After the pastor of the church I was supposed to look after returned, we had a very nice conversation over the events that had taken place in his absence. He is a lovely man with a lovely heart for God who now has the task of "restoring order" in the church.
In our two hour conversation we touched on many things, including my "offending" view that all would eventually be restored to the Father. Our discussion has prompted some topics for a few more posts on the blog.
Here's the first.
Although people might readily agree that God's purpose for the world is "to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ" [Eph 1 : 10], it is not always easy for them to get to the next step and agree that this means that all of humankind must be reconciled to the Father for that unity to be possible.
They cannot see that unity cannot be achieved if God is enjoying the sweet fellowship of some whilst overseeing the eternal torment of others at the same time.
What is the mental block here?
Or is it nothing to do with logic, but everything to do with revelation?
We only become believers as a result of God giving us faith, so maybe the only way we see God's truth on this issue (or on any issue) is when God opens our eyes to it.
What do you think?
What's the relationship between logic and revelation?
Or is there no relationship at all?
Barry
Hi Barry,
ReplyDeleteI'm seeing more and more how revelation is the key. Some interesting confirmation came from a book I'm reading called The Power Of Story, written by a sports and corporate psychologist, Jim Loehr.
A very telling point he makes is how when we believe any form of dogma (or idea), it actually gets hard wired in our brains such that not even logic will shift it. It takes a determined force of will to shake ourselves of wrong thinking. Hence we hit brick walls when we see something so clearly and others are actually refusing to consider it.
The key has to be revelation. We are literally set free from the hard wiring in our brains by an act of divine inspiration.
I guess we can choose to be open-minded, and I wonder what kind of neurone patterns would become apparent in a study of the brain with that kind of rare thinking.
It would be important for all of us to understand that we are all hard wired in different ways to different ideas - some right, and probably some wrong too.
Bless you, Rog
The hard-wired theory certainly fits what I have run into.
ReplyDeleteBarry