OK, Finn, you are correct in one issue: to put one’s trust in the Christian God and in Jesus Christ is most emphatically faith in the same sense as putting one’s trust in one’s wife or another human being is. It is of course a non-rational, though hardly irrational, decision to trust someone. What I was protesting, I believe with some justification, was the use of terms like “brainwashing” and “irrational” to describe religious belief.
In the simplest of statements: I do not believe the Bible to be dictated by God, in any strict sense. I do believe that the majority of it was written by people proclaiming the truth as they knew it, in a variety of genres and literary usages. You could get Diogenes, Tom~, and me riffing for hours on the nature and provenance of the Gospels – which were definitely not in two cases and likely not in the other two written by eyewitnesses, but which were prepared as polemic documents portraying Jesus in four men’s particular perspective of who He was. It’s my considered opinion, weighing the evidence, that they together paint a coherent picture, allowing for literary flourishes and individual slants on interpretation, of an individual who had a strong impact on those with whom He came in contact. With those early Christians, I feel it is an acceptable metaphor to say, “When we see Jesus, we see God.”
As to why I came to put my trust in Him, and through Him in the God of whom He is simultaneously Son and Person incorporate in (and we can do Trinitarian theology at length later if you like), it came from a number of personal experiences that I have tried to subject to skeptical analysis and find difficult to explain as self-delusion – combined with the fact that my concept derived from them accords in large part with elements of the historical testimony of people who have had similar “theophanies.” Again I can talk about this at more length, preferably in answering questions and clarifying misperceptions of what I mean.
And I have no problem doing this; I firmly believe that the bases for a belief structure must inevitably be subjective, but should be able to stand up to honest objective questioning. I do have an issue with spin-doctoring people’s statements in a belligerent, uncivil manner, as has been discussed at length in the Pit.
Afterwards it was the emotional connection to that church and a sense of purpose that kept certain questions suppressed. I see that in some of my friends and family now. I’ve even asked them to stop asking someone else “what does this mean” and look into your own heart and mind for the answer. What seems to happen is that they fear that if they actually look at it too much and find they disagree then that might threaten the emotional relationship they have with their group. Maybe it’s also that they haven’t been able to separate the subjective nature of the journey from the objective beliefs attached to it and fear if they throw out anything they must discard it all. IMO that’s that’s Jesus was speaking of in the verses that talk about separating families and bringing the sword. We must be committed to our own inner journey. People tend to be a herd and when someone has the nads to not follow the herd and steer for themselves the herd gets annoyed.
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