Quick reply to a skeptic

Until I was about 9-years-old I was solipsistic; that is, I believed that nothing existed outside of my own mind. Once I realized that reality was real, I still didn’t believe objective truth could be known until I was about 13, when God destroyed my egotism and forced me to reckon with something absolute. I get what it’s like to see everything as a matter of opinion, perspectives, and delusion, but inasmuch as that approach seemed to me like a cold, hard admission of how things really were, I learned it was actually a warm blanket keeping me from facing a much harder truth.

I looked up some of your old comments reflecting on your journey toward enlightenment, it doesn’t seem to me that you’re a reader of mine, so I’m not sure why I should be a cipher to you, but if you do actually find my perspective worth hearing, I’ll just spell out the logic, because I know that you are close to a transformation yourself.

We could start with one’s own conscience. Humans have an internal mechanism for prompting us when we witness something immoral, whether externally or internally. We have the opportunity to act accordingly. Whether any truth exists, or reality is even real, that conscience records our decisions based on what we knew at the time.

Does that record matter in the great equation of the Universe? Does anything happen with it?

The two most subtle, pernicious impulses in the human psyche are self-pity and entitlement, which quickly swoop in to brush aside accountability. We either justify ourselves or disregard external standards, by making the entire matter about our own point of view. These impulses start off extremely crude in children. They openly wallow in self-pity or demand whatever they want, expressing the core pattern. But we all learn to be more sophisticated, disguising our thoughts from ourselves, creating handy blind spots. We reinforce just-so narratives about our own lives that shield us from the raw signals of our own conscience. Our identity, purpose, and relationships all become tangled up in our own narrative, which rests on this system of self-curated “facts” that are little more than self-pity and entitlement.

In the Bible, the conscience ends up being the most important factor in the equation of judgment and salvation. Far from just being the 10 Commandments, we see an almost post-modern sounding argument in Romans 2, in which Paul describes (if I may paraphrase and extrapolate) how knowledge of righteousness heightens that sensitivity, raising the standard by which a person is accountable. That means history, culture, traditions, laws, philosophies, religions, and lived experience all contribute to the individual’s own burden of justification. To deny or neglect this burden does not in any way diminish it, but only compounds it, by exposing the hypocrisy of the person who claims to be good (or at least good enough) without examining their own soul by the highest standard.

You cite a person who is “friendly” (why should that matter?) and “good by non-book-related metrics,” but that itself is a convenient framing. You happen to be “good” by your own particular standard? I’m sorry, but who isn’t? The murderer, the liar, every person you might say is objectively evil all have a sob story and a justification at hand. Everyone justifies themselves. Everyone is friendly and good by their own standards, because we change our standards to fit ourselves. It’s a rubber measuring stick.

And isn’t it convenient how “immorality” begins exactly at the limit of our own behavior? Whenever we cross a line, the definition of evil changes accordingly, to retreat just a little bit further. There are exceptions. There are reasons. In our own story we never cross the line, because we keep realizing the line is actually somewhere else, and we’re still good… by non-book-metrics.

If you were ever to study the life and teachings of Jesus, you might find that he is surprisingly light on high-minded “thou shalt” commandments, and heavy on self-reflection. The reason he is the exemplar is because he cuts through the bullshit. He strikes at the heart of the matter, tears away the pretense, and airs the secret logic of the hypocrite. Those who value him—even to the point of placing in him their entire hope of reconciliation with the Creator, who knows our conscience—do so because they are realize that they are failures by the standards of true righteousness. There are many philosophers who pondered wisdom and good living, but Jesus is the dividing line of reality. He cuts deeper than anyone, and to the insulated heart it’s terrifying.

You’re right that we can’t think through reality; not in the way that a God could. We are profoundly ignorant beings, shrouded in mist and darkness by nature. But if God is willing to enlighten us, then we can begin to see, however faintly, the outline of objective truth.

“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

—John 3:19-21

Those who love the truth will eventually face a reckoning with their own soul. God is there to reveal our own history to us. Jesus is there to remove the excuses, and to offer a radical alternative to self-pity and entitlement: full conviction, self-denial, and extreme accountability, without any last shred of justification, and total dependence on a mediator. To become a Christian is not to become a good person, but to abandon the lie of being a good person. It is not about knowing everything confidently, but to admit that we don’t know anything except the testimony of our own renewed life.

If there is a universal judgment coming, as Jesus announced, then the burden of our conscience cannot be mitigated by convenient stories anymore. He raised the standard to the point where everyone falls short, and then surpassed it himself. He was given eternal life to show us what happens when God finds no fault, and then offered to implant in us a renewed conscience; a spirit that is hypersensitive, where guilt can no longer be denied. And along with that renewal comes a small, budding faith in something that sounds impossible: that God will forgive us on that day.

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