Right Left Whatever

I was a 'Bright' once, then I wised up

Reverend Mike has a post linking to two other bloggers, One Hand Clapping, and Kingdom Come.

Here's some testimony: I was a 'bright' once. Indeed for about twenty years, I thought I was too smart to be a Christian. I was a secular humanist most of that time, sometimes not too fervently (tip for seekers out there - Humanism is boring!), and tried Ayn Rand's Objectivism for a couple of years (the last two - and I credit her for blasting post-modernism out of my brain)

There were two questions that influenced my thinking, that got me turned around. One political, one religious.

1) First off, as an open-minded seeker of truth, I read the Black Book of Communism, which led me to ask, "If humanists are so smart, then why are they so apologetic for socialism?" If you look at the magazine put out by the American Humanist Association, The Humanist, you'll see that that magazine is as bold as The Nation in its support for socialist policies and ideals. Didn't these people ever consider the track record for socialism in the twentieth century? Can they truly claim to be smart? The seeds of my doubt were sown. I began to doubt the wisdom of what I heard in humanist circles, but before going any further, I had to get rid of a post-modern mindset. For that, I turned to Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Ayn Rand was a fierce critic of post-modernism, and believed in the existence of Objective Truth. I had to change my mindset because in my former Unitarian Universalist-belief, I believed that one could never know the truth. Seeking for it was ok, but finding it was a sure sign of heretical closed-mindedness.

2) If God created the universe, and if Jesus is The Son of God, or God Himself, given the divinity of the entire Trinity, why would the Resurrection be an incredible thing? Really, why would it be such a big deal for Jesus to be able to do this if He was who He claimed to be? I did a bit more research on manuscripts which led me to believe, based on real evidence, that all the books of the New Testament were written by people who either saw the Resurrection or were in the company of someone who did. I could never say with complete intellectual honesty, "The Resurrection never happened". I believed, and my belief has evidence backing it up.

Posted by joelfuhrmann at June 26, 2003 09:51 PM