Wittgensteinian-Kierkegaardian

A philosopher-atheist accepts Jesus Christ as his personal savior. How'd that happen?? He tries to tell. Not your usual conversion story, at Hitting Bedrock. (There's a sequence of several posts to read to get the whole story so far, and it's still in progress.)

Accepting this or that belief is generally pretty involuntary. Making this or that commitment is not. [ ... ]

And I thought: Screw understanding. Understanding is for wusses. (And similarly for curiosity.)

How I came to this story is pretty cool too. The AmbivaBro was wasting time at work by hitting the Blogspot "Next Blog" button after making his usual rounds. Most of what he found was mind-bogglingly dreary, but, he said, there was the occasional diamond in the rough -- and he linked to Babble On, which in its sprightly multitopic posts and rants on a lot of brief, absurd news items reminded me somewhat of my blogroll buddy News on the March. The last item in one of those round-ups was, "In more personal news, I lost a friend to religion . . . "

I followed the link. See, I'm not trying to avoid working, I'm trying to avoid packing, which drives you even deeper . . . of course some would say divine providence is at work . . .

Comments

[Mark Daniels]

What an interesting story. My son, a committed Christian who majored in History and Philosophy, also loves Kierkegaard--understandable since K was in all his philosophizing, thoroughly Lutheran--and Wittgenstein. Thanks for calling this tale to our attention.

Mark

[amba]

The radical conservative Jewish neuropsychiatrist and expert on obsessive-compulsive disorder (a consultant to Leo DiCaprio on the Howard Hughes movie), Pali scholar and 20-year daily Buddhist meditator whom I helped to write this book has now become deeply involved wth the Christianity of Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship).

[Micah]

Thanks for this link! Really fascinating stuff, tying in very interestingly with a lot of my own thoughts on faith.

[Mark Daniels]

Bonhoeffer's 'Cost of Discipleship' is one of the best--and most challenging--books I have ever read. His book on Christian community, 'Life Together,' is also quite good.

The attractiveness of Bonhoeffer and of Kierkegaard to non-Christians puts the lie to those Christian leaders who seem to want to reduce Christianity either to legalistic proscriptions or consumer-sating marketeering.

Mark

[Toby]

A philosopher-atheist accepts Jesus Christ as his personal savior.

"philosopher"? A philosopher is a lover of wisdom. The fellow in question merely finds wisdom to have a winning smile and an amazing sense of humour. He remains a wannabe.

(Thanks for the link. The new visitors have been a pleasant surprise. Christian reactions to my conversion story have been otherwise extremely limited.)

[Cygnus]

Look at our little worlds all colliding like this.

Thanks for the link to my blog, too!