Tag: the church

It Takes Time to Change Your Mind

I always used to think of myself as an open-minded person overall. But I have since—regretfully—come to the conclusion I was not. The thing is, it’s very difficult to be completely open-minded. For instance, if I have made up my mind that a particular person is disagreeable, it will take quite a lot of time and evidence for me to change my mind on that notion. In fact, sometimes it will take more than twice the evidence to change my mind than the evidence that made me come to the original conclusion.

I remember the first time I realised that I was inherently closed-minded. It was in February of 2014. My family gathered together to watch the great debate of Ken Ham and Bill Nye. Ken Ham I knew about because I had read a lot of issues of the Creation Magazine. I had never heard of Bill Nye before, but I was told he was an atheist and he would be arguing against Creationism. He was the ‘bad guy.’ We all sat down and looked forward to him being smothered in the truth and being completely lost in what I thought was infallible evidence for the creation claim.

Mr. Ham Started the debate off and presented the worldview I was at that time very familiar with. That of the idea that the Bible accurately relates the story of the beginning of the universe. Then Mr. Nye presented his views or rather, the views of mainstream science. I was quite surprised when one of the things he said was, ‘Mr. Ham, I learnt something; thank you!’ This guy was admitting to the world that he didn’t know everything, which wasn’t what I expected him to do. The portrayal of atheists I had been taught is not one of humility.

The second thing that surprised me, and this is probably the seed that eventually grew into my atheistic tendencies later was the manner with which these two men replied to a question at the end. The question was, ‘What, if anything, would ever change your mind?’

‘Hm,’ Mr. Ham took a deep breath and thought for a moment, ‘well, the answer to that question is: I’m a Christian. And, as a christian, I can’t prove it to you, but, God has definitely shown me very clearly through His word and shown Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. The Bible is the word of God. I admit that that’s where I start from.’ Then he continued for a bit reinforcing that statement and then said that no one is going to convince him that the word of God is not true. ‘The bottom line is that as a Christian, I have a foundation. But as a Christian, I would ask Bill the question, “What would change your mind?”’

Bill Nye didn’t even stop to think about his response. ‘We would just need one piece of evidence.’ Mr. Nye had just pointed out that I was completely closed-minded and was interpreting the world around me from the point of view of a creationist.

At that moment I made a decision that I would stop closing my mind to things that disagreed with my beliefs, and would examine every idea that came my way.

But I didn’t. It still took me a couple of years to eventually admit to myself that I no longer believed in the creation narrative. It wasn’t until 2016 that I started calling myself an Agnostic Atheist. Even though I thought I was completely open-minded I was still stubbornly holding onto my beliefs. I suppose when you’ve had a worldview for nearly two decades it becomes hard to change your mind.

But it happened eventually; I changed my mind. It took about two years. And since then I’ve found that that’s about how long it takes to change my mind on anything fundamental like that: about two years. It takes a long time for me to change my mind.

That’s an important thing to remember when you are in an argument with someone, or trying to give someone advice. Usually when someone is arguing with me, no matter what I can say, they will never change their mind on whatever it is they are arguing. However, sometimes it will stew in their minds and if they are an open-minded person, it’s quite possible they may change their mind. Similarly, when people come to me for advice, they usually have already made up their mind what they are going to do. (This doesn’t happen very often by the way, I don’t want people to get the wrong impression that I am some kind of wise person who can solve people’s problems.) When people come to me for advice, they—subconsciously, sometimes—already know what they are going to do, and are looking for someone to give them advice that is in line with what they wanted to do already. If what I advise them to do is in parallel with what they, consciously or subconsciously, have already decided upon, they will thank me and follow my advice. (Again, I try not to advise people, because I don’t think of myself as the sort of person qualified for that sort of thing, but sometimes it can’t be avoided.) If however, I advise them on what to do, and it doesn’t line up with their inclinations, they will seek advice from people who tell them what they are wanting to hear.

I know this, because that’s what I do. Most of the time I don’t even realise it myself. I am trying to change that fact that is within me, but it takes time. Just be patient, because changing your mind takes time.

Posted on by Oves Tondente 0

There Might as Well Not Be a God.

I was brought up believing in an all-powerful god. He was bigger than anything that you could imagine. He could do anything. He was anywhere, any time. He listened to what people asked. He was like us, in that we were made in his image. Thinking about God always blew my mind, because I would try to imagine what it was like at the beginning of the universe. There was nothing there, just God. There was no time, no space, nothing. Just god. In the beginning, the beginning of all time, God was there, even though nothing was there.

I used to lie awake at night thinking about that. Nothing was there, and God was there … but God is everything, so everything was there in the form of nothing. But what was before that? God was before that. Did god have a god that made him? No, he just was. Nobody knows how he got there. Does God know how He got there? Maybe … yes he must, because he knows everything. Well why didn’t he tell us how he got here then? No idea.

