Lately Ichthus has entertained us with his exposition of Tim Keller’s book “Reasons for God”, addressing those of us who find spiritual plurality not a problem and telling us that “not all religions can be true”. Also Shotgun has been busy with a number of threads, wanting to show us how to deal with “NCGS” who, he says, constantly “launch” inconsistencies at Christians. I think that these issues really come from the same camp, and yet they are both irrelevant.
You see, spiritual revelation is something that can take place anywhere and in any kind of situations, something which Judaism and Christianity actually both tell us. This means that religious people throughout the world are inspired by something that we cannot explain rationally, and even those who are engaged in discovering what our world and universe are composed of (or how they work) talk of inspiration that doesn’t take place during cognitive processes, but often when they have turned to something completely different. Inspiration is therefore a human experience.
Spiritual literature or scripture is written by human beings, recording spiritual experiences, circumscribing experiences, describing visions or inspirations, insights and ideas. The fact that we are talking about religious experience means that very often something “non-rational” (rather than irrational) is involved. It would be a difficult task for us to say which of these experiences is authentic and which of them are not. Shotgun believes that we can distinguish authenticity by using a presupposition of his liking, but that wouldn’t “prove” anything, since everybody has a vaguely different presupposition that each is trying to promote.
Tim Keller has a problem with the example of the elephant and the blind men, although there is no reason for that since it is only an analogy. The blind men are said to claim that their “corner” is the real description of the elephant, but it could be equally be that the blind men exchange their experiences and find that they are all right. This is in fact the advised course of action – which involves plurality. There is nothing arrogant about the analogy, but rather it gives an example of how we can add to the spiritual knowledge we have collectively.
Where the problem arises is when consistency is claimed and inconsistency stares at you from the text, or when you maintain that religion has to be exclusive and someone must drop out. You see, such claims or insistencies are what cause the problems, which are intending not only to prove that the own tradition is venerable, but that other traditions are disreputable. Often the ball is put into the courts of completely unaware people who are said to be “attacking” Christianity, but in fact it is the other way around. It is only when one blind man says, “I don’t want to feel your part of the elephant, I’m only sticking with my bit!” that we have fundamentalism on our hands.
I also feel that the analogy fits for religion and science too, if we could accept it. Both have something to say about reality as sentient beings experience it, and neither of them have the whole picture (elephant) in view (or at their hands). I feel that a misunderstanding occurs when people start assuming that the Bible is information about God, whereas it is in fact information about Humankind and their religious per- and conceptions of God, but in particular, how these conceptions are betrayed by hypocrisy. Human beings are an hypocritical race, there seems to be no doubt about that, and many traditions show us how our behaviour is the cause of our sufferings.
Any thoughts?