Unplugging from the Matrix

By Caleb | May 1, 2007

…or at least, I’m going to remove and hide my computer’s wifi card so that I can no longer be distracted from my work by the Internet (in particular, Facebook, Outpost Gallifrey and Ship of Fools). I’ve got a lot to do on my dissertation on Christian literary criticism by two weeks tomorrow, as well as redrafting my Creative Writing and revising for my Chinese history and Mandarin Chinese exams.

Hence for the next few weeks I’ll only be checking my email when I use the university computers, and will be blogging less frequently, though I still intend to post my thoughts on Life on Mars and on whether God punished Jesus at some point.

This technological deprivation will probably be almost as traumatic and shocking as Neo being removed from the Matrix, and similarly I may also have to then encounter reality rather than its computer-mediated simulacra.

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Cleaning up the blogroll

By Caleb | April 26, 2007

I’m currently in the process of going through the links to other blogs in the sidebar on the right to remove links to blogs that aren’t being updated any more or that I no longer read. Hopefully what I’ll be left with is a list of blogs that really are worth people having a look at.

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Question Everything

By Caleb | April 24, 2007

I’m currently working on a couple of posts, specifically:

  • a discussion of the ideas in the shocking final episode of Life on Mars
  • editing some of my contributions to online discussions of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (such as on Ship of Fools), defending the idea that Jesus died in our place to take away the punishment for our sins and bring us to God.

On the subject of the controversy in Christian circles over what Jesus did on the Cross (see my previous post here, and some of the latest in the discussion here, here and here), I’d just like to return to some things I said about intellectual maturity in the first in a series of posts I began but haven’t yet found time to return to. As I said back then,

One example of immature thinking on the part of Christians is to label certain speakers, writers, books or organisations as “sound” or “unsound”, and to then either accept or reject what they say fairly uncritically. This goes right against the command to “Test everything. Hold on to the good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21)…

I think the original post is worth reading, and it uses the atonement argument as an example of discussion. To elaborate a bit on that quote, one of the ways we allocate these labels is through a process of guilt by association – because speaker X is friends with person Y who worked with “unsound” organization Z, speaker X is obviously clearly beyond the pale, too.

Whether or not someone signs a doctrinal statement can also be a basis on which someone gets either uncritically accepted or rejected. Don’t get me wrong, doctrinal statements are important and useful. But we’re misusing them if we use them as a substitute for actually thinking Biblically about what people have to say. Just because someone can sign up to a statement of essentials shouldn’t mean that they get a free ticket on everything else they say, and just because someone is wrong on something important doesn’t mean that everything else they say is necessarily mistaken.

So when I get on to discussing PSA, I’m going to try my best to discuss the theology, weighing it up against the Bible, rather than the personalities and the politics involved in the current debate. Naturally I’ll refer to the likes of Jeffrey John, Steve Chalke, and the authors of Pierced for our transgressions and so on, but hopefully to discuss their ideas. If you’ll excuse me quoting from myself again:

Part of becoming mature as Christians is being able to engage in debate and discussion lovingly, listeningly, and carefully, and to be able to value discussion and diversity. I do not mean a pluralism that accepts every view as equally true, but a valuing of debate and discussion as a useful way of refining our views to bring us closer to what’s true…

If we really have confidence in the truth of the Gospel, then we need not be afraid of examining it, asking honest questions, and working through difficult issues.

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Global warming overhyped?

By Caleb | April 24, 2007
There’s a funny piece over on Boundless Line about the dangers of “dihydrogen monoxide”. Unfortunately it uses it as a way of taking a side-swipe at us humans causing global warming. For some reason, the Religious Right in America seems particularly hostile to the idea – which given its political influence, and the overwhelming evidence for anthropogenic climate change, is rather worrying. To repeat what I said in the comments… if there is some doubt about whether or not climate change is caused by our activities, shouldn’t we, as responsible stewards of God’s creation, err on the side of caution in responding to climate change? But “erring on the side of caution” isn’t really necessary – the evidence is overwhelming. Climate change is a reality – fact. What’s more, the vast majority of scientists are agreed that it is caused by human activity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), internationally recognised as an authority on the subject, puts the probability of climate change being anthropogenic at 90% or higher. The current US Government calls the science “beyond doubt”. No-one denies there are natural factors by which the Earth’s climate varies a bit, but the level of climate change goes above and beyond that which can be explained by such processes. Thinking critically about the evidence we are presented is very important, but to deny anthropogenic climate change is to fly in the face of the scientific evidence and the consensus among the vast majority of climate change scientists.
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Traffic Jams of the Soul

