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It All Depends

 “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,” (Matthew 6:9)

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1)

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.  (Hebrews 11:6)

          Let’s do a thought experiment. In your mind, walk out your front door and turn left. Continue through the first cross street to where the street Ts. Turn left. At the second traffic light, turn right, Take the first left.  Are you in the parking lot at Tops Markets? Are you even anywhere near a Tops Market? If you followed my directions, you must be in the parking lot. How can you not be?

          Of course, there may be two dozen houses in the universe where following those directions will get you to a Tops Market. The crux of the matter is where you start. This is the core of the problem faced in the debate between higher criticism, scientific naturalism, atheism, etc. and Christianity. If you begin with a foundation that there is no god, or (at its most lenient) the deistic view that if there is a god, he created the universe and went off somewhere, leaving us on our own, you will find any discussion of miracles impossible to comprehend.

          Oddly, it seems as though the person who does believe in God is better able to follow the argument of the person who doesn’t. My reading of White Fragility may have helped me to explain this to myself. A White person, the author insists, sees the world from his/her own culture, while a Black person (as a minority of the population) not only lives in a world where Black cultures exist, but also a world in which the White culture is imposed on them. If you replace the word White with World, scientific naturalism or atheism, and the word Black with Christian, you’ll find a parallel.

          Another reason for this is that the supposedly scientific perspective very explicitly excludes God and religion, while (contrary to some opinions) God and Christianity are able to include a large percentage of science. In other words, while you may not live where I live, you may know the area well enough to be able to follow the instructions in my thought experiment and end up at Tops.

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