This weeks Cafe Online with Simon Manchester – as succinct and sharp as ever! With a wee clip from the Passion at the end and some great questions….
The Blog of David Robertson
The Blog of David Robertson
This weeks Cafe Online with Simon Manchester – as succinct and sharp as ever! With a wee clip from the Passion at the end and some great questions….
Well, I watched the video – skipped over the music which really is a pointless part of this presentation. – eagerly awaiting something, no, anything that was to be presented as evidence and nothing was forthcoming.
And Flew stated he was deist NOT theist. What I found ironic was the fact Flew flatly rejected the notion of the Resurrection of the character Jesus of <Nazareth and here you are including Flew in a discussion of the resurrection.
You clearly havn’t read Flew!
Really like the way Simon Manchester puts this in his delivery with the invitation in the light of the millionaire committing suicide. I was contemplating similar in the light of someone I looked up to James Hunt when watching the film Rush.
I love the passion of F1, for me it’s second to flying. As someone who has driven an Aston Martin and a motorcycle round a racetrack and flown aircraft I get it. And why wouldn’t I want to taste more of what the world has to offer?
But then James Hunt died at the age of 45 form a heart attack. Hmmmmm. Live fast, die young, have a good looking corpse – could this be the voice of the devil, lying as what to do to live life to the fullest?
It was an interesting question to pose as to why our default position is disbelief. And then it logically flows why would God have this be the case, rather than an Eden experience of the default position to be in relationship with him? Isn’t a baby born innocent? Well – that’s a question I would file under “I don’t know”. And it’s OK to not know. Not knowing is not the opposite of faith, certainty is. For with certainty, there is no need for faith.
But yes listening to the talk is a reminder to me about how vociferously opposed to the Gospel I have been unlike you David who of course being a good Christian, perish the thought that you could ever have been that way ;).
But isn’t it the least likely people that are often of use? I was reading about Moses recently, and there was the reminder there that he was a murderer. And what did he do when he was called out on it? Rather than face the music, he ran away. And what about when God called him to approach pharaoh he made excuses and asked that Aaron do the speaking instead. But then this cowardly murderer ended up leading Israel out of slavery in Egypt.
Or consider say the apostle Paul, persecuting Christians to the point of death. And then him writing a good portion of the New Testament.
And I might be going some way to answering my own “I don’t know” as to the reason why the default position is unbelief. What if this being the reality points to the nature of God, valuing people that the world might have written off?
Is his empowerment of such people to fulfilled lives evidence of outrageous, other worldly love that would not be apparent if the default position had been belief? That even the most vile murderer is not exempt from his forgiveness and love?
The distinction between evidence and proof is key and is everywhere evident today, yet little acknowledged. Covid 19 so called science is on point as is much of what passes as research, with little words, “may” and “could” inevitably swamped in the write-up summary.
Standard of proof is also barely breathed as a topic.