By Caleb | April 22, 2007

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

So said Marx, and it seems that Russell T Davies would agree, judging by a recent Doctor Who episode, Gridlock. The story was centred around a giant traffic jam in New New York on New Earth of the future. The Doctor and Martha arrive in the undercity to find it far from the sunny, shiny place that the Doctor brought Rose. People are leaving for the motorway in search of a better life, but are never heard of again… Martha is kidnapped, and the Doctor give chase, and we discover that the whole thing is a giant gridlock – people have been trapped on the motorway for literally years, with no way off, and no help from the city above.

This then leads to one of the oddest and most interesting moments in this series of Doctor Who so far. All the many inhabitants of the motorway join together in singing a hymn, The Old Rugged Cross:

On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
The emblem of suffering and shame;
And I love that old cross where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain. So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,
Till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
And exchange it some day for a crown. O that old rugged cross, so despised by the world,
Has a wondrous attraction for me;
For the dear Lamb of God left His glory above
To bear it to dark Calvary. In that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,
A wondrous beauty I see,
For ’twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died,
To pardon and sanctify me. To the old rugged cross I will ever be true;
Its shame and reproach gladly bear;
Then He’ll call me some day to my home far away,
Where His glory forever I’ll share.

In one way, it’s quite a moving moment – the people coming together in community to express hope in a better future. Martha is moved by what she sees, and joins in with the singing. But on the other hand, the people of the traffic jam are curiously uncurious about what has gone wrong, and aren’t taking the initiative to try and get themselves out of their sorry situation. The Doctor watches, but seems rather disturbed by what he is seeing. These two sides of the religious hope of the masses are quite deliberate on the part of writer Russell T Davies, who discusses this point with David Tennant on the commentary available to download from the BBC Doctor Who website.

On the one hand, faith can have a positive impact in bringing people together – Davies had originally envisaged the situation on the motorway as being much darker, with pirates and cannibals and the like, but instead wrote this as a testimony to the human capability to come together and imagine a better future. Similarly, in context, Marx’s aphorism that “religion is the opium of the people” isn’t entirely negative: religion provides comfort and helps people to bear the pain of their existence.

But, according to Marx, religion is a false comfort, and one that stops people from understanding their situation and acting to improve it – and again, this is what we see in Gridlock. In Christianity, hope is meant to motivate us to action, rather than give us an excuse for inaction. Because we know that God is real and powerful, the kingdom of God is not just an empty wish, but an inevitable reality. We know that it is worthwhile working towards the kingdom; we know that as we live with God as our king it is not futile, but part of this irresistible transformation of the cosmos. Rather than propping up unjust systems and a corrupt status-quo, Christian hope should help overthrow them.

The question that stories like this raise for me is this: what is the difference between active hope and passive hope? What distinguishes them, and how can we make sure that our hope is one that acts as a basis for action? I don’t have any answers yet, and it’s something I hope to think through.

Though as Davies points out, their hopes of a saviour prove not to be entirely mistaken, because the Doctor does in fact turn up and save everyone! The messianic imagery in last series’ episode New Earth was even more blatant – humans being kept in darkness and suffering, until the Doctor turns up to free them, and who saves the day by wading into them to heal them all with a healing touch (of a special cocktail of medicines) to create a new humanity.

The Face of Boe is also another God-like figure. Impossibly old and deeply wise, he has appeared and disappeared, Aslan-like, in the Doctor’s travels. In this story, he sacrifices himself to save the people of New New York, allowing the sky to split open (well, the roof of the motorway), and all the trapped souls ascend up into the light. It’s interesting just how much the series draws on Christian imagery and themes, despite (or maybe because of?) Russell T Davies’ secular humanism.

