Proph, at the Orthosphere writes:
The modern mind cannot be evangelized:I agree with him.
The Gospel is the “good news” of the saving death of Jesus Christ: but it is totally unintelligible to people who have neither heard nor intuit the “bad news” of sin and the Fall. Such an intuition came more easily to earlier generations whose minds were unencumbered by blank-slate nonsense and whose understanding of the poverty of their spiritual condition was made possible by the poverty of their material condition; to the ears of the modern public-schooled 32-year-old bachelor with a state-financed bachelor’s degree in communications, it sounds like irrelevant fantasy.
How do you evangelize under these circumstances? I don’t know, and I suspect you simply don’t. The modern cannot be evangelized; he is incapable of such a thing, at least incapable under his own power. If and only if he repents of his errors, if God gives him the grace to repent of his errors, can he be evangelized — but then he will, by definition, no longer be a modern.
In fact, I am more pessimistic than him regarding the acceptance of the "good news." In my recent visit to New York, we were discussing the return to religion, mainly to Catholicism, after declaring oneself an atheist.
I said that an atheist, should he return to Christianity, will never be a "perfect" Christian, and would be spending the rest of his life making amends to God for having willingly abandoned, or rejected, God some time in his adult life. This is very different from a Christian who never abandoned God, and doesn't have to expiate that terrible sin. Instead, he can innocently pursue the joyful, guilt-free worship of God.
But the ways of the world, and of God, are mysterious. There is nothing to stop a "returned" Christian from getting better favors from God. As his messenger, through example.
Human beings should thus never give up on themsevles, and on the mercy, and calling of God. Each day is a surprise, and an expectation.
By the way. the banner that the Orthosphere uses for its wesbsite is a cropped version of Guido Reni's Archangel Michael:
The Archangel Michael defeating Satan
Artist: Guido Reni (1575-1642)
Painting Completion Date: 1635
Technique: oil
Material: canvas
Dimensions: 293 x 202 cm
Gallery: Private Collection
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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