[Chrysostom]

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

Hmm, I do see what you're saying now.

Yeah I think we got mixed up because I was having two different conversations -- one with you, one with Jerry.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

Yes I totally agree that evolutionary theory - as well as the ethic I am proposing - *necessarily* transcends the individual. I'm all about that, man! I got a lot from the community focus of the "emerging" circles I hung around in a little while back, and a lot of that social concern has stuck with me (though chai and clothes made of hemp never took hold, fortunately).

I was drinking chai lattes before they were cool. Unfortunately, my clothes are all from Banana Republic, so I will forever be shunned...

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

I guess that the problem that I do have is with the idea of a personal god being behind all of that.

The way that I see things (right now, anyway), a sense of kinship with a few other feeling, loving human beings, and companionship, safety, love and passion with my partner, and a good relationship with my children, is all the "spirituality" I need. That makes me feel connected with reality, like I have my own little place in the world where I fit. Why would I need a "personal relationship with Jesus"(tm), or a set of ancient rituals to perform, or membership in a group of somewhat likeminded people, or a "divine mission of cosmic reconciliation" to give my life something that it isn't really lacking?

(Obviously, I realise that this has just strayed into my own personal issues rather than just being a rather theoretical debate... )

I've always thought it was a lot more interesting to have a conversation when you're explicitly talking about your own personal issues. I've read enough on these boards that I can see that most of the time people are just talking about their own personal issues behind a veil.

I agree with you. I don't think you need it. If you want to live a happy life where you make a decent wage, feed your kids, go out to eat now and then, etc., I don't think you at all need Christianity. I don't think that God is going to get you out of debt, pay your mortgage, or help your kids get good grades. You just need a university education, a good wife, and a home in a nice town, and I think you've got the smarts to do that.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

I do realise that, but how else can a moderately Modernist sceptic interact with the claims of theism?

I think I'm misunderstanding what you're asking. I do understand that in a Greek physicalist world things worked the way you described them, and if that's your bag then obviously those are the options available to you and I agree with you that that "god" will fade into irrelevance pretty quickly. But that doesn't mean that that's the only way some god could be. In the Christian world, for instance, the divine and the human get joined in Jesus. So yes, that's not your world so it's not credible to you that that's what actually happened. But when you talk about Christianity it's still worth taking note of any material differences between what a god could be in your world and what a god could be in its world.

Of course, by looking at people relative to the worlds they inhabit I've ended up doing all kinds of crazy things like seeing abolitionism as a hypocritical elitist power play, even if I'm supportive of the ending of slavery in the abstract. So maybe my example should be ignored...

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

On one hand I have the things that I can touch and taste and see - pleasure feels good to me, seeing people in pain is distressing, the natural world seems rather random, arbitrary and lacking in "morals", etc. - and on the other hand I see a set of beliefs which don't come naturally (to me, at least) and I need to verify them to myself. The only way to tackle this, as far as I understand it, is to judge the thing that is claimed by what I "know" already (and as a little bit of a Postmodernist as well, I feel compelled to confess that I realise I can't know anything for absolute-100%-sure, but I've got to work with something here)

Or I suppose I could just "read my Bible more" and hope that faith comes by osmosis, or I could go to some whizz-bang Christian rally and hope that assurance comes in a flurry of emotion and blazing guitar riffs...

Haha, I remember that. I remember how the lights would go off and the hands would be raised instantly. I remember how the most emotional, spiritual people didn't seem to be getting any less immature or any more wise or good. I remember shouting at myself and at God trying to get assurance, trying to feel connected and spiritual, trying to walk with God as much as I could.

