What It Would Take: Or Bullocks To Christianity!
August 20, 2015 at 1:35 pm
(This post was last modified: August 20, 2015 at 1:40 pm by Manalive.)
The following is an essay penned in two halves: the first half some necessary intellectual gymnastics, the second some necessary play. Both I hoped to utilize as effective tools in demonstrating my thesis: should Christianity amount to fallacious reasoning, I would still remain on the side of Christianity. If Christianity be a comedy of errors, at least it is a comedy, or more appropriately, a tragicomedy. Interestingly, both portions were written at different points in the year, the latter portion in the last few hours, the former in the last few months. For any stark incongruities in prose or style I apologize profusely. Just pretend I was away on holiday for a while. Holidays do that to me sometimes.
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“I want to say to you, about myself, that I am a child of this age, a child of unfaith and scepticism, and probably (indeed I know it) shall remain so to the end of my life. How dreadfully has it tormented me (and torments me even now) this longing for faith, which is all the stronger for the proofs I have against it. And yet God gives me sometimes moments of perfect peace; in such moments I love and believe that I am loved; in such moments I have formulated my creed, wherein all is clear and holy to me. This creed is extremely simple; here it is: I believe that there is nothing lovelier, deeper, more sympathetic, more rational, more manly, and more perfect than the Saviour; I say to myself with jealous love that not only is there no one else like Him, but that there could be no one. I would even say more: If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky in a letter to Mme. N. D. Fonvisin.
“Foolishness! Absolute foolishness!” I muttered to myself, “How can you be a rational human being, always following the evidence where it leads—even if that evidence is away from Christ—and still be a Christian? It just makes no sense! You’d be denying the truth, and the truth is of utmost importance, is it not?” Such was my reaction to the above quotation. Fyodor Dostoevsky, famed Russian novelist and existentialist philosopher, author of The Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot as well as many other works of Russian literature, penned some curious words there. Assuming that Christianity is false, it seems that Dostoevsky would remain a Christian. End of story. Is there nothing more to say on the issue? Would it not be considered foolishness on my part to believe in something that is not in line with the truth? Can I remain a rational follower of Christ and retain this kind of faith in spite of the evidence?
Dostoevsky’s words, like a freshly opened channel, came flooding to my mind in a brief exchange with a friend of mine. An apologist was coming to my university to give a series of lectures on God, science, and the new atheism. In preparation for the Q&A period of the lectures, I asked my atheist friend if he had any questions for the apologist. His question was roughly this: If I could prove to you that all your arguments for God’s existence are just errors in reasoning, would you change your mind about Christianity? The question bogs my mind as I write it out; but the query was twofold. In addition to the previous question, he also asked if we should give reasons for what we believe (arguments, evidences, etc.) even if these reasons are not what got us to believe in the first place.
Fair questions, I think, yet they are also puzzling. After a few conversations and some time to think it through on my own, I think I have an answer to both inquiries. In no way do I claim authority on these questions, as they are more fitting for those who have dedicated years of study and practice to them. I have in mind the philosophers, theologians, monks, and the elderly fellow in the church’s congregation. At any rate, I would like to present my answer if not for the benefit of encouraging my fellow brothers and sisters the faith, then for the practice of articulating a view in order to have it changed this evening.
My atheist friend’s first question, concerning changing my mind about Christianity should it be proven false on reasonable grounds, puzzles me the most. On the surface, it reads as an innocent inquiry, which I still take it to be; it’s my understanding that he means no harm in asking it. However, it hums a curious tone about the nature of belief that makes it rather difficult to answer in the first place. The question, as I see it, implies that belief deals primarily with the intellect. If the intellect can be modified, then the belief can be modified as well. Now, this may be all well and good for other ideas, but when you’re dealing with religions such as Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, the intellect is not enough to change a belief.
