Doubters

For some years Barbara Kruger has, in my view, played with language.  I believe she has served purpose in demonstrating what language might do, but she would not likely agree with me on the contribution.  She has a knack for using single words, in large form pasted on background photographs so as to provide some information not expressed in the words she imposes.  The first image I recall from her appeared to me some years ago.  It was simply a hand holding a card with the words: I SHOP therefore I AM.  She meant it to be an arrest for consideration of the consumerism culture.  The statement is a take-off from the concept of Descartes, I think, therefore I am.  I need many words from other persons before I learn what they may have meant.  In the words themselves, Descartes is clearer and more convincing than Kruger.  Kruger is clever, but indirect.  There is a bit of humor there.  Descartes includes all persons who think, even if they do not know what their thoughts prove to them.  Thought proves something.  

Are all shoppers, some or few, taken by rabid consumerism?  We thoughtfully resist.  So a concept slogan from Kruger is not the value of the concepts of Descartes.  In point, the slogan may change, and the context changes or is distorted from the original.  For example: Kruger presented the slogan: BELIEF + DOUBT = SANITY.  A case can be made for that – a case requiring many more words.  She changed it to her favorite current, single word: DOUBT.  Her explanation was that if doubt is imposed on belief one takes away something from belief.  She believes that if there is doubt, belief is mortally wounded.  DOUBT, she feels stands alone.  A theist and an atheist are wrong in some way because doubt is real.  Doubt is best because it tells us that there may be a God, and there may not be.  So she is an agnostic which is to say there may be God, or there may not be.  She does not want to say there is, or there is not.  So she is an agnostic.  If doubt stands alone, without clear faith or denial, as she feels it does, then one understands if she doubts her belief in doubt?  Doubt, as neutrality, is the word she wants.  Really?  Are we to live by neutrality?  She adds a statement she wants us to believe: In this country it’s easier to be a pedophile than an agnostic.  I doubt that.  There are many millions of agnostics here and abroad who will not go to jail.  They have broken no human law in America.  The pedophile has.  I doubt, with my certainty, her conclusion, and wonder why she would want to waste her time in poorly defending, doubt.  Persons talking to her seem to like her cryptic approach to language, used widely in sloganizing that seems like Up/Down.  God is least respectful of neutrality and treats it as contrary to his affirmations about Christian meaning for mankind.

Language is not absolute, although it accomplishes much of what we want to accomplish in discussing absolutes and affirmations/negations.  Our concern is that a concept may be unrealistic in experience.  Experience works along continua – from one context to another.  Continua are, for our purpose, imaginary lines along which an idea/experience moves. At the two ends of the line are the extremes.  We live between the extremes.  At one end is belief (no denial): at the other end is denial (no belief).  Between the two are gradations.  In real life we deal with gradations. Scripture uses the understanding in such statements as the degree of love.  This person loves, and that person loves much.  Even if the bride has a song, Perfect Love, in her program for her wedding day, it may be canceled five years later in a divorce court.

Honorable and effective Christians, holding strong faith, have acknowledged doubt in the context of their lives.  Their faith went to the defense of its meaning/experience.  Their humility was aided and spiritual pride was checked, in the incursion of doubt to which they did not succumb.  It is not widely understood that Christianity is a gift from God, given fully after invitation and contrition from penitent persons.  From the turning point of 180 degrees on the continuum, Christians begin the journey in God’s direction, absorbing the virtue of his nature as they move, oftentimes haltingly from that in which they were traveling.  When they work along in the Pilgrim’s Progress, doubt loses its force (as is true for much else) and faith gains its promises incrementally.  Effective truth is not easily achieved in its mottoes.