From: Josh Bembenek (jbembe@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Sep 19 2003 - 10:25:06 EDT
Steve-
I have a hard time understanding the process that your local UU church
experiences with the loss of its intelligensia. Perhaps they are teaching
something other than the gospel at a "universalist" church, which folks can
see through and wish to abandon.
The bottom line in the point I was trying to make is
>that Christianity is becoming less and less compelling for a many people.
>Why is that? Although I'm not member, I see a virtual revolving door of
>the
>newly disillusioned going through the local Unitarian Universalist church.
>My questions may sound like scholasticism but that's because the premises
>lead to a plethora of follow up questions. And they are, by the way, not
>irrelevant to the thinking persons I know. The scholastics may have been
>able to "reason" through each question but in the final analysis was
>anything compelling about their system? Did they convince by their
>gymnastics of logic? Christianity may not be that fragile as a whole now,
>but what about 100, 500 years from now. The populace is becoming more and
>more educated and critically thinking. The scientific worldview is sweeping
>the globe. All it will take is something new to come along that speaks to
>their needs but is less intellectually objectionable and there may be a
>mass
>exodus."
Critical thinking is an integral part of my Christian faith. I believe
strongly that if you begin to ask the correct questions that you will find
Christianity the single best solution to those problems. When I was in
college questioning religion and Christianity, I began performing
thought/practical experiments in my life. For example, what does it mean to
treat ones' neighbor as one wishes to be treated? Back then I would
experiment, treating someone as I would like to be treated and watching the
response, as opposed to the next week treating them the other way. The more
I observed human interactions, the more the gospel makes perfect and
complete sense. Paul's writings contain the most sophisticated and
articulate understanding of human interactions and behaviors, and also
delineate clearly the most effective approach toward an understanding of God
and changed lives. The teachings of Christ represent the most elegant
solution to life as a human in my opinion, following Pascal's challenge.
Questions or discoveries about aliens cannot change that.
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