Before I press on, I must define what I understand a belief to be. My understanding of a belief is twofold: there is belief with respect to what one holds to be true—a philosophical belief— and belief with respect to what one acts upon—a psychological belief. Belief with respect to what one holds to be true concerns itself with the truth or falsity of propositions. I believe the sky is blue like I believe in the existence of cheese: I think that the propositions are true. “The sky is blue” and “Cheese exists” are both propositions that can either be true or false; my belief with respect to these propositions hinges on what I think to be true. On the other hand, belief with respect to what one acts upon concerns itself with the actions of human beings. These are beliefs that govern what we do, how we interact with one another in dialogue, in private quarters, in large communities, and so on. One example of this should suffice to demonstrate the distinction. For Christmas this past year, I had a PlayStation 4 on my Amazon wish list. I’m not as big of a video game player as I used to be, so putting a PS4 on my Christmas list seemed a radical decision to me. To be completely honest, I had no expectations that I would actually get the PlayStation 4: I did no prior research of the games, the mechanics, the software—absolutely no research was done on my part. In other words, I had a belief that I would not get the PlayStation 4 which I acted upon. I was happily surprised to receive it so generously from my mom, her husband, and my brother.
So much by way of distinguishing between my twofold understanding of a belief. Now, it should be noted that I do not take these two kinds of belief as mutually exclusive. I do not think it is always the case that accepting a proposition as either true or false has no bearing on our affections. I think the opposite is more often the case: our beliefs influence our affections. Belief with respect to what one holds to be true and belief with respect to what one acts upon, then, are mutually inclusive; that is, a belief can be developed with both respects.
This, I think, is important to understanding my forthcoming answer to my friend’s question. Because a belief can be developed both with respect to what one holds to be true and what one acts upon, it is not always the case that if I were to change what I hold to be true, then I will change the way I behave. Psychological belief seems to imply a personal connection with a certain way of living. Beliefs of this respect are what we address when we wish to change certain behavioral patters of ours, especially if they are harmful for us. An easy example of this is in addictions. For instance, you could convince me that smoking is poor for my health. You could even convince me of this after years of developing a killer smoking habit. However, you could not as easily convince me that my smoking habit as a way of life ought to stop. Psychological beliefs are a matter of personal attachment to a referent, some kind of object, and progressive stabilizing. In other words, how accustomed I am to living in this way will not change as easily as my intellectual belief that it is a bad idea for me to smoke. So, by way of analogy, there are instances in which a belief in one respect does not necessitate the presence of a belief in the other respect.
Next, I am to establish that Christianity is not one of these instances in which a belief in one respect does not necessitate the presence of a belief in the other respect. In better words, I need to demonstrate that Christianity is a religion of the head and the heart. This point is certainly debatable. Philosophers and theologians throughout history have disagreed on this issue, dividing the perspectives into two primary camps: fideism and what I will call rationalism. Fideism, as I understand it, is the idea that faith is all that is necessary for belief in God. Some thinkers may add that it is the absurdity of Christianity that makes it true. It is not the primary concern of fideists that Christianity is reasonable, rather that it is simply accepted as a way of life. Perhaps this is a crude interpretation of the fideist position; I apologize if that is the case. Rationalism refers to the idea that belief in God must be completely and utterly reasonable. On this view, there is little to no room for paradoxes and simple leaps of faith; it all must be grounded in some sort of reason. For the rationalist, it is the reasonableness or rationality of Christianity that makes it true. There are in-between camps in this debate, those that hold to the idea that belief in God ought to be both rational and based on some practice of faith. I personally belong to this in between camp.
And it is in this in between camp that I pitch my tent because here I find streams of living water. The pasture is wild with emerald blades of grass, the wind tenderly caressing each blade as though it were one large love affair. Here I see the trees are firm, resolute like soldiers keeping watch over the castle that is their forest. They terrorize by their mere presence, though under their terror I know I am safe. The air seems solid, dense with a definite dynamism which indulges its inhalers with idiosyncrasies too foolish for a rationalist and too reasonable for a fideist. I laugh because the sight is comedic: everything is wild, nothing is tame. The world is a farce; I have become farcical. This is a beautiful world, a world that can be measured in architecture and in awe, in quarts and in quartz, in centimeters and celebration. I very much like it here, because this is where the evidence leads, not to some hodgepodge of rationalistic propositions I happen to hold as true via valid or even sound syllogisms. Nor is the evidence a collection of diarrheic, haphazard journals of one discovering one neat thing here and another there. Heavens, no! Logic is the recess of our minds in this beautiful world: evidence is a proper escort when it affirms our intellect and affirms our absurdities, that evidence has purpose not to affirm propositions but to affirm persons. In this world we see evidence come to life; we don’t beg lives to come to the evidence. Up here it is like a breath of fresh air, an air from where I know not it comes and know not where it goes, but which enlivens my soul and clears my mind to clumsily follow its lead. Even the folly of God is wisdom here.
