Big Ideas and Bolognese

He was a lawyer.  Partner in a British firm by the time he was 35, drove a hard-top in the winter and a convertible in the summer.  He commanded house staff, fearful interns, and a parrot that cursed for fun at parties.  He was a man of every means.

He tells the story of being invited to a gathering at a colleague’s home.  He attended, intending to poach a competitor’s business contacts, but instead found himself discussing second rate philosophy over third rate spaghetti bolognese.  The gathering was a spiritual discussion group and he hated it, but discovered he was curiously drawn to the spaghetti-sopped assembly week after week because, as he put it:

“I was afraid that someone somewhere would ask me what I thought about the deep issues of life and I would be unable to answer.  The humiliating truth was, I had never even considered them.  I thought to save myself embarrassment, I ought to at least formulate some sort of opinion.  Everyone, at some point, should consider what they think about the big issues of life and why.”

I agree.  It’s common to know more about sports scores, celebrity break-ups and the latest app than we do about the thoughts steering our own souls.  Big ideas are intimidating, and as the world gets smaller, they run into one another, their edges smudging and blurring so that a once colorful rainbow of different philosophies now resembles so many melted crayons on a summer day - a grey-brown sludge of truth, opinion, and possibility, streaked with colors once crisp and concrete.  Rather than go through the painstaking process of separating one critical idea from another, the simpler solution is to throw the whole mess in a mental box, and shove it to the back of our minds.  We have other things to do.

The problem is that the mess at the back of our minds somehow affects our other things to do.  Our seemingly superfluous worldview, it turns out, is the rudder directing our choices, our relationships, and our self-image.  Ignoring it won’t change the fact that subconscious feelings and convictions govern our actions, opinions, and fears.  Taking our invisible beliefs out of the box and into the light is the best way to discover why we do what we do. If our feelings and convictions are based on solid facts or on little more than temperamental fluff, we ought to know, either way.  

My upbringing was defined by one particular hue of the philosophical rainbow, and even now, it’s hard to see anything not colored by it.  But, I am not fool enough to trust that just because someone taught me an idea was true means it actually is objectively true.  I have one life and I refuse to spend it believing something simply to make me feel good and gooey.  A singer once crooned, “I believe it even though I know it isn’t true.”  If what I say I believe is not based on reasonable, logical, credible actuality, then I’m letting it go.  I have other things to do.

My journey to the heart of the legitimately believable has taken me across countries and continents, into conversations unsuitable for the easily satisfied.  I have been challenged, questioned, interrogated, and disbelieved, and I am grateful for it.  A belief system that cannot withstand such pushing and shoving is worthless.  I don’t want a faith I cannot jump up and down upon, because such a faith will not hold me up when I fall.  Trust does not come easily to me and an ideology must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt before I will allow it to cradle my heart.  If God gave me a brain, then He expects me to use it.

These writings chronicle patches of that journey.  I have been given the incalculable gift of interesting friends, many of whom I have randomly collected at Starbucks, their life experiences and convictions painted other shades of the philosophical rainbow, our respective colors bumping into one another over coffee and affectionate heated conversations.  Through their eyes, I have seen my own faith anew, how it is perceived and understood and misunderstood.  I respect the perspectives they offer and can only hope to do them justice as I share what I consider the treasure of what I have learned.  

Come along, if you like.  Consider the big issues of life, perhaps for the first time, perhaps for the hundred and first.  It’s an endless conversation, and one than never fails to fascinate me.  Think, argue, question, discuss, pontificate, chew, wrestle, doubt.  Just don’t give up until you’ve reached a reasonable conclusion.  I’ll be here, doing the same.  Stop by anytime - I’ll spare you the spaghetti.