THE INFINITE VALUE OF A DIFFICULT QUESTION

Does it feel like a difficult question for you ?

That's fine if it does.

It's good to confront difficult questions, don't you agree?

Herein lies the value of a difficult question: it keeps your mind sharp even as your body rots away beneath you.

Let not dullardry encroach on old age!

I'm glad to have posed a difficult question for you.

You can think through it logically.

There's no other conclusion to arrive at, or else that seems too absolute, too definitive.

So you can think it through emotionally, if that helps you make sense of it.

If you just think it through logically and you answer the question, do I get to decide whether or not someone else is a believer, regardless of how you might answer the question privately, how could you submit to the judgment of another on such a perfectly personal question as that?

Ask yourself whether anyone else could possibly even know.

If you accept that no one else can know the inward truth of your secret mind, then whatever judgment an outside person might levy, you would not defer to it, nor consider yourself accountable to it.

You might say about that person something to the effect of, 'what do they know about me?'

'Who are they to say whether I am or am not a Christian?'

You would almost certainly say that sort of thing.

If you think of yourself as someone who knows a Christian when they see one, and hold within your powers of discernment the ability to scry the inner life of your fellow human beings, what other conclusion could you arrive at, besides that someone else gets to decide the same thing about you.

Whether you consider yourself a Christian or not a Christian, regardless of whatever your inner monologue might recite in the otherwise silent inviolability of your private mind. 

Are you ready to let someone else determine whether or not you're a Christian? 

Would you prevent someone from doing that to you while you excuse it when they try to do it to me?

Christianity often strikes me as one of those faiths that veritably requires of its converts a wholesale skewering on the meat-hook of hypocrisy.

Do you consider me a Christian now, or one of those forever expelled from its precise forms of religiosity?

What then should we call it besides a formulaic, scripted worship?

How could that be relevant to my supposed-to-be-hoped-for salvation, let alone my almost-certainly-certain damnation except that we find some slight bliss in mechanical repetition of action? 

Do you doubt whether there are people in this world who would try to decide for me whether I am or am not one of them?

Who would doubt that people exist who would claim or disclaim me as one?

And do you think I should accept their judgment just because they do or do not claim me?

Are you going to accept their judgment when they try to define you one way or the other?

Are you going to say, 'Oh, they said I wasn't, therefore I must not be.'

Is that how you're going to respond in your mind let alone with your mouth? 

No?

That's not how you're planning to respond, is it?

No.

Because at the end of the day, you resolve that nobody else gets to tell you whether you're a true believer or not.

Because at the end of the day, you acknowledge nobody else gets to tell me whether I'm a fooking Christian or not.

I don't take anyone else's judgment on that question, nor should anyone expect me to.

I require no second opinions.

Isn't that right, dear believer?

Would you?

No, I'm asking about you.

You, personally. 

We're talking about you right now.

You. 

How you define it for yourself.

Would you accept any judgment from someone else on that question? 

Would you let a stranger decide whether you were a Christian or not?

What you have before you is a yes or no question, isn't it?

And the answer is obviously what?

Of course you wouldn't let someone else decide for you.

So are you prepared to say it to their face?