how long does faith hold out?

Christians in some numbers have called other Christians who believe in faith liars because they believe in things that are not as though they were. This of course is the definition of faith as given in Hebrews. The hinge word here seems to be persistence and the lack of persistence. When persistence fails then my faith fails. Fears are the opposites of faith. Most know that but apparently do not know when they declare God did not heal someone that they are saying it was all God's fault and not their own lack of persistence.

taking offenses is offensive

If I take an offense, for any reason whatever, from anyone, then I by virtue of having taken the offense, have become an offensive person. The act does not have anything to do with anyone except me, the offensive person.
             Nothing anyone can say should have any influence upon me unless I have given control over myself to others. If however, I do take an offense then this shows I am part of a larger group rather than being an individual within the group. From this you can tell a lot about a person, politically being only one portion of their personality thus revealed.
            Salvation is only available to the individual. However, the individual can chose to be part of the group. Whether they would gain salvation from that servitude is doubtful since nothing happens to the group without individual majority input.                               

two nice guys

Hard for me as an individual to be influenced by anyone's style rather than their substance. I recall saying I would rather have coffee with one president but feel better if another president were in the white house. What does anyone's style have to do with me beyond enjoying a cup of coffee with them? 

So this person in conversation mentioned they liked a particular president. I responded that I liked another president who was diametrically the political opposite of the one he had named. He said oh I liked him too. I pointed out that they were both opposites of each other. He said oh no they weren't, they were both nice guys. So it appears one person's style is another person's substance, or something like that. 

persistence bedrock of faith

What if you ask God to heal you and He does not do it.  I once was told this story by a pastor several years ago now. He said, if we pray for two men to be healed and He heals one but not the other then the reason God did not heal the other because He did not want to. He either even had a lesson to teach the other one or else He wanted the other one to do some suffering for his own good, etc.

Notice that this is in direct opposition to the definition of faith. First of all since faith is belief in things that are not as though they were, then who was it that quit faith altogether and decided God, God Himself, did not heal? 

I think rather that is we who decided the game was over, and the gig was up that did not believe in any healing. We forgot along the way of unbelief that persistence is the bedrock of faith. If our persistence wavers or we pull it back and turn from the plow, then we do not believe. If there is no persistence then there is no faith. 

I will believe even after death, death of the body will not deter me. Why was I not healed? I only know I am to do what I am told to do, and no explanation outside of that will weaken my faith except make it stronger. This is what I speak. 

Unfortunately people who go to church to gain faith, are often given no incentive to build their faith. Rather they are left to sit and wait until they decide no answer is coming. What else is such a decision but the end of faith? There is nothing for them to do.

If we do not get an answer and our request to God seems to go down into the grave with Lazarus what then? I don't know, but I trust God anyway even though He kill me. So what if I do not have enough faith to hurl a mountain in the sea? The disciples could not heal the little boy but when they turned him over of to Jesus he was healed. Why they asked could we not do it? This came out only with much prayer and fasting, Jesus said. 

So faith comes in various degrees, some with little and others with great.  Those with little best go to work. But it does not mean I am not saved or will not go to heaven. It means I did not have enough faith to accept healing at that point. I might suggest we ask God... ask Jesus... ask the Holy Spirit to step in and shore us up. We can never say He does not do it until our persistence turns to jelly. I say I will persist anyway and never give up my faith. 

I do not have to know everything. I am a slave dead in Christ. 

knowlege is heavy

We'll never know everything as knowledge multiplies ignorance divides it. Knowledge is heavy. Where enough knowledge is, forgiveness is light. Mankind is crafty and can do anything it sets out to do. Groups are crafty, drawing upon many convergent directions within themselves. God, as the personified Spirit of Existence, is not a committee or a group and therefore wise, able to carry that which He gave existence. Survival is a core desire and leads to hope, but it does not reach to existence.

spiritual struggle to define and change meaning

There is a constant spiritual struggle to define words and change some people's reality for the ultimate purpose to control perceptions and the preceptors to control themselves according to the desires of others to think for them. The words remain but the spirit of the words is changed. 

The great barrier to understanding these abstract spiritual forces is the lack of an understanding of time. We don't know what it is. Physicists cannot agree and must step back offering viewpoints, suspicions, but little understanding of time. I tend toward the idea time only exists in a comparative state. We compare ourselves to our sun. What would time be somewhere else compared to another somewhere else? It is not one thing but many, so it is without any singular meaning, and does not have meaning outside itself.

