I've been in communication with a friend of mine who, having described to me the frustration lately of not going to church in a number of months, and being faced with the prospect of returning, has been plagued with the foreknowledge of the impending guilt shame and judgment that awaits her should she return.
This is what I wrote to her:
I can't tell you how much or how often I've had similar thoughts, feelings and fears as those you describe above.
There is one great freeing thing I learned from Africa, and I've been trying to share it with people in some capacity since; it's the piece of the puzzle that we, those who have grown up in the church, struggling all of our lives to meet some standard of behavior, ever-cognizant of the unspoken judgments that abound in the hearts of people, especially in the church, are the first to miss, or overlook, in the constant barrage of sin-conscious theology that we're inundated with for years: I know its something we hear, but it's so little in comparison to everything else that it takes a quietness of the other things, which you can find in bars and clubs when you realize that they satisfy nothing of your needs and you retreat into what you know to find the still small voice that says you are loved, Jesus loves you, you learned to love him, and none of the thoughts or judgments of man mean anything in that perfect truth that is the most clear depiction of grace you will ever know because its easy to see in our darkest hour that we don't deserve the love we were given, but there it is.
I didn't learn this through a lot of prayer, fasting, worship, or any of the other regulatory church activities. I learned this because I was in the midst of running away from everything, at the end of my rope, quite ready to give up, and then this hope was manifest, not through people, and still I often wish I could find that person to help me understand the deeper elements I've yet to delve, but through the simple revelation that this is true; I finally learned the thing I'd heard countless times before, and better yet, I understood: It is finished.
There in no work yet required for our salvation. Sin does not matter. The failings and judgments of other people does not matter. There is nothing in life worthy of our fears except God, and God doesn't deserve it, outside of the awe our love merits. Nothing we do, say or become can separate us from the love of God because Jesus made a bridge, and if you accepted Jesus into your life, you have a way back to the love you need at any time, even in the darkest place, when it seems too late, you can turn around to see the outstretched arms of that loving grace welcoming you back to life.
There's a whole community of professing Christians who are trying their best to live outside of the institutional churches, in hopes of finding the true fellowship of like-minded believers, to live according to the simplicity of the good news that God loves us, Christ died for us, Christ lives in us, so how can we better serve Christ, who accomplishes all that we cannot in our strength do, who has done all that needs to be done to reconcile ourselves to our Creator, loving God, loving one another?
Just be willing to listen and serve. That is all we need to do. Listen. Serve. Love.
PS: Sorry if its not what you expected or wanted in reply... it just sort of came out in typing. It's as much for me as you because I'm still alone and apt to wander in my desire not to be so, but grace has kept me where I am. I'm just trying my best to do the few little things I'm in place to do in service... and in love. So far, my peace is undisturbed.
- TPS
Friday, 20 March 2009
Monday, 16 March 2009
Blogging the Bible: Genesis
This is something I started a while ago, with a professing atheistic friend of mine, but like most attempts at reading The Bible, I came up short. I'm hoping that I can get some ideas out for all 66 books of the Bible within the year (requiring having read them all) because it's the greatest travesty of my life that I have yet to read every word God has made available to me. If I post a book I've read it. It won't be linear, but that's how I started, and probably why I've always failed. I'm reading a NKJV. So, without further ado:
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
The book of Genesis tells the story of God from creation through to the Israelites’ relocation to Egypt through the life of Joseph. What stood out to me was the Nature of God in contrast to the Nature of Man. God is depicted throughout Genesis as the source of life, love, wealth, and health, whereas humanity is mostly then, as now, the recipients and consumers of the goodness of God.
My favorite stories and illustrations are the Garden of Eden, depicting the beginning of humanity’s relationship with God and each other, and the stories surrounding the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, from the covenant and subsequent sacrifice of Abraham regarding Isaac, to Jacob’s wrestling with God to obtain favor, to Joseph’s God-given favor to surmount innumerable obstacles in a foreign land through dream interpretation and his steadfastness in accordance with God’s will.
The story of Eden introduces the nature of Love through choice. It also reveals the Nature of God in the relationship that existed between God and creation. It clearly depicts the consequences of sin in that relationship and goes on from there to encapsulate the consequences of sin in human relationships. The downward spiral that culminates in the great flood is the unhindered nature of man at work.
