Dear Organlearners,
In my <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> reply to
Winfried Deijmann <winfried@universal.nl> I wrote:
> Faith is a quality of knowledge. Perhaps it can be described as the
> cutting edge of my thoughts. Thus faith concerns some of my
> thoughts. I may also call them my personal beliefs. Some of these
> beliefs originate externally from other sources (God and other
> humans). I have to trust these external beliefs in order to derive
> any value from them. The other beliefs originate internally in my
> mind and permeate the four levels (experential, tacit, formal and
> sapient) of it. I have to reason with these internal beliefs,
> questioning them day by day to ensure their validity. To symbolise it
> in the shortest manner:
> faith = trust + reason
I have a serious problem with what I have written above. The problem
is not its content. The problem is also not the language and my use
of it. (The language and its correct usage is another problem which I
have since English is not my mother tongue and I seldom speak it.)
The problem is the fact that I have expressed my thoughts on faith in
fixed writing rather than sharing it in spoken dialogue. I am doing
something which gave me great pains when I was an adoloscent fourty
years ago.
Let me explain. To become a confessing (full) member of our church,
we youngsters had to know, among other things, the confessions of
faith of our church. There are three of them, all orginating from the
16th century. The one is called the Heidelberg Catechism (with a
question-answer format). This catechism defined faith, put very
consicely, just as I have done above, as
faith = trust + reason
I asked my fellow students, the pastor and sunday school teachers why
the cathechism defined faith in such a manner. Some said that the two
authors of the catechism got it from the Bible. I asked them how they
got it from the Bible. Their reply was that the how is not important.
What was important was that I should memorise the cathechism because
400 years ago people had witnessed to it with their lives and someday
I might find it useful to answer the questions of an unbeliever. The
more I wanted to have a dialogue (Afrikaans "gesprek") on the
catechism's definition of faith, the more they answered me with "Dit
is God se Woord" (It is the Word of God ).
Several years later I found an old copy of the Catechism which still
made referances to the Bible verses on which each answer was based.
The next few weeks became a wonderful study in "tracing the dialogue"
between the Catechism and the Bible. But I was also painfully
reminded that this "dialogue" was happening in my head while as a
youngster I longed for a spoken dialogue with my fellow church
members.
While I wrote the paragraph quoted at the beginning, I wondered how
many of you would experience the same frustration as I have
experienced as a youngster? Did some of the following thoughts not
occur in your mind?
* Here At de Lange writes "faith = trust + reason" while I want to
* question this wierd definition. Who cares about my problems of
* understanding faith? He seems to use the Bible as a hidden source
* while I want to avoid the Bible. Although he says that it is very
* difficult for him to etablish which articles of faith comes from
* and God which he thus have to trust, I still think that he invokes
* a godhead as an easy and uncreative way.
Well, I do care. Today I know that our lack of creativity is
responsible for most of our learning problems. On the one hand, I
can help you with your learning by "writing" what I have discovered
about creativity through unceasing questioning. Among other things,
you will have to struggle through "entropy production" and its
consequences. (My book will do it and that is why the book appears to
be so horrible.) However, eventhough creativity plays a main role in
my systems thinking, the system is very complex and thus poses
problems peculiar to complexity. But I worry mainly because this
"writing" will result in the same dilemma as the
"faith = trust + reason" episode in my own life.
Fortunately, in my system thinking I do not only formalise
creativity, but I also recognise certain manifestations of human
creativity which sustains creativity, even if we know nothing about
creativity formally. I have identified five of them up to now, using
the basic method of phenomenology. They are: dialogue, game-playing,
problem-solving. exemplar-studying and art-expressing.
Allow me to show you how they work by using two of them on the
concept of trust. We will first consider dialogue as an elementary
creativity sustainer.
Many months ago on this list we had many contributions on the word
"trust", probably more than on any other topic on this list. Most of
these contributions were of a dialogue nature. We traced the role of
trust in organisations and especially learning organisations. We
covered an immense web which uncovered a diversity of topics related
to trust. On certain topics we maintained different opinions. But two
things I myself will never forget, were:
* The dialogue led to the evolution of a diversity of topics
related to trust - the emergence of the-web-of-trust.
* We all had faith in the main definition of dictionaries for the
word trust:
To trust X is to rely with confidence on the integrity of X.
