The Waning of Summer

And Reflections on Knowledge

Welcome to another edition of The Mueller Report!

Update

Summer has been flying by!

It’s been over a month since I last wrote. Life has been a whirlwind of travel since April. We spent four to five weeks on the road, including staying multiple nights in NJ, FL, MA, VT, and IN. I also participated in four different work travel events and conferences over that time.

Then we made another family trip (and for me another work trip) to MI in June. Then in July I had work events in Las Vegas, Park City, and Denver. August, fortunately, has not had any work travel in it.

That’s good, not only to have a break from being on the road, but also because August is our busiest month at The Abbey. We’ve already rented 160 nights this month. One weeknight evening while we were trying to notarize documents to sell our house in NJ, three new sets of guests walked in and wanted rooms in the span of 20 minutes!

Besides the occasional “all hands-on deck” moments, there is a regular flow of work: laundry, cleaning, answering questions, restocking, etc. Thankful for the business but also glad this is not the tempo year-round. In fact, the 100-mile ultramarathon this past weekend marks the beginning of the end of the busy season. We’ll still be busy, especially on the weekends, into September. But we are past the peak. I know Kathryn is looking forward to that as she starts homeschooling in earnest this week.

Writing

I’ve had several pieces come out since my last newsletter. The biggest release is my first white paper about ESG. I also have a handful of shorter pieces including a letter to my local paper about how we should emphasize efficiency over tax increases; a column about how there is likely a trillion-dollar (plus) surprise in the Inflation Reduction Act; and on Friday a column about how Bernanke opened a Pandora’s Box of monetary policy.

I was also interviewed for the Capital Record podcast earlier this month about my ESG paper, with a little conversation at the end about the Religious Liberty in the States project I help lead.

Reflection

I preached on Habakkuk this past Sunday and will again next Sunday. I chose the text because I think it helps us navigate our current political conflict and turmoil.

I called yesterday’s sermon the city of man. Next week’s sermon is entitled the city of God. For those who don’t know, I took those titles from a famous book by one of the greatest Christian theologians: Saint Augustine. His book, The City of God, was written in a time like ours. The Roman empire, which had stood for nearly a thousand years, was sacked by the Visigoths and the entire empire was in shock.

Many Romans blamed the rise of Christianity and the abandonment of the Roman gods for this calamity. Augustine rightly tosses aside this nonsense by talking about how the Roman gods were mere idols made by human hands and had never protected or blessed the Romans. How, in fact, these idols were an affront to nature itself and the Author of nature. And how completely unworthy of praise and adoration they were.

I’ll spare you the details, but you can read the first three to four hundred pages of the City of God if you want to hear everything Augustine has to say on the matter.

But in the second half of City of God, Augustine turns to his Christian readers to encourage them and counsel them about how to process the end of their nation with the accompanying violence, uncertainty, and injustice. He tells them that there are two cities in this world, the city of man and the city of God, and that we simultaneously dwell in both cities. The city of man is all around us – in government, in culture, in business.

And the city of man is broken by sin. It tolerates and often encourages vice, injustice, and evil. But, Augustine says, the city of God is also there – or rather the citizens of the kingdom of God are there. He’s referring to us, brothers and sisters. We are citizens, emissaries even, from God’s city to the city of man. This is exactly what Jesus tells us over and over: we are salt and light in a dying world. We should be in the world but not of it.

The church, then, is much like an embassy – it is where strangers, non-citizens sojourning in a foreign country, gather together on a piece of their own soil. When we fellowship with other believers, we gather together in an outpost of the city of God. Our allegiance is first to God’s kingdom, to advance it in the land where we sojourn – just as the Israelites were told to work and pray for the good of Babylon when they were exiled there.

Augustine wanted his readers to know that the earth was not their home – Rome, or in our day the United States, is not the same as God’s kingdom. We sojourn in the city of man, but we are citizens of the city of God. And that has profound implications for how we live and how we navigate our election season and our ailing culture.

Habakkuk talks about violence, iniquity, wrong-doing, destruction, strife, and contention. We see the city of man on full display. His society sounds a lot like ours today. In addition to this evil and violence, he says the law seems paralyzed – unable to function. As a result, the wicked tend to get off scot-free. Not many things are more grating than watching or experiencing injustice.

Yet the city of man is full of injustice! This certainly bothers Habakkuk. Why will God not hear? Why does he make Habakkuk see iniquity? Why do you, God, idly look at wrong?  Bitter words to be sure. But friends, at this point in the book Habakkuk has lost the script – he seems fully focused on the city of man, not the city of God.

