"The Excluded Middle"

Between the scientific/rationalistic West and the 2/3 world, there is a great gulf. Anyone who has lived in a developing country has probably encountered it to some degree. I lived in such a developing Arab country for 8 years. Aside from their customs that were polite to them and offensive to me, and my customs that were polite to me and offensive to them, there was another culture gap: they were powerfully influenced by folk Islam.

Folk Islam is the practice of going to the tombs of long-departed Muslim saints and praying or making sacrifices in hopes of healing, getting a job or some other assistance. It also entails the curses against one's enemies, the evil eye that might despoil one of a prized possession and other - what we'd call - superstitions. Along with this are regional "saints" that are witnessed at times roaming around.

Science dismisses this as superstition and having no basis in reality. Anything that might have a real effect has a "rational" explanation. As a result, even Christian missionaries are rather quick to dismiss all of this as utter nonsense, though it's usually put more politely to the locals.

This is what Paul Hiebert, a Christian anthropologists, calls the "Excluded Middle," a middle world of spirits, demons and angels that 2/3 of the world's population claims to experience on a near daily basis. It is excluded from Christian missions because it is excluded from the Western scientific worldview.

Is there any reality to this? An acquaintance recounted to me that, when he was young, his aunt was paralyzed from the waist down and doctors couldn't help her. She went to a woman with special healing powers for help. They brought a sheep, slit its throat and the woman dove on the spurting blood and began to drink it. At that moment, he saw his aunt leap to her feet and begin dancing. She retained her healing for the rest of her life, but to do so she had to return every year on the anniversary of her healing to sacrifice a chicken. If she failed to do this, she would once again be paralyzed. What might the rational explanation be for this?

Apparently, this is not an uncommon occurrence, according to friends of our who live in Africa. There is not mechanical efficacy to this any more than there is to modern medicine, but there is enough that even many Christians living in these countries return to these pagan practices when Western science and technology fail them. My son, who spent some time in Africa said that witchcraft devastates local Christians through their involvement.

Some American friends of ours lived in a remote village. On several occasions, after they put their toddler to bed, he would wake up crying, claiming that a dog had been in his room. They later found out that the “saint” that supposedly roamed that region sometimes manifested himself as a dog. Perhaps that’s just a coincidence of the imaginations of an infant and those of the locals. Perhaps there is a spiritual reality that Westerners are blind to.

As Hiebert said, citing Leslie Newbigin, this poses a problem for modern missions in that "Western Christian missions have been one of the greatest secularizing forces in history." The problem is that we are not setting them free from their superstitions, but we escort them into our worldview where, in practice, God may as well be an "absentee landlord." This is the deistic worldview which Western Christianity is dangerously close to, if not deeply immersed in.

There is yet another problem that is even more subtle. In denying the "Excluded Middle," Western Christianity has given the okay, starting in the Middle Ages, to delve around in the occult in search of methods of manipulating our environment and gaining mastery over it. Since we have considered the occult to have no power or validity - it's not rational - we picked out of it whatever we pleased and continue to do so.

I claim that this has been a dangerous error that has led Western Christianity into a mindset of which Paul has this to say: "Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away." (2 Timothy 3:5) I believe Western science has been a major contributor to this, and it has neutered the Western Church and made Western missions a great secularizing force of history.

Rob

A Variety of Musings

If you find science interesting, particularly the philosophy of science, perhaps you will find this interesting. I've always found it interesting that, in light of all that we don't know about the universe we live in, we seem to feel justified in believing we can figure out universal laws by simple reason. That seems rather a stretch to me, even if our theories and laws do make predictions that bear out. In other words, I'm not much of a scientific realist, but very interested in science.

I've been studying the history of science and the influence of Greek philosophy on our current theories. That's taken me into influences from alchemy and the occult - though I have no interest in the occult other than how it has influenced science. Interesting books I've read recently on this are Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer by Michael White and Magic into Science: The Story of Paracelsus by Henry M. Pachter. Another, though rather hard to read and long is Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas. I'll cite other references of interest in later posts. Suffice it to say that that which was once considered occult is no longer and has become accepted as science. Could it be that science is more occult than we realize? Then what influence has this had upon Christianity through history and where does that leave us today? There is much to say on that.

What does the Bible have to say about all this? It might seem somewhat disconnected from the above, but I find today that Christians of all stripes omit huge portion of the Canon of the Scriptures through reason. What seems to be the biggest motivator? "I'm okay and if there's a discrepancy between my experience and what the Bible seems to say my experience should be, then there's something wrong with my interpretation of the Bible." In other words, my experience takes precedence over the scriptures. My experience speaks into the scriptures and not the scriptures into my experience.

How does this all tie together? Perhaps you see it. Perhaps you don't. I think it'll become clear in future posts. If not, feel free to write to me anytime. I love respectful challenges to my thinking.

Later,
Rob