There is no concept of time outside our own dimension. In the abstract spiritual world time is forever, without beginning and without end. Just one big bang after another as current theory holds. Therefore time does not exist except in our concrete seen world, which itself came from the unseen.  

This means we are living as in a brief dream with an end, and the dream is from the unseen. We shall see what we shall see.

politics is a no plausabilty zone

Politics is gossip, but recently politics is mostly bullying by those who control the microphones. Also it is the many attacking one individual without any attempt at plausibility. When anyone speaks about another they tell more about themselves than anyone else. If a person sees racists among issues with no relation to racism then we have an open book speaking to us about what they see and hear within themselves. When one gives tongue to the devil it is the devil's message being scattered about. If one really wanted to starve racism they would do better than to feed it. Why would anyone keep coming back to racism if it is not the urge to speak what they see, hear, with a desire to keep alive. Bullies speak for their own benefit about what pleases them the most.

the first definition of God

God defined Himself, according to the report of Moses, in what seems to be the first definition of who God was written down. He said He was Existence, "I Am that I Am". Also this was to be His name for all generations, as a memorial of who He was, according to the report of Moses. 

There was no mention of "supreme being", a definition offered since then by men and other various sources. The aforementioned definition could easily embrace idols as well anything else. The reading of ancient writers reveals they clearly understood God to be Existence. 

everyone faces their faith alone

Faith for believers pleases God. Faith for the atheistic view is all there is to fall back on since one will never have all the facts to prove a negative. So we all are forced to operate on faith. It helps to believe strongly and steadily in something. This something for believers is their Bible and reading and rereading it until it is deep into their spirit. Atheists usually believe in some form of humanism, which could be themselves or mankind.

(I understand that some adults are giving teaching the children another sort of regressive language designed to render everything as simple as possible so as to make everything the same. So mankind would be another word. Well, they have their language and I have mine.)

There is another route to faith alongside the Bible. It is unendorsed but I think it valid. Faith cannot be effective if it comes within itself. In other words if one wants faith then it must be as if independent of or alongside a belief such as the Bible. That would be a belief in another person outside yourself which for Christians would be Jesus. It could also be God and or the Holy Spirit but I favor Jesus. This reflects a simple binary nature rather than a mathematics elaborately organized. 

 I favor Jesus but I find myself talking primarily to the Comforter. Faith is not so easily gained as I suspect many people may think. One cannot believe so easily as a belief based on agreement, or just going along with someone else, rather it must be deep down into the spirit already locked in and decided. It necessarily must be worked on daily if you are to move it forward.

Jesus was the first prominent voice to reveal the importance of the unseen spirit within elevated to the Holy Spirit from which it comes. When science dedicated to the known split off from the devotion to the unknown from which all things known originate, this was a serious handicap to enlarging knowledge. This handicap suffered a serious blow when Newton discovered scientifically characterized knowledge that was totally unseen, such as gravity. This knowledge was perhaps the only abstract spiritually characterized facts that appeared in the focus of Jesus up to the time of Newton.

There are many individuals who cannot relate whatsoever to anything spiritual and continue their focus on things concrete which misses entirely the binary nature of faith arising from faith founded on a conscious decision to believe on a power source from within a personified Spirit. In the best case, this would be Jesus.

the facts and the fancy

There are physicists who are accepting the idea of a designer source, in an effort to understand how things came to be about. The viewpoint of a designing force takes in more than one entity at a time, which seems to rule out anything evolutionary. These entities are often binary in nature. They multiply by dividing similar to observations under the microscope. What I find fascinating is the mathematics of binary functions. Why is the numerical mathematics we utilize  so well, not the foundation of the designer? Binary code is the most simple and fundamental of anything that could come about. It does allow any room for evolution from within a single source and is not even intended to be visually useful or easily recognized. Who can recall a binary number in their heads? They all look alike.

So what is the nature of binary numbers and what is their significance in understanding progressions. One entity evolves but two would have to evolve separately. The male was designed with the female in mind. In other words, the designing force had to be behind the evolving of both as not one but two. 

The ghost of Isaac Asimov has entered deliberations. Whenever he wanted to know something about anything, he wrote a book about it. When you know nothing about a subject, this is the perfect time to explain things. Sounds like first glance we could get something from nothing, as has been suggested elsewhere. 

If one does not believe in the concept or the need for a purpose in the progressions, what do we do with the resulting absurdities? Here one can wonder why it is that when we finally figure something out we find all our previous paradigms weren't even close? 

did you ever hear an adult say, "see Spot run?"

