Of course not! But most modern people - especially intellectuals - think much like computers; and more so with every passing year.
They think in very narrow, passive, unintuitive, unimaginative ways - plugged-into and dependent-upon almost constant inputs from the mass media and social media, as bureaucratic functionaries...
Modern thinking has been entrained into machine-cognition - and a machine cannot be Christian.
So modern Man cannot be a Christian, any more than a computer can be a Christian.
Oh, modern Man can say he believes this or that doctrine or dogma - but that is just a print-out; he can transport himself to a church and make singing or praying noises - but that is just an audio-broadcast; he can read Scripture - but that is just another memo from central management...
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Before modern Man can be a Christian in any meaningful sense, he must discover or re-learn how think in a human way - not a computer/ machine way.
This is why the aspect of consciousness, of spirituality; of such themes as the livingness and consciousness of all the world, the truth of imagination, the primacy of intuition, the possibility of personal revelation, the reality of supersensory perceptions... such themes are not just optional extras (and certainly they are not forbidden to Christians!), but such matters are vital to Christianity being or becoming more than an alternative software package for computer-Men.
Christians cannot be meaningfully Christian and think/ reason/ evaluate/ 'feel' just like mainstream modern people - to be really Christian here and now, in The West, requires a radical metamorphosis of thinking; of form as well as content; and all serious Christians need to be aware of this necessity.
I find this post quite scary and I think it really hits at a truth. What's the solution though? I would love (I think? Or maybe it's just 'grass is greener' thinking) to go and live out of the city. Live in the country and grow my own food. A smaller community. No commute on the tube. But how can I afford to buy land? How will I sustain myself? And surely, also, God needs Christians in the cities?
ReplyDelete@Nick - A first step is to see the country in the city - there is a lot of it, more than enough! Trees, grass, wildlife (esepcially birds); there is often rain - and, of course, the sky! All these are divine communications trying to get through to us - and once we accept that as a fact, then we can begin to understand them.
ReplyDeleteThis is very funny.
ReplyDeleteIt is frustrating for me though to deal with a program and not a person. I understand a person but I can't understand a program--which is more of the pre-immunization you've talked about. What is his particular version of the algorithm? Will I hit unrecoverable error and need to reboot?