Posted on 10/19/2014 10:38:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
He’s very smart, my childhood best friend, and very faithful in his atheism. When he was 6 he was clever as clever, but now he’s past 60 and knows he will not live for ever and ever. Yet now, as in years past, even the most modest mention of God brings a growl: “Don’t proselytize me.”
He called me this summer and pleaded that I come visit him, so I hopped on a plane and did. He has many physical problems for which doctors have prescribed this and that, with meds for one ailment making another worse. He has worse psychological problems, which he first summarizes with sociology speak: “I lack a support network.” Then he speaks more plainly: “I’m all alone.”
He puts his head on the table and says, “I don’t know what to do.” He’s haunted by unused potential: “I’ve wasted my life.” He programmed computers for others but never worked on any trend-setting products. He knew some women but never married. No children. He knows he could go underwater with hardly a ripple. He doesn’t look back proudly at anything in his life, including military service. Seems noble to me, but he says all he learned was, “It’s better to be a live coward rather than an f-ing dead hero.”
For a time he took satisfaction from his financial worth, having socked away maybe $2 million, but he long expected a stock market crash, kept his money in cash and commodities, and missed recent run-ups. He’s angry about that, and blames the Federal Reserve. He blames politicians. He blames Obama, for whom he voted.
He says he would be suicidal except that he fears death and oblivion. When he was working, he could keep his brain busy on computer problems. When he stopped working, he could keep his brain busy learning a new language and his legs busy by learning how to dance. But at some point the void within him became unbridgeable by activity. He stared at the void and reacted with the cry of Ecclesiastes from 3,000 years ago: “Meaningless.”
Some Christian writers have understood what my childhood friend is going through. Blaise Pascal wrote in 1670, “I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me, and I find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am put in this place rather than in another, nor why the short time which is given me to live is assigned to me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me. I see nothing but infinities on all sides, which surround me as an atom and as a shadow which endures only for an instant and returns no more. All I know is that I must soon die: What I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.”
T.S. Eliot wrote in 1925, “We are the hollow men. We are the stuffed men.” A half-century later Walker Percy described the contemporary secular man as one who “works, grows old, gets sick, and dies and is quite content to have it so, [living] as if his prostate were not growing cancerous, his arteries turning to chalk, his brain cells dying off by the millions, as if the worms were not going to have him after all.”
But what happens when secular man wises up and is no longer content?
I spent three days with my childhood friend as his world was disintegrating. He was in despair, but I can’t consider that a bad thing: With his hostility toward God, he should be in despair. He has to hit bottom before he can rise, and maybe his only chance is to hit bottom. But how will he then bounce up? Augustine wrote in his Confessions that he was “speaking and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo! I heard from a neighboring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, ‘Take up and read; Take up and read.’”
Augustine did that, picking up Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. When others will not take up and read, true change seems impossible. Except, except…with God, nothing is impossible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Olasky
Olansky stikes me as a tad mean spirited ... a tad vain. I suspect that might not sit well with a higher being:
from the link:
Olasky was born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, to a Russian-Jewish family and graduated from Yale University in 1971 with a B.A. in American Studies.[2] In 1976 he earned his Ph.D. in American Culture at the University of Michigan.[2] He became an atheist in adolescence and a Marxist in college, ultimately joining the Communist Party USA in 1972.[2] He married and divorced during this period and by his own admission broke every one of the ten commandments except the one against murder. He left the Communist Party late in 1973 and in 1976 became a Christian after reading the New Testament and a number of Christian authors.[2]
Thanks,
I don’t know how you come to that conclusion. That that you are entitled to your opinion
Tears By Me Out The Heart.
Some fiction can affect us profoundly if we’re still alive.
I’d also recommend the Bible even though Job is admittedly fiction to many authorities, Jewish and Christian.
“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”
Marvin Olasky’s pride and arrogance are thinly vailed ...
Ask Jesus to save him. He’s been known to intervene and give the hopeless a chance upon the prayers of loved ones. “Saul, why do you persecute me?”
To be Surprised by Joy was the vector that saved C.S. Lewis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surprised_by_Joy
Yes, it is as simple as the Sinners Prayer, and if they have never been baptized, just sprinkle water on them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit once that prayer is done....the sick cannot be taken to be immersed.
God is love ....we have opportunities to bring our family to God. Don’t let that opportunity pass. I had an Uncle who was made ready for death in this very way.
There is a ‘peace that passes all understanding’ once they have made that commitment and the fear leaves them, because then they aren’t going to hell.
Jesus was clear and simple....
It is that Simple,,,,,Yes !
Jesus said ;
This Day You shall be in Paradise,
to one on the cross beside Him.
Thanks
Give him the book “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist”
by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek.
I called myself agnostic for a long time. But I would never have referred to myself as an atheist. It cannot be claimed but as an alternative religion, regardless the huffing and puffing..
This is powerful. Prayers for this man and the many angry fearful ones like him.
Got a line on it through the local library. I’ll try & report.
Thank You.
“Many” authorities?
The entire Bible is fiction to “many” authorities,seeing as how it includes mystical beasts (see Job, for example), and mythical personages, and magical miracles.
In their view, the only saving grace is its moral message. But seeing as they keep drawing the wrong moral message ffrom it, I have no real use for their opinions.
They could be right; I could be wrong. But my money goes the other way.
Some Christian writers have understood what my childhood friend is going through.
Ecclesiastes
Ecc 1:1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Ecc 1:2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
Ecc 1:3 What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? ....................................
There is a wise conclusion at the very end but if anyone wants to know what it is, you will have to go read it your self.
“Is it as simple as the Sinners Prayer,,?”
No because the person may not completely understand what is happening. Jesus said “You must be born again”. You have to put away the old man and embrace the new man.
Here’s a better of example in a simpler form. Not perfect but good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCSUKIhjevo&list=TLloeB_AWqVGrHWQ0aF8wOZS-GpdG4Gvbr
There is so much more to just being saved. There are rewards to be received in front of our God Almighty. If all we did our whole lives for God was believe in Jesus Christ and his resurrection you will be ashamed and disappointed that you did not do more for Him. There are rewards, awards to be secured in our eternal life. Do more works, not for salvation but for rewards, study, speak and take a stand.
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