Lenten Reflection: From the Head to the Heart

The following is the sixth in a series of reflections on The Great Divorce.
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From the Head to the Heart

A reflection on chapter 5 of C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom.  For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

1 Corinthians 2:1-2 (NRSV)

Questions fade when You invade

You chase all my fears away

With Your love in my atmosphere

All confusion disappears

From "Everything About You" by Sanctus Real

A few years ago, on a Sunday afternoon, I went to a coffee shop... as I often do on Sunday afternoons.  I sat across from a woman reading a book titled Why People Believe Weird Things.  Curious - and having spotted an opportunity to strike up a conversation with her - I asked, "So, why do people believe weird things?"  She offered me a number of answers, but the one that stood out to me was a lack of critical thinking.

I think that a lack of critical thinking is a problem in many churches.  One thing I love about my own tradition, the United Methodist Church, is the fact that critical thinking is affirmed, even in matters of faith.  Methodists are a people of The Book, but we read The Book with the help of Church tradition, our experience, and our reason.  This four-sided approach is sometimes called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, as it is believed that John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, approached matters of faith in this way.¹

If a lack of critical thinking is a gutter on one side of the lane - to use a bowling analogy - is it possible to roll the ball into the gutter on the other side of the lane by overthinking things?

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One ghost, who had been a bishop in his earthly life, is met in Heaven by a spirit named Dick, who was - I'm guessing - a friend from seminary.  In their earthly existences they had both abandoned their faith and had adopted a religion of questioning.  Dick eventually found his way back to his faith, but the bishop thought that he was merely becoming closed-minded.  Dick pleads with the bishop to reclaim the childlike faith he had given up and informs him that they are now in the land where all one's questions about the Eternal can finally be satisfied.  Unfortunately the bishop has become interested solely in the mental exercise of inquiry and is not at all interested in discovering actual answers to his questions.

Interestingly, the bishop still does not believe in a literal Heaven or Hell, even though he has now been to both places.  He is very optimistic about the town he just left, not realizing it is actually Hell, and he ultimately decides that his talents and his interests will be more useful there.  He heads back to the bus because he is scheduled to deliver a paper at the theological society he started.  In his paper, he explores how Jesus' teachings might have evolved if Jesus' life hadn't been tragically cut short.

The bishop walks away, humming a hymn, and Dick slaps himself in the face, frustrated.²

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Repeatedly, the bishop insists that he and Dick, in their earthly lives, were courageously following their own honest opinions.  Dick argues that they weren't really following their honest opinions but rather following the trends of the time, and he argues that they weren't really courageous about it because they had set themselves up to gain more than they ever stood to lose.  The bishop actually became a bishop because of the work he was doing.

I would never advise a person to suppress his or her honest questions or doubts, for I believe that honest questions must be raised and that honest doubts must be confronted.  By doubting, we question; by questioning, we learn; and, by learning, we grow.  I would suggest that suppressing questions and doubts might actually be more of a hazard to one's faith than actually exploring them, because whatever we suppress will somehow find away to manifest itself.  On the other hand, I would not advise a person to question or to doubt simply because it happens to be en vogue.  Questioning, Lewis argues, is a thirst that was made to be satisfied by the Truth.

Peter Rollins once said, "If you want to know what you really believe, don't listen to what you say; look at what you do."³  I think that sometimes we use layers of questioning and intellectualism as a defense mechanism to shield ourselves from the responsibility of believing, specifically the responsibility to live according to one's convictions.  Thinking and speaking are cheap, but believing can be costly.

I am not accusing the bishop of using intellectualism to protect himself from the truth: I am actually drawing from my own experiences.  For example, I might come across a Bible passage that makes me feel somewhat convicted and begin to ask myself questions: "But what is the writer really saying in this passage?  What was the cultural context?  What does the original Greek text literally mean?  I should really do a word study someday."  These are important questions to ask, but I think I sometimes use such questions to keep what I just read confined to my head.  Otherwise, it might find its way to my heart, and then I might actually have to act upon it.

It is important to ask questions, for questioning is a means to gaining knowledge.  Still, we would do well to remember that questioning is merely a means to an end and not an end in itself.  May we not be afraid to honestly ask questions, and may we not be afraid to honestly and humbly receive any answers God might offer us.


Notes:

1. Wikipedia: Wesleyan Quadrilateral
2. Okay, the part about the facepalm wasn't actually in the book, but one could easily read it into the story.
3. Peter Rollins.  "Confronting Our Beliefs."

The photograph of the forest is believed to be public domain.