Now, this "faith" in the meaning of the word trust, is it "trust",
"reason" or both "trust + reason"? I think it is both. But because of
the circularity involved, I will be very careful to admit "trust" as
the reason why we had "faith" in trust. However, once we use the
dictionary definition for trust, namely "To trust X is to rely with
confidence on the integrity of X", two words intrigue me because of
their direct relationship to the essentialities of creativity. The
word "confidence" relates to "sureness" and the word "integrity"
relates to "wholeness".
Let us think about the previous paragraph. Did you get the gut
feeling that something creative happened in it? I got that feeling!
So, which one of the five elementary sustainers of creativity was
operating here? I think it is "examplar-studying". So let us all
participate in this sustainer.
The etymology of "integrity" is the Latin (L) word "integer"= whole.
The etymology of "confidence" is L "con-"=with and "fido"=trust.
Instead of sureness, we end up with "trust". Thus we will have to
study the etymology of the word "trust" to see what we can learn form
it. Let us do it!
It all began with the word for "tree" in the ancient Germanic
languages. They derive from a proto-language which linguists call
IndoGermanice (IG). The word in IG was probably "droru". This word
was also used for the number "three" (G="treis", L="tres"). Even in
OE (Old English = Anglen+Saxon+Frisan) the same word was used for
tree and three, namely "treo". Why? Because a tree had three parts:
roots, stem and leaves. Augustine, who brought Christianity to
England in the 6th century, used this very etymology to explain the
triune nature of God.
Now what were these ancient Germanic tribes in northern Europe - a
bunch of tree worshippers? No, not according to their mythology which
involved gods such as Thor ("Thursday") and Freia ("Friday"). But
trees played a very important role in their culture. They used the
wood of trees to make such things as trays (utensil for carry,
OE="treg"), trusses (to keep a roof in position, OE="tros"), troughs
(to keep water in, OE="trog") and tar (resin for water repelling,
OE="teru").
But they also organised themselves for whatever meeting (marriages,
elections, law courts) in the vincinity of a tree. (When Doc Holloway
writes about Barry Owen's concept of "open spaces", these ancient
Germanic tribes would think of the clearing around a big and old tree
which they had to make for their meetings) There they used trees to
refer figuratively to trimness (to be strong, OE="trum"), to troops
(shelters in war, OE="truma"), to truce (making a pledge for peace,
OE="trow"), to true and truth (referring to facts, OE="trowe") and
last, but not the least, to trust (or believing, OE="truwan")
Tracing this word in other languages like Old Norse, Old Frisian, Low
Saxon (Niedersachsisch), Franconian (Old Dutch) and even my own
language Afrikaans (a modern language) is very exciting. Following it
up with the Romanic languages such as Greek and Latin brings even
further insights, extending the web of understanding. But all of it
is still "exemplar-studying", one of the five elementary sustainers
of human creativity!
In conclusion: The ancient Germanic tribes had a word which seems to
have sounded very much like "trow". This word signified for them
their paradigm for constructive creativity. How could they create
constructively without having faith? Is it not faith which gave them
the cutting edge to their creativity? Does it make sense to you?
In my own language Afrikaans many of these meanings can also be
traced. But the one which I want to mention, is the word which
we have for marry, namely "trou" (sounding like "trow"). We use it in
the sence of pledge, but also in the sense of "standing together till
death parts us". This irreversible "standing together" is exactly
what the word system means in Greek: "syn"=together, "histemi"=stand.
I have noted elsewhere that I have learned in 1969 from the Bible
that I have to trust God only. I was baffled by this message. Today I
understand it. It means, among other things, standing together with
God Creator. You may believe in a different God than the one who is
revealed in the Bible because He commands me not to judge any person
or disrepect a stranger. But, whatever or whoever you believe in,
think about the following questions. Do you not stand together with
what/whom you believe in? Should faith be excluded from your system
thinking?
To tell you the truth, my last couple of contributions on faith and
believing made me scary to post them. But I had to post them
otherwise my soul will get no rest.
I believe that faith is very important to system thinking, just
one order lower than love. Unfortunately, articles of faith and their
close counterpart religion have caused immense hurt in this world
since the dawn of humanity. This is what scares me. As a reaction
many people tried to reduce the roles of faith and religion in their
lives. With some it has become a faith and religion which hurt many
other people.
What we really have to do, is to establish beyond doubt whether faith
has a role in system thinking or not. Simultaneously we have to find
out how we can avoid causing hurt whatever our finding is on the role
of faith in system thinking.
Thank your for reading me so far. I will now stop rushing in where
angels fear to tread. If I acted foolish towards somebody else's
faith and religion, please forgive me. I did not intend it. Open my
eyes to my own foolishness.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
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