godrulz said:
The church made a mistake to abandon science and the arts to the secular world. It is noble to integrate science, art, and Christianity.
There is a difference between Borg-like integration and real unity. The first is what the Catholic Church wants for Christianity, the second is represented by the growing sense of a Christian identiy that transcends denomination, that has built itself around a worldwide Christian consensus about what it means to be Christian.
Borg-like integration annihates differences and tries to make everyone the same. Real unity comes when we learn to appreciate our differences and come to understand that our diversity actually makes us stronger.
Consider the Communist block a couple decades ago. In the Soviet Union everyone was a member of the communist party. But does mean that everyone actually believed in Marxism? Is that the kind of world that you want for Christianity? One where every person pretends to be Christian and does unspeakable things in the name of Christianity?
You must learn to accept the fact that if Christianity had not released its grip on science we would still be back in the dark ages.
I am horrified by how politically powerful the gay rights movement has become. They have come within a hairs breadth of turning the US into a theocracy ruled by their religion which says that people are born with a sexual preference. I have a friend in California who was denied an engineering licence simply because he dared to say in a required (political correctness) class that he did not think that it was proven that homosexuality was genetic. I cannot fault the Christian right for fighting back. But I fear that it is just a part of a back and forth pattern which will tear this country apart.
godrulz said:
Does Francis Schaeffer resonate with your ideas at all?
I found the section on apologetics interesting. It should be very obvious that I am very much an apologist rather than an evangelist. I offer no criticism of evangelism, it is only that my empathy for different points of view makes me far more suited to apologetics.
On the other hand, unlike Schaeffer, I am an advocate of pluralism. Is see the hand of God in human diversity as well as in the diversity of life on this planet. Genesis chapters 6-11 provides me a great deal of inspiration for this. I think that the Tower of Babel represented the rebuilding of the kind world that God destroyed in the Flood, one of mankind united by language and culture. But God found righteousness only in the one who insisted on being different -- Noah. Therefore God destroyed this attempt to unite all of mankind and instead promoted diversity of language and culture to increase the opportunities for individuals to be different.
I believe that the Protestant Reformation is repetition of this divine strategy. Sure our baser nature seems to keep us arguing among ourselves promoting division and conflict. But in "unity" we find the danger is worse. We see it in the history of Catholic church what happens when our baser natures become a part of what rules a "unified" Christianity - and by extension we can imagine what a "unified" mankind might be like. But it is in a diverse society that the unlikliest individuals (like Erin Brockovich) can stand up against the powers that be, to defend what is right.
Plurality is not relativism. It recognizes that there are indeed objectively recognizable or discoverable absolutes, but that there is also a great deal which cannot be objectively determined and in which many choices may in fact be correct. Determining which is which is indeed a problem -- but just because life is difficult that is no reason not to live.
Too many Christians envision the posibilities of the world as one of a single point of light surrounded in all directions by darkness. But since I believe in an infinite dimensional God and the infinite possibilites of life and goodness, I see something quite different. I see us on an infinite plane with light in all directions, but that the plane is dotted with pits of darkess that people stumble into blindly. Jesus is the way. God is our salvation. But these are not just excuses for telling everyone that they must do things my way. We are all blind. God can lead us past the pits of sin and death. But this does not mean that He must lead everyone out in the same direction, and it especially does not mean that we can lead anyone out ourselves.
In summation with regards to Francis Schaeffer, I would find much to agree with and much to disagree with, just as I find with you.