Whatever way we get our morning news, there is a predictable sameness to it, day after day, decade after decade. What is that all about? The endless conflict; the forces of good and evil arrayed against one another, as if Armageddon were being waged not at the end of time but every morning while we sucked on our Twinkies. Some mornings it seems that the whole of humanity has chosen sides to meet on the plains of Megiddo. Everyone seems to have their pet issue to react to each day and the eternal faith that their god will eventually show up and award them the victory vanquishing the ignorant, scuzzy and unworthy enemy.
Perhaps it is our psychological nature that needs a goat that escapes which is the literal translation of the Hebrew azazel. In the Old Testament the first Hebrew priest, Aaron, would confess all of the sins of the children of Israel “over” the head of a goat which was sent into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement. Is it that sense of relief, of cleansing, that accompanies our guilt-laden latte-sipping false self? So much shadow projection day in and day out—will we ever tire of it?
In any case, I prefer to examine these behaviors at a less metaphorical level. You ready? C’mon let’s wake up and take a whiff of our coffee. One thing is clear. The modern human mind had its genesis some 200 years ago with the Enlightenment—the beginning of what we might call rational thinking, that is to say—we humans transcended our ignorance and old superstitions. We are now truly the animal that reasons. Don’t laugh, it’s unseemly in this our serious inquiry.
The evolution of our reptilian and mammalian brain is quite impressive. And yet, in America at least, we have a schizophrenic relationship with our intellect. Some of us tend to worship the intellect as a savior, the all-purpose problem solver/rescuer, and others don’t trust it at all; which brings us to American anti-intellectualism, an attitude which, as we shall see, will help explain the connection between coffee and violence. You were beginning to doubt that we would get back to that weren’t you?
Armageddon for breakfast takes may forms. One that is common at the American breakfast table is the battle between the creationists who prefer to pretend the Enlightenment never happened, and the evolutionists who cannot untangle their brains from all of the facts related to the world of the senses. Ne’er the twain shall meet, right? Don’t be too sure.
Let’s involve some smart people in our discussion. Randall J. Stephens and Karl W. Giberson have written a book entitled Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age, which the title reveals is germane to our war between the moderns and the neo-medievalists. “To the evangelical experts profiled in this book, the chief purpose of science or historical research is not to expand human understanding, but to elucidate God’s will. That doesn’t require academic scholarship—just a “common sense” reading of the Bible and a knack for finding evidence in today’s headlines rather than in the record of the past.” Well, that certainly explains why the conservative toast-crunchers are going to battle each morning with the evolutionist scapegoats.
What are the sins that evangelicals want to “lay” on the heads of those intellectual elitists? “America’s worrisome slide into immorality, liberalism and unbelief was caused by the widespread acceptance of evolution and its pernicious influence in areas like education, law, sexual mores, politics and so on …” This is how the authors describe the “belief” component of the evolutionist’s worldview (comprised of beliefs, attitudes and values).
How strong is the evangelical anti-intellectualism? “…the average evangelical hates the academic establishment almost as much as he loves Jesus.” Uhmmmmm, pretty strong! The existence of the enemy, which we see on the battlefield as we peer across our poached eggs in the morning, is dependent on our not really knowing much about them. After all, it’s hard to hate someone that you know personally. (That’s because we are all fundamentally alike and all differences are basically illusions.) For example, the authors’ interviewees included “a home-schooled Baptist who has never had a non-Christian friend.”
What if we took time to get to know the enemy? Maybe we like having a scapegoat too much. Maybe we don’t want to give up our combat-infused breakfast. Maybe, in some twisted neurotic way we prefer conflict to peace. However, wouldn’t it be strange indeed, if we realized that the differences that energize our morning melees didn’t, in fact, exist?
We are going to bring this essay full circle and end on an upbeat note. We are going to create a serene soufflé to go with our non-fat latte with mucho foam, amigos. I promise! But not yet!
Arrayed on the battle field we have described so far are the proponents of the Enlightenment, called secular humanists or just liberals by their opponents, and the conservative Christians sometimes called fundamentalists by the liberals. Name-calling is obviously part of the weaponry heard above the crackling of our bacon. When name-calling starts, forget about calling a truce, we have passed the possibility of a rational solution, it is game-on time.
It’s important that we flesh-out the worldviews, identities and behavior of each side in order to establish that they are not as far apart as they might think. First, the intellect commands more respect than many evangelicals might admit. “Christian colleges have sought secular accreditation and often boast when one of their own earns a Ph.D. from a prestigious university.” It can be argued that Christianity is reasonable and fact-based. Ken Ham says “I don’t interpret Scripture; I just read it.”
Who is Ken Ham? His ministry in Australia includes 1,000 radio stations, a magazine with a circulation of 70,000 and a multi-million dollar museum in Kentucky. Ham is clearly a “general” in the armies of the faithful on the right side of the political spectrum. But in the final analysis the conservative mistrust of the intellect wins out. “In the Christian worldview, human reasoning, without God’s guidance, will always err; faith must precede the scientific method. Serious evangelical thinkers—not just lightweights like Ham—insist that facts and values are inseparable.”
Who could possibly get these two sides to the peace table and bring tranquility back to our breakfast table? Why, the mystics of course. Theologian Michael Horton in the pages of Christianity Today said that “reason rests upon public facts, faith, on private values…” but that “the Gospel tears down the wall between reason and faith, public and private, objective and subjective truth, by its very content.” The mystics would say that Horton is right, sort of.
The mystics realize that relying on the intellect for something as profound as Truth is simply asking human reason to overreach what it was designed to do. Our smart people are great at problem solving in the realm of form “out there.” Subordinating reason to that which guides the mystics, their intuition, gets a better, more peaceful result.
Horton’s Gospel (the good news) if it really is profound would synthesize the intellect and intuition, while separating reactions (violence) from response (compassion), and encourage a clear distinction between emotions (suffering) from feeling (heartfelt joy, freedom, peace and happiness).
Horton is also correct that facts and values are inseparable. In fact, beliefs, attitudes and values being the components of the very story that we tell ourselves (our worldview), determine who we think we are and most importantly, our behavior.
The fear and anger that shows up all too often with our morning repast is the result of our failure to recognize that the only narrative that really exists—that of Oneness—the inter-connection, inter-relatedness and interdependence of all human beings. Any conflict in that story would be absurd. In that story it would be easy to reconcile evangelicals and atheists, faith with science, and the human animal that reasons with the being that is capable of self-transformation.
So we have indeed come full circle. There is no difference between a Christian and an atheist, an Israeli and a Palestinian, a Muslim and a Hindu, or at least no difference worth fighting about, no difference that justifies interrupting a perfectly good breakfast. Maybe, as it turns out, we could have had our ham and eggs in peace all along. We have been getting unnecessarily hyper by adding sugar to our grapefruit when it was already sweet enough just as it is.
_______________________________________________________
References and notes are available for this essay.
Find a much more in-depth discussion in books by Roy Charles Henry:
Who Am I? The Second Great Question Concerning the Nature of Reality
Where Am I? The First Great Question Concerning the Nature of Reality
Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival
