Arguments and Dead Ends

[Aaron]

At certain times in my Christianity I find myself trying to base my faith on arguments and everytime I end up in a place of depression, confusion and just plain doubt. It's usually right about that time that the words of Jesus, "I am the way the truth and the life" enter in and completely and immediately change my whole being. Jesus is the truth. There's something about those words that just fullfil me, they settle me. Its amazing really. I can't explain it. It's just simple and yet it's solid, there's no where else I'd rather be or anything else that's ever felt so much like reality, like this is the way things really are.

Does anyone else experience this, or something similar?

[mitchellmckain]

At certain times in my Christianity I find myself trying to base my faith on arguments and everytime I end up in a place of depression, confusion and just plain doubt. It's usually right about that time that the words of Jesus, "I am the way the truth and the life" enter in and completely and immediately change my whole being. Jesus is the truth. There's something about those words that just fullfil me, they settle me. Its amazing really. I can't explain it. It's just simple and yet it's solid, there's no where else I'd rather be or anything else that's ever felt so much like reality, like this is the way things really are.

Does anyone else experience this, or something similar?

Not exactly. I can only say that this makes perfect sense to me. I see it as coming back to the irrefutable reality that life requires subjective participation and that an attempt to restrict oneself to objective observation only will put your life on hold. To put it another way. There is no life in logical arguments. Life is about making decisions. Thus in the logic and the arguments there is only death, but in the decision to believe in Jesus there is life.

I have no doubt that the atheist finds life in his own subjective decisions as far as he willing to even admit to himself that he makes them. Likewise all the evidence tells me that they have found more life in their decision that God does not exist than they ever found in previous decisions to believe that he does exist.

But none of that changes where I myself have found the most life for myself, and it is the experience, decision and belief that God does exist and that He became a human infant named Jesus in the town of Bethlehem, grew up among us in Nazareth and died at the hands of our sin on a cross outside of Jerusalem.

[Moonwood the Hare]

When I was looking into Christianity there was a stage where I had moved from definite hostility to seeing it was an attractive world view; something I wanted to believe so I aked someone how I could get faith. She said that I should ask God to reveal himself to me and I did that eventually reaching the point where I felt I could say if you are there please come into my life. Some time later I met an atheist philosopher, an existentialist in fact, who asked me why I believed and I said I heard the gospel and responded. He felt that was not a good enough answer and by that time I had started reading people like C. S. Lewis who especially in his earlier writing tends to talk as if people could and should find faith through argument. although Lewis does recognise the validity of an emotional appeal he feels it is not for him. Yet although there was a n emotional dimension in coming to believe I never felt my belief was purely emotional or lacking in intellectual content. Although to start with I was very involved with a Charismatic type spirituality which emphasises experience I later came under the influence of Francis Schaefer and the Reformed tradition which emphasised having valid reasons for belief which for Schaeffer meant arguments. I felt there was something missing and began to explore Catholic and neo-Jungian spirituality so there was once again a shift back towards experience but of a very different kind. When I have found myself in doubt I have more recently tended to look to experience rather than argument. I tend to think that the more grounded you are in the reality of your own encounter with God the more open you can be towards other ways of experiencing the world. Often I find that doubts do not have any rational ground but they are no less keenly felt for that. I think for example a book like the God Delusion is far more of an appeal to the emotions than it is a reasoned argument and I can certainly feel its emotional appeal when I am in the right mood.

[humanguy]

I think for example a book like the God Delusion is far more of an appeal to the emotions than it is a reasoned argument and I can certainly feel its emotional appeal when I am in the right mood.

I'm so glad to see someone finally say that.

[mitchellmckain]

I think for example a book like the God Delusion is far more of an appeal to the emotions than it is a reasoned argument and I can certainly feel its emotional appeal when I am in the right mood.

Reminds me of the Communist Manifesto, which also far more of an emotional appeal than intellegent argument. But I only feel repulsion from its flagrant appeal to hatred and I don't feel any appeal from from the God Delusion at all.

[Aaron]

Thus in the logic and the arguments there is only death, but in the decision to believe in Jesus there is life.

I see truth in this statement, but it is truth that I understand through experience.

Some time later I met an atheist philosopher, an existentialist in fact, who asked me why I believed and I said I heard the gospel and responded.

Well you know more and more I think that's really the only answer a person can give. For to me the fact is the real living person of Jesus Christ came to meet with you, to live inside of you, to live with you to give you real true life. An argument can't do that. A proper understanding of an argument can't do that. The real person of Jesus must do that.

I've been thinking lately that I have held my reason up to a place it doesn't really belong. I'd call it the deceitfulness of materialism. I'm not saying that I think I'm irrational or that I want to be or that I don't value reason. But I think I've placed reason as like the be all end all discriminator, and I don't know if that's correct, if that makes sense. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this thought or if it really makes sense, but I guess it just makes sense that my reason would have limits and it would be unreasonable to use it beyond those limits... but these are just very raw thoughts that I've been mulling over recently. But more and more trust in Christ, the creator of all things, looks like the most reasonable thing I could do.