{"id":103539,"date":"2024-01-22T14:42:41","date_gmt":"2024-01-22T21:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=103539"},"modified":"2024-01-22T14:42:41","modified_gmt":"2024-01-22T21:42:41","slug":"something-that-christians-dont-need-to-believe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2024\/01\/something-that-christians-dont-need-to-believe.html","title":{"rendered":"Something that Christians don’t need to believe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
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Throughout Utah \u2014 and, no doubt, across the Western states, \u00a0North America, and around the world generally \u2014 hundreds of thousands if not millions of listeners gather by their radios every Sunday night, eagerly seeking wisdom from the Interpreter Radio Show. They\u2019re never disappointed.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Spencer Kraus, Martin Tanner, Hales Swift, and Brent Schmidt came together for the 7 January 2024 episode of the Interpreter Radio Show, which focused on Come, Follow Me<\/em> Book of Mormon lesson 5 and on evidences for the Book of Mormon. \u00a0Their conversation is now archived, freed from commercial interruptions, and made available for your listening pleasure. \u00a0The \u201cNew Testament in Context\u201d portion of the 7 January 2024 show, for Come, Follow Me<\/em> Book of Mormon lesson 5, will also be posted separately on Tuesday, 23 January 2024.<\/p>\n
The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard each week on Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640. \u00a0Or you can listen to it live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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The Bodleian Library at Oxford, where C. S. Lewis was a student and where he spent most of his teaching career, as seen from from Radcliffe Square.*
*(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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*I recently re-read C. S. Lewis\u2019s famous book\u00a0<\/span>Mere Christianity<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>on the flight over to London and Cairo. \u00a0It has been a fair while since I\u2019ve read that particular volume, and here are a couple of the many passages that struck me. \u00a0I supply no page references both because there are multiple editions and because I read it on my iPad:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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I have been asked to tell you what Christians believe, and I am going to begin by telling you one thing that Christians do not need to believe.\u00a0 If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through.\u00a0 If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake.\u00a0 If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all those religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth.\u00a0 When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view.\u00a0 But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong..\u00a0 As in arithmetic \u2013 there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong; but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
"
The first big division of humanity is into the majority, who believe in some kind of God or gods, and the minority who do not.\u00a0 On this point, Christianity lines up with the majority \u2013 lines up with ancient Greeks and Romans, modern savages, Stoics, Platonists, Hindus, Mohammedans [sic<\/em>], etc., against the modern Western European materialists. (C. S. Lewis, \u201cThe Rival Conceptions of God,\u201d in Mere Christianity<\/em>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n*
**
*When Lewis comes to the mainstream Christian doctrine of the Trinity in the latter portion of Mere Christianity<\/em>, he loses me. \u00a0He strikes me, there, as much less lucid and definitely less persuasive. \u00a0I think that that is the fault of his subject matter, orthodox Trinitarianism, rather than his own. \u00a0The doctrine is, in my judgment, unavoidably and necessarily incoherent. \u00a0But his discussion of the Trinity is probably the reason why I\u2019ve gone so long since last reading the book. \u00a0On the other hand, the earlier portions of Mere Christianity<\/em> seem to me, at places, nothing short of brilliant.<\/p>\n
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An imaginative modern depiction of Asherah from https:\/\/oldworldgods.com\/canaanite\/canaanite-goddess-asherah\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n*
**
*Our friends at Interpreter\u2019s sister organizations are doing very interesting things these days. \u00a0I highlight two recent video examples here:<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat Does the Goddess Asherah Have To Do With the Tree of Life?\u201d (Book of Mormon Evidence 427)<\/a>. [7:27]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n "
I have myself long had a particular interest in the subject of Asherah and the Book of Mormon, and I have published on it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n\u201cThe Greatness of the Evidence | A Marvelous Work | Episode 1\u201d<\/a> \u00a0[43:10]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n "
Discover compelling evidence for the divinity of the Book of Mormon in \u201cA Marvelous Work\u201d. In this premiere episode, Scott Christopher provides a glimpse into the topics he\u2019ll explore as he travels the world in search of evidence for the Book of Mormon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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The then soon-to-be dedicated Orem Utah Temple, in a Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph. The white tent on the left side of the photo was temporary, for the temple\u2019s open house.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Here for your enjoyment are some really beautiful photographs, including interior<\/em> photographs, of the newly dedicated Orem Utah Temple, which is conveniently located just a few minutes from my home: https:\/\/churchofjesuschristtemples.org\/orem-utah-temple\/photographs\/<\/a><\/p>\n
I was surprised to see this article, written by Brian T. Allen<\/a>, appear just the other day in National Review<\/em>: \u00a0\u201cWhat Is Utah?\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t quite as positive and enthusiastically favorable as I would have preferred, but it was far better than such articles typically are. \u00a0If any of you can access it, please let me know what you<\/em> think.<\/p>\n
And this Deseret News<\/em> article, authored by Hanna Seariac, might interest you: \u00a0\u201cFrom fry sauce to social mobility, here\u2019s a closer look at what Gov. Cox says makes Utah \u2018weird\u2019: In the State of the State address, Utah\u2019s governor spoke about both silly and serious things that make the Beehive State unique.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 Even apart from religion, I\u2019m a fan of regional differences and dislike the standardization of America. \u00a0I want Portland to remain weird, and New Orleans to continue to be whatever New Orleans is. \u00a0I like local restaurants with local foods and specialties. \u00a0I don\u2019t want everything to be flattened out and made uniform.<\/p>\n
But there is no question that there is a religion-related subtheme here, and that all three of the items mentioned immediately above were located in the general vicinity of the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u2122.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 Spencer Kraus, Martin Tanner, Hales Swift, and Brent Schmidt came together for the 7 January 2024 episode of the Interpreter Radio Show, which focused on Come, Follow Me Book of Mormon lesson 5 and on evidences for the Book of Mormon. \u00a0Their conversation is now archived, freed from commercial interruptions, and made available for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":103542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7542,6018,56,5168,4946,37080],"class_list":["post-103539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-1-nephi","tag-asherah","tag-book-of-mormon","tag-evidence","tag-mere-christianity","tag-other-religions"],"yoast_head":"\nSomething that Christians don't need to believe<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\" Spencer Kraus, Martin Tanner, Hales Swift, and Brent 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