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From: aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Sargent on reality vs. illusion, etc.
Message-ID: <1277@pucc-h>
Date: Fri, 28-Sep-84 21:04:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: pucc-h.1277
Posted: Fri Sep 28 21:04:04 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Sep-84 01:04:20 EDT
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Organization: Tucumcari Divinity School
Lines: 130

From John T. Nelson (trwrba!jnelson):

> All you have are very old testaments of what people say happened; not
> tangible evidence that we can see and touch and analyze.

There is of course the empty tomb near Jerusalem.

But wait a minute!  What are we doing?  Jesus said (roughly), "All people will
know that you are My disciples by this sign: if you have love for one another."
He never asked us to indulge in arguments and spend a lot of time trying to
prove the existence of God.  He (and His early disciples) asked us to love,
even love our enemies (!).  I confess that I have very much fallen down on
the job; I'm not sure how to love some of my -- well, if not enemies, at least
opponents -- in this newsgroup, since all but one of them are not at Purdue.
But at least I'll try to keep out the dislike and contempt that have pervaded
so many of my articles.

> By appealing to a higher plane of reason
> you simply discard physical evidence, claiming it to be invalid
> somehow in the face of more subjective reasoning.  This is a mistake,
> I think.  Physical reality is here to teach us, not to deceive us.
> It is a cruel god indeed, that creates a universe, only to discard
> all it has to say because he claims that the clues are invalid.

No one has yet backed up the claim that physical evidence is the BEST or the
only valid convincer.  Why this urge to view human beings -- those wonderful,
ambiguous, irreproducible [in the laboratory sense, obviously] creatures --
as no more than lab specimens?

And as to physical reality, God does not at all claim the clues He left lying
around to be invalid.  I don't remember the passage exactly, but somewhere
around Romans 1:18 there are some words mentioning that God's invisible
qualities are obvious to everyone, being inferrable from the world He has made
(very rough paraphrase).

There is no physical evidence that God does not exist.

> The changes in the lives of people who lived 2000 some years ago cannot
> be seen objectively, since they are long dead... and the cause of the
> change is not something we can observe first hand.

Actually, I was referring to the changes in lives of people who are alive
today.  For instance, many people have been ruining their lives with drugs,
then turned to Christ and been immediately (or at least quickly) freed from
their drug habits.  My case is not quite so dramatic, but if you think I'm
intolerable now, you should have known me 10 years ago!  God's love has
enabled (is enabling) me to be gradually freed of all that prevents me from
loving Him and loving those around me.

> Besides, many people have
> experienced changes in their lives without some intervention by God.

This is true.  On the other hand, again, many have experienced changes in
their lives *with* intervention by God -- though He doesn't force His aid
on anyone.

> I thought Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden because of their
> search for the knowledge of good and evil.  If this is the root of man's
> sinfulness and fallen state, then surely the search for knowledge is not
> a good thing....

Knowledge of good and evil is not the same as knowledge of facts about
the world.  In fact, God said before the Fall, "Be fruitful and multiply,
and fill the earth, and subdue it."  This is probably the only command of
God that humans have kept perfectly; but that's not the point.  Note that
last phrase, "subdue it"; this would, to me, be a mandate for the scientific
enterprise -- i.e. gain mastery of the earth.

> If God meant us to seek knowledge then he must also recognize the
> fact that his creations will want to know more about him, and question
> his nature.  The learning process does not mean just accepting what
> you see at face value, but QUESTIONING its nature.  This is how the
> acquisition of knowledge works.  It is neither rebellious nor sinful to
> question, or hypothesize about, the nature of God and the universe.

Nothing wrong with questioning.  "Keep seeking, and you shall find; keep
asking, and you shall receive; keep knocking, and the door will be opened
to you."  Of course God would like His creations to know more about Him.
Some are so constructed as to naturally have simple, strong, readily
functioning faith; this actually is probably the best way to God's blessings
-- "whoever will not approach the Kingdom like a little child will never
enter into it."  Of course even such people will have questions, particularly
if reverses come in their lives.  Others of us are so made as to question and
fight everything God tries to do; I for one usually fight Him until I'm tired
or until I finally get at least a first glimmer of the greater freedom and joy
I can move into when I stop; even though God has been good to me before when I
have said "Your will be done", I still find it hard to yield to Him, partly
because some of that good has come via tremendous pain and there's no guarantee
this won't happen again, partly because it's always difficult to surrender
myself (one reason for some of my problems chronicled in net.singles).

I can give a qualified "yes" to your last sentence.  If one is genuinely
questioning -- open to whatever the right answer turns out to be -- then it
is certainly neither rebellious nor sinful to have questions about God.
However, if one's questions are actually based, not on curiosity or love, but
on some less creditable motive -- on some desire to hang onto yourself rather
than give yourself to God so He can give your real self back to you -- I would
count that rebellious, and I would not be surprised if you got no answer.
Example:  In John chapter 21, Jesus, Peter, John, and others are on the shore
of the Sea of Galilee.  Peter asks Jesus, "What about John?"  Jesus replies,
"If I want him to live until I come again, what's that to you?  You follow Me."
I suspect Peter may have been perhaps a little jealous of John, "the disciple
whom Jesus loved" -- Peter, until the day of Pentecost one of the greatest
weathervanes in the Bible, always moved by shifting impulses; Peter, who one
minute said "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (to which Jesus
replied "Blessed are you, because flesh and blood have not revealed this to
you, but my Father in heaven" -- a one-line comment on physical evidence), and
shortly thereafter, when Jesus predicted His crucifixion, took Him aside and
said "May this never be!" (to which Jesus replied in that famous bizarre 
phrase, "Get thee behind me, Satan!"); Peter, who at the last supper said he
was ready not only to follow Jesus but to die with Him, and who a few hours
later denied that he even knew Him; Peter, so ashamed after his denial that
Jesus felt He had to tell the women who saw Him first after the resurrection,
"Go tell the disciples *and Peter* to meet me" -- i.e. Jesus wanted to
underscore the fact that He still loved Peter; Peter, still sufficiently
unsure of himself that he wonders if some other disciple is going to get ahead
of him -- but also Peter, the man who preached in the power of the Holy Spirit
and saw thousands of people come to know Christ after one sermon, and who
confidently said to a beggar lame from birth, "I have neither silver nor gold,
but I give you what I have:  In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up
and walk", took the man's hand, and saw him stand, walk, and leap.

Pardon this rambling detour, but I thought it would be nice to point out how
God can take even the flakiest person and, with His unflagging love and power,
turn him or her into a vastly different, much stronger and better person.

-- 
-- Jeff Sargent
{decvax|harpo|ihnp4|inuxc|seismo|ucbvax}!pur-ee!pucc-h:aeq
No one knows the day or the hour....