For a long time Axl would tell you that I knew everything. If he ever asked me a question I was quick to give him an answer. Why do the leaves fall from the trees? So little boys have a way to make money to buy their mom a Christmas present. He accepted every response and marveled at my vast knowledge. And poor Warren, Axl was quick to tell him, “but Mom knows everything.” I had told Axl that I knew everything, and in a way I meant it.
Earlier this year, I realized that I had a serious problem. While, I knew that I didn’t really know everything, I did firmly feel that if I believed it to be truth then it was true knowledge and therefore could not be wrong. I was talking with my dad and the movie Christmas Vacation came up. My dad said that the boy in Christmas Vacation was the same boy who played Darlene’s husband on Roseanne, well I didn’t believe that to be true and therefore it wasn’t true. I was very adamant that this was not the same boy and made a little fun of my dad for thinking so. So, to prove my point and pour a little salt in the fresh wound, I went straight home and googled it. Well I don’t have to tell you that the imdb, international movie database, had it wrong too, because they had this guy listed as starring in both things. I wasn’t just embarrassed; I was hurt and I was wrong. Obviously situations like this happen all of the time, because no matter what I choose to believe, sometimes I am wrong.
Eventually, I felt guilty because Axl actually believed that I knew everything, and I was forced to let him in on the sad truth that that was just a story. My need to be right has always caused me problems, but it has also closed my mind to a lot of actual truths or potential alternate truths. I was raised into a family of believers and although my family left our church and for most of my life didn’t practice our faith we each had strong beliefs, beliefs that defined our worldview, whether we lived it out or not. Warren, on the other hand, was not raised in a family of strong faith, so in the last five years, he has discovered the Word of God in a new and fresh way and is encountering many faith issues for the first time. It was in this area that my mind was the most closed and my “I am right at all costs attitude” was the most pervasive.
There were some topics we absolutely couldn’t discuss. If he didn’t see it my way or if he questioned my belief or why I believed a particular way I was mad, I was hurt, but deep down I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed, because I didn’t have an answer. Because Brother Watson and Mama said so simply wasn’t good enough. I knew I had been taught truth in my little home church, and that had always been enough for me. So when questions like: “Why?” or “Where does the Bible say that?” and especially “What about this verse that appears to say the opposite of what you believe?” came I was speechless. I couldn’t give an answer and I realized that I had been spoon fed my faith, accepting someone else’s truth for my own, not caring enough to discover God’s Word for myself. I had strong faith, and I knew many quality catch phrases that seemed to affirm my belief, but truly I had no real understanding.
Warren likes to have philosophical conversations. Questions like “How you know that blue to you is blue to me?” “If a branch falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound?” These types of questions just make me ill. So, when he really wants to annoy me this is the kind of warfare that he uses. Last semester you can imagine my complete dismay and utter despair when I had to take Philosophy. I cried. I literally cried. The material was so hard. I had to read and reread every sentence, stopping at every other word to look up its meaning. I hated it. I wanted so badly to quit. This class stood in the way of my finally completing my long sought after degree and I simply couldn’t allow myself to give up. I pressed through. Then, an amazing thing happened. I started to love it, I started to get it, and one of my classmates actually asked me if I was a Philosophy major and I started to get a little prideful. I do know everything even philosophy! Right? Wrong. I toned it down, took my pride to the cross, and can assure you that in one disastrous assignment God squashed my philosophical ambitions. When the class ended, I knew that it had changed my life and the way I examined ideas and truths. I was no longer content to accept the Biblical truths that I had held all of my life, simply because someone else had told me that they were true. I wanted to see and examine them for myself. I wanted to be able to give a reason for the hope that I have in Jesus.
I can tell you that thoroughly evaluating my ideas has not changed them. I have discovered topics new to me, ones that I never considered before, and I am continually working through where I stand on those issues and I am grappling for the first time with ideas that have always plagued my understanding, but my digging deeper has not decreased my faith. God can not only handle our quest for true knowledge, for true belief He calls us to it.
Tomorrow is the day. We will talk a little about a worldview, what it is and how it effects our beliefs. We’ll learn the difference between a mere belief and a true belief, discover intellectual virtues and talk about learning to create a spirit of critical thinking, and most importantly, we will learn how to argue. That’s right. This is going to be good stuff. Tomorrow is the foundation. I can’t wait to get started.
