DIALOGUING TO COMMUNICATE
Correction: I should have written: I think I know why the cynics and the nihilists love to dismiss and kill most new ideas, and even new ways of doing things,
which could be of value and for the greater good of all of us. It is oh so easy to knock!
It takes energy, real effort, curiosity, intelligence, imagination, faith, hope and loving concern for anyone to take the time to grasp, to really critique, to explore the new, and then take creative action--beginning with taking the time to understand another.
COMMUNICATING
For example, some atheists confuse PANTHEISM and PanENtheism. I asked one atheisT about PanENtheism and he answered:"There are different kinds of atheists and different approaches they take. My view is that I don't see the value of a pantheistic approach to god."
To clarify the important difference let me put the question this way to atheists: Are you aware of the work of the mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead? If so, are you aware of the difference between PANTHEISM AND panENtheism? Are you willing to find out?
Though I am easy, as you know, I like using the symbol G?D, rather than god, or God.
Why?
Because it helps me to think of the 'ground of all being'--a term for 'God' used by the great theologian, Paul Tillich--as more than a personal and Superbeing. How many have ever you heard of Paul Tillich?
If we are truly serious about the art of communication we MUST dialogue until we really understand what the other person is really saying--even if we end up disagreeing all the more.
THE CONVERSION OF A REAL ATHEIST
By the way, I once baptised a former atheist. He was my age--we were both in our twenties, at the time. Later, he actually became a successful minister.
In preparation for his baptism I asked him: What changed your mind?
But first, let me tell you how we met:
Interestingly HM's first greeting to me was: "Good to meet you, Rev. I am a devout agnostic, if not an atheist. Since you are running the only show in towm, and there is nothing else to do on Sunday, anyway, I will come and hear you...if you promise to keep me awake...." [Folowed by a loud laugh.] The rest is history.
His answer to my question, above, went something like this:
"
As you know I have been coming to church for nearly six months. Needless to say, your sermons have kept me awake. Not only that, they have made me think.
And your wife's home-made bread is delicious. I should add: Your cutting my hair now and then is appreciated too. [BIG laugh!!! Before I started to cut HM's hair he had to travel to the Goosebay Air Base, seven miles up the road. He mentioned the home-made bread because we often had food and fellowship together, after church] Then he went on:
Because you gave me a definition of God which does not insult my intelligence and my imagination. I discovered that the male-like God I was raised and expected to believe in was too small.
What I was raised to believe in bordered on--more than that, it was, a mental form of idolatry. I was expected to create God in the image of my father.
Your definition of God as that which is in and through the Cosmos; as all that encompasses and inter-penetrates it, physically, mentally and spiritually...how can I deny that, and go on thinking that life has any kind of meaning?
I began to see materialism and its atheist atheology for what it is. The problem with atheism is that it is a faith in things as they appear to be. Therefore, it is without any kind of hopeful or eternal meaning. The best atheism has to offer is a good life for the fortunate few in the material now until death do us part. At the end of all our striving there is nothing but the hope of a quick and painless death when our soul-less bodies--together with all our works of engineering and art, mixed with detritus and other kinds glacial debris--will be dumped into the abyss of unconscious nothingness, there to remain, forever.
Your definition gave me the freedom to think bold new thoughts. I now see the earth, the planets, the galaxies--whatever is out there and in here (he pointed to his and brain and heart)--as truly AWE-full. [He was an avid reader of astronomy, and other things, I found out.]
I liked your sermon on what Paul wrote in Romans 8:28.
In God, all things can--I'll change that to WILL--work together for good...as we put into positive action our faith, our hope and our love". Needless to say, the Rev. H.M. went on to become a colourful and dynamic minister. He served out his whole ministry way up in the sub-arctic north, which he loved.
When I met HM, he was a young manager with the Hudson Bay Company, the only store in Happy Valley-Goosebay, Labrador, at the time. IN 1953, there were 115 families, all squatters--living on Department of National Defense land.
As the leader of the only church in the shack town, with the help of the Church Council, I started the move to make the community into a regular municipality. This gave the people the right to own the land they lived on. They had already been up-rooted from their original shacks, which were too near the landing field. I was there when the Americans first became involved in the Viet Nam War. What a massive force of planes took of and flew over the arctic to Nam. It was a very historic moment. I had no idea, at time, of what a moment it was.
Today, there are about 9,000 people in the area. Things have changed. They even have their own radio station. Yes, the story of Happy Valley, yet to be fully documented show the role churches play in the development of communities. It also show that church people are interested is the social well-being of communities.
I do not wish to be snarky but may I ask: I wonder where the athiests were? Maybe some were among the silent adherents of my church, and were just afraid to speak up. If so, they had no need to fear; they were more than welcome.
Or were they coming to get caught up on their sleep?
