional.

I could go on and on but I know most of you are not that interested in philosophy. But philosophically speaking and subsequently within society, we have lost any sense of identity because we have abandoned God as our source of identity. This isn’t anything new, the scriptures teach that the first people “fell” because they wanted to be autonomous from God. The story tells us that while they were with God they were “naked and unashamed”. In other words they were vulnerable and yet they were secure in who they were, because their identity, value, meaning, and security was found in God. Yet as soon as they turned from God they became self conscious, defensive, and felt the need to cover themselves.

We are strange creatures because we were created with a void that is to be found in God. We are created to find our identity, value, meaning, purpose, and security in the one who created us. Yet we are all fallen. I have to say, the scenario that is painted in the scriptures is a very good explanation for the situation we see all around us. If we were created to find our identity in God, yet have turned from Him, becoming separated from Him, you would expect to see exactly what you do in our modern society.

Now to my point. (I know it took a while to get here.) All other religions and (pseudo religions) have a system in which we make ourselves valuable in order to reconnect to God. The problem with that is if being reconnected to God is our only source for value and yet we need to make ourselves valuable so that we can connect with God, then we have quite a dilemma on our hands. It is like someone saying “come out of that dungeon and I will free you from your shackles” yet you can”t come out until you are first freed.  The Christian message on the other hand is that God has come to us, through His Son, so that we may be restored to God. We are given an identity, meaning, value, purpose, security by the only one who is capable to give it to us. It is by grace not by works you have been redeemed. As it was in the Garden so it is for those of us in Christ, you are who you are because God has declared you to be so. To continue the earlier analogy, the Christian message is like someone saying “I will first free you so that then you can come out and be with me.”

So you would then think that Christians would be the most secure group of people. You would think we would never try to prove our value, try to find identity in something other than God, that we would always rest our security in God and we would never rest our security in our career or 401k. At least as you read the NT you would see letter after letter arguing just that. But this is not the reality and sadly (and quite ironically) our response in the church is often to “work harder at it”.

As you look into the scriptures you will see that much of the NT has a common flow. Rarely do you find a new testament letter start with something we must do, it always begins with who we are because of what Christ did. In more academic terms the “indicative” precedes the “imperative”.

So I ask, is your identity, value, meaning, purpose found by faith in what Christ did? Or are you still seeking redemption through work and effort. I know most of us will proclaim the proper theological answer, but looking at your life what is the real answer that you are showing by how you live?

I know for myself God has been convicting me. I so often don’t accept that which I proclaim. I’ve spent too long trying to gain affirmation of who I am and affirmation of my calling through the response of others. If people are not responding to my preaching, reading my blogs, and attending an East End Ecclesia service my identity, my value, my calling is in jeopardy. This is because I’ve sought others to tell me who I am instead of listening to God as He tells me “you are my beloved child, an ambassador, a prince, a coheir with Christ.”

I want to particularly challenge other pastors. What drives you? Where are you finding your worth? Are you working and striving because secretly you are finding your worth or identity in the ministry you create? Or are you functioning out of a deep sense of who you are because your Daddy has told you so?

No matter what your answer is, the only way we can find our true identity, true meaning, true value, true security, and a true purpose is to Trust God at His word and Believe you are who God says you are because of what Christ did.

One thing that is shared by all of humanity is that we tell stories. All cultures have myths, stories, and parables that are shared through out generations.  It is our stories that shape our society, that shape our world views. Some within philosophy talk about an over arching story that is the foundation of our beliefs, this over arching story is referred to as our “meta narrative.” Our Meta narrative is an underlying story about reality that shapes how we interpret and understand all of reality. I will give a quick example from literature to help illustrate this idea.

When you read anything you begin by reading individual words. These words only make sense by their relation to surrounding words that make up a sentence. We understand a sentence based upon its place within the greater thought or paragraph. But each paragraph gains it’s meaning from the greater story at large. To transfer this to reality. Specific facts and events are like words, that are understood in relationship to surrounding facts like a sentence. These combined facts or events make up a theory. These theories are understood in light of our “meta narrative” or the over arching story.

