Dear Matt:
This letter lays out my stance on the questions you submitted to me via instant message on 31 December 2006.
Let me begin here by writing that there is no higher aspiration than to know God—clearly, in the search for Truth, every person must deal, at some point, with the notion of a separate and superior intelligence. Even an agnostic, or atheist, works according to his stance on the fundamental question of the origin and purpose of consciousness. In posing these questions, the mind and heart should work in tandem, neither trumping the other. Who could walk so far with one leg?
Before he can begin the journey, a person walking on both legs should address four separate quandaries: 1) does such an entity exist; 2) if so, by what approach may communication be had; 3) if one experiences God, how can one determine that such communication is not the product of wishful thinking, mental illness, or social pressure, and, finally: 4) how can one reconcile a real experience with the Divine with what one otherwise believes, to a high degree of probability, to be true?
Ultimately, if one answers these questions in the affirmative, one must finally decide how to approach life from within that framework. That decision requires evaluation, choice, sincerity, and commitment. All those things are easy to say and write; none of them are easy to employ.
Does God Exist?
It is the opinion of many in the modern context that the God of the three major faiths, not to speak of the gods of the minor faiths, is an antiquated notion belonging to pre-scientific, i.e., uncivilized, societies. The most prominent gifted thinkers of the last century began from that premise—Nietzsche, Marx and Freud were adamant, and in many ways persuasive.
They were persuasive in large part because the phenomena they treated gave new names to old maladies where religious people—Jews and Christians alike—assumed that real reflection on their own ways of thinking were safe from engagement with the real world, and that somehow by being untestable, they were immune from critique.
In doing so, the long dispute between faith and reason culminated in a loss for faith; science has developed as an alternative worldview, and the higher understandings of the truths it can illuminate are left untended, and they float without context. As a rule, people of faith react to science, and do not engage it. For various reasons, they won’t, or can’t. But:
Let me be clear—one cannot separate Truth from truth.
So, were Freud, Marx and Nietzsche wrong? Is God a mass delusion, a means of social control, or a dead philosophical trope? Yes and no. The god those men put to rest never existed, as far as I can tell, and was quite rightly put to bed. But, aside from that, does the Universe hold any Being or Beings, conscious and intelligent, greater than what carbon-based life it has produced?
We cannot seek confirmation from any religious text. The Bible, the Koran, the Baghavad Gita are all explicit about creation and God, but they have a dog in the fight, don’t they? Unless we are willing to concede that Genesis—the recorded creation story of a wandering band of Canaanites 6000 years ago—is accurate, we must look outside the writings of those who already want us to believe their brands for evidence.
For me, evidence of God is as near as my own consciousness. I am contemplative by nature, and am, more than some, attuned to irrational sensations. These often translate, mentally, into such explanations as, “I doubt doubt.” But I have been trained, and I like the method, to think in a rigorous way; “doubting doubt” won’t cover it. So I have three other means of knowing that there is something beyond my ability to perceive greater than myself. ,
First, I use nothing more than the scientific method, and some of the things I taught you in Composition I. What, exactly, is the probability of life developing in the Universe, and more importantly, what is the probability of life with the ability to contemplate itself developing in the Universe? Quite low, I’d say. In fact, it’s 1 in 10282. So there’s something out there, I’m willing to bet. But that doesn’t meant it’s “God,” as we traditionally, think. Not yet, anyhow. And this is not to say I am a creationist. Far from it. It means only that we are probably not alone, and probably not the smartest kids on the block.
Second, there’s the old Pascal’s wager—one loses nothing by choosing to believe in God. If God exists, then He should be attended and worshipped. If he does not, one gains by contemplating the abstract. Taken alone, Pascal’s wager is hardly an enthusiastic affirmation. But it allows me, in a nice existential way, to choose belief instead of letting it be a default.
Finally, I have had many “mystical” or charismatic experiences in my life; i.e., personal, local, perceived phenomena that defy conventional explanations. Most of them have been connected, in one way or another with religious devotion. Some of the experiences are doubtful—either drugs or suggestion were involved, and I can’t ascribe them wholly to any outside presence; however, there are some which I cannot deny. Two of them bear description to you.
First, when I was in high school, a particularly holy woman, the estranged wife of a local mobster, in fact, lived with my family. One evening, she anointed me with oil and prayed over me in tongues. I had no reference for any of this—a good Southern Baptist would have had her committed. As she did this, I lost all awareness of space-time and, in short order, I came into a presence, or a state of awareness, I have learned to call the Holy Spirit.
This experience had both physiological and psychological effects. My body stopped responding to commands. My hair stood on end and my flesh crawled with goose-pimples. I do not remember breathing, though I must have been. I felt as though some part of my brain had opened, like an eye waking from sleep. My chest burned. Meanwhile, my conscious mind—Freud’s ego—went silent and I became very aware of a Big Silence, an endlessness, and a connectedness.
When I returned to normal sense, I was not the same. I also understood, for the first time, what it meant to be born again. I had emerged from darkness, and ignorance, into a more illuminated existence. Again—I knew nothing more than I had before, except I was disallowed the luxury of denying that something greater than myself existed, that it defied category, and that it had been invoked by Christian means.
Some years on, when I had left college after my Freshman year to “find myself,”—by which I meant sitting on the beach in Long Beach, California, reading great books, doing great drugs, and bedding whatever delicious burgers I could—I found myself totally sober, quite with the purpose of bedding a delicious burger, at a very weird revival service, to which one said burger had invited me as a precondition of me fiddling with her bra strap.
The service was held in what had once been a combination movie-theater. An evangelist named Neva Lema presided over the service. During the service, she claimed to have a “word of knowledge” about me and asked me to come to the front. When I did, she laid her hands on me and, quite to my chagrin, explained my situation to the assembly. Then I went out.
The experience was much the same as before, except this time it lasted much longer. Also, I had a sensation of flying this time, and of conversing with the presence in a language I cannot now replicate. I can best describe this as an internal explosion. When I came to, I could not speak for hours.
The events following belong in another letter. Suffice it to say that I soon discovered that the people with whom I surrounded myself that night believed such experiences were not proof of God’s existence, or of humanity’s capacity for knowing God, but of the rightness of kooky theology.
Now, none of these things prove anything beyond my subjective experience. They are not “objective” proof of God. But you know what? Every experience I have is ultimately subjective. All phenomena, after all, are subjective. And if there is no God, I don’t care. I am mentally ill then, but in a very beneficial way. So be it.
It so happens that I, as a person, cannot be fully realized without this aspect of my being actualized. In short, I frankly don’t care if I can’t prove God’s existence to you, or anyone else. I can only report what I have experienced, and that has been tremendous.
Taken together, these reasons convince me that God exists.
By What Approach?
Why would I call myself a Christian, especially when I have seen sincere religious devotion in other faiths, met holy people of other faiths, and seen tangible aspects of the Divine in other faiths’ observances?
Moreover, why, once I choose to call myself a Christian, would I have reticence about drilling down to more specific definitions and vocabularies, especially when speaking to my fellow Christians?
In the first case, there are a few reasons. First, I am persuaded by the life, purported words and Resurrection of Jesus. Second, I am a white, Scots protestant male by tradition, and Christianity is my traditional faith, and the framework within which I am most comfortable discussing these matters. Third, Jesus’ sincere followers’ effect on world history suggest to me that there is something both unique and authentic about Christianity, even now worth saving and espousing.
In the second case, my quarrel is not with Christ, it is with Christians. In America, popular Christian theology is nearly indistinguishable from white, Middle Class culture—especially of the Southern variety—and it dominates, in a negative way, most of the issues that affect any community.
From the consumption of alcohol, to sexual matters, to politics, to race relations, to the consumption of literature and the viewing of movies, the modern “Christian” ethos often exists in reflexive, silly opposition to rational discussion of many matters, including faith itself, and in opposition to the arts and public policy. Theirs is not a world I want to occupy, and their values, in large part, are ones I do not share.
Let’s discuss these cases in turn.
The words attributed to Jesus, if not His, are worthy of Him. I asked you to review the Sermon on the Mount tonight. The Gospels, especially the fiery madness of John’s Gospel, move me in a way that I cannot explain without resort to gesture and guttural noises. They are quite literally a superlative blueprint for living one’s life, and for living one’s life in relationship to others.
In them, I find admonitions to simplicity, poverty, service, holiness and humility. These are good things, overall. I also find hints at my own potential as a follower of Jesus. As a writer, and a person who deals with words as a matter of compulsion and near-obsession, nothing speaks to me more than the first verse of John’s Gospel.
Also, in the Resurrection, we find the ultimate lesson. Through submission and acceptance of one’s purpose, we become something more than we are. Literally, we become more than human. We become something new, something else. This has been important to me, and again, is a concept which exists beyond the power to describe. Those who know, know it cannot be told. It must be felt, and even then may not be fully understood. I do, in fact, hold as a personal belief that Jesus’ death and Resurrection was necessary for such change to be possible, at least for me.
I am, however, very aware that I see things in this way because of who I am, where I live, how I was raised, how I was educated, and who my family are. And I’m okay with that, to be honest. Were I a Hindu priest, living in Bombay, I would likely see it very differently. I categorically refuse to judge anyone in that position, nor do I think it wise or toward to bully them. I don’t presume that my understanding of such matters should supplant theirs, or is superior. It is God’s business and the Hindu priest’s business.
The Great Commission was long ago fulfilled, perhaps at sword-point. In any case, there are few places on the planet where people do not know of Jesus, or of standard Christian arguments. Even in Saudi Arabia, the laws against Christianity presuppose knowledge of it; in most cases, proselytizing assumes rudely that the Christians in various locales are not, in fact Christians (the Orthodox, Johannites, etc.). It’s presumptuous and condescending.
Even in America, the idea of active proselytization has as much to do with spreading a particular kind of culture as it does spreading the Gospel. I hold the present is a matter of conscience between we who would dwell on such matters, and God Himself. The information is out there, and I prefer to show commitments by living them instead of browbeating people with what I think is right vis a vis Reality. I am not always successful, but I try.
That said, I think simple Christianity works. Jesus told us to love God with all our hearts, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. This, he said, was the fulfillment of The Law; also, he warned against meddling with the world, when the real work as to be done on oneself. These teachings direct us to a very simple, narrow walk. Matt, I believe that, and try my best, as a weak person, to walk that walk. I am not always successful, but I try.
I quarrel with fellow Christians, especially the white American ones, because I do not like the way our faith has developed over the past century or so. The mainline denominations are dying, and which churches aren’t have become more and more aligned with the nondenominational movement (NDM). The NDM is essentially—I know this because I am very familiar with both—southern Pentecostalism recycled into a mainstream-friendly format. The Rick Warrens of the world, as well as the “hip” mainline denominations (and middle-American Methodism, in some ways comports with this) have essentially adopted this tack, with the exception of requiring the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a requirement of Salvation.
The pitch goes like this: everyone, even Christians in denominations like Catholicism and Orthodoxy, needs a “relationship” with Jesus. Or God. Or both. Or they’re the same. Or they aren’t. Sometimes the two get confused, because the traditional teaching of the Trinity has been abandoned.
And with good reason, as it’s essentially circular, nonsensical and maddening. It’s also a Catholic relic, and we’re uncomfortable with it. But what matters is “relationship.” This is an amorphous concept that keeps people, often beneficially, focused on Jesus, and the hope of communion with God. It also stresses, in a good way, the need for meditation and prayer, as that is, truly the surest way of hearing God. All fine.
But what is “relationship?” How does one get it? Primarily by adopting fundamentalism or evangelicalism. By those terms I mean a set of beliefs which stress the following as the primary premises (quite in opposition to the simple and exclusive message of Jesus Himself, which I mention above):
· The inerrancy of the Bible,
· The virgin birth of Christ,
· The doctrine of substitutionary atonement,
· The bodily resurrection of Jesus,
· The imminent return of Jesus Christ.
These propositions, none of which are shocking or scripturally debased, were not always the most important aspects of Christian teaching. In fact, one of them has led to a crisis which the faith, as we know it, may not survive.
The idea that the Bible is inerrant is ludicrous. It is not. It is in great shape to be as old as it is, but it is not without editors. Inspired? No problem. But inerrant means something else entirely. It means that the Bible is the ultimate authority on all matters, public and private, religious and secular, and leads us to literalism and all the stupidity that literalism asks us to swallow—creationism, thousand year-old men, suns revolving around earths, etc.
In fact, most of modern American Protestantism is guilty of Bibliolatry, which is the practice of confusing the text with what’s in it. Christianity existed before the Bible. The Catholic Church assembled the Bible, picking and choosing among texts to include. It is not meant to be read as a whole, or chronologically, like an encyclopedia of Existence. When one cites the Psalmist, Jesus and St. Paul in one argument, however cohesive, one is spanning millennia, region and history. Often, one is applying scripture out of its context, to now, without the benefit of understanding the original context.
Which is why the Baptists supported slavery. And why we persecute gays now. And why we don’t persecute divorcees. And why we don’t sell our things and give the proceeds to the poor, ad nauseum. We cherry pick, without benefit of understanding the book. But no matter—for many of us, the word has become the Word, and they are the same.
