Re: Call me a fideist

On 5/26/05, glennmorton@entouch.net <glennmorton@entouch.net> wrote:
>
>[snip]
> Now, the problem I keep trying to get people to focus on is the fact that
> the religious world is much larger than NOrth American christianity. Try
> living in a place where no one shares your theology, or even has a theology.
> You quickly realize how sheltered North American Christians are. One can't
> start with "Assume the Bible is true therefore...."
>
> That approach, which both YECs and many ASA members take, quickly begins to
> sound like the man who went to the owner of a large chicken meat company.
> The guy told the owner that he could cut the company's costs by 40% by
> mechanizing the feather plucking. The guy told the owner that he would no
> longer have to hire hundreds of chicken pluckers. The owner, quite
> interested asked how the man would do that. The man said, " I built a
> feather plucking machine. Here are the diagrams. First, assume that you
> have a spherical chicken....."
>
> When one looks beyond North America and sees what is out there, one realizes
> that we Christians are busy assuming spherical chickens. And then we create
> these marvelous apologetics which are utterly worthless.
>
>

Glenn,

You're absolutely right that the religious world is much bigger than
North American Christianity but you seem to be failing to fully
recognize that fact. The well-recognized rise of Christianity in
Africa and Asia over the last few decades has little to do with the
sort of apologetic that you and others on this list are trying to
construct. The concerns of your average African or Asian convert are
miles away from what we're discussing on this list. That's not to say
that these discussions aren't important but I'd say you're mistaken to
think the sort of scientific-type of apologetic you've worked on will
have much traction beyond North American or European Chrisitanity. In
my limited observations, most people who convert to Christianity do so
because of personal testimony and a daily living out of one's calling
to follow Christ.

-Joel
Received on Fri May 27 10:08:21 2005