Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

• Acts 1:7-8

I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know!  I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that through my being with you again your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound on account of me.

• Philippians 1:20-26

“Educated at the Majorcan royal court in Mallorca, Llull developed a mystical version of Neo-Platonism. After a vision of Christ, he joined the Franciscan order and worked as a missionary in North Africa.  Convinced that rational argument could persuade Muslims and Jews to convert to Christianity, Llull wrote Ars Magna. In this work, he used complex reasoning to generate different combinations of the basic tenets of all monotheistic religions, hoping to demonstrate the truths of Christianity He was convinced that if everybody was of one faith, all human knowledge would combine into a single system.”

• Sam Atkinson (senior editor), The Philosophy Book, Big Ideas Simply Explained

Ramon Llull, anglicized as Raymond Lully, (1232-1316), was a theologian, poet, philosopher, and Christian apologist, among many things.  He was once a knight in the kingdom of Majorca.  He was a prolific writer and his system of logic and philosophy, known as The Art, was his finest work, but the idea failed in the long run.

But, my question is whether it failed.

My thought is on the story of the two men walking along the beach at sunset.  One man continued to bend down and pick up sand dollars that were washed up by the surf, and he tossed them into the sea.  His friend says that it is a waste of time.  There are so many sand dollars.  They continue to be washed onto shore.  It is a fool’s errand to try to save them.  It makes no difference.  Then his friend bent down and picked up another sand dollar.  As he threw it as far as he could into the sea, he said, “It makes a difference to this one.”

I have heard countless pastors use that illustration.  They never give the source, so do with it as you wish.

So, if Llull converted one unbeliever or a member of another religion, his arguments mattered to that one.  It made a difference.

Did kingdoms topple?  Did a massive conversion to Christianity occur?  Not really.

But his idea was flawed, no matter how much passion he put into it.  The concept of apologetics is the argument of intellectually discovering that there is a God, that God is real.  At that point, the evangelist shows them how to find God and accept Him.

But while the apologist uses the intellectual argument, the evangelist uses the spiritual argument, or proposition.  If our process is purely intellectual, the person with whom we are talking realizes that there is a door, but does he hear Jesus gently knocking?  Does he realize that there is a knob and he must turn the knob to open the door?

There are many people in the church pews that intellectually know that Jesus lived, died for our sins, and they think they are fine with that.  Of course, I have known those who never missed a Sunday at church, until they passed away, who laughed at the preacher trying to convince them that Jesus even existed.  Why were they there?  Tradition?  A habit?

I have heard many evangelists, from the street evangelists to the ones who pack them into the stadiums.  They talk about the longest distance in life is that eighteen inches from the head to the heart.

I encourage anyone who thinks that they have a way to convince someone that Jesus is the only answer.  After all, I do that every day, right here on this site, but it takes the Holy Spirit to move within the other person’s heart.  It means that the events that bring that person to that point have to align perfectly with the words the other person says.

Does it always work?  No.  But as I pick up my imaginary sand dollar and heave it into the sea, I firmly believe in my heart, that it makes the difference for this one.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.