We can learn another thing from this opening section: the heavens seem deaf to people in the city of man. No God hears. No God acts. Citizens in the city of man are like the fool who says in his heart “there is no God.” They are like the wicked evildoers that the Psalmist says crush God’s people, kill the widow, the fatherless, and the sojourner, and then say: “The Lord does not see; the God of Jacob does not perceive.”

Though Habakkuk is not doing or saying these things explicitly, he seems to have absorbed some of the mindset that God is indifferent. I wonder, have you or I absorbed ideas or mindsets from people in the city of man?

Maybe that faith is a private issue of the heart, not a public way of life – something for Sunday but not for business or work challenges, or for leisure or entertainment or education?

Or perhaps you’ve unconsciously adopted the position that indulgence is good and holiness is optional?

Or do you fear that Christianity lacks intellectual foundations and secularization is the future?

Maybe you doubt that God really cares about this social problem or that injustice.

But as we are about to see, God is far from indifferent and is already at work addressing the evil and injustice that Habakkuk bemoans.

Habakkuk waits and watches for the Lord. There is a lot we can draw from this one verse. Even though he is upset, confused, and likely angry, Habakkuk turns to God for answers. He knows that God is his only hope.

Notice also his watchfulness. Habakkuk’s not just lying in bed waiting for motivation or a dream. He is not just going about his ordinary life waiting for God to speak. No, he puts himself in a specific place and sets himself to watch. He takes action, even uncomfortable and inconvenient action, to hear from the Lord.

Do you ever watch for God’s response to your prayers? How have you deliberately sought his counsel and comfort? I encourage you, especially in seasons of darkness, sadness, and confusion, ‘station yourself at the ramparts’ and ‘set a watch’ – don’t just go about your ordinary life as if nothing were wrong.

For Habakkuk, this watchfulness and waiting are also full of anticipation. He fully expects to hear from God. And, as we’ll see next week, he is not disappointed.

Bookshelf

I recently finished Longing to Know by Esther Meek. This is the 3^rd quarter book for First Baptist Church of Leadville. Our lead pastor has been kicking around the idea of pursuing a PhD in epistemology and wants the church to understand how he sees the world and what he wants to pursue since it affects his teaching, preaching, and philosophy of ministry.

The basic idea propounded by Meek and others emphasizes epistemic humility, seeking confidence rather than certainty. It is built on philosophy of science ideas like those of Thomas Kuhn and Michael Polanyi – ideas that criticize Cartesian rationalism and logical positivism. The philosophical idea elevates interpretation and experience over a purely logical, deductive, or pre-suppositional approach to knowledge. Yet it also posits what we can call “metaphysical realism” – that the world out there really exists independent of our experience and interpretation of it. Hence the need for humility. Our “subjective” models and frameworks sometimes rub against reality (often painfully) when they are wrong. Then we have to adapt to reality, not vice versa.

The idea of “correspondence” does a lot of work in this framework. We don’t claim direct, perfect access to reality as it is. But what our senses experience does correspond to reality in a consistent and meaningful way. If you’ve never read Lewis’ essay, “Transposition,” you should. He articulates the idea that earthly realities and patterns imitate heavenly ones, but not as perfect copies. As the author of Hebrews says, many earthly things are only types and shadows of the heavenly ones.

I’ve studied and written in this philosophical tradition since finishing undergrad – and maybe indirectly there too. In my writing, speaking, and debating, I prefer to use the language of evidence rather than proofs. Human knowledge is not binary; either true or false, fully known or not known at all. Instead, we “know” things with greater and lesser degrees of confidence.

Sometimes our confidence is so great that it feels certain. But people have been wrong about things of which they were completely certain – perhaps you have been too! Have you ever thought you knew something and discovered that you didn’t in fact know it? Or believed something strongly only to discover that it wasn’t true? We tend to believe things strongly, or feel “certain” about them, only after extensive argument, evidence, and experience.

Consider, are you certain the world is round? Most of us would say “yes.” But how do you know? Perhaps you’ve seen pictures from space, or looked at a globe, or heard about someone traveling around the world. In fact, mountains of data and evidence suggest that the world is round. Yet for much of history many people were unsure of that – and there are still a few who deny it (perhaps overlapping with people who think the moon landing was a hoax).

To take a less stark example, many scientific theories have been held as “certain” and as describing the world the way it really is – only to be found approximations or erroneous: The Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, Newton’s law of gravity, etc. These theories had substantial evidence and theory supporting them – yet it turned out that some of the evidence was wrong or could fit a different theory even better.

