Desperately Trying to Live The Red Letters…
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted, school has been substantially more difficult in the fall than it was in the summer. It turns out seminary is pretty hard! My apologies to those of you hoping for more consistent updates. As you know, I tend to write when the spirit moves me, and lately it’s begun to do so again.
2 Things to talk about today!
It has occurred to me that there seems to be quite a hefty conflict raging… A conflict between Christianity and supposed “intellectual” people. I say supposed because the argument assumes that you can be either intelligent or Christian, but not both. (I suppose this argument also exists for other religions, but as I don’t practice Islam or Hindu beliefs for that matter, I shan’t comment on them.). Now I understand to an extent where people are coming from when they say this as, upon initial inspection, Christianity is a little hard to believe. All that bit about angels, harps, and a man being “God”…or for that matter, a personal God at all. But that is just precisely what begs deep research and introspection. We don’t have this reaction to other things that exist in the universe.
If a group of scientists tells you that every third Tuesday gravity has ceased to apply to all the nations ending in “-stan”, you would rightly be inclined not to believe them! But, nonetheless, you would read their reports and do your own homework to make sure that you weren’t being misled. And that is precisely what I find so interesting about the Christianity vs. Intellectualism arena. In some cases people do their homework, and still come out against Christianity, but in my experience, it is rarely so. It seems, we are more likely to allow our emotions to speak volumes, before we even turn the first page of Christian apologetics or Christian literature.
Why?
I propose that the reason why is due to the very fact that a conflict has been manufactured and is presently in people’s minds. It is not the “factuality” of the intellectual argument, it is the tone of condescension that does the majority of the fighting. I believe this is for several reasons, but the greatest of these is that there are very few even moderatlely convincing ideas against belief. I have talked to a great deal many of atheists and agnostics, and even moreso, read many articles, comics, and websites chiding and flaming the beliefs and practices of Christians. In the end, it seems to be a flame with out a candle…lots of heat but no substance. (In fact, that is precisely the problem with atheism, but we will come to that later.)
Again, why is this so, why has the tone gone so desperatley wrong?
I suppose there are a myriad of reasons, so I will attempt to cover the greatest of these.
(More after the break…)
Copyright © 2010 A Red-Letter Mission All rights reserved. Theme by Laptop Geek.