In the instance of science, all scientific work and discovery is borne out of a shared narrative. A scientist must first hold a “meta narrative” that describes reality to be coherent, that rationality exists, that the physical world is not illusion, that reality is governed by laws, among many other things. Scientific testing would be futile if, say, one believes that reality is governed by inconsistent chaos. If that was so then one would have no basis to assume that if a test produces a given result, that the same would be true tomorrow or in another location. Even basic things such as the continued existence of the physical laws are accepted based upon the assumption that these laws are constant and will not change tomorrow and were the same thousands of years ago. You cant “prove” that the physical laws will remain tomorrow, for tomorrow hasn’t come, you can only assume that they will remain based upon a “narrative” that states that the universe will remain constant.  Also all scientific discovery is borne out of “premises” that come from an accepted narrative about the physical world. It is out of a scientist’s narrative that he forms his hypothesis, he then goes out and tests his hypothesis to formulate a theory. If science was based solely upon “facts” as some propose, then no scientist would be able to form a theoretical hypothesis to test. Also if one did not hold a “meta narrative” that tells the individual that humans have trust worthy rational cognitive abilities, that humanity has the capability to have empirical connection with reality, or even that the physical world exists and is not an illusion, that person would have no reason to even begin down the road of scientific testing and investigation.

Hopefully you can follow what I’m saying here. I’m not a scientist (so I’m sure I’ve butchered the scientific process) but I wanted to use the example of science because it is often the scientist that excludes himself from being foundationaly rooted in narrative presuppositions.

But the reality is we all interpret facts and events in light of a greater story. Just last week my wife and I were sitting in our living room and we heard sirens in the distance, while multiple military helicopters flew over our house. Immediately one would begin to formulate a story in order to understand the “facts”. I could speculate that the sirens are from police vehicles, and the number of sirens seem to mean that something bad has happened. The existence of the military helicopters could mean that a war or attack has occurred. I would then formulate a story to understand the facts. A possible story could be that “Pittsburgh is under attack from a terrorist group” which would account for the sirens and helicopters. Now I could then talk with my wife who has a different story. Let’s say my wife has read the paper and saw that the G20 is in town and that there is expected to be thousands of protesters in Pittsburgh. My wife tells a different story. Her story leads to the conclusion that because the G20 is in town the sirens and helicopters indicate that there must be a protest going on nearby. As I pit my story against her story I would conclude that her story better takes into account the given evidence and I would change my story (unless I’m feeling really stubborn and unwilling to admit I’m wrong!)

You see the reality is, whether it is waking up and walking down the stairs expecting to see what existed there the day before or determining whether the holocaust really occurred and if it was a bad thing, we all need stories to make sense of the facts.

In light of this reality many today conclude that since we all have different stories no one can claim to know what is true. We are all left with different interpretations based upon different, but equally valid, “meta narratives”. I completely disagree with this assertion. Just as I could begin to refine and change my story to better reflect the evidence given the superior explanatory value of my wife’s story. I believe that we can engage other “meta narratives” taking into account our shared experience, and begin to refine our stories to come to a fuller understanding of Truth.

We all hold some type of grand story that shapes how we interpret things, how we perceive things, what we value, what we despise, even determining how we live our lives. The question is “is our story the right account of reality?’

In light of all of this, I find it very interesting that the core of the Christian message is a story. It is a story about God, humanity, meaning, and purpose. It all culminates on a story or “Good News” about a God that entered into our story, through His Son, who was crucified, and raised for the redemption of the world. If how we perceive things, interpret reality, even live our lives is borne out of a foundational story, then the Gospel message is given as an alternative story that when accepted would change everything. Now I personally believe that the Gospel is not just a “good story” but that it is the “true story”. I also believe that the Gospel should only be accepted and adopted as our foundational narrative if it is True.

If putting your faith in the Gospel is nothing less than accepting the Gospel as the true “meta-narrative”, then the Gospel can do nothing less than Change Everything about our lives. The only way one could “accept” the Gospel while not finding their whole world view (perceptions, values, and daily lives) radically transformed, would be for them to accept the Gospel as “a” story not “the” story.

