Tag Archives: rigor

Love & “working” definitions

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What can we really say about love?

As I re-focus on my principal assumption—the co-centrality of truth and love / love and truth—I have been arguing for the importance of working definitions.  I don’t think that we can define love, not comprehensively. And certainly not to consensus.

Yet I also think that when it comes to love, even if comprehensive definitions were possible, they would be undesirable. My point here, as in my post on biblical love, is that working definitions have the advantages of being less daunting (and so allowing us to get the discussion started) and less austere (and so keeping us from being unduly suspicious when others use words like “love” without comprehensively defining them).

Yet working definitions also avoid what may be the biggest pitfall when it comes to love: assuming completeness.

What I mean is that most of us, most of the time, presume that love is something in which we will engage entirely. So even though we live with constant reminders of our limited and finite nature (we all get tired and need sleep, and get hungry and need food) we so often assume that we can love someone—and be loved by them—completely, with our whole selves and our whole lives.

And in certain ways and at particular moments, we can (and do).

My hunch is that this happens because the human posture in love—giving and receiving it—is, more than any other, as close as we may come to being “complete.” So we are able to focus on the other nearly exclusively, prioritizing him / her to ourselves, such that their pleasure is our pleasure and their gains are our gains.

Yet even taken at its most positive (and setting aside concerns that sometimes we engage in love harmfully, with too little self-love) this is not what we naturally are. Permanence and comprehensiveness are foreign to human existence, which is much more about change, transition, and development in the course of sameness.[1. Philosopher Paul Ricoeur expresses this in terms of human identity being both idem and ipse: self-sameness and change. More on this later.]  But when we speak of change, transition, and development in relation to love we typically mean that love is “breaking,” or fading, or simply no longer being love.

In contrast to this temptation toward completeness, working definitions allow us to engage in this discussion (and orient us toward love as a state-of-being) in the right way. By that I mean a way that is limited yet committed.

So in the first way, a working definition reflects the inherent commitment that humans already have toward love. In other words, no one approaches love neutrally but, regardless of definition, we all seek it (even if only despite ourselves).

Yet in the second way, a working definition also reflects the scope and capacity with which humans must approach (and engage in) love: being finite, and so limited. As such we are unable to maintain the intensity of our desire or remain in the the place of wonder that love engenders.

Likewise, working definitions reflect this committed stance by requiring something of us, just as love does. In other words, they require that we state what we want or desire. And when we do so, we not only demonstrate what we know or how we think but show “who we are.” Similarly, working definitions mirror our limited capacity by requiring us constantly to be aware of our limitations—by engaging us as both those who “know something” and yet also as those who are still learning; as those who are capable and yet who are unable to sustain that capacity.

Further again, working definitions are by nature both “in use” (as that which does the work) and “in transition” (as that which is incomplete or unsatisfactory). And here again these aspects well reflect both human nature and love’s character. [1. Presupposing a certain, rudimentary character of love does not beg the necessity of first having defined it: no one needs a definition of love in order to distinguish it from things that it grossly is not, such as sexual exploitation or pure negligence.]

Thus the very process of committing oneself to creating or engaging with a working definition of love—the process of committing to a conversation about love, even as part of engaging in love—is making a commitment to a process of both acting and observing. It involves reflecting on one’s experiences and participating in one’s reflections. It involves considering one’s desires and one’s knowledge, as well as their sources (and so too, their reliability).

In this way, by “creating or engaging with a working definition of love” I am no so much proposing that we embark on a task but, more accurately, embrace a lifestyle. It is a way of being that involves both investigation and participation; both rigor resulting in knowledge (and peace) and vision resulting in delight (and inspiration); both faithfulness and creativity.

One confirmation that “creating or engaging with a working definition of love” is indeed a lifestyle rather than simply a task is the connection that I mentioned previously: love’s definition is inextricably tied to personal story or narrative. Thus the process of engaging in a working definition of love is always ongoing, both because the definition is connected with personal narratives (mine and others) that continue through time, but also because human identity is essentially narrative identity: we know ourselves through the stories that we enact, narrate, and hear ourselves recounting (and hear recounted by others about us).[2. Paul Ricoeur’s One Self as Another is a majestic, if complex, investigation of narrative identity.]

I would highlight two important conclusions from the preceding.

First, Christians are necessarily to adopt this lifestyle of engaging in a working definition of love, because their primary “task” is to be in love relationship with God. Yet second, because the Christian God is complete in this regard (because this God is love) Christians are able to be at ease in engaging in this lifestyle, and so are able to rest in their own incompleteness. In this sense, “loving God” is a burden that is “light” and a yoke that is “easy.”

When believing hinders faith

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Last post I highlighted the importance of truth-seeking and distinguished various types of truth, with the claim that the Bible focuses on relational truth. Yet before continuing the discussion I need to address what is likely the biggest obstacle to Christians succeeding at truth-seeking (thus developing a robust Christian faith):

Belief.