On a slightly different note, it’s an interesting irony that the idea “religion is the opium of the people” should be presented through a piece of mass entertainment. These days it is the media, far more than religion, that is our opium.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Western society is, in almost all ways except the purely material, far more impoverished than ever before: community and family life have broken down, democracy is lost in spin and image, we’ve completely lost touch with the very idea of the transcendent existence of Goodness, Beauty and Truth, we make our own personal happiness our goal but what do we have to be happy about?

All we have left is our toys, which don’t make us really happy, but provide enough of a distraction to stop us thinking about it, easing the pain of our disjointed modern existence while stopping us from taking action to really change things for the better. Perhaps it is the religion of worshipping the stars of the celebrity rather than celestial variety, of leisure and consumption and entertainment that really need questioning.

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Love and the Cross Controversy

By Caleb | April 20, 2007

Word Alive and Spring Harvest, two Christian conferences that for many years have held a joint event, are parting company over the issue of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (whether Jesus died to take the punishment for our sins on the Cross, PSA for short). Adrian Warnock has given a good summary of what’s happened on his blog. (If you don’t know anything about the atonement, perhaps you just check the blog for Doctor Who stuff, you’ll probably want to skip this one. Some tv reviews and stuff are on their way, honest!)

I think the whole current controversy over PSA raises lots of questions about how we Christians handle disagreement. Over in the comments on Adrian’s post, the phrase “uniting those who love the Gospel” is being bandied about. But I think that first of all we are to love God and love one another – that’s what Jesus says is the greatest command, after all!

Loving the Gospel is implicit in that, of course. But I think if we make a set of abstract beliefs, no matter how correct, the prime object of our love, then we’re in danger of diminishing that Christian love is firstly personal and relational. So we need to be passionate about correct doctrine, but not as an end in itself, but out of a deep concern for people as individuals, and for the glory of God.

I found it very sad that apparently much of the correspondence received by Jeffery John about his Good Friday talk, which also criticised PSA, was “abusive and obscene”. I believe PSA to be clearly taught in the Bible, and disagree with what Canon John had to say. But unless we communicate with love and grace, we’re not going to convince anyone of anything. The medium should match the message; our lives should be grace-dependent and grace-soaked to match a Gospel of grace.

I’ve not read Steve Chalke’s controversial The Lost Message of Christ, but from his article “Redeeming the Cross” (pdf file), it’s clear that what he rejects is a distorted caricature of PSA, of it being: “child abuse ­ a vengeful Father punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed.” Chalke sees it as presenting God as angry as something apart from God’s love, rather than an expression of it.

Now this distorted charicature is one that is also rejected by people who hold to PSA. Evangelical theologican John Stott, for example, says of the atonement in defence of PSA:

We must not, then, speak of God punishing Jesus or of Jesus persuading God, for to do so is to set them over against each other as if they acted independently of each other or were even in conflict with each other. We must never make Christ the object of God’s punishment or God the object of Christ’s persuasion, for both God and Christ were subjects not objects, taking the initiative together to save sinners. (The Cross of Christ, p. 151)

Unfortunately, Chalke dismisses PSA as if that charicature was the thing itself. But reading what he says, he is motivated by a desire to be faithful to scripture and to the loving character of God. If he is wrong (and I believe he is), then he is sincerely misguided.

We have a responsibility, then, to clearly explain to people how God’s wrath is an expression of his love; to demonstrate from Scripture what the Bible says on this matter; and to make sure that we aren’t presenting a distorted version of the atonement. I have heard Gospel talks that are more like the caricature Chalke dismisses than they are what the Bible teaches, and there is responsibility on the side of those of us who would uphold PSA.

What we definitely shouldn’t do is to jump on people like Chalke like the Spanish Inquisition, denounce them as heretics and try and cut ourselves off from them. Difference should not be the end of love, but the occasion for it. That doesn’t mean pretending all is fine. But when someone falls into error, the chances are that they are nonetheless a brother or sister in Christ, and so still part of the same community of the Church, with whom we are bound together in eternity by our shared relationship with God.

Our unity is more than just shared theology; theological disagreement modifies the way our unity is expressed, but should not destroy it. Unity in community does not necessarily mean agreeing with others; it is agreeing to disagree, and to work on resolving your disagreement as an ongoing project. It means approaching people as people, working through their honest questions and misunderstandings, coming together with a mutual desire to seek the truth in love.

