From: jonh@david.wheaton.edu (Jonathan Hayward)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: A Question to Christians
Date: 1 Oct 92 03:57:47 GMT
Organization: Wheaton College, IL

In article <Sep.29.02.27.04.1992.2332@athos.rutgers.edu> jcarroll@ferris.cray.com (Jeff Carroll) writes:
>Monotheists in general believe that morality is basically "what God wants".
>Christians believe, in opposition to other monotheists, that God actually
>got down on earth, walked around for thirty years or so, and made the set
>of moral pronouncements that appear in the New Testament of the Bible.
>
>Many Christians believe that what's in the Bible is literally what Jesus
>said, and that what of the Bible he didn't say was inspired by God, and
>that that should be the end of the argument. In that world view, anyone who
>thinks that morality or theology or literary interpretation is more complicated 
>than that is clearly in the wrong, and is worth listening to only inasmuch as
>is necessary to point out the error of that person's ways.

That's one of the biggest oversimplifications I've seen in a long while.  Let
me present a comparable oversimplification of New Age religion (and many
Eastern religions, such as Hinduism) to perhaps make it more visible how that
is.

New Age religion does not have absolutes.  It does not have black and white.
Everything is grey, and what truth one person finds has no bearing on what is
truth for another.  Ethics and morality exist in some sense, but they are what
you choose them to be, and it is perfectly acceptable to choose them to fit
your convenience and not restrict anything you want to.

Read the above a few times, and look at what it is (if at least a fundamental
understanding of New Age and Eastern religions is rare, I'll try to massacre
another example).  It starts with some things that are right (kind of): not
everything is black and white, and there is grey (note a lack of discussion of
the idea of darker and lighter shades of grey, and searching for the lighter
instead of the darker shades to the best of your ability).  From this
oversimplified statement, it leaps onto something that is much more completely
and visibly wrong: that morality is whatever you choose it to be for your
convenience, and that there are no common, fundamental principles of light and
darkness.

Now, for how that is done in the quoted text: Many Christians believe that the
Bible is what God wanted to write (OK so far), and that that should be the end
of the discussion (well, um, really shaky: that God wrote it is taken to be the
end of the discussion, but the described misunderstanding of people who want to
know how God wrote it, and if there are errors, is very poorly founded).  It
then goes on to a sweeping (and false) conclusion: anyone who wants answers to
the more complex questions that present themselves is wrong, and there is
nothing to be learned from people who have not found Christ.

The rest of the article was not really like this, but this fly in the ointment
stood out.  To the author of what I responded to, and other people who are
writing articles: please be careful in your writings not to write overly
simplistic summaries that do not do justice to what they summarize.

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