aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent) (08/29/84)
From Rich Rosen: > It is precisely because the notion of a deity implies something "greater than > human" that that the use of "human"-oriented or even life-form-oriented terms > seems bogus. Does the idea of using a pronoun denoting neither sex seem less > great than using one that implies a particular sex? Granted that God is not a life-form, He (convenient pronoun) is still life- oriented. There is, unfortunately, no pronoun in current usage which has the advantages of being third person singular, personal, yet not implying either gender. (In some of the writings of C.S. Lewis, "it" is used in referring to "a child"; but in that case it is quite obvious that a person is being referred to. However, the use of "it" as a genderless but personal pronoun is not current usage; thus it would obscure God's being personal.) > The sexuality preconceptions of those who wrote the text [in which God is > repeatedly referred to as Father] should not affect what a deity really is, > should they? Here we get into a question of the inspiration of the Bible, and how it worked. I'm not sure whether God gave the writers of the entire Bible the exact words throughout (though there are many passages in the Prophets and historical books where an utterance is preceded by "Thus says the LORD"). But if God did indeed at least have a hand in deciding the phraseology of the Bible, then there is some indication that He prefers to be referred to as masculine (another example being the image of the Church being the bride of Christ). Anyway, the beginning of the letter to the Hebrews says something like "God spoke to us in various ways through the prophets in old times, but now has spoken to us by His Son" (very rough paraphrase) -- in other words, the fullest revelation of God was as a man. But we really shouldn't chew up a lot of time and bandwidth on this, since, as Paul said, we now see a dim reflection of God (even in the moments when we are closest to Him), but we will see face to face; at that time all of these discussions will fade into insignificance (perhaps we won't even remember them); for some of us they will pale in the light and joy we experience, while for others there will be the horror of being -- by their own choice -- forever shut out from that light and joy (as Lewis put it, "nothing but yourself for all eternity"). >>> If it doesn't change your life, it's not worth doing. [RLR's signature] >> This has a great deal of application to Christianity. > It has even more application to rationalism and independent logical thinking. Indeed? My impression of your rationalism is that you desire a world without risk, utterly predictable. Christ frees us to take life-changing risks (sometimes the freeing process takes a while, since we resist it). Anyway, the way in which your idea of rationalism and logic as the guiding force of life breaks down is that people's actions are often motivated or governed by subconscious, often irrational beliefs, which they are not consciously aware of (of course), and therefore which cannot be subjected to the logic of the conscious mind. I am grateful to God for accepting my invitation to come into my mind, bring many such subconscious, irrational, false beliefs into my conscious mind, and thus give me the chance to choose whether to hold onto the security of these false but familiar beliefs (and resultant actions) or to repent of believing these lies (as stated here before, "repent" is a translation of the Greek word meaning "change the mind", and even etymologically it means "think again"). In a way, Christ does free us to be logical; but the premises of the Christian life would seem to permit a more daring lifestyle, since one knows that one is never ultimately rejected, but rather always loved. > I hope Jeff doesn't think THIS signature line is applicable to Christianity, > otherwise we're all in trouble... > -- > "If we took the bones out, it wouldn't be crunchy!" It isn't. One of the prophecies fulfilled in the life (actually death) of Jesus was, "Not one of his bones will be broken." -- -- Jeff Sargent {decvax|harpo|ihnp4|inuxc|seismo|ucbvax}!pur-ee!pucc-h:aeq "We can build a beautiful city, yes we can, yes we can...."