Truth is subjective! (for me)

"Truth is subjective. We all construct our own world of 'truth' and no one's version of 'truth' is any more valid than anyone else's. There is no 'objective' truth."
"Heil, Hitler!"
"Totally valid."
"You're an idiot."
"Totally valid."...
"You actually believe that you're an idiot and that Nazi's are cool?"
"No, I didn't mean those things were valid for *me*, but they are for *you*."
"Hmm... you're kind of missing the point... But... your claim about the subjectivity of truth: who is that valid for?"
"For me."
"So shouldn't you have said, "*I* construct *my* own world of 'truth' and no one else's version of 'truth' has any validity for *me*"? In other words, you don't care what anybody else thinks."
"That's right: you want to be a Nazi, go ahead. I won't like it, but it's totally valid, for *you*."
"But you're missing the point: I don't want to be a Nazi!"
"Sure, that's valid for *you*, but I really don't care."
"You really are an idiot!"
"Again, totally valid, but I don't care."

Knowing and Belonging

Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), Jesus of Nazareth, p. 280f.:

“I am the Good Shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep” (Jn 10:14f.). These verses present two striking sets of interrelated ideas that we need to consider if we are to understand what is meant by “knowing.”

First of all, knowing and belonging are interrelated. The Shepherd knows the sheep because they belong to him, and they know him precisely because they are his. Knowing and belonging (the Greek text speaks of the sheep as the Shepherd’s “own,” ta ídia) are actually one and the same thing. The true shepherd does not “possess” the sheep as is they were a thing to be used and consumed; rather, they “belong” to him, in the context of their knowing each other, and this “knowing” is an inner acceptance. It signifies an inner belonging that goes much deeper than the possession of things.

Let us illustrate this with an example from our own lives. No human being “belongs” to another in the way that a thing does. Children are not their parents’ “property”; spouses are not each other’s “property.” Yet they do “belong” to each other in a much deeper way than, for example, a piece of wood or a plot of land, or whatever else we call “property.” Children “belong” to their parents, yet they are free creatures of God in their own right, each with his own calling and his own newness and uniqueness before God. They belong to each other, not as property, but in mutual responsibility. They belong to each other precisely by accepting one another’s freedom and by supporting one another in love and knowledge – and in this communion they are simultaneously free and one for all eternity.

In the same way, the “sheep,” who after all are people created by God, images of God,* do not belong to the shepherd as if they were things – though that is what the thief and robber thinks when he takes possession of them. Herein lies the distinction between the owner, the true Shepherd, and the robber. For the robber, for the ideologues and the dictators, human beings are merely a thing that they possess. For the true Shepherd, however, they are free in relation to truth and love; the Shepherd proves that they belong to him precisely by knowing and loving them, by wishing them to be in the freedom of the truth. They belong to him through the oneness of “knowing,” through the communion in the truth that the Shepherd himself is. This is why he does not use them, but gives his life for them. Just as Logos and Incarnation, Logos and Passion belong together, so too knowing and self-giving are ultimately one.

[*That is, God, Holy Trinity: Father (Origin) begetting Son (Word, Image), together breathing forth the Spirit (Love, Gift).] 

What a beautifully challenging picture of the world we indeed live in: We are indeed responsible for each other, challenged to accept one another's freedom, and to support one another in love and knowledge. And the true shepherd is the one that reveals the truth and offers his love - and so we become free to enter into that life, to seek to cling to him so as to be (and to live as) one of his own (so as to in turn lay down our lives...).

But the true shepherd has competitors, enemies. There are others who would like to take charge of the sheep and make a different kind of world. Still, the true shepherd lays down his life for all, even for the ideologues and dictators, those who are rather rapists and seducers than lovers,* who pursue an empty kind of freedom which is divorced from communion in truth and so who despise and fear reality, and hate life, hate others, hate the truth (and who thus ultimately hate themselves), and who thus suppress any natural compunction they might feel about spitting on those who dare to challenge the idol they have made of their ideology. They know - deep-down, at least - their own guilt: they know that hatred of truth and complicity in lies are deeply shameful; and they know, deep-down, that they are in fact decidedly humble and fallible little creatures, subject to the truth, not Lord over it; they know that they should thus always be open-minded, open to the possibility of correction, so as to be open to the truth; and yet they are afraid to reveal themselves - most of all to themselves - so they hide in dishonest rhetoric and malicious venom. It seems too great a risk to enter into a genuine dialogue, and so to be open to communion in the truth. They  know deep down their own pettiness and guilt, but because they haven't encountered divine mercy, they are afraid to trust and to open themselves up to something bigger than themselves, something that transcends the familiar and comfortable ideological tent they inhabit, which they have learned to embrace as their reality and source of security, and over which they do their desperate best to reign as little tyrants.

