I haven't heard that one. I have a version of "Be Thou" done by the Irish Christian group Iona, but it's to a different tune.
I do believe that Christ is the way to salvation but have trouble imagining God condemning those who have never had the opportunity to know Him.
Well, when I look at the Bible I see so many examples of people in the most unlikely circumstances who were found by God because their hearts were open to Him. Look at Abraham, from Ur of the Chaldees (a hotbed of idolatry if ever there was one); Rahab the harlot, from the doomed Canaanite city of Jericho; Ruth, the Moabitess; the Ethiopian eunuch, etc. So I think the idea that a genuinely seeking heart will always find God, even if that person is buried deep in the jungle, is very Biblical.
And yet, though the Bible is full of foreigners and pagans and members of other religions who came to God, it was always on God's terms and not their own (or the terms of the cultures and religions they came from). They still had to come through the "narrow gate", as it were. It's not as though God made two ways of salvation, one for people who grew up hearing about Christ and one for people who didn't. So I don't think that the hypothetical person in the deepest darkest jungle who can't read, has never heard of the Bible and knows nothing about Christ is going to be saved by virtue of his ignorance; rather I think that if he really wants to know God then God will lead him out of that ignorance in some fashion, even in ways that might seem to us exceedingly unlikely or indeed miraculous. (If that makes any sense.)
Romans 1 & 2 seem to put paid to the notion that there might be someone in the world who is sincerely and completely ignorant of God, or who knows nothing of right and wrong and never had a chance to know any differently. If we aren't condemned by the Law then we're condemned by our own consciences; if we've never read the Bible we've still looked into the book of God's creation; so "Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin" (3:9).
It also causes discomfort when I take stock and realize how very little, really, I'm doing to spread that message.
*nods glumly*
And now (finally) to the Q&A part:
When do you find time to write? When is your most productive writing time, and are you able to accommodate that somehow or do you squeeze it in when you can? Do you ever have guilt over time you spend writing/reading/online?
Well, it's a lot harder for me to write now, with two kids, than it was when I just had the one. I wrote most of D&L while Nicholas (#1) was napping or in bed. However, Nicholas stopped napping when he was two, just before Simon (#2) was born, so even though S. is a good napper I still lose those hours to looking after N.
If I want to get any serious writing done at all (as opposed to just blogging or chatting or whatever) I pretty much have to do it after 7:30 p.m. But of course, I'm usually pretty tired by then... you may have observed that I'm writing pretty short and unambitious stories these days!
I don't really feel guilt over the fact of spending time online, only that I often waste a lot of time clicking around brainlessly and reading useless junk when I could be doing something more productive. During the daytime I often browse LJ and blogs while nursing Simon, and write my e-mails and other responses while S. is sleeping and Nicholas is watching TV or playing in the backyard. As for writing and reading books, I've never felt guilty about that. Unless, of course, I'm reading or writing something that I know full well I shouldn't...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-04-29 12:22 pm (UTC)I haven't heard that one. I have a version of "Be Thou" done by the Irish Christian group Iona, but it's to a different tune.
I do believe that Christ is the way to salvation but have trouble imagining God condemning those who have never had the opportunity to know Him.
Well, when I look at the Bible I see so many examples of people in the most unlikely circumstances who were found by God because their hearts were open to Him. Look at Abraham, from Ur of the Chaldees (a hotbed of idolatry if ever there was one); Rahab the harlot, from the doomed Canaanite city of Jericho; Ruth, the Moabitess; the Ethiopian eunuch, etc. So I think the idea that a genuinely seeking heart will always find God, even if that person is buried deep in the jungle, is very Biblical.
And yet, though the Bible is full of foreigners and pagans and members of other religions who came to God, it was always on God's terms and not their own (or the terms of the cultures and religions they came from). They still had to come through the "narrow gate", as it were. It's not as though God made two ways of salvation, one for people who grew up hearing about Christ and one for people who didn't. So I don't think that the hypothetical person in the deepest darkest jungle who can't read, has never heard of the Bible and knows nothing about Christ is going to be saved by virtue of his ignorance; rather I think that if he really wants to know God then God will lead him out of that ignorance in some fashion, even in ways that might seem to us exceedingly unlikely or indeed miraculous. (If that makes any sense.)
Romans 1 & 2 seem to put paid to the notion that there might be someone in the world who is sincerely and completely ignorant of God, or who knows nothing of right and wrong and never had a chance to know any differently. If we aren't condemned by the Law then we're condemned by our own consciences; if we've never read the Bible we've still looked into the book of God's creation; so "Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin" (3:9).
It also causes discomfort when I take stock and realize how very little, really, I'm doing to spread that message.
*nods glumly*
And now (finally) to the Q&A part:
When do you find time to write? When is your most productive writing time, and are you able to accommodate that somehow or do you squeeze it in when you can? Do you ever have guilt over time you spend writing/reading/online?
Well, it's a lot harder for me to write now, with two kids, than it was when I just had the one. I wrote most of D&L while Nicholas (#1) was napping or in bed. However, Nicholas stopped napping when he was two, just before Simon (#2) was born, so even though S. is a good napper I still lose those hours to looking after N.
If I want to get any serious writing done at all (as opposed to just blogging or chatting or whatever) I pretty much have to do it after 7:30 p.m. But of course, I'm usually pretty tired by then... you may have observed that I'm writing pretty short and unambitious stories these days!
I don't really feel guilt over the fact of spending time online, only that I often waste a lot of time clicking around brainlessly and reading useless junk when I could be doing something more productive. During the daytime I often browse LJ and blogs while nursing Simon, and write my e-mails and other responses while S. is sleeping and Nicholas is watching TV or playing in the backyard. As for writing and reading books, I've never felt guilty about that. Unless, of course, I'm reading or writing something that I know full well I shouldn't...