Christian Overconfidence

[Fenris]

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/17/israel-successfully-tests-new-laser-missile-defense-system/

It's like living in the future!

[Fenris]

But then that brings us back to (1), and something akin to the criticisms Oscar had earlier: the idea "I'm a Christian; therefore I'm more confident". I would expect this to be a driver-away from the Christian faith, actually, as those who are brought up in a Christian environment, under their parents faith, encounter believers in other religious who are just as dedicated as the most dedicated Christian they've met, or possibly more.

This leads to another observation I've had. There exists a small subset of Christians (not generally here, although the old BF had numerous such) who are viscerally hostile towards Jews. They take quite literally such verses as "You belong to your father, the devil..." (John 8:44) and others. I feel that this is brought on by the fact that Jesus was supposed to be the Jewish messiah and yet the Jews alone of all people generally rejected him. And it perhaps creates a nagging doubt deep down in those Christians of weak faith; that if the Jews rejected Jesus, maybe he isn't the messiah after all. And the only way for them to deal with this is to lash out at Jews for that rejection. "The Jews had to reject him, not because the evidence was weak (as this person themself perhaps feels) , but because they are evil".

[Athanasius]

This leads to another observation I've had. There exists a small subset of Christians (not generally here, although the old BF had numerous such) who are viscerally hostile towards Jews. They take quite literally such verses as "You belong to your father, the devil..." (John 8:44) and others. I feel that this is brought on by the fact that Jesus was supposed to be the Jewish messiah and yet the Jews alone of all people generally rejected him. And it perhaps creates a nagging doubt deep down in those Christians of weak faith; that if the Jews rejected Jesus, maybe he isn't the messiah after all. And the only way for them to deal with this is to lash out at Jews for that rejection. "The Jews had to reject him, not because the evidence was weak (as this person themself perhaps feels) , but because they are evil".

It shows a lack of empathy, and it's like they never developed a proper idea of the theory of mind. It's like, okay, here are the Gospels, and in hindsight, everything is obvious; sure let's grant that, but at the time? It's easy to lose sight of the fact that the timeline is actually 30+ years, and TV didn't exist, or phones, or newspapers. It's this idea that if I'm convinced of the truth then the only possible reason someone else isn't is that (1) they're an idiot or (2) Satanically deceived. It's a complete failure to understand the other perspective. But what if those people simply don't find the teaching compelling? Then you have the even worse misapplication of the doctrine of predestination which says, "they're Satanically deceived, but that was God's plan, so might as well kill them all". And yeah, maybe it's projection too. It's easier to attack another than look within.

Just take a look at how distracted American Christianity has become. Is that even Christianity anymore, as in, following the teaching of Christ? But then if it's not, what exactly is being pushed? And I will suggest that this is exactly the kind of 'worldly' thinking, thinking that takes God's name in vain, that Moses and Paul and others warned against.

[Athanasius]

And now post liking is enabled.

[Fenris]

It's this idea that if I'm convinced of the truth then the only possible reason someone else isn't is that (1) they're an idiot or (2) Satanically deceived. It's a complete failure to understand the other perspective.

This right here. You completely understand the phenomena.

Just take a look at how distracted American Christianity has become.

Yeah, that may well be. Ob the other hand, American Christianity is still the best version out there. In my opinion anyway.

[Athanasius]

Yeah, that may well be. Ob the other hand, American Christianity is still the best version out there. In my opinion anyway.

I grew up with it so I prefer Europe, and I think for all its severe doctrinal problems (like, early church doctrinal issues), African Christianity attests to a reality American Christianity has for a while now only grasped at. Still, I'll fully accept that this view is partly because I grew up with it, and not that it's quite as bleak as I might make out.

[Fenris]

I grew up with it so I prefer Europe

European Christianity has way too much organized religious violence in it's history for my taste.

And then there's Naziism. The Nazis in general were Protestant (or at least professed as such), and the Catholic church did nothing as an organization to save Jews from the Nazis (which doesn't mean that individual priests or nuns didn't do anything). Meanwhile after the war, the Catholic church did organizationally help Nazis escape justice (false documents, Vatican passports, exit documents, whatever they needed really to escape to freedom).

