Imago Dei

From BWC:

What bothered me most was the notion that fact is an authority in itself. That all people have to do when in disagreement is find out what the facts are, to step outside their respective stances and see the topic in an objective light, and truth will be made known to all who question. This was the Chaplains method, proving that the resurrection was an undeniable fact, therefore worthy to be believed. What he didn’t seem to understand, what many refuse to accept even today, is that objectivity is impossible. What one believes will determine more about what he accepts as fact than what he accepts as fact will determine about what he believes. The cause and effect is reversed.

Maybe I can see things a little clearer than some because I am too young to have let the age of fact, of Scientific Reasoning, sink on me with a firm grip. Or maybe I have just been reading too many British Christian writers. Who knows. I could be completely wrong about everything as well, that is one claim on objectivity. I spend as much time as anyone wondering and questioning, but when something seems clear I can’t easily hold it inside.

[…]

Newbigin’s writing coached me on the concept some sociologists refer to as the plausibility structure. The plausibility structure, for the purposes of Newbigin’s writing, are the beliefs and ideas that are accepted as true within a culture, the foundation for accepting or rejecting what can be accepted as ‘fact’ by asking the question “is it plausible?” Every person, whether they admit it or not, filters the information they take in each day based on the plausibility structure from which they operate, far from any such thing as an objective viewpoint. Each society also has a reigning plausibility structure, a dominant worldview that allows for masses to interact and communicate, functioning on and filtering information inflow based on what could be called common sense. The problem for Christians is that not all sense is common, and Christianity preaches ‘facts’ that are not at all kosher with the reigning plausibility structures - especially those of the descending Scientific Method and the rising Religious Pluralism in the Western world. But instead of fighting for the Christian worldview, bearing a plausibility structure of its own, many have fought to prove Christianity triumphant within the confines of other worldviews, watering down the messages and manufacturing evidence to make it fit. Newbigin says that Christians have co-opted the Gospel by trying to prove its viability under the plausibility structure of Science for the past decades. If you ask me, we are still guilty today.

[…]

I looked up the news (CNN and FOXnews, just to be fair). The Pope’s sermon, people suffering worldwide, another thirty killed from violence across this war-torn country, a minister murdered somewhere. How does one make sense of this history? What are the facts? Should American forces remain in Iraq? What level of corruption sits over our government, or any government? Is there any good news? I knew that the things I felt about these issues were dependent on the facts I knew about them, and I considered what I knew and how much my worldview played a role in accepting those facts. How much have I regarded as fact solely because it fit easily with what I already believed? How much have I rejected? And, if I can handle the answer, through which lens have I been looking?

I think this guy (Zach Binsfield, stationed in Iraq) has hit the nail square on the head.

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