No, I didn't forget this book. But ever since the CM conference and my experience with the leg cramps, I've been reading everything I could about how to deal with them. But now I'm back to Being Human (by Ranald MacAuley and Jerram Barrs). This book deserves a second reading, so I'll be re-reading it with Miss Roxie when she gets her copy.

This chapter is about how to understand the role of the mind in a Christian philosophy that isn't based on Platonic dualism. In light of scientific evidence and criticism that casts doubt on the truth of Scripture, the tendency is to go towards one of two extremes - either stubbornly refuse to consider or accept science or critism (evangelicalism), or to decide that faith is something different and removed from the reason of the mind and based on experience (liberal theology). Traditional evangelicals bury their head in the sand and accuse anything that comes from the secular world or appeals to the intellect as evil. Liberals look at faith as being divorced from reason. It doesn't matter whether the story of Adam really happened, they say. What matters is that I feel the presence of God in my heart.

But there's a middle ground. "Thou it is possible to declare the truth while knowing little about it, believers should never consider ignorance a virtue, but always seek to understand what Christianity is and how it relates to contemporary ideas. In this way we grow as Christians and become better able to help others see both what is wrong in alternative systems of thought which deny God and also the truth revealed in the Bible. The very fact that truth exists will be a source of wonder and excitement . . . As this happens the division between religious and non-religious topics of conversation disappears. Since almost everything one talks about necessarily relates in some way or other to the biblical world view, conversations will tend to lead toward the discussion of the basic truths of the Christian faith without any artificial manipulation . . . We have nothing to fear intellectually; it is other world views which are false, and demonstrably so."

There's also no need to discourage honest skepticism - if God is truth, then we don't have to be afraid that too much prying and questioning will reveal weaknesses that will erode faith.

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