Knowledge stamped on the heart makes one wise.
Beth Moore
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Hello Linda
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I felt that my last journal entry "No End In Sight" was important enough to get some response. even contentious comments from people who disagreed. But on Saturday, when I posted it, I received only 18 visits instead of my usual 30 to 40 (high 20's on a slow day). I thought that was pathetic.
The entry was an honest gift, an attempt to clear the air of some of the superstitious and limited thinking about the cosmos we live in and with. There are temptations engendered in some to treat the Bible and other sacred texts as historical documents. As a result there are always delusional people calculating the end of the world, even among the educated and intelligent. Why should this be? What brings a person to such a state of false belief?
The search for the living truth of our existence as items in the universal patterns is a struggle. It is a long voyage toward the ever expanding mental horizon. It seems easier to abandon the task altogether, to leave such matters to the solitary guru on the mountain top. But it also seems impossible so long as words like heaven, hell, judgement day, immortality , mortality and God are flung carelessly around the tables of discussion.
I fact it seems easier to rely on superstition, hearsay and what someone else has to say about any of those things than to face reasoning one's own way through the tangled foliage of misinterpretations. How many Christians believe that "an eye for an eye," and that if you live a virtuous life you will go to heaven when you die, is the word of God? And yet there was a Jewish man called Jesus Christ who came teaching the "glad tidings" of forgiveness, immortality and "the kingdom of heaven is within you." There was a man for whom everything that existed was a symbol, a trope, a parable. He insisted the people look beyond the obvious to learn the reality of it's meaning and when they couldn't do it he got frustrated and yelled at them.
I decided to leave my journal entry up until I got 100 visits, which happened yesterday (Thursday) afternoon. I know it doesn't mean that 100 people read it, but some of them did, and that's what I hoped for. And perhaps a few of them will begin, if they haven't already, to ponder the fact that there is wisdom, hidden, but in plain sight, with every flower, poem, natural law and powerful force of the universe.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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AUTUMN QUESTION
What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?
Only 5 answers so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
I await your answers.
DB
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Showing posts with label Jesus Christ. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jesus Christ. Show all posts
Friday, October 28, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
The Great Snatch
You have to get close to a theory to see the cracks.
Unknown
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Hello Alborg, Denmark
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The Bible is a wonderful document, filled with wisdom and practical truth. But unfortunately it is also a document upon which to hang theories about things that have nothing to do with wisdom and truth. One can put this verse with that verse and a few other verses and in the process prove almost anything.
From my own curiosity I read everything I could find on the Internet about the theory of the Great Rapture, the event coming this Saturday when there will be a worldwide earthquake and the elect and true believes will be taken up to the air along with Jesus Christ who will then shut the door on salvation, as God shut the door to Noah's Ark which then floated for 150 days while the Earth was destroyed, or rather those who lived here. Then those of us who are left behind will suffer torments of scorpion like creatures and beg for death for another 150 days until the End Of The World comes in October.
This theory is so full of cracks it's almost impossible to list them all. But it falls apart at the very beginning when Camping basis his findings on a myth. He traces the creation back to the year 11,013 BC and identifies Adam and Eve as part of that creation. In fact creation was well up and running before the patriarchs came up with the myth of the Garden of Eden to explain hubris, right and wrong, the true and the false. If one actually believes there was such a garden, with Adam and Eve and a talking snake one might as well believe there was once a race between a tortoise and a hare.
At best this canard is an exercise in trying to measure the cosmos by simple arithmetic. At worst it is a dogmatic claim of divine reward and punishment which does nothing but frighten a lot of innocent, gullible people.
The final crack in this theory is that the Creator is going to destroy His own creation. Simple arithmetical reason takes over here. If the creator has to destroy part of his creation he is an imperfect creator, he has destroyed part of himself. And where does that leave the people who are up in the air? Up in the air.
There will be no worldwide earthquake on Saturday. The local forecast is for scattered showers. But there may be a great shake up of some people's religious beliefs.