Some might say that maybe they were antisemitic but otherwise good. But really, if you've got no problem with someone shoving Jews into ovens and even help that person escape any version of earthly justice, how "good" can you really be? Back to Leo Baeck -

This finished perfected justice, this self-assurance of the possessing, has also often found expression in a tranquil, comfortable, almost smug indifference. Being satisfied with itself, the Church was capable of beholding a great deal without being at all upset. Since it considered itself a world apart, it could leave many matters in this world to take care of themselves. Having issued from divine grace, the pious faith was superior to everything impermanent and human; hence it could regard earthly deeds, of whatever character, as something inferior and indifferent, as beneath it. So one was prepared to overlook and discount and indulge anything: the correct faith was easily satisfied with itself for "whoever believes in him is just." A good deal of Church history is the history of all the things which neither hurt nor encroached upon this piety, all the outrages and all the baseness which this piety was able to tolerate with an assured and undisturbed soul and an untroubled faith. And a spirit is characterized not only by what it does but, no less, by what it permits, what it forgives, and what it beholds in silence. The Christian religion, very much including Protestantism, has been able to maintain silence about so much that it is difficult to say what has been more pernicious in the course of time: the intolerance which committed the wrongs or the indifference which beheld them unperturbed.

and I think for all its severe doctrinal problems (like, early church doctrinal issues), African Christianity attests to a reality American Christianity has for a while now only grasped at.

I don't know anything about this and so I cannot comment.

Still, I'll fully accept that this view is partly because I grew up with it, and not that it's quite as bleak as I might make out.

The American version of Christianity is and has always been able to make distinctions between right and wrong. Always able call out oppression instead of enabling it. I give credit for this.

[Oscar_Kipling]

So, we are talking about Space Monkeys?  isn't that a bit of a straw man argument?

"Here, let me attack your sacred text, not on the basis of the text itself, but on the basis of the ways in which some unidentified people may approach or understand it?

That's sound a lot like "living document Constutionalists."


Who cares about the game?  The game, as you call it, has no more meaning that theories that the earth is flat, that all dogs go to heaven, or that the CIA faked the moon landing.  Well, I'll give you the last one...

Game or practice, flawed as it may be, does not change the nature and character of the real deal as communicated to man by God.

no, I'm strictly speaking about terrestrial primates an the things they believe. I think that the text makes some claims about Christians and Christians make some claims about the text, its a system of strings like when a detective gets too wrapped up in a case and sees everything is connected, that's me and i'd argue that's Athanasius too and probably you but I doubt you'd see it that way.


 I've heard it said that you can tell alot about a Christian by the fruit they eat or something like that, i'm paraphrasing, But the point is that i'm supposed to look at Christians and their favorite fruits for some reason and by doing this i'm supposed to be able to draw some conclusions about Christians or Christ or horticulture...Now I know what my favorite fruit is (obviously mango, the best fruit), but when i'm creeping about behind trellises and under picnic tables I am unable to tell which Christians are the best at fruit. It would be wrong to judge them all by the standard of mango as just because that's my favorite fruit doesnt mean its the best fruit right? So I lurk about in bushes and slink behind the lilacs and watch Christians eat apples, and pineapples, and crabapples and ice apples and rose apples and sugar apples and custard apples and guapples and wood apples and cashew apples and water apples and ice apples and you get the picture.  Now when I pop out of the cardboard box camouflage I was inconspicuously hiding in like solid snake and after the lovely Christian family stops screaming, I ask them why Christians are eating all different kinds of fruits when Christian fruit (singular) is supposed to be the (singular) best fruit. Without fail the christians laugh at me, a laugh as if to say "oh you poor deluded atheist" and they kindly point out that all Christians are eating apples. Being a bygone that just wants other bygones to be bygones as well, I thank them and walk away just before they call the cops about a man sneaking around the park in a cardboard box


...but i'm not satisfied because they aren't all eating apples are they? I mean lets see anyone bite into a pineapple like a granny smith and I actually don't even know what an ice apple even is! The fruits are even quite regional, the people in idaho are almost never seen enjoying the exotic flesh of a cashew apple, and I once lowered myself down a rope from a tree onto a picnicking couple in Toronto and offered them a star apple, and after they finished screaming they refused to even acknowledge that it even was an apple...they wouldn't even taste it...rude. I learned then that what Christians call apples are often regional, and Christians in other regions do not acknowledge the Apple-ness of alien apples and that Christians for some reason freak out when you pull a spiderman onto their picnic.

