it's not at all an uncommon thing, but i really don't know how to get through to this kind of person. C.S. Lewis' famous quote came back into my head as i've been reflecting on the conversation:
... you must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.quote originally from Mere Christianity, this one in From Narnia to a Space Odyssey, a conversation between Arthur C. Clarke (who could be classed as believing in 'scientism') and C.S. Lewis (who rejected the claim that science answered all of life's problems). book edited by Ryder W. Miller, iBooks, N.Y., 2004.
2 comments:
I feel your pain. Am having exactly the same battle with some of my colleagues at work (only they won't admit to having created their own religion)!
Choosing between the possibilities that Jesus presents is a different kind of choice to the 'shopping trolley' idolatry that your uni student displays. It reveals the voluntarism at the heart of modern morality.
Unfortunately, the only way out of it that I can think of is when reality doesn't fit the choices we have made in an attempt to tame it. But we are so very good at protecting ourselves from such risky situations...
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