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Comment by metzler — November 25, 2009 @ 8:06 pm
Hello Michael,
I appreciate your information and analysis of what you call the Kirk. I have read some of their writings. I like your friendly advice on how Christians could be more effective. I believe that Jesus is the resurrected Son of God and in the Triune God. The reasons I believe are a mixture of standard apologetics, Pascal’s wager, my cultural background and childhood influences, the influence of the words of the Bible, and what I see as genuine miracles and spiritual experience. Any one of them would be insufficient, but all together it’s a potent and strong more than threefold cord. I’m sorry yours has unraveled.
Blessings, Jeff
Comment by Jeff — December 1, 2009 @ 6:04 pm
Hello Michael,
Comments are the Kirk are not enabled so I’m doing it here. I was involved with a charismatic church that went badly wrong back in the eighties and nineties. On a much smaller scale than the Kirk we made our own society and civilization on a large piece of property in the redwooded SantaCruz mountains in California, arts music, community and so on, entrancingly beautiful in many respects. I left in 1994 when the guns were turned on me. It seems from what I read Mr. Wilson is creating a calvinistic culture that maybe partially existed in the past- never in fully realized form, at least in the form he’s striving to create. It’s quite an accomplishment as a leader to incarnate a fantasy involving so many people. Of course I still maintain that Jesus the resurrected Son of God is no fantasy!
Best regards,
Jeff
Comment by Jeff — December 2, 2009 @ 1:00 pm
Jeff,
Thanks for the comments. Your experience in Santa Cruz sounds very interesting. Have you written anything on this? And I agree, Wilson has quite an accomplishment on his hands.
As for reasons you believe: it seems that all the reasons you list are causal or explanations for the genesis of your belief/faith but for your reference to apologetics – there are two kinds of ‘reasons’ to address here. It is only your reference to apologetics that seems to potentially provide grounds or rational reasons for someone else to agree with you or to likewise believe/have faith. What are these apologetics you are referring to?
On the face of it we have reasons not to believe: regarding the problem of evil (which I find to be the most important), the doctrine of hell, evolutionary claims of science, the raving politics and violence from the new testament apostles, the church’s consistent lack of empathy and opposition to science, the lusty genocide of our Old Testament Lord, the incoherent strands of ancient texts that Christians claim to be all divinely inspired by the same author, the easy alternative social explanations for the existence of Christian groups and institutions, the moral social failures of conservative Christianity in America, and the small percentages of conservative Christians who have lived and died in comparison to the billions of other humans who will, on your terms, be tortured forever because God made them objects of wrath according to his own ‘good’ pleasure.
Comment by metzler — December 2, 2009 @ 1:13 pm
Michael
I read the discussion guidelines and I am relieved to see I didn’t cross any lines.
I neglected to give a response to the below.
“the small percentages of conservative Christians who have lived and died in comparison to the billions of other humans”
This seems to be a variation on “what about the millions of people in foreign lands who never get to hear the gospel and so they go to hell, that’s not fair!” question. This was a huge issue for me as I came out of a eastern/new age religious background that taught all paths lead to God. Here are my purely personal thoughts on the matter (they’re not standard doctrine), which will be repellent and superstitious to the group you now identify with and certainly not any kind of legitimate apologetic argument by their standards. But I think with your background you will be able to appreciate and understand them from the inside. They’re drawn from verses in the New Testament.
“It is given to man to die once and then comes the judgment”
“we must all come before the judgment seat of Christ”
“everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me”
I think those who haven’t had a clear gospel opportunity will come before Christ after death and have an opportunity to give him the preeminence appropriate to the one who is the Son of God or choose to retain the preeminence for themselves and remain the center of their personal universe.
I have a Jewish friend to her shock have an unexpected visionary experience of Jesus and turned it down. While my next door Jewish neighbor having a similar experience became a believer with the words “My, Lord” upon seeing Christ.
In my own life and the lives of friends and relatives over the years there has been quite a number of spiritual events – some purely personal and others coming into the realm of the objective – healings or knowledge of facts given supernaturally and not through normal means – I’m not including the providential circumstances, most believers see as proof of God’s acting, in this category. It’s by no means continuous, day in and day out it’s everyday reality with an inner and background presence of God, but over the decades enough unusual things had happened so they are part of the data set I use to interpret reality. I also realize this type of thing is rare and unknown to many people and I can’t expect it and have no control over it – “the wind blows where it wills”. It is also no indication of any special spirituality of mine.
Sincerely,
Jeff Alexander
Comment by Jeff — December 4, 2009 @ 9:50 am