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Showing posts from October, 2014

Negative Capability (It's not what you think.)

...instead, negative capability is what being a Christian is all about. The great English poet John Keats defines negative capability as when an individual  "is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason" rather than "being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge" ( http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/237836?page=2 ). Keats doesn't say that we shouldn't be curious or that we shouldn't use reason; instead, he says that some things defy reason and can't be understood by rationalizations...and that we have to be okay with it.  People are most successful when they can ponder, but at the end of the day, there has to be a certain measure of acceptance of uncertainty. So, how do Christians live in "uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason"? Paul writes, "Beyond all question, the  mystery  from which ...