I was taught what I suppose can best be described as sort of axioms: God is all-knowing, God is all-powerful, God is everywhere at every time, God made everything, God is love, God is good. And there is another one: God works in mysterious ways. Using these axioms one can describe the universe with perfect accuracy, better than any scientist could, and answer any question with infallible logic. For instance:

Where did we come from? Axiom: God made everything, therefore god made us, because the set of everything includes us.

Why were we made? Axiom: God works in mysterious ways; axiom: God is all-knowing. We don’t really know why God made us, but he knows, and that’s all that matters. The one thing we know is that God is good (another axiom) and that he did it because he loves us – axiom: God is love.

This satisfied me to a certain degree, in as much that I was unable to argue with any of the statements without questioning the authenticity of God. But there was always something that didn’t quite feel right. I never felt like I could solve any real world problems with these axioms.

If god is all-powerful and protects those he loves, then why do we have to wear a seat-belt in a car? I never had a very good answer for that one that didn’t involve logical hand-waving.

Other questions were tumbling about in my head, and they scared me. I didn’t really know why though. Maybe it is because deep down I was discovering that the beliefs I built my world around were like chaff, that can blow away in the wind. So I decided to find God for myself. I shut myself off from the world and spent months trying to pick apart my beliefs and find what was holding them together. I decided that God would reveal the truth to me no matter what happened and so I opened up my mind as a receptacle for any thought that may come my way, no matter what the axioms said.

Then things started to get strange. I saw turmoil and confusion. If God is love, then why would he choose to torture those who did not believe in him by sending them to hell for eternity? If I had a friend who decided that he didn’t believe that I existed, would I lock him in a torture chamber for the rest of his or her life? No, that would be something an evil person would do. Then I wrote down a sentence that probably changed my life, because it was the first time in my life I had elevated myself to the level of God and challenged him. I wrote, ‘If somebody goes to hell because they could not find evidence for God and therefore could not believe, then they, being punished eternally for a misunderstanding, are more righteous than God.’

Is God so weak that he cannot stand up against questioning? If I cannot question my god, then my god is too weak.

After that the floodgates were open, and there was no holding back the thoughts. Some part of me still believed deep down, but another part of me was putting God on trial. If you can’t test god, then how can we follow him? Maybe we are not made in the image of god. Maybe god is made in the image of us. That would explain why god keeps changing his mind about what is good or bad. For instance, it was okay to kill unbelievers, but now that’s somehow not right anymore, and we should love our enemies.

Also, I came to the conclusion that belief is not a decision, it happens on its own, usually from experience. For instance, you can be told all you want about fire and how it burns and how you should not touch it, but somehow it doesn’t really sink in until you can test it. You can stand next to a fire and feel its radiant heat, and touch it and feel it burn. But you can’t touch God, and feel him. You can’t look at him. You can’t feel his power. I used to think I could, but really the things I could feel where only there when I expected them to be there, and existed in my imagination. God always said exactly what I expected him to say, almost as if he was a fabrication of my mind. I guess it boils down to this: if one can’t tell the difference between a god one made up in one’s own mind, and and the One True God that one claims to follow, that god might as well not exist.

But even after all of this transformation happened, I still believe in the thing they call God. There is something deep within us that we can never understand. Something in our mind that we will never control. It makes dreams seem real and sometimes speaks to us with wisdom that we cannot fathom. It is neither good nor evil. Some choose to call this thing a god, but I call it myself. The thing that is within me is a real thing to me; the thing that is within me is the me that I do not understand. God is within me, and I put him in my image, and I am him.

Perhaps Jesus was thinking on similar lines when he said, ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’ Perhaps the message of the Messiah is that what we believe does not matter.

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Unity, if there is Such a Thing

I was going to write another entry, and I found this draft, so I thought I might as well publish it:

A couple of weeks ago the question was posed to me: what are the younger generation of Christians doing today to create unity amongst the body of Christ? I thought that this was quite an interesting question to ask, because today there are so many Christians who disagree with the rest of the body of Christ. We are really doing nothing to create unity. ‘But,’ I thought, ‘I can’t agree with everyone; some people’s ideas are just plain daft.’ So, really … what can we do to be one with the rest of God’s people? This is a question that I haven’t got a full answer for yet, but I will try to answer some of it to best of my knowledge.

Obviously agreeing on everything is impossible, so the only way we can work together with our difference of beliefs is to accept that we have different beliefs. This sounds like an obvious statement, but for some reason a lot of us have ignored it over the years. Yes it is important to stand up for what you believe in. Yes, it is important not to just go by what the person next to you is doing. And yes, it is very important to discuss and even argue our different opinions. But I’m going to say something now that may get a few eyebrows raised; it’s more important what we do than what we believe.

What we believe obviously matters to us. It matters to our personal lives and shapes who we are. But what we do matters to the people around us; it affects the lives of those around us and shapes the world. Even — dare I say it? — even whether we believe in God at all doesn’t matter if we do nothing about it. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t believe in God or the divinity of Christ. But I am saying that what we do about it is more important than what we believe. If i believe that God is the creator and ruler of the universe, that belief means nothing unless I do what He says. I can believe that God judges every one of my sins but unless I repent from them that belief really means nothing.

