my modern philosophy saga

i left my first class period of modern philosophy thinking, 'i love love love this class, but i'm not going to get tooo excited because the last time i freaked out this much about loving a class ...' it was economics. and i loved it for the first week as i informed everyone that economics was so wonderful i was going to declare a minor in it. thankfully i never acted on that impulse because i ended up quickly losing interest in economics. reigning in my excitement seemed wise when i left the second class period of modern philosophy last week wanting to flip over my desk and shout to the class, "WE DO HAVE SOULS! DON'T BELIEVE THIS PROFESSOR! DON'T BUY INTO HIS LETHAL PHILOSOPHY THAT SAYS YOU'RE JUST MEANINGLESS MATTER WITHOUT A PURPOSE! YOU ARE SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT!" sigh. oh to be so brave.

so what's the verdict on modern philosophy after three meetings? too soon to say, and yet i have quite a lot to say. (surprise! ha.) i love philosophy. i love learning how to think, studying logic, and examining the patterns of ancient thinkers.

luckily i also love a challenge, because this class will require me to work twice as hard. if i weren't a believer i could just blindly accept everything my professor is teaching me and regurgitate it for the exams. but i happen to love the Lord and have a fierce belief in - and loyalty to - the word of God and His plan for our lives. which includes each of us being created for a purpose with a body, mind and soul made to love God and love others. all of this goes completely against everything my philosophy professor has already pushed in just THREE days of class.

it's not fun listening to someone tell a room full of people that "those people who believe we have souls and a purpose are like people who would believe in a flying spagetti monster." or that "christians are like those people who believe in ufo's and other crap." ouch.

nonetheless, he is an incredibly intelligent professor and i have so much to learn from him. i want to gain as much knowledge and understanding as possible so that my faith will grow even stronger. this blog began when i completed the School of Biblical Foundations and Missions through YWAM maui. at the time i had no idea what a profound impact that little three-month school would have upon my life, and i continue to thank God for leading me to complete that school when i did. God's timing is so perfect. SBFM solidified my faith and replaced my somewhat secular humanist mindset with a biblical christian worldview. (i promise they don't pay me to write ads for them, i really mean everything i'm writing, cheesy as it might be.)

one of the most important concepts ingrained into me during SBFM was the need to THINK CRITICALLY. american education trains us to take information in without truly processing it, only to regurgitate it later for a grade. critical thinking is not only ignored, but often discouraged. (trust me, i asked a LOT of questions in school - and that behavior was rarely encouraged. God bless my parents for answering the brunt of my endless barrage of questions.)

so as i study each philosophy i try to figure out where it fits with a biblical worldview. then i look at what the implications of that philosophy would be if it were lived out to the fullest extent. ideas have consequences, and the conclusions of many philosophies are often very scary. (not to mention incredibly detrimental to mankind.) i want to understand the ideas fueling other people's beliefs so that i can better help them to know and understand truth.

"And as we have a strong doctrinal content, we must practice the content, practice the truth we say we believe. We must exhibit to our own children and to the watching world that we take truth seriously. It will not do in a relativistic age to say that we believe in truth and fail to practice that truth in places where it may be observed and where it is costly. We, as Christians, say we believe that truth exists. We say we have truth from the Bible. And we say we can give that truth to other men in propositional, verbalized form and they may have that truth. This is exactly what the gospel claims and this is what we claim. But then we are surrounded by a relativistic age. Do you think for a moment we will have credibility if we say we believe the truth and yet do not practice the truth in religious matters? If we do not do this, we cannot expect for a moment that the tough-minded, twentieth-century young person (including our own young people) will take us seriously when we say, "here is truth" when they are surrounded by a totally monolithic consensus that truth does not exist."
[Francis A. Schaeffer]

"For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength."

[1 Corinthians 1:25]