I once disguised myself as a Christian and infiltrated a church in North Carolina. I was wearing my traditional Christian sash made of the finest most colorful bird feather I could find and carried the customary Christian Staff that dispenses candy and sliced fruits for the younglings...Anyway the one thing I failed to do in all of my excellent research on North Carolina Christian traditions, garb and manner was to bring the right apple, turns out I brought a Love apple, and you would not believe the response! You would have thought I brought an orange to this sacred place as they practically gave me a whole fire and brimstone sermon about how a love apple isn't actually an apple at all but the tool of the enemy disguising itself as an apple and the so called Christians that eat this false apple are only doing it because love apples are easier to grow and they taste better when deviously sliced thin and laid atop the foul slow roasted turkey of corruption with 3 or four slices of the crispy bacon of wickedness all on a bed of the reprobate lettuce of deceit and covered in the in the vile mayonaise of inequity all between 2 slices of the white bread of darkness lightly toasted in the fires of Gehenna creating nothing less than the putrescent turkey club of sin. Needless to say I gathered up my sash and bolted out in a cartoonish plume of colorful feathers...I ran all the way to the nearest deli to have an open faced Rueben because, like why take the chance on the turkey club in this town right?

Anyway, all that to say this, either I'm supposed to gain some knowledge about Christians based on their produce choices or i'm not. Either I'm supposed to believe that a crabapple and elephant apple at their "core" are the same thing or I am to use my singular God given gift of being the only man alive able to distinguish a tomato from a macintosh merely by biting into several of them, recording the sounds that they make and analyzing those sounds with a series of self designed computer algorithms over the course of several months. The naive Atheist would see this state of affairs from a distance and conclude that on the very face of it these are different fruits and only a few of them are even apples in any sense that that word means a particular family of fruits and be done with it. Not me though, I'm sophisticated so instead of merely observing "some unidentified people" from the comfort of my commie-socialist-lgbtq-welfare-evolution tower of sin where we spend all day writing angry emails at the God we dont believe in, I embedded myself with Christians, I read their books, I ate their little tiny crackers and drank their sip of rather bottom shelf wine. I listened to their music, even the songs that are just secular songs where they just replace some of the words with Grace, or God or Christ or something equally Christian-y. I've even talked to the people (the "some people"), the rude ones, the intellectual ones, the bakers the candlestick makers, heck one was even a lawyer (if you can believe that a Christian could do a job that is clearly meant for demons). Mostly though I observed their fruit, and almost to a man-woman and child they have tried to convince me that they were all eating apples. The intellectual ones gave me mind bending gymnastic rationales for why when i'm looking at a pineapple i'm actually not. Other ones insisted that only Granny Smith eaters are tasting the true fruit of our lord and savior. Some of the more theological ones insisted that they only look like different apples because I have not truly sought out what an apple truly is. Others still have just tried to give me apples and told me that once I take a bite then the question of apples will seem moot and i'd never eat mangoes again. Still others have told me that I need to believe that a crabapple is actually custard apple and then suddenly all apples will be custard apples.

That being said, you can accuse me of not taking you too seriously or finding the sport in this (both true sometimes), or being kind of obnoxious because i'm the only one that finds my jokes endlessly funny (i'm friggin Chapelle-bamford-carlin-pryor-hicks-hedberg in my mind), You can accuse me of not being anywhere near as smart as I clearly think I am (I think i'm as sharp as a ...like a sharp, umm like like real sharp, like a very pointy stick that you spent like a long time on getting like very pointy)...lots of things are true of me and a lot of them don't have me come out smelling like a rose on a spring day...however to even form your cold spindly Christian fingers to type something as disgusting as the unbearable accusation that i'm here attacking your fine religion based on anything but the stuff actually in your fine religion and the people who claim to also be members of your fine religion whose fruits are supposed to mean something (dang i wish i knew what page of the bible all that fruit stuff was on)...anyway it is an affront to the sacred code that I have bled, perspired, micturated and cried for in order to stay true to the highest standards of Intellectual honesty, academic precision, Scholarly depth and philosophical rigor....The bewildering fact that you aren't apologetically washing my feet with your hair and tearfully offering me a cool sip from your well after the years of thirsty toil I have put into ensuring that when with broken feet and ashen lips I finally summon the dregs of my strength to at last feel I have earned through suffering and struggle, strife and repudiation, tribulation and abuse the vaguest most tenuous and fragile grasp upon the slightest diaphanous wispy tendril of license to bravely yet humbly murmur the merest whisper of the sentiment that "You say it look like that, but it don't look like that to me at all" is a wrenched blasphemy...Some would say that I should retaliate with the fury of a thousand furious suns whose fury is that of 10,000 smaller but proportionally more furious suns...but no, that is not who I am nor who I want to be, I wont because I know that the highest justice transcends the furious heat of all those suns I was talking about earlier, it is in the fact that you must now slither in lowly disgrace through life with this ever enduring inky black stain on your soul for as long as you shall persist on this precious green earth ....and as I read once in an oddly ominous fortune cookie "may you be cursed with a long life indeed" sir..or madam I actually don't remember if you were a guy or not.


