Posted on 02/07/2016 10:35:14 PM PST by TBP
That I don’t get unless it is anger at knowing they really are not their own little gods and the final arbiter.
My wife’s nephew was raised in the church and went to college and bought the leftist program. He is an atheist currently and calls himself the “friendly atheist” yet his posts on FB are full of rage, hate and the ridiculing of people of faith. When you ask him why he feels the need to mock and ridicule something he doesn’t believe in he says he just doesn’t see what you are talking about, he is tolerant and inclusive...
He is a real disappointment and a nasty little bugger to converse with. Before college he was a good kid, now he is nothing more than an angry, hate filled ahole.
Your reference to 'mind' seems impossible....how can chemicals have perception of mind?
You reference 'belief....yet chemicals do not 'believe'.....carbon oxygen nitrogen....they react....they do not believe.
How can God, who you says does not exist, bother you?.......According to you?
Some entity which you say does to exist 'pesters'.....how can that be? THAT is irrational and illogical........but then, to a an atheist denies logical and rational thought....how can he believe is logic......they are immaterial according to the physicalist and all there is in their worldview it is impossible.
I will stop here.
Very good questions.
That's funny because it's pretty much exactly what I did, albeit I had a stint as a Charismatic who didn't read anything for awhile. Luckily God pulled me out of it.
FYI, Augustine’s writings are very easy to read. If you read him first, you’ll be more than ready for Luther, who was an Augustinian monk.
>>FYI, Augustine’s writings are very easy to read. If you read him first, you’ll be more than ready for Luther, who was an Augustinian monk.
But we’re talking about a new Christian. Would you really send them off in search of Augustine’s writings, Luther, and Calvin? Understanding these is seminary-level stuff and you’d dump all that on the shoulders of a person who was just trying to figure out where to go after “Jesus love me, this I know”?
Well, gee, Elizabeth. Hell is a real place and you are right to be afraid of it.
Find Jesus. Trust Jesus to be your Savior. Live your life for Him.
How stupid do you think "new" Christians are? I think you're exaggerating how hard this stuff is.
Understanding these is seminary-level stuff
Well, maybe you're thinking of some advanced classes, but these books are easy to get into. Only Calvin's might be tough, not because of the subject matter, but because the book is huge.
>>How stupid do you think “new” Christians are? I think you’re exaggerating how hard this stuff is.
I don’t think I am. I’m really underestimating it. True, they aren’t written using big “churchy” words, but the subject matter for a person who doesn’t even have a firm grasp of the NT is not very essential to their spiritual development. Since I’m a PCA Presbyterian (started out as a Methodist, but I saw the light a couple years ago), I would give them a copy of the Confession and Catechisms before I’d drop Luther and Calvin on them.
I think maybe there is a misunderstanding on your part or maybe I was not clear. I am not telling any Christian to jump into Luther etc before reading the entire Bible. But your catechism idea is a good one.
>>I think maybe there is a misunderstanding on your part or maybe I was not clear. I am not telling any Christian to jump into Luther etc before reading the entire Bible.
I know. I’m not suggesting that you said that people should skip the bible and go straight to Augustine. I’m just talking about the idea of a new Christian trying to figure out the nuts and bolts of his new faith by going to Augustine, Luther, and Calvin after they read the bible.
>>Everyone should read the Holy Scripture, then maybe read all of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings, and then work your way to Luther’s Bondage of the Will and Calvin’s Institutes. a’Brekel’s “A Christian’s Reasonable Service†is good too, as well as any sermons by Jonathan Edwards.
I was actually suggesting that they go to Mere Christianity somewhere in between the “OK, God, I’m here. What am I doing here?” stage and the point where you sit down and start doing your comprehensive bible reading plan.
Remember that we were talking about atheists who started believing here. These are people who were struck so hard by the Holy Spirit that they changed their entire worldview into one that they used to ridicule. They know all the arguments against Christianity, just as Lewis did. His book starts them out where they are and systematically walks them to where they need to be to just get started as a new Christian...and he does it in a simple, easy to understand format.
You make a strong point here. I was never an atheist, but more of a person who was simply ignorant when the Gospel was discovered to me. I studied the entire Bible first, with Matthew Henry as my commentary, though I fell into Charismaticism because the person who I credited with converting me was a Charismatic. It was probably one of the greatest mistakes of my life.
I do not like Lewis since his Arminianism is a problem, and new Christians will tend to look at a guy like that and try to emulate him entirely. Luther, Calvin, even Augustine are better bets.
>>I do not like Lewis since his Arminianism is a problem, and new Christians will tend to look at a guy like that and try to emulate him entirely.
Yeah. I have a good point there. When I lost my atheism and came to Christ, I obviously had a Calvinist leaning—even though I didn’t even know what Calvinism was. I became a Methodist because that’s what I nominally was when I was 10. I figured, “it doesn’t really matter”. But since God came and snatched me out of my comfortable life with no input from me, I just had this idea that it isn’t really a choice as my Methodist pastor kept telling me.
He went to great pains to explain the evils of Calvinism and how I needed to give up that idea that it wasn’t my free will choice. I almost believed him, but stopped talking about it so he thought he had won.
But it kept nagging at me, so instead of listening to Methodists telling me what a Calvinist believes, I went to a Calvinist and asked him. I felt like I finally understood.
My point in telling you all this is that a recently-converted atheist is going to feel like he had no choice, so the Arminian leanings of Lewis won’t affect him much.
>>Yeah. I have a good point there.
Sorry. I really meant to say “Yeah. YOU have a good point there.”
;-)
"I make a good point" ;) heheheheheh!, but you make a good point as well, though after Lewis, we'd had to give him a proper diet of sound readings!
There’s a neat youtube channel featuring C.S. Lewis doodle video. From talks which C.S. Lewis gave talks on his book “Mere Christianity.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmHXYhpEDfM&list=PL9boiLqIabFhrqabptq3ThGdwNanr65xU&index=1
Pascal said:
“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.” (148/428)
As the hart pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after you, O God. (Psalm 42:1)
“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.” (Isaiah 55:1)
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