"The Making of a Mind Set Against God: The Intellectual Principles I Was and Wasn't Taught in College"

This talk by Mary Poplin, from the Veritas Forum, is a very refreshing explanation of why Christianity makes sense in the mix of various worldviews--refreshing in the sense that she doesn't follow the more common Zacharias-Craig-Moreland-Sire approach to worldview. Those are great, but this is too, and different. See for example how she treats the claim that all religions are basically the same at their core:

"In Judeo-Christian principles, God wants to give you the desires of your heart.... With a relationship with the living God, you begin to understand who you are... you understand your gifting. But in Christianity it is not just your giftings that help you predict and understand what your purpose is, it's your grieving. For example, for me, when I look around the schools and see what happens to poor children in schools, and how they come out of schools still sorely, poorly educated, it grieves me. And that means that's part of my purpose. Also in Christianity when you line up with God you understand your purpose, and it becomes the desire of your heart to fulfill it. And God wants to then give you the desire of your heart, knowing full well that fulfilling your purpose will actually cause you to suffer; and there is a way to suffer in the right way. That is versus Eastern religions, which I thought were not incompatible with [Christianity], but in Eastern religions, the goal is to actually give up desire in order to avoid suffering. Now those two things can't both be true."

(This excerpt comes at around the ten minute point in the podcast.)

Now, granting that not all Eastern religions teach the same thing, she is right on the mark with pointing out that at least one of them (Buddhism, in this case) has goals that are totally different from those of Christianity. I've never been able to understand how anyone could say "all paths lead up the same mountain."

By the way, her analysis of desire is correct: God promises to give us the desires of our heart--though not without suffering--as we follow him and trust in him, and as those desires are tuned to the way he has uniquely designed each of us to make a difference in the world.

Posted: Wed - May 23, 2007 at 04:45 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

"The Making of a Mind Set Against God: The Intellectual Principles I Was and Wasn't Taught in College"

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson