Believing
Recently, I was talking to a teenager interested in Christianity. He wanted to believe but was scared to make the step - to give up all the things a believer in Christ must. I was struck by how crucial it is for all of us to open our eyes at some time in our life and see that everything we accept, religioius or not, about the world we accept on faith. That we must stand at the cross between Frost's two roads in the wood, look down them as long as we need and then choose one and reject the other. Whatever we choose we are only moving from a blind faith into a seeing one.
What amazes me, is how many people, religious or not, are so incapable of seeing this. They take what is theirs on faith as being true in and of itself. But living is believing and believing is a frightening, uncertain, risky thing. Unless your eyes are shut.
The "Rational Response Squad" and their "Blasphemy Challenge" have shown me recently how much of the "enlightened", anti-religious community go on believing and trusting and living by faith without, apparently, knowing it. Check out this critique and discussion of the film "The God Who Wasn't There" (denying the Historic Jesus and villifying Christianity) - it's amazing to me to see that the response on behalf of the Atheist communtiy is so much more emotional and defenselessly dogmatic than the Christian one.
As John's gospel tells us over and over in different ways, "unless you believe you will never believe."
posted by Lian at 10:21 pm
4 Comments:
Interesting. Yeah, the Rational Response Squad definitely has more faith than the average Christian out there. I write about the blasphemy challenge here.
3:53 am
Hey Dan! Good to here from you again. Have you still got the same email - I'd love to get in touch again.
As for your comments, I think you're right if you mean that there is no foundation in the teachings of Jesus (or anywhere else in scripture) for assuming that mere words have spell or incantation-like power.
At the moment, though, I'm feeling a bit reactionary against the arbitrary term "superstitious" - not because I approve of superstition but because i think the term is thrown around in the West in regards to anything we don't understand or that doesn't fit in to our very clinical view of the world. What we would call superstition, someone else might experience in a visceral, undeniable way.
9:19 am
Yeah, I see exactly what you mean. Often there is a great deal of stereotyping on both sides.
As a very brief response to your comments about the denial of the Holy Spirit, I think you are looking at the issue from the wrong way around.
Essentially (and I do mean ESSENTIAL - this is very basic), the forgiveness of God should be seen as total. However, this forgiveness is not extended to those who do not want it (man's free will is thus upheld - we are not forced to have anything to do with God or his redemption). Therefore, the sin (using the Biblical term for it) of disbelieving in God - of rejecting his Spirit who is the agent of his forgiveness is thus the only one that cannot be forgiven.
To put it another way, God will forgive you unequivocally but if you deny his existence what good is that to you?
This is the only argument for the scripture passage in question that makes sense to me at the moment. And, at any rate, I think it makes the issue far deeper than, as you say, the superstitious idea that a one-off statement can never be forgiven.
6:56 pm
And that really highlights the problem with folks like the RRS. That they tend only to address the most superficial theological constructs, the most childish interpretations of religious texts, etc. They become like fundamenalists themselves in their refusal to acknowledge any kind of meaningful hermeneutics. Alas...
7:52 am
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