We can be very good at assenting to this in practice, but in practice, I’ve often seen people’s love for doctrine cloud their love for people. I don’t know enough to comment on how things have played out between Spring Harvest on the one hand and UCCF and Keswick Ministries on the other: perhaps it was the best course under the circumstances, I don’t know. But all the tub-thumping for PSA sometimes comes across as just a passion for an agenda rather than people, and I agree with the importance of PSA.

To sum up, this is a plea for love, firstly for God and for other people, with theology following on from that rather than taking first place. It’s a call for care in explaining Penal Substitutionary Atonement; a recognition that some responsibility for its distortion lies with its supporters as well as detractor; and a recognition of the responsibility of those who stand for it to argue for it persuasively, which means both theological rigour, and love.

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Where is the kingdom?

By Caleb | April 18, 2007

Wisdom has to work in secret, whispering her words, moving like a spy through the humble places of the world, while the courts and palaces are occupied by her enemies…
– The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman

Wouldn’t we all go to a church that believes in ordinary fools and ragamuffins and whose gospel is actually good news? I’ve grown to admire the humour of a God who uses foolish things to shame the wisdom of this world, and weaklings to remind the strong that they may not be as might as they think they are (1 Cor. 1:27). And in an era of smart bombs, maybe the world needs more fools. There have always been ‘fools’ in imperials courts, but it’s an interesting age when folks trust the court jesters more than the court itself.
– The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Clairborne

Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.”
– Luke 17:20-21

The theme of the student week I attended on Iona was “Freedom”, and the phrase “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”, with questions such as “Whose truth? Yours or mine?” posed. (The answer as I see it being “Neither – it’s God’s truth that liberates”).

In one of the sessions, we discussed what “freedom” actually means. Something that came up was the idea of giving up your freedom for the sake of a cause. It would be right, for example, to go to prison because you were campaigning against injustice, for example, or if you were imprisoned for your faith.

But is that all that freedom is about – not being physically restricted? That’s an external freedom, but in the course of the discussion my group distinguished that from another type of freedom. If we understand freedom as being the ability to choose what is right and good, then it is not going to prison for your beliefs that takes away your freedom, but being intimidated by the fear of prison so that you do not do what is right is the real robbing of freedom. In short, there is an inner freedom that no-one can force from you unwillingly, even if you are imprisoned or tortured of killed.

Which brings me to a wonderful insight by Dan Edelen over at Cerulean Sanctum: there are “The Two Christianities“, the Externally-Motivated and Internally-Motivated. Here are a couple of quotes:

Externally-Motivated (EM) Christianity sees the Kingdom of God existing in systems and institutions “erected by God” or by Christians faithful to God. The essence of what it means to be a Christian dwells in hallowed monolithic icons, largely existing outside the believer. We see the expression of EM Christianity whenever we encounter Christian groups and individuals seeking to preserve or defend some aspect of the truth they see encapsulated in a system, institution, or organization…
Internally-Motivated Christianity, in sharp contrast, invests little time and energy in externalities. Its hope is not in systems and institutions because it understands that those succumb to entropic forces. To the IM Christian, the Kingdom of God cannot rest on externalities prone to decay… the Kingdom of God cannot be destroyed from without because the Kingdom of God is within us. When attacked, IM Christianity responds with grace and love. It continues to offer Christ to all, even to those who oppose it.

Check out the full post on his blog. It really gives shape to some of the things I’ve been thinking about recently. The flavour of the student week on Iona was rather more ecumenical and liberal than, say, Christian Union events, with Jo Merrygold from the Student Christian Movement (SCM) doing some of the sessions, for example.

(A quick side note: SCM is the liberal counterpart to the theologically conservative UCCF, which is the national fellowship of Christian Unions. Basically, UCCF split off from SCM around 100 years ago over the issue of penal substitutionary atonement – that Jesus died in our place to take the punishment we deserve – not being held as central to the Christian faith by SCM. The same issue has just led to Word Alive, the student conference which UCCF has a big part in organising, parting company with Spring Harvest, who have declined to disassociate themselves with Steve Chalke, who controversially attacked that particular doctrine. It’s interesting to see the same issues coming up, and I may well comment on them soon.)