Excuse me?

To most Christians this probably sounds like madness: how can belief be a problem? Isn’t belief at the heart of what it means to be a Christian? My answer is: Yes and No. For that depends on what belief is—what sense of belief we are meaning.

Let’s first examine the sense of “belief” that is indeed essential for Christians to cultivate. This is belief as a result. In other words, the end-product of my engagement with the Bible and Christianity should be my belief that:

a) humans are a certain sort of being, beings who need to embrace and cultivate their faculties (imagination, rationality, will, memory, emotional response), certain self-understandings (trust and suspicion, confidence and humility, subjective objectivity) and certain relational “goods” (love, truth, patience, forgiveness) in order to thrive,

b) the God of the Bible seeks just the sort of relationship with humans wherein our faculties are most engaged, our self-understandings are best cultivated and our relational goods are maximized,

c) this God began such relationship with human being on a small-scale, with a nation called Israel, with the intention of then expanding these relationships on a global scale, potentially to include all people,

d) God’s relationship with Israel was formalized into a covenant: an agreement of how God and Israel would regard and act toward the other (and of how Israel was to govern itself and interact with others). Yet the intention for global-scale relationship was stalled when the people of Israel wholesale reneged on the agreement,

e) this intention was realized when Jesus of Nazareth, who is both human and divine, acted as Israel and both lived the life required to fulfil Israel’s side of the covenant and died a death that bore Israel’s penalties for having reneged on the covenant,

f) the Bible is a sufficiently trustworthy source of information on this matter, as understood through humans engaging their natural faculties in partnership with God’s guidance (the Holy Spirit).

In other words, the Bible is making certain truth claims about human nature, God’s nature, and the relationship between them, and frames these claims primarily through a series of unique historical events. To be a Christian is to validate these claims and their source—to attest to the positive, truth value of these claims and to the trustworthiness of the Biblical text concerning key aspects of human nature, God’s nature, and their interrelation. [1. It is essential to understand that the biblical texts depict God, human beings, and the relationship between the two in a manner that is sufficient for belief, but the depiction is not exhaustive or complete! Further, to assume that the Bible contains truth claims on any and every matter that it addresses is actually to undermine its validity as a text and to divest ourselves of our responsibilities as readers. This is because doing so would necessarily require disregarding equally important truths regarding genre, content, and the meaning (or directedness) of the text itself.]

So in what way should Christians not cultivate “belief”?

To answer that let’s redefine belief in its positive sense. In this first sense, used above, believing means affirming certain matters as “being the case” or simply being “true.” Several clarifications about belief are important here.

On the one hand, we refer to believing rather than knowing Christianity for two reasons. First, because Christianity deals with unique entities and events rather than with manipulable objects or repeatable phenomenon. So because it cannot be demonstrated through repetition, it cannot be proven scientifically. Second, because humans are the sorts of beings that know in limited ways: our knowledge is dependent on many factors and we possess a limited, or subjective, form of objectivity. Thus we cannot know “beyond doubt.” As such, belief is not just the only method of accepting Christianity, it is the best method.

On the other hand, belief in this sense is a result. It is an orientation that comes about through having cultivated our faculties and developed certain crucial self-understandings, while aiming at key, relational goods. In summary, belief follows the development and application of certain competencies, rightly aimed.

So if belief is the result of certain actions, it is clearly not the means by which that same result is achieved! In other words, holding particular beliefs (about who / what human beings are, God is, and what the relationship between the two should be) is a matter of deeming certain things to be true. And we do this by understanding the claims, assessing their basis and implications, and so becoming convinced that they accurately and fittingly represent the matters to which they pertain.

As such, Christians should never “simply believe” something.

This confuses a claim to truth with its proof, or to confuse truth claims and truth value. Thus I do not believe someone is innocent simply because they claim it, but because the weight of the evidence, rightly interpreted, offers good reason to believe it.

Believing in this second, negative sense amounts to credulity: simply believing what I have been told (and doing so, likely, because I have been taught to do so). In my experience, many evangelical Christians have been raised this way. They have been taught not simply what to believe, but that “belief” is the vehicle by which they acquire their identity, rather than being what holds that identity together.

Let me be blunt: whatever it may be, credulity is not Christian.

Instead, my view is that truly Christian belief results from participatory understanding and observational engagement.

So such belief is the result of the engagement of my whole person with the twin tasks of understanding / pursuing full humanness and committing oneself to truth in all its manifestations. It is a process requiring rigor[2. Rigor involves both looking at myself and looking at the material in question, in order to assess the material and yet also properly to determine my own competence at making good assessments in this regard.], attention, and commitment to one’s own life.

And it can result in peace and joy. Peace through the satisfaction of adopting a lifestyle where one is rightly oriented toward truth, a dedication to honesty with oneself. Joy through the increased possibilities of loving myself and other more rightly as I rightly relate to God, who knows be best and loves me most.