The beauty of the covenant God made with Abraham (formerly Abram) is that God took the whole responsibility for its keeping. Thus began God’s romancing of humanity. It’s a love comprised of choice and consequence, wherein we, as God’s creation, often falter, and occasionally rise up to the occasion to wrestle with the almighty and sway the heart of God.
There are some beautiful illustrations of a father's heart. One of my favorites is in the choosing of Rebekah as Isaac's wife. There are some great levels to this simple story where a servant carries out a natural father's dying wish with the help of the heavenly Father.
Other stories of note are the stories of sibling rivalry, from the first fratricide, to the trickery of Jacob, to the jealousy toward Joseph, all dealing with the complex relationships between brothers. If you have a brother, you might understand what I'm talking about. I'm not entirely sure how well they translate to sisters.
As a final note, I found the numerous name changes interesting, if not foreshadowing. They remind me of a beautiful verse in Revelations, but I’ll venture to tie that up in a few years or so.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
The book of Genesis tells the story of God from creation through to the Israelites’ relocation to Egypt through the life of Joseph. What stood out to me was the Nature of God in contrast to the Nature of Man. God is depicted throughout Genesis as the source of life, love, wealth, and health, whereas humanity is mostly then, as now, the recipients and consumers of the goodness of God.
My favorite stories and illustrations are the Garden of Eden, depicting the beginning of humanity’s relationship with God and each other, and the stories surrounding the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, from the covenant and subsequent sacrifice of Abraham regarding Isaac, to Jacob’s wrestling with God to obtain favor, to Joseph’s God-given favor to surmount innumerable obstacles in a foreign land through dream interpretation and his steadfastness in accordance with God’s will.
The story of Eden introduces the nature of Love through choice. It also reveals the Nature of God in the relationship that existed between God and creation. It clearly depicts the consequences of sin in that relationship and goes on from there to encapsulate the consequences of sin in human relationships. The downward spiral that culminates in the great flood is the unhindered nature of man at work.
The beauty of the covenant God made with Abraham (formerly Abram) is that God took the whole responsibility for its keeping. Thus began God’s romancing of humanity. It’s a love comprised of choice and consequence, wherein we, as God’s creation, often falter, and occasionally rise up to the occasion to wrestle with the almighty and sway the heart of God.
There are some beautiful illustrations of a father's heart. One of my favorites is in the choosing of Rebekah as Isaac's wife. There are some great levels to this simple story where a servant carries out a natural father's dying wish with the help of the heavenly Father.
Other stories of note are the stories of sibling rivalry, from the first fratricide, to the trickery of Jacob, to the jealousy toward Joseph, all dealing with the complex relationships between brothers. If you have a brother, you might understand what I'm talking about. I'm not entirely sure how well they translate to sisters.
As a final note, I found the numerous name changes interesting, if not foreshadowing. They remind me of a beautiful verse in Revelations, but I’ll venture to tie that up in a few years or so.
Saturday, 14 March 2009
On the Mechanics of Church.
Perhaps eventually there will be a more linear thematic development to these presently meandering thoughts, but for now, and especially as I'm new to this, I'm simply sharing the thoughts that rouse me to write.
I'm trying to continue going to church while I'm abroad. Have I mentioned yet that I'm abroad? I guess it doesn't much matter since I have yet to mention where I'm from, or where is home, which are not necessarily the same thing, nor am I confident that I could reveal either within any relevant confines of certainty, so suffice it to say I'm living abroad for at least a year and am just recently attending a church where I am.
It's a Pentecostal Church, not that divisions of unity, such as denominations, are anything I'm especially fond of, nonetheless they exists and it is at this particular church where I will probably be going on Sunday afternoons for the reason that it is convenient, and not too far removed in any significant sense from what I'm accustomed to.
There is one problem that I frequently wrestle with in going to church, however, and I am encountering this issue in full force at this particular church.
This church is run with the stalwart efficiency of a well-oiled machine, if you'll pardon the cliche, in that it adheres to a strict schedule, enforces certain preferences regarding seating, and has instituted a class for newcomers wishing to become a greater part of the church community. Some could read this and see much sense in any of these established edifices of order, however they always reek to me of people's efforts to control the things of God, or in others words, religion.