And yet, as long as they live, as long as they are still able to choose life, the true shepherd continues to lay down his life for all these sheep. That is, he continues to offer us the gift of a share in his life, whereby we can know and love the truth, know and love the Shepherd (first of all acknowledging that we need one - we need help, we need guidance, we need redemption!), and thus know and love even ourselves, so that finally we can freely rejoice together in the beautiful gift of life. Some people are too afraid or confused or too accustomed to a life of hedonism or of spitting on others with violent self-righteous ideology to take seriously the gospel, this offer of the gift of life. Nonetheless, conversion is possible, the offer is there.

***

Eternal Father, for the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on me and on the whole world.



[*Wayne Brockriede wrote an article entitled "Arguers As Lovers" (see Philosophy and Rhetoric, 1972) in which he classifies, in a rather simplistic but useful way, three kinds of arguers, that is, three possible ways of presenting and promoting truth-claims: as a rapist, as a seducer, as a lover. The rapist openly tries to force his view on the other person by the use of power (by censorship, for example, simply refusing to allow the other to even express his point-of-view - which can be accomplished simply by plugging one's ears, refusing to honestly listen to his point of view). The seducer likewise is indifferent to the humanness of the other person, but uses charm and deceit in an effort to "eliminate or limit his coarguer's most distinctively human power, the right to choose with an understanding of the consequences and implications of available options" (this is a standard device of ideologically motivated teachers, professors, politicians, journalists, parents, etc.). The lover, finally, sees the other person as a person, not as an object or victim. As Brockriede explains it, "the lover wants power parity." Rather than simply facing an adversary, "the lover...is willing to risk his very self in his attempt to establish a bilateral relationship." There is a clear resonance here between Brockriede's "lover-arguer" and Ratzinger's description of the true shepherd, who lays down his life in order to offer us freedom in relation to love and truth, freedom to belong to him (and him to us) in love, through oneness in knowing and through communion in the truth.]

"Confronting the lie": Nate Pyle's pile

Nate Pyle, the very sincere-sounding Lead Pastor of a very sincere-sounding protestant (make-it-up-as-we-go-along-style) church* (or rather, ecclesial community - see Dominus Iesus, para. 17), was going through a rough stretch a while back and wrote what turned out to be an amazingly popular piece called Confronting the lie: God won't give you more than you can handle.
[*That is to say, a community of Christians with a very 'minimalist' ecclesiological understanding.]

From the title of the piece, you'd think he was going to explain how it is a lie to say that God won't give you more than you can handle (call this proposition G). What he actually begins by claiming - or rather, strongly implying - is that proposition G is a "trite Christian platitude," "an insipid axiom." In other words, the proposition is not really a lie, but rather is unhelpful as advice for someone going through a rough time. And secondly, Pyle further claims that proposition G is bullshit (i.e., not just bullshit, but bold bullshit!). Let's examine these two claims.


So far as the first claim goes, let's just say it's pretty subjective. After all, sometimes all someone needs is a 'trite Christian platitude' to give him a little boost. (Ronald Knox wrote of the pious old lady whose simple heart is warmed just by hearing the hallowed name 'Mesopotamia' - 'Mesopotamia' is a place-name found in the Bible, for those who are wondering why it should be significant to a pious old lady.) And so far as the notion of its being an 'insipid axiom,' on the one hand, it's just not clear why it should be judged 'insipid'; and on the other, if it is an axiom then it can hardly make sense to call it a lie. (And if one happens to have no taste for the truth (finds it 'insipid'), probably one shouldn't assume that it is the truth which is at fault.)

Of course, possibly Mr. Pyle wasn't even trying to say anything strictly true in the foregoing. Perhaps he was just stating in a broadly rhetorical way his displeasure with people who don't try hard enough to say something creative and 'relevant' in order to make people like him feel better when they're down. He really isn't trying to make any genuine theological point, as his title suggested; he wanted to make a psychological point and vent his feelings a little.

Nonetheless, the way he does so is, well, problematic. First, you should be able to vent your feelings without sacrificing your respect for the truth. Accordingly, if you are going to vent your feelings by claiming that some theological (-sounding) claim is a lie, you should actually think, and you should explain why it is that you think, that that claim is in fact false. And in order to do that, you first have to explain what the allegedly false claim actually means (the intended meaning of proposition G is just not intrinsically obvious); then you need to explain why you think it is false. Pyle never does this.

