Wednesday, September 14, 2005

If

If you want your child to never change what he believes, give him no reason to believe what he does.

It's becoming evident. For generations, a vast majority of the Old Order Amish have taught a gospel of works, not of salvation. And for generations they will continue if they never give their children a REASON to believe what they believe, because there children will NEVER care.

Of course, I'm generalizing. But the point remains.

I asked people outside of my Mennonite background questions. I got their answers. I approached my dad with their answers (and along with them, their bias as well), and he gave me answers of a different sort. So I went to the other people defending my father's point of view, and they returned fire; and on and on it went. Finally, after having fought my own self in this manner for months, I knew what I had to do. I forged a trail, with a fresh respect for my father, and finally knew what it meant to KNOW what I believe. And I'm still working on it.

Then...

There are the people who, for sake of singular modernity and not much else, leave everything they knew before and follow the trail of certain liberalistic nobility-is-in-seeing-truth-in-all-cultures, and often academic, mystics, down a road paved with compromise. After this, not much moral fiber remains. They've forsaken the moral standard they knew before, and chosen a path where such morality is of secondary value.

I pity their souls.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What do you mean by, "I forged a trail, with a fresh respect for my father. . . ."

I know there must be a reason for the things i was taught/believe. And I'm willing to expend alot of energy to understand the reason why i was taught this. If I don't try, i'll feel like a hypocrit.

whimsicalfaery said...

And then there are the people who grew up conditioned in the liberal mindset, the same way we were conditioned in a conservative one.

Nic Miller said...

Basically, Micheal, I made my own path, with my father's blessing, rather than those pressuring me to step outside of HIS beliefs. I've been blessed with the benefits over and over again.

Annie, you're absolutely right.

Dave, pretty much what I meant was that, without fundamental reasons to believe the way they do, there will never be the intellectual stimulation to find out why they believe the way they do. And it's my personal opinion that the answers they give are surface answers that don't reach the heart. On the other hand, I'm good friends with an Old Order Amish Preacher who preaches salvation (and reaps the consequences periodically), and he stays Amish because he thinks it FUN! He enjoys the lifestyle, and that's all that keeps him. So that's his ministry! It's wonderful.