The church in which I grew up so to speak, at least spiritually, seemed to express to me that "religion" was a dirty word. When I first attended this church, meetings had no time-frame, little structure, but maintained a surprising semblance of order within the other elements of chaos, often lasting hours, with frequent distractions, interruptions, every manner of movement, posture and person present in the sanctuary, and it really was a freeing experience to be a part of, but the end result is that I feel pretty spoiled in the freedoms I expect in churches. Freedoms that even the above church began to infringe upon after some years of attendance there, where conformity began to be more highly regarded, where order began to be more stringently enforced, where attendance became restricted to a more homogeneous crowd, and unwittingly or purposefully, an agenda became the priority.
I find myself wondering what the value is of a community that is so guarded and gated as to have each member become nearly indistinguishable from an other. This is an extreme instance, and I cannot in good conscience accuse any congregation of being quite so far gone as that, but there always seems to be a tenuous balance between freedom and control that I don't think really exists in God. Why then does it exists in church?
I feel most comfortable these days thinking of church as a walk through a forest, a climb up a mountain, a day at a beach, or a time in the desert. In any of these places I'd prefer the company of good people, but the reason behind these out of door cathedrals would simply be the freedom from the stifling controls that people always seem to place on God, in worship, through amplification, through messages with rows upon rows of heads nodding in quiet agreement, or in some cases, not so quiet but appropriately truncated affirmations, of bulletins, announcements, classes, meetings, and all the other elements that turn faith into works, as seems to be the end result of almost every endeavor people have to control the things of God.
I'm not saying church is bad. I think church is extremely important. However I think it may be time to re-redefine church. The church is a body (made of larger parts, or smaller cells). The church is a family (comprised of members). The church are the branches of a vine, the church are the holy ones of God, the church is only a building so long as it is made of living stones erected upon the cornerstone of Christ. Being a member of a church, or better yet, the Church is not supposed to stifle our originality but enable us to be the freest we can be as Christ shines through us individually to create a unified image of God corporately. It's like the picture of one thing that is made up of the myriad individual pictures of many things; sometimes they share a theme, sometimes they are just brought together, but it is always with an expressed purpose to make a greater joint image of which each individual is a part, a shade, a contour, a hue, but all essential to the overall greater impression.
We have yet to reach an age of living machines, and so there still exists an innate conflict between the living and the mechanical, and I don't think that a bionic church should be our foremost expression of who we are in community. The mechanic machinations of church would be better grafted onto the tree of life, where it will be tended, pruned, and in turn blossom and bear fruit.
This could just be a pet peeve. This could be something more. I don't feel it's finished, but our respective attention spans probably are.
- TPS
I'm trying to continue going to church while I'm abroad. Have I mentioned yet that I'm abroad? I guess it doesn't much matter since I have yet to mention where I'm from, or where is home, which are not necessarily the same thing, nor am I confident that I could reveal either within any relevant confines of certainty, so suffice it to say I'm living abroad for at least a year and am just recently attending a church where I am.
It's a Pentecostal Church, not that divisions of unity, such as denominations, are anything I'm especially fond of, nonetheless they exists and it is at this particular church where I will probably be going on Sunday afternoons for the reason that it is convenient, and not too far removed in any significant sense from what I'm accustomed to.
There is one problem that I frequently wrestle with in going to church, however, and I am encountering this issue in full force at this particular church.
This church is run with the stalwart efficiency of a well-oiled machine, if you'll pardon the cliche, in that it adheres to a strict schedule, enforces certain preferences regarding seating, and has instituted a class for newcomers wishing to become a greater part of the church community. Some could read this and see much sense in any of these established edifices of order, however they always reek to me of people's efforts to control the things of God, or in others words, religion.
The church in which I grew up so to speak, at least spiritually, seemed to express to me that "religion" was a dirty word. When I first attended this church, meetings had no time-frame, little structure, but maintained a surprising semblance of order within the other elements of chaos, often lasting hours, with frequent distractions, interruptions, every manner of movement, posture and person present in the sanctuary, and it really was a freeing experience to be a part of, but the end result is that I feel pretty spoiled in the freedoms I expect in churches. Freedoms that even the above church began to infringe upon after some years of attendance there, where conformity began to be more highly regarded, where order began to be more stringently enforced, where attendance became restricted to a more homogeneous crowd, and unwittingly or purposefully, an agenda became the priority.
