There are so many causes competing for our attention, our time and our finances. The question is, where do you stand?
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J.R. Miller
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I married my wife Suzanne in May 1996. I love her and treasure her as the best friend and helpmate I can imagine. We have 3 wonderful boys. I am finishing my Doctoral dissertation on developing self-replicating teams for church planting and living out my current dream planting a church and working for Logos Bible Software. God is awesome!
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Love your cartoon. Seems like everyone’s pushing one cause or another instead of finding out what Father’s doing and imitating him. And we sure can’t do that if we’re not standing on the Rock.
Amen brother.
Good cartoon. I agree with the basic sentiment. Not sure I would expand this to all philosophical systems though.
My thinking was more focused on systems of government, but I am curious–which system of Philosophy would you put your faith in the same as you would the person of Jesus?
Well the question gets into the *what* a philosophical system is. If we take the basic and broad definition as an epistemology, metaphysic, and ethic, then I think it is plain that Scripture (and Christianity) presents a system of philosophy. In fact, such systems are unavoidable.
Personally, I view politics or government simply as ethics applied to society. So in that respect, it is possible for a political system to be more or less “biblical” than another.
Comparing Jesus to systems of philosophy seems like apples and oranges to me. To put your faith in Jesus requires that one already have in place *some* sort of “system of philosophy” (as I’m defining it).
I see what you are driving at, but I would suggest that Jesus is a person who cannot be reduced to a system of philosophy. And while many philosophical systems exist to explain people’s faith, none of these systems replace faith in the person of Jesus.
You wrote, “So in that respect, it is possible for a political system to be more or less “biblical” than another.” I do agree with this and the cartoon is not meant to diminish the importance of this discussion. It is more a reminder that ultimately all these things, good or bad, will pass away.
I find the language of “reduced to a system of philosophy” a little confusing. God certainly exceeds our comprehension and what we are able to systematize rationally (but as Esther Meek points out in her book “Longing to Know” so do people like car mechanics!), but I don’t really see this as problematic since what can be known of God is known (at least to some extent) via a “system” of thought like I mentioned in the last comment.
I’m also not sure how to take your statement about faith in a philosophy replacing faith in Christ. As I’m defining them, it would be like saying my faith in math replaces my faith in other people’s minds.
For instance, let’s say that evolutionary naturalism is a system of philosophy and someone has “faith” in it. I’m not sure how we could say, for example, that an evolutionary naturalist has replaced his faith his car mechanic, Jones, with his system. On the contrary, his system provides the (fluid) basis upon which he interacts with Jones… but I don’t see how it could ever replace his belief in Jones since the beliefs are operating at two different levels.
I would write the analogy for what I intended this way.
Imagine you were trapped on an island and will soon die unless you can get off. Lucky for you, there is an airplane on the island, but you don’t know how to fly it. You get one wish, what do you ask for.
1. A textbook explaining how to fly an airplane.
2. An advanced understanding of Bernoulli’s principle of fluid dynamics and its implication for piloting through turbulence.
3. A pilot to fly you out.
I would ask for the person.