Now I haven’t laid out any arguments for the “Gospel” being the true foundational story, but instead I’m trying to show us all that everyone builds their entire lives off of a narrative, and we all must ask ourselves what that narrative is. For the Christian, is the Gospel just another “story” that you have placed within some other greater narrative, or is the Gospel your foundation that all other “stories” are understood through? In other words is the Gospel a paragraph, a chapter, or is it the grander story of your life. For the non christian. It is a false stance to write off Christianity because it is foundationaly based upon “stories” while you claim that you follow “facts”. We all ultimately determine truth based upon foundational “stories”. I ask you to try to truly understand the Gospel story, and begin to understand your “meta narrative” to honestly seek to find out if the Gospel is not the true “story” to interpret all of reality through.

So we are on part 2 of my look at epistemology. To understand where we are now in western thought and to be able to take a fresh look at what Christianity has to say about how we know, we must first take a brief look at the history of thought in the west. It is not my intention to give an exhaustive look at the past 500 years of epistemological thought so I will be giving a broad generalized look at the flow of western thought. So if their is anyone out their who is a Philosophy PHD or even worse a second year philosophy undergrad, understand that this will be a generalization not a precise thesis!

There are 3 general stages of thought that have made up western thought, pre modern, modern, and post modern. I know very little about pre modern thought so I want to look at the shape of modern and post modern thought.

Most scholars would place the beginning of the modern era during the time of the great philosopher Rene Descartes. Descartes was a French philosopher during the early 1600′s. In the face of heightened skepticism Descartes set out to form a basis for certain knowledge. (correction) Descartes’ pursuit of philisophical certainty was motivated by his desire to carry the certainty found in mathmatics into the realm of philosophy. In his pursuit of an unquestionable basis for knowledge he came to the famous conclusion “I think therefore I am.” Though we can doubt most everything, Descartes came to the conclusion that we cannot doubt our own existence because even in our doubts there is someone doing the doubting. There are 2 key things that came out of Descartes that played a key role in forming western thought. The first key thing is the pursuit of certainty. This is key in understanding western thought post Descartes. After Descarte the focus of modern thought was the pursuit of certain knowledge. What was important were the things we can know with certainty. The second important thing that came out of Descartes was the focus on the “I” as the source of knowledge. I think therefore I am. This is important because the easiest way to summarize modern thought would be the pursuit of concrete certain knowledge and the centrality of man as the focus of our knowledge. Throughout modern thought there were 2 main streams of thought. The first stream was what is called rationalism. Rationalists believed that human reason was the primary source of knowledge so they focused on reason and logic as the means to obtaining knowledge. The second camp was what is called empiricism. The empiricists believed that knowledge obtained through the senses was the primary source of human knowledge. The best way I can distinguish the 2 would be that the empiricists would fall more in the realm of scientific knowledge while the rationalists would fall more in the realm of philosophic knowledge. As the modern era took shape western society began to place an emphasis on what can be rationally proven and empirically verifiable. In other words, does it make sense and can we test it. Because of the huge influence modern thought had on western society, people began to be more and more skeptical of things such as revelation, and God. The shift that occurred was a shift from “I know because God spoke” to “I know because I see it and understand it.” Needless to say the Christian approach to scripture, knowledge, and theology was greatly influenced by post enlightenment modern thought. But I will talk more about this influence in a later post.

Well, as modern thought progressed, western society progressed. With no need for God or revelation, western thought pushed ahead creating a new “man centered” age of progress and knowledge. Everything seemed to progress quite well till the late 1800′s when a German philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche came along and messed everything up. Nietzsche was an atheist philosopher that began to deconstruct the base assumptions that modern philosophers had functioned on all these years. Nietzsche believed that since their is no God then their is no ultimate purpose to reality. Nietzsche was influenced by Charles Darwin with his theory of evolution. What Nietzsche taught was that since we are just part of a line of species continuing to evolve we cannot  trust our own knowledge, so instead we are left to the fight for power and survival of the fittest. Up till Nietzsche most thinkers held Man as the center of reality and sought to create a human utopia. But with Nietzsche man is just an animal (though the most fully evolved animal). Ultimately we no longer should talk about truth and meaning, but instead we should pursue power and the evolution of the species. It was Nietzsche that coined the idea of the “Death of God.” Basically he claimed that the need for the idea of God is gone and now we are free to take power as man and rule our future. Here are a couple of quotes from Nietzsche that capture his understanding of the meaning of life and the death of god.