I find myself wondering what the value is of a community that is so guarded and gated as to have each member become nearly indistinguishable from an other. This is an extreme instance, and I cannot in good conscience accuse any congregation of being quite so far gone as that, but there always seems to be a tenuous balance between freedom and control that I don't think really exists in God. Why then does it exists in church?
I feel most comfortable these days thinking of church as a walk through a forest, a climb up a mountain, a day at a beach, or a time in the desert. In any of these places I'd prefer the company of good people, but the reason behind these out of door cathedrals would simply be the freedom from the stifling controls that people always seem to place on God, in worship, through amplification, through messages with rows upon rows of heads nodding in quiet agreement, or in some cases, not so quiet but appropriately truncated affirmations, of bulletins, announcements, classes, meetings, and all the other elements that turn faith into works, as seems to be the end result of almost every endeavor people have to control the things of God.
I'm not saying church is bad. I think church is extremely important. However I think it may be time to re-redefine church. The church is a body (made of larger parts, or smaller cells). The church is a family (comprised of members). The church are the branches of a vine, the church are the holy ones of God, the church is only a building so long as it is made of living stones erected upon the cornerstone of Christ. Being a member of a church, or better yet, the Church is not supposed to stifle our originality but enable us to be the freest we can be as Christ shines through us individually to create a unified image of God corporately. It's like the picture of one thing that is made up of the myriad individual pictures of many things; sometimes they share a theme, sometimes they are just brought together, but it is always with an expressed purpose to make a greater joint image of which each individual is a part, a shade, a contour, a hue, but all essential to the overall greater impression.
We have yet to reach an age of living machines, and so there still exists an innate conflict between the living and the mechanical, and I don't think that a bionic church should be our foremost expression of who we are in community. The mechanic machinations of church would be better grafted onto the tree of life, where it will be tended, pruned, and in turn blossom and bear fruit.
This could just be a pet peeve. This could be something more. I don't feel it's finished, but our respective attention spans probably are.
- TPS
Saturday, 7 March 2009
The first of many tangents: On "secular".
Growing up in the church one cannot escape certain dichotomies: Old and New, Life and Death, Faith and Doubt, True and False, Light and Dark, Right and Wrong, and before too long you become accustomed to looking at the world through these bifocal lenses of either or. I don't have a problem with that. I believe that there are objective standards, many of which we can know through study, observation and experience.
There is one popular division however that I do not believe in at all: that is the distinction between "Christian" and "secular". I think that this is probably the most diabolical institutional marketing ploy that the religion of Christianity has come up with. The advent of church bookstores selling "Christian Literature", "Christian Artists", "Christian Clothing", and every other marketable merchandise is the biggest and most obvious blight in most grand-scale evangelical churches today. To label anything "Christian" for the sole purpose of increasing sales is a travesty to faith, and an insult to consumers.
In seeing a bookstore at the back of a sanctuary I'm always reminded of the sole instance of pure righteous anger that Christ enacted against people, throwing the moneychangers out of the temple. The NKJV translation records it this way in Mat. 21:12: "Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves."
I believe wholeheartedly in art. I believe that legitimate art is a true expression and that Christians should be amazing artists given all that there is to express in a relationship with God. However, the distinction between Christian and secular work, be it art or otherwise, has only managed to secure a market for mediocrity and censorship where the greatest works of devotion, expression, and truth should exist, and succeed, by their own right and merits, especially given the subject matter.
I know a lot of people who readily dismiss honest expressions by struggling people because it depicts situations and circumstances of sin, doubt, hatred, death, and every manner of darkness that Christ came to banish in the light of such amazing grace that any counter argument is dissolved in the bending, consuming blaze of enlightening glory, and yet, in so doing they deny the artists the opportunity to communicate, and so hold over them the shading parasol that essentially denies them the love, grace and acceptance of God through Jesus that would set them, or those who subject themselves and relate to such expressions, free.
There is legitimacy, if not truth, in every human experience. You cannot deny the feelings and circumstances of others, especially their suffering, their pain, their doubt, their sin, their loss, their happiness, their lusts they believe to be love, or any other transient impetus of expression, because if you do, you limit their capacity to receive the gift of redemption God is offering to them through Christ as it becomes increasingly difficult to communicate through walls of censorship and judgment labels like "secular" erect.