The way I see it is that goodness is the only rational way to define godliness. On one side I want to dissuade the so-called godly, pious hypocrites from the idea that they are going to heaven while everyone else is going to hell. Someday I may even inform them that their hypocritical ways puts them already in hell. Human behavior can be improved, the evil in it can be jettisoned. I believe that everyone is redeemable from even the worst kind of badness (ungodliness, ungoodness) and there is endemic rightness (righteousness) in people, however and in whatever ways one can discover it.
My own brand of bible thumping has to do with trying to get rid of an anthropomorphic god in people's thinking, to accept an inherent natural god with spiritual power and love, a kingdom of heaven within us as stated by Jesus. My religion, if you can call it that, does not come out of some fragrant field of flowers, or from some rosy cheeked pastor with flashing teeth. It comes from striving and grappling with years of poverty and pain, and having witnessed the healing of the desperate through strong faith in themselves.
On Saturday, May 21 when the Rapture, The Great Snatch, comes or doesn't come, I think I'll join my good friends in the bar.
Dana Bate
The Vagabond
Never Give Up
*********************
Unknown
****************
Hello Alborg, Denmark
*************************
The Bible is a wonderful document, filled with wisdom and practical truth. But unfortunately it is also a document upon which to hang theories about things that have nothing to do with wisdom and truth. One can put this verse with that verse and a few other verses and in the process prove almost anything.
From my own curiosity I read everything I could find on the Internet about the theory of the Great Rapture, the event coming this Saturday when there will be a worldwide earthquake and the elect and true believes will be taken up to the air along with Jesus Christ who will then shut the door on salvation, as God shut the door to Noah's Ark which then floated for 150 days while the Earth was destroyed, or rather those who lived here. Then those of us who are left behind will suffer torments of scorpion like creatures and beg for death for another 150 days until the End Of The World comes in October.
This theory is so full of cracks it's almost impossible to list them all. But it falls apart at the very beginning when Camping basis his findings on a myth. He traces the creation back to the year 11,013 BC and identifies Adam and Eve as part of that creation. In fact creation was well up and running before the patriarchs came up with the myth of the Garden of Eden to explain hubris, right and wrong, the true and the false. If one actually believes there was such a garden, with Adam and Eve and a talking snake one might as well believe there was once a race between a tortoise and a hare.
At best this canard is an exercise in trying to measure the cosmos by simple arithmetic. At worst it is a dogmatic claim of divine reward and punishment which does nothing but frighten a lot of innocent, gullible people.
The final crack in this theory is that the Creator is going to destroy His own creation. Simple arithmetical reason takes over here. If the creator has to destroy part of his creation he is an imperfect creator, he has destroyed part of himself. And where does that leave the people who are up in the air? Up in the air.
There will be no worldwide earthquake on Saturday. The local forecast is for scattered showers. But there may be a great shake up of some people's religious beliefs.
The way I see it is that goodness is the only rational way to define godliness. On one side I want to dissuade the so-called godly, pious hypocrites from the idea that they are going to heaven while everyone else is going to hell. Someday I may even inform them that their hypocritical ways puts them already in hell. Human behavior can be improved, the evil in it can be jettisoned. I believe that everyone is redeemable from even the worst kind of badness (ungodliness, ungoodness) and there is endemic rightness (righteousness) in people, however and in whatever ways one can discover it.
My own brand of bible thumping has to do with trying to get rid of an anthropomorphic god in people's thinking, to accept an inherent natural god with spiritual power and love, a kingdom of heaven within us as stated by Jesus. My religion, if you can call it that, does not come out of some fragrant field of flowers, or from some rosy cheeked pastor with flashing teeth. It comes from striving and grappling with years of poverty and pain, and having witnessed the healing of the desperate through strong faith in themselves.
On Saturday, May 21 when the Rapture, The Great Snatch, comes or doesn't come, I think I'll join my good friends in the bar.
Dana Bate
The Vagabond
Never Give Up
*********************
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