Notice the “virgin” birth—why is that important? I don’t know. I haven’t a clue. It doesn’t matter to me at all. The “substitutionary atonement,” business means that anyone who doesn’t believe as fundamentalists/evangelicals do is hell-bound; i.e., Jesus died for everyone, and unless they die professing Christians, they are doomed. As I mentioned before, I’m not willing to speak for God in that respect, and I’m surprised anyone is.
The “bodily” in Resurrection is meant to exclude anyone who might be comfortable with the concept of the Resurrection as metaphor, and many Christians, as well as Christian theologians, are. To me, again, it has never mattered. Jesus’ bones, if lying beneath the streets of Jerusalem, are no more Jesus than my bones are me. But I get the point, clearly: believe exactly as we do, or excuse yourself.
Finally, the “imminence” of Jesus’ return is another jab at liberal Christians, if any still exist—certainly, they did in the early 1900’s, when this theology took hold. Let’s be honest about this: many critical readers of Revelation (including Christian ones outside the fundamentalist/evangelical circles) believe that its events happened in the first century. They don’t tell their congregations this, nor do they emphasize it beyond the seminaries, but it’s there.
This requires a reevaluation of Jesus’ return, and what it might mean, if anything. That’s beyond the scope of this letter, but you should be aware that the reading I describe is persuasive; also, for me, like Mary the Mother of God’s sexual habits or proclivities, have never mattered much. It has no effect whatsoever on the life, character or teachings of Jesus.
But these things do matter to some, if not most, modern Christians. So I choose most often not to engage my brethren on these matters. Also, it means that I hold, or rather do not hold, suppositions that allow me from to be in “relationship” in the way that many Christians mean it. I also find the question to be a little unnerving.
It’s the religious equivalent of “…you getting any lately?” I’m unlikely to answer politely to that question, either. Both are a little personal, and frankly a little rude—if not carefully phrased. Essentially, to ask about “relationship,” means, “tell me about your beliefs, so I can judge them against my own, and correct you if I think you’re wrong.” You might not mean it that way, Matt, but many do.
“Relationship,” further, deals with the idea that Jesus is my buddy. And that Jesus and God are the same. I do not believe either statement to be accurate. In fact, I’m not even sure they’re scriptural, to the extent I require anything to be for my own edification.
The proper attitudes for me to have toward Jesus are reverence, supplication, seeking, reflection and emulation. As a Christian, Jesus is the means by which I am permitted access to God, for whom I hold adoration, fear, and awe. Yet it is by the Holy Spirit, with whom modern Christians ought to consider themselves in direct “relationship” that I find my faith strengthened, and my decisions guided, and my paths led.
Many modern American Christians would quibble with my dividing the Godhead thus, but that is mostly because, whether they know it or not, they are really “Jesus only” Christians—a Pentecostal theological staple—and make no distinction between the three traditional Persons of the Deity. It’s not really “all the same.”
Instead of a folksy, casual relationship with my pal Jesus, who is and isn’t God, and is and isn’t here, but is really here because he’s the Holy Spirit but isn’t, I choose to follow what I understand to be the essentials of Christianity.
Sometimes I pray with words. Sometimes I meditate without them, and focus on concepts like God Himself, the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ suffering, or something profound He taught, or on something else entirely. I read everything I’m led to, whether a “website,” or something written by “some man” or the scriptures themselves, or poetry, or Iisten to edifying music, or the scriptures of another religion, or whatever. I engage fellow Christians when I am sure they are not unreasonable. I test my faith. I engage people of other faiths—not to convert them, but to listen.
“Relationship” also brings under the doctrinal and theological frameworks many aspects of life upon which the Gospels (as opposed to priggish St. Paul, or the myriad, and very politically concerned, authors of the Old Testament) are silent. We are asked, by way of the fundamentalist/evangelical premises which create the circumstances of “personal relationship,” to endow basic cultural or essentially biological functions with religious import. In doing this, we make Jesus into our AA sponsor, or our porn cop, or our political and business advisor. He is none of those things.
If we can consider the behavior attributed to Jesus by rumors He addressed and tacitly confirmed, we’re faced with the realization that He was famous for having a good time. He drank. Alcohol. He ate well. He kept bad company. We have no information whatsoever on Jesus’ sexual habits, if any. We do know that he did not seem to approve of illicit behavior, but he also did not judge divorcees or prostitutes too harshly. Yet we judge each other harshly, and hold one another “accountable,” for less. That’s puritanical, uptight culture, Matt. Not Christianity. And I want no freaking part of it.