We are to be in the world, but not of the world. To those cloistered away in homes devoid of Rock n Roll and restricted movies I would caution that sterile environments are, by definition, hostile to life, and Christ came to give us life abundantly, not necessarily through R-rated movies, though if you saw "The Passion of the Christ" you'd know that the life of Christ is hardly family viewing fare, but there is real life in the stories, songs, pictures, and words of the world wary (and often weary) artists out there. They are worth knowing in their due degrees for the lessons that transcend and speak of that which we know without their knowing, and also to be better armed and aware of the ways of humanity, in all measures of depravity, while they can be dissected, understood, and defeated in the comforts of the home and as such, may not become the surprise attacks of the enemy in the unfiltered reality in the world outside your doors.
Just a thought.
- TPS
There is one popular division however that I do not believe in at all: that is the distinction between "Christian" and "secular". I think that this is probably the most diabolical institutional marketing ploy that the religion of Christianity has come up with. The advent of church bookstores selling "Christian Literature", "Christian Artists", "Christian Clothing", and every other marketable merchandise is the biggest and most obvious blight in most grand-scale evangelical churches today. To label anything "Christian" for the sole purpose of increasing sales is a travesty to faith, and an insult to consumers.
In seeing a bookstore at the back of a sanctuary I'm always reminded of the sole instance of pure righteous anger that Christ enacted against people, throwing the moneychangers out of the temple. The NKJV translation records it this way in Mat. 21:12: "Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves."
I believe wholeheartedly in art. I believe that legitimate art is a true expression and that Christians should be amazing artists given all that there is to express in a relationship with God. However, the distinction between Christian and secular work, be it art or otherwise, has only managed to secure a market for mediocrity and censorship where the greatest works of devotion, expression, and truth should exist, and succeed, by their own right and merits, especially given the subject matter.
I know a lot of people who readily dismiss honest expressions by struggling people because it depicts situations and circumstances of sin, doubt, hatred, death, and every manner of darkness that Christ came to banish in the light of such amazing grace that any counter argument is dissolved in the bending, consuming blaze of enlightening glory, and yet, in so doing they deny the artists the opportunity to communicate, and so hold over them the shading parasol that essentially denies them the love, grace and acceptance of God through Jesus that would set them, or those who subject themselves and relate to such expressions, free.
There is legitimacy, if not truth, in every human experience. You cannot deny the feelings and circumstances of others, especially their suffering, their pain, their doubt, their sin, their loss, their happiness, their lusts they believe to be love, or any other transient impetus of expression, because if you do, you limit their capacity to receive the gift of redemption God is offering to them through Christ as it becomes increasingly difficult to communicate through walls of censorship and judgment labels like "secular" erect.
We are to be in the world, but not of the world. To those cloistered away in homes devoid of Rock n Roll and restricted movies I would caution that sterile environments are, by definition, hostile to life, and Christ came to give us life abundantly, not necessarily through R-rated movies, though if you saw "The Passion of the Christ" you'd know that the life of Christ is hardly family viewing fare, but there is real life in the stories, songs, pictures, and words of the world wary (and often weary) artists out there. They are worth knowing in their due degrees for the lessons that transcend and speak of that which we know without their knowing, and also to be better armed and aware of the ways of humanity, in all measures of depravity, while they can be dissected, understood, and defeated in the comforts of the home and as such, may not become the surprise attacks of the enemy in the unfiltered reality in the world outside your doors.
Just a thought.
- TPS
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
In the Beginning...
A belief in the existence of a God is assumed here.
God is understood to be the unequivocal standard of intrinsic value. God is good. As a matter of fact, God is all that is good. This does not make God subjective; God is simply the definition of what is good. If God is eternal, eternal is good. If God is true, truth is good. If God is love, love is good.
I don't really want get caught up in trying to define God, or argue God's existence. I want more to talk about people. People who believe, or claim to believe, in God. People I grew up knowing as "the church". To understand "the church" however, one must understand what the church is about, and that assumes a limited understanding of God, who is essentially, by definition, unknowable in any proximal sense of entirely. Yet there is much of God that is knowable and accessible. Most of what is accessible of God is made so through God’s creation, which is, coincidentally, the greatest testament to God's existence. Nothing can come of nothing, so if the assent is made that an entity of eternal being created the finite universe, it follows that the universe was created out of said being. Therefore, God must be present, in part, in God's creation.
