Origins, Fences and Plans

And the 'once a week entries' rule starts now...

Hmm, I would agree that thus far in these posts I've been procrastinating the bigger core issues that I've been wanting to explore via philosophical ramblings on perhaps smaller topics which can wait 'til the big fish have been fried. The main reason being that I wanted to get the dice rolling as I gather some sources and start the 'real' investigating.

The good news is that I actually have started :) The missing thing though has been me reflecting on it here and synthesizing both what I've learnt, my response/reaction, questions I have and tangents or links that should be followed up later on. In fact, I think that's a nice way to structure my regular posts. Let's make that into a simple dot point list:
1. What does the research say?
2.What do I think about this information - both on a personal level and in light of other information?
3.What other sources or topics have arisen from this research that is worth following up on or exploring another time?
4.What unanswered questions remain that I need to research further?

That of course is just the bare minimum of what I'd like to do here in these posts.

So the purpose of this post (seeing as it's bed time and all) is to give a brief summary of what I've looked at so far, where I'm at in terms of being a Christian, and what the plan is from here.

1. What I've looked at.
Just a summary for now.

Basically as I may have mentioned before, I've read a Lee Strobel article on Doubt in which 3 main points that I can remember came out:

a) It's ok to doubt and still be a Christian. I.e. Having doubts don't make u a non-Christian; and it's normal for Christians to strugle with doubts every once in a while.

b)Strobel thinks that people use doubts as an excuse to hide something deeper. Like hiding behind say a particular argument because you don't want to say give up your life for God or something like that was one of his examples. This got me wondering - gee, am I hiding some deeper resistance to Christianity? I think I wrote down some points about what me deeper reasons could be that I gotta look up

c)I forgot where he got this idea from (perhaps the Bible?), but Strobel thought that you basically come to something either wanting to believe or not, and that that will affect how you read things. That sounds a bit too simple - he was way more poetic and deep and I'll get back to that 'cos I think it's a really important point. Kinda scary too. It did, however, remind me of the commonsense concept of the 'gestalt' ( I think was the word), that cam up in my Science and Religion course back in 2007. The gestalt theory was pretty much that if u come to something with a preconceived view you will see what you want to see. But Strobel's point was a bit different....

I'll flesh these out better another time. Including who Lee Strobel is etc. I really want to make it clear where the information is coming from, how credible the sources are etc....

Ok, another thing which I've done is watched the 4 episodes of the 'Christ Files' documentary - made by our very own Aussie scholar John Dickson. If you're reading this Attila, I think you should watch it and I'd very much like to hear your thoughts. The cool thing about this doco, is that all the info comes from scholars and is therefore credible as they're the experts in the areas of the historicity of the Bible.

From the doco, it was made clear that there really was a historical figure names Jesus and that the New Testament documents about him are credible historical sources. More on the particulars later.

That basically has 2 implications or next steps:
a) If Jesus was a real person, then he must have been either a liar, a lunatic or Lord (I steal that phrase from FEVA and their poster ministry). That's pretty serious stuff and is worth checking out - c'os if he is Lord u'd be pretty dumb to ignorantly let that slip by.

As I'll explain later, historians basically think that the New Testament documents are the best source to get info about Jesus as it was written by the people who he hung out with, and also the people whospent time with the the ones Jesus hung out with. Essentially by witnesses. This in turn means that to do proper research on the matter, the New testament must be read and studied in detail. In fact, as the whole Bible is being explored for truth, i would agree with the point that you actually have to read what you're exploring before you can make educated responses to it. A long jouney indeed...

b) The Old Testament, what it says and its credibility are very important because they are essentially what point to Jesus' significance.

I haven't found much on the OT yet, so i gotta do that.


2. Where I'm at as a Christian
I guess I'm a bit of a fence sitter. I wanna believe Christianity and go with it, but the skepticism and doubts prevent me from whole-heartedly commiting to it and growing. My mission is to sort out the core doubts first so that I can commit to it properly and be a 'proper' Christian exploring doubts, rather than a fence sitter not getting anywhere in either direction.

I think part of the 'problem' is the influence of others upon me. Both your everyday non-Christian critique and members of the intelligentsia who downright look down on all things spiritual as being archaic - of an old age. I like having the ability to switch perspectives and empathesise with all views (or not just ignore new discoveries), but I think I've worked my way into an unhelpful corner of 'neutrality' at present. Even when I hardcore commit, as an educated member of society I:
a) don't want to lose the ability to objectively consider other people's perspectives; and
b)I've forgotten, hehe...

So gotta do more Bible reading etc as part of getting over this hurdle.


The Plan from here
So I guess the plan is 2 fold:
1. I'm starting with continuing my research of the historicity of the Bible; and
2.I'm gonna sit down and study the Bible with that little bit more effort. And yay, I'm finally gonna get once of those study Bibles. About time, aye?

So from hence forth, (hopefully), no more vagueness like 'I think it said etc'. This blog will updately track my journey so that I always have things to go back to and won't forget.

And someone please smack me if I don't keep this regular. Once a week minimun, ok? Peace out.