Doug Spaulding, you say eventually you'll get to heaven? Boy, those are pretty evasive answers. Your charming words and phrases have a suspicious irk to them. You mean after you someday die? Or because you first have to clean up your act?

This chatter about a triune God makes it sound like Jehovah Witness banter. For those not aware, a Jehovah Witness says no one is going to Hell, because there ain't such a place. And no one is going to Heaven either because everyone is staying right here on planet Earth. Jehovah Witnesses claim Jesus was Michael the Archangel. And most profoundly insane to the point of get-me a-room-at-the-ward in Bonkersville, they claim that Jesus already came back in 1914. So you see, everybody is waiting for absolutely nothing. No second coming. It's already happened! And guess what? It happened in secret. Only the Jehovah Witnesses knew about it? Maybe the rest of us are just plain dumb. This is what happens when you alter the Greek text. Or is it pure and simple blatant theological revisionism? Anyone can come up with a book on Ray Bradbury in 50 years and claim all sorts of things and have a following. Like, well, ol' Bradbury did sleep in my Uncle's cedar chest in the attic, back in Arizona, when he was a kid, when he didn't want to go home. Oh, by the way, his first love was playing the violin just like Jack Benny, also from Waukegan. And another thing, Ray used to always practice the violin while standing in his favorite place in the back yard, the Tomato patch. Yeah, in Arizona!

'Tis as I always suspected, one man's truth is but another man's myth.

quote:

Originally posted by Phil Knox:
Doug Spaulding, your charming words and phrases...

Thanks!

Phil Knox!
We all said our say, and it was by the grace of God that I woke up. I have Uncles and Aunts and cousins that are at ease in ignoring truth. It's so gosh darn easier. In fact, it's darn comfortable. You don't have to give up anything. Christ said it all: If you love your wife, your husband, your family, your home, more than me, you don't belong to me. A lot of people have this notion that it's some sort of easy thing, growing in your understanding of God's grace. That's called Cheap Christianity. There's a lot of that out there.

Nard, a few of your recent comments got me thinking of this topic (below). Then your most recent post brought me to respond tonight.

If you are familiar with Pete Maravich, the basketball genius of the 70's-80's, a new biography has been just released by Wayne Federman that has some enlightening chapters. With all of the fame and glory he had growing up, playing at the college and professional levels, being the highest paid NBA star (by far) of the era, true happiness came only after awakening from a sound sleep one night to hear of his true calling.

I could not do justice to the writing or the moment or the telling of the months that followed. If you can get a copy of the book from the library, even if not familiar with man, his joy at last is (you need to know about his "from childhood-to-adult driven life") a real blessing just to read about.

I followed him in my youth and recall vividly that he was brilliant at what he did. The story of his life after basketball now gives him a glow that far outshines the image I had of him running, shooting, and getting front covers on all of the sports mags. He left us far too early at the age of 40.

Life! Is it not all about using our very special gifts, but not for our own glory!?

Also:
Here is an NPR audio clip from "Only a Game" -
http://www.onlyagame.org/features/2007/01/Maravich.asp

quote:

Originally posted by Nard Kordell:
...ignoring truth. It's so gosh darn easier. In fact, it's darn comfortable.

We must all come to a place where we face the choice between the right thing and the easy thing.

I pray my journey is never easy.

quote:

Originally posted by Chapter 31:
But this [butterfly] is an extra. It’s [loveliness is] an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness that gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from [the butterflies].”

I say we better be darned careful about stepping on butterflies whenever we venture into the distant past!

quote:

Originally posted by Doug Spaulding:
We can't explain God. We can't define God. We can only worship God.

This cuts to the essence of theological debate today. Yet it is one that most people who identify themselves with evangelical Protestantism or conservative Catholicism seem to think they can either ignore or repress. They cannot.

Popular religion is not what Christianity is all about.

The intervening, miraculous God is built upon the old idea of the record keeping Deity who lives above the sky and who swoops down on earth to split the Red Sea, or to rain heavenly manna on the starving Israelites in the wilderness. This is also the God who delights in sending plagues on Israel's enemies, the Egyptians, and drowning them in that same Red Sea.

This is also a God who apparently has not accepted the insights of Isaac Newton about how the world operates. It is a world, not of precise natural law, but of controlled chaos. Most theologians have long since abandoned such a deity.

When people assert that God intervenes in human life to heal, they must explain why God does that so sporadically. When people assert that splitting the Red Sea was a miracle to save Jews from death, they must explain why God allowed the Holocaust that destroyed Jews by the millions. It is not a simple subject.

The idea that anyone knows who God is or how God works is ludicrous. What kind of human folly is that? I do not think that a horse can describe what it means to be human. Humanity is a dimension of life and consciousness that is simply beyond that which a horse can embrace. Similarly, I do not believe that human beings can describe what God is. The realm of God is simply beyond that which the human mind can know. Perhaps one ought to observe that most of the deities that human beings have worshiped throughout history have looked remarkably like human beings, magnified and supernaturalized. We have no God language to use so we force our God consciousness into human language. Only when that truth is acknowledged and accepted can we even begin to understand the question.

As to the nature of God, it's something we cannot know but about which we speculate endlessly. I believe God is real, but my human mind and human language can never penetrate that reality. So I cannot describe God, I can only describe my presumed God experience and honesty compels me to state that I might be delusional.

We must move between the God experience which I believe is real and the way the God experience has normally been explained, which are to me dated, inadequate and generally unbelievable.

Those who continue to repeat the slogans of their religious past as if they are still operative are wrong and they are increasingly weird.

I wish you all the best in your various spiritual journeys, and I take comfort in the knowledge that we will all...

Rocket,
With one whole green lime. Got a match?

fjp451: Hey, thanks loads. I will check that link out.

Doug Spaulding:
Have you become so heavenly minded that you are no longer Earthly good? I mean, so you're waaaay out there because God is already waaaay out there. Fine! Sure there comes a break where plain old fashioned 'awe' stupifies one at God revealing something in a moment from nowhere, when you think you're just about to be snatched away into heaven where eternity dwells. But also understand that God is 'understandable'. Not all of God, of course, but at least something: For instance:

Philippians, Chapt 2, verse 5-8:
Your attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God. He laid aside his power and glory and made himself nothing; he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form. And in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal's death on a cross.

Doug,
The butterfly metaphor is a wonder. Of course you know this already but it’s not just a past scenario but a past, present, future one. It’s the silver candlesticks in Le Miserables, or, if you will, a homeless man who comes up to someone they know and ask if they will take them in if things get too bad. The person says yes. The homeless man makes arrangements at the shelter instead but is inspired by the fellow who offered the help. Jump a hundred and fifty years, the homeless man still lives, the inventor of whatever has saved the world from some sort of destruction. When interviewed by a reporter he responds, “The events as they have transpired could not have been except for the man who said ‘Yes.’”.

I do have a match, sadly no lime (>going on six years w/out the lime)

Rocket,
The MI password to recognize another agent was:
“Do you have a match?”
“No, I never use them. But I have a lighter.”
“Better still.”
“Yes. Until they go wrong.”

All from Fleming.

Oh, to those who are still involved with Q and A (and I know this has been used on the board once before)—that’s one down and five to go. The questioning now goes to Mr. Cerf. (I liked that one about going to Heaven. That was a pip!)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Chapter 31,

You know, this could become a full-time job going back and forth with questions and answers. Now exactly how did Bennet Cerf make money on this sort of thing?

HERE'S A QUESTION:
Why is it so cold everywhere. Is it really the result of global warming?