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  1. FireDragon76

    New belief among teenagers. What do you think?

    Here’s a question to hold with care: Where is Christ in your certainty? Not the idea of Christ, but the One who meets us in real, lived relationship, revealed in sacraments and known in the heart?
  2. FireDragon76

    New belief among teenagers. What do you think?

    Jesus didn't say "Blessed are the bookworms", but "Become as little children". That's the heart of the matter. My critique of "academic rigor" isn't out of bigotry, either. I have seen how empty, hollow academic rhetoric hollows out religious institutions. As the Korean proverb goes, "the...
  3. FireDragon76

    New belief among teenagers. What do you think?

    All I know is that nobody ever truly encountered God without being willing to deeply challenge their categories of thought. An encounter with God has a habit of shattering our categories and expectations, as even Aquinas was forced to admit in the end, when he confessed his writings were "all...
  4. FireDragon76

    New belief among teenagers. What do you think?

    I'm not saying Eastern Christian theology is a perfect system, but its way of knowing is actually consonant with actual embodied human experience (indeed, there are many resonances between Eastern Christian spirituality, and many indigenous and premodern or non-western ways of knowing). OTOH...
  5. FireDragon76

    New belief among teenagers. What do you think?

    It's not bigoted in the sense that I am dismissing it out of hand. I look at its fruit, both personally, socially, and ecologically, and find it lacking. Roman Catholic scholasticism holds up legalism and rigorism as its fruits, and Protestant scholasticism ends in hollow dogmatism, with the...
  6. FireDragon76

    New belief among teenagers. What do you think?

    God is encountered personally in prayer, service, and sacrament, not simply through abstract categories. The mystery invites us to live faithfully within tension, bearing paradox without losing the core realities that faith demands. Doubling down on a medieval scholastic framework—with all its...
  7. FireDragon76

    New belief among teenagers. What do you think?

    I do agree, the real, living impact of Christ’s death and resurrection can’t just be some abstract moral example. That’s really what faith is about. But at the same time, trying to box that mystery into any one philosophical system misses something vital. The early Church wrestled with this...
  8. FireDragon76

    New belief among teenagers. What do you think?

    It’s not “conservative” to affirm that there is one Creator to whom we owe our lives and whose reality we are called to receive—even when it unsettles or challenges us. That’s simply faith. But you’re making a category error by importing Aristotelian metaphysics into what is, at its heart, a...
  9. FireDragon76

    New belief among teenagers. What do you think?

    That's a good point. Being overly concerned or controlling is just as bad as being indifferent.
  10. FireDragon76

    delete

    delete
  11. FireDragon76

    What did Jesus mean by "night is coming"?

    Yes, though I suspect it's a multivalent symbol, without one specific meaning.
  12. FireDragon76

    NT Wright refutes claim that early Christians expected immediate End Times

    Borg or Whitehead were closer to the truth here, a mystical reality, the quiet operations of love in the world that work in hidden ways yet have pervasive effects. It's akin to the Prophet's idea of "the Torah of the Heart". It just shows how much western people want everything practical...
  13. FireDragon76

    What did Jesus mean by "night is coming"?

    An untimely death, judgement. There's a sense of urgency in Jesus' words that speaks to something about the human condition broadly- we resist change, become set in our ways, and put off needed change until its often too late. "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish", etc.
  14. FireDragon76

    What is your opinion? - The intended readership of Hebrews.

    Rowan Williams is also excellent to read, if you like patristic theology and eastern spirituality, but want somebody more conversant in western critical scholarship and culture. He's a very profound, integrative Christian theologian and scholar, in that way.
  15. FireDragon76

    New belief among teenagers. What do you think?

    I don’t feel offended. My earlier questions were rhetorical, though sincere, and meant to invite reflection rather than confrontation. My responses aren’t meant to be evasive or obscure; rather, they come from a lived experience that recognizes life’s deepest realities are ultimately...
  16. FireDragon76

    New belief among teenagers. What do you think?

    Why does this require such a strong response? To what end? I honestly don’t see how engaging in this debate in that way really builds anyone up or advances genuine understanding.
  17. FireDragon76

    New belief among teenagers. What do you think?

    No, it's somebody stripped of illusions. What has the American love of pragmatic, rationalized efficiency done? It's destroying the planet, it's reducing human life in all its beauty and richness to an impoverished performance of consumerism, isolation, and mental illness. And many metrics of...
  18. FireDragon76

    I was told by a non believer that I should not be "so meek"

    As others have said, don't take it too seriously. Meekness is simply basic sanity in this world. This isn't about self-abasement, it's about staying out of the way of pettiness and foolish pretensions.
  19. FireDragon76

    New belief among teenagers. What do you think?

    Life isn't a problem to solve, but an unfolding story to inhabit. Conflict, paradox, mystery, they are all part of life. Take this bit of relational wisdom as an example from the Scriptures: "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another" (Prov 27:17). Western culture, with its idolatry...
  20. FireDragon76

    New belief among teenagers. What do you think?

    Love isn't an intellectual task, a puzzle to solve, divorced from its relational and incarnational nature. I'm really pointing towards something more like Native American or Eastern Orthodox spirituality and ways of being in the world, but one that also recognizes insights from western...
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