I hope the explanation is clear. I spent a good deal of this essay trying to set out some important distinctions between propositional and psychological belief, accepting things and living in acceptance of those things. In answer to my friend’s first question, we can summarize my response thusly. It would take much more than mere evidence for me to abandon Christianity. I happily accept the evidence, because evidence gives me reason to be happy, because it leads me to the person of Christ in one sense or another. In order for me to exhibit any signs of abandoning the faith, you would have to commit a most heinous and blasphemous crime: flog the forestry, waste the water, conquer humanity, and become God. You will not persuade me on this matter unless you have authority and have proven yourself authoritative. And the only way you can prove yourself authoritative to me is to tell me a joke as great as this one: creature, cosmos, and Creator.
Now, I can hear the objection loud and clear: “You’re in denial! You just don’t want to be dragged out of your castle in the sky and face the brute facts of reality! Life is empirical, and we must be faithful evidentialists and follow the evidence where it leads!” The first charge is right: I am in denial, simply because I deny materialism. I don’t buy it because I think it is irrational. The second charge is even more fun, because it is precisely the castle in the sky that perfectly encapsulates the brute facts of reality. Not only are there castles in this world, but the castles can fly. Flight we can observe, castles we can examine, but for some odd reason we cannot wrap our materialistic minds around a castle that flies. Now, do I want to be dragged out of this castle in the sky? Of course not! Who would? This is a wonderful contraption, an inconveniently generous airline that transcends the laboratories and observes the observers. This second charge is ultimately a charge based on preference, which is a fairly weak thing unless empowered by persuasion; and, therefore, my response should also be based on preference. But my preference has been persuaded by the view from on high, and from up here nothing seems more chilling than the cackling covens of materialism. Their preference has been persuaded from down below, and from down there nothing seems more charring than the rambunctious romance of Christianity. They must persuade me, a knight in the suspended castle, that witches brew is finer than new wine.
This third charge is most necessary to address, because it roundabouts the cul-de-sac in which I, and hopefully my atheist friend, have been dancing. “Life is empirical!” is the charge. The charge itself is not an empirical claim. If it is true that life is empirical, then that must be demonstrated empirically, apart from abstraction. It would be far more fair to life and to empiricism to say that life consists of a body of observable phenomena that can and ought to be recorded. Even then Edinburgh aground would be just as empirical as Edinburgh aloft. Concerning other implications in following the evidence, several things come to mind, but I wish to only tackle one more.
Following evidence where it leads suggests that one becomes a disciple to the evidence. Wherever the evidence goes, if we were to be faithful evidentialists, we must follow. Evidence becomes the teacher and we the student. This is not a bad image. Certainly evidence can be partial in the sense that, upon examination, we alight on some revelatory discovery about something that was previously enigmatic. However, the analogy of teacher and student compared to evidence and disciple cannot mean that evidence is impartial. The evidence always has a place to go, and it is not our business to know where until we get there. We cannot stop midway and inquire of our Stoic teacher, “Rabbi, where do you take us? And why? What will it cost us to follow you even further?” We can only trust that the evidence is actually taking us someplace.
Evidence holds a unique place in Christianity. It is actually a humorous position, because it speaks when its spokespersons are silent. When the geologists are silent, even the rocks cry out. Christianity is a religion that promotes an active nature, one that is constantly pining for our attention. She screams, demands, throws tantrums, all in an attempt to preach the sacred folly of Christianity. Evidence does indeed have this power of leading someone someplace, and in Christianity, evidence lies in the hand of whoever happens to be listening to the rocks. We usually mock those who have been living under a rock for most of their lives. This is an improper perspective. It would be more fitting to eagerly sit at their feet and anticipate the Overture of the Overturned Stones.
