Everyone has an ultimate standard.
Perhaps your ultimate standard is the opinion of your parents. Someone presents you with an idea, and you judge it to be correct or incorrect because of the instincts you have gained because of the way your parents have raised you.
Perhaps your ultimate standard is pleasure and self-gratification. You don't much care what you believe as long as it allows you to seek the life that you want.
Perhaps your ultimate standard is academic respectability. You will only hold opinions that are in agreement with the latest findings being published in the respected academic journals.
Perhaps your ultimate standard is religious respectability. You don't necessarily know why you believe what you believe, but you believe it because everyone around you seems to, and it is just easier to go with the flow.
Perhaps your ultimate standard is empirical verifiability. You will only believe those things you can test with your five senses. Whatever anyone tries to tell you, you will only believe it if you can touch it or see it for yourself. This makes it difficult to know a lot of things. Unless you are willing to trust what other people say they have seen or touched, etc.
Perhaps your ultimate standard is your own rationality. You trust only the things that your own mind can logically deduce. Perhaps it is some combination of empirical verifiability and rationality.
Perhaps your ultimate standard is pragmatism. You are willing to accept a thing if it seems to work.
Perhaps your ultimate standard is your own common sense, seen in your ability to critically evaluate using some combination of these other mentioned standards.
Perhaps your ultimate standard is humor. You constantly look for the punchline in different things.
Basically, your ultimate standard is your last line of defense. It is the place where you are standing in order to critique anything else. The thing is, there is a circularity to everyone's ultimate standard. For instance, try to ask yourself honestly what your ultimate standard is. Then, ask yourself why your ultimate standard is better than the Bible as an ultimate standard. Your critique of my standard and your defense of your own standard will inevitably invoke your own ultimate standard. If it does not, then there is some other grounds at the bottom of your defense, and that is your real ultimate standard. Rinse and repeat.
Defend your ultimate standard. Listen carefully to your defense. On what are you building your house? Why did you choose that foundation? Upon what does that foundation rest? Eventually you will get down to the land of, "Well, I just believe that is the best foundation." Why? "I just do." Eventually you get to the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of the way your mind and heart works. It is here that you discover where your faith lies. Everyone places their faith in something.
Why do I bring this up? I do not think that Christianity should be rejected simply because of an allergic reaction to the ultimate nature of its claims to be true. I do not think Christianity should be rejected simply because of an allergic reaction to a supposed circularity. Absolute standards are ubiquitous. And so is circularity.
Not every circle is created equal. I think there are better circles and worse circles to get sucked into. How can we tell which one you should be in? Is there some objective standard we can get into? Some actually objective circle? I do not think that total neutrality or objectivity is possible. I don't think it is possible to escape the reality of being inside one of these circles, just as we cannot get outside of our own skin. But empathy calls us to think outside of our own limited perspectives. I don't know the solution to all this, but I know that it will be worse if we are not able to see our own limitations.
As a presupposition to study, we might begin by thinking God is possible. We might begin thinking God is not possible or prohibitively unlikely. We might begin thinking God is probable. None of these starting points is neutral. But in the end you must start and go, or else you are left in the middle of nowhere. Our outcomes will be affected by our presuppositions. And while it may not be possible to escape our presuppositions, we will have greater empathy and a better outlook if we at least acknowledge our presuppositions.
Sometimes on our journey, we may find evidence, even from within our circle, to challenge our presuppositions. (Just as Jesus, in love, stooped to enter our blue little sphere, so also, in love, may he step into our own individually colored circles. Grace.) Worldview shifts occur sometimes when presuppositions give way, and this is sometimes difficult because, on my analogy, it is like an earthquake in which the ground disappears.
Well...
I like having a standard outside of myself. The modern mantra is Self. Rationalism and empirical verifiability place the Self at the center of things. A reliance on common sense places the Self at the center of things. When our faith is not placed in God, it is most often placed in Self. My own estimate of my intelligence and integrity and ability to live well is that I am not trustworthy. Why should I place my trust in the hands of an unreliable twenty-five year old doofus? I trust in Scripture because it feels like I am being addressed by God. Instead of standing in judgment over Scripture and over God, I read on my knees (figuratively speaking) and accept God's prerogative to judge me. I need Scripture because I need to be in relationship with an ultimate Authority that I have given permission to change my mind. Where I disagree with Scripture I am wrong. With no corrective, there will be no bounds to my own immaturity. I am my own worst enemy. (I believe the Bible is trying to save me from myself. In order to give me my true self.)
This will seem antiquated, but I don't mind too much. To take a page from the pragmatists, the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding has been good. My life has direction and purpose and joy for having been submitted to something bigger than myself.
But this is the one to whom I will look:
he who is humble and contrite in spirit
and trembles at my word.
(Isaiah)
I pray for myself and my readers that humility and contrition would mark our interactions with God.
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