 

[Oscar_Kipling]

Haha, yeah maybe as I am pretty confident that at least most of the versions i've run across are inchoate to say the least. I won't pretend that the idea hasn't been caricatured by non believers, but I think it's only fair to acknowledge that actual people who claim to be actual Christians are also proponents of many versions that even some other Christians would dismiss as infeasible. Idk, i've been getting the impression that maybe you guys aren't always acknowledging the full gamut of ideas that a great many Christians legitimately believe just because you don't think they represent your conception of Christianity very well. I'm happy to back off a bit and give credit where credit is due in that there are better and worse versions of inerrancy but there are still some very very bad imo indefensible versions...and I don't even think we'd disagree on some of them if you acknowledged that many Christians actually believe them.

Here's the thing: science is best left to scientists, and theology is best left to theologians. The core message of Christianity does not require theological sophistication, but Christian doctrine does. And just as not everyone is a scientist, so too not everyone is a theologian. The popular misunderstandings of Christian doctrine that the laity hold are teaching failures. The target to attack is Christian doctrine proper, and not everyone is a theologian, which means that a there are indeed a great many Christians who don't believe doctrine like they think they do, because they don't understand it like they think they do.

hmm, I guess i've never really bought that the core message is both easy to extract and/or is all that matters and everything else is just frosting on the cake. It just seems that there are so many that claim to be adhering to the "core" and again they have mutually exclusive beliefs in conflict with others that are just as certain that they have gotten at the core. I do not see a way around the problem of fundamental conflicts because no matter how "core" you get I can find examples of Christians with a different core. I feel you just keep trying to pawn off the problem by suggest that no one believes this or that thing, or that there are no conflicting ideas but there are for just about any aspect of christianity that you might bring up.  Additionally if the core is all we need then why bother with the rest, why isn't the bible 6 pages long...i'd argue it's because whatever the "core" is its much more complex and in depth and mired in disagreement than you would like to present it here. If you edited the bible down to the core, what's left? Would every Christian in the world agree with you that you've cut to the very quick and left nothing crucial to the core out? I doubt it. Are those people that disagree just not true Christians? are they too sophisticated or not sophisticated enough? are they bad theologians or too good theologians? Is it because they are deceived, deluded too in love with sin? are they idiots? lazy? or is this just a bad experiment for some reason? or maybe you do believe you'd get universal agreement, you've surprised me before.

and to be clear i'm taking about the game, not practice, not sophisticated theology, not theory but the game, How Christianity actually looks in the world, what people actually believe, the conflicts that actually exist, the actual lack of a unified concept of what the core of Christianity is, not practice, the game XD

Are you going to stick around Oscar? I don't want to spend time replying if you're going to nope on outta here.

I wont just drop off i'll give you fair warning, because I know there is nothing worse in internet discussion than bother to thoughtfully respond just to have some joker dip out ...the only thing worse is to spend a bunch of time thinking and writing just for someone to dismiss it as word salad because they maybe had to look something up and god forbid learn a new term they didn't know. I won't do you like that.

[RabbiKnife]

So, we are talking about Space Monkeys?  isn't that a bit of a straw man argument?

"Here, let me attack your sacred text, not on the basis of the text itself, but on the basis of the ways in which some unidentified people may approach or understand it?

That's sound a lot like "living document Constutionalists."


Who cares about the game?  The game, as you call it, has no more meaning that theories that the earth is flat, that all dogs go to heaven, or that the CIA faked the moon landing.  Well, I'll give you the last one...

Game or practice, flawed as it may be, does not change the nature and character of the real deal as communicated to man by God.

no, I'm strictly speaking about terrestrial primates an the things they believe. I think that the text makes some claims about Christians and Christians make some claims about the text, its a system of strings like when a detective gets too wrapped up in a case and sees everything is connected, that's me and i'd argue that's Athanasius too and probably you but I doubt you'd see it that way.


