Sunday, October 4, 2009

Agnostic Christians?

Oswald Chambers defines and agnostic as someone who recognises that there is more than s/he knows and if s/he is ever to know more, it must be by some sort of revelation.

Every one of us living today, whether we have ever thought deeply or not, has faced this problem: If God is love, why does He allow so much suffering and violence and heartache in this world? This is not a passing perplexity but a real puzzle. The puzzle forces us to either deny the facts or confess we simply don’t have all the information. We can also grasp one of two irrational options. First, We can deny that God exists or two, We can pretend that the world really isn’t that bad of a place. If we enjoy reality however, we are forced to admit that things do not look as they should if God is the kind of God that we expect Him to be.

The only possible conclusion that honest observers can reach is that something is terribly wrong, fundamentally wrong with the world and with us. On the other side of the coin, we must also admit that with either a telescope or a microscope both the macro or micro universes are appallingly beyond our comprehension. Unless you are a spiritually blinded atheist you must admit that we are in way over our heads. No one is able to comprehend the madness and chaos into which we are born. No one can, in all honesty believe that s/he has to answer to putting this madness right.

A secular agnostic says, “There is more to know but I’ll ignore it until either I’m forced to deal with it by some external event or someone gives me the answer. Until then I’ll hum a song.”

An atheist says, “We know as much as we can and until I discover more, I’ll simply deny that there is any more to life than what we already know.

A Christian is an avowed agnostic intellectually; h/his attitude is, “I have reached the limit of my knowledge, and I humbly accept the revelation of God given by Jesus Christ.”

2 comments:

Don said...

Correction: An atheist says, “We know as much as we can and I refuse to accept 'God did it' as an answer to everything we don't understand yet."

Adam said...

Again with the straw arguments. What percentage of your posts here are imaginary statements from generalized people?