Saturday, July 15, 2017

FASCINATING COMMENT from a FASCINATING ARTICLE; update John Piper

"
I attend an Anglican Church which is part of ‘the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (The Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion), using the
1928 Book of Common Prayer. It’s small, but not tiny, and growing.

I’m in my 50s, from California. Attending church was never a part of my childhood as my parents were atheists and my neighborhoods were devoid of church-going people. As a curious “seeker” in my twenties, I attended an Episcopal church, which I later joined, and after a years of listless boredom and putting up with increasing weirdnesses, I found this Anglican church.
Legions of us, children of atheists, struggle with any sort of faith. For me, doubt overwhelms daily. Merely believing the basics of Christian faith seems far more of a struggle to me than it does for those who grew up in the church, that is, in real churches where something other than progressive social policy is/was taught.
In my first grade of school, my parents inexplicably became Presbyterian. This blip in normal secular family behavior has given me memories of wiping oil off seagulls on the beach and wandering around Chinatown in San Francisco giving sandwiches to hippies. I vividly remember when the Sunday School teacher was told we had to memorize a part of a psalm (23rd, perhaps) so she left the classroom to find bibles. It took a bit of time, but she came back with a shiny bibles and passed them around. This was the first time I had seen a Bible — I wasn’t sure what it was. I thought, perhaps, it had magical powers, that the words within were charmed and so ran my fingers over the text so the magic would stick to my little fingers like sweet honey. Strangely, I licked my fingers afterward because I didn’t want to waste or lose any of the magic they had touched.
I asked the Sunday School teacher if I could take the magical book home for a week … and was refused.
Tragically, I didn’t learn from my own parent’s mistakes and so didn’t raise my own kids in churches. I repeated what I experienced, giving my kids only occasional forays into foreign, churchly places. My children are the latest iteration of a continuing process of spiritual degradation which has been manifested generationally. Seven generations of my family, ending with my grandfather, attended Princeton to train for the ministry. Seven! But my father, who is still alive, became a physicist, a thorough-going secularist/materialist who rejected the hypocrisy of his own father, a corrupt minister. This probably explains why I wasn’t raised in the church. It also explains why my children weren’t raised with any faith. And, sadly, their children won’t be raised in the faith, most likely.
In spite of all the hoopla about “outreach” and “missionary work within our own communities,” the number of converts who raise their children successfully in churches, and then their grandchildren … is vanishingly small. What I see, as a struggling Christian, are churches populated with people who grew up in the faith, not newbies or converts with families. Once an extended family “goes secular,” the path to re-Christianizing that family is long, difficult and usually unsuccessful."
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THE CHURCH OF MODERN LUNACY

http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=10845

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Most recent post from T.W.W. is about John Piper -
Believe me, he lives "rent free" in their heads.  He's a great and Godly man.

Don't forget; the prophets have always been hated.

2 comments:

  1. Whatever you may say about TWW & John Piper, I've noticed that on your blog everything is about The Wartburg Watch, even the name given to your blog is about them. Could it be that TWW and the Deebs live "rent free" in your head? My Mamma always said, "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."

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  2. Nonna, I am the antidote to group think at T.W.W.
    But Kudos to you for offering your opinion.

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