But that is a distinctly Christian thing, I think. Apart from Christianity, nature dies; if nature dies, nature’s storytellers die. That is what we are up against: a story. Not a textbook, but a fantasy. Christianity may run contrary to some evidences, but some evidences may run contrary to good empirical Christianity. Evidence is not against the Christian; it speaks for the Christian. And yet it is Christianity that gives evidence a voice in the first place. So, if it could be proven to me that Christianity is false (a rather fiery hoop to jump through), like Dostoevsky, I would still side with Christ. Why? Because I would know him better than I would know the evidence against him. Foolishness! Absolute foolishness! Yes, but if the folly is God’s, then who am I to condemn his wisdom?
---
“I want to say to you, about myself, that I am a child of this age, a child of unfaith and scepticism, and probably (indeed I know it) shall remain so to the end of my life. How dreadfully has it tormented me (and torments me even now) this longing for faith, which is all the stronger for the proofs I have against it. And yet God gives me sometimes moments of perfect peace; in such moments I love and believe that I am loved; in such moments I have formulated my creed, wherein all is clear and holy to me. This creed is extremely simple; here it is: I believe that there is nothing lovelier, deeper, more sympathetic, more rational, more manly, and more perfect than the Saviour; I say to myself with jealous love that not only is there no one else like Him, but that there could be no one. I would even say more: If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky in a letter to Mme. N. D. Fonvisin.
“Foolishness! Absolute foolishness!” I muttered to myself, “How can you be a rational human being, always following the evidence where it leads—even if that evidence is away from Christ—and still be a Christian? It just makes no sense! You’d be denying the truth, and the truth is of utmost importance, is it not?” Such was my reaction to the above quotation. Fyodor Dostoevsky, famed Russian novelist and existentialist philosopher, author of The Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot as well as many other works of Russian literature, penned some curious words there. Assuming that Christianity is false, it seems that Dostoevsky would remain a Christian. End of story. Is there nothing more to say on the issue? Would it not be considered foolishness on my part to believe in something that is not in line with the truth? Can I remain a rational follower of Christ and retain this kind of faith in spite of the evidence?
Dostoevsky’s words, like a freshly opened channel, came flooding to my mind in a brief exchange with a friend of mine. An apologist was coming to my university to give a series of lectures on God, science, and the new atheism. In preparation for the Q&A period of the lectures, I asked my atheist friend if he had any questions for the apologist. His question was roughly this: If I could prove to you that all your arguments for God’s existence are just errors in reasoning, would you change your mind about Christianity? The question bogs my mind as I write it out; but the query was twofold. In addition to the previous question, he also asked if we should give reasons for what we believe (arguments, evidences, etc.) even if these reasons are not what got us to believe in the first place.
Fair questions, I think, yet they are also puzzling. After a few conversations and some time to think it through on my own, I think I have an answer to both inquiries. In no way do I claim authority on these questions, as they are more fitting for those who have dedicated years of study and practice to them. I have in mind the philosophers, theologians, monks, and the elderly fellow in the church’s congregation. At any rate, I would like to present my answer if not for the benefit of encouraging my fellow brothers and sisters the faith, then for the practice of articulating a view in order to have it changed this evening.
My atheist friend’s first question, concerning changing my mind about Christianity should it be proven false on reasonable grounds, puzzles me the most. On the surface, it reads as an innocent inquiry, which I still take it to be; it’s my understanding that he means no harm in asking it. However, it hums a curious tone about the nature of belief that makes it rather difficult to answer in the first place. The question, as I see it, implies that belief deals primarily with the intellect. If the intellect can be modified, then the belief can be modified as well. Now, this may be all well and good for other ideas, but when you’re dealing with religions such as Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, the intellect is not enough to change a belief.
Before I press on, I must define what I understand a belief to be. My understanding of a belief is twofold: there is belief with respect to what one holds to be true—a philosophical belief— and belief with respect to what one acts upon—a psychological belief. Belief with respect to what one holds to be true concerns itself with the truth or falsity of propositions. I believe the sky is blue like I believe in the existence of cheese: I think that the propositions are true. “The sky is blue” and “Cheese exists” are both propositions that can either be true or false; my belief with respect to these propositions hinges on what I think to be true. On the other hand, belief with respect to what one acts upon concerns itself with the actions of human beings. These are beliefs that govern what we do, how we interact with one another in dialogue, in private quarters, in large communities, and so on. One example of this should suffice to demonstrate the distinction. For Christmas this past year, I had a PlayStation 4 on my Amazon wish list. I’m not as big of a video game player as I used to be, so putting a PS4 on my Christmas list seemed a radical decision to me. To be completely honest, I had no expectations that I would actually get the PlayStation 4: I did no prior research of the games, the mechanics, the software—absolutely no research was done on my part. In other words, I had a belief that I would not get the PlayStation 4 which I acted upon. I was happily surprised to receive it so generously from my mom, her husband, and my brother.
