I must be a nerd because I enjoyed my philosophy class in seminary. After being a French major in college, I had already read about many of the French thinkers, so adding a few more gave me a nicely rounded understanding. Do you know what I learned?
There’s pretty much a philosophy for everything!
You get an idea about something, and it’s easy to build an entire thought process around it. This is basically what philosophy means, anyway—a way of thinking about things and life.
There’s only one problem: Philosophy doesn’t get us anywhere. We can enjoy stimulating conversations on materialism, stoicism, nihilism, or hedonism, but in the end, it’s just talk.
Chesterton wrote:
For we must remember that the materialist philosophy (whether true or not) is certainly more limiting than any religion.
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
The difference between philosophy and our faith is that the Christian can believe in both the physical and spiritual world. Just because I live in the present, work to eat and provide a home for myself doesn’t mean this is all there is to my life or the world. God allows us to enjoy all the beauty of creation while remembering he reigns as Creator overall and has an even more amazing place for us to enjoy on the other side of this present world.
Paul, living and serving in a time of Greek and Roman philosophies, certainly knew their limitations. He wrote the believers in Colossi:
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.
Colossians 2:8 NIV
Engage in conversation with your friends but then help them to see the dead-end sign in all philosophies and point them to Jesus.
Grace and Peace