Good question...if Christianity is true, why does it need so much defending? And why
doesn't God make it clearer?
Draft: Sept
24/2000
Section 1: If Christianity is true, why does it
need so much 'defense' and 'apologetics'?
Section 2: The question of responsibility: is God
supposed to 'prove stuff' to us, or are we supposed to 'seek God'?
Section 3: Interacting with the "possibly
revelatory" data: Lessons from the Text on Encounter, Response, Results
Section 4: Two Pushbacks, on "would more
hurt"? and "why seek a hidden God anyway?"
Section 5: Practice and Problems in "Seeking"
This is Section Five.
...............................................................................................................................................................................
The Practice and Problems of Seeking
(skeleton outline so far)
Important Note: many of the below issues are discussed in a series on "Why
should we believe the Christian explanation?"
- The basic
Process
- Assess
arrogance and compassion
- Assess
motive and desire
- Deliberate
commitment to honesty and openness
- Set
Alertness=ON and Attitude=WARM and Response=SLOW
- "Grope"
experience and/or "Grope" overall picture of central biblical
passage
- Expect incremental
change only
- Expect
re-work constantly
- Expect an
iterative process
- Show
"good faith" and "non-subvert" to others
- Exercise
"cordial skepticism" and wide-cast listening techniques
- Expect the
frustrations of intersubjectivity , the Linguistic Bubble, and precision
issues
- The Personal
relationship model
- Problem:
Helpful friends versus "blind guides"--the problem of telling
the difference
- Problem:
Deliberate deception by others
- Problem:
Over-imagination (faces in clouds versus Mona Lisa in bitmaps)
- Problem:
Conscience and Hypocrisy
- Problem:
Self-projection--Invisible Friend versus Imaginary friend?
- Problem:
Motives, "testing God", and hypothesis verification
- Problem: When
is there no need to explain or understand?
- Problem:
Integrity and Assumptions of Possibility
- Problem:
Pressures
- peers,
- sub-culture,
- authorities,
- tradition,
- background,
- education,
- assumptions,
- personality
type,
- tolerance
for ambiguity,
- need for
control,
- significance
requirements
- Problem:
Discontinuities in the data--patience, subversion, slander, priorities
- Problem:
Community interactions--argument, persuasion, explication, vocabulary
- Problem:
starting points--Jesus, texts, history, mystical, theoretical, etc.
- Problem:
Changing your soil-type! (Parable of the Sower)
- Problem: Corrigibility
and its relationship to personal loyalty, intimacy, and relationships
- "my
sheep know my voice"
- "I
already have a husband--I'm not being closed-minded to not consider
divorcing him and trying another!"
- "no,
it's not theoretically possible that
my mother doesn't exist"
- Problem:
False seeking--Hos 7.14 and Jer 3.10
- Problem:
Constantly checking character--arrogance and compassion
>
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