I sometimes think about war and its' constant presence in the pages of history. I wonder if war is part of our condition, as a measure of what should survive and who should dominate. Ever consider hurricanes as a cleaning of the planet surface? Fire rejuvenates the forest, like a farmer burning off his blueberries. Volcanoes are evidence of constant moving of the crust of terra firma. Everything is constantly changing in the concrete world. War is like the planting of seeds and peace is the time of growing. Is the United States changing outwardly or is it, because of it size and success, changing eternally. With change there is life and with further change there is death, All this is evidence of renewing. Where is our abstract spirit in all this concrete change changing to? Two signs of death or two signs of change in Groups are the weakening defenses of failing borders and the escalating cultural suicide in the practice of abortions. These are not social issues we consider here, this is merely doing the math.   

the last big bang leads to another

Without facts we rely on faith. Since we do not know anywhere near the basic necessary facts of any matter, everyone has to take all issues the same, which is to rely on faith. The more we learn the more we learn that there is more we did not know that we ever were aware of before. With the answers we demonstrate our increasing knowledge. The attending questions testify to our increasing ignorance. I wonder if this may be why we think the universe is expanding? If the universe appears to be expanding then this is could be where the big bang began.

fear gains the upperhand

One can sense it gathering ever deeper behind the near panic all around us. There is an invisible  cloud of foreboding and fear settling over the entire planet to which we are wedded for our entire lives. The internet does not reflect this fear as much as the political climate but volcanoes and the weather are great dragons of the technical age.

The most frightening fear is Yellowstone. The entire United States is the crater of a volcano that can take out all living things. Life will return as it likely has every time previous but we will not return with it. Volcanoes are just as dangerous all over the planet as Yellowstone, but it is the conversation within Groups that is indicative of fear.

Consider the climate itself. Fear of even the weather stalks political world views. Ridiculed by some as the Humpty Dumpty Party, adherents are threatening each other and seriously reflecting near panic in their conversations of the future.

Everything coming out of groups is largely involved in recruiting members using fear of the future as the major attraction. People seem to be blaming themselves, anyone, for making the fearful even worse. 

Asteroids are low on the list, but our knowledge and ability to predict is giving us a clearer outlook for the possible disasters which do threaten. 

The constant spiritual struggle escalating between Groups is growing more powerful through communicative advances, and it is the individual who is the most vulnerable because of these advances.

The group does not need the individual and will sacrifice individuals to the group without caution or restraint. The individual however, needs the group for protection and the division of labor. Communication between individuals already welded to their Groups is providing those Group control over their individuals like never before.

Consider the narrow views seen and heard in the general media, all tinged with dread and a fretful fear. There is the smell of war in the air. My grandmother's saying for these situations was, a lot of baby boys being born... means war is nearby. 

from out of the heart the mouth speaks

We all speak for our own benefit. Anyone speaking about someone else is still speaking for their own benefit and will in their conversation tell us more about themselves than anyone they are talking to or about. If you ever are accused of lying then you know the accuser is likely routinely lying himself and therefore why in the world are you not also? 

When anyone tells you this is what you are saying they are telling you what they are saying and put it in your mouth. The stronger they are against you the stronger their tongues speak or even see with their eyes. Not so long ago that we could say recently, a reporter in the oval office wanted to not see what was in his heart so strongly that he insisted he did not see something sitting right in front of him. Everything we say comes from within us.

For example, someone who speaks of racism often will usually begin to see racism everywhere, They become experts in racism, and racism is constantly on their minds. As their sensitivity escalates they will be able to see it as a matter of fact no matter what. So what? This reinforces the ideas of racism outside themselves and confirms their original suspicions. As a result they themselves become even more expert in giving tongue to the devil. 

response ability

Response ability is the ability to respond. Respond is the keyword, since it is just the response itself, with or without the adjective ability. If you do not have the ability to respond then you are singularly not to blame. However, you still have to respond, regardless of blame. In other words you are the only one in the donut hole even if the blame rests with someone else.

This was first demonstrated by a little known theory inaptly named baby in the well. If a baby is placed irresponsibility, on the edge of a well and falls into the well by a gust of wind, the baby remains in the well. Blame however rests wherever it rests. 

All this was in the law since Roman times as relating to intent. Intent does not enter into guilt or responsibility,  Intent regards only degree of sentence by the court. You are not guiltless because you did not intend commit a crime, you are only subject to a lesser or greater sentence as determined by the degree of your intent. 

Spahn and Sain and pray for rain

There are several instances which struck me as to the accuracy of technically exact language as against the spiritually abstract view of any event. This is highlighted in the Spahn and Sain saying often attributed to Billy Southworth of the Boston Braves when he named his starting pitchers for the next day's doubleheader.