 I've heard it said that you can tell alot about a Christian by the fruit they eat or something like that, i'm paraphrasing, But the point is that i'm supposed to look at Christians and their favorite fruits for some reason and by doing this i'm supposed to be able to draw some conclusions about Christians or Christ or horticulture...Now I know what my favorite fruit is (obviously mango, the best fruit), but when i'm creeping about behind trellises and under picnic tables I am unable to tell which Christians are the best at fruit. It would be wrong to judge them all by the standard of mango as just because that's my favorite fruit doesnt mean its the best fruit right? So I lurk about in bushes and slink behind the lilacs and watch Christians eat apples, and pineapples, and crabapples and ice apples and rose apples and sugar apples and custard apples and guapples and wood apples and cashew apples and water apples and ice apples and you get the picture.  Now when I pop out of the cardboard box camouflage I was inconspicuously hiding in like solid snake and after the lovely Christian family stops screaming, I ask them why Christians are eating all different kinds of fruits when Christian fruit (singular) is supposed to be the (singular) best fruit. Without fail the christians laugh at me, a laugh as if to say "oh you poor deluded atheist" and they kindly point out that all Christians are eating apples. Being a bygone that just wants other bygones to be bygones as well, I thank them and walk away just before they call the cops about a man sneaking around the park in a cardboard box


...but i'm not satisfied because they aren't all eating apples are they? I mean lets see anyone bite into a pineapple like a granny smith and I actually don't even know what an ice apple even is! The fruits are even quite regional, the people in idaho are almost never seen enjoying the exotic flesh of a cashew apple, and I once lowered myself down a rope from a tree onto a picnicking couple in Toronto and offered them a star apple, and after they finished screaming they refused to even acknowledge that it even was an apple...they wouldn't even taste it...rude. I learned then that what Christians call apples are often regional, and Christians in other regions do not acknowledge the Apple-ness of alien apples and that Christians for some reason freak out when you pull a spiderman onto their picnic.

I once disguised myself as a Christian and infiltrated a church in North Carolina. I was wearing my traditional Christian sash made of the finest most colorful bird feather I could find and carried the customary Christian Staff that dispenses candy and sliced fruits for the younglings...Anyway the one thing I failed to do in all of my excellent research on North Carolina Christian traditions, garb and manner was to bring the right apple, turns out I brought a Love apple, and you would not believe the response! You would have thought I brought an orange to this sacred place as they practically gave me a whole fire and brimstone sermon about how a love apple isn't actually an apple at all but the tool of the enemy disguising itself as an apple and the so called Christians that eat this false apple are only doing it because love apples are easier to grow and they taste better when deviously sliced thin and laid atop the foul slow roasted turkey of corruption with 3 or four slices of the crispy bacon of wickedness all on a bed of the reprobate lettuce of deceit and covered in the in the vile mayonaise of inequity all between 2 slices of the white bread of darkness lightly toasted in the fires of Gehenna creating nothing less than the putrescent turkey club of sin. Needless to say I gathered up my sash and bolted out in a cartoonish plume of colorful feathers...I ran all the way to the nearest deli to have an open faced Rueben because, like why take the chance on the turkey club in this town right?

Anyway, all that to say this, either I'm supposed to gain some knowledge about Christians based on their produce choices or i'm not. Either I'm supposed to believe that a crabapple and elephant apple at their "core" are the same thing or I am to use my singular God given gift of being the only man alive able to distinguish a tomato from a macintosh merely by biting into several of them, recording the sounds that they make and analyzing those sounds with a series of self designed computer algorithms over the course of several months. The naive Atheist would see this state of affairs from a distance and conclude that on the very face of it these are different fruits and only a few of them are even apples in any sense that that word means a particular family of fruits and be done with it. Not me though, I'm sophisticated so instead of merely observing "some unidentified people" from the comfort of my commie-socialist-lgbtq-welfare-evolution tower of sin where we spend all day writing angry emails at the God we dont believe in, I embedded myself with Christians, I read their books, I ate their little tiny crackers and drank their sip of rather bottom shelf wine. I listened to their music, even the songs that are just secular songs where they just replace some of the words with Grace, or God or Christ or something equally Christian-y. I've even talked to the people (the "some people"), the rude ones, the intellectual ones, the bakers the candlestick makers, heck one was even a lawyer (if you can believe that a Christian could do a job that is clearly meant for demons). Mostly though I observed their fruit, and almost to a man-woman and child they have tried to convince me that they were all eating apples. The intellectual ones gave me mind bending gymnastic rationales for why when i'm looking at a pineapple i'm actually not. Other ones insisted that only Granny Smith eaters are tasting the true fruit of our lord and savior. Some of the more theological ones insisted that they only look like different apples because I have not truly sought out what an apple truly is. Others still have just tried to give me apples and told me that once I take a bite then the question of apples will seem moot and i'd never eat mangoes again. Still others have told me that I need to believe that a crabapple is actually custard apple and then suddenly all apples will be custard apples.

