Flat earthers!
Yes 'Ianhimself' it is possible to be agnostic on a flat earth [I actually believe it's roundish] but surely you are being disingenuous. Can you be agnostic on the Virgin Birth or Resurrection? You know the one; "something doesn't have to be true in order for there to be truth in it."
If you become what you believe, what do you become if you believe nothing but imaginary stories about a man who may or may not be a sinless Saviour?
posted by Paul Reid at 3:48 PM
7 Comments:
Can’t resist taking part in this!
Have read ianhimself's comments and thought I would comment myself.
Those who have intellectual difficulty with the claims of the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection etc. are actually barking up the wrong tree. I speak as a bit of an intellectual myself…but one who has a captured heart!!
Trying to know God in a way that satisfies the intellect will never work. If God is to be known at all, He must be known spiritually.
Anyone, anywhere, at any time who has ever known God personally, has known God 'spiritually'.
Institutional 'Christianity' claims to 'know' God, but is generally not producing the fruit of knowing God. If God is really and truly known, there will be an outcome.
The 'knowledge' of God by any other means has produced outcomes which are at best woefully inept and sterile, and at worst intensely evil.
The attempted knowledge of God in the mind has long been the quest of philosophy and theology. Its outcome has been somewhere on the continuum from atheism, nihilism and agnosticism right across to religious bigotry and a fundamentalism that breeds violence and murder. The quest for knowing God in the mind has led humanity down a dark alleyway from which there is no way out.
So, I say again, if there is a God and if He is to be known, it must be spiritually.
What does this term 'spiritual' or 'spiritually' actually mean?
We have already dismissed the quest to know God intellectually as a blind alley. God clearly cannot be known in a physical way. There are, of course, cultures who do have physical gods (made of wood, stone etc.), but most people reading this will not be concerned with that.
The conclusion therefore remains, that God must be known in a spiritual way.
What then, does it mean to be 'spiritual'? Very few people who have a Western mindset can grasp what it means to be 'spiritual'. This is because (whether we are aware of it or not) our whole paradigm is a paradigm that is dominated by the mind and the intellect. The time for this in the history of Western civilisation has come to an end, but it's all-pervading influence dies slowly.
The very fact that we are looking for a clear definition of what 'spiritual' actually means, gives away the reality that we are trying to ascertain its meaning in an intellectual way. Down the blind alley we go again!!!
The mind does not grant us access to God who is 'spirit'.
There is NO way out of this blind alley.
God claims to live in the supernatural realm. Can we have access there?
The good news is that we can have access there....
So, the question is - "what does it mean to be spiritual?". Any person who is religious will immediately misunderstand this question and assume that being 'spiritual' is about how 'good' or 'holy' you are. That is barking up the wrong tree again. To be spiritual means that you function and operate out of a part of your person that can only be accessed by submitting your life fully to Jesus. Religious people do not submit their lives fully to Jesus, neither do those who wish to retain control of their own lives. Those who, as a bottom line, commit to making Jesus absolute Lord, have this area of 'spirit' within them activated. It is this area which is the portal to our relationship with God. It is through this portal that God reveals Himself and through which He communicates.
When Jacob dreamed that he saw angels ascending and descending on a ladder stretching from heaven to earth, he caught a glimpse of the portal. John saw the portal standing open in heaven while he was on the island of Patmos.
What I am saying is that you do not have to have a dream or a vision to understand this. The portal is within you - in your innermost spirit. The way in is by entering the Kingdom, (by faith). The human intellect does not have any conception of faith.
If you squeeze in through the narrow gate - the portal will be opened and you will know God spiritually!!
8:43 PM
Hi Paul, there's a first time for everything, I'm a virgin blogger!
Interesting opinions on emergent church. At CFC we have seen in the past that churches stagnate when they don't embrace the next move of God. The reason they don't embrace it is usually because they feel the rug has been pulled out from beneath them and they can't even imagine that this could be of God. What if this IS the next move of God?
Voyager
9:33 AM
Oh it's all getting very complicated and i am more of a Homer Simpson think-alike than an intellectual....but I think I was saying broadly the same as Stephen was...probably.
