I'm a Christian Aspie

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Yeah, too many Christian movies make me feel like I am watching an old 1970s Movie of the Week episode. The quality is always about 80 percent. Acting: Meh. Production value: Meh. Writing: Meh+, Directing: Meh-. Of course, very occasionally, there is a Passion of the Christ or Ten Commandments which are well done for traditional-movie reasons.

I'm a Christian, and I find most "religious" films cringeworthy.

This, and the junk produced by the "Christian Music Industry", whatever that is...

I know WAY TOO MUCH and I don't even listen to the stuff AT ALL anymore. I can't do it. I personally know people involved in the "industry", too, but still...

I'm a trained musician. Christian music, to me, is Bach and those who have followed in his footsteps. I even like Palestrina even though he wrote for the Catholic church during the Counter Reformation.

...so radically and unconventionally bizarre that they totally fall into "so bad it's good" territory (alongside so many ridiculous straight-to-video rapture movies from the '00s)....

You mean that Corbin Bernsen, Gary Busey, Louis Gossett Jr., Margot Kidder, Howie Mandel, Judd Nelson and Mr. T couldn't save the Book of Revelation? I guess some actors just can't do Shakespeare convincingly.

The trouble is that Hollywood won't produce such films, and deep-pocket Christians are just as doubtful.

Ah, my kind of movie buff.

I don't expect anything *thoughtful* to come out of Hollywood, but it's not unreasonable to expect a good or even interesting movie every now and then. Do we really need a new Jesus movie every few years? Why not do some Biblical epics based on stories which haven't been filmed before? And, of course, in independent films where there's a lot more creative freedom, it's not unrealistic to imagine a solid, thoughtful Christian movie getting a limited release. I have faith in a lot of things, but I believe it can happen someday.

This, and the junk produced by the "Christian Music Industry", whatever that is...

I know WAY TOO MUCH and I don't even listen to the stuff AT ALL anymore. I can't do it. I personally know people involved in the "industry", too, but still...

I'm a trained musician. Christian music, to me, is Bach and those who have followed in his footsteps. I even like Palestrina even though he wrote for the Catholic church during the Counter Reformation.

Bach - Oh yes. I spent my childhood and teenage years aspiring to be a church organist, so I've spent more than a few hours with Herr Bach.

Nerdygirl - I worked tangentially with Gospel musicians in the early 70s. If you know any of those folks we can share gossip.... Errrr... I mean stories.

(...)My friend Julia said that the Lutheran rules are stricter that Catholic. Is that true?(...)

Let's set the tone for this big rabbit trail, and enjoy some material from Psalms:



Yes, it really demonstrates that many people walk around feeling as if their system of thinking is so much more robust and rational than some other group, yet appearances can be deceiving. I've met a number of professors like this, especially in public institutions, who think that because they know much about one subject they are instantly conversant in a bunch of other issues, most often philosophy. I can't even count how many science teachers I've been acquainted with that couldn't even explain to me what epistemology is, or find any good reason to believe in the scientific method when presented with just a few basic problems from Descartes, probably the easiest and most familiar example of Rationalism one could mention (e.g., the "brain in a vat" argument, or the "demonic entity" argument).



Of course, they don't exactly consider it wholesale "blind reasoning", either. Let me explain faith in it's authentic biblical context:

Ahlam is the Hebrew root term, and most concordances and dictionaries such as Strong's Concordance, Vine's Expository, and so on into more modern entries have agreed that ahlam actually indicates a relationship concept, similar to people trusting their parents. So let's ask ourselves: why do we trust our parents? Well, typically we trust them because they have established that trust by doing all the things that they do for us. Okay, simple enough.

Next stop is a little visit to Koine Greek: pistis. A pistis is actually similar to an argument and it is a specific type of logos that is meant to persuade someone. There are strong conceptual ties between pistis, logos, and pneuma so it behooves us to take a look at each of these. In the ancient Hellenized world one's pneuma was the essence of their spirit, the idea of some tangible wind like substance that resided within the body and was the seat of intellect. When people spoke or otherwise communicated, their logos, a visualized portion of their pneuma, left their bodies and interacted with others, and inasmuch as they formed ideas they took on a life of their own; hence the wide variety of definition for this term in Attic Greek). Plato took logos to mean ordered thinking, or a system of thought as in a scientific discipline (the "sciences" used to be a much more broad, holistic term). But we're talking about biblical Koine Greek here, so the aforementioned, comparatively simple definition is more appropriate. Finally we visit pistis again and note that it is a particular type of logos that is intended to persuade another person to accept a position. So again here we can see that the term is talking about a rational process. This is notable when we look at instances like Paul saying in an epistle "did you accept this person's pistis, that person's pistis, or even mine? Well I was trying to get you to accept the pistis of Jesus Christ, not that of some other person."