That being said, you can accuse me of not taking you too seriously or finding the sport in this (both true sometimes), or being kind of obnoxious because i'm the only one that finds my jokes endlessly funny (i'm friggin Chapelle-bamford-carlin-pryor-hicks-hedberg in my mind), You can accuse me of not being anywhere near as smart as I clearly think I am (I think i'm as sharp as a ...like a sharp, umm like like real sharp, like a very pointy stick that you spent like a long time on getting like very pointy)...lots of things are true of me and a lot of them don't have me come out smelling like a rose on a spring day...however to even form your cold spindly Christian fingers to type something as disgusting as the unbearable accusation that i'm here attacking your fine religion based on anything but the stuff actually in your fine religion and the people who claim to also be members of your fine religion whose fruits are supposed to mean something (dang i wish i knew what page of the bible all that fruit stuff was on)...anyway it is an affront to the sacred code that I have bled, perspired, micturated and cried for in order to stay true to the highest standards of Intellectual honesty, academic precision, Scholarly depth and philosophical rigor....The bewildering fact that you aren't apologetically washing my feet with your hair and tearfully offering me a cool sip from your well after the years of thirsty toil I have put into ensuring that when with broken feet and ashen lips I finally summon the dregs of my strength to at last feel I have earned through suffering and struggle, strife and repudiation, tribulation and abuse the vaguest most tenuous and fragile grasp upon the slightest diaphanous tendril of license to bravely yet humbly murmur the merest whisper of the sentiment that "You say it look like that but it dont look like that to me" is a wrenched blasphemy...Some would say that I should retaliate with the fury of a thousand furious suns whose fury is that of 10,000 smaller but proportionally more furious suns...but no, that is not who I am nor who I want to be, I wont because I know that the highest justice transcends the furious heat of all those suns I was talking about earlier, it is in the fact that you must now slither in lowly disgrace through life with this ever enduring inky black stain on your soul for as long as you shall persist on this green earth ....and as I read once in an oddly ominous fortune cookie "may you be cursed with a long life indeed" sir..or madam I actually don't remember if you were a guy or not.

Was there a point or question in there?

[Oscar_Kipling]

Was there a point or question in there?

How could you have read that entire thing and not seen that my point was twofold, both "nah uh" and "how dare you". I just couched it in a parable, I know how you people go gaga over parables, parables this parables that, check out my new parables,  have you heard the parable about the fig tree that walks into a bar.

The bible says to look at Christians, Chistians say look at us because the bible says my fruit is delicious and different from earthly fruit and that way you'll become a fruit weirdo too.....but don't forget also look at the bible too because while it looks like a book its actually a fruit tree and a book too, it totes is also a book, which then leads me back to looking at you because the bible told me so.

You accused me of doing something ridiculous by merely listening to what Christians say about themselves and what the book says about them, and you know paying attention to Christians because they say they are special and the bible says they are special and that that specialness should practically ooze from their pores like supernatural pulp free orange juice.... then when I point out that they...meaning you and your ilk (joke, portending disgust) really deeply truly and without a tinge of humor or silliness look exactly and I mean exactly like everyone else. look i've danced with alot of Christians and some of you describe the same old thing so deftly and with such grace, skill and aplomb that I legitimately find it addictive, not like special devine fruit addictive, but its the same reason I keep going back to my favorite books year after year, or get new books by my favorite authors or try to find new books and authors to fall in love with. To spell it out it's because you are doing interesting human stuff, but definitely human stuff.

now I dare you to perch those lying fingers over that keyboard and tell me i'm lying on the bible when I say it says i'm suppose to notice something special about you because you have chosen to follow the greatest most special thing that exist and some of that specialness is supposed to find its way out of you like some kind of imperfect, perhaps rusted shut but still ever so slightly leaky tap for the one true and only specialness that actually exists. If you don't think I should see something with honest and seeking eyes, then well it honestly beats the tarnation out of me what the heck that wacky old book is on about.

tell me you've never heard as christian claim that if i was running at top speed I should be practically clotheslined by the christlove emanating from a true and righteous christian if I have clear eyes and a full heart...it's a can't lose proposition, touchdown every down. What am I to make of that? Peer right through it like the filthy lie that it is? What of the stuff that i'm sure you're fine with but is a practically indistinguishable claim to my stupid pitiful  human eyes unwashed in the blood of the lamb?
to put it more clearly, if I spent a bunch of time listening to you then I have no doubt that you would eventually say something equally ridiculous and yet it would be a profound and unassailable truth to you. Should I then toss you out with the bathwaters as another tiresome "some people"? Or are you one of the elusive actual Christians that actually walk in christ along the narrow path and has an actual relationship with the God of the universe? If so, I hate to break it to you but that's a wacky claim too...but like I should be able to tell the difference between things that could be legitimately said to be in the bible is frequently said by Christians but is wholly unsupported by reality.


