Posted on 07/12/2012 9:34:51 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I don’t accept your premise that she has accepted hell. I am not applauding her glibly either.
She was never saved in the first place. The proof of Christianity is the Salvation itself. I left atheism and became a Christian when Christ Saved me, not when I figured it all out. I still can’t figure it all out.
All the external proof in the world is insufficient.
Trading one false faith for another.
Theology studies for a lot of Christians these days, is an academic mental exercise, devoid of the mystical or spiritual aspect of actually relating to and experiencing God.
The mental exercises are provided in atheist (social Marxist)institutions with theology programs that are actually hostile to the moral and mystical aspects of the Bible and the spiritual aspects of life and man. In these institutions obedience is only accepted as it applies to being obedient to the institution’s political correctness and that obedience is set up to directly conflict with obedience to the God of the Bible.
I have heard many times from people who come out of Theology schools with less faith and experience of God than when they went in. They no longer believe the Bible is true because they have had to twist themselves around humanist institutions.
As you said, being saved is not a mental exercise. But becoming a pastor is a mental exercise requiring allegence to a social beleif structure and value structure in opposition to the Bible. This might explain what has happened to the spiritual experience of our churches.
I hope all the atheist ministers come out of the churches like this woman did. They are torturing the faith and Godly power of the churches and people.
And she pretty much says “I was a liar and a fraud but you can trust me”.
Her “theological” analysis is notably trivial. Based on her description, she was influenced by all the common, pop-culture, cliched and debunked arguments.
“One was the contradictory nature of the Bible; the lack of scientific or historical foundation or accuracy, which took me a very, very long time to come to terms with.”
The only logical conclusion from this is that it took her such a long time that she didn’t have a chance to check the historical record or the forensic evidence.
But the best intellectual analysis of Christian doctrine tells us that the doctrine makes more sense than not.
—But the best intellectual analysis of Christian doctrine tells us that the doctrine makes more sense than not.—
I agree in a backhanded way, and agree with C. S. Lewis when he says that if Christianity is man made, whoever “made” it was nuts. It doesn’t have the fingerprints of man.
One example: In the culture of Jesus’ time, if you’re gonna make up your guy rising from the dead, it’s idiotic to use women as the witnesses.
“being saved is not a mental exercise”
You make a very important point. But it seems a good way to phrase it is: “being saved is not entirely a mental exercise.”
For example, “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.” (John 20:30-31)
We find other examples in the New Testament that Jesus used physical evidence to convince people of his Truth, so they would be saved.
But again, your point is essential because if we look at the verses just preceding those in John from above, in what Jesus says to Thomas, we see Jesus favors belief through faith above belief inspired by physical evidence.
Don’t forget that Lewis has pointed out that due to the nature of the facts in the larger context, it is irrational to think of Christian doctrine as coming from insanity.
Because they oppose truth itself, they must progressively ignore emerging facts. The only ultimate recourse for atheists is to use the tactic of name calling.
The more we examine facts and process them logically, the more we see not just the moral weakness but the intellectual weakness of atheism.
Yes. In Mere Christianity he calls it the most intellectually bankrupt of all “religious” beliefs.
You might remember his observation that there are necessarily three logical possibilities: Jesus Christ was either a liar, a madman or simply a person telling the truth.
The problem faced by the atheist is that he must deny—to himself—that he lacks confidence in his own ideology, meanwhile it’s this very lack of confidence which limits his access to the intellectual realm of the debate.
Nailed it.
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