Anyway, much of the focus on the student week was on things like social action, responding to consumerism, how we can work for a fairer world and so on. All of which is important and I agree with, and was very challenged by. But what I found significant was what wasn’t said. There was very little rooting of this in our personal relationship with God, of being reconciled to him and transformed by him, and that then flowing out from our changed hearts into changed lives, and so towards a changed world.

But even though evangelicals can often be much better at emphasising that we relate to God personally, evangelicals can often just be motivated by a different set of external agendas. Rather than, say, fair trade, community action and social justice, you get a set of concerns like preventing the erosion of religious freedom, opposition to gay clergy, protecting the institution of the family.

Dan doesn’t say, and I’m not saying, that working out our faith practically and externally is wrong. But that shouldn’t be our motivation, our starting point. It begins with lives indwelt with the Holy Spirit, being changed from our hearts outwards. Our concern should not firstly be the politics of church or state or other institutions, but living lives of love in the grace of God. That should then be worked out holistically in every aspect of our living, but the kingdom of God begins by individuals and communities seeking to live life under him, being transformed by love, of change coming from the bottom up, rather than the kingdom being a political agenda imposed from the top down.

This is one of the lessons I’ve begun to learn through my involvement in CU, and my sometimes frustration at not seeing it be as on fire as I’d like, or improving as quickly as I’d like. Not that I mean to be down on CU. There’s loads that’s great about it, and loads of people passionate about God and his Gospel. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its weaknesses or that we shouldn’t long for it to serve God more and better. I’ve had to learn to content myself not with trying to change things by the exercise of power, but in being involved with people, loving them, and seeking to build others up, and to see that this is the way to real change, not pushing of a political agenda of what I think CU should be about.

The natural habitat of this internally-motivated Christianity is in the fringes, on the margins, outside the seats of power and political influence. Let’s pray that our faith will be rooted in a revolution of love in our hearts.

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Stop shopping… or else?

By Caleb | April 14, 2007

I’ve read some thought-provoking articles on consumerism recently. One was in The Observer – Stop shopping… or the planet goes pop:

‘Many big ideas have struggled over the centuries to dominate the planet,’ begins the argument by Jonathon Porritt, government adviser and all-round environmental guru.’Fascism. Communism. Democracy. Religion. But only one has achieved total supremacy. Its compulsive attractions rob its followers of reason and good sense. It has created unsustainable inequalities and threatened to tear apart the very fabric of our society. More powerful than any cause or even religion, it has reached into every corner of the globe. It is consumerism.’

He goes on to say…

‘I think capitalism is patently unable to go on growing the size of the consumer economy for any more people in the world today because levels of consumption are already undermining life support systems on which we depend – so if we do it for any more people, the planet will go pop,’ Porritt told The Observer. ‘So in a way we don’t have a choice about this: we’ve got to rethink the basic premise behind capitalism to make it deliver the goods. In the long run, when you really look at what happens on a planet with nine billion people and really serious constraints on the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that we can emit, it’s almost inevitable we will learn to have more elegant, satisfying lives, consuming less. I can’t see any way out of that in the long run.’

Meanwhile, author Lawrence “Mad Larry” Miles over on his blog issued this challenge…

So I say this, to anybody who might be reading these words in the future, assuming you’re not choking to death on your own packaging. Get rid of everything, absolutely everything, that you don’t want. Forget “need”, forget the whole Marxist idea of surviving while allowing others to survive. Get rid of everything you don’t really, really want. Throw it away, or give it to Oxfam, or leave it on a park bench. Any DVD you know you’re not going to watch again at least six times over, any CD you know you’re not going to listen to in a month’s time, any book you’ve already read and are just using to make your bookcase look better-stocked. Get rid of it. Stop buying more of it. Buy things only if you want them, only if they make you feel really, really good, not just because you’ve been told it’s normal to keep filling your home with dreck. And while you’re at it, don’t go and see any film at the cinema unless you’ve got good reason to think it’s worth seeing. If you’ve got money left to waste, then do something with it instead of wasting it, and stop encouraging people to fill the world with shit. You don’t want stuff, you certainly don’t need stuff, so take the stuff out of your life. That’s all.

