What My Father Told Me: A Final Word
Years ago in my first blogpost, I recalled how my father told me that he was a Christian because his father, the best man he ever knew, had been one. As one of the youngest of nineteen grandchildren, I barely knew Papa Green, but certainly he was a role model. At the time Daddy spoke, I had discarded my childhood religion because of factual doubts, so his statement was nonsense. How could an Alabama farmer's life validate the Apostle's Creed: the virgin birth, for instance, or the incarnation? And, if these doctrines weren't facts, how could Christianity stand? Of course, out of respect for Daddy, I kept my mouth shut and, like Mary, pondered these things in my heart. Now, sixty years and 155 blogposts later, I no longer expect the kind of truth I expected back then, not from religion. I've knocked on too many doors of that kind to expect that I'll get an answer. I accept beyond reasonable doubt that religious language not factual, not in the sense that water is ...