You haven't practiced much religion, have you? Why would I use a crutch that weighs a ton? A mobility device is supposed to help. I have some experience here, as you may or may not know. [But it provides meaning, doesn't it?--ed.] Sure, but it's not intelligible from outside itself. Religion--let's just say "Christianity" to save time--doesn't help to live this life at all. What the truth revealed in Jesus Christ will do is transform how you see ordinary things.
Two guys walking and talking. Picture this, now.
"I can't believe it, but he said that horrible accident was the best thing that's ever happened to him!"
"Well, he got religion, so."
"Yeah. He's nuts. Still, I've never seen him so happy."
Now, I ask you, what changed? The experiences and things in the world didn't. The people didn't change, at least by normal appearances. The man's relationship to the things in his life changed.
Christianity says that suffering can be good. Christianity says that death isn't the worst thing that could happen to you. Is the world painful and tragic? Yes, almost always. This is why that "evangelical" atheism won't go anywhere. Everybody knows the world is often tragic and painful. If there's nothing but this, life really isn't worth it. The existentialists figured this out, eventually to their detriment, in many cases. I agree with them.
You can't make meaning out of life. You just can't. But if Someone comes and explains everything to you, that's different. If the Author of the Great Story comes to you and says, "I know it looks bad, but trust Me, it's worth it!" then OK, I'm in.
That's why Christianity truly exists only in personal encounter. The great edifice of Western civilization is crumbling because the people no longer acknowledge the Person whose entry into the world breathed life into our collective lungs. He's there, but we're not talking to Him. He is everlasting; we are not. We live, we die. I'm not trying to make it in this world; I'm living for the next. If I succeed in living "on Earth, as it is in Heaven," that really blazes a trail, though.
Two guys walking and talking. Picture this, now.
"I can't believe it, but he said that horrible accident was the best thing that's ever happened to him!"
"Well, he got religion, so."
"Yeah. He's nuts. Still, I've never seen him so happy."
Now, I ask you, what changed? The experiences and things in the world didn't. The people didn't change, at least by normal appearances. The man's relationship to the things in his life changed.
Christianity says that suffering can be good. Christianity says that death isn't the worst thing that could happen to you. Is the world painful and tragic? Yes, almost always. This is why that "evangelical" atheism won't go anywhere. Everybody knows the world is often tragic and painful. If there's nothing but this, life really isn't worth it. The existentialists figured this out, eventually to their detriment, in many cases. I agree with them.
You can't make meaning out of life. You just can't. But if Someone comes and explains everything to you, that's different. If the Author of the Great Story comes to you and says, "I know it looks bad, but trust Me, it's worth it!" then OK, I'm in.
That's why Christianity truly exists only in personal encounter. The great edifice of Western civilization is crumbling because the people no longer acknowledge the Person whose entry into the world breathed life into our collective lungs. He's there, but we're not talking to Him. He is everlasting; we are not. We live, we die. I'm not trying to make it in this world; I'm living for the next. If I succeed in living "on Earth, as it is in Heaven," that really blazes a trail, though.
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