If an experience seems mystical, but it came after a cup of strong coffee, is that reason to doubt its status as coming from God?

One day I was sleep deprived from having spent most of the night before cranking out papers, one on the common practice of scourging in ancient Judea (Roman and Hebrew customs), and the other on Innocent III.

During the day, I felt a little woozy, but at the same time my mind was racing like--an expression I've used before here--a washing machine with an unbalanced load. During this strange mental state, my thoughts took me back to two distinct events that shaped who I am as a Christian.

The first of these was in college a couple of years ago. I was studying George Berkeley, the Anglican bishop and philosopher, who was absolutely convinced that there was no such thing as "matter"--rather, the only real things in the world were "minds" and "ideas", and all supposition of an external physical reality is an impious illusion.

Berkeley's arguments are actually rock solid, with the exception of a few subtle quirks that nobody discovered until Kant came along and blew him out of the water.

But that's beside the point. I was studying Berkeley, and I caught myself staring in absolute wonder at the strangeness of a new experience: I cannot pass through solid walls! I pressed my hand hard against the wood of my desk: nope, nothin' doin'. It just wasn't going to go through. I could not force reality to bend to my will. But sometimes, people can still catch me staring at my hand pressed hard against a solid object...

A similar instance was once, on the afternoon of a school day, I decided to be fascinated by a cork bulletin board. No--nothing posted on the board--the board itself. I looked at the little holes made by thumb-tacks, the funny little patterns, the odd consistency of the material...

This will undoubtedly strike some as very odd, and I won't argue. But on this dizzy, insomniacal day, as I drifted from class to class, I got to thinking--this place God put me in... this earth, this dimension, this space--there are no words, just: thank you.

But there are more words than that, I'm afraid. You see, I reflected on Rene Descartes. Smart guy--pulled the trigger that killed good philosophy for 250 years--but smart guy nevertheless. Descartes wanted absolute certainty, so used all of the skeptical doubts in order to reduce all reality to one single undeniable fact: "I Think."

That's great and all... but what happens when we start doing philosophy which is founded upon distrust? Easy--we alienate ourselves, from the world, from God, even from ourselves, and we place our trust only in logical systems that seem to give us absolute certainty, like the scientific method... (I posted on this before). I.e., Descartes is the father of ideology.

Descarte's philosophical method is called "systematic doubt" or "methodological doubt." You start with obviously doubtable things, and doubt them; then you take other things you're more sure of, and you doubt them, too. It's like peeling layers off on an onion--but an onion with a lead core--"Cogito ergo sum."

I would like to suggest an opposite method--but it's not mine and it's not really a method. It's just the way everybody was doing philosophy before Descartes came along, and we're just now rediscovering it. I call it "Systematic thankfulness".

In systematic thankfulness, we start with the things we're obviously thankful for--"My family and friends, health, my Catholic faith, my dog Sparky, etc." Then we go a little deeper and realize that we're thankful for "other human beings, contentment, God, nature." And then we go even deeper, and discover that we're thankful for "The physical, the spiritual, time, physical laws, thought itself, emotions, life;"

And when we get right down to the "core", we see not "Cogito ergo sum," but BEING--the confusing and unexplainable fact that anything is at all, when it could have, after all, never been.

Suddenly, I'm thankful for the fact that we have such a thing as "color", or that paper is thin and water is wet; the existence of plants and animals is almost too much to bear, and suddenly the signature of God himself is there--not only on the objects themselves, but even on the fact that there is such a thing as an "object."

Descarte's "systematic doubt" peels away the layers of the onion, and winds up with something very small and worthless. But "systematic thankfulness" goes freely through infinite layers and smells each scent deeply, until it is finally too much and we have to cry.

"Systematic doubt" is reductionist; it has a habit of turning a lot of truth into garbage. Systematic thankfulness bursts all of reality into an infinite garden of creation, and finds deep truth even in garbage--suddenly, nothing is dull, nothing is worthless, and for every pebble that points to God its Master, there is a person that knocks us completely off our feet in speechless thanksgiving.

-- anon (ymous@god.bless), January 10, 2005

Answers

'kin I bump it?

-- anon (ymous@god.bless), January 10, 2005.

anon,

Clear insight. The Faith seeking Understanding (vs. Understanding seeking Faith) maxim fits well with your "systematic thankfulness" description.

-- Daniel Hawkenberry (dlm@catholic.org), January 10, 2005.

How beautiful! "In God we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:20).

-- Michael (edwardsronning@prodigy.net), January 10, 2005.