Then I remember attending this church that was anything but cool. There were no electric guitars, no repeated choruses, and the lights were never turned off. There was no powerpoint, and the songs were hard to sing. I remember that I kept seeing people pray, and when they prayed they never once used the word 'just.' In fact one prayer lasted for almost ten minutes, and nothing in it was very spiritual. He prayed for our enemies, he prayed for the other churches in our area, and he prayed for so many mundane things I could barely keep listening. He never prayed for a mighty work or for the Spirit to fall down upon us or for revival, or even for us to retake America with our votes and petitions. And at the end of the service we had no opportunity to make a decision, no evangelistic appeal, no refrain of "Just As I Am." Instead we ate bread, drank wine, and left. Of course that leads into a much longer story, but I started to dig into history and figured out that this was what Christians had always done.

So the dilemma here was that at this new church it seemed like making a decision to be a Christian wasn't that big of a deal, so if that were the case then how could I be reassured and learn the truth of the decision I had already made? But I figured out that when you structure your life around a momentary crisis of decision you're always second-guessing that decision and even if you make it now you'll question it and decide differently tomorrow. Later I would connect this with consumerism, which offers us infinite choices but in so doing demands of us eternal dissatisfaction with the choices we've already made. Eventually we hole up and just try to "get by," trying to shield ourselves from the bombardment of choice by committing to none.

I figured out that at this new church there was no balm to create my decision, no hype to help me into a leap of faith, because the emphasis was on faithfulness. Sure, the guy who prayed for ten minutes was really uncool and totally boring, but as he went on I just started crying uncontrollably because I felt like I was witnessing something beautiful. This was much stronger than any power-chord-driven emotional high I had previously experienced, because I was staring at profound transcendence in something that was completely and utterly mundane. I was listening to someone who was completely concerned with being faithful and barely concerned with mustering up faith.

Well, I have to go to lunch now, but hopefully I'll be able to respond to the rest of this soon.

[PartTimeLurker]

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

I was drinking chai lattes before they were cool. Unfortunately, my clothes are all from Banana Republic, so I will forever be shunned...

Heheh

Chai never did it for me, actually. I was in the "drinks-lots-of-caffeine" stream of the emerging church, as opposed to the "drinks-only-water" and "drink-lots-of-microbrews" streams...

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

I've always thought it was a lot more interesting to have a conversation when you're explicitly talking about your own personal issues.

I know what you mean. I guess I don't want to bring it up all the time, though... This is a discussion board after all, not a free counselling board (which I'm sure they have, but I won't be making use of any time soon...)

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

I've read enough on these boards that I can see that most of the time people are just talking about their own personal issues behind a veil.

Quote for truth!

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

I agree with you. I don't think you need it. If you want to live a happy life where you make a decent wage, feed your kids, go out to eat now and then, etc., I don't think you at all need Christianity. I don't think that God is going to get you out of debt, pay your mortgage, or help your kids get good grades. You just need a university education, a good wife, and a home in a nice town, and I think you've got the smarts to do that.

Thank you John, for showing that you know what I mean. Sometimes it feels a little like a cop-out, "well if all you care about is yourself..." kind of attitude to have right now, but I think that a lot of that is guilt-baggage from previous, ah, [I]experiences[/I in the church]... I feel like, as you talk about below, a lot of Christianity is presenting a false dilemma, or in advertising-speak, creating a "felt need" for the product they're pushing.

Obviously, I know that you're not all like that, but I'm sure you know what I mean...

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

I think I'm misunderstanding what you're asking. I do understand that in a Greek physicalist world things worked the way you described them, and if that's your bag then obviously those are the options available to you and I agree with you that that "god" will fade into irrelevance pretty quickly. But that doesn't mean that that's the only way some god could be. In the Christian world, for instance, the divine and the human get joined in Jesus. So yes, that's not your world so it's not credible to you that that's what actually happened. But when you talk about Christianity it's still worth taking note of any material differences between what a god could be in your world and what a god could be in its world.

Of course, by looking at people relative to the worlds they inhabit I've ended up doing all kinds of crazy things like seeing abolitionism as a hypocritical elitist power play, even if I'm supportive of the ending of slavery in the abstract. So maybe my example should be ignored...

