For example, a well-loved hymn written in 1933 enshrined this subjective sort of knowing when its chorus proclaims regarding Jesus: “You ask me how I know he lives, He lives within my heart!” How do I know? I just know.

Having been unceremoniously tossed out of his English boarding school, Patrick Leigh Fermor thrashed about wondering what to do next… At 18, he decided to walk across Europe…

In reflecting about his decision, Fermor wrote, “All of a sudden it was not merely the obvious, but the only thing to do.” It is fair to say that sometimes we know “all of a sudden.”

There are times when the results are marvelous, but, then again, it can also result in disaster. In fact, the next “all of a sudden” in Fermor’s story made my blood run cold…

“All of a sudden!” he was a Nazi, an enthusiastic — even fanatical — follower of Adolf Hitler. Suddenly he just knew and there he was. I find that very scary.

Now I confess that there is something to intuition, to knowing “all of a sudden.”

…Yet how many of our decisions, including our beliefs about morality and God, are explained with a subjective “suddenly I just knew”?

While this is a perennial problem in the modern world as the hymn and Patrick Fermor’s experiences indicate, the problem has become increasingly acute. Rather than deferring to the authority of church, tradition, or reason, we have come to make decisions — particularly decisions about religion and morality — exclusively on subjective experience.

Read More: http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0002359.cfm

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