I was reading some Descartes recently (Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences) and came across this passage which gave me pause:

It is good to know something of the customs of various peoples, so as to judge our own more soundly and so as not to think that everything that is contrary to our ways is ridiculous and against reason, as those who have seen nothing have a habit of doing. But when one takes too much time traveling, one eventually becomes a stranger in one’s own country; and when one is too curious about what commonly took place in past ages, one usually remains quite ignorant of what is taking place in one’s own country. Moreover, fables make one imagine many events to be possible which are not so at all. And even the most accurate histories, if they neither alter nor exaggerate the significance of things in order to render them more worth of being read, almost always at least omit the baser and less noteworthy details. Consequently the rest do not appear as they really are, and those who govern their own conduct by means of examples drawn from these texts are liable to fall into the extravagances of the knights of our romances and to conceive plans that are beyond their powers.

I instantly thought about my love of travel and my love of reading histories, fantasies, and science fiction. Am I falling prey to these attitudes? Do I live my life as if impossible, fantastic things can happen? Am I a stranger in my own land? Have I focused too much on other cultures or the past?

Then I thought about the church — the modern, American church. Does the church have these same problems? Here is what I know: there is a recent (and yet it has always been there) desire to emulate the earliest church. Some people spend their lives trying to figure out what the early church was like. Others put much stock into the church of the middle ages. There is also a large swath of people who highly revere the church of the 1950s. Then there are the masses who advocate new ways of doing church by integration of culture. But if the church is focusing too much on history then it may become prey to missing the “baser and less noteworthy details.” We run the risk of focusing too much on the past so that we remain “quite ignorant” of what is taking place in our own country.

It seems Descartes is getting at the idea that we should have balance. We cannot ignore what is happening in other cultures nor can we ignore what has happened in the past. But we cannot be obsessed with other cultures or the past either. Do you have balance? Does your church?

Tags: church, Descartes, Philosophy

This entry was posted by zac on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 at 7:52 am and is filed under Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.