Chess and Fundamentalist Religion

Kenneth Kidd of the Toronto Star has a great interview with David Shenk about his book on chess called "The Immortal Game."  There is a lot of fun and interesting stuff in there from the history of chess but the part that I am most interested in is his take on the relationship between chess and fundamentalist religion.

Chess is all about complexity, the trillions of positions that stem from just a few moves, and about looking at those positions from different angles. Toward the end of the book, you compare chess with today's world, and how some people simply retreat from that into fundamentalist beliefs and religions.

There is this choice that people can make, maybe unconsciously, about how they're going to face the complexity and nuance of the world. Some people, for whatever psychological reasons, need a much more black-and-white world, and are comforted by this idea, where there are absolute truths, absolute right and wrong. It's a belief system and it gets you through life.

Then there's this other way, which is to embrace the nuance, to be comfortable with the idea that, yes, there are things that are true and not true, but there's also all this in-between, all these nuances, all these possibilities.

Chess represents a window into a more nuanced way of looking at the world, which I personally think is the way. It's enlightened, a more peaceful approach to living. It's a way to understand other people and other perspectives. It leads to better politics, and I think helps us solve our complex problems.

Do you ever fantasize about teaching chess to some religious fundamentalists?

What a great question. I should actually try to do this some time — just spend time studying how someone who thinks in this fundamentalist way most of the time is also a chess player, because I really see it as a contradiction.

If I got into this line of thinking, philosophically, they probably would be offended and kick me out and it wouldn't be much of a conversation.

There are some cultures, like the Taliban and when Khomeni ruled Iran, where chess in all its nuances is just too much for them, and they literally ban it. I think they understand intuitively that it's a sign of this complex, nuanced way of thinking.

In my opinion you can accept the reality of absolutes in our world while still embracing the nuances.  Absolutes without nuance lead to the more egregious forms of fundamentalism while nuances without absolutes lead to the more egregious forms of postmodernism.

Notice that I carefully chose my words there - not all fundamentalists take their fundamentalism to the most egregious lengths nor do all who wrestle with postmodernism take their postmodernism to its most egregious ends.

His examples of religious fundamentalism are drawn from the Muslim world, but as one who is familiar with the fundamentalist side of the Christian world I believe he mentions some things to which we need to take heed.

I do believe the Biblical message is fundamentally simple, yet I don't see how you can truly understand it without being able to deal with complexity and nuance.   A classic example is in dealing with James 2:17 and Galatians 2:16.  Unless you are prepared to wrestle with issues of context, historical setting, biblical and systematic theology, you really will be left in a quandry concerning the two.

Another example comes from a conversation I had with my wife tonight.  She is in a Bible study using a book by one of America's most famous women Bible teachers and tonight she started asking me some questions that led to a discussion of rewards in heaven.  The more she asked the more bothered I got so she showed me the section in the book and it had some of the typical evangelical stuff about rewards in heaven.  You know, the typical garbage stuff about how your place in heaven is secured by the work of Christ but your standing in heaven is determined by your works on earth.

I preached at explained to her that a surface reading of a few passages might lead to those kinds of conclusions, but it does so at the expense of the gospel and renders the gospel irrelevant to sanctification.  Not to mention that such a teaching clearly violates Matthew 20:1-15 which says that we will all be rewarded equally in heaven, and not to mention that this renders the work of Christ an incomplete and insufficient work, and . . . and . . . and . . . I'll stop there.

But the point is that to understand the Scriptures on rewards takes an ability to deal with complexity and nuance.  I could multiply examples.  What are we to make of Rahab's deception, Esther's marriage to a pagan, God's command to the Israelites to divorce their wives in Ezra and other matters.  There are answers to all of those but those answers will have to come via a fairly nuanced understanding of language, history, redemptive history, systematic theology and so on and so on.

I am not sure if chess is the cure all for this, but I do like his Shenk's point that the skills for success in chess are similar to the skills for success in making sense of life, and I would add, the Christian faith. 

Also, I would point out that there is a difference between classic fundamenatlism, which is simply the acknowledgement that there are certain beliefs that are fundamental to the faith, and an overly simplistic way of looking at life.  The former does not necessitate the latter, and there are many classic fundamentalists who are able to wrestle with the complexities of life, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are some decent chess players among them.