I try to love God with all my heart, and to love my neighbor as myself. I am cognizant that the Kingdom is within—before I try to do anything outward, I’m busy getting my own, internal, house in order. Most of all, I seek to replicate those tangible moments of touching the Divine, and I listen for the Holy Spirit to lead. I try this, and I often fail. But I continue, hopeful that the Spirit provides strength.
I also try to act as I am led, which means that I try to enliven my faith with works, as I’m led, whether or not someone thinks they’re sufficiently “for Him,” whatever essentially meaningless bullshit like that means. The faith is cluttered with such phrases, which require, imply and import exclusive arguments against ancient heresies.
Your comment tonight about faith and works, for instance, is a reflexive stab at Catholicism. Did you know that? We’re taught that the two are separate, when Jesus’ brother, St. James, taught otherwise, (despite his disagreements with St. Paul) because of Martin Luther’s argument, 400 years ago, with Pope Leo. We should be beyond it, but we’re not. We’re just not, and we may never get there.
Is Marlowe Crazy?
One of the problems with Modern American Christianity, even for a heretic like myself, is the problem of private revelation. Because we are, in most cases, either, reliant on “relationship,” where our pal Jesus and the scriptures we make synonymous with Him give us advice on everything from diet to dating, or we rely on that “still, small voice,” to guide us, we find ourselves in the crazy place of listening to Beings who aren’t objectively present to direct our behavior.
The best way to know if we’re nuts is to look at the effects of what we’re led to do. While nothing is disallowed to a Christian, certain behaviors do make the two-legged walk we’re on a little harder, and should be avoided. I know the path I’m on, and the things the Spirit guides me to, have been expedient and beneficial. They have also made me more effective in my various roles and services to my community—as a teacher, a lawyer, and a writer. I am, generally, as much as an person can be, at peace.
It is by listening to the voices of people—unfortunately, most of them Christians in “relationship”—that I’ve made mistakes. I don’t listen to those folks anymore, unless I’m led to. I’m usually not. Ask yourself this: by what fruits do you know your brethren?
Are they following all the rules, saying all the right things, and accountable? Are they in “relationship?” and do they still seem to have all the marks of Original Sin—venality, greed, game-playing? Do they sell Jesus as if he were Amway, building their heavenly down-line? Do they fixate on the End Times with one breath and talk a prosperity gospel with the next? Do they fasten to enemies, instead of making peace?
Or do they go quietly amid the haste and suggest the question of Jesus by reflecting faith, hope, joy and love? Do they bring news? Good reports? A change in themselves and the world, for the better?
Fruits, my boy. Fruits.
Can a person be a Christian and an Intellectual?
According to the terms lain out by modern evangelicals and fundamentalists, the answer is, emphatically, no. I discuss this at length in the essay on scriptural inerrancy to which I directed you earlier in this letter. Please read it, as I am incorporating it her by reference.
Bibliolatry—that insistence that the Bible is as perfect as the God it describes—requires a modern American Christian to subvert reason and knowledge in order to hold the point.
This insistence leads people who don’t believe that to seek other faiths that permit rational inquiry, or other, non-traditional Christian expressions, and hardens the stance—increasingly untenable—among those who hold to biblical inerrancy.
The scientific method is not perfect. In fact, that’s its genius. It requires testing and confirmation and a continuously evolving understanding of objective reality, to the extent such a thing exists. It is not perfect, but it is superior to a literal, biblical worldview. I’m sorry if that offends, but I can’t put it otherwise. Creationism, etc., is not an equal alternative to science. Science may not be right—by its very nature it certainly is not completely right–but that doesn’t mean that the words attributed to Moses are, or present a better way of understanding the world around us.
Thankfully, Jesus did not include a belief in Genesis as a prerequisite to following Him, no matter what our modern pastors allege. But the hostility toward intellectualism present in modern churches, and among modern Christians, drives away many bright people who are looking for a vocabulary to describe what’s in their souls. It also makes us look like idiots.
As Christians, we can’t win this argument. In fact, we’ve lost it, but we won’t admit it. We’re like the Black Knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, holding to a wrong course despite the obvious truths in front of us. What’s worse is that it’s an argument we never had to have, but for poor reasoning, bad judgment and stubbornness.
