A Response To A Friend

A dear friend of mine, and one I have enjoyed the dis­cus­sion we have shared, has decided that I am not seek­ing the truth and will no longer dis­cuss the­ol­ogy, phi­los­o­phy, and spir­i­tu­al­ity with me. The fol­low­ing ideas are what he sent me, and I want to address them.

It’s inter­est­ing that you have already revealed your inten­tions before you have even began an hon­est study of Ibn ‘Arabi’s work [Sufism/Taoism]. Your inten­tion is to find some­thing wrong with his ideas, to see how they do not agree with your agree­ments, and then to dis­agree. The result is that you will fur­ther solid­ify your own view­points and beliefs, and achieve a feel­ing of right­ness and hence a sense of safety.

In doing apolo­get­ics, which I why I orig­i­nally asked him for arti­cles, is to defend the truth. The dif­fer­ence between my friend and I is that I have found the truth. “Truth” is not sub­jec­tive, rel­a­tive, or per­cep­tive only to the real­ity of the indi­vid­ual per­son. My friend fails to real­ize, as I have told him, that I was a pro­fess­ing Bud­dhist, Taoist, Uni­tar­ian Uni­ver­sal­ist, Post­mod­ernist, and on and on. The search for the truth was not based on one fact to which I was given as a child and I hence­forth spent my life defend­ing some­thing that I never under­stood why I believe what I hold dear (cf. the last post).

He fails to real­ize that my career in apolo­get­ics con­tin­ues to give me pain, anguish, tears, grief, and the like. To con­tin­u­ally ques­tion your beliefs is a very hard process, and that is exactly what apolo­get­ics is. I still strug­gle to rec­on­cile my for­mer new age beliefs with that of Chris­tian­ity. He has illog­i­cally assumed that my inten­tion was not to look intently upon the ideas in Ibn ‘Arabi’s work (to which I say Tao­ism had the great­est impact on me of all my reli­gious stud­ies out­side of Chris­tian­ity; Lao Tze was a stud).

The fact of the mat­ter is that the log­i­cal fal­lacy that I revealed on your blog is insu­per­a­ble [the tran­scen­dence of God]. But for­tu­nately, I have and will for­ever cease all activ­i­ties on there. And as far as dis­cussing phi­los­o­phy, the­ol­ogy, spir­i­tu­al­ity, etc. with you, this too will cease. It seems more and more that we have noth­ing to learn from one another anymore.

The next post I do will is to con­front his accu­sa­tion of the appar­ent “log­i­cal fal­lacy” of the Chris­t­ian God (in fact, I’ve had his ques­tion saved for a while, but my study of the fore­knowl­edge of God has kept me from address­ing it as soon as I’d like). But back to the accu­sa­tions from his letter.

Why is it that we have noth­ing to learn from each other any­more? I learn the most from peo­ple who are devout in their beliefs. Truth­fully, I don’t try and go “find” truth from peo­ple who don’t even have the faintest idea of what that is. He has also appar­ently for­got­ten how much I am indeed open to dis­cussing ideas with him. I ask my friend, how much I have I talked about Jesus around you? Lit­tle to noth­ing, I’m always inter­ested in hear­ing his new ideas. From Sci­en­tol­ogy to Sufism I have been inter­ested in what he has been study­ing. The most I’ve talked about my beliefs were that of my reformed the­ol­ogy at our last meeting.

It’s a shame that some­one would stop talk­ing to some­one just because they thought they couldn’t learn some­thing from some­one else (nar­cis­sis­tic view). My friend’s not there when I spend hours study­ing dif­fer­ent reli­gions, philoso­phies, and other world views. Just because some­one has found the truth doesn’t mean we should stop try­ing to under­stand where some­one else stands (one of the core ten­ants of apolo­get­ics). Fur­ther, my friend him­self is doing exactly what I am attempt­ing to do. I know he took a class on the “com­plete” gospels; my guess is that he wasn’t gen­uinely look­ing for truth in that class, but more­over to fur­ther his cyn­i­cism towards Chris­t­ian theology.

The closer one gets to some­thing, the bet­ter one will under­stand it. So, with this in mind, to totally under­stand some­thing one would need per­fect affin­ity. This means you get so close you become this thing (some call this love). And to do this requires will­ing­ness and an abil­ity to let go of one’s view­points and beliefs. Since your unwill­ing­ness is evi­dent before the endeavor has even began, a study of Ibn ‘Arabi’s work would be use­less for you. But, good luck nonetheless.

I remem­ber the exact time when I did my Descartes: “Cog­ito ergo sum.” He speaks as though I never went through such a process (which appar­ently would prove he wasn’t lis­ten­ing to some of our con­ver­sa­tions). My unwill­ing­ness is not that I do not desire to learn, under­stand, and artic­u­late a view­point; but rather I am held fast to the Truth (of which I am grate­ful for). I spent my time out there look­ing around the bot­tom­less, dark pit of intel­lec­tual uncer­tainty. The inter­est­ing fact is that, if my friend ever does dis­cover some form of truth, he him­self will take such pre­sup­po­si­tions into such stud­ies. Whether he will acknowl­edge it or not (which I doubt he will); in fact, if he doubts such a claim then that means he has not man­i­fested any truth for him­self. Oth­er­wise, he would fight for it. (Also, wasn’t he doing just that when he was claim­ing log­i­cal fal­lac­ies of Christianity?)

I love the friend­ship I’ve had with this man. I leave dis­cus­sions excited, stim­u­lated, and re-kindles my desire to study dif­fer­ent thoughts and philoso­phies. This let­ter was an attack directly on my char­ac­ter as a friend and a fel­low seeker of truth. The dif­fer­ence to this whole mat­ter is that, I have found it. And if I need affin­ity (as he is appar­ently pro­claim­ing), why is he deny­ing the very affin­ity that spurred on our friend­ship for so long? And if you are to use a word (in which he him­self didn’t declare the means for the ends but only pro­claimed that “some” see it that way) like love, you really need to qual­ify a word that strong.

I hope the con­ver­sa­tion doesn’t cease due to a small dis­agree­ment. I was not attack­ing his search for truth, only that I wanted to see how the world­view he pos­sess con­trasts with my own. If he were to stop talk­ing with me, he would be com­mit­ting the error he is claim­ing that I am committing.

The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth. He will ful­fill the desire of those who fear Him; He will also hear their cry and will save them. The LORD keeps all who love Him, But all the wicked He will destroy. My mouth will speak the praise of the LORD, And all flesh will bless His holy name for­ever and ever.
Psalms 145:18–21