So much by way of distinguishing between my twofold understanding of a belief. Now, it should be noted that I do not take these two kinds of belief as mutually exclusive. I do not think it is always the case that accepting a proposition as either true or false has no bearing on our affections. I think the opposite is more often the case: our beliefs influence our affections. Belief with respect to what one holds to be true and belief with respect to what one acts upon, then, are mutually inclusive; that is, a belief can be developed with both respects.
This, I think, is important to understanding my forthcoming answer to my friend’s question. Because a belief can be developed both with respect to what one holds to be true and what one acts upon, it is not always the case that if I were to change what I hold to be true, then I will change the way I behave. Psychological belief seems to imply a personal connection with a certain way of living. Beliefs of this respect are what we address when we wish to change certain behavioral patters of ours, especially if they are harmful for us. An easy example of this is in addictions. For instance, you could convince me that smoking is poor for my health. You could even convince me of this after years of developing a killer smoking habit. However, you could not as easily convince me that my smoking habit as a way of life ought to stop. Psychological beliefs are a matter of personal attachment to a referent, some kind of object, and progressive stabilizing. In other words, how accustomed I am to living in this way will not change as easily as my intellectual belief that it is a bad idea for me to smoke. So, by way of analogy, there are instances in which a belief in one respect does not necessitate the presence of a belief in the other respect.
Next, I am to establish that Christianity is not one of these instances in which a belief in one respect does not necessitate the presence of a belief in the other respect. In better words, I need to demonstrate that Christianity is a religion of the head and the heart. This point is certainly debatable. Philosophers and theologians throughout history have disagreed on this issue, dividing the perspectives into two primary camps: fideism and what I will call rationalism. Fideism, as I understand it, is the idea that faith is all that is necessary for belief in God. Some thinkers may add that it is the absurdity of Christianity that makes it true. It is not the primary concern of fideists that Christianity is reasonable, rather that it is simply accepted as a way of life. Perhaps this is a crude interpretation of the fideist position; I apologize if that is the case. Rationalism refers to the idea that belief in God must be completely and utterly reasonable. On this view, there is little to no room for paradoxes and simple leaps of faith; it all must be grounded in some sort of reason. For the rationalist, it is the reasonableness or rationality of Christianity that makes it true. There are in-between camps in this debate, those that hold to the idea that belief in God ought to be both rational and based on some practice of faith. I personally belong to this in between camp.
And it is in this in between camp that I pitch my tent because here I find streams of living water. The pasture is wild with emerald blades of grass, the wind tenderly caressing each blade as though it were one large love affair. Here I see the trees are firm, resolute like soldiers keeping watch over the castle that is their forest. They terrorize by their mere presence, though under their terror I know I am safe. The air seems solid, dense with a definite dynamism which indulges its inhalers with idiosyncrasies too foolish for a rationalist and too reasonable for a fideist. I laugh because the sight is comedic: everything is wild, nothing is tame. The world is a farce; I have become farcical. This is a beautiful world, a world that can be measured in architecture and in awe, in quarts and in quartz, in centimeters and celebration. I very much like it here, because this is where the evidence leads, not to some hodgepodge of rationalistic propositions I happen to hold as true via valid or even sound syllogisms. Nor is the evidence a collection of diarrheic, haphazard journals of one discovering one neat thing here and another there. Heavens, no! Logic is the recess of our minds in this beautiful world: evidence is a proper escort when it affirms our intellect and affirms our absurdities, that evidence has purpose not to affirm propositions but to affirm persons. In this world we see evidence come to life; we don’t beg lives to come to the evidence. Up here it is like a breath of fresh air, an air from where I know not it comes and know not where it goes, but which enlivens my soul and clears my mind to clumsily follow its lead. Even the folly of God is wisdom here.
