As I mentioned in my previous post Mr Dawkins is under his own God delusion, a delusion shared by many others and in my worse moments by me. The root of this common delusion lies at both our lack of understanding of the full godness of God and the pride of our hearts which hampers us even further.
We do not like to think of how above us God is because to do so is to remind ourselves of how far we have fallen. There is only one way to correct this deliberate misunderstanding of who God is and that is to turn to the Bible and see what it has to say about the full glory of God or the ‘weightiness’ of God (the technical term for this is the transcendence of God.)
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The God Delusion - What he said that was good Jesus said better. What he said that was bad was bad.11/8/2010 Four years after it was published I finally got round to reading Mr Dawkin’s best selling work “The God Delusion”. I may as well start by admitting that I remain a Christian, a six day creationist and a Bible literalist. Richard would be spinning in his grave had the church actually got its act together and bumped him off. That last sentence, although firmly in keeping with Dawkin’s view on religion, was a joke.
Anyway, it’s not all negative, there were a few points were Mr Dawkins and I share common ground. It’s probably best to start off there before moving to the considerably longer list of things we don’t agree on. The God Delusion – The Good Stuff Religion sucks Right, this point may take some explaining. Dawkins hates religion; that point is clear enough. He hates the hypocrisy of religious people, he hates the special treatment it receives, he hates all the wars, debates, murderers, evil all done in the name of religion. He rallies against Islamic fundamentalism, Jew haters, racists, people who want to see a Christian theocracy in the US, basically every religious nut job out there. And I agree with all this (to some extent). Religion, or to be more precise, religions of work, suck. As usual Jesus put it better in his famous six woes: This question is a biggy. Right up there with what is our purpose in life? (to glorify God) what will happen when I die? (heaven or hell) or what will I have for breakfast tomorrow? (cereal and toast).
The answer to the above question resolves around the concept of predestination. I know, long work, but the good news is that it means exactly what it looks like it means. People were destined to become Christians and the ‘pre’ means that this happened before they came into existence. But that’s throwing you right in at the deep end. To truly understand predestination we must go right back to the beginning… Man is sinful This is a pretty self evident point. Let’s run a quick test: have you for the whole of your life perfectly kept the two commands to love God with your heart, mind and soul and to love your neighbour as yourself? If that’s a no then you’re a sinner. But sin is more than that. We’re not sinners because we sin. We sin because we’re born sinners. “All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful natureand following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.” Ephesians 2 v 3 By default we’re sinners, ‘by nature and choice’ as Mark Driscoll says. Jesus gives a damning assessment of a sinful man’s heart: |
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