Gobblerforge wrote: ↑Sun Nov 03, 2024 6:30 am
Been there, done that. God's Holy Spirit convinced me, when I was running away as fast as I could.
I'm curious if you read fiction? What do you like to read?
And, is there any other body of knowledge or inquiry that you also reject?
No I don't read fiction. Actually, I don't read for pleasure. All my life I have had a very difficult time retaining anything I read. If I am trying to memorize a part from a harley manual or something I have to read it over and over to put it all in my head. Don't get me wrong. I can read very well and aloud but not retain it. Give me a picture or better yet a video and I got it. As for rejecting a body of knowledge, That's a tough one. I see it more as choosing to follow the trail of evidence over faith.
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Thanks very much for responding. I get what you are saying. I use technical manuals for working on trucks and bikes and boat engines, etc. I have difficulty with certain things. Strings of numbers, like a telephone number, i might have to look at 3 times to dial it correctly. I transpose numbers. I have a credit card I have used for 10 years and i still don't recall the numbers correctly. But I built a flathead harley 45 from parts i scrounged from newspaper ads. Engine, frame, forks, tanks, wheels, etc collected until i had a kit bike. And assembled all the pieces with no manual, no internet, nothing but my hands teaching me to do it. I guess i am mechanically inclined.
My question about what you like to read is about reading fiction, the ability to "suspend disbelief" is what makes it possible to see yourself in the scenes and the context of the story.
The Winds of War comes to mind, historical fiction based on historical facts lets me "get" to some extent what my family was going through, and what their peers were going through. Something i wouldn't know about otherwise.
The shop manuals are important. I took a detroit 71 series shop manual to a youth group meeting, showed the kids the photos and the step by step instructions and told them that with that book and a few very simple and common tools they could completely disassemble and reassemble that detroit engine.
Then i showed them some generic manuals with lots of pictures and explanations for working on cars, and asked them which manual they would use to work on a Jimmy engine. They agreed that the manual written by the makers of the engine is the one to use.
Then i told them that the Bible is exactly the same thing. The maker of the universe and everything in it gave us the shop manual so that we could know who the maker is, and what he wants us to know. This is the proposition of scripture, that the one who created everything is revealing things we cannot know or understand without this revelation.
This owners manual not only tells us about God, who he is, and what he has done, and what he will do in the future. BUT, it also provides the proof of the evidence so that we can examine what has happened and what will happen as evidence that can be tested. Faith is fact based in exactly the way that the detroit manual is fact based, and can be tested the way any objective proposition can be tested.
This evidence is tested and proved, it is supplied in the book. It is reasonable and understandable. It is given to us because
we don't know what we don't know.
I'm glad to 'splain it if you are interested or curious. It's a simple proposition, and not difficult to understand.
i respect your position because i've been there. thanks for listening.
regards,
grizz