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From: aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: response to anti-religious flame - (nf)
Message-ID: <609@pucc-h>
Date: Thu, 22-Mar-84 11:43:49 EST
Article-I.D.: pucc-h.609
Posted: Thu Mar 22 11:43:49 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Mar-84 21:27:37 EST
References: <6291@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Organization: Purdue University Computing Center
Lines: 33

Reply to James Jones (uokvax!emjej):

>> = Sargent
>  = Jones

>> The reason I continue to believe in God is that there is evidence that He
>> does exist.  He has changed me vastly.  In the years I have been a
>> Christian, I have been enabled (via prayer, the ultimate psychotherapy,
>> and via the ministry of other people) to become much more fully human than
>> I was, say, 10 years ago.

> You mean that you interpret the changes you have experienced over the past
> 10 years as being caused by God. There's no way that you and I could agree
> on what has happened inside your head, or its cause.

1. There is evidence that a relationship with God (or, as you would phrase it,
   what I perceive as such a relationship) changes people for the better if
   the person will allow it to.  Note that this does involve giving and
   committing oneself to God as completely as He gave Himself to us in Christ
   and has committed Himself to love us unchangingly, never to leave us or
   forsake us.  Sure we can't quite match that "never", but the point is made:
   commitment to the person of Christ (not just to some set of doctrines
   called Christianity, but to the living Christ) will usually be followed by
   changes in a person--often quite dramatic ones.
2. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it.  If you've never tried such a
   commitment, such a relationship, you can't know what it's like.  (As an
   analogy, I suppose the same can be said about marriage--I don't know what
   it's like, never having married.)

-- 
-- Jeff Sargent
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