A Philosphical Question...

I am here in Guatemala beginning my third and final week in this country. My education thus far has been incredible - academically, spiritually, and socially. What have I learned? New questions. This, after all, is the purpose of education: to be able to ask the right questions, not necessarily have all the answers. But what questions have I learned?

Today I went to a protest where Guatemalans screamed for justice over the recent murder by the President. But what is justice to a Christian? Now I hesitate because I feel like when I add the prepositional phrase " to a Christian" I have in some way removed the intellectual nature of the question. Why not just ask, "What is justice"? But why is this question more "intellectual" than the former? Is it because Christianity, at its core, places a premise of faith superior to any premise of reason? For instance, Christianity assumes a seven-day creation, which diametrically opposes many interpretations of certain scientific evidence. Christians are often considered "unintellectual" because they have chosen a paradigm of principles based on a foundation whose existence cannot be proven. Maybe this is the case. Maybe some "Christians" pursue God out of some self-seeking motive of security or self-confidence. But I believe at its core, Christianity simple adds moral dilemas to intellectual questions. Maybe rather than Christianity rejecting intellectualism, we have witnessed the exact opposite. When we add the phrase "to a Christian" to our original question, we are adding a moral condition to the quesiton of justice. It changes the source of the answer. If we simply were to ask "What is justice" the intellectual response would come from a well-reasoned source which has been educated in the way of some other philosopher, or higher education. In other words, it comes from man who has defined justice according to his understanding. His answer may be revenge, mercy, or other responses to wrong actions. We accept these answer because either 1) the preceeding argument makes sense to our logical pattern or 2) because if we do no agree, we can use our own logic to combat the conclusion. In other words, we remove the the necessity of an absolute. But when we add "to a Christian," we have added a statement of conditionaltiy which assumes on absolute answer which demands no logical pattern other than "God said so." On that "illogical" foundation, then, we make a moral statement that cannot be combated with reason because the Christian claims the declarations of God to be superior to the reason of man. Thus Christianity is removed from intellectual discussions, not vice versa.

But doesn't this solidify the argument of intellectuals that Christianity cannot be a credible paradigm because it rejects any reason of man as a "depraved" sense of understanding? On the contrary, I believe Christianity proposes a moral foundation to guide our reason. Christianity understands that at some point, absolute good and evil exist. Other things equal, we can for the most part, associate pain inflicted by one individual onto another innocent individual as "bad." There are a million and one conditional "what-if" scenarios which could change the outcome of our conclusion. But we only need one time to agree that for one person to hurt another innocent person is bad. But why? Why do we think that a middle-aged rapists should be placed in jail for the murder and rape of a young girl? Why should the President of Guatemala be placed in jail, or at least lose his office for the murder of an innocent lawyer investigating the truth? The very cry for justice demonstrates that "wrong" has been done and it is "good" to punish that wrong. But what gives us this sense of right, wrong, good, or bad? The universal nature of government: executive, legislative, and judicial authority implies a universal understanding of what is right or just. Can this universal good be reasoned or is it a higher law to which we ascribe- written by something higher than man? If it were defined by man, it would be subjective in nature to man's imperfect understanding.

I can't answer the question yet. I do not pretend to know the answers; however, I do believe that Christianity is the truth and must be the backdrop of questions that consider the nature of man. We must add phrases like "to a Christian" to our questions because man's reason and emotion daily. I assume that the moral code which defines good and bad is found in Scripture. I cannot prove this assumption; however, neither can I disprove it. I hope to continue my education, asking the right questions, so that at I can find the right answers. I do not believe I will ever prove the existence of God and his relationship to the supremecy of moral law. If I could, faith would be irrelavent. But we must not reject something because it cannot be proven, nor choose to be ignorant under the banner of "faith." If it is truth, it can be defended, and must be considered when asking the right questions.