Matt Chandler is the pastor of Village Church in the
Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex (several sites). This guy is young and fresh, and
an obvious leader of the pack. He’s also, unfortunately, another exclusivist
taking shots at anyone who claims there are good reasons not be a Christian. Here’s one of his videos I recently came across (thanks Dave) which attempts to
break down the analogy about the blind men and the elephant that is used to
support the validity of diverse perspectives. Watch him do his best to maul
this well-meaning parable that he simply finds no use for in his fundamentalism:
First of all, it’s a real shame that he felt the need to guard
believers against this parable. It’s really rather simple and harmless on the
most basic level as a story about how different perspectives may appear to be
antithetical to each other, but may in fact be different perspectives of the
same thing. On a more complexly pluralistic level, which I don’t think Chandler
understands might be differentiated by some, it’s brilliant as a possible
explanation of why some religions seem to describe a higher being or transcendent
reality in different ways, even ways that sound hostile to each other’s perspective,
but how they may all be seeing truth, while not seeing all truth. Sounds nice,
doesn’t it?
Of course, it doesn’t sound nice to Christian apologists. It
sounds like bad business.
So, what about Chandler’s denial of the logic of the blind
men/elephant analogy? Here are my responses to his specious attempts to
dislodge the premise.
1.
First, Chandler actually gave the primary reason
why he has a problem with this analogy. He says, "surprise," he is a believer in Christ.
So, he’s a believer in Christ first, and a free thinker second, or I’m left
that to assume because he says about his faith, “I won’t even address that part.” I think he
would honestly admit that he does not base his faith in Christ on reason, but
it certainly is convenient and encouraging for him (for some reason) when it sounds
reasonable. So, basically, reason didn’t bring him to Christ, and reason won’t take him away.
2.
As far as Chandler’s inimical handling of this
beautiful analogy, his interpretation depends on who is giving this analogy,
and what they’re using it for. Chandler obviously thinks people are using it to
prove that they know what ultimate reality is. He says that the narrator
telling the story is himself assuming to know ultimate reality, or he is
claiming that it is knowable, to substantiate the claims of the individual
blind men. While this is somewhat insightful, he’s just simply pointing out what
many of us know, that one critic has no right to tell another not to criticize,
and if you say there is no ultimate meaning, they you shouldn’t set up an
analogy where someone, the narrator being God, a guru, or humanity in general, claims
to know what ultimate meaning is (the elephant) and therefore can confirm or
deny that the different parts described by the blind men are, or are not,
accurate.
While I see what he is getting at,
what he is really doing is the same thing the creators of the analogy were
doing. He is exposing the pride of someone who says that only they can be
right, and all other less right, or completely wrong. Now, he may be perfectly
comfortable with God being the narrator, or one of his blessed saints, but he
will not put up with a mere mortal having a wider perspective or an infinite
one, especially if that mortal claimed there is no infinite perspective. In
other words, how dare someone say that no one person can have all the truth,
when the only way you can hypothesize this is if someone was theoretically able
to see that no one person can have all the truth?
It is true that making any kind of absolutist
claims can be tricky, especially if your absolutist claim is that no one can
make absolute claims, but this is exactly what Chandler accuses the makers of
the parable of: smoke and mirrors. You see, Chandler typifies users of this analogy
as types that posit that no one can be more right or more wrong than anyone
else. But, in fact, some users of this analogy would be fine with God, a higher
being, a higher reality, Mind, Spirit, combined humanity, or…Something… being
the narrator and overseer. On the other hand, some people who say there is no Something
as narrator may be merely speculating that there is a bigger picture than we
all can see right now. They’re not saying who is confirming this, because it is…HYPOTHETICAL!
This is what is called…drumroll please…induction. Has Chandler not heard about
this? I think it’s an idea a few millennia old. Plus, we’re not talking about a
real elephant, or blind people really petting an elephant. It’s an analogy, and
Chandler is trying to find a hiccup with it.
Chandler says the only way this story makes
sense is if the narrator sees the whole elephant. Not true. Someone, the
narrator or whoever, may review the different descriptions of the blind men and
suddenly glimpse what they think is the emerging picture of an elephant. You
don’t have to be absolutist about this. We can claim to know be able to know
anything 100% with our finite and mortal minds, and still have a high level of
confidence about something. Depends here on who is telling the story, but it
doesn’t have to about a narrator’s claim to absolute knowledge of ‘ultimate
reality’, though that gives Chandler something to yell about (see point 5).