“What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.” Nietzsche ‘Antichrist’

“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.After the old god has been assassinated, I am ready to rule the world.“ Nietzsche

Even though Nietzsche was very anti Christian (one of his more popular works was called “Anti-Christ”) I really like Nietzsche thinking. In my opinion he brought man centered atheistic philosophy to it’s proper conclusion. If their is no God how can we talk about good, right and wrong, or even meaning? Their can’t be right and wrong if their isn’t purpose and their can’t be purpose if their isn’t a purposer behind everything. Also if their is no rational mind behind creation how can we assume that creation is rational? If we are a product of mindless random chance how can we trust our minds? I would not trust an ape’s conclusion on reality. So how do we know that we will be like apes to the next species that would evolve out of humanity?

Anyway in light of Nietzsche’s work, a group of philosophers began coming up with an answer to the dark nihilism of Nietzsche. These philosophers came up with a philosophy called existentialism. The 2 primary thinkers in existentialism is Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre. The existentialists recognized the idea that since their is no God their is no overarching purpose to reality. But what they proposed was that their are purposers in creation and those purposers are us. So what they taught was that we had to create meaning and purpose for ourselves. Truth was no longer an objective reality that needed to be found through reason and science, but instead truth was a subjective reality that needed to be created by the individual. On the heals of Camus and Sartre came the Post modernists. Post modern philosophy at it’s core is built upon deconstruction. You will not find a lot of positive assertions within post modern writing, what you will find is many negative assertions critiquing earlier modern thought. Their are many streams of post modernity that influence many different fields of thought, but the current conversation is around the post modern influence on epistemology. In essence post moderns are epistemological skeptics. They question our ability to know anything with certainty. They propose that instead of talking about truth in absolute terms we need to speak of personal or societal truth. I like to say that post modern thought is Nietzschian nihilism with a smile. Nihilism would say that truth is unknowable so we are all wrong, so then the strong should impose their will on the weak and dictate their false “truth”. Post modernity would say that truth is unknowable so lets just say we are all right and live and let live.

You will hear many talk about the fact that we now live in a post modern culture. I would say in some ways we are and in other ways we are not. Very few people actually accept or function within the epistemological framework of the radical post modern philosophers. Also post modernity is like a rebellious child that is still living within modernity’s home. Some would say that postmodernity is not post modern but the continuation of modernity. I would say that as a whole we are more epistemologically post modern when it comes to areas such as theology and morality, but we are still very epistemologically modern when it comes to areas such as science and math. Which would still leave us very much modernist because many modernist philosophers were very skeptical about our ability to know truth in the realms of theology and morality. I say this because their is a growing movement of Christian thinkers that like to quote post modern philosophers such as Derida and Foucault and then claim that our current society functions within their thinking. The danger is that many are influenced to begin ministering in a manner to engage the thoughts of some dead french philosophers that many current philosophers have rejected as being too radical. But this is just a side note.

Anyway what I wanted us to see is that the way we approach knowing has been shaped by a long progression of thought. Whether the primacy of knowledge is placed on science, reason, the will, or our own personal experience, we all approach the question of “how we know?’ with a lot of presuppositions that are not solid nor universally accepted.

There is one thing that I want to point out as I close this post.  No matter what stream of epistemology you chose they all have one thing in common, man is the center of reality. Whether it is “I think therefore I am” or “I am the source of truth”, truth and the knowledge of truth is centered in man. It is interesting because even though this epistemological project began some time in the 1600′s it very closely resembles an ancient story I remember reading. It is a story of the creation of humanity in which a man and a woman were in a garden left with a choice. Either trust their creator and rely on Him as their source of knowledge and truth or eat some fruit so that they may poses this knowledge apart from God. As the story goes, the man and woman decided that they wanted to be the absolute rule of truth and turned from God so that they may “rule the world”.

Just something to think about.

As you can probably tell from the title of this post, this will be a more theological and philosophical series. Don’t worry though, I will be writing other post’s that are less “philosophical” as I work through this more academic issue. For those who are interested, I will try my best to make these next few posts as understandable as possible. But to be honest the issue of “knowing” in a truly Christian framework is an issue I’m still trying to get my mind around. So I will do my best to be coherent.

