Re: [OT] Good, evil and religion [WAS] Re: A way to compile 3rd party modules into deb system?

[Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 05/11/07 08:00, judd@wadsworth.org wrote:
> On 10 May, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 12:25:43PM -0400, judd@wadsworth.org
>> wrote:
> 
>>> I agree with you on this.  My point was that some American 
>>> evangelical churches put a lot of emphasis on each person
>>> having a specific, identifiable conversion event in their
>>> life, which I don't feel is soundly based in scripture.  I
>>> wasn't sure if your use of the term "rebirth" referred to
>>> this type of event or the more general usage.
>>> 
>> I see what you are saying.  I generally believe that "born
>> again" experience should generally be a significant moment in a
>> person's life. However, I don't think it is always some sort of
>> "light shining from heaven, angels signing" type of experience.
>> In my case, it came on gradually over a period of weeks.  But I
>> can identify a definite before and after.  I think that is
>> "sufficient", so to speak.  More importantly, however, is
>> whether you feel that you are right with God in your conversion
>> experience.  That is, when God judges you will you be certain
>> that you *have* at some time in your life accepted Jesus 
>> Christ?
>> 
> 
> The reason that I mentioned it is that I have some friends who
> grew up in churches where everyone was expected to come forward
> at some time (usually as a teenager) and make a proclamation
> about their own "rebirth experience" in front of the
> congregation.  Somehow it was not acceptable to be born into a
> Christian family and gradually mature in your faith.

Because everyone must make their own choice.

Even if you are born into a Christian family and grow up learning
about evangelical theology, "you" must eventually make a concious
choice: the "wide" way of the world, or the "narrow path".

> There was enormous peer pressure to conform to this model, and
> several teens just made up stories to get it over with.  It is
> this emphasis on some sort of a personal transcendental
> experience ('light shining from heaven', as you state), that I
> object to.

Being physically born means N months of maturation then a single
point-in-time experience when you actually are "born".

Still, that communal pressure is, of course, a gross perversion of
the whole tenor of the New Testament.

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFGRHHMS9HxQb37XmcRAltbAJ9hs4aM/pLAlaZJgFLPfEaLFNBXawCg3nPS
rd2wX4Y0wTNn9HDg28LSOeA=
=yIEG
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----