Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept Read Online Free Page B

of eternal return. Nihilism is a master story, perhaps a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, but a master story nonetheless.
    Christianity, with its pattern of creation, fall, redemption and glorification, is a master narrative. I see my life and the lives of others as tiny chapters in that master story. The meaning of these little stories cannot be divorced from the master story, but some of this meaning is propositional. When, for example, I ask myself what I am really assuming about reality, the result is a set of ideas that I can express in propositional form.
    The initial story in the present book illustrates one way a question requiring a nonstory answer moves through story into propositions without losing its story form. Notice what happens to the father when he is challenged by his son to explain why the world doesn’t just wildly spin off in space or plunge downward to oblivion. He may not have thought about such an issue since he took earth science or astronomy in high school or college. He does, however, remember a bit about what he learned, and so he can make some progress. He can tell his son about the law of gravity. He can even tell him about the orderliness of the universe. What stymies him, however, is the ultimate question—what makes the universe orderly? Still, by pondering, he can make a stab at an answer. “Well, ah, er . . . uhm . . . it’s matter and energy all the way down,” or “God made it that way, and it’s God all the way down.” These are the choices a father in the modern Western world is likely to make. One is the first ontological presupposition of naturalism, the other of theism or perhaps deism.
    There are, of course, other ways for the father to have answered his son’s question. Let’s say the father has made a full commitment to Zen. He is not yet a Zen master. He has not yet been enlightened or achieved satori. But he is anxious to steer his son in the right direction. So how does he answer the question, What holds the world in space?
    “Son, that’s considered an interesting question by those who do not know what questions to ask. Your teacher or something in you has started you thinking in the wrong direction.”
    “Why, Dad? What do you mean?”
    “Why? What do I mean, Son? Even those questions are really unproductive. Come, sit with me. There, now get into the position you see me taking.”
    “Okay, Dad. Is this right?”
    “Right? Wrong? Don’t ask. It will do. Now, let us be silent.”
    The father may turn the boy’s attention to an object in nature—the moon, the stars, a bird on a branch. He may teach the boy a mantra, like Om mane padme hum , or just have him say Om slowly over and over. But he will not answer his questions. Questions have no answers, at least not ones that appear rational to the waking logical consciousness. But after meditating, the boy may well no longer be interested in the questions. He may be captivated by the journey toward the Void—the empty fullness of the universe.
    The first principle of Zen is that there is no first principle of Zen. Or, the first principle of Zen is Not. Everything in our conscious Western being cries out against the possibility that the father and son humming their mantra are remotely in touch with the way things are . Our presuppositions are so radically different that we have great difficulty seeing what the Zen father is trying to get his son to see. Perhaps we can’t see it at all. Is there something there to be seen? If there is, then the Western notion that being is determinate—some specific thing and not something else—is wrong. No logic—no form of rationality—is common to the Zen father and the Western father, whether Christian or naturalist.
    Here is where Dooyeweerd’s notion of ground motive seems to me to be helpful. There is a commitment or disposition below the level of conscious reason that characterizes the heart of everyone. From this commitment flows