it hurts to be told that i'm some kind of tourist when I've lived among you, I don't like to say I actually was one of you because the criticism and vitriol I've received for making that claim has made me legit question if I in fact ever actually was a true scotsman. Man, tell me I've wasted years just to misunderstand the things i've genuinely and without exaggeration spent years of days and nights struggling to understand, but for the sake of crackers don't tell me i'm just button mashing at Christianity.


so yeah, Nah Uh, and gasp how dare you.

[Oscar_Kipling]

just realized that last post got super long too and I know that makes my point confusing here is a slightly TLDR version.

You look like other humans that believe other religious stuff very sincerely or no religious stuff at all, your book looks like a not especially inspired Book that people wrote back when people told stories like that to impart knowledge that didn't actually involve sea monsters but it got the point across with moxy. Your God, haven't seen him even when I asked real real nice. He's just as indistinguishable from not real things like Vishnu, Thor, the Kabballah monster and Free lunch at a church.

I want to be swept off my feet and dance like a dervish, I want to be deliriously happy for some indeterminately brief amount of time, I want Jesus to give me the kind of hug that leaves no doubt even in my questioning mind that it was a bona-fide Jesus Hug, and then 28 or so minutes later I want another one just for good measure. I want to pick up the bible and feel the scales drop from my eyes and instead of seeing a bunch of made up stuff punctuated by reasonably good advice sometimes and very very bad advice at others, I see the most true thing ever written with nothing but really cool useful advice that is super relevant to my struggles and the struggles of literally anyone else that might cross my path or will ever exist. I want to one day notice that there is only one set of footprints because Jesus is carrying me like yoda on luke's back across the trials and tribulations of Dagobah, i mean life......Unless this thread is lousy with lying liars then all those stupendous things like actually happened to some if not all of you...well not Fenris cuz like Jesus, but still I'm supposed to take your wild claims and be like oh those other guys over there are nuts but you guys here in this one thread saying exactly the same kind of stuff are talking sense?

[ProDeo]

I see a lot of pain. Maybe you are closer to the Kingdom then you think.

[Athanasius]

I want to be swept off my feet and dance like a dervish, I want to be deliriously happy for some indeterminately brief amount of time, I want Jesus to give me the kind of hug that leaves no doubt even in my questioning mind that it was a bona-fide Jesus Hug, and then 28 or so minutes later I want another one just for good measure. I want to pick up the bible and feel the scales drop from my eyes and instead of seeing a bunch of made up stuff punctuated by reasonably good advice sometimes and very very bad advice at others, I see the most true thing ever written with nothing but really cool useful advice that is super relevant to my struggles and the struggles of literally anyone else that might cross my path or will ever exist. I want to one day notice that there is only one set of footprints because Jesus is carrying me like yoda on luke's back across the trials and tribulations of Dagobah, i mean life......Unless this thread is lousy with lying liars then all those stupendous things like actually happened to some if not all of you...well not Fenris cuz like Jesus, but still I'm supposed to take your wild claims and be like oh those other guys over there are nuts but you guys here in this one thread saying exactly the same kind of stuff are talking sense?

You want an experience to assent to a proposition, but even Paul had faith before his Damascus road experience. So say God reveals Himself to you, then what? Are you prepared to live a radically different life that's consonant with the revelation of God? Even the most devout Christians struggle with this, and it's one of your criticisms. Are you prepared to upend the very foundation of your existence to pursue a reality that involves things that you presently think are dubious, suspicious plain nonsense?

I've never been swept off my feet.
I've never danced a dervish.
I've never been deliriously happy (in fact, for most of my life, I've been miserable and anxious).
I have been hugged, but I've never had another -------------- and I've asked.
The Bible isn't so obviously truly concretely factual to me that I look at it as if the scales had fallen from my eyes.
I've yet to be carried by Jesus, although He's damned well helped out.

"Prove to me you're real and I'll believe" won't lead to belief, or maybe it will lead to the assent of a proposition, but the existential reality is an entirely different question. Faith is demanding, and revelation even more so. The anxiety of freedom, as Kierkegaard put it, is well and truly experienced by anyone who considers themselves to be responsible before God. What are you doing with any other potential proof of God's existence? What's to say you wouldn't write off a vision as a fever dream? After all, if God really did inspire the Bible and you say, "not good enough, give me more?" then what?

