I hope to be back soon. I was travelling for almost four weeks - visiting relatives and attending a "Global Health Conference."
I've had a lot of experiences that has provoked thinking over the last few weeks. Visiting with relatives from across the spectrum, 1) radical liberal-anti McCain pro-Obama supporters, 2) radical conservative-anti Obama pro-McCain supporters, 3) Stripper/model relatives, 4) TV evenangelists relatives and the list goes on. Sometimes I've had all the above in one living room.
I am overwhelmed by work because I was gone, but hope to be back soon.
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Key Words: Post-evangelical, disillusionment with Christianity, spiritual abuse, Christian Dualism, Francis Schaeffer, Christian Decision Making, Honesty and Christianity
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Seeing the entire universe, the seen and the unseen, as all part of God's wonderful creation.
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Key Words: Post-evangelical, disillusionment with Christianity, spiritual abuse, Christian Dualism, Francis Schaeffer, Christian Decision Making, Honesty and Christianity
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Mount Baker, Washington
What A Christian Monist Believes
A Christian Monist is simply a nudging of the mainstream Evangelicalism back towards it Biblical-philosophical roots, which we think is Monistic rather than Dualistic.
This may sound complicated but it is not. Scripture says that God created man, woman, the creatures and the cosmos . . . then said it was good. Yes the Fall did happen, tainting this world (and ourselves) but it didn't decimate the cosmos, rendering it as totally worthless or even evil.
The old Dualist (such as the Gnostics, which influenced the early church) believed that this physical world is evil. They also believed that Satan is the Lord of the darkness, juxtaposed, to God the Lord of the world of light (and the forces were almost equal). C.S. Lewis disagreed with this view, stating that evil was a lowly parasite in the shadows of God’s wonderfully created world.
The practical implications of this change in perspective is immense and we believe accounts for almost all that ails modern, American Evangelicalism. These implications are too many to discuss here, but to mention a few examples.
American Evangelicalism, which had been greatly influenced by forms of Dualism, from Zoroaster to Plato and others, sees things in black vs. white. The spiritual (invisible) is superior to the seen (the physical cosmos). So to an Evangelical, everything is divided between the spiritual vs. worldly and is almost along altitudinal lines. The earth, our physical bodies, art (especially art by non-Christians), emotions, our brains (eg. psychology) . . . all are inferior to the unseen spiritual.
Therefore Evangelicals believe that events must be understood by their unseen forces or they have no value. In other words, Aunt Martha’s cancer wasn’t caused by a cell mutating but by Satan’s attack. Her cancer wasn’t cured by the smart doctors who developed chemotherapy but only by a “super-natural” hand of God.
But that is only the tip of the iceberg. Evangelicalism has become very dishonest in places and the younger people (both within and without the church) often see it as a farce. I feel very passionate about this because 85% of children, reared within the Evangelical church, leave it before they are 25. Evangelicalism is on the wrong path. They see the great evil as humanism or evolution. The real great evil (and many young people have told me this) is the phoniness withing the church.
This may sound complicated but it is not. Scripture says that God created man, woman, the creatures and the cosmos . . . then said it was good. Yes the Fall did happen, tainting this world (and ourselves) but it didn't decimate the cosmos, rendering it as totally worthless or even evil.
The old Dualist (such as the Gnostics, which influenced the early church) believed that this physical world is evil. They also believed that Satan is the Lord of the darkness, juxtaposed, to God the Lord of the world of light (and the forces were almost equal). C.S. Lewis disagreed with this view, stating that evil was a lowly parasite in the shadows of God’s wonderfully created world.
The practical implications of this change in perspective is immense and we believe accounts for almost all that ails modern, American Evangelicalism. These implications are too many to discuss here, but to mention a few examples.
American Evangelicalism, which had been greatly influenced by forms of Dualism, from Zoroaster to Plato and others, sees things in black vs. white. The spiritual (invisible) is superior to the seen (the physical cosmos). So to an Evangelical, everything is divided between the spiritual vs. worldly and is almost along altitudinal lines. The earth, our physical bodies, art (especially art by non-Christians), emotions, our brains (eg. psychology) . . . all are inferior to the unseen spiritual.
Therefore Evangelicals believe that events must be understood by their unseen forces or they have no value. In other words, Aunt Martha’s cancer wasn’t caused by a cell mutating but by Satan’s attack. Her cancer wasn’t cured by the smart doctors who developed chemotherapy but only by a “super-natural” hand of God.
But that is only the tip of the iceberg. Evangelicalism has become very dishonest in places and the younger people (both within and without the church) often see it as a farce. I feel very passionate about this because 85% of children, reared within the Evangelical church, leave it before they are 25. Evangelicalism is on the wrong path. They see the great evil as humanism or evolution. The real great evil (and many young people have told me this) is the phoniness withing the church.
Evangelical Church Exit Interview--Fictional, but Possible
God's Glorious Creation
Genesis 1:31 (New International Version) 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
1 comment:
Looking forward to reading your insights.
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