that I could be considered a Christian for 5 years, and do not understand basic theology. If somebody came up on the street and asked me what salvation, faith, truth and the Trinity meant I would have trouble answering his questions. That's probably because I have never been asked these questions directly; rather indirectly, and I wasn't expected to give an answer. Therefore I never was obliged to take Christian faith seriously.
Other than the ones I see every Saturday and Sunday at service the majority of my friends are 'apathetists' or atheists. I remember taking a philosophy class in year 10 solely because all my other school friends were doing it as well, and I didn't want to be left out of the circle. When the teacher asked if anybody believed in a god no one put their hands up, not even me because I was not ready to defend my faith. The teacher looked a bit shocked, replying 'well, many people rely on religion as inspiration in their lives.' But still she didn't get any response that admitted that they believed in God, and my friend silently muttered to me, 'well, don't you go to church?'
I think that God hung His head in shame for this moment in time. 5 years down the track, and I am taking up philosophy once again, this time only to pass a university course, or the unit known as 'History and Theory of the Built Environment'. When I tell people that I have to sit on a exam that tests you on your knowledge of philosophy applied to architecture they get question marks above their heads and wonder how does architecture really relate to philosophy. I don't get it either; maybe architecture has high reaching moral and ethical consequences that come from dealing with spaces that people practically live in, and that's why I have to study works by Kant, Foucault, Heidegger and Rousseau.
To be honest I hate studying philosophy. I wish I could do away with it. I am a firm believer that I don't need philosophy to get through life, and trying to understand the knowledge of how knowledge works is a waste of time. I wish I never took up that unit in year 10, because it is better for me to not know that there can be factual errors in the Bible, that law and order is a social construct of mankind, or that reality is just a perception from the human mind, post-modernist theories in general or stupid things like that. But unfortunately I live among people smarter and more intellectual than me, who all have the privilege of studying at a tertiary level, and if I just left my faith without any intellectual basis then people will consider me ignorant and dumb. I know, I have beef against philosophy because I don't want to be reminded of my high school blunder.
But since I've taken philosophy as of now I've decided not to leave my faith to stale away as it already is as it is, so I have been reading a few things about theology while I study for my exam. I've gone through a few chapters of St Augustine's Confessions and some other books as well. As well as that the youth group is going through some sessions loosely directed towards defending your faith. The important thing I have taken away from a few weeks' thoughts ignited by our youth sessions is that we might know God with all our intellect but it is not enough. We do not truly know God until we have seen Him and experienced Him personally. A.W. Tozer puts this simply in his book
The Divine Conquest; 'A man can die of starvation knowing all about bread, and a man can remain spiritually dead while knowing all the historic facts of Christianity.'.
I imagine for a few weeks there's been this talk flying around because God might be intervening and letting me know that I have so much intellectual pride stored up in my heart that I cannot love Christ for what He has done. It might have been inevitable that I had to face studying philosophy again. For a while I've wanted to make the conclusion that we can never give ourselves to Christ, because of our sin. I think that today we can sit there, bow our heads and say, 'God I want to give my entire life to You, do as You will', but that will not do any good until God really touches our hearts and asks us to come forward as disciples of Christ to do His will. I for myself have stood up countless times when a pastor or preacher calls to devote their souls to Christ but never really committed in my heart to follow God everyday.
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