Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Relevancy
Jollyblogger is reading again. He is reading a book that made him think about another book that made him think about another book thatr got his to say this
Time after time when I read about people's faith journey's I see the intellect as obstacle to faith, and in some cases the path to faith, but it is never ever enough.
God is real in every possible sense. He is not an idea, and He is not remote. One need not understand quantum mechanics to experience an atomic explosion. David is absolutely correct, we do need to learn how to engage on "deeper levels" than arguement which has, I think, one very important ramifications.
We must find those levels for ourselves. How do we do that is the important question. From mysticism to pentecostalism to "the disciplines" they are all efforts to seek those deeper levels. Personally, I think each path works to some extent but is also fraught with possible missteps. Thus I explore all of them in hopes they balance each other out.
What about you?
Related Tags: Christianity, spirituality, Jesus, Christ, evangelism, apologetics, outreach
I also think of a book I started a few years ago (I don't think I finished it) called The Way of the Modern World by Craig Gay. Gay's thesis is that we moderns have constructed a world that that basically renders belief in God irrelevant. Again, this dovetails with Schaeffer and Borgmann.I read through David's post and agreed with it, but when I pull that quote out of context, the questions occurs to me, "How can God ever be irrelevant?" David concludes his post this way
Similar things happen in evangelism and apologetics and it's a good reminder that our calling as Christians is to engage people and cultures on deeper levels than just those of arguments. This does not mean that we quit offering arguments, but in our attempts at persuasion in any matter we need to look deeper to what values and plausibility structures (presuppositions, in Cornelius Van Til's thought) need to be engaged with the gospel.Ah, so the idea then, is that our modern world has made God intellectually irrelevant, but not generally so. This begs a question for me as well, "Was God ever really intellectually relevant?"
Time after time when I read about people's faith journey's I see the intellect as obstacle to faith, and in some cases the path to faith, but it is never ever enough.
God is real in every possible sense. He is not an idea, and He is not remote. One need not understand quantum mechanics to experience an atomic explosion. David is absolutely correct, we do need to learn how to engage on "deeper levels" than arguement which has, I think, one very important ramifications.
We must find those levels for ourselves. How do we do that is the important question. From mysticism to pentecostalism to "the disciplines" they are all efforts to seek those deeper levels. Personally, I think each path works to some extent but is also fraught with possible missteps. Thus I explore all of them in hopes they balance each other out.
What about you?
Related Tags: Christianity, spirituality, Jesus, Christ, evangelism, apologetics, outreach
