Caution: Blasting Zone Ahead

Any of you who have heard Brian Regan's comedy album know what my title refers to, but for those of you who have not, I will explain. He has a bit about the ridiculousness of a road sign that says "Caution: Blasting Zone Ahead." Shouldn't that sign read "Road Closed"? He goes on to wonder what action the sign posters want passengers to take in response to that warning. Should they buckle up? What good would that do in a blasting zone?

As believers, when we begin to intellectually engage questions that have the potential to challenge our theology, we often see that sign that says, "Caution: Blasting Zone Ahead," and my question is whether or not that should read "Road Closed."

First from a completely humanistic view of things, is it intellectually honest to set barriers beyond which we will not allow our minds to go? Can we be true to ourselves if we do not even allow our minds the opportunity to play with certain questions? Can we even consider ourselves to be truth-seekers if we do not consider all possible truths.

From a Christian perspective we might say, "Well certain things that contradict what I believe the Bible says don't even need to be delved into deeply because I know they aren't 'possible truths'." First of all, it is arrogant and foolish to assume that what we believe the Bible says is a complete and accurate interpretation of what it actually says and how it interacts with reality. Also, if we say that Christianity cannot be disproved, which a refusal to engage a potentially challenging argument to Christianity or conundrum within Christianity would constitute, then we are saying that our argument in favor of Christianity is completely irrational. All rational arguments must be able to be disproved.

Now then, is it possible to deny that a certain question, conundrum, or argument could have even the slightest possibility of disproving our faith without submitting that there is no rational argument for our faith? I believe that it is possible, and it comes back to this basic question:

Do you believe in the risen Lord because of the resurrection or do you believe in the resurrection because of the risen Lord?

In other words: Is your faith based on experience or evidence? I recognize that for most of us it is some combination of the two. With this in mind, it would be perfectly plausible to say that no argument can make us lose our faith because no rational argument is equipped to disprove our personal experience, and even if our rational arguments were sufficiently challenged, our experience would keep us true to the hope inside us.

Now, this hasn't really addressed the question of whether we can be true to ourselves if we set restrictions on our mind, areas which we won't approach because they could cause us to stumble in our faith. Of course you might be thinking about barriers on our thought life that we set up in order to avoid fundamental purity issues. These are not what we are discussing. Rather, I'm referring to the barriers purely set around the intellect.

There is a passage in Les Miserables in which the narrator describes Monseigneur Bienvenu's approach to Christian thinking and living. It casts an interesting light on this discussion:

"There are geniuses who, in the fathomless depths of abstraction and pure speculation -- situated, so to speak, above all dogmas -- present their ideas to God. Their prayer audaciously offers an argument. Their worship questions. This is direct religion, filled with anxiety and responsibility for those who would scale its walls.
Human thought has no limit. At its risk and peril, it analyzes and dissects its own fascination....there are men on earth -- if they are nothing more -- who distinctly perceive the heights of the absolute in the horizon of their contemplation and who have the terrible vision of the infinite mountain. Monseigneur Bienvenu was not one of those men. Monseigneur Bienvenu was not a genius. He would have dreaded those sublime heights from which even some very great men like Swedenborg and Pascal have slipped into insanity. Certainly, these tremendous reveries have their moral use; and by these arduous routes there is an approach to ideal perfection. But for his part, he took the short cut -- the Gospels."

I feel like Victor Hugo's "heights of the absolute" are very similar to the questions, conundrums, and arguments about which I am speaking, and in his novel, the most Godly man most will ever encounter in literature preferred the simplicity of the gospel. As Hugo points out, however, they can be of immense value to those who dare approach.

For me it comes down to an issue of timing. It is acceptable to say, "I can't deal with that question right now" but it is never okay to say "I will never consider that question/argument." We must be strong in our faith, but often, when the timing is right, periods of confusion brought on by these "heights of the absolute," once overcome by the clarity which only the Holy Spirit can bring, can lead to types of growth that can be reached by no other means.