Overdetermined

I've just returned from an eight-day silent retreat in Durban. What an experience! I probably won't blog too much about it, but wanted to mention a lovely book I picked up towards the end of the retreat. It's M. Scott Peck's Searching for Stones. As he writes in the opening pages, it's a kind of autobiography in that it's about a three week trip he and his wife take in Great Britain. As the trip unfolds he explores some of his ideas about philosophy, psychology, spirituality and life.

One of the central themes that runs through the book is the idea that everything is overdetermined. In other words, for everything that happens there are many causes or many reasons. When we just give one reason for something happening, we over-simplify which in many cases can be stunting or even dangerous.

For example, if we say the reason there is an upsurge in crime in South Africa is because young black youth are aggressive we're missing the complexity of the situation. There may well be a high level of aggression within certain demographic groups in South Africa, but it more likely that there is an overdetermination of causes, from unemployment, to a break down in family structures, to a natural movement in the beginning phases of a democracy, to a breakdown in traditional values, to an unjust social system, etc etc.

Throughout the book he describes the many possible reasons why certain things may or may not have happened. He often draws on logic, history, current affairs, evidence, experiential knowledge and a range of others things, to bring a depth to any phenomena. The one of greatest interest to him and his wife is why prehistoric people in Great Britain built these magnificent megalithic structures (such as Stonehenge), hence the name of the book, Searching for Stones. But he is also interested in questions such as why he and his wife have stayed together all these years when he was unfaithful to her, and why certain of his clients (in his work as therapist) reacted in certain ways to various treatments.

I found this an excellent read and highly recommend it!

Everyone's a believer

Kevin and I have attended a group called TGIF a number of times. This is a group of philisophically minded people who meet at various venues in Joburg and Pretoria to listen to a short presentation on a variety of thought-provoking topics and discuss these, largely from a Christian perspective. The organiser of these events, Thorsten, normally precedes the weekly TGIF email-update with something similarly thought-provoking and I appreciated what he wrote this week:

The term "unbeliever" is sometimes not particularly helpful and potentially misleading. It wrongly suggests that some people don't hold beliefs, while others choose some or other belief as an optional "add-on" to the facts of existence. In this paradigm, it is unsurprising that people would dismiss "belief" or "faith" as superfluous. More truthfully, however, we should recognise that all people have beliefs, though not all beliefs are necessarily "religious".

Just about everyone holds some beliefs about how we can know reality (reason, intuition, tradition, revelation, ...), what type of universe we live in (fluke, illusion, creation, ...), our identity (product of evolution, fertiliser, one with the universe, I am because we are, made in God's image, ...), our core problem (ignorance, desire, religion, evil spirits, rebellion, ...), the solution (enlightenment, science, appeasement, voluntary extinction, atonement, grace, ...), and so on.

We all have basic presuppositions regarding these key questions of life, and to do so is to hold beliefs. Even the sceptic lives life making some assumptions about the reality in which she lives and about how knowledge does and does not work. People never move from unbelief to belief or vice-versa, but rather from one set of beliefs to another. Everyone's a believer.

Happy birthday!

I’m using the public space of my blog to wish my good friend a very happy birthday! We wish both Jacomien and her twin sister, Salomè, a great day and even better year ahead.

Jacomien, we've thoroughly enjoyed your sense of humour, your deep and insightful ways of looking at the world and your endless, rather bizarre stories of association so many of the places we visit together seem to inspire. Thanks for the past few years of friendship and here's to many more!

Hostile Christian Bloggers

I've been rather disturbed these past few months with the hostility expressed by Christians towards others on their own blogs as well as in the comments they leave on others' blogs. Kevin often says I shouldn't take it too seriously as those bloggers may well just be kids or lonely, isolated individuals without any friends, for all we know! Steve Hayes makes the point on the Emerging Africa site that these kinds of people don't represent anyone except themselves.

In this post, Steve refers specifically to the blog Discerning the World, where the writers say rather malicious and unfair things about the Amahoro conference. Kevin has often been on the receiving end of hostile and cruel comments by Christians on his blog, and has recently been singled out in a rather hurtful post by the writer of the blog Beautiful Redemption, which Kevin writes about here. I also wrote a response to Heather, which I'll paste here verbatim:

Dear Heather and all the other people who have commented here. I appreciate the way everyone has engaged so passionately on this blog. The danger with blogging is that we don't see each other face-to-face and as a result we sometimes speak in a way that we wouldn't were we to be, say, sitting together over coffee. The post referred to here about the Potter and the Clay were written by my husband out of a long and difficult journey that we and others shared over some ten or more years. It has been a very precious and heartfelt journey and I respect Kevin so much for his integrity on this journey even though he hasn't reached the same decision I have (which is to follow Christ). I have also admired the way Kevin has always spoken with such gentleness and respect to Christians and people that believe differently from himself on his blog. Unfortunately others have not been as gracious towards him. I encourage us as Christians to be more gracious, more loving, more kind, more good, and more gentle in our blogging. Sometimes we get so caught up in the truth that we forget to speak it in love. Blessings and love to you all.

I should probably just let all this go. Discussing these things on our blogs gives these bloggers and their blogs only more attention and perhaps fuels what should really just be encouraged to die down. Yet I also feel that there needs to be a certain level of accountability in this kind of shared public space. I would certainly intervene if Christians were to call out hostile things to Kevin or other unbelieving friends of mine on the street, and similarly feel I need to intervene when this happens on the web. What do you think? What should our response to this kind of behaviour by Christians on-line be? Beyond my frustration with such behaviour I would really like to practice what I preach and live out love even, or most especially, in these situations.