Louise recently caught up with her friend, Stephi, who she went backpacking around Europe with when they were both younger. They drifted apart after the trip and lost contact.
Since then, Louise and her husband have become Christians. They've spent the last 25 years working in Christian ministry in the Northern Territory.
Louise recently caught up with Stephi and found that she's really into spiritualism – that is, spiritual healing such as raiki and chanelling.
Louise is concerned that Stephi thinks they believe the same thing, because her friend sometimes says they believe in the same 'source'.
But Louise doesn't want Stephi to think that the source of her raiki healing is the same source that Louise trusts in.
Louise really values Stephi's friendship and doesn't want to lose it. But she does want to say something without being over reactive and coming out and telling her what she believes is wrong.
It's also difficult to know what to say because she hasn't seen her for so long.
Comments (1)
I highly recomend Francis A Schaeffer's "Trilogy". They are difficult to get in Australia but they will give you much insight into what confronts Christianity in our postmodern post-Christian 21st century. Very few people have read Schaeffer which is sad indeed. Schaeffer traced the flow of philsophic thought forms beginning at people like Socrates Plato and Aristotle right up to people like Jean Paul Sartre and Francis Crick.
if you were to ask Stephi what love was or what pain was, she could only give you her individual idea about these things but she could not give you the universal for love.
For example to build the perfect chair you would need the perfect chair before you otherwise you could only build your idea of the perfect chair. Love is no different so unless we have a universal to explain the existence of love and its value then we need a universal. The Christian simply doesn't have this problem because of the alwaysness of the nature of the relationship between the memebers of the Trinity.
Love and communcation have always occurred here and so for the Christian love is not a word which behind it stands nothing. No other system give man an explanation like this. In all other systems, they begin with the 'impersonal' plus 'time' plus 'chance'. Not a single living soul here.
Pantheism begins with an 'impersonal other' or a 'philosphic other' but not a living soul. Stephi's spiritualism is no different.
It is one thing telling her that she is wrong but it is another thing when your dialogue is accompanied with a bit of intellectual love. Only the Judeo Christian faith has a personal God with a personality. The Greeks and Romans had personal gods to but they were merely exagerated human symbols and were finite. Our God is Personal Infinite Creator God.
I have bearly begun here as this is to greater subject to discuss in this foramt. I do recommend Schaeffer's "Trilogy" or any of his and Edith's (wife) books.
Posted by Hona Wikeepa | May 29, 2007 11:48 PM
Posted on May 29, 2007 23:48