I’m beginning to seriously think it might be a good idea. Anyone else up for it? One last quote, which is even more radical:

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

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Happy Easter

By Caleb | April 8, 2007

Christ is risen! What amazing news. How easily Christians get used to the idea that a man came back from the dead; how easily that idea becomes just a bit of cultural background noise, rather than a shocking, incredible claim. Knowing that Jesus was resurrected transforms our understanding of the nature of the universe we live in – not just a closed mechanical system of cause-and-effect, but a place of miracles, where the spiritual is a reality and where God breaks into the warp and woof of history in the form of a man. Now that’s something worth celebrating and boggling at!

Since I last blogged, I fought and lost an election campaign, went to the Iona Community‘s student week with a group from Cardiff University Chaplaincy, and have returned to my home town of Dolgellau in North Wales. These first few months of 2007 have been absolutely mad, and I’ve been loving it, as much because of as despite the hecticness of it all! I’m really grateful to have been able to do so much exciting stuff. I now need to knuckle down to finishing my degree, and have the adventure of moving from university into the world of work to look forward to. And I don’t say that with any irony – although I’ll be sorry to leave student life, I also look forward to the new challenges and new adventures of life after university.

As for this blog, I’ve started typing up my journal of the trip to China, so hopefully I’ll start unfolding the talk of the adventures of Team Greg in that far away land in the next few days. There was an interesting article in The Times recently asking “where have all the intelligent Christians gone?” which I’ll probably comment on, since I’ve already written them a letter about it, and if I find time I’ll comment on the new series of Doctor Who!

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The importance of asking questions

By Caleb | March 18, 2007

One idea people have about religion is that it means hanging your brain up at the door, and just accepting a certain set of dogmas unquestioningly. Even some Christians view questions with suspicion as something dangerous and insubordinate. On a recent discussion on Ship of Fools, one person argued that:

making this concept of supernatural revelation central to thinking about God in fact ensures faith must always rely on a less than honest commitment to truth. It has to adhere to a tradition that has been passed down. You cannot question the messenger, no matter how unsure or tired or simply downright unbelievable he appears without being ready to let go of that faith.

One of the talks I listened to on my MP3 player while in China was the L’Abri lecture by Ellis Potter entitled The Importance of Asking Questions. He had strong words for those who don’t ask questions when they have them – if you don’t understand or know something, but by not asking a question pretend that you do, then you are lying, to the person you haven’t asked the question of, to yourself and to God. Asking questions is fundamental to learning and to being human. Some people try and use Jesus’ instruction to come to him “like little children” as an argument against asking questions. But Potter puts a different spin on it: children are asking questions all the time! Why this? Why that? It shouldn’t at all mean that we don’t question things.

What follows is what I said on the Ship arguing that in fact, if you take the concept of revelation seriously, you are obligated to “question the messenger”, to check out whether they are reliable and whether what they are saying is true…

To be fair, some Christians try and use “revelation” as a magic epistemological wand in a very crude and question-destroying way. I came across one blog that seemed to be saying that to use our reason to try and ascertain whether God’s revelation is true is to set ourselves up above God, and so is sinful – instead we should just accept God’s revelation! Which rather begs the question of “which revelation”, because you’ve got plenty of competing claims for the title of God’s Revelation.

But it isn’t rebellious to seek to establish which is the genuine revelation of God. Here’s an analogy: if I am a soldier on a battlefield trying to receive orders from my headquarters, but I’m receiving conflicting messages from different sources, it is not rebellious to question each one to try and establish which are genuine. On the contrary, it is my duty and responsibility to question if I am to respect the authority I am supposed to be subject to. Questioning shows that you value the truth and respect the true authority enough to go to the trouble of understanding it properly and making sure you have what is genuine.

There is also a prideful form of questioning, where you question to undermine and challenge truth and authority. Like every good thing, questions can be abused. But to ask a genuine question, that is, one where you are trying to discover something you are ignorant of, (such as whether a supposed revelation can be trusted) is something that requires a great deal of humility and shows respect to who you are asking for answers.

So a strong concept of revelation should produce a high understanding of the importance of asking questions. That’s not to say it always does in practice, but it should.

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