I refuse to believe that the God to whom many of us attribute the design of our brains would ask us to check that brain at the chapel door, even to the benefit of the Heart, which is surely His.
Often we are, as often we do, demanding that other people use our preferred vocabulary to describe phenomena. We speak with a first-century vocabulary—sometimes describing something as, for instance, demonic possession—when science would call it paranoid schizophrenia. Does it matter when the point is that the Holy Spirit can heal it? No. But that’s where we are.
Which brings me to the final point about intellectualism and Christianity. Great hay is made by evangelicals and fundamentalists about discarding “ritual”, and downing “religion” and emphasizing a “personal relationship,” and deliberately deemphasizing “theology,” and “man’s opinions.”
Seems to me that this is error.
The intent of such statements seems to me to be to hold a brand of faith—modern American Protestant Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism—above the history, culture and greater context that informs it, and ultimately, when fully examined, exposes it in many ways as deeply flawed; conversely, it lets the holders of such notions think they’re onto something new, when, in fact, they are putting old wine in new skins.
Tonight, you asked me about my “relationship.” I asked you to define your terms. You responded by diminishing my thoughts—which are the result of years of devotion, meditation, prayer and study, as mere “theology.” You then, as though such things are meaningless, suggested I have erroneously sent you to “websites,” and “books,” which I suppose you meant to imply should somehow to be excluded to the benefit of Obadiah.
One cannot make one’s theology more than a theology by making snide remarks about “theology.” A theology is a statement of cohesive meaning based upon scriptural interpretation and amalgamated traditions, but in the way you’ve used it, you seem to mean “silly eggheads thinking about God instead of feeling him.”
On that, I call bullshit. Our current fascinations with making Jesus into one of the guys, and portraying Yahweh’s insistent demands for blood, and ultimately, Blood, in return for sin as a “love story,” do not change that.
Christianity is difficult. It is a religion. It has theologies. Jesus instituted a ritual. Christianity has a rich history of thinkers and poets and writers and saints who wrestled with questions of faith and reason and gave us a record of their contentions.
Christianity did not begin in 4004 BC and end in 90 AD. Lutheranism, or Methodism, or Catholicism, or Seventh Day Adventism, are not mere labels to be worn or discarded at leisure. Moreover, NDM, and its infectious notions, is among them, not above them.
Those labels mean something, even though that something is often and likely wrong. They indicate, in shorthand, competing claims to truth. Our easy, modern, softball-playing how’s-your-day Jesus is only one of the competing claims. We pretend otherwise at our own peril. And we judge others accordingly at the peril of our likewise being judged.
My hope for you, dear Matt, and for the mind in your head that I admire, is that you don’t forever think information that brings the heart and mind, or, both legs, to belabor my metaphor, into alignment? I hope, to the extent you do—and I do not know you well enough to judge—that you can stop putting the components of your world in mutually exclusive boxes. By doing such things we only put off the day when we must reconcile them.
The world and faith are not severable. How long can we go on, as a faith, professing things we know not to be accurate, or espousing leaders with devilish intentions and scripture on their lips, or pretending it is a virtue, or somehow an exercise in holiness, to avoid thoughtful consideration of real issues with faith, and yes, our theologies, by applying dismissive labels to the exercise?
I would hope you not fall into the trap of sorting things as “His” or “of God,” and “of Man” or “not His,” without carefully examining, and knowing, why you do so. This is one of the reasons I encouraged you to undertake a secular course of study—you don’t know what you don’t know, and I hate to see movement, unless you’re absolutely sure you’re led otherwise, toward a goal simply because you think you need to go to college “for Jesus.”
Did you ever think Jesus might want you to study economics and work in the World Bank?
I am a Christian, and an intellectual. They need not be mutually exclusive. I do not choose to engage my faith in a vacuum. I will not pretend Christianity has no history, or that what history it has is without scars, or that any denominational or creedal understandings currently fashionable are any more, or less, valuable than what has come before.
I will not pretend that the current trends in modern American Protestant evangelical or fundamentalist Christianity toward social conservatism, political deal-making, anti-intellectualism and irrationality are admirable things, or are healthy things, or are in any way to be associated with Jesus, God, or the Holy Spirit. And I won’t pretend that you can separate the trends from the message—because you can’t; they have common roots.
I seek Truth, and I will go where that search takes me. Someone promised it would lead to freedom. And I’m convinced—no, I’m led to think—it does.
Marlowe
12/31/06 2:13:25 PM
Confessions of an IWU College Student 