It, if I recall inside my version, was not said by Billy at all but rather by a sports writer in his column. And, it was not worded exactly like that at all. Bottom line however, is that the final wording no matter how it arrived was better than the actual technically correct version.

This happens over and over, one could recount examples all day. So which is the best? The abstract one often seen in the distant past that creates the spiritually correct wording that far exceeds the actual recorded words? The ancient historical writers could capture the most memorable incidents several years after an event, more so than a concretely correct recording. The latter version was often cluttered with minutiae that clouded rather than providing any clear explanation of an event.

Numbers, when quoted by the ancients were not exact either. Forty meant a lot of days, not exactly forty. The spirit is always the more accurate and cutting science off from the spiritual limited the gaining of new knowledge from the previously unknown. In these later day however, there is some evidence that science and religion is coming closer. It was a blow when they separated that may be healed in future days, if there are any.

father and the son together

In the New Testament John 3:16 is often thought of as the central verse in the Bible. However, the most important verse in the Old Testament, and the most significant verse in all the Torah is 
Exodus 3:14. 

It says that God is Existence. Specifically I am that I am means existence. The word Hayah is the first person singular meaning existence. This is the report of Moses, credited with being the first to write anything Biblical down. Moses himself does not give this definition, God is answering Moses about who He is. This is God describing Himself.

Yet if you look it up in your hand held you will not find any definition like this until you dig deeper. God is a supreme being seems to be the consensus. All of the definitions come from other people, not one single one quotes Moses' report that God said He was I Am that I Am, meaning existence.

God did not say He created existence, He said he WAS existence. He did not even say he was a supreme being, probably caused by the obvious fact that, in these definitions by men, even idols could bee supreme beings. 

He did not say He was in control, This definition by men is subconsciously created to shift all responsibility for everything off the shoulder's of men and onto God. This requires no belief on our part, for instance God will heal us if we can only persuade Him to do so. No admission of belief is required from us. This despite Jesus said over and over again, if you believe, be it done to you according to your belief. We are not healed by the belief of Jesus, but by our belief in His power. Many believe in Jesus but not His power. I call this view Christian atheism.

So if the atheist does not believe in God he does not believe in existence. 

Forever is not now

Outside it is dark and rain on the roof takes on a persuasive sound above empty rooms. Alone  one thinks of all the people known personally over time many years long gone. Just the passage of time itself is lonely and it does not seem to matter whether they were good times or bad. Both are melancholy. The passage of time alone just by itself is lonely. So many have lived and died. Lost, all eventually forgotten within their own short space of time even as our own space of time is disappearing. It fools us into thinking there is plenty of time left. We know it is not, but we think what we like.

Maybe an awareness of separation from the past does it. Maybe it is the hint of a separating from existence. Nothing could be sadder than the sense of separation from our existence. We need another if we are to be sensitive to ourselves.  I think it is good to have an intense sense of yourself. We do this while living with another. It is enjoyable and for a brief moment we think it will all last forever. Our near orbits progress slowly hurling us apart changing perspectives into a deeper sweeter sadness.   

tiny

Size print so smell make it more likely typos will go uncorrected. Wrriting fast and furious results in tiny but key words skipped over. Just like reading....

everyone likes a mystery

Why are conspiracies I've heard usually mentioned as vast? Perhaps the prominence of the discoverers is to blame. Conspiracies seem to be largely attempts to provide answers where there are no

certainties. Obviously enough. My impression of their vastness is pure anecdotal, naturally so since any further proof would not be worth the effort. Which brings me to why I am drawn to all this is. It is in the UFO column. I tend to discount such subjects as anything psychic as like a verb in search of a so what subject on the horizon. Everyone likes a mystery.  

confessions of a christian

After perfect attendance in sunday school, graduating from a Christian high school, and attending a Christian college I became an avowed atheist. This decision was based on one of the more common fallacies in logic, misplaced authority.

Today I have a page I paid six dollars for, torn from Life magazine of Ted Williams endorsing cigarettes. It is presented in a unique frame under glass. He was an authority of baseball, not of tobacco. I am not aware he ever used cigarettes.

Churches literally do not define God, Luckily God defined Himself. You believe it or you don't. Agreeing is not believing, neither is going along with the pastor, nor even a strong wanting to believe.  

before discussions come definitions

I can see the scene on my way home almost as yesterday. A voice without sound said within me, God is Existence. I cannot recall my age but it happened in those early days before one is conscious of time. I had no idea what the word existence meant nor its' significance. 

