The story is told of a budding philosopher who set out on a
search for truth, during the process he discovered Christianity. There were
many aspect of this new discover that he liked; however, being the honest man
that he was, he was not sure about some of the deeper mysteries of the
religion, so he decide to wait before he embraced it full on. Unfortunately one
day as he set about to meditate on this new religion in order to unravel some
of the knots of doubts in this new discovery, he was shot with an arrow filled with a slow
action poison. None-the-less, he resolved to get all of his questioned answered
before he signed on. So, he continued in his pursuit. As he edged closer
and closer to declaring himself a fully committed Christian convert the poison finally took his life.
At the time of his funeral a great debate broke out among
his fellow philosophers as to whether or not he such be buried a Christian or
an agnostic. Finally it was decided to bury him as an agnostic Christian, and
so it was, and perhaps rightly so from their perspective.
The point is, Christianity is not a philosophy and, in my
opinion, those that approach it as such are in for a great disappointment. I will
also goes so far as to say that it is totally impossible to prove any of the
claims of Christianity through the use of philosophy. I say this because all
philosophy is open ended—there is always room for doubt; therefore, certainty
is out.
Scripture speaks of this phenomenon when Paul writes to
Timothy with criticism of those that are always learning but never come to any
understanding, that is to say, any conclusion [2 Tim. 3:7].
Now, back to our story. Life in a sense is as if we have all
be shot with a poison arrow at that time of our conception which slowly but
surely works its way through our system until we eventually die. There is no
escape either, as Alan Seeger's poem, I Have a Rendezvous with Death, so aptly reminds
us. The sad fact is that most live their lives as it they have ever and a day
to make up their minds on such an important subject as what happens when we
face the Grim Reaper, and what can I do to assure a safe passage into something
better?
As Blaise Pascal, the great French mathematician and
philosopher once remarked—
“In faith there is enough light for
those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.”
So, if we have the notion that we will ever have enough
faith to answer all our questions, my answer is that no you never will;
however, you can have enough trust to navigate the course of this thing we call
life, and die with the full confidence that you have done your best and that
you are comfortable with the choice to leave the rest up to God.
No comments:
Post a Comment
We appreciate your comments and opinions, please continue.