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No truer words, buckinleadership, than your mapping reality paragraph.
There is a conscious push toward predestination in Christianity, while at the same time pulling you away from relying on that theme too much in being given freedom to choose your path. The same double-standard system is at work in the evolution/creationist battle. If we're perfect as was and as is, then why worry about a few moral ambiguities on the road to the Second Coming? If we can't evolve, we can't devolve. But if we do have the ability to devolve enough, while entertaining a false peace (somehow that peace amid the greatest time of sin is contradictory, but we'll shelve that for now), then won't Christ's second arrival be made more imminent? In other words, why fight it? Jesus will come a-knockin' all that much sooner.
It's CYA -- Christian style.
posted by
saul_relative
on July 4, 2005 at 6:49 PM
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ditto
Saul - thanks for your expansive treatment of this topic. My exposure to the history of religion in college led to graduate studies that grounded me in an evolutionary world view. I work to understand the dynamics across the fundamentalist-humanist chasm and I continue to see it as one more tribal manifestation of our past path.
I find it ironic that evangelicals dismiss the tenets of evolutionary theory, holding that we could not have evolved -- that we popped right out of the holy chute fully finished, as is -- while also sounding alarms about the morally corrosive impact of modern culture. If we didn't evolve in the past, why are fundamentalists so concerned with change and degradation in the present environment? The fear of change today seems to support, not oppose, the idea that we have always adapted and evolved, for better or worse, over the ages.
I know there are theological rebukes to the paragraph above -- I'm just trying to map to reality.
posted by
buckinleadership
on July 4, 2005 at 6:08 AM
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Thank you so much, 081121. Your words are kind. The only thing I
would say to you is the same advice given by people who write best sellers and good interoffice memos (like the Downing Street one) -- just write and write a lot. I think its applied practicum. The more you do it, the better you become.
posted by
saul_relative
on June 19, 2005 at 9:35 AM
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STALKING THE BEAST
These are my sentiment exactly. I wish that I had the gift of writings as you do.
posted by
123Clint
on June 19, 2005 at 9:25 AM
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