And as for the specific claims Pyle does make, there's just not much to admire in what he says. His first attempt to dismiss proposition G involves the claim that people who insistently ask a lot of "why"-questions when things are going badly  - as opposed to trusting in 'insipid axioms' and 'trite platitudes' - are people doing something courageous, and that there is something holy and sacred in being so courageous. And a prime example of one such admirable person is Nate Pyle himself, apparently; it seems that he is one of these laudable people who asks God, Why? Why not step in? Why not act? Why wouldn’t you make it right? Why couldn’t you part the clouds and provide a moment for us to catch our breath? Why everything at once? Why? There are two problems here: First, a point of logic: it seems that you can ask those questions - if you like - without impugning proposition G. Indeed, perhaps proposition G is an important part of the axiomatic framework within which you can ponder responses to these questions. Second, a point of clarity: Pyle never explains what is so courageous - or, more generally, praiseworthy - about asking these questions. He just seems to be - rather grandiosely and absurdly - congratulating himself on what he takes to be his own courageous holiness without explaining what is especially courageous or holy about his reaction to his situation. Now again, maybe he simply isn't trying to say anything strictly true at all here, he is just trying to find a sophisticated way to make himself and others feel good about themselves (in spite of their self-pity - "my life sucks right now - but at least I'm a holy and courageous dude, not like those limp, lying cowards who try to tell me God won't give me more than I can handle"). But again, it's important to find a way of doing that which respects the truth and the truth is, it's just hard to imagine a genuine model of exemplary courage and holiness, say, the Blessed Virgin Mary, or Jesus of Nazareth, or Anthony of Egypt, or Catherine of Siena, or John of the Cross, or Isaac Jogues, or Josephine Bakhita, or Antonio Maria Claret, or Edith Stein, Maximilian Kolbe, Simone Weil, John Paul II, etc., making these kinds of laments.


Which brings us to the bullshit claim (i.e., the claim about 'bullshit'). I've already mentioned that Pyle doesn't actually do what his title indicated he was going to do, namely, explain the falsity of proposition G. Thus Pyle himself is bullshitting and it is actually his piece that is bullshit. As Harry Frankfurt explained in his 1986 essay "On Bullshit":

The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.

This is the crux of the distinction between him and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it.

[I pull this quote from Edward Feser's recent post, Some Varieties of Bullsh*t.] 

Now Pyle certainly might dispute my characterization of "what he is up to," but in the meantime, so far as I can see, his claim about proposition G being a lie/bullshit is itself just bullshit (in the technical sense given in the underlined sections above). Pyle tries to tell us that God won't give you more than you can handle is a "limp, anemic sentiment" which "will not stand in the face of a world that is not as it should be." But his limp, anemic argument for that claim is as follows:

Tell that [proposition G] to a survivor of Auschwitz. Tell it to the man who lost his wife and child in a car accident. Tell it to the girl whose innocence was robbed from her. Tell it to the person crushed under the weight of depression and anxiety. Tell it to the kids who just learned their parent has a terminal illness.

As if none of the people who have been in these situations has been able to handle 'what God has given them'... In reality, Pyle's list of tell-that-to's don't constitute an argument at all; it's just a vague appeal to emotion. Pyle seems to sense this, so he adds a 'real' argument, namely, a limp, anemic proof-text from 2 Cor. 1, where St. Paul writes (and Pyle emphasizes): "we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself." But Paul then goes on to say, "It is God who has preserved us, and is preserving us, from such deadly peril; and we have learned to have confidence that he will preserve us still." Paul never says, "God gave us more than we could handle." He does say, "we have learned to have confidence that God will preserve us." So what is Pyle thinking here? Not sure.

 

 

So much for a general analysis of Pyle's pile. In terms of a more personal reaction, his assertion that it takes courage to ask "why? why? why?" when some faced with some difficult situation strikes me, frankly, as ridiculous. When I had to hold my little daughter's beautiful little body and accept that she was taking her last breaths and then feel her body turning cold in my arms and finally leave it behind at the hospital, I was numb, devastated. I couldn't conceive carrying on without her and I wept bitterly in the presence of God. But I never asked "why?" Pyle and his pile of theological bullshit would seem to have it that I just lacked the courage to take up my holy and sacred duty to give God notice of the brunt of my emotions by asking evidently useless questions.

Pile's platitudes remind me of Weird Al's "Dare to be stupid." Sorry, bro, but I don't think that's real courage, and I don't think there's anything sacred or holy about it. When we dare to ask the question "why?" it should be because we actually want to know the answer to a real question, so unless you can seriously imagine that perhaps God wants to give you a special answer to some very particular question - think Abram's vision in Gen.15 or Moses and the burning bush -, and thus that he has not already given you a sufficient general answer to that question, there's no need to make a pretentious show of asking it. And it seems, I dare say, that in reality Pyle's "why"-questions are in fact all "why me"-questions. In other words, they express egotism, not courage, not holiness, not obedience to some sacred duty. Which is not to say we shouldn't feel compassion for someone who is in the clutches of self-pity, but we should still try to keep in the habit of calling things by their true names.

Love and choice: Hating God and making sense

WE (human beings) are simply confronted with a world of things (including persons) which we did not create, and from among those things we must choose what we will love. This means that our love develops as a result of our choice. What we love (and so our destiny) follows from our choice.  

