Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Nov 09, 2021 5:47 pmIn your account, you've go no place for an actual God who actually saves, or who actually helps people. All you've got in there is a concept, the "belief in the existence of God," which is not at all the same thing. And that's what is distorting your view of what Christians believe, and of what they experience as well. It's why you find yourself occasionally tongue-tied about what the implications of being a Christian must be, because the one thing you haven't taken into your equation yet.
God is real.
"Christian awareness," like human "attempts," is never enough. Christianity is only as good as it is able to deliver this: reconciliation and peace with God...not imaginary peace or imaginary relationship, but the real, actual, dynamic thing.
A few things are going on here, I will try to explain.
One is that you, because of your strongly declared position (which incidentally I respect and also emulate because in order for there to be a Christianity there has to be strong believers who define what that belief is and hold to it), so because of your strongly held belief you are asked to *answer* for everything that people hold against the Christian religion. I think people
seek out arguments of this sort in order to attempt to defeat a given Christian, and thus the *Christian argument*, because of their own conflicts with the moral and ethical demands the system of belief makes on them. That is at least one aspect. But the other aspect is, for example, Lacewing's specific complaints about specific aspects of your views.
You are an Protestant Evangelical Christian (Christian non-denominational) and you come from a very specific, and quite adamant and quite defined,
interpretation of Christianity. I am more interested in the structure of your belief, your belief within an historical picture, than I am with arming arguments against specifics. I know that you support the specifics of your belief with direct quotes, etc., as do all Christians, but in my own case (and it really is my own case) I feel that the entire system of belief needs to be examined from some distance. So, if the truth is to be told, and this is a philosophical environment and not an environment of Christian apologetics, my personal view is that all declamations about belief have to be understood as part of 'story'. The elements of the story are crucial to the understanding of the story, but a Christian view is still a 'story'.
In this sense the believer's story is a sort of 'lens' or filter through which the world, or the believer's self, and of course *reality*, is filtered to the believer. Obviously, but I think you already knew this about me (given previous conversations) you know that in this sense I have no alternative but to hold to, to define, to see things, in a way that can only be called gnostic. When I use that term I am not referring to historical gnosticism. This term for me means that though I understand the need for and the value of 'the story', the story is not sufficient for one who really thinks things through. It is sort of like what Nietzsche said (I will paraphrase):
We were told 'the truth will set you free' and we employed truth-seeking to the Story itself. We punctured the veracity of the Story at numerous points -- in the name of truth. But the Truth we discovered did not 'set us free' in the expected sense, no. It set us on a road of continued peeling away of layers of Story. For those, let us say 'weak of heart', the excavating under the structure of the Story led to the complete and thorough destruction of it as a 'salvific possibility'. The undermining of the Story led to the undermining of so many different truths. Now, we who undermined story live in the ruins of an Old Structure in which that given person cannot any longer believe
and remain in self-integrity. As you well know Nietzsche refers to this as 'dusk' and as a 'twilight of the gods'. To believe, for many, and to adopt a Christian belief, is not possible. And if they did so they would be lying to themselves. The Story is collapsed to that degree.
Now, with that said everyone with some familiarity with modern thought knows that what Nietzsche predicted with the intuitive eye of a Seer and in this sense a Prophet, was the terrible specter of nihilism. So in my case (maybe it is different for others) what I see going on in this conversation, the one we are in now, is just one more rehearsal and enactment about the psychic state that is nihilism. We are all in it, to one degree or another. But what is it? Well what I say is that it is the loss of metaphysical grounding, if I can put it like that (as if something metaphysical could operate and support on like a *ground*). And I would say that both Lacewing and Belinda are, each in their distinct way, emissaries of the fractures of nihilism. But this must not be interpreted as a criticism! (I have no reason and no desire to criticize anyone and there is nothing to be gained from it).
So the larger picture is what interests me, personally. But within that larger picture I too have my place. A position I have carved out for myself. Yet you are mistaken if you assume (and in this sense you are driven to make specific assumptions) that I do not think 'God is real' or that I do not, say, believe in God or what I might call a 'promise' of God. (But I do say and I will continue to say that salvation is a non-clear term and, I will also note, I do not think a) you can define it and b) have a solid explanation for what it is.
So the things that you mention here, in my case, must be turned into topics of examination. Each listed item must be turned into a question:
God who saves.
God who helps people.
Distorting view of what Christians believe.
Distorted view of what Christians perceive.
Tongue-tied about *implications* of religious/spiritual belief.
I do not know what 'salvation' really is. I know what people say about it. And I also know what Evangelicls say about their salvation. But Evangelicals cannot be relied on! Why? Because the issue is not defined, controlled nor mediated by them. And (I must say this) not by you. You do not have the power or the right to define how God acts in relation to any other person. Now, with that statement I am actually going toward a sort of gnosis. The statement has an heretical tinge. I can explain what I mean though. And my explanation will, I think, make sense.
How God helps people is something that can be talked about. God helps all people, all the time, at every moment. That is a basic tenet! What you are talking about is a special form of aid. You are implying a more complete help and aid that is offered, specifically, to a Christian. And I have said that in many senses I agree -- if it is carefully explained. And the explanation is one that has contentious elements.
Christian view, and the view that you have, is by definition distortion, distorting and
distortioned. What might *correct* it? (Gnosis).
What we perceive always is filtered through our *lens of perception* -- our mind, our concepts, the fore structures within our imagination. Here, I will make a quick reference to Heidegger's meditation on Plato's Cave. It is not a route for everyone, this I am certain about, but I think that we can all examine our own 'mediating lenses'. They are all of them just lenses. And what the lens bring to us is not a true vision of 'things'. True indeed, this pushes us back into a zone of 'intuition'. What I intuit to be true, and where my link with God is, occurs on the inner plane! For me, it can only be found (as it were) when I enter into the space within myself.
We have no other means, right now, except to be 'tongue-tied' about so much going on around us. The world seems to rise up around us, in one manifestation like a mechanism, run by AI, that seems to be on the verge of attaching electrodes of control onto us, into us, for what seem nefarious purposes. But on the other hand 'the world' (the people surrounding us) all seem halfway mad -- because, I assume, they have become ungrounded from sound, believable, metaphysical platforms.
So it seems to me -- this is what I try to do -- we can push open this conversation and move it toward realms of *truth-telling* that touch on these sorts of realities. What else, in fact, is there to be talked about today? I mean
really? 
If somebody is going to be a "Christian," in more than a merely-nominal sense, then surely they would have to pass the test that Christ Himself set, no? And if they can't, then we have the word of the Originator Himself that they are none of His...is that good enough for you?