To many the thought of even questioning how we know things is a silly pursuit that only strange philosopher types, that have lost touch with reality a few PHD’s ago, would wrestle with. To some degree I would agree. But on a practical level this idea of how we know things goes to the core of one of our highest pursuits as Christians, the pursuit of the knowledge of God. So bare with me as I stumble through such an abstract and complicated issue.

Before I begin I want to lay out an outline of what I hope to cover.

1. What is epistemology? How can we know?
2. Our cultural epistemology: A historical look at our knowledge of how we know.
3. The epistemological war: The battle between those who are certain we can know and those who know we can’t be certain.
4. A new epistemology found in Christ that can get us out of our current mess.

So what then is epistemology? In simplest terms, epistemology is a philosophical category dealing with the question “how does one come to know truth?” Epistemology is the study of how we know things.

How we know is usually something we assume and rarely question. When I put my hand on a hot stove I don’t think to myself “this stove appears to be hot, but how can I be certain that it is actually hot, maybe it only appears to be hot, I mean possibly my senses are not in right order so my mind could be tricked into thinking it is hot when in reality it is cold, well it appears that this burning sensation I feel can not give me epistemological certainty, oh well this is quite the epistemological dilemma.” Of course not! When I put my hand on a hot stove I scream out “owwwwww this stove is hot” with quite a bit of certainty. This is a bit of an exaggerated example, but the point is most of us never really question how we know things. Well most of us never question how we know things as adults, but little kids sure do. Have you ever been around a toddler who is just beginning to understand concepts. That little child is just full of deep epistemological questions. Well the child may not see it that way, in his mind he is just curious, and in our mind he is just being annoying. You have probably experienced a small child’s deep epistemological prodding. You are doing your thing, working in the yard, then a young philosopher comes up to you and asks a seemingly simple question. “Hey why do you (fill in the blank)?” You respond with a very clear and concise answer, then continue with your work assuming the child’s question has been answered. Then the once simple question becomes quite complex with a little added question, “well, why?’ You try to give an explanation of why to only receive another response of “why” from that child. This then goes on till you don’t know the “why” behind your previous answer so you respond by saying “just because.” Often we as adults see the child as being annoying, but in reality the child is trying to figure out what we take for granted. The child wants to know “how we know” what we just told them. In technical terms the child is trying to figure out our epistemology. The sad thing is that most children eventually “grow” out of this curiosity. By the time they get to high school they have been trained to not care about “how” the teacher knows what they are telling them and are instead trained to just worry about “what” is being taught so they can pass the upcoming test.

So what is the point? Well the point that I’m trying to make is that academic philosophers are childish! OK not really, but in some ways I wonder if when the bible tells us that we are to come to Christ like little children, it is saying more than we have previously assumed. Maybe we need to stop and look at our epistemological assumptions. Then go to Christ as children, asking “why” seeking to learn from our messiah not just “what” is true, but “how” we can know this truth. Maybe we have just assumed our culture’s epistemology, missing the fact that God wants to transform not only “what” we know but also “how” we know. Maybe I have spent to much time sitting on a mower thinking about this stuff and need to “grow” up and stop asking such silly questions. Well, maybe, but how do we know that such questions are silly?

The reality is we all have an epistemological frame work in which we reason, live, and ultimately try to find “truth’. This is not a bad thing, it is a necessity to function in reality. The problem comes when we begin to realize that this frame work is not shared by all peoples and cultures. So we are left with the question “how do I know that my frame work of knowing is true?” This is where epistemology becomes very tricky because we must function within a framework of knowing while we try to question that which we are using to ask the question in the first place. It would be like a person who is uncertain if the computer program is working properly and the only way he can check the program is by using that same program that he thinks may not be working right. This dilemma is what has caused many to become epistemological agnostics, or in common terms someone who believes that we can never to know truth with any certainty. Others seem to ignore the problem claiming that it is all foolish philosophy and continue approaching the scriptures and life within their current framework assuming that they have it right. I tend to take a middle ground, I don’t think we can just assume our current modern western epistemology is true but I also believe that their is a creator God who has revealed Himself and makes us capable of knowing His Truth with certainty. This understanding is what has caused me to wonder if indeed God is not only teaching us what is true but also through His Spirit is transforming our minds in a manner that changes our framework of how we know truth.

Till the next post, I will just say, go to your heavenly Daddy to not only know Truth but also allow that Truth begin to transform your mind.