Thomas Kuhn writes about the idea of paradigms, paradigm shifts, and the accumulation of outliers to describe how scientific revolutions come about. Something similar plays out in our theories about the economy or about society. All of us develop explicit and implicit models or paradigms to enable us to navigate the world. Some are simple, others are complex. Some models are purely “tacit” – that is we can use them without being able to fully articulate how (like riding a bike or swimming).

Our paradigms are useful, but they also filter what we see, believe, or consider. Have you ever heard someone say, “I don’t have a category for that” when they experience something novel or surprising? Those experiences can be jarring precisely because we are not sure what to make of them.

When ideas or experiences go against our paradigm, we tend to discount them or ignore them entirely! We interpret them as necessarily wrong – “surely he couldn’t have meant that” or “that’s simply not possible – someone is delusional or lying.” In fact, one of the dangers of holding too strongly to one’s existing paradigms is a deep anti-intellectualism and skepticism, or a “closedness,” to the world.

All of this bears directly on matters of theology, faith, and the Bible. Why do we believe that the bible is God’s Word (and what does it mean to believe that?) Our answers will affect how we weigh various arguments and evidence for its historicity, authenticity, and divine authorship. Many a person has been tripped up because they were “certain” of some element or piece of biblical inerrancy and then ran up against enough evidence to cause them to doubt. But in a binary “certain–not certain” world, that loss of certainty can be shattering. Brittle belief has been broken.

If instead one approaches Scripture with confidence, recognizing not only historical, philosophical, and textual evidence, but also one’s personal experience of the truthfulness of the Word, your faith does not rest on one leg, but on many. Nor are you surprised by skepticism and arguments calling into question certain elements of Scripture – many of which are relatively unimportant.

Was Daniel written in 738 BC or 725 B. C.? Is there evidence of another contributor or multiple writers even though a book bears a single author’s name? Or what about the concern that the mustard seed that Jesus calls the smallest of seeds is not actually the smallest seed we know of. Last summer I hiked with a guy who had walked away from Christianity at least in part because of this very “problem” or “inconsistency.”

Of course, there are meaningful responses and answers to these questions, but will we accept them? If we have an overly narrow (and really incorrect) view of biblical inerrancy as meaning a certain universal literalism, we are in trouble. But ask yourself, was Jesus making a scientific claim about all seeds when he called the mustard seed the smallest? What would his listeners have known and understood at the time? Should debates or questions about the scientific accuracy of an illustration cause doubt about whether God exists or whether Christ lived and died to make a way for us to the Father?

Part of a robust faith involves recognizing Christianity and the bible as the best paradigm for navigating life and our own souls. Do we know enough – have we tasted and seen that the Lord is good – to carry us through doubts, trials, and challenges? Do we trust that there are answers to every question and challenge because all truth is God’s truth? And very importantly, what do we do with ambiguity? How do we navigate it?

Christians have some fairly sharp and significant disagreements among themselves about theology and practice. What are we to make of this? How does God want us to know Him as we navigate disagreements? While it is important to question, consider, and search for the truth, it is also important to become increasingly grounded in God’s grace – and that involves accepting limits to our knowledge. Trusting God provides a framework for life, and grounds us in his revealed Word. It helps us to be resilient rather than brittle. And it helps us to be gracious and patient rather than divisive; to be at peace in disagreement rather than threatened by it.

None of this should seem relativistic. God exists. Reality exists. Truth exists. But as fallen, finite human beings, our ability to access and fully understand truth is limited. God knows this. It’s why he asks us to have faith. And it is why He gives us His Spirit and a community of believers to help us understand the Word and to navigate the turbulence and ambiguity of life.

This approach to knowledge is an invitation to inquiry, to reflection, and to humility – not a restless never-ending search for perfect certainty. A search which will most likely end in existential despair.

Game Corner

A couple weeks ago we played a game called Machi Koro several times. It’s simple to play. Your goal is to be the first player to build (purchase) four major city improvements. All players have the same improvements to build. You gain money by creating various business establishments – fields, orchards, forests, bakeries, restaurants, etc.

Some establishments give you money whenever their number is rolled, regardless of which player rolled it. Other establishments only pay you when you roll the number yourself. Finally, a third set of establishments requires other players to pay you when they roll the cards’ number (or, for some cards, if you roll the number).

Everyone begins rolling one die. One of the cheaper city improvements gives you the option of rolling two dice. The calculations entail deciding whether to focus on cheaper single digit cards or more expensive 7+ number cards. You also have to make decisions about how much to diversify, when to save and when to build, and how to avoid losing your money to other players. Expansions of the game offer greater variety of cards and methods for gaining income.