Does Christianity Make Sense?

I've just finished reading Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller, which is an excellent book that I recommend to all of you. But in this post I want to address one of the book's theses that I find troubling. Blue Like Jazz is basically about postmodern Christianity, and not by one of those Christians who think that postmodernism is one of Satan's latest hobbies, but by one of those Christians who has grown up living and breathing postmodernism and regarding that as pretty okay. Now, one of the central tenets of postmodernism is that the world doesn't make much sense, and that's just the way it is.

So Donald Miller says things like this:

There are many ideas within Christian spirituality that contradict the facts of reality as I understand them. A statement like this offends some Christians because they believe if aspects of their faith do not obey the facts of reality, they are not true. But I think there are all sorts of things our hearts believe that don't make any sense to our heads. Love, for instance; we believe in love. Beauty. Jesus as God.

So maybe you can begin to hear my warning bells going off. I read something like this, and I start to wonder what in the world Miller can even mean--I mean, what are these "facts of reality" if not just the things that are true? Is the truth itself supposed to be contradictory, then? True things are false simultaneously?

But a couple sentences later, here's what he says:

[Our creator] would have to be greater than the facts of our reality, and so it would seem to us, looking out from within our reality, that it would contradict reason.

Note the shift there--from "reality" to "our reality". And that's the big postmodern leap there, propelled by two centuries of philosophers: we don't see things or talk about things as they are, but things as they seem to us. And the radically postmodern bit goes on: in fact, there aren't any "things as they are", no God's-eye-view of total, cohesive truth--only stories and perspectives.

But Miller isn't that radical, and I think it's important to pay attention to that. Because the reason things-as-they-seem-to-us don't make sense is because things-as-they-are do make sense: that is, because there is a God with a complete view of total, cohesive truth, and that God is incomparably greater than me and my knowing capacity--"such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain". God doesn't make much sense, but that's not just the way He is--that's the way I am.

So how do I respond to that? Is it to say with Miller, "There are things you cannot understand, and you must learn to live with this. Not only must you learn to live with this, you must learn to enjoy this"? Well, yes, to some extent: clearly I don't have a clear grasp on much of anything, and the only respectable course of action is to fess up to that, to recognize that

As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

But I don't think (and I've forgotten who wrote this) that's an invocation to revel in our ignorance and keep to the low road, but rather to seek God's ways and to think his thoughts: to aspire to the perspective from which things make sense. Miller writes, "I don't think there is any better worship than wonder"--but we don't, like the Athenians, raise altars to an unknown god. Rather, as John Stott writes, "All worship is an intelligent and loving response to the revelation of God.... Our worship is poor because our knowledge of God is poor."

The postmodernist despairs of making sense of things--of nature, of love, of religion--because she rejects that there is any sense to be found in them: it's chaos and confusion all the way down. But that's not what I believe. Sure it's chaos and confusion, and I don't claim to be able to see much through that; but even so there is something solid and sensible--cohesive truth--at bottom. Of course I can't reach the truth--so it's sure a good thing that the Author of truth is reaching for me.