Faith Critically More Important
Couldn'thelp overhear an intense discussion about signs and wonders at a side table in the Naked Eye recently.
What did Jesus say about "this" people desiring a sign? (Checking location) I am myself not overly impressed with blood coming out of stones and such. The fact that there was even universal donor blood involved does not rate any big discussion for my part. The Shroud is, on the other hand, quite interesting but is still not pivotal in any way.
Of course, now that I think on it, I am very concerned about healings. They seem worthwhile since they are so very appreciated and attracts faith. It is still, just the same, all in the seen world, and in the end, the flesh will not help us. This according to Jesus.
I am now finally become rather bored with all the old chestnuts dealing with the existence of God, having settled everything in that drawer to my own satisfaction. God is the I am that I am, which is to say God is Existence. My foundational view is that existence itself is good by definition, or else it could not exist. Anything bad is destruction destroying itself by definition.
So where will this lead next? I sense a stream of consciousness coming over my spirit. It is not a time to carve anything in stone. So, I will say what I will say and let no one tell me what I am saying in my place.
Gingerbread maybe, but not foundational. Everyone says what they say, and they can keep on saying it, but not hold to making as if I am saying it for them. So let the tremble chins line up and tell me what I am saying if they want. I just will say "No, that is what you are saying, saying all for yourself, from yourself, about yourself, on your own."
My faith no more has a foundation in logical arguments made from routine believable concepts, bordering on the mundane. I am venturing on my own, off by myself all alone. I think so in any event. Both faith and fact are logically equal it seems to me in this particular moment.
Faith experienced is always new and dynamically moving. Fact on the other hand is rooted in a final settlement, a fixed stone marking something that in time will be thought of as, "once was but no more."
Now that is getting to too toot far ahead of even me!
The original short green foliage seen earlier on Churchill's stone has been replaced with a newer inscription seen in today's Memory Stones.
I suddenly find myself isolated amid all my logical spin weaving with the proof there is not only an existing God, but that there is something greater... "a faith" in God. A faith that renders all my logical proofs redundant at best. I sense there are beliefs and there is something quite another, "believing in God".
Nothing is impossible.
The word itself is I'm possible.
Audrey Hepburn
It is more difficult to write a good short story than a good novel. It is more difficult to write a good poem or lyric than write a good short story. To write a good quote is another story.
The illustration highlights an example of why attacking the man begins, by attacking his argument with the logical fallacy of argumentum ad hominem.
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| Truth takes courage |
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| Red Sea seen from space on a clear day. |
Was not the existing pagan
Holiday Before Christmas
Christianized to Christmas?
The Baby in the manger theme this time of year was just slowly seeming to merge with a fading view of the incarnate God, and in turn be absorbed by a diluting Xmas. This in my instinctive view at least.
The mother comes before her son. But is this mother before, or after "her" Son? It was not until I focused on the word incarnate that I realized it was beginning to replace the incarnate view in my view at least.
I was internalizing the view of the seen "Baby in the Manger World." In it I was about to lose the significance of the incarnate transition from the unseen to the seen.
Who Causes Suffering?
If there is a God, then why does He allow suffering to exist, since He is Existence Himself? My quick answer is because we, many of us at least, insist on it. Why did we insist on it? My view is because not a few gave themselves over to the chief spirit of suffering, the devil of doubt and destruction.
So how did we do that? We were born into it, as children of suffering. How could that be true? Why would not God intervene? There was originally no need for Him to intervene since all existence is good. We ourselves intervened instead.
We became convinced that knowledge of our own, the knowledge of good, and as it turned out, evil, would be better than God's given knowledge. So, it did turn out that our new knowledge included not only knowledge of good, but something new, the knowledge of, evil.
Knowledge not a one-way street
Much evil knowledge seems good until one gets deeper into it and then find the seeming good, changes, changes into destruction. All I can tell myself now is that since I do not have access to all knowledge, I have to trust someone I believe has.
Why would I do that? I found the more knowledge I gained included knowledge of more questions I did not know ever even existed. So, my knowledge turned mostly the knowledge I was more ignorant of than when I was unaware the extent of my ignorance.
The daring leap
So now that our knowledge includes evil, knowledge some of us assume is based on what is only presently known. This forces them to take the only action they can take under the present circumstances of which they are limitedly aware. I find my conclusion of all these complications is that I may have been maneuvered into the unenviable position of judging God. I suggest a hasty retreat. So, I take Job's position of trusting God no matter what. Maybe this is what actual believing is, believing in an incredible God worth believing.
