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Tag: apologetics

End of the Story: Most of the truths we live by are things we cannot prove. Beauty is just one of them. (Faith for Reasons)

The Creation of Adam
The Creation of Adam (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We live in a moment in history in which truth is only found in this fairly new thing we reinvented called a ‘fact.’    “This is a table,” we say.  It is a fact that the thing I just set my cup on is a “table.”   Ta-da!  End of story…    It is an idea that seems pretty hard to argue with until all of a sudden I take that same table  apart and plan to build a flower bed out of it.   Fairly quickly it becomes lumber.  So it is now not a table after all.   Er… right?  That is the case until I decide without making any changes to the pile, to burn it in a fire.  Without moving an inch, by mere planning in my head,  it becomes fuel.  This pile of wood is fuel for my fire, end of story.   …Or perhpas this is where the importance of ‘story’ just begins. 

Faith for Reasons.

Is a Train Trip to Dallas Considered a Religious Experience? Faith for Reasons…

Austin Amtrack station (Texas, USA) Français :...
Austin Amtrack station (Texas, USA) Français : La gare Amtrak d'Austin (Texas, États-Unis) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am on a train, the whistle just blew the wheels have begun to turn.  I am watching the backside of downtown Austin and it feels very much like I am on a ride at Disneyland or on  a tour of a movie studio where I,  for one second, get to peek around a corner and see how the magic happens.  Trains, I am guessing, are quite heavy and the wheels, as they say, have been put in motion.  Like it or not, I am going somewhere.

Faith for Reasons.

How my relationship with Jesus is, and is not, personal.

When I was young I would go to camp or a youth service where I was told that what I needed was a personal relationship with Jesus.  It made a kind of sense as a lot of things do for children because I was still relying on other people to teach me how to make sense of things. So I agreed, with no regrets.

Buddy Christ
Buddy Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

However, I happen to be the kind of person, and have been since childhood, to throw myself headlong into the task at hand whatever it may be.   So I was bound and determined to have the most personal relationship with Jesus a person could have. This is a dangerous prayer.  The trouble began when I took it so seriously it started to take my life in some surprising if not shocking directions that none of my youth pastors had anticipated.

Faith for Reasons.

Reasons for my Faith. …from someone who has nothing to prove

 

J. Douglas Harrison. The Patient

In the next few weeks  I will occasionally be posting some reflections on what it can mean to have faith in a time when the Christian faith may seem, at least to many people, quite unreasonable.

I won’t try to provide irrefutable evidence in favor of the Christian faith.  I will not be presenting argumentative ‘facts’ or try to show that Christianity is obviously intellectually superior to everything else as others may  have tried to do.  I have nothing here to prove.   I have nothing here to buy or sell.  Instead, I believe there are different genres by which we come to see what moves people to live as they do.

Faith for Reasons.