Comment on A “Christian Agnostic”? by Wesley Kime.
To add a little texture to this thread: An Academic or Freelance Agnostic is a different question-slinger than a Christian Agnostic, very.
A simple agnostic firing questions at no target, just into the air for the hell of it, like a gunslinger roaring into town Saturday nights; or just to get your attention (“get you to think,” as he puts it, or to dance, in Westerns), or wince at the noise, and bagging no answers and at the end of the day empty-handed, is not unrespectable. His fusillade can be awesome, and, as long as a stray shot doesn’t take out an innocent bystander who failed to duck, entertaining, like fireworks. Some of our best friends are such straight-from-the-hip high caliber agnostics. Somehow they emerge from their cloud of gunsmoke smiling and unscathed. What a relief, on all sides. (I could have likened the Colt-waver to Don Quixote but he’s already taken.)
But a Christian knows his God and knows that he knows. But that knowledge of God, and soon God Himself, and then the slinger himself, become the Agnostic Christian’s target, and those self-inflicted wounds are not uncommonly fatal (not to God, not to worry). The holey Agnostic Christian is not just an oxymoron but terminated. Agnostic Christian, R.I.P.—oh that he would! His ghost seems hellbent on even higher decibel cannonades, and his targets his fellow Christians…with the happy Agnostic gunslinger still standing.
Wall, padnah, ah’m as ee-droit ah slinger as anaboodee in these he-are pahts, and ah find ma ammo (allegories and parables) all over’n the range ‘cept Genesis 1. Loading up another silver bullet, I take aim again:
A Christian Miner is different from a Christian Sapper. A Christian should never, yea he must never, in this life or the next, for eternity, never cease digging deeper into his mine, his God-given mine, harvesting ever more precious gems the deeper he digs. He digs deeper into the mine, not around or at that mine to undermine it, discovering only dung, and caving the whole mine in upon itself, and himself.
Wesley Kime Also Commented
A “Christian Agnostic”?
Whether waggish or grumpy, ET’s visits here are always memorable, especially today’s.
Normally frolicsome, he’s usually merely entertained by the idea Genesis 1 can be science and by the Heroic Crusade in defense of such, as he himself proclaimed it, waggish proclamations being his wont.
But today in a resolutely magisterial tone he’s over here proclaiming Genesis 1 Adventism, as personified by Dr. Pitman, sect-ist.
But I’m so old I remember when Walter Martin (remember him?), more theologically than anthropologically oriented, regally adjudged and adjudicated Adventism NOT a sect. WHAT a relief that was! Amen.
But seriously, of immediate concern is ET’s fretting over being so thumbed down over here. Amen.
A “Christian Agnostic”?
@ken: ET call home.
A “Christian Agnostic”?
@ken: Establish a Chair of Intelligent Design? A crackerjack idea! Award-winning! Best thing since 9-9-9. There’s a crying need for it. Must happen – at Harvard. UC Berkeley?
But at LSU? Friend, that’s like establishing the Debt-Tax-Abatement-Enhancement SuperCommittee at… — but wait! That’s too zingy, artful, insensitive, unfriendly, arguably sarcastic, in a word Kimesque. Apologies. Again. May I try again?
Recent Comments by Wesley Kime
Beyond the Creation Story – Why the Controversy Matters
@Ken: Ken, re. yours of May 31, 15 12:42 pm: … those standing up for FB28 have every right to do so…until they [presumably the FBs, not the communicants, although either could be changed in a twinkling of any eye] are democratically changed.”
FB28? What’s that? You probably know better than I. Genesis 1 I can quote; FB28 I can’t. And won’t bother to check. I couldn’t even tell you where to find those FBs. I read what you say more assiduously than the FBs. (What’s FB? FaceBook?)
In the first place I think you’ve got Adventism wrong, or at least Adventism as I know it. Well, maybe you haven’t, the postmodernist kind anyway. I’m pre-catechistic, ergo prehistoric, alas. I’m that old.
FB28 or whatever it is, if it WERE changed, democratically or otherwise, dramatically or creepingly, by evolution or edict, even if expunged and expurgated in the interest of big-tent accord, which seemed on the verge of happening pre-T. Wilson, and may yet, I wouldn’t even know it until I saw it here. You’d know before I would.
With or without and despite FB28 or whatever, or EduTruth, I’d still honor Genesis 1. I’d honor it, A, by faith, because the Bible, i.e. God, says so. A validated faith validated by B, The evidence, good scientific falsifiable evidence. And C, the consummate cosmic multi-vectored syllogism. Everything fits.
Seriously, though, discussion has to start somewhere and be referenced by something, for convenience if not citizenship. But I’d prefer to start, if granted “every right,” with Genesis 1, at the beginning.
Dr. Ariel Roth’s Creation Lectures for Teachers
@Ken: “something Dr. Kime said struck a very strange chord in me: that a Chair in ID at Harvard would be a quantum leap (forward – my edit) while such a Chair would be a step backward at LSU. I’ m very sorry Wes, but for me to honestly investigate reality, such double standard is not acceptable. …[therefore] I think I’m coming to the end of my Adventist journey.”
I can, of course, dear friend, understand why, and respect that, you would see the two directions of leaping, forward and backward, by Harvard and LSU, as a double standard.
But might it also be seen as simple Einsteinian Relativity? It all depends on from whence you’re starting or observing. Two venues, Harvard vs. LSU, two vectors, not two standards. At any rate, a parting of our ways. The Chair did it. A very unlucky ill-omened Chair, from the start.
Parting — that indeed is sad, especially this parting. I grieve too. In sadness we are agreed. That’s not double speak; only you could I say that to.
For these several years you, and your courteous ways, even your questions, have been most fascinating, even endearing, inspiring to both poetic and, I now regret, rasping response. I’ve so much enjoyed your postings, always looked for them first, and appreciated your uncommon patience and politeness, and our camaraderie in the bomb shelter and on the grandstand. Too bad the Chair, our double bed, didn’t work out.
As benediction, maybe we can all get together again, somewhere. Meanwhile, the Mizpah, which I think I should be the one to deliver, seeing it was, you say, my one-liner that was the last straw, for which I’ll get heck all around, and rightly so: “The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.” Genesis 31:49.
What the heck, have some popcorn for the road. And don’t forget your cyber plaque. You will be remembered, appreciated, thought about, prayed for. Do come back soon.
Until then, your jousting friend, W
Strumming the Attached Strings
@Phillip Brantley: Excellent! I shall quote you: “learn something from Sean Pitman.” Indeed, indeed — there’s so much to learn from that man.
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Bill Sorensen: “I don’t know if anyone has really been able to follow your thinking…”
A tad, a smidgeon, just slightly overstated maybe? Just a tad, just a smidgeon, at the cost of not a few dislikes? Well, I for one do follow it. And with great admiration. Great.
What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
@Ervin Taylor: Out of purely poetic symmetry of rhetoric, Ervin, your trademark whimsical “…I guess someone who rejects…” is asking for — I was waiting for it! — a Pitman’s “I guess someone who accepts…” Lovely diptych, ping and pong.