But what does what I’ve written so far have to do with the original question, What can we do to create unity amongst God’s people? We can act instead of cut each other off. We can love each other instead of trying to force them to believe what we do. We can work together to build God’s kingdom, instead of tearing His kingdom down by excommunicating each other. How can we be the body of Christ without unity?

Sometimes I think to myself, ‘If everyone in the world were like me, then there would be world peace.’ Now, this is most definitely not true, because if the entire population thought like me, we would all be too radical to even admit that we agree with each other. (I often say that what I fear most in the world is myself.) So what would create world peace? Is it beliefs? It’s a very hard question to answer, and I’m not sure I can answer it, because I have never experienced it. But just because I don’t think I can answer a question shouldn’t mean I will stop trying. So I will try.

First, I will try to define what world peace is not. It isn’t every man agreeing with each other; that’s just not healthy. Neither is it a world with only one branch of religion; as far as I can see, all of the religions of the wold have some flaws. I suppose world peace might be achieved if no human killed another human — If nobody deliberately tried to hurt another person.

So what can we do to achieve such a goal? I don’t know. But what can I do to help? Get along with people. Try not to hurt them. You don’t have to agree with them, but I do think you have to love them.

This is a much more complicated subject than I thought it would be. So I suppose I’ll try to answer a more specific question. What can young Christians do to create unity amongst the church? That is also a very hard question. Perhaps even harder than the first one. So many Christians seem to think that it all depends on all Christians agreeing with one another. The trouble with that, is that the type of Christians who think that also want the whole world to believe their specific theologies. And the problem with that is another group of Christians that believe a slightly different thing cannot tolerate the first group. It’s a really mucked up jumbled mess.

But what can I do? I can’t agree with every other Christian, because some Christian’s ideas are just plain daft. I can’t say that all beliefs are equally right because some beliefs seem to me to be quite clearly wrong. This is what led me to the conclusion that whether someone’s beliefs are wrong or not, it shouldn’t matter as long as what they do isn’t wrong. So what is the right and wrong thing to do? As far as I can see, all of the peaceful religions are good for the world, and all of the non-peaceful religions are bad for the world. (I may be wrong on this though — I haven’t thought it through very well yet.) And as far as I can see, the Bible si the best guidebook to follow. All of the laws and commandments in the Bible that were written to be eternal statutes make up a good system to run the earth by.

The more I think about this subject, the more complicated it becomes. Perhaps a whole library of books could not explain this fully …

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The Unimportance of Belief Without Deeds

Sometimes I think to myself, ‘If everyone in the world were like me, then there would be world peace.’ Now, this is most definitely not true, because if the entire population thought like me, there would be no uniqueness of individual people, which is an important thing to have in society. So what would create world peace? Is it beliefs? This is a very hard question to answer, because I have never experienced it. But just because it is difficult shouldn’t mean I will stop trying. So I will try.

So what is world peace? It isn’t every man agreeing with each other; that’s just not healthy. Neither is it a world with only one branch of religion; as far as I can see, all of the religions of the world have some flaws. I suppose world peace might be achieved if nobody deliberately tried to hurt another person. So many in the church seem to think that it all depends on Christians agreeing with one another. The trouble with that, is that the type of Christians who think that also want the whole world to believe their specific group of theologies. And the problem with that is another group of Christians that believe a slightly different thing cannot tolerate the first group. It’s a really mucked up jumbled mess.

Obviously agreeing on everything is impossible, so the only way we can work together with our difference of beliefs is to accept that we have different beliefs. This sounds like an obvious statement, but for some reason a lot of us have ignored it over the years. Yes it is important to stand up for what you believe in. Yes, it is important not to just go by what the person next to you is doing. And yes, it is very important to discuss and even argue our different opinions. But it’s more important what we do than what we believe.

I can’t say that all beliefs are equally right because some beliefs seem to me to be quite clearly wrong. This is what led me to the conclusion that whether someone’s beliefs are wrong or not, it shouldn’t matter as long as what they do isn’t wrong. What we believe obviously matters to us. It matters to our personal lives and shapes who we are. But what we do matters to the people around us; it affects the lives of those around us and shapes the world. Even whether we believe in God at all doesn’t matter if we do nothing about it. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t believe in God or the divinity of Christ. But I am saying that what we do about it is more important than what we believe. If we believe that God is the creator and ruler of the universe, that belief means nothing unless we do what He says. We can believe that God judges every one of our sins but unless we repent from them that belief really means nothing. Belief is irrelevant without action.

So what is the right and wrong thing to do? As far as I can see, the Bible is the best guidebook to follow. All of the laws and commandments in the Bible that were written to be eternal statutes make up a good system to run the earth by.

Ab imo pectore, Oves Tondente.

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