And now finally we come to the word in line just before our modern word faith: the Latin term fides. Long before it was used by Catholic Christians to talk about theology, fides was a very important concept in Roman society. Well, not just important in fact but the bedrock of Roman society. It was considered an essential element in the character of a man of public affairs, which signified reliability, a necessary sense of trust between two parties that was a precondition for them developing a relationship. This was an entirely reciprocal and mutual thing. It is very important to note that in order to understand later Christian references to God being faithful. If we think of God as faithful in the misguidedly popular, modern sense of the word "faith" we come to the silly thought that God merely believes in us. Well of course He does, He did make us after all. The statement makes no sense to modern ears with a modern definition.

The truth is that many Christians (but of course not all) have battered themselves into the modern definition of faith as many of them retreated from issues in the intellectual world. They looked at verses in the epistles like "faith is belief in the evidence of things not yet seen" and assumed from their English translation that that meant faith was somehow separate from reason. My contention is that we have bastardized the definition and for the longest time faith was actually seen as it's own form of reasoning that wasn't mutually exclusive to other forms at all. This should be even more clear when we look at the Apostle Peter, as he talks about being ready to give an account of your beliefs in his epistle and when we look at what appears to be an apologetic/logical-argument (surprise surprise folks!) in his address to the people on the day of Pentecost near the beginning of Acts. In his address to the people he makes an appeal to prophetic texts and eyewitness testimony in order to convince people that Jesus was who He said He was. Eyewitness testimony huh? Isn't that enough to put someone away for murder even now in modern courts?

What's more, I would also contend that it's easily arguable that an ancient thinker would have defined a physicist's belief in atoms as faith, because the physicist can't see atoms but he can reasonably prove their existence under the paradigm of empiricist philosophy. Faith is how we establish a reasonable belief in things that aren't as tangible as others, such as an ancient Roman using fides to gauge the trustworthiness of his business partner when he has no Cartesian proof that that business partner won't cheat him.

Newton used faith to argue for different classes of substance and form, and also the existence of gravity, as opposed to Leibniz who argued for monads and a liquid medium called aether in the place of gravity. For Leibniz it didn't make sense that objects could interact with one another without directly touching so he assumed that the two objects were affecting a fluid medium in order to get around Newton's concept of gravity while still sufficiently explaining Newton's solid observation that objects attract one another, and this is what causes the planets to orbit the sun. Neither of them could see with their own eyes what they were talking about but we take it for granted today that one view prevailed and the other didn't, that today we believe in gravity instead of aether. And to this day physicists argue over issues using indirect observation or appeals to what they feel is the more reasonable explanation of the same data. So the truth of the matter here is that we still use faith all the time and it is an indispensable tool for modern reasoning. Without it we wouldn't have radio waves or a whole host of other very tangible inventions using things we can't see. People have long understood that this form of reasoning is valid and you can verify it with another more easily observable form of reasoning by talking to a friend of yours on the phone.

Now Christians might get confused by this into thinking that I have just sterilized the concept of saving faith in the Gospel. However, the faith that we have involves more than just pistis. That experience is the result of both pistis/faith and metanoeo/repentance. Repentance, in the Greek, is a change in a person's mind. It is a compound word for "mind" and "turn" that, as opposed to one typical understanding today that says "repentance is a change in behavior", actually refers specifically to a mental change. After we receive the pistis of the gospel and have metanoeo towards it, the rest of the picture here comes into play.

The main source of confusion here, in modern discussion, is that all of these concepts aren't wrapped up under just one term. In order to explain all of that we have to come to a general view of the ordo salutis, i.e. the process or order of events in the life of a saved person, and if we want to agree upon and explain all of that we become involved in several other terms.

Classical Calvinists, for example, believe that the ordo salutis is unconditional electing grace, regeneration, faith, repentance, justification, and then sanctification (this is a shortened version of their whole ordo salutis). A Classical Arminian believes that the order of the process is prevenient grace, faith and repentance (happening simultaneously at the same stage of the process), justification, regeneration, and then sanctification.



I treasure such moments because they invite me to admit when I am in error and must change my assumptions on the grounds of the challenge, or when I don't know enough yet to form a proper conclusion. Truly disciplined thinkers should feel they are flattering themselves if they can say that they've been known to concede a point.



And thank you for the pleasure of reading and contemplating your post.

Can we please make..... "Chrispies" the new term for Christian Aspies? That's too good to pass up.