I hope the explanation is clear. I spent a good deal of this essay trying to set out some important distinctions between propositional and psychological belief, accepting things and living in acceptance of those things. In answer to my friend’s first question, we can summarize my response thusly. It would take much more than mere evidence for me to abandon Christianity. I happily accept the evidence, because evidence gives me reason to be happy, because it leads me to the person of Christ in one sense or another. In order for me to exhibit any signs of abandoning the faith, you would have to commit a most heinous and blasphemous crime: flog the forestry, waste the water, conquer humanity, and become God. You will not persuade me on this matter unless you have authority and have proven yourself authoritative. And the only way you can prove yourself authoritative to me is to tell me a joke as great as this one: creature, cosmos, and Creator.
Now, I can hear the objection loud and clear: “You’re in denial! You just don’t want to be dragged out of your castle in the sky and face the brute facts of reality! Life is empirical, and we must be faithful evidentialists and follow the evidence where it leads!” The first charge is right: I am in denial, simply because I deny materialism. I don’t buy it because I think it is irrational. The second charge is even more fun, because it is precisely the castle in the sky that perfectly encapsulates the brute facts of reality. Not only are there castles in this world, but the castles can fly. Flight we can observe, castles we can examine, but for some odd reason we cannot wrap our materialistic minds around a castle that flies. Now, do I want to be dragged out of this castle in the sky? Of course not! Who would? This is a wonderful contraption, an inconveniently generous airline that transcends the laboratories and observes the observers. This second charge is ultimately a charge based on preference, which is a fairly weak thing unless empowered by persuasion; and, therefore, my response should also be based on preference. But my preference has been persuaded by the view from on high, and from up here nothing seems more chilling than the cackling covens of materialism. Their preference has been persuaded from down below, and from down there nothing seems more charring than the rambunctious romance of Christianity. They must persuade me, a knight in the suspended castle, that witches brew is finer than new wine.
This third charge is most necessary to address, because it roundabouts the cul-de-sac in which I, and hopefully my atheist friend, have been dancing. “Life is empirical!” is the charge. The charge itself is not an empirical claim. If it is true that life is empirical, then that must be demonstrated empirically, apart from abstraction. It would be far more fair to life and to empiricism to say that life consists of a body of observable phenomena that can and ought to be recorded. Even then Edinburgh aground would be just as empirical as Edinburgh aloft. Concerning other implications in following the evidence, several things come to mind, but I wish to only tackle one more.
Following evidence where it leads suggests that one becomes a disciple to the evidence. Wherever the evidence goes, if we were to be faithful evidentialists, we must follow. Evidence becomes the teacher and we the student. This is not a bad image. Certainly evidence can be partial in the sense that, upon examination, we alight on some revelatory discovery about something that was previously enigmatic. However, the analogy of teacher and student compared to evidence and disciple cannot mean that evidence is impartial. The evidence always has a place to go, and it is not our business to know where until we get there. We cannot stop midway and inquire of our Stoic teacher, “Rabbi, where do you take us? And why? What will it cost us to follow you even further?” We can only trust that the evidence is actually taking us someplace.
Evidence holds a unique place in Christianity. It is actually a humorous position, because it speaks when its spokespersons are silent. When the geologists are silent, even the rocks cry out. Christianity is a religion that promotes an active nature, one that is constantly pining for our attention. She screams, demands, throws tantrums, all in an attempt to preach the sacred folly of Christianity. Evidence does indeed have this power of leading someone someplace, and in Christianity, evidence lies in the hand of whoever happens to be listening to the rocks. We usually mock those who have been living under a rock for most of their lives. This is an improper perspective. It would be more fitting to eagerly sit at their feet and anticipate the Overture of the Overturned Stones.
But that is a distinctly Christian thing, I think. Apart from Christianity, nature dies; if nature dies, nature’s storytellers die. That is what we are up against: a story. Not a textbook, but a fantasy. Christianity may run contrary to some evidences, but some evidences may run contrary to good empirical Christianity. Evidence is not against the Christian; it speaks for the Christian. And yet it is Christianity that gives evidence a voice in the first place. So, if it could be proven to me that Christianity is false (a rather fiery hoop to jump through), like Dostoevsky, I would still side with Christ. Why? Because I would know him better than I would know the evidence against him. Foolishness! Absolute foolishness! Yes, but if the folly is God’s, then who am I to condemn his wisdom?
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