Have you ever learned a new word while reading a book and created a pronunciation of it in your mind that’s nowhere near how the word is actually pronounced? After pronouncing it the wrong way for a while, it can be tough to relearn how to say it the right way. This illustrates a key fact of life. When our learning involves unlearning, learning becomes confusing. This is especially true of spiritual emergencies. When you begin to deconstruct and unlearn your former way of understanding life, it can lead you to question all kinds of other things too. Eventually, you start to reconsider everything because the rug has been swept from under your feet. When your foundation for everything you know and believe crumbles, it leaves you with a million different questions that suddenly need answers, which can be really difficult to process.
That’s why we’ve worked through the first two steps of Triage already. First, you slow down and keep breathing. Take some time to process and don’t make any rash decisions. Second, find the right people. In situations like this, it’s important to have people in your circle who can walk with you as you process everything. Now, we’ll talk about the third step, which is how to stop the bleeding. The short answer is this: you stop the bleeding by learning how to think, not what to think.
The goal of Triage is to equip you with some tools and a process that will help you both survive and avoid ever having a spiritual emergency again. Given that, our goal is to ensure that we don’t create conditions that will just lead you into another spiritual emergency. One of the most surefire ways to fall into a spiritual emergency is by listening to people who will only tell you what to think, not how to think. If that’s all you’ve ever had, you will tend to look elsewhere for the same kind of teaching. This kind of pattern is like slapping a band-aid on a wound that needs a full-blown surgery. That’s why this chapter doesn’t really focus too much on answers, because learning how to think is far more about questions than it ever is about answers.
With this idea in mind, the first question isn’t “What are the right answers?” It’s “What are the right questions?” To answer that, let’s look at the story of someone who went through his own spiritual emergency and the questions that he asked to help him through it. His name is Thomas. He was one of the disciples, and he often gets a bad rap for his role in the Gospel story. He is often known as “Doubting Thomas,” but a better title for him would be “Thinking Thomas.” This is because he demonstrates an understanding of not just what to think but how to think. Let’s start by painting a picture of who Thomas was. The Bible gives us some insight into Thomas’ conviction in the Gospel of John chapter 11:
14 "So then he told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead, 15 and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ 16 Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’” (John 11:14-16)
At this moment, Jesus is returning to Judea, where He will die. All of the disciples know this, but Thomas encourages them all to go with Him so that they may die too. Thomas’ courage of conviction in Jesus was so strong that he was ready and willing to go die with Him. After this moment, though, we start to see his convictions erode.
The next time we see Thomas, he is with Jesus and the other disciples in Jerusalem, and they are having a final meal together before Jesus is arrested. Many things are said during the ensuing conversation, including Jesus stating that He will be going away, to which he replied:
"Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’” (John14:5)
This conversation is incredibly disorienting for everyone, including Thomas, so he asks this question. This conversation is where we see Thomas’ confidence in his beliefs start to slip. It only gets worse from here, as the very next day Jesus is crucified, which is earth-shattering for the disciples. How do the disciples put the pieces of their lives back together after Jesus’ death? We get an answer (for Thomas, at least) in John 20. This is immediately after Jesus has risen from the grave and appeared to some of the disciples. Starting in verse 24:
24 “Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hands into his side, I will not believe.’ 26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ 27 Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.’ 28 Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God! 29 Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’” (John 20:24-29)
Here we see that Thomas knows what to ask. He begins with the obvious in asking whether Jesus really is alive and then asks what that means if that is the case. After Jesus presents evidence to answer his most pressing question, he responds by acknowledging who He is. Jesus’ words at the end of this story aren’t an encouragement to those who simply believe without thinking. Rather, it’s an encouragement to those who maybe have to think harder according to different evidence. This response tells us something important about who Jesus is.
Jesus honors our ability to think. He wants us to use our minds and think well and ask good questions. The question, then, is how do we think well? The key to thinking well is establishing a solid foundation. When you start with the foundation, then you can begin to rebuild your life and your understanding of reality in a way that is stable and secure. Here are two questions that are at the foundation of everything:
1. Is truth real?
2. Is reality only material or is it immaterial also?
Your answers to these two questions establish the foundation for everything else you believe about life. If the answer to the first question is no, then we’re lost. If truth isn’t real, then we really don’t have any foundation to build our lives on at all. If the answer to the first question is yes, however, than we can begin to address the second question. If reality is only ever this material world, then we are born, we live, we die, and that’s it. There’s really no need to even bother with any of this because after your life on earth ends then there’s nothing else that comes next. But, if reality is also immaterial, than we have a lot more that we should investigate. These questions are important, and while they are deep, their answers are actually fairly simple.
The answer to the first question is yes, truth is real. This is because in order for the answer to be meaningful at all, it has to be yes. If the answer is no, the answer is self-defeating. Whether your answer is yes or no, you’re making a statement that you believe to be true. This means that all of us believe that truth is real, even if we say we don’t. Not only that, but we build our entire lives on what we believe to be true. That’s why a spiritual emergency can be so disorienting, because something that you believed to be true that you built your whole life on turned out to be a lie. Even that recognition itself also assumes that truth is real, because in order for anything to be a lie, there has to be something that is true. You can’t have one without the other. Thomas understood this, because he asked if Jesus was really alive. Jesus was either dead or alive; one of those had to be true, so Thomas seeks to find out which is which because he understands that truth is part of the foundation of our thinking.
How to you figure out what the truth is when everything can get so muddled with different voices and opinions? We have three tests for truth that can help you as you try to sort through all the things that you have heard and seen:
1. Coherence – Is it coherent with other things I know to be true?
2. Correspondence – Does this idea correspond with reality?
3. Functionality – Is it functionally adequate?
When you’re going through the process of unlearning, you can rely on these three tests to help you discern what’s true and what isn’t.
The second question is just as significant, but the answer is also just as simple. The easiest way to answer it is to just step back and realize that the question itself assumes an immaterial reality. The question assumes that there is some an answer that is true, and truth is immaterial. Not only that, but the logic that we use to locate truth is immaterial, as well as things like mathematics, morality, and the laws of physics. All of these things are immaterial, so reality must be both material and immaterial.
These two questions don’t fix everything. There are many other important life questions to be answered from here, but these two questions establish a foundation from which you can begin to answer other questions. Your answers to these two questions can give you the ability to rebuild your understanding of life. You can stop the bleeding by answering life’s most foundational questions and building upon them.
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