Yeah, I know what you mean (even about Abolitionism being another example of wealthy Westerners deciding what's right and wrong and then enforcing that on the rest of the world, if that's where you were going), but I'd like to think that I do see things from other POVs as much as I possibly can. That's part of what got me where I am now - looking at the atheist POV so closely that some it's arguments started making better sense than theism's... I think that we are still talking past each other a little, though (which is honestly a problem I have pretty regularly - I think I just have trouble getting all my thoughts out in a format anyone else can understand)

What I meant was that right now I'm in the place of (speaking from a Modernist kind of perspective) an honest inquirer, trying to weigh up various truth-claims and determine the capital "t" Truth as best I can. Empiricism, I suppose. And as someone who has invariably been influenced by Postmodernism (and my own life experiences) I am honestly quite cynical and sceptical of anybody who claims to know answers to any of the Big Questions that humanity has struggled with for as long as anybody can tell.

So my dichotomy isn't really between "how things are" and "how God works", but between "how things look to me, as imperfect an observer I am" and "how other imperfect observers tell me things are, as apparently informed by a god that I can't touch, see or verify".

I suppose I could follow Van Til or Lesslie Newbigin's guidance and "suck it and see", trying the Christian worldview on and seeing whether it makes more sense of reality than other ones, but I reckon that's what I could call the last 8 years of my life. Maybe now it's time to try another paradigm on for size...

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Haha, I remember that. I remember how the lights would go off and the hands would be raised instantly. I remember how the most emotional, spiritual people didn't seem to be getting any less immature or any more wise or good. I remember shouting at myself and at God trying to get assurance, trying to feel connected and spiritual, trying to walk with God as much as I could.

Then I remember attending this church that was anything but cool. There were no electric guitars, no repeated choruses, and the lights were never turned off. There was no powerpoint, and the songs were hard to sing. I remember that I kept seeing people pray, and when they prayed they never once used the word 'just.' In fact one prayer lasted for almost ten minutes, and nothing in it was very spiritual. He prayed for our enemies, he prayed for the other churches in our area, and he prayed for so many mundane things I could barely keep listening. He never prayed for a mighty work or for the Spirit to fall down upon us or for revival, or even for us to retake America with our votes and petitions. And at the end of the service we had no opportunity to make a decision, no evangelistic appeal, no refrain of "Just As I Am." Instead we ate bread, drank wine, and left. Of course that leads into a much longer story, but I started to dig into history and figured out that this was what Christians had always done.

So the dilemma here was that at this new church it seemed like making a decision to be a Christian wasn't that big of a deal, so if that were the case then how could I be reassured and learn the truth of the decision I had already made? But I figured out that when you structure your life around a momentary crisis of decision you're always second-guessing that decision and even if you make it now you'll question it and decide differently tomorrow. Later I would connect this with consumerism, which offers us infinite choices but in so doing demands of us eternal dissatisfaction with the choices we've already made. Eventually we hole up and just try to "get by," trying to shield ourselves from the bombardment of choice by committing to none.

I figured out that at this new church there was no balm to create my decision, no hype to help me into a leap of faith, because the emphasis was on faithfulness. Sure, the guy who prayed for ten minutes was really uncool and totally boring, but as he went on I just started crying uncontrollably because I felt like I was witnessing something beautiful. This was much stronger than any power-chord-driven emotional high I had previously experienced, because I was staring at profound transcendence in something that was completely and utterly mundane. I was listening to someone who was completely concerned with being faithful and barely concerned with mustering up faith.

Well, I have to go to lunch now, but hopefully I'll be able to respond to the rest of this soon.

Hmm, that's a really cool story, John. It's quite similar to mine, even up to the current church that is kind of old, dull and definitely very mundane, but with a hint of something beautiful. I have wondered often whether it's just the "hype withdrawals" (as much as I hate it, I understand how much I thrived on it) since we left the old church that have led us here...

-- Nate