Who Says?
Earning the right to be heard.
1-8-23
“If your life doesn’t demand a supernatural explanation, you haven’t earned the right to be heard.” -- Stephen Olford
Eric (see last week's message) and I, along with our fascination with Nietzsche, got enchanted by the novels of Jack Kerouac that presented a life of thrilling encounters in search of some kind of transcendence. So, following one rather uninspiring semester in college, when a friend invited me to "hit the road", I climbed into an old jalopy.
After a few months of adventures, having experienced plenty enough to require some years to absorb, I landed back home and soon found myself invited to a Billy Graham crusade. I attended, mostly out of curiosity. But Mister Graham offered this challenge: trust in Christ and save the world.
Having seen enough of the world to believe it needed plenty of saving, I accepted the challenge.
Back in college, I majored in philosophy, and though I would soon change to literature since I preferred contemplation to argument, I became somewhat familiar with quite a few philosophies, my favorite of which was called existentialism. The philosopher who made most sense to me was Soren Kierkegaard, who presented existentialism as an attitude that calls for lots of observation and reflection and eventually a conscious choice. Authentic existentialists will at some point decide on a philosophical or religious stance and undertake to stick with it.
Over lots of years, though I have hardly proven to be the sort of Christian Billy Graham or most other promoters of the faith would prefer, I have stuck with my decision to follow Christ to the best of my meager ability. Rarely have I doubted the wisdom of doing so, perhaps because I have encountered plenty of evidence, albeit circumstantial, that my life demands a supernatural explanation -- see the Stephen Olford quote above.
So I rather immodestly allow myself to believe that I've earned the right to be heard.
And here I am, hoping to be heard.
Recently I spent lot of hours reading a wonderful book about Jerry Lee Lewis and his two cousins. Here's a brief review , and the link below gives you an opportunity to hear one of Jerry Lee's cousins who had earned the right to be heard.