Have you ever heard Jordan Peterson talk about his dreams? That dude had a vision from God and understood it purely psychologically. I could psychologise my own experience easily. You have available to you what was available to us, and for us, faith came before the experience. Of course, this results in the complaint that God just never seems to evidence Himself to anyone but those who already believe. But no, God is evidenced in such a way that the possibility of freedom is maintained. You think the creation narratives are useful myths not concrete realities? That Noah's flood was local not global, or didn't happen at all? That Jonah didn't get swallowed by a whale? That's nothing new to Christianity. To deny God's involvement entirely - a metaphysical/philosophical question, not a scientific one - is a different matter, though. Did God kick-start abiogenesis or did it happen on its own? What's on the other side of the singularity that exploded our universe into existence? Etc. Etc.

Maybe there's something in common between rich men and scientists? physicalists? Hmm.

[RabbiKnife]

I find it extraordinarily difficult to discuss the colors of the spectrum when one does not fundamentally accept the evidence of various frequencies of light and the concomitant interpretation of the same in terms of various colors by the human brain based on the stimuli response of the cones and rods in the retina.  You doubt the existence of God, the veracity of Scripture, the universality of both sin and evil and of the imago Dei and good.  I understand that.  You are speaking high Mandarin or Arabic and I'm speaking the regional "English" dialect of Appalachian coal country.  It is nature that we should have difficulty communication. 

The beast at Tanagra.
Kadir beneath Mo Moteh.

Our presuppositions prevent us from meaningful conversation, so we end up talking around each other.  Yes, using words in someone of a similar language, but either lacking communication or predetermining that the language of the other is not ever going to satisfy us. 

I start with very basic presuppositions.
1.  There is a supreme creator that is ontologically different that me.  Call that being/force/entity "Other."  The idea that all (even the limited "all") that man can observe exists without a first cause is foolishness to me.
2.  If there is anything that Other wants to communicate to me, it is dependent on Other to do the talking and to equip me to be the receiver, as I am apparently ontologically unable to communicate with Other on my own.
3.  From my observation of nature, humans, and human society, I must either acknowledge the existence of some code of morality that is based outside of man; otherwise, he with the biggest femur bone in his hand wins.
4.  I must recognize that in my inner most being -- call it id, ego, superego, conscience, mind, whatever -- in the part of me that makes decisions I have the capacity for the uttermost evil, abuse, horror, and societal wrong ever imagined by man.  If I don't recognize that, I haven't looked very deep.

I could really care less about what other Christians say or do vis a vis their faith.  That is between them and God.  There are many things that Scripture says that Christians should do, but I, like all other Christians, never seem to hit that mark.    That doesn't change the nature of God, or of His communication with humans, of the sufficiency of God's communication.  You reject Scripture because you want to reject Scripture; that's not necessarily a criticism (ok, maybe a small one), but it is true of all of human presuppositions.  None of us approach any issue without preconceived bias, as we are in the experiment.

There is more to life that scientific fact or test-tube/laboratory scientific evidence.  Discussions of deity, which are -- by any rational definition -- outside of mankind, are by nature metaphysical; trying to test or prove metaphysical constructs within the construct of scientific method or legal forensic evidence is like trying to see air or taste a color. 

I wish I could snap my fingers and see you swept off your feet and dance like a dervish.  Never happened to me.  I wish that you could have a supernatural vision, or  have Jesus give you a physical hug.  I pray that someday you will see only one set of footprints in the sand.

Maybe that works for others, but it hasn't been that way for me.  Even though I've been a Christian for more than 50 years, even though I am both undergrad and seminary trained in theology, even though I have served on church staff vocationally and at times been out of church attendance for years at a time, I have no silver bullet.  I've meet Christians who have no doubts and everything is unicorns farting rainbow sprinkles on cotton candy clouds, but that's not my existence.

Like I said, I've been a believer for 50 years, and to this day, the only prayer I ever really have that is from my heart is "Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief."

Simple?  Yes.
Naive?  Probably.
Satisfying to you?  Probably not.

I keep going back to Paschal's wager.  I may be completely, sincerely wrong.  I hope not.  I really hope not.  I am convinced in my faith, that I am forgiven even when I sin, that I am loved even though I am unlovable, that I am accepted even though I am unacceptable.  I do believe the Scripture, even when I don't understand it. 

Yes, true Christianity is flawed, and frightening, and filled with imperfect blind men staggering toward what someone told them is the light.

But raging against the light never makes it any brighter.