I love the word “ignoramus.” Particularly in this context where a person with a big ol’ brain realizes maybe all us Jesus freaks aren’t completely nutso. The big question I pose from this article: is this relationship she discovered only available to select people? Or the more prominent response in our post-modern culture: “Good for her, but I’m not interested.” Is God cool with that option?
I understand her initial dismissal. The reality is, I often think I’ve made a decision to put my life and soul in the hands of the almighty tooth-fairy. Plenty of days I wonder if I drank the Bible Belt Kool-Aid and transformed into a mindless zombie. I’ve had people tell me maybe the revelation was due to some of my synapses misfired… maybe it was a hallucination… maybe my parents told me to believe it. I respond with “Did you have sex in the last week?” If they say yes, I reply, “Maybe your synapses misfired… maybe it was a hallucination… maybe your parents told you to believe it.” In other words, could I speak into a major life event of yours and tell you it wasn’t real?
Articles like these bring me back to true north, and I realize I know my life changed on Fri, Oct 22nd, 1999, when God grabbed me in a headlock. I kicked and screamed with my own objections, and then I realized the tooth-fairy is real, like in a MASSIVE-I-RULE-THE-UNIVERSE kinda way. By a country mile, it’s the best thing that’s happened, nothing else comes close.
“I once thought I was too smart to believe in God. Now I know I was an arrogant fool who snubbed the greatest Mind in the cosmos—the Author of all science, mathematics, art, and everything else there is to know.”
Shazam, that’s a doozy statement. Ms Picard is calling herself out as someone with too much pride to peer into the looking glass. Once she did, however, she encountered the answer to all things. Her world inverted the pyramid. Instead of becoming narrow, the world got exponentially bigger. Same thing happened to me, and it will for you too.
See ya next time. ML
This was a great read. Thanks for sharing it. I have a quick question about one of the points you make…
“I’ve had people tell me maybe the revelation was due to some of my synapses misfired… maybe it was a hallucination… maybe my parents told me to believe it. I respond with “Did you have sex in the last week?” If they say yes, I reply, “Maybe your synapses misfired… maybe it was a hallucination… maybe your parents told you to believe it.” In other words, could I speak into a major life event of yours and tell you it wasn’t real?”
I don’t understand your argument. Your revelation is 100% internal while sex is a physical and external experience. Maybe you’re arguing that we all live in The Matrix and what feels like literal physical contact is not really happening? Or, more likely, what you are saying is that your revelation was so profound that it was not a mental process, but rather that it rivaled a physical experience. I’m just interested in better understanding your perspective on this.
Yes, your latter question. I am saying my life change was so profound that the mental and internal wiring was altered, and rivaled something as powerful as sex. In my opinion, when prominent atheists such as Dawkins, Harris and Shermer try to argue a pseudo-neuro science concept that a Christian’s brain just “thought” something happened. It seems dismissive of the fact that literally several hundred million would claim life change like me. But to a skeptic, because you can’t measure belief in a vial like the physical act of sex, they attempt to reduce the power of the internal change. And there is data showing faith-based people have lower stress and other physical health improvements. Of course not all in a binary measure, but enough to give credence. Thanks Bryon.