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Healthy agnosticism
> From: Gilhamilton at aol_com
> Subject: Re: strike me anywhere
>
> Good words Fred. Thanks for posting them.
> I'm just hitting my 15 year mark as a
> Christian and it's only been the last
> few of those that I'm coming to realize (still
> processing) that most of the
> thoughts I've had about God were much too
> small. Which is ironic considering
> that I spent around 10 years as either an
> atheist or agnostic with no
> metaphysic, or seeking truth through a
> counterfeit drug/meditation/alternate
> reality sorta induced mysticism (mostly reading
> - Lilly, Casteneda, Dunne,
> etc. - and courting the idea rather than
> doing, at least the drug part)
> then, after becoming a Christian, I realized
> that all my thinking about the
> universe was... much too small. As a Christian,
> I started studying
> apologetics and cults and argued that all the
> idea's THESE people had about
> God were , you got it... much too small. In an
> attempt to fully understand
> him they had milked the mystery right out of
> Him. But, in my studies, I came
> to realize that even this doctrinally correct
> God I was reading about in all
> the *right* books -- yes, even He... was much
> too small. So here I am, this
> side of authors like Buechner and Tillich, this
> side of a more open reading
> of scripture, more baffled and confused than
> ever about this God I worship
> but somehow feeling, at the same time, that I
> might be just closer than I've
> ever been to bursting through those walls of
> illusion, smashing apart those
> man made processors that would squeeze the
> orchards of God down into one tiny
> easy to swallow paper cup and finally take the
> to jump headfirst into that
> ocean of shadow and mystery that is the God
> BEYOND my understanding.
> By the way, have you ever read Donald
> McCullough's book *The Trivialization
> of God*? Your words do a pretty good job of
> distilling one of his main points
> - -- see especially the chapters *a pantheon of
> deities* and *temple of idols*
> where he talks about the God of our cause,
> understanding, experience,
> comfort, success, and nation. He ends the
> temple chapter with:
> "To know the holy God, we must acknowledge what
> we do not know; to see the
> light of God, we must pass through the dark
> night of the soul; to gain faith,
> we must begin with doubt. Knowledge of God is
> born from the womb of reverent
> agnosticism."
>
Thanks for your message to the OTR list about
your "brand," for lack of a better term, of
Christianity. While I haven't read as much as
you, nor is my background similar (I grew up as a
straight-laced, church-going guy), my thoughts
are basically the same. I've been a Christian for
15 years or so, and I bought fundamentalism and
played the part for many years. But it just
seemed that people were, and still are, putting
God in a box and trying to define who he is too
narrowly. I'd love to say those people drive me
nuts, that they're off base, that they're plain
wrong and I'm right. But that would be taking the
same attitude that they take against me and other
religions.
I am rambling -- but I know one thing
unequivocally (for mandatory OTR content): The
music of Over the Rhine always is a worshipful
experience and sustains me and points me toward
God in ways that fundamentalists will never
understand.
Jeff McCloud
teamcloud at yahoo_com
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