Wednesday, February 20, 2013

The Will of God- Is it easier to do when you know you don't know what it is?

Buried deep in Mencius Moldbug's tribute to Lawrence Auster, there is this:

Since I've already violated my daughter's privacy, I'll tell another story. The other day we were driving down 14th Street and Sibyl was looking out the window. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, I hear: "It says, 'Christ is the answer.' What is Christ?" She made it rhyme with "fist."

No Christian UR reader will ever forgive me for my answer. After correcting her pronunciation, I said: "Christ is the same thing as God, Sibyl. It's... it's... it's like Santa Claus for grownups."

Actually, there are few things that would please me more than seeing my daughter become a Christian. If only because it would mean she was not a worshiper of Beyonce, or something worse. I know all too well, however, that it is not in my power to raise her as one.
It is rather trivial to forgive an unbeliever such a simile.  It's those supposed already Christian that are harder to forgive.

But if we change the question to: "is Hamlet a useful concept?" we find that again everyone agrees. Hamlet is a literary character, and perfectly real in that sense. It is completely sensible to say, for instance, that someone is acting like Hamlet, or should be more like Hamlet, or should be less like Hamlet. These statements are well-defined and cogent.

It is also a well-defined and cogent statement to say that Lawrence Auster is a servant of God. One can serve without orders. 
One can further suggest that both concept and reality ought to be congruent with one another.
I have been wondering a bit about what I see in the world, and very often it seems there are a lot of non-christians and even just non-believers who are doing the Lord's work, while folks who profess do strange things, like fill up a Texas stadium in tribute to a sniper who killed a lot of people for our government.  Macabre irony comes when a sniper who works for our government shoots up Texas, and possibly even the stadium, though they'd probably just drop a bomb on the stadium. 

But beyond that there is the reality check- if you really want to convert people to Christ, then people actually have to be able to live as Christians.  This means breaking away from an increasingly bankrupt modern industrial system and finding ways of families being provided for.  You can't get the average Christian to understand basic facts- like how women in the workforce depress wages for everyone, resulting in it being increasingly impossible for anyone to provide for a family.  No wonder people resort to emotional and even romantic appeals to 'just believe'- you can't actually do much else, can you?

Well, you can, but much of what you can do isn't seen except in isolated incidents among Christians.

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