Captive Thoughts
a silly little thought experiment about consciousness
As you read this, I will be in Washington, participating in the University of Washington Hackathon. (Before we continue, a hackathon is not about “hacking into” systems to expose vulnerabilities. Instead, it's about “hacking together” a solution like a logical and structural improvisation. It is a constructive, not a destructive, process.) I’ll have the pleasure of hacking with a team of students from British Columbia for 24 hours, and then I’ll get the joy of spending the rest of my Fall Break with my former roommate who now studies at UW.
Lately, I’ve been concerned about whether the work I do is pleasing to God. When I spend the next 24 hours rapidly developing a solution to a problem, is that process pleasing to God? When I spend time to parse web pages into natural language, is that pleasing to God? When I listen to and dissect a philosophical argument, is that pleasing to God? If my work is not pleasing to God, shouldn’t that motivate a change in my work, in my passions? The answer to these questions would have a large impact on my life.
It should be noted that any work I do is a pittance compared to the glory of God. Nothing I ever do will pleasing to God in the sense of merit; I cannot impress the Creator of the universe. God’s response to my work is like that of a father to a macaroni necklace: it is not pleasing by skill or craft but by intention. However, even if my work cannot ever be pleasing in the sense of merit, it can still be pleasing in the sense of intention, and a traditional way of showing intention is through improvement, or rather, an approach of something meritorious. A macaroni necklace is not necessarily intentional if the father has trained the child to be a jeweler.
If I seek to make my work meritorious, what is my work? Is it simply writing and coding, or is it something more abstract? Isn’t my work purely composed of my thoughts, of the constructs that sit on the substrate of my conscience? Writing and coding are just the expression of those thoughts, the movement of those thoughts onto a medium that is observable to those besides myself; text and code are side effects, rather than the outcomes, of my work.
Let’s assume, then, that my work is primarily composed of thinking. Thus, the product of my work is thoughts. This poses a more philosophical question: if I’m concerned with whether my work is pleasing to God, then how do I know whether my thoughts are pleasing to God?
The evaluation of thoughts would require the observation of those thoughts. Paul puts it in terms of captivity, such that
We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ… (2 Cor. 10:5)
Consider, for a moment, the idea of the captor. What is capturing our thoughts, and how can the thoughts be taken captive? My initial intuition was that the conscience is the observer of our thoughts, that there is hierarchy of thoughts such that higher-order thoughts operate as captors of lower-level thoughts, and those higher-order thoughts are the ones who transfer the thoughts into the captivity of Christ. The higher-order thoughts, essentially, are the thoughts that think about or evaluate other thoughts.
However, this construction seems bankrupt. If you operate as an external observer of your own thoughts, shouldn’t that external observer, which is a thought, also be taken captive? How do you take something captive when the captor is also included in the class of things that need to be captured? And doesn’t the entire system depend on there being a “highest-level thought” that is not subject to captivity, which seems to be completely contradictory to Paul’s charge to take every thought captive?
To further complicate this structure, isn’t it difficult, if not impossible, to capture a thought without first exposing its contents? At least for me, there does not seem to be a definition of a thought such that the recognition of the thought does not also insert the contents of the thoughts into the conscience. Observe, for instance, that it is difficult to consider that you are thinking without also being aware of what your thoughts contain. So, if the goal is captivity, how do you capture a thing of which its nature is to break free upon being recognized as a discrete entity?
So, if my initial intuition is untenable, there must be something else at play.
Consider Paul’s verse again. First, note that Paul is speaking to the Corinthians in the context of professional rhetoricians. He’s discussing the idea that some Corinthians look down upon him because he refuses to teach in the same manner as the professional Greek rhetoricians, even though doing so would earn him, and presumably his cause, a great deal of respect.
Second, note that 2 Cor. 10:5 is preceded by a metaphor of war:
I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking in the flesh. For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. (2 Cor. 10:2-5)
Paul seems to be drawing a direct contrast to the professional rhetoricians by comparing them to the flesh. The professional rhetoric of the Greek debaters is fleshly because it is not empowered by the Holy Spirit. Instead, Paul is arguing that the warfare he carries out is, in some sense, divine. In the same vein, he argues that by refusing to argue strictly in the flesh, or rather, by refusing the employment of only professional argumentation, that he is assuming a position of humility. The warfare he carries out is by rejecting the “lofty opinions” by subjecting every thought to the captivity of Christ.
Interestingly, this shares strong similarities with 1 Peter 3:15, which many modern professional apologists (logical defenders of the faith) use as their motivation. While Peter is using the word apologia in the legal sense of defending oneself in the court of law, Peter also appends the notion of meekness and fear at the end of his charge. As one commentator (Archbishop Leighton) noted, Professional debaters and rhetoricians who bluster about with invective are not true apologists. The meekness and fear seem to stem from the awe and knowledge of God’s holiness such that the flesh would in some way impede the defense — not in the sense that the flesh of the tongue stumbles over its words, but rather in the sense that the worldly flesh of the conscience inadequately represents the faith. And if the stance of the professional debater is fleshly, apologists should, at the very least, be wary of a purely logical argument that is not crafted in conjunction with the Spirit.
Third, note that Paul does not argue that we should evaluate the criminality of our own thoughts. The external observer of our minds, our conscience, is not expected to make the judgment; instead, the true judge is Christ. Thus, the stream of our thoughts is not necessarily subject to our own conscience, which is prone to fleshly corruption, but rather subject to something else, something divine. At the very least, if there’s any sort of supervisor of our thoughts, it should not (and cannot) be the conscience on its own, but rather something divine. In this sense, the flesh, absent the Spirit, cannot regulate itself. Only the divine can regulate the flesh.
We started this thought experiment with the question of whether my thoughts are pleasing to God. However, that’s something that likely can’t be discerned from a purely intellectual standpoint, and any attempt to do so is self-defeatist. Instead, my primary concern should be whether my spirit is in a position of authority over my flesh, whether it is aligned with the Holy Spirit, and whether it is sufficiently emboldened to take my thoughts captive. My chief concern should not be the feebleness of my thoughts but rather the strength of my spirit, which is empowered by the Holy Spirit.
And here’s the surprising conclusion: if my thoughts are my work, then my work should be in subjection to Christ. And if control of something is handed over to be subject to something else, is that not a sacrifice, which is, in itself, worship?
Here we go,
Isaac