Here’s a post from Roy Jacobsen’s Writing, Clear and Simple blog, explaining an actual physiological reason why active verbs are better than passive verbs. So use active verbs, already!
Oh yes, he also has a blog called Dispatches from Outland.
I had an IM conversation last night with a friend who is an agnostic.
He talked about the idea of missionaries in space travel stories. He was assuming that if we found intelligent life on other planets, missionaries from various religions would go to them.
I suppose that’s probably true.
But I said that, for my own part, I’d never been certain whether the Atonement had anything to do with people on other planets (assuming there are any).
He had trouble understanding that.
I said that from a biblical perspective, sin is passed down from Adam, and the Redemption pays for that sin. But space aliens are not descended from Adam. So either a) they would not require redemption at all, or b) they might require an entirely different sort of remedy for whatever problem they might have gotten themselves into.
He said that that was a new thought to him.
It occurred to me that this might be a common problem of perception, and a sign that we Christians haven’t been making our case clearly.
He assumed (I take it. Could be wrong) that believers in proselytizing religions spread their messages out of a simple desire to make people agree with them. A conviction that “I’m right, and I won’t rest until I’ve convinced everybody else that I’m right.” A sort of intellectual bullying impulse.
While from my point of view, the central question is a purely practical one. I believe that there is something radically wrong with the human heart. It is literally “sick unto death.” And I have been entrusted with the medicine that cures that sickness. If I didn’t believe people were perishing, I wouldn’t be greatly troubled that people in Madagascar have a different world view than I do.
Context matters. A man running down a city street shouting, “Follow me to the exit!” is a nut. A man shouting “Follow me to the exit!” in a burning theater is very probably a hero.
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