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Anne Tinetti's avatar

It wasn't until I was a 20-year-old Christian that someone sat me down and made sure I knew my faith didn't culminate in a ticket to heaven when I die, but nothing less than Christ's restoration of all things. All things! It changed my life, of course. (Thank you, Dr. Jeffrey Gibbs). The paradigm shift was at first a hurdle for me, and as I go forward as a self-proclaimed member of the Eschatology Brigade, I have seen that it's a hurdle for many Christ followers; so many of our hymns and sayings leave out the resurrection. How much moreso those to whom Christ's cross is foolishness. I tried to describe to a friendly apostate, post-election, why I wasn't too flapped about how things turned out, but to no avail. Thank you for this thorough treatment.

Also, this:

“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamozov

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Jon Cutchins's avatar

Very nice. The sum and substance of Christianity is, 'If in this life only we have hope, then we are of all men most miserable.' I have seen posts on a lot of what you read, I was curious what you think of George MacDonald's thoughts on resurrection, particularly the 'good death' in something like Lilith or At the Back of the North Wind.

My own thoughts are well summed up in https://comfortwithtruth.substack.com/p/the-children-get-up-and-reign-anotherhtml

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