A Better Way of Knowing

Christian apologetics and children's stories.

Every so often, mainstream media trots out the “God” question again. They devote documentaries or special programs posing provocative taglines, more or less asking, “Can science prove the existence of God?” They gather experts in evolutionary biology, archaeology, and even psychology to determine the answer, drawing on empirical evidence and “measurable” data.

The answer invariably amounts to what my biology teacher said in college: “Creation science is fruitcake science.” In a single hour, they disprove God’s existence (yet again).

They allow you to still believe in all that spiritual stuff if it makes you feel better. Some Christians accept these terms without much backchat, saying, “It’s a leap of faith” or, “I just know in my heart that it’s true.”

I think we can do better. 

Same Tools, Same Rules

What makes me go a little crazy is that both sides operate based on the same set of assumptions. Both camps apparently take for granted that, in this material world, if God exists, he should obviously just tell us. He should make a downright unassailable case, easy and obvious, open and shut. He should placate the centralization of our conscious reasoning minds.

Of course, there are plenty of Christians who engage in intelligent apologetics, design theory, and reasons for faith, and that’s very needed. But even then, we sometimes operate according to the same rules as our opponents. We tend to assume that we must formulate reasons, arguments, and proofs from within the same materialist’s sandbox. They have science, we have science.

But I think there’s a totally different sandbox. 

These rigged assumptions actually reflect far more about us than about God. It often merely betrays our own selective views about how knowledge is passed on.

I am not at all denying the importance of logic, facts, and rhetoric. I wouldn’t be writing these articles if so—but I think there’s another paradigm.

How do we Know the Truth? 

Whenever a character enters a new world for the first time in a Lewis fantasy novel, their initial reaction is paramount. The manner in which they take in this new world is no throwaway point. It speaks volumes, revealing everything about them and almost nothing about the new world itself. 

When Uncle Andrew first entered Narnia in The Magicians Nephew, his senses were perfectly intact, ears and eyes fully functional, sensory data downloading normally. I’m sure he would have passed his yearly physical. 

When he encountered a singing lion, he saw and heard it clearly… at first. The lion literally brought this fresh new world into existence through song, devastatingly beautiful music. But Uncle Andrew knew full well that lions don’t sing. It says so. He tuned it out. In no time, he convinced himself that the lion was not singing but roaring. 

Later, when the animals of that world started talking, he underwent a similar process of self-deception. He stopped up his ears, stubbornly refusing to take in information that contradicted all his assumptions about reality. Soon, he could no longer hear animal speech either, only stock zoo noises. 

Uncle Andrew’s sensory data and reasoning mind betrayed him. 

This is what we all do. We may not encounter singing lions every time we walk out the front door, but we might as well. The universe is constantly speaking to us in a similar way - through metaphors and symbols and song. The mountains tell of God’s majesty and faithfulness. A great star in the sky sends star juice into the good earth, and pineapples appear. No one can put that in a test tube. 

But we have changed all the metaphors for knowing. We have put on crisp white robes and dubbed creation with academic words and sciency labels to deceive and fool ourselves more conveniently. 

Test tubes, reason, and science place us at the center, making us arbiters of our own knowledge.

But we can be duped.

The world around us sings of God’s existence, and we are freakishly preoccupied with whether we can lick it or analyze its DNA. We are flattered by our own gimmicks and tricks. We assume that material observations generate an unbiased, objective view of reality. The truth is, we are constantly seduced, flattered, manipulated, and conned by our own eyeballs. 

We are the blind madness of moderns who look at clear ultrasound images of preborn babies with full intact organs, separate DNA, scientifically monitored hiccups and heartbeats and and call it a “clump of cells.”

As Aslan told Uncle Andrew, “What you see and hear depends on the sort of person you are.”

There is a Better Way of Knowing

The world is full of metaphors that speak of God’s existence and character. Honey is like wisdom, Jesus is a door, a shepherd, and a lamb. “Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; your judgments are like the great deep;” (Psalm 36:5-6).

God everywhere speaks to us. As C S Lewis elsewhere said: “We can ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks everywhere incognito.”

What Stories Should We Then Tell?

If you’re paying attention, you may recall that I am working through a short series on the importance of giving children the right kinds of stories (you can find the first post on the problem with morality tales here). This may seem like a subject change. It’s not. 

When we accept only a highly rational, modern view of reality, this view is reflected in the kinds of stories we tell. 

We keep perennially and rather officiously trying to drop all that literary-type stuff. To make the Bible and stories easier. As Lewis put it in his essay Myth Became Fact, to “just dispense with myth, throw away the hull, and keep the kernel of religion…”

“The long, Platonic tradition, then, taught Lewis two things: to see the world as a symphony but always to take this symphony (or cathedral) as a symbol or sacrament or transposition, which gestures at something beyond. The world itself is but a sketchy translation of a poem that no one has ever heard.” [1]

We think that a real God would just tell us his existence in clear, straight bullet points, four spiritual laws, or in a helpful, shiny pamphlet. And that’s how we, therefore, tell stories—“dispensing” with all story elements.

But God seems to think that we learn best when get alongside the truth, indirectly, through myth, metaphor, and magic. The Medievals understood that we learn more deeply through metaphor. They considered “The lowest level of taking in the world is sense perception.” [1]

We have allowed ourselves to become a Christianized version of Uncle Andrew’s great-grandchildren when, instead, we need to learn how to tell stories that mimic the lion’s song. 

Stay tuned for more on this topic! 

1. Jason Baxter, “The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis”