A Hermeneutic of Suspicion versus an Epistemology of Love

A Hermeneutic of Suspicion::

Our culture defaults to suspicion. This is even more prevalent amongst younger generations. I admit to it, my first instinct is to ask, 'where's the catch?'

'What are you selling?'

'Yeah, right!?!'

Even people I trust, even about things that I already adhere to. My primary mode of thinking is suspicion.

Look for the angles, watch for the hoax.

Who's the sucker? If you don't know who the sucker is...
...then you're the sucker!

We doubt as a matter of reflex.

The suspicious approach is our default mode of understanding and interpreting the world around us; this leads to an attempt at a self-centered epistemology, a 'pick and choose' hermeneutic that attempts to divorce thoughts from their context. We take what we hear, or read, or see, and we spin it to fit our own grid. We fail to come at anything with an attempt to understand it on it's own terms because nothing is to be trusted on its own terms! And so, we fail to understand.

This is what has been called the 'wikipedia-zation' of knowledge. It leads ultimately to a failure to critique sources of information, and their authority, because we have become the source of all authority. We assume that we can know the truth on our own, in fact, that this is the only way it can be known.

Because there is no authority that we will accept, ultimately we will accept any authority, because we cannot function without authority.*

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Here is where this gets practical:

According to recent studies, 80 percent of this countries population believe that "an individual should arrive at his or her own religious beliefs independent of any churches or synagogues."

Here is where it gets problematic:

Epistemology is a communal activity; we cannot come to any knowledge of truth, or approach to knowledge of truth, apart from our relationships with people. If we think otherwise we are deluding ourselves, and ignorant of our tutors (those who influence us). We wear lenses in all that we understand, and those lenses come from other people.

This plays into spirituality in amazing ways. The DaVinci Code was a wonderful example of people grasping at anything to bolster their already held beliefs. On both sides. People antagonistic to Christianity looked to Dan Brown's novel to define their understanding of Church history (a work of fiction, based upon an admitted hoax... but an attractive one.) Christians were quick to respond with protest and outrage.

Rarely did people ask the deeper questions about what really happened, why people were so intrigued by such a presentation of history, or how we can even know! Much less actually enter into dialogue or relationship with each other...

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An Epistemology of Love ::

So what would a different way of knowing and understanding look like?

To whet your appetite here is an interview that references NT Wright's epistemology of love.

More to come...

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*We take almost the entire realm of our own knowledge of the universe on the authority of others, from atoms, to Beijing, to fidelity, to the 'Catcher in the Rye.' ...I've never actually seen a possum, I can choose to believe it is an elaborate hoax, foisted upon me by those with nothing to gain, or I can simply take it upon the authority of other people that such a creature does indeed exist.