Sunday, December 15, 2013

The Attitude Towards Truth

...Satisfaction plays the key role in many contemporary accounts of human floursihing. Satisfaction is a from of experience, and experiences are generally deemed to be matters of individual preference. Everyone is the best judge of their own experience of satisfaction. To examine whether a particular experience fits into a larger account of the world is already to risk relativizing its value as an experience. If those who understand human flourishing as expeienctial satisfaction happen to be religious, their faith sheds its powerto orient people and is reduced to a  servant of experiential satisfaction, which is a major malfunction of faith. From being revered as the "Creator and the Master of the Universe," who by their very identity defines who human beings are and how they should live, God is then transformed into something like a combination of "Divine Butler" and "Cosmic Therapist"

....My point isn't that it would be impossible to offer a plausible interpretation of reality- "plausible," I write, not "true"!- Into which an account of human flourishing as experienital satisfaction could nestle comfortably. It is that many today would not care whether they live with or against the grain of reality. They want what they want, and that they want it is a sufficient justification for wanting it. Arguments about how their desires fit with the more encompassing account of reality- how they relate to"human nature," for instance -are simply beside the point.

~Miroslav Volf in Covenant and Hope: Christian and Jewish Reflection

John 8:32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free...

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