In God, who is the creator and cause of all that exists, it is the other way around: love precedes choice, because love is what moves God’s will to create, to call things into being, in the first place. God’s choice of particular persons, then, and his predestining them for glory, responds to, corresponds to, follows from, his own act of creation, from his own act of will, his own act of love. In this way, God’s choice follows upon, is consequent upon, his love. God's love is the creative origin of the very being of things. Our love is not; our love, and our destiny, follow from our choice.

Now if I love someone and she dies, God let this happen. (In my case, he let my daughter die. Naomi was only two years old, dearly beloved, and yes, if God exists, then he let her die.)

Would it make sense to be angry with God, to hate God, because he lets things like this happen? Perhaps that reaction would be natural or tempting for some people, but that’s different from it making sense. In fact, to be angry with God, to hate God, would be a good indication that I never really loved my daughter, and that I am choosing not to love her now. How so? I know that life is often short (always short, in comparison to eternity), that we all have to die, and I believe that God did not create us only for this life, but for eternal life with him – so, if I really believe that, why would I thank God for loving Naomi into mortal existence and then hate him for loving her into eternal life? I may have intense feelings and emotions towards someone, but I don’t really love her if I despise the person who has given her good things. (This is a real problem for all those who attempt to love their children – or to love anyone, for that matter – while despising God.) If my love for my little girl turns to hatred of God when she dies, then my love wasn’t real, it was selfish possessiveness, directed to my own gratification here and now, and to an irrational insistence on the sufficiency and perfection of my plans for giving her good things, my way of doing things.  When my plans or ideas or expectations fail to materialize and I hate God as a result, this only proves that I had been treating my plans (and thus myself) as equivalent to God. But I’m evidently not God, and I’m not God’s equal, so this attitude simply doesn’t make sense.

So perhaps I could think the following: “This happened to my loved one, and now I feel angry with God; but I do love Naomi and since it simply doesn’t make sense to be angry with God if I believe that through this horrible event he has in fact given her good things, I’ll just stop believing in God altogether (and try to write-off my anger with him as an irrational foible of my human nature).” Does this make sense? Really, not at all. Reasoning in this way implies that what I care most about is justifying my own feelings. But I know – as any honest person knows – that just because I feel a certain way, it doesn’t follow that I should be feeling that way. It is just obvious that my feelings of anger are not, in themselves, an appropriate criterion for determining the truth about anything else. My feelings tell me primarily about me; I have to be very careful if I want to make any inferences regarding other things. In any case, if your love is real, then you will want good things for your loved one, and deciding to give up on your hope for good things for your loved one – not to mention giving up on being reunited with your loved one – just so that you can indulge your anger is hardly a genuinely loving response. It’s actually rather petulant and narcissistic, and again, it just doesn’t make sense.

[A third option would be to think: "She's dead. She's gone. She once was not, for a short time she was, and now she is again nothing, except a memory (which is likewise destined for nothingness). I believe that that's all anyone is, that's all my love for her is, and that's all my pain is: a flash in the pan, that will one day turn out to be nothing." This way of thinking isn't obviously nonsensical, there is even something stodgily noble and tritely comforting about it, but it is also sad, pessimistic, groundless, pusillanimous, and - I'm afraid - stupidly presumptuous.]

One might still think, “Maybe all you just said ‘makes sense,’ but you seem not to understand the way normal people think. Things don’t ‘add up’ and ‘make sense’ for ordinary people in such a neat 'black-and-white' way; they struggle, it’s hard, they need to grieve and rage, and they have a right to think whatever they want to think when something tragic happens or when they feel themselves to be the victims of cosmic injustice. When people are hurting, it’s not fair to assess their reactions in terms of whether they are 'making sense' or not.” It’s true that when people go through traumatic experiences, sometimes they don’t think clearly. And sometimes they really try, but they are simply unable to think clearly. It follows that we shouldn’t expect that they will always think clearly, and we shouldn't be hard on them when they don't (or on ourselves when we don't). It doesn’t follow, however, that they shouldn’t think clearly, that is, that they have a right to think things that don’t make sense ("yay, post-modernism! - it doesn't matter if I make sense!"); or that the nonsense (or the shrivelled resignation) that they end up losing themselves in actually does make good sense, at least for them, in such and such situation: it doesn't. This vacuously subjective attitude is just not how 'sense' works. So it’s true that we can’t assess people’s reactions solely in terms of whether or not they make sense, but that is no excuse for ignoring whether or not they make sense. We can and should have compassion for people who have tangled themselves up in nonsense, but we do people in this situation no favor by patting them on the head and pretending that, “hey, you’re only human, so there's really nothing wrong with the nonsensical way you’re processing things.” In the end, even when shit happens (as it inevitably does), the task lies ever before us of choosing our love - and avoiding doing so in a self-defeating, nonsensical way.