 Posted Friday, August 11, 2006 6:16 AM
|
|
|
|
Hi all...SurferforJesus here long time no post. I hope your summer is treating you well and our Lord is holding you in the palm of his hand as the old Irish Prayer says...
A question.
As you know my lovely and loving wife is CS and so I know about CS through my exposure to her. One thing I notice is this obsession with CS literature. All she reads is the Sentinel, S & H, the Monitor and anything coming out of the Publishing Society. I tried to get her to read Mere Christianity to no avail, which in my view is Christianity 101.
Is this typical behavior? I mean this woman has never read anything else since I married her 13 years ago. I just wonder if it is typical or atypical of CS people in general.
BTW...if you were wondering how I am doing.... here is the update... I am fine, but I have given up the fight. I have two kids to raise and a start up business to manage.. I have no energy to fight. So, I pray daily ( in my case the rosary) that the Holy Spirit will find an opening in her heart to show her Christ's truth. I ask forgiveness for my sins and for hers and thank God for his blessings. But I cannot fight about religion and keep a happy household. I am in a no win situation with that and put myself in God's hands.
Nice to see new people posting ......your ex CS stories are tragic and I pray for your recovery.
God Bless and thanks for your responses.
SurferforJesus
|
|
|
Posted Friday, August 11, 2006 7:13 AM
|
|
|
|
SurferforJesus,
Is this typical behavior?
Yes, it is typical CS behavior. While perhaps not explicit, the culture does implicitly discourage other literature such as CS Lewis.
According to communication theories as old as Aristotle, such discouragement can be an effective means of ensuring control of the beliefs and behavior.
Do Go Be Man
<><
|
|
|
Posted Friday, August 11, 2006 7:55 AM
|
|
|
|
Marketing operates on the same principles. The user or customer becomes hypnotised to accept what is being sold by continually advertising its product. Organised religion is no different.
Cheers
Jan
|
|
|
Posted Friday, August 11, 2006 7:57 AM
|
|
|
|
Not sure if I made sense on my second sentence - could do with some editing - however hope the reader understands.
Jan
|
|
|
Posted Friday, August 11, 2006 10:10 AM
|
|
|
|
<<
As you know my lovely and loving wife is CS and so I know about CS through my exposure to her. One thing I notice is this obsession with CS literature. All she reads is the Sentinel, S & H, the Monitor and anything coming out of the Publishing Society. I tried to get her to read Mere Christianity to no avail, which in my view is Christianity 101.
Is this typical behavior? I mean this woman has never read anything else since I married her 13 years ago. I just wonder if it is typical or atypical of CS people in general. SurferforJesus >>
Hey Surfer.
In my experience it is very typical of the cs I knew and observed closely for 50 years.
I cannot think of anything official coming from tmc dictating limited selective choice of literature in general.
After college I personally read very little else until I broke out of my cs mental box.
One of the traps I think one can get into when adopting any social, political or religious belief system is you tend to read what reinforces it not what challenges it. I tend to be fairly conservative politically yet I read across the spectrum from ultra left to ultra right wing. Now that I have been mentally liberated from the 'thought box' I was in I truly enjoy challenging my opinions and being open and aggressive about pursuing knowledge and news and others differing opinions. My opinions can change with new views and information from the distillation of complex geo-political issues by brilliant analysts and thinkers.
Religious beliefs may not be totally analogous with political orientations.
I made an extensive study of all major world religions after leaving cs.
I wasn't sure I was technically even a 'Christian' ie adopting dogma, values and beliefs all on faith and my relationship with Jesus Christ at that time.
You know you have to be careful when throwing stones if you live in a glass house as they say.
I wonder how many people on this forum have read the Koran, Bhagavad-Gita, Upanishads, Torah, Rigveda or investigated or studied Buddhist or Hindu practices?
My guess would be most born again Christians read Christian literature that resonates with their own interpretations of the Bible.
I think you have made a good choice for harmony in your household rather than trying to change your wife.
Praying for open hearts and minds is a good place to rest.
Camille
|
|
|
Posted Friday, August 11, 2006 10:23 AM
|
|
|
|
SurferforJesus,
It may be for the best that you don't have any time to fight about religion; I believe that praying for your wife is the very best thing you can do and leave it in the hands of our Lord. He knows your wife, and He's got a billion ways to change her heart. When I was a CSist, Christian friends prayed for me for years - didn't do anything but pray and invite me to events of their bible school and never said a word when I was too busy to accept. And the Lord did find a way to my heart. In my instance, He opened my eyes to differences between the bible and s&h ...
I believe it's very common for CSists to focus on reading whatever material TMC provides - it's a lot and if you want to do all the reading, you're quite busy already. And as CS is considered superior, why bother with other "conservative" Christian literature - I did read other Christian literature because I craved something solid which discussed bible chapters etc. and I found both Sentinel and Journal to be rather "boring".
|
|
|
Posted Friday, August 11, 2006 12:08 PM
|
|
|
|
Spring makes a good point that, since CS is considered superior, it would seem pointless to read Christian literature that wasn't based in CS.
When I was in CS, people were only supposed to read "authorized" CS literature, -- material that had been OK'd by the CS Church. The Church suppressed writings that it did not approve of (including Dickey's memoirs that MBE made him promise to write -- they reveal a lot about life within MBE's household and, my guess is, did not fit the image that the Church was trying to portray). Some of these writings were made available by CS "dissidents" who felt that these materials should be available. The CS Church has relaxed a bit regarding these formerly-supressed materials and has even made some of them available through the MBE Library. I suspect that much of this relaxation has had to to with the fact that the materials had become available anyway.
In recent years the Sentinel has had interviews with non-CS Christians like Philip Yancey (author of books like "The Jesus I Niever Knew"). I assume that interviewing non-CS authors would make CSists more likely to read what they have written -- I don't know if this is the case but it would make sense. However, if I were still CS I would probably spend most of the time reading "spiritually mature" CS authors rather than "less spiritually mature" authors like Philip Yancey.
|
|
|
Posted Friday, August 11, 2006 1:55 PM
|
|
|
|
<< Spring makes a good point that, since CS is considered superior, it would seem pointless to read Christian literature that wasn't based in CS.
>>
Linda,
I think many of the cs I knew were not particularly intellectually enlived people ---about world events, literature, arts, politics, period...
I am not sure it is because cs think they are superior to any and all contributions of science, literature, arts as well as religion.
I guess it could be. But it could also be a case of the circles I ran in. Not intellectually curious people.I don't think I can generalize to all cs in that regards.
Camille
|
|
|
Posted Friday, August 11, 2006 10:05 PM
|
|
|
|
Camille,
That's interesting. I would have to say the opposite -- that I knew a lot of intellectual and interesting people in CS. My dad's Naval career took us to lots of churches , and many of our CS friends were very intelligent people who were involved in stimulating and often impressive jobs. Attending Principia put me in contact with a lot of really interesting CS professors. Overall, I have always considered CSists to be a pretty intellectual bunch. Ignorant regarding their bodies and often a bit out of touch emotionally, but creative and intellectual in many ways.
|
|
|
Posted Saturday, August 12, 2006 5:28 AM
|
|
|
| | |