Re: Acceptance and growth

On May 1, 10:44 am, jjsarg...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> I don't plan to go on disputing with Matthew Johnson
> when even my side of the argument is lifeless and
> mechanical.  The only response I will make to the
> specifics of his April 10 posting is that I agree that
> Ayn Rand was mistaken in one way, and she
> exposed this mistake at the end of her novel
> _Anthem_, when she referred to "this god: EGO."
> I don't want to be a god; it's too much pressure.
> I just want to be a healthy, happy human being,
> and I can't say that Christianity has been much
> conducive to that.
>
> But there's something else I need to say to
> Mr. Johnson, and I think he needs to hear:
>
> Jesus did not say, in John 17:3, that eternal life
> consisted in knowing a great deal *about* God,
> even if it's written by a great many people both
> famous and obscure, over many centuries, in
> several languages.  He said that eternal life was
> to know *God* and Jesus Christ, whom He had
> sent.  I have to ask Matthew Johnson, despite
> all his knowledge and otherwise admirable
> erudition *about* God:
>
> Do you actually know God?
>
> (supposing for the sake of this discussion that
> He's there to be known).   It was, quite possibly,
> about those who would consider themselves
> His most vociferous partisans that Jesus said
> in Luke 18:8, "When the Son of Man comes,
> will He find faith on the earth?"
>
> -- Jeffrey J. Sargent

You're correct in saying we need to know God personally more than we
need to know about Him.  This is not to cast aspersions on Matthew
Johnson's character.  Matthew is clearly well vesed in Orthodox
Christianity, it's history, liturgy and theology.

The quote of Luke 18:8 almost begs the answer that faith would seem to
be lukewarm or missing.

One of the clearest elements in the New Testament is that Christ will
return when we least expect it.  This also implies that humanity, at
that point in time, won't be expecting His return.  The Jews, for all
their faults, were at least expecting a Messiah when Christ arrived
for the first time.

He seems to say Himself that when He comes the second time, we won't
be expecting Him.  In itself this implies a lack of faith.

That's also one of the reasons I don't agree with the fundamentalist
expectation that He's going to return pretty soon.

Personally I think Islam is going to become the dominant religion for
some time, and I also think God is going to drive us off the planet
out into the universe which He put there.  It seems a bit big to be
merely a backdrop.  And since He has allowed us to develop robotics,
computers, rocketry, artificial intelligence, nuclear power and those
things which would be necessary preludes to such an undertaking, then
it seems to me His vision is not earthbound, even if "Biblical"
exponents tend to be earth minded.  The other thing that intrigues me
is that in regard to modern "prophecy", hardly one of our self styled
end times evangelists predicted the resurgence of Islam.  Barely
one.