Wise Words from a Pretty Boy

First of all, a point of clarification: I am not the "pretty boy" referenced in the title of this post. I use that title to describe a young Hollywood actor, Chace Crawford, recently voted "Hottest Bachelor" by People magazine. His wise words, which I will quote later in this post, are an oasis of rationality in the inchoate worldview propounded by the cultural elite (include Hollywood, which makes his words all the more oasis-like).

In a nutshell, for several decades (perhaps much longer) Western culture has posed doubt to be the summum bonum of life. Our current cultural quest, it seems, is to rid our minds and hearts of any attachment to "absolute truths" as foundational to existence. This is the ultimate end of Western "individualism" - ridding our lives of any external, transcendant standards so that each individual may "define his or herself" however he or she wants, without any risk of accountability or judgment.

This can be seen in two current postmodern philosophies. Neo-pragmatism avers that the only standard of value in life is "what works for me." Deconstructionism propounds the meaning-laden theory that nothing means anything, so I can make anything mean whatever I want.

This is seen also in international politics, in which our current President seems utterly unwilling to take a clear moral stance towards the evil regimes in the Middle East, but only expresses his doubt about American goodness. In fact, it seems that any sense of absolute morality has been ejected from political discourse.

Hollywood recently put forth two films that explicitly address this topic.

The film Doubt, featuring riveting performances by its four cast members, superficially deals with a case of child-molestation by a Catholic priest. But the deeper issue in the film is the utter inability of people to have absolute certainty about anything. An older nun (superlatively portrayed by Meryl Streep) is the only character in the film who displays a sense of firm conviction about her faith; yet the climax of the movie comes when she despairingly cries, "I have such doubts!"

Religulous is comedian Bill Maher's satirical attempt to poke holes in the very notion of religion itself. In the film, he interacts with individuals who represent only the most absurd elements of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and other faiths. He does all of this to prove that religion is pointless, that those who endorse it are ignorant rubes, and that it is much better to live in perpetual doubt.

Sadly, this attitude is infecting the Church as well, with "Jesus Seminar" followers destroying the credibility of Scripture and with some (though not all) Emergent Christians expressing disdain for orthodox Christian teachings or for the exclusivity of Christ as the unique Savior of humankind. I still haven't decided whether these phenomena are the result of Christians' prideful unwillingness to submit to the authority of God's revelation, or the result of Christians' sad proclivity for desiring to be "with it" even more than they desire to be "with God."

In any case, it's my opinion that the following simple quote from pretty boy Chace Crawford ought to be seen as prophetic to all disciples of Jesus Christ:

Doubt your doubts before you doubt your beliefs.

I called the quote simple but it is, in fact, quite profound. Think of it this way: When you are confronted with a proposition that claims to be an absolute truth, and your initial reaction is to doubt that truth, today's culture would say that you should go with your doubt not just about that particular absolute but about all absolutes.

Chace Crawford's words give us a different piece of advice. When we doubt a proposition that claims to be absolute, we should first ask ourselves why do we doubt it? Is it because we have thought carefully about the questions raised by the proposition, and have we looked at it logically? Or is it because there is something deep within us that doesn't want to acknowledge its truth?

If we reject a truth claim, is it because we have found a more logical proposition to answer the questions is raises? Or does the proposition so unsettle us that we'd rather dismiss it than deal honestly with its claims?

The ancient and medieval philosophers put it this way: We should not seek to conform the truth to my own mind and soul; rather, we should seek to conform my own mind and soul to the Truth. It is objective truth that critiques me, not I who critiques objective truth. When I am confronted with a proposition that claims to be absolute, like 2 + 2 = 4, I have only two options: I can conform my mind to that truth and accept it, or I can live in rebellion against its reality. There is no middle ground.

We Christians--indeed, all human beings--have been seeking to find middle ground in matters of faith for too long. In reality, we have only two options: we can doubt the Christian faith and reject it (as much of our culture is doing), or we can follow Chace Crawford's advice to doubt our doubts, and live boldly (not apologetically) in the truth of the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ.