aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent) (05/02/84)
Back for a moment....
There are lots of things I COULD reply to, but many of them have been handled
already, and many others would lead to clones of previous discussions and
would get just about as far. But I wish to address Rich Rosen's "Comments
(3.1)" article.
1. As to God's being an enemy to whom we must surrender: That's not the way
He wanted it, but we chose it. "Man is not a fallen creature who needs
improvement; man is a rebel who must lay down his arms." (approximate
quote from "Mere Christianity" by CSL) We have chosen to fight God, so
let's not blame HIM for being an enemy. The funny thing is, it turns out
to be easier to lay down our arms and be defenseless before God than to
go on opposing Him. It may seem harder; it may seem agonizing; but in the
end, it leads to peace (logically enough).
Rich summarizes his (and many Christians') view of the situation as:
"Those who choose to wrap themselves up in themselves and their 'wants
and urges' are surely damned" -- the implication being that this damnation
is something externally applied by God. A more reasonable phrasing would
be that God lets you go, and that you remain wrapped up in yourself and
nothing but yourself for all eternity; while if you choose to be friends
with God, you will have fellowship with Him and other nice people for all
eternity. I, for one, much prefer the second alternative.
I had a curious thought: PERHAPS (this is quite speculative) it was in
fact God's will that Satan fall and that he deceive humans into doing the
same, so that those people who choose to follow God will, in the end, be
more firmly devoted to Him (having actually experienced the effects of
opposition to Him) than they could ever have been if humanity had never
rebelled. Just a thought, whose truth or falsehood we aren't likely to
know in this life....
2. As one could not blame Rich for his view of damnation (since he got it from
some unfortunate Christians), one cannot blame him for his view of morality
-- i.e. a "parental" view, that "[certain] things are bad for you and you
MUST [my emphasis -- jjs] not do them". Perhaps the language of reward and
punishment was the only thing that the warrior Hebrew tribe could
understand. But even in the Old Testament, the idea of LOVING God and your
neighbor pops up; when Jesus named the two greatest commandments, He wasn't
making up anything new; He was quoting the Pentateuch. The New Testament
makes clear that God loves us, too, and that He wants to conform us to the
image of Christ -- because that's what will make us ultimately happiest.
While there are times that the New Testament condemns particular sins (and
often long lists thereof), the emphasis (particularly in Paul's letter to
the Romans) is on being changed so you sin no more -- "transformed by the
renewing of your MIND" (yes, Christ deals with the mind too!) -- not on
being damned. God would much rather transform you than see you damned.
And the whole point is that all this transformation -- this "dying to
sin" -- is because the "sins" are bad for us, but not that we MUST not do
them, rather that we'll be happier and better off if we don't.
For example, let's consider the class of sins that fundamentalists most
condemn: sexual activities other than between husband and wife. It is
amazing what one can learn by closely watching the emotional component of
one's own sexual fantasies -- and letting God observe them too. (One
minister friend of mine gave me the excellent piece of advice, "Show God
your dirty pictures"; and one non-minister friend of mine summarizes a way
many Christian singles handle their sexuality as [warning: not rot13'ed]
"Beat it till it falls off and pray like heck", to which I would add the
word "simultaneously".) I discovered that if I fantasize myself tasting
the bodily delights of a woman to whom, in the fantasy, I am not married,
it is emotionally unsatisfying because, hidden under the ecstasy of knowing
and being known, is the knowledge that the other person is not committed to
me, and could very easily reject me -- hence there's an undercurrent of
fear which destroys (or at least vastly diminishes) the beautiful
communion, the truly becoming one in a context of loving commitment to each
other, which sex was intended to be. I find that if I fantasize myself as
married to a woman, I fantasize myself as much more relaxed, free, and
joyous. The point: God did not prohibit fornication just because He
wanted to arbitrarily set down a rule that would cramp our style; He told
us not to fornicate because it is so very sub-optimal, and we would be
destroying our own happiness if we did it. Again, this is only one
example.
3. A note inspired by rabbit!ark's article about Ayn Rand's "The Virtue of
Selfishness": In a sense, everyone is selfish; we all do what we really
want to, Christians as well as Objectivists. It's been said that no one
comes to Christ for the right reason. Certainly I don't; I come to Him
and stay with Him in order to glom onto the promise in Revelation that God
will wipe away all tears. I come to Him because I WANT to be transformed
into the image of His Son, because I've been sufficiently mangled inside
that I'm not very loving, very patient, ..., in sum, very Christlike --
and Christlike people get liked, loved, desired much more easily than
others; since I want all that, I have a very selfish motive for being a
Christian. However, I also remember that verse which is simultaneously
beautifully comforting and greatly terrifying: "Delight yourself in the
Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart" -- one tougher
paraphrase of which begins "Make God your only joy, ..." In other words,
it is as true in Christianity as in Buddhism (referring again to Rich's
articles) that if you seek the direct satisfaction of your desires, you
stand a good chance of suffering (how true this is); but if you continue
to go to God and choose to give Him priority over anything or anyone on
this earth, He will eventually give you something/someone much better than
you would have gotten had you gone out seeking entirely on your own, and
your total joy will be much higher -- because you'll have this beautiful
gift, and you'll have God as your friend too. I never said this giving
God priority over, say, a desire for a Significant Other (S.O.) was easy!
