Cultivating Wisdom (3)

The practicality of wisdom

A person once asked G. K. Chesterton, the late 19^th and early 20^th century writer, philosopher, and Christian apologist this question: “Sir, if you were marooned on a deserted island and you could only have one book, what would it be? Would it be the Bible? Would it be the collected works of Shakespeare?” Chesterton answered, “Neither. I would want a manual on boatbuilding.”

Knowing: What, How, and Why? (9)

“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” John 13:17

Knowledge and life

We should not take for granted either the idea of knowing something or the various ways we arrive at that knowledge.

Increasingly, certain members of the secular scientific community want to insist that their discipline alone can provide reliable, usable knowledge. This view, which is referred to as “scientism”, is not shared by all scientists, at least, not openly. Many non-scientists, however, are willing to accept that claim, so they look or appeal to science – material or social – to shape and validate their policies or claims. Yesterday I saw a commercial on TV for an outdoor cooker, which closed with the narrator saying that “4 out of 5” outdoor chefs preferred the features of this product. This is an appeal to social science to validate a claim about the superiority of this product.

Knowing: What, How, and Why? (8)

So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Acts 10:34, 35

Ways of knowing

We have been considering the various ways people come to know what they know. Because human beings are so dependent on knowledge, we need to hone the skills whereby we acquire, analyze, sort, store, and use the knowledge we require. I have been arguing that there are many ways to gain the information we need, among them, the methods of science.

Cultivating Wisdom (2)

An inadequate view of suffering

Philip Yancey, in Where is God When it Hurts?, quotes Helmut Thielicke, a German minister who survived Nazism and World War II, as answering the question, “What [did] he [see] as the greatest weakness among American Christians?” in this manner: he replied, “They have an inadequate view of suffering”.

We have a tendency in America to avoid pain at all costs. Advertisers capitalize (literally) on this, bombarding us with images of instantaneous remedies for pain. When a child is rejected by her friends, we are instructed, via ads, to comfort her with soup. When we feel lonely, we are told to join the beautiful people at the bar and chug-a-lug a few beers. When we have a slight headache, we are to rush to the medicine cabinet as soon as possible and swallow—our choice—various brightly packaged analgesics. We are told quite disingenuously that more hospitals prefer one pain reliever over another when in reality the hospitals who recommend this product receive hefty discounts from the drug’s manufacturer.

Cultivating Wisdom (1)

The nature of learning
Contemporary American dialogue in almost all disciplines seems characterized by rancor, bitter ad hominem attacks, and acrimonious, ideologically driven arguments. We hear a plethora of opinions but not much in the way of wisdom.

Knowing: What, How, and Why? (7)

My mouth shall speak wisdom; the meditation of my heart shall be understanding. I will incline my ear to a proverb; I will solve my riddle to the music of the lyre. Psalm 49:3, 4

Not by science alone

We’ve been considering various ways that we come to know the things we know. We must not overlook or minimize the role of authorities, experience, reason, and imagination in helping us come to know the world and our place in it. While we actually know quite a bit, very little of what we know has been acquired by strict application of the scientific method. This does not invalidate the scientific method as a way of knowing. Rather, I am making the claim that there are other ways of knowing that are equally valid and therefore should be given at least as much attention – in raising children and in making our own way in the world – as the method of science.