Simply Sinning

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  

I've been asked to sit on a theological panel at my church to discuss sin and salvation.

I am very excited about this.  I only have one friend with whom I can sit for hours and talk that good old theology talk without either of us looking at our watches because we're bored.  

It will be my first time serving in such a capacity.  I was thinking about how I would prepare.  I am no expert in theology, yet I am a sinner most expert.

I say I am no expert, but I do possess academic credentials.  I earned a degree in philosophy and religion.  Furthermore, I earned some credit hours in theology while attending a Baptist seminary.  I did not finish for reasons I wrote about in earlier posts.

You can also visit my website:  neverleavinggod.com to learn more about my faith journey.

Theology class was a disappointment.  I hoped for a survey of theology.  Instead, I sat an entire semester learning about one old guy theologian from another old guy theologian.

What fun to learn about Emil Brunner for a semester after reading Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology for a whole year with a Princeton professor who had been one of Tillich's students.

Tillich was a breakout theologian for me.  After reading and comprehending his work, what does one do with any orthodox theology?

Anyway, I have studied and still do study theology.  My degrees are a B.A. in philosophy and religion, a B.A. in English, and an MA degree in composition and rhetoric.  (I do not know if the letter M should get the article "a" before it since it is not a vowel or gets an "an" before it since it sounds like a vowel.  The "an" sounds more natural.  Grammar means a lot to me.)

There are four sources to learn about sin.  The first is one’s own experience.  Anyone who can talk can sit on a theology panel and discuss sin. 

Related to personal experience, another source is other people.  Psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors get paid to listen to other people regret or analyze their sin.

Philosophers of religion, theologians, and ministers are another source.  They have sinned and pondered deeply about sin as an existential, academic, and devotional subject.

Literature and poetry are most profound sources to ponder sin.  In fact, the Bible contains a lot of poetry about sin.  Does it not?

Those are my starting places.

Blessings…

Happy Sabbath

Rest in God as you rest with God today.

Blessings...

A Bucket of Fried Health Care

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. 

There are some things that happen in America that confound me.

Today, I met my first Affordable Health Care Act casualty: a mother, Mrs. Moore, whose son had committed a zero tolerance offense. 

Her son had been sent to us after his middle school learned that he had not done his zero tolerance time.  

Someone had dropped the ball--if I might employ a cliché.

That was not the worst of her sorrow.  Mrs. Moore told me that for the first time in her life she was homeless.  

Apparently, someone dropped the ball again, except this time, the ball was too big to fit inside a gymnasium or a nation, and when it dropped, the ground quaked.

Then she told me why she was homeless.  Popeyes had cut her hours from forty to twenty-seven so she could be legally designated a part time employee.

I knew then who the culprit was.  It was President Obama's fault.  Mrs. Moore did not say that.  I did.  

If he had left well enough alone so that our patriotic job creators, subsidized by tax breaks out the yin yang, might enjoy the blessings of liberty that their riches afford them from the labor of people who do all the working and dying in this country, then she might be housed with no health insurance instead of being homeless with it. 

However, I can't tell who the worst victim here is.  Is it this mother or Popeyes?  I mean, who do we feel sorry for the most?

I, for one, feel nothing but deep and abiding pity in my heart for poor poor Popeyes.  They may well be forced to run around like a fried chicken franchise with its roof chopped off once ObamaCare is fully implemented.  

We cannot expect Popeyes to allow their workers to lower them into the fiery fat of financial ruin. I love their chicken.  That’s the last thing I want to see unless it’s on my plate.

Popeyes believes in that old time religion healthcare which is the official healthcare plan of the Republican Party. 

You know the plan:  pray you don’t get sick.

Who can blame them?  Popeyes had no choice because there’s no Cajun or mild healthcare, only ObamaCare.    

That’s two fixin’s our government has served up to poor Popeyes.  Minimum wage is the other one.

How does a manager who may otherwise be a moral person tell a mother of two children that she must be a part time employee?

It’s easy.  Popeyes exists solely to make money, lots of it, and if their fat cats get even fatter by keeping that labor budget as low as inhumanely possible...well...then...that’s a good thing…like remembering to ask for the jelly before you sit down.  

First of all, that mother is an enemy of the state for wanting healthcare.  She violates the all American economic system of laissez faire which in French means “the gravy will trickle down to the taters if you leave it alone.” 

Like most liberals, that mother wants someone else, namely, the government, to dip out that gravy and pour it onto those taters. 

I say, thank God for laissez faire. It is as American an economic system as biscuits, unlike the president’s, which is a more European style economic system that is as European as croissants.

I do not know what benefit Popeyes receives from avoiding the AHCA law.  Is it an economic necessity, a corporate political protest, or a precursor to a new breakfast menu?

  

Let’s be honest here.  The bucket of health care we shared before Mr. Obama put his greasy fingers into it was perfect.  

It cured illness with a huge dose of despair given intravenously or as a suppository that comes in a pill the size of the plump part of a chicken leg. 

I’ve always been able to endure any virus when I concentrate on how many years it will take me to pay for the hospital stay, tests, and medicine.

I was not happy at first with ObamaCare because it was a conservative idea straight out of the pit of the Heritage Foundation.  The thing I don’t like about conservatives is that they do not tinker to make better, they tinker to make richer.

But seriously, folks, how is it that we have read the gospels for centuries without knowing that alleviating the grinding plight of poor people is a very Jesusy thing to do? 

I seem to recall a few times when Jesus healed the sick without having them sign a payback plan.  Usually, those who were sick were also very poor.

The system we have now is not that great for anyone, let alone working people.  If you are blessed with Captain Kirk health, if you rarely go to the doctor, then it works great for you.

However, if you are like most people, if you age, if you have gout, chronic back pain, Cohn’s Disease, Colitis, MS, HIV, diabetes, and the list goes on and on, and if you despair as the hospital bills hundred-dollar you to death or thousand-dollar you to debt, then you know