3.
Yes, this is a story used to promote tolerance,
but not JUST tolerance. Many of us know already that tolerance just helps us
play better in the sandbox together, and we ultimately need to move beyond
tolerance to ‘engaging diversity’ (see Diane Eck’s excellent article on a
healthy notion of pluralism that all religious peoples should embrace at: http://pluralism.org/encounter/challenges.
Chandler, you mad bro? Because people want you to be more tolerant? First world
problem son. Please don’t add this to the list of how you think you’re being
persecuted. K?
4.
Is Chandler honestly implying that Christians “know”
the fullness of spiritual truth? Aren’t they supposed to be content with God
knowing all Truth, and them trusting him? Evangelicals are so circuitous with
their use of the word ‘know’. The best of their saints often claimed to only
know what is real as if through a cloudy window (“we know in part, we prophesy
in part”), and yet they appeal to other verses in the New Testament in which
the saints claim to be “enriched with all knowledge.” We have here either a bad
case of mixed messages or a case of poor interpretation (probably both). I
remember the words of Kierkegaard, “Any attempt to know in a realm where only faith
is possible, is itself unbelief.” It’s sad to me that Chandler honestly thinks
that attributing all knowledge to God means that Christians have some kind of
perfect ability to know any one thing perfectly and absolutely. Doesn’t he know
that to know any one thing in the universe so perfectly and completely in all
its individual qualities and in its relation to everything else in the universe
that contributes to its nature and is in turn affected by it so that there is
nothing left to learn is to ipso facto know everything about everything in the
universe since every atom is coextensive with the next and interrelated in
myriad ways? He’s allergic to the word know when it comes out of someone else’s
mouth, but he strains at a gnat and swallows a camel. I just made that phrase
up. How you like me now?!!
5.
Chandler yells in the video when he mimics how
others may use the analogy. He yells. He totally missed the point. The sad
thing is, analogies and stories like are meant for us to contrast understanding
and reason against dogmatism. No wonder Chandler doesn’t get it. He’s the avatar
for dogmatism. He speaks with such a commanding tone. As if he were yelling at
sheep.
6.
His claim that people who share this story are actually
religious with “affirmations, denials, and absolute truths” is nonsense. Who
made up that definition of religion by the way? “Baker’s Dictionary Of Theology
and Religion and Anything Else You Need It To Be a Dictionary Of”? And just
because some believe something to the highest degree, doesn’t make their
commitment or confidence in ‘truth’ or data a claim to absolute truths. What?
What are you even making up right now? That is, in your own words, “comical on
a philosophical level.”
7.
He keeps on repeating what he claims people are
saying, but he’s just mixing up a bag of random lines that he thinks represents
his opponents. “You can’t know absolute
truth”, “All religions lead to God”, “No one can know God in its [sic] fullness”, “It doesn’t matter what
you believe but how you live.” Besides the fact that these can be different
people saying different things for different reasons, they also may not be
dogmatic developing rigid doctrines in the sense that they are thoughtlessly prejudiced
and obstinate in unexamined conviction that they will have to be pried from
after death. Maybe they are religious in your evangelically made-up definition
of religion, but they don’t have to be dogmatic like you. Oh, excuse me…like
you ‘seam’ to be. Yes, yes, I remember that I don’t think we can know absolutes
absolutely. Please don’t yell at me.
8.
He says he’s not speaking ‘religiously’, he’s
speaking ‘intellectually.’ But he’s preaching. But. He’s. Preaching.
9.
And finally, he ends his sermon by saying that
the ‘irony of ironies’ is that there is a relativist inside of him that is
claiming “the same thing at different points of emphasis.” Nice Chandler.
I understand that this is a clip out of a larger sermon
posted elsewhere, but I sincerely don’t believe (observe, I’m NOT stating this
as an absolute!!) the context will shed much light on the words that I hear
coming out of his mouth.
Remember in the movie “The Village” when (spoiler alert…if
you haven’t seen the movie yet, watch the whole thing on youtube for free at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4NFdLBnD0g)
the young people discovered the older generation of adults had been lying to
them to keep them in a false state of innocence and purity away from the evil
of the outside world and all the ideas and freedom that had so obviously made a
mess of things, even though they all ended up finding out that their own privatized
civilization was corrupted too because they were, after all, human? Remember
that? I know this is a cheap shot, but there’s a reason Chandler’s church is
called Village Church.
Bye.
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