God is not a he or a she. God is God. Hence the annoying repetition for the time being. Without getting into gender confusing issues of psychological identities and whatnot, it is fair to say that, biologically speaking, God has no need of gender defining attributes. God did not create the universe as the Greek pantheon, through excessive copulation, rather God created all, everything, using the only eternal substance available: namely God, and specifically, through verifiable communication (verifiable because we exist, not because I can show you any more evidence than is available to you wherever you are right now).
God is definitive, but there are some distinctions to made between who God is and what God does. The attributes of God, or who God is, are the defined characteristics or objective standards that God’s existence sets forth. The actions of God come from God's attributes. Sometimes God's actions (or more accurately God's perceived actions, or inaction) are confused as God’s character and consequently God is then perceived, in humanity’s limited scope, to be fallible, incompetent, absent, or at worst, non-existent in the affairs of God’s universe. However, if the characteristic attributes of God are good, then all that stems from those attributes must also be good, and as such, must certainly exist. These are some strenuous thought aerobics, like performing mind circles, so bear with me.
First the assent is made that God is. God exists. Which sets the foremost standard that by existing God is good. This needs to be known; to be is a good thing, for God, and for God's creation. It is the first principal to acknowledge in order to make the assent to every other principal embodied by God; God is good because God exists, and God exits because God is good. This comes back to the definition of who God is as the definitive standard of creation, the foremost of which is necessarily existence. If God's existence is a problem for you, this is not going to solve that problem. Once that assent is made however, and one can see that God exists as the standard for good, there are a number of questions that arise from the apparent contradictions in existence. The foremost of which is sin. How can sin exist in a universe created by a perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, being that is characteristically perfect by the very means of existing? What is sin? What about the church? I'm already asking way too many questions than your or my attention span will merit in one sitting. So we have at least some direction for the future, should it exist, which would be good, or so I think.
None of this is new. I'm simply warming up the thought process(es) I'll be following for a bit. It's a little rusty to be sure... so I anticipate that I'll be making some retractions and changes as I think along the way. Hopefully I have some time yet to figure at least some of this stuff out... a lot of time. And a lot of help along the way.
- TPS
God is understood to be the unequivocal standard of intrinsic value. God is good. As a matter of fact, God is all that is good. This does not make God subjective; God is simply the definition of what is good. If God is eternal, eternal is good. If God is true, truth is good. If God is love, love is good.
I don't really want get caught up in trying to define God, or argue God's existence. I want more to talk about people. People who believe, or claim to believe, in God. People I grew up knowing as "the church". To understand "the church" however, one must understand what the church is about, and that assumes a limited understanding of God, who is essentially, by definition, unknowable in any proximal sense of entirely. Yet there is much of God that is knowable and accessible. Most of what is accessible of God is made so through God’s creation, which is, coincidentally, the greatest testament to God's existence. Nothing can come of nothing, so if the assent is made that an entity of eternal being created the finite universe, it follows that the universe was created out of said being. Therefore, God must be present, in part, in God's creation.
God is not a he or a she. God is God. Hence the annoying repetition for the time being. Without getting into gender confusing issues of psychological identities and whatnot, it is fair to say that, biologically speaking, God has no need of gender defining attributes. God did not create the universe as the Greek pantheon, through excessive copulation, rather God created all, everything, using the only eternal substance available: namely God, and specifically, through verifiable communication (verifiable because we exist, not because I can show you any more evidence than is available to you wherever you are right now).
God is definitive, but there are some distinctions to made between who God is and what God does. The attributes of God, or who God is, are the defined characteristics or objective standards that God’s existence sets forth. The actions of God come from God's attributes. Sometimes God's actions (or more accurately God's perceived actions, or inaction) are confused as God’s character and consequently God is then perceived, in humanity’s limited scope, to be fallible, incompetent, absent, or at worst, non-existent in the affairs of God’s universe. However, if the characteristic attributes of God are good, then all that stems from those attributes must also be good, and as such, must certainly exist. These are some strenuous thought aerobics, like performing mind circles, so bear with me.