In my original post I was trying to comment on the fact that I feel that ultimately how you live out your life is more important than what you think in your head... I called that "joining the story" - though it's probably better described as "participating in the story" ....i.e. living a life that radically confronts the mores and attitudes that we encounter daily in the world in which we live ... attitudes that both explicitly and implicitly allow for the exploitation of the weak, the justification of aggression, the selfish destruction of the environment and the systematic betrayal of love. Living in the world presents a daily challenge to us to eschew selfishness, materialism, gracelessness, anger, misplaced lust and all those other "normative” characteristics of the society into which we are indoctrinated on a daily basis.
Back in the realm of "what we think in our head" we have two concepts that are (I think) easily confused - those of "knowledge" and "belief"
"Agnosticism" refers to uncertainty about what we know ..... not what we believe. And of course we can't empirically know anything about the Virgin Birth, Resurrection etc ....we can only believe. We weren't there. We didn't see. And so we are not using the word "know" in any meaningful way if we talk about "knowing these facts' We must of necessity be agnostic in respect of knowledge .... but we can, and should, believe.
And so we read the scriptures, we listen to our inner sense of what is right, and we come to know what (or who) we believe. And this belief informs our participation in the story. What we believe entices us into this wonderful journey of grace and love that we call "following the Christ"
But sometimes the journey can go sour on us. Sometimes we struggle to maintain belief. Sometimes we, for whatever reason, just cannot bring ourselves to say the creed and it is at that point that we rely on something deeper than head belief, we rely on the grace touched instincts of a participant’s heart; and also at this point we need our brothers and sisters to embrace us and even though they might not understand us we need them not to condemn us.
It is, for me anyway, sometimes hard to maintain orthodox belief in the face of tsunami, or famine, or the suffering of a dear friend, or personal crisis, or abandonment by those we trust....or indeed any one of a million external and internal factors – including those times of mental soul searching that seem to pepper the journey we are on; but surely at these times that which marks us out as a participant, or believer, then is not the acceptability or orthodoxy of what is in our head, but rather our commitment to keep participating in the story.
And that, I think, is the essence of the emerging movement. There is a huge commitment to participate in the story through staying plugged into the grace of a God about whom we may be currently struggling to articulate even to ourselves what we believe in our heads
As Homer might say ..... "Grace, mmmmmmm"
1:08 AM
Surely we keep participating in the story, because of belief and faith. The problem we have is when we don't have the answers, or the answers are difficult, we want to question the answers and then we have the problem of trying to put God in a box. Sometimes it is not neat and tidy, emergent does not mean ignore, emergent does not mean God in a box. We will forever struggle to get into our heads who God is, but if we accept God and Jesus as His son, then yes, we have to accept the other stuff that goes along with it, His word, for instance, to not accept that is to limit God. 'He made the universe but that bit can't be right' is an argument that does not make any sense. Just fresh thought.......
2:57 PM
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
- Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"
© Abbey of Gethsemani
Just thought it might strike a chord ..... for me it does anyway. I think I find now that this form of "intimacy without understanding" has much more meaning than any attempt to apply logic or 'knowledge' to this mysterious journey we call faith.
10:54 AM
Maybe world-renowned theologian Karl Barth might shed some light on this complicated debate...'Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.'
2:35 PM
Again, I like what i understand of what Ian said.
I find Stephen's posting quite interesting. Sounds like there is alot of conflict between, the identity as an intellectual, but the resistance to intellectualising. Sounds also like some sort of Kierkegaardian irrationalism. For those of us who think alot, and process things in our minds...we cannot amputate that ...we cannot rid ourselves...although we may become addicted to less-mindful activities (that could be anything from more physical tasks, to the loss of oneself in a boxset of the latest drama).
The best reading of Christianity that I find, is one that allows for the analytically minded and the Box set watchers (not that these are mutually exclusive traits)
Surely there must be grace and acceptance for those who would rather be told what to believe, and those who would rather express their "god-given" (dare i say it!) curiosity.
I reckon it is the clinging to the unquestioned orthodox creedal version, and the subsequent disappointed gaze (i'm not angry, i'm just disappointed) at the curiosity of the wandering and wondering of the journey-bound soul...that has led to empty churches.
Not that I am entirely against empty churches...though I am sure I will get a rebuttal claiming that churches filled with people, is a sure sign of the presence of God, and revival.
I reckon both expressions need to be embraced, instead of looking down on eachother (of which both parties can plead guilty to)
grace and peace
12:42 AM
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