This strange idea, mentioned in Manna today, says Jesus was murdered. In John 10:17-18, Jesus speaks otherwise. I am concerned that so many, and in teaching positions as well, are so unaware of the commandments of Jesus.
They seem to think the parables, wherein many commandments are revealed are what, for whom, somebody else? We can ignore the parables?
But one fact is revealed by this particular murder view thing. A lack of awareness of that everything seen came from the unseen, even as high up as the pulpit itself. Look at myself as well, regarding the incarnate post.
Faith is what the
World calls a lie
Whenever I am asked, how I am I doing, I like to say I am doing wonderful, marvelous, fantastic! They say, isn't that great. Then I follow up with the only thing that bothers me is, I lie a lot. Nothing better than an old joke.
The scriptures, in Hebrews I think, defines faith as, saying things that are not, as though they were. The world, even some Christians, call that a lie.
Words are powerful
The world goes by the seen, they have little respect for the spirit. However, God spoke the world into existence by saying, and His faith brought it into the seen. Everything unseen came from the seen.
According to polls as well as my experience, here in the States, church attendance, membership, and believers in God are shrinking and shrinking. I would have liked to have known this early, like when I was deciding whether or not to believe in Sainta Claus, I learned then from our pastor that the stories in the Bible were not true, only the meaning was true.
Notice the word meaning? Why was that word meaning not spiritual instead? Later I learned the adults only believed in God, for the sake of the children. All the while adults were sprinkling their talk with words like pulpit talk, meaning pretend talk. Then I learned that something in the Bible was not for today.
It goes on from there. I wonder where it stops? Maybe Jesus did not even exist. Homer with one surviving book thanks to the Alexandrian fire existed, but unbelievable numbers of books about Jesus called His existence into question.
Maybe Jesus is just not for today. It was not until I was an atheist in college, with a course in logic under my belt, and learning the list of fallacies, that the seeds of doubt about all this pinball thinking would begin a slow-motion exploding revelation in my mind.
Either the mind rules the body
Or the body rules the mind
I do not think it possible to persuade anyone of anything they were not already persuaded of in their spirit or in some other status of, hopefully, their mind directing their body. This means, if true, they alone are responsible for what they believe. This, no matter how dense the crowd they gave their surrounding will to while in the crowd.
Does this make sense?
I do not care how articulate anyone is, it baffles me how anyone can debate whether there is a God or not, all the while never once identifying what their definition of who God is. If this does make sense to anyone then they are merely not convinced who God is, in my view. There are some others who are certain that there not only is no God, but we are all organisms. I first encountered this position in college. This view likes to think everything is a science, so they reduce everything to a formula equaling everyone is the same. But it turns out some are not so identical as others. These will tell the same people what to do, apparently so they will be useful, useful to those who are not so identical. Our key word is same. But if one does not believe in God out of the box, then how can you have a definition?
The Hour has Come
The night before going to the Cross Jesus prayed what is called the high priestly prayer. Of all the books in the Bible the most central chapter is the red-letter chapter John 17. It is on the same par as John 3:16 is the most central verse.
We are One
The theme that God is in Jesus and Jesus is in God, and God is in us, and we are in God is stressed over and over. I'd like to count how often sometime. My mother read this chapter every morning. John 17 is the first thing you read looking at her cenotaph.
Life is like a butterfly
Time is fooling us all even as I speak. Wasting time, my more grievous sin, is also the theme of the prison movie Papillon. This life is often characterized as a prison. Sartre, for instance, titled one of his books No Exit.
Life and prison are alike in some respects. Quite a few of us do not want to be released when our time is up, maybe because the longer one lives, the more likely we become institutionalized, comfortable where we are. 😉
Gaining hope
However, I am coming out of this cloud reading the Bible regularly (see Manna) and my feeling is, I am going to crash out soon. As a reminder to myself, next is looking this moment like... "a case of stolen identity".
If one is concerned with the current generation's appearance to be largely led around by their sniffling intellectual noses, have no concern. I'll always remember one of my BU professors commenting that approximately every 25 years (considered a generation) that each one overthrows the previous generation to go off on a different tangent of their own altogether. So, there is always hope for renewal... for everybody eventually.... for a while at least. How quickly will everything pass. Time is always moving toward something new and if one does not like it, we have to remember that to go up the steps we have to put one foot down to get to the next step up.