First the assent is made that God is. God exists. Which sets the foremost standard that by existing God is good. This needs to be known; to be is a good thing, for God, and for God's creation. It is the first principal to acknowledge in order to make the assent to every other principal embodied by God; God is good because God exists, and God exits because God is good. This comes back to the definition of who God is as the definitive standard of creation, the foremost of which is necessarily existence. If God's existence is a problem for you, this is not going to solve that problem. Once that assent is made however, and one can see that God exists as the standard for good, there are a number of questions that arise from the apparent contradictions in existence. The foremost of which is sin. How can sin exist in a universe created by a perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, being that is characteristically perfect by the very means of existing? What is sin? What about the church? I'm already asking way too many questions than your or my attention span will merit in one sitting. So we have at least some direction for the future, should it exist, which would be good, or so I think.
None of this is new. I'm simply warming up the thought process(es) I'll be following for a bit. It's a little rusty to be sure... so I anticipate that I'll be making some retractions and changes as I think along the way. Hopefully I have some time yet to figure at least some of this stuff out... a lot of time. And a lot of help along the way.
- TPS
The Pastor's Son
I am a twenty-something year old with a BA in English therefore, none of what I have to say is supported by any relevant conferred degrees, ordinations or superfluous factoids. This is a wholly subjective endeavor erected on personal experiences, biases, and judgments. Let there be no misunderstanding; this is a work of perspective and is intended to open opportunities for discussion, amusement, and relate problems and queries of any who care to share, but it will undoubtedly arouse anger and indignation in some in varying degrees. It will be perceived as insulting, demeaning, confrontational and offensive. Fortunately, this is not written for your approval; it is written for my, and perhaps others', release. I won’t enjoy writing it as much as some other projects I'm engaging in, for it is assumes a masked vulnerability, accompanied by a pretense of a knowledge that is essentially unverifiable, and as such it is a slippery slope to tread. It will be full of the author, whom you can claim is full of himself if you wish, if that will help you in dismissing this as something that you can ignore, but I believe that in being so, it will contain at least some elements of truth (at least, insofar as experiences can be true). You now have your excuse, right here within the context of this work, to ignore this in its entirety; but feel free to continue in the perceived abomination if you choose, at least you will be confronted with some fodder for thought, maybe. Hopefully. Either way, you are free to choose.
Already you can say to yourself, "Who is this guy? Why would I read what some anonymous individual posts into cyberspace without credibility, without identity, without a reason to believe that anything he writes is true?"
To answer you, I would only say that you're here, reading, and that something must have brought you thus far. I can only write that my intent is to be as real as I can be in my anonymity, and that while I hope some discussion may arise across the divide it creates, that the divide exists for my own insecurities and protection in a medium that is known to have its pitfalls, its predators, and its traps. So if I should write that I am this or that, and you form an image of what you perceive me to be, should prudence disclose realities in images, and sight in shadows, and I am actually something other than that thing, that phantom formed in your fantasy, we may yet safely pass someday in blissful ignorance, there may yet be some awe and some surprise left to the man extending these words, be they a helping hand or clenched fist to you, until a day dawns when all is revealed and the secret is no more than a denial away from truth.
I enjoy writing. I enjoy the places that writing takes me. I'm looking here for a new place, somewhere deep, dark and cool inside to weather storms, retreat in solace, and hold fast against any enemies of belief. It's a new place for me. Should you stop by to visit, I'll try my best to make you feel at home... but home is not my forte; still, you are as welcome here as you can be.
- TPS
Already you can say to yourself, "Who is this guy? Why would I read what some anonymous individual posts into cyberspace without credibility, without identity, without a reason to believe that anything he writes is true?"
To answer you, I would only say that you're here, reading, and that something must have brought you thus far. I can only write that my intent is to be as real as I can be in my anonymity, and that while I hope some discussion may arise across the divide it creates, that the divide exists for my own insecurities and protection in a medium that is known to have its pitfalls, its predators, and its traps. So if I should write that I am this or that, and you form an image of what you perceive me to be, should prudence disclose realities in images, and sight in shadows, and I am actually something other than that thing, that phantom formed in your fantasy, we may yet safely pass someday in blissful ignorance, there may yet be some awe and some surprise left to the man extending these words, be they a helping hand or clenched fist to you, until a day dawns when all is revealed and the secret is no more than a denial away from truth.
I enjoy writing. I enjoy the places that writing takes me. I'm looking here for a new place, somewhere deep, dark and cool inside to weather storms, retreat in solace, and hold fast against any enemies of belief. It's a new place for me. Should you stop by to visit, I'll try my best to make you feel at home... but home is not my forte; still, you are as welcome here as you can be.
- TPS
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