Seeing, they do not see
I enjoy reading/hearing secularists trying to explain Christian doctrine — it’s quite amusing.
I particularly remember with fondness a certain CBC lit teacher who attempted to explain that the Puritans believed in a limited number of seats in heaven that God has chosen who will sit in each one; he then claimed that the American Puritans were spurred to good works in order to prove to themselves and the world that they were chosen for one of those seats. Then there was a lit professor at UI who laughed at the irony that it was the Protestants’ zeal for the Scriptures that resulted in near-universal literacy, which enabled the peasants to rise above the tyranny of the Church and made possible the Enlightenment.
Today, I caught this gem of a generalization from Age of Faith, in a portion actually speaking of the persecuted medieval Jews:
“It is the unfortunate who must believe that God has chosen them for His own.”
I know what you mean. I’ve noticed that you can kind of tell when reading a secular book if the writer himself is actually something of a believer.