But it's a good idea (in my case certainly), because I keep being shown
things in myself which would stand a good chance of either destroying a
relationship should one form, or else preventing one from forming in the
first place. If I continue bringing these fears, angers, etc. to God, He
will eventually bring me to the point where I can get an optimal S.O. --
or where I am content without one; either would be less painful than my
present situation....
But this is not net.singles, and I have wandered off the point I originally
wanted to make. God hopes to transform us so that we want to live in a
Christlike manner -- i.e. that we will "selfishly" want to be "unselfish".
Ayn Rand's philosophy has many good points in it (I have read her magnum
opus, "Atlas Shrugged"), and might be one of the best ways to live if the
assumption that there is no God and that we're in a closed system were
true. (For example, Rand considers productive work as the best possible
activity for humans to engage in; the Bible also considers productive work
good; Paul wrote "If a man will not work [i.e. refuses to work], neither
shall he eat", and even that great missionary worked as a tentmaker
[perhaps Paul should have called himself Omar :-)].) But the Bible
indicates that we're not in a closed system, so we can afford to be
"unselfish". That verse I quoted earlier about delighting in the Lord
(Psalm 37:4) applies, as does another verse which I think is somewhere in
Paul's epistles and goes approximately "God will supply all your NEEDS
[my emphasis] through the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus." You may
not get everything you want (or seem to want), but you will get what you
need. (I confess that my actual faith in this is not strong, despite
hearing many accounts of people, say, receiving just the amount of money
they needed at just the time they needed it; this is an area where I have
yet to be "transformed". I believe in my head, but not yet in my gut,
that God will enable me to have the sustenance I need. From this aspect, I
can easily understand Rich's skepticism; I continue to work feverishly to
pay off my high-interest mortgage as fast as possible....)
4. One bit of "evidence" of God which occurs in many believer's lives is the
various spiritual gifts, the most obvious of which is "speaking in
tongues", i.e. speaking a language one does not know without conscious
thought. This does happen. I know. I have this gift myself; and I can
truthfully attest that the incomprehensible words I speak are not being
generated by my conscious mind. I can also attest that until I was not
quite 17, I did not have this gift; but one evening after a church service,
a man laid his hands on me and prayed, and I received that gift. I can
thirdly attest that the commitment shown in baptism by immersion appears to
be necessary; once before my baptism I attended a pentecostal service, but
for all the excitement, I did not receive the gift then; that had to wait
until after my baptism. Fourthly, I can attest that this "tongue" is very
useful in prayer; sometimes I may be really stuck on trying to unravel some
sin, some irrationality in myself, and if I pray in tongues for a minute, I
am given some new insight that enables me to get past the roadblock.
Lest you all get a false impression of me, I do not attend a "holy roller"
church now; I agree with Paul that "things must be done decently and in
order" in worship; I do not believe that all Christians must speak in
tongues (Paul emphasizes that different believers have different gifts, and
that tongues is the least of the lot).
But my point is: Here is some evidence that something, or someone, outside
the "normal" course of events is operating. Given my experience, and the
experience of others who also speak in tongues (e.g. Oral Roberts, who has
not only written a book on this subject but also been blessed with even
greater gifts), the most likely explanation that ties them all together is
that God is providing the gift(s) to all.
Wow.... There was a lot of pent-up writing. I never expected to write over
10kb this evening.
--
-- Jeff Sargent
{allegra|ihnp4|decvax|harpo|seismo|ucbvax}!pur-ee!pucc-h:aeq
"Rivers belong where they can ramble..."aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent) (05/08/84)
Why do I get the feeling that the article to which this is a followup is
being ignored by the opposition? No one has attempted to rebut any of the
points I made. I never realized it was THAT good of an article! :-)
--
-- Jeff Sargent
{allegra|decvax|harpo|ihnp4|seismo|ucbvax}!pur-ee!pucc-h:aeq
"...eagles belong where they can fly..."rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn) (05/16/84)
<> >Why do I get the feeling that the article to which this is a followup is >being ignored by the opposition? No one has attempted to rebut any of the >points I made. I never realized it was THAT good of an article! :-) Jeff, that's cheating. OK, you're right - it WASN'T that good an article. It WAS long, and frankly, it appeared at a time that there was a lot of really acerbic material that more required response. -- ...A friend of the devil is a friend of mine. Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303) 444-5710 x3086
emjej@uokvax.UUCP (05/17/84)
#R:pucc-h:-69300:uokvax:8300057:000:228 uokvax!emjej May 16 18:44:00 1984 What may have happened was that it was lost. For a few days, all the notes that got here consisted of one character, followed by convex ignored <n> bytes I'm sure it was a good article; I wish I'd seen it... James Jones