Humans, Experience, Fahtih and Reason

There has been a lot of talk lately about human beings. What does that mean to be a human beings? And what about the human being is different from the animal kingdom, if there is any difference?

Our physical bodies do impact the way we understand our life. Our physicality is our situadedness, or our culture, as well as our personal and unique identification factors. The Christian worldview is challenged today to understand how it is a distinct understanding of truth. Some have reverted to a somewhat fundamentalistic understanding of truth in Scripture. This is nothing less that a warmed over fundamentalism, where Scripture was understood apart from the other disciplines. Scripture was understood to be a uniquely inspired text, where all the disciplines were to be understood within the text's understanding. It is the pieistic understanding of truth, through faith, which presupposes the text, as foremost in the seeking after truth....

I find that understanding faith as the end of of every situation and person's difficulty is so short-sighted. And I think that the Church has an interest in "protecting" the Scritptures as special revelation, but at what costs is this "war"? The costs is the costs of understanding a broader perspective of "truth". It is, in effect, the costs of edcuation! Christians should not be perpetuating an unenlightened view of faith. We should seek to help students and others to critically think about their faith, so that real growth can happen.

I watched a documentary on Jim Jones last night. It is amazing that so many people would come under the influence of such a person. Jim Jones was not particularly chraismatic. But, the people that followed him were predisposed to being "led' into the abyss. There's was not a critical faith, but a pieistic one. Faith in faith is a leap into the dark of another's control, or an irrational priority of life. And all of this is done in the name of the "kingdom", or "the people of God" or other such terms. It is dangerous and harmful.

Reason must be embraced so that in a climate of irrationality, faith can be educated into true commitment, not based on a childish "dream" but a true conviction.