Ok, Aaron, my first response to your question was instinctive and perhaps somewhat trite, so let's start again, shall we? We don't have all that many Born Again Christians posting here, so I would be interested in some genuine engagement with the goal of trying to understand where you're coming from, in order to see whether any meaningful dialogue is possible.
In answer to your question - although I was baptised as an infant (which, according to the teaching of all the mainstream Christian churches, with the exception of some elements in the Baptist tradition, is regarded as adhering to the admonition of Jesus in Mt. 24:1 to baptise, a meditation on the meaning of which is provided in Jn. 3, where he speaks of being born through water and the Spirit [Jn 3:5]), I do not regard myself as having been Born Again in the sense commonly used by so-called evangelical adherents of the Christian belief. Having spent many years regarding myself as a Christian, the difficulites and contradictions I saw with my professed Christian belief led me to finally acknowledge the essential agnostic/atheistic basis of my world view around eight years ago. It was - as you put it - "all too difficult to believe"; I realised and admitted to myself that I did not, in fact, believe it. I found (and still find) this realisation to be personally liberating. One of the most positive aspects of this realisation was that it made clear to me that I, personally, was responsible for myself and my actions (or inactions) and that I could accept (and relish) my fundamental freedom (even if this is often limited in practical situations and by the neurotic baggage I've accumuated through my life) as a human person. I regard it as a step in a process of maturing; being able to live a generally fulfilled and fulfilling life without having recourse to some kind of "higher power" to make sense of things or sort things out for me. In many ways I would see it as a kind of growing up and believe(!) that this sort of process would be beneficial for the human race as a whole. What/who is this "Christ" who came looking for you and revealed himself to you? Jesus of Nazareth, an somewhat unorthodox Jewish teacher, who (as far as we can reliably tell historically) fell foul of the religious authorities in his own tradition and was executed by the Roman civil authorities as a nuisance to public order? Or some kind of "annointed" [greek: Хῥιστόϛ] of God, or son of God, as he was later regarded in a number of traditions which among those who had heard him, or of him? Which tradition - the Jacobine, the Pauline, the Johannine? In what sense do you claim that the words recorded in John 3 (the dialogue with Nicodemus) were the actual words spoken by the teacher, Jesus, (if they were, in fact,) spoken by him around seventy years before the gospel of John was written? Even if the gospel referred to was written by John, the disciple of Jesus referred to in the synoptic gospels (something about which the majority of scholars are sceptical [he would have had to be about 90years old at the time of writing]), given the absence of modern recording devices (or even general literacy), the accuracy of such intricately constructed dialogues with regard to what was originally said is profoundly questionable (particularly given the fact that they seem to have been unkown to the earlier sources [Mark and "Q", which form the basis of the synoptic gospels, which are, in turn, earlier than John]). Finally, I would ask what the advantages of being found by Christ and being "born again" are? As a non-believer, I do not regard myself as being in need of some kind of revelation, nor do I see myself as a bad person in need of redemption. The examples I have encountered of self- declared "born-again" Christians does not, in general, evoke any feeling in me that they have got something worthwhile which I lack. Indeed I find many of their attitudes, opinions and positions to be facile, intolerant, badly thought out and just plain wrong. It would be helpful if you could give such clarification using arguments and terminology which are common to both of us, without argumentation based on what you call scripture. I ask this because I regard supporting reference to the Bible as being counter-productive, as "born-again" believers tend to see such argumentation as absolutely authoritative, because they perceive it as being of divine origin, whereas I do not accept this basic premise, so the argumatation just doesn't reach me. Francis On 21 Dez., 23:00, "Aaron Eel (Ehrin)" <[email protected]> wrote: > Have you been Born Again, I mean? If Christ hadn't come looking for me > and reveled Himself to me, I probably would have gone through my life > as an atheist. It would have all been too difficult to believe. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Minds-Eye?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
