Our actions in and reactions to the quotidian life are far better indicators of our philosophical and theological tenets than any creeds we confess or theological systems we espouse.

You wouldn’t be so surprised by your sin if you didn’t think so highly of yourself.

- Steve Brown

One of the things that has become clearer to me over this summer is the fact that each of us is always declaring some gospel - with our words, with our actions, with our tone of voice, etc… Whenever we interpret (to ourselves or to others) the significance of the circumstances of life (our personal lives, politics, relationships, etc.) and set a value on those circumstances (”good”, “bad”, “hopeful”, “hopeless”) we are locating those circumstances within a larger narrative - a big picture story of how we understand life in general and our own lives in particular.

For instance, if Laura and I come home from the grocery store and she runs in the house carrying one little bag and leaves me to carry in the rest, and then on the way up the stairs I badly stub my toe and trip and spill all the groceries I am carrying down the stairs, I am now presented with a set of life circumstances which I now have to (and will) interpret, and I will most likely proclaim my interpretation of these circumstances right then and there. If I am angry it is because I have opted for a particular interpretation of the events, not because I have simply responded to circumstances in the only way conceivable. From one perspective, my plight is morally neutral - you could say that nothing more is involved than bodies and matter in motion, and such things merit neither a positive or negative response. But as Cornelius Van Til has helpfully pointed out, for us, there are no “brute facts” - all facts must be and are interpreted in some way.

So then, why do I choose anger as the “appropriate response”? The answer to that question will extend far into the way I understand thing like the meaning of life, God’s sovereignty and attitude toward me, what people are for, justice and fairness, and so on. Likewise, my response to these circumstances will proclaim or “preach” the answer to these questions to myself and to those around me. If I let loose a string of profanity and complain to Laura that she hasn’t helped me like she should, or if I just quietly pick up the mess and am cold to her for the next couple of hours, I have just declared to her and myself what I believe to be the significance of what has just happened in the grand scheme of things.

The painful conviction that has struck me more and more is that the “gospel” I preach to Laura and to my friends and family by the way that I choose to interpret and respond to the circumstances of life is usually either the antithesis of the real gospel or some deceptive and twisted perversion of that gospel. I am rightly (albeit insufficiently) ashamed of this fact and brought once more to the place where I must say, “I am way worse than I thought, and way more in need of God’s grace and help to change than I thought”. Praise God for his merciful provision through Jesus Christ, who not only freed me from the eternal consequences of my sin, but has also set his Holy Spirit to the work of transforming me to the likeness of his Son!

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

- Immanuel Kant

Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you , opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

- Henry David Thoreau

A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason.

- Thomas Carlyle

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

copied from journal entry dated 2/7/2000, 1:45 AM

I really wish these things wouldn’t strike me so forcefully at such inopportune times. If I don’t write it down now it will be gone in the morning.

A Theory on the Mind

1. A Collective/Comprehensive Philosophy

• Made up of memories, data, observations, etc., as well as established/accepted beliefs.
• Dinstinct and detached from emotion.
• Contains elements that we have forgotten or are unaware of as well as those that can be recalled by the conscious.

2. The Animal - like Freud’s “unconscious” in some ways.

• source of all emotions, drives, desires, etc…
• distinct from all moral/value judgments
• basic instincts of man qua man
• not governed by logic/reason or conscience

3. The Conscious/Operative Philosophy

• seat of logic/reason
• the part of us that is able to call up or access data from the Collective.
• competes with the Animal for control of actions 
• possibly the seat of morality (the Conscience)
  • Problem: There may be things that logic tells us are ok, in view of our comprehensive philosophy, that our consience still tells us are wrong. Therefore the Conscience may be another part.
• able to shut itself down (or are we able to shut it down?) almost completely.  Not all the way. Therefore we can operate by the Animal instead.

 

Enough for now - I need some sleep!

 

This entry was where I first started trying to work on my Comprehensive Philosophy project. It’s not anything like a solid or coherent, developed theory - just at attempt to get down a sketch of some ideas while I had a moment of clarity. My understanding of these things has developed and changed significantly since this point, but I think there is still some useful stuff in here.

11/25/99:

The most important thing for a parent to teach a child, above all do’s and don’ts, is the habit of analyzing one’s own thoughts and actions. Without this, laws and morality become meaningless and futile. Such an existence is virtually animal.

7/26/99

Human beings, no matter how rationally minded, can never separate themselves from their experiences enough to form a truly objective opinion about human existence. Ironically, any hypothetical being which stood outside of human experience, thus able to deliver an objective opinion, would have no personal use for such considerations, other than to bestow them, in a display of benevolence, upon mankind.