There is a simple story we usually tell about the things we
believe: we were presented with the alternatives, carefully examined the facts,
and came to a studied conclusion about what is true. The truth of the matter,
of course, is far more complicated.
For one thing there is an essential link between knowing and
doing that we must never ignore. It is why St Paul can speak of “the obedience
of faith” (Romans 1:5) without for a moment suggesting that the Christian’s
relationship to God through Christ is based on works, or on meriting grace in
some way. Rather, we are embodied creatures so what we know and what we do is
inextricably tied together. What I truly believe is evident in how I live,
regardless of what I claim to believe. How I live effects what I believe
because beliefs that do not resonate with the give and take of life are for
that reason suspect.
Once we begin to reflect on this, it is clear that what is
involved is far more richly nuanced than we might initially imagine. In i told me so: Self-deception and the
Christian Life, philosopher Gregg Ten Elshof (professor of philosophy at
Biola University) examines one aspect of the process of belief more carefully.
He argues that one thing we do is selectively give attention to things—we have
to since there is far too much going on to give full attention to everything.
But he also argues that this thing we do so naturally and subconsciously has an
effect on what we believe.
In The Violent Bear It Away, Flannery O’Connor’s Tarwater is a man busy
about the task of suppressing his knowledge of Christ. O’Connor's description
of Tarwater's inner life is worth quoting at length:
In
the darkest, most private part of his soul, hanging upside down like a sleeping
bat, was the certain undeniable knowledge that he was not hungry for the bread
of life. Had the bush flamed for Moses, the sun stood still for Joshua, the
lions turned aside before Daniel only to prophesy the bread of life? Jesus? He
felt a terrible disappointment in that conclusion, a dread that it was true… He
tried when possible to pass over these thoughts, to keep his vision located on
an even level, to see no more than what was in front of his face and to let his
eyes stop at the surface of that. It was as if he were afraid that if he let
his eye rest for an instant longer than was needed to place something—a spade,
a hoe, the mule's hind quarters before his plow, the red furrow under him—that
the thing would suddenly stand before him, strange and terrifying, demanding
that he name it and name it justly and be judged for the name he gave it. He
did all he could to avoid this threatened intimacy of creation.
William James said that “my
experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items I notice shape my
mind.” The most common strategies for long-haul self-deception involve the
management of attention. Through habitual and systematic management of my
cognitive gaze, I can come to believe things that I wouldn’t believe were I to
attend indiscriminately to my surroundings. Through attention management, I
exercise a degree of control over what comes into my mind. And this, in turn,
affects what I believe.
I first came to the study of
philosophy through an interest in apologetics. I found philosophically trained
Christian apologists handling with some care the difficult questions that
others in my Christian context seemed to gloss over. Is there good evidence for
God's existence, for the reliability of the Scriptures, or for the historical
resurrection of Jesus? Can the reality of evil be squared with the existence of
the Christian God? I read books on these and other topics by Christian
apologists. I found the evidence supporting the truth of orthodox Christianity
impressive, and that was a source of great comfort and increased faith.
Before long, though, I also noticed
that the people most impressed by the arguments favoring orthodox Christianity
were the orthodox Christians. Now this in itself isn't at all surprising. I
suppose the people most impressed by the arguments for anything will be the people who believe in that
thing, whatever it is. The people most impressed by the evidence for
extra-terrestrial life, for example, will tend to be the people who believe in
extra-terrestrial life. Arguably, it’s because they’ve found the evidence compelling that they now believe what they
do. So a correlation between people who find the evidence for Christianity
compelling and people who believe that Christianity is true is not surprising.
What struck me, though, was the
seeming infrequency of a change of mind
in either direction upon initial confrontation with the evidence. Christians I
knew who carefully considered the evidence for the first time tended to find it
impressive. Non-Christians I knew who carefully considered the evidence for the
first time tended to find it wanting. And if they didn’t, they’d likely fault
the person articulating their side of the issue for a less-than-adequate presentation
of the evidence. I’ve found it almost as unlikely that people will change their
minds about Christianity at a debate as it is that they will change their
sports loyalties after seeing their favorite team lose.
But how do we do this? How do
Christians manage to find the same body of evidence supportive of Christianity
that non-Christians find to discredit Christianity? How do Christians and
non-Christians alike manage to remain unimpressed by the evidence against their
position? The answer, in part, is that we do this by managing our attention. To
a significant degree, we control the character of our experience by deciding
what to attend to. Those experiences, in turn, result in our having the beliefs
that we do.
This reality has profound implications for our own faith,
and for how we engage in conversations with non-Christians over what beliefs
are best supported by the available evidence. And I’d love to hear people’s thoughts
about that.
Source: i told me so: Self-deception and the
Christian Life by Gregg A. Ten Elshof (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; 2009)
pp. 31-33.
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