truth

Here's one model of understanding the world, truth, knowledge, etc:

When officials are learning to spot forged money, they don't spend their time looking at forgeries. All their time is spent, instead, studying real money, and by learning to spot real money, they are better able to spot forgeries.

I've heard this used multiple times in my life as an example of how Christians should approach the world. The idea is that our understanding of truth increases the more that we study "the real thing" (e.g. Christianity, the Bible) and that it doesn't improve by studying other religions or other points of view.

Unfortunately, this model is arrogant and simplistic, and it misses the point.

First, this model is experientially false. Not false with dollar bills, since I don't try to identify forgeries, but false when it's applied to realms of knowledge. I know from experience that my understanding of Christianity and the uniqueness of Christ has increased as I have studied other religions and other points of view.

Second, this model is incredibly arrogant. It assumes that we know what the truth is. What I think this would come down to is "The Bible is God's infallible word, and by studying this we learn what truth is." Infallible and non-contradicting are different things, but the Bible is contradictory, at least. This model of understanding the world ignores that the contradictions of the Bible, along with all the rest of it, must be interpreted. It ignores that Christians themselves disagree on fundamental issues of faith, and that a monolithic, homogenous Christianity in many ways does not exist. It also, perhaps, ignores that Christians' understanding of the Bible has increased when hermeneutics converses with other areas of study, such as science and archaeology.

The idea with that little tale is that you study truth to spot out what is false. How and why it is false are unimportant, but the fact that it is false is enough to know that I shouldn't learn about it. But this leads to a lack of understanding and to people making stupid claims about what other religions actually say. I just hate all the vibes that that model gives off, all the isolationist and close-minded and arrogant vibes. I usually get very angry when I hear it.

Whatever. Here's a different model that I cling more closely to:

Humans get sick. To cure them, it is important and necessary to study sickness, to study disease. Studying healthy bodies shows you how all the cells and systems should be functioning, but it ignores the reality that bodies don't function properly, that things break down and sicken.

I guess that's why people say to have the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.