Re: 'The Missing Day...'

donr@iclnet93.iclnet.org
Thu, 7 Mar 1996 09:34:26 -0800 (PST)

As a Christian and a teacher of the social sciences, I have been very
interested in the continuing dialogue about urban legends on this listserv;
a dialogue that I believe started in January (or did it start earlier?). I am
still puzzled as to why Christians tend to create, elaborate, and distribute
urban legends such as the lost day in time and others. I think it may be
partly because of the naturalistic world view that is so dominant today.
Christians affirm a God who is transcendent and beyond naturalistic
explanation. Yet perhaps we as Christians are so threatened by
naturalism that we cannot see the transcendent God working through the
natural world, or unconsciously question the possibility of his exercising
transcendence beyond the natural world. This loss makes us vulnerable to
explanations that purport to describe a God that does, indeed, intervene in
human affairs in a supernatural manner. Perhaps it is an unnecessarily
defensive posture from the unconscious threat of a contrary yet dominant
world view. I think the same struggle exists when I find myself
questioning specific "words from the Lord" or ecstatic expressions of
religion or whether a specific event is the result of angels and demons.
Some of what is claimed to be of God is rather easily explained in a
naturalistic frame, yet we must also allow for God's transcendence if we
affirm the reliability of biblical references to prophecy, gifts, and the
realm of spiritual beings. Perhaps the problem is that we feel compelled
to force God into either a naturalistic frame or a supernaturalist frame,
instead of letting God be God by admitting the adequacy of each frame
and trying on each frame for a specific situation. To use another
metaphor, perhaps we want to see it through one lens or the other, rather
than admitting that each perspective is only a lens and that God ultimately
is greater than our lenses and frames. But why are so many people
threatened by the naturalistic world view and thus so prone to
accepting--with little question--supposed evidence to the contrary? Is it
because of a latent fear the naturalistic world view may indeed be the
ultimate explanation? Or perhaps because many people do not realize that
we are just dealing with frames, with lenses, with perspectives, as we
interprete the everyday world. It is just the limitations of being human.
I'd rather just affirm what Paul did in I Corinthians 13--"we see through a
glass darkly," rather than hold to a single frame tenaciously,
insisting that one frame or the other explains everything. God is always
bigger than our limited conceptions of him.

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Donald Earl Ratcliff, Ph.D.
One Chapel Drive/P.O. Box 800840
Toccoa Falls, GA 30598
Telephone: 706-886-7299 xt. 5297
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