Today I am a lot closer to the end of my life than the beginning. I discovered the meaning reading the ancient writers where it was reported by Moses when he asked God who shall he say sent him. 

According to Moses, in very likely the earliest definition of God, that defined Himself as I am that I am. This is an obvious reference to Existence. He did not create existence He is existence. 

Since God is unseen and is universally described as a spirit, in particular a personalized spirit of ourselves, and also since, we were given existence by definition. This we should remind ourselves contributes to a definition, not a theory.

Therefore the earliest spoken definition, God is the personified spirit of existence. This is, as we emphasized earlier is a definition, not a theory. Without a definition how could two individuals discuss it within themselves?

God is, in the popular definition, a or the supreme being, which could easily be confused with idols. Physics  is now quite comfortable discussing the unseen. At one time seeing was believing to many, but it gradually became true to me that believing is seeing. Today this is more universally recognized.

even atheists are faith based

Both the atheist position and all believers in God, with or without a logical definition, cannot anywhere near prove their positions but must base their views on faith for several reasons.

The most obvious reason is lack of anywhere near enough information to make a sensible decision in the matter, Many have little or no respect for their ignorance, since one supposes, they are ignorant of it. Most do not even realize they have a totally inadequate definition of God. When we gain new information and add to our knowledge that alone satisfies quite a few atheists.  

Since there more unknowns than known facts in the matter we cannot escape the necessity of faith to fill the gap. The more answers we gain knowledge of, the more we realize we are learning there are even more questions to gain the answer of. Questions require answers when we are aware of them unlike the seen universe appearing that it is expanding, suggesting a bang starting it all. Many forget they are talking about theories and eventually speak of theories as if they were proven facts. Meanwhile the bang theory is a fallacy in logic begging the question.                                                                                                                                               

living in our head

We all admit to ourselves we are going to die, but not now. It is a good definition of forever. We also sometimes take illustrations as proof. Some of us might remind themselves that illustrations do not prove anything or even make a good case for themselves. Illustrations merely illustrate. Also, theories are theories,  Theories are unproven. Yet when we refer to a theory often enough, especially popular ones, they are merely fill ins for that we do not know scientifically. Our expectations of new information is most often not what we expected at all.  The so-called big bang is a theory. It even suggests a beginning which sounds much like begging the question, which to put it more baldly is a fallacy featured in logic. It pushes the theory up against another theory, so that we are more stacking up theories than anything else. 

proving the proven in real time

While there are plenty factors interfering with the ability to prove something true, time alone is enough by itself to place all proof in question. When you prove something to your satisfaction you are doing it in the present that is soon the past. Most proof soon settles into assumptions very likely true, but which you believe in those moments that are piling up additives placing everything in a different time zone and a different perspective. Things may still appear to be true but it is an operative true for yourself. It is not technically true for all time and for anyone else. In short, time itself and itself by itself is reason enough to rendered absolute truth questionable, meaning nothing can be proved for a certainty. This is only one reason why there are so many lies from even the past which are flourishing factually in the most current present. There are other reasons but ultimately nothing can be proved scientifically.                                                                         

time always enters the pciture in the end

Charles Dickens talked to himself. Time (still we cannot define it) was a problem for him. He begged off meeting with a particular person because knowledge of even a short moment sacrificed for someone else's benefit interfered with all his other ostensibly free moments leading up to the meeting. Men have rifle like focus whereas women often seem to favor shotguns. Point for me is that time maybe hard to define but it is more important when we order it for our personal schedules. Time itself alone may be an illusion since it only exists in a comparative state. So if I use my time to solve problems, I may think it is well spent but one has to figure out what my serious problems are first, which forces me to arrange my time backwards. The trap here presenting itself is spending a questionable amount of singular time observing. The title for this post comes from the film Beat the Devil (1953)  first production by Bogart free of the star system.

Speaking from principles rather than personalities.

One should remind themselves periodically of the simple fact that all politics is gossip primarily because people talk as specifics. They talk, as we all do in the greater part, for their own benefit. This is true even in attempts to persuade. Persuasion is about talking ourselves into ourselves being persuaded rather than others. Similarly, anger signals one's weakness in believing it. 

Believing is not easily accomplished as some tend to think Believing is not agreement or going along with someone else. It is achieved by repetition, reading repeatedly, until it is down into one's spirit. I am nagged by a sense of lack that I do not know of another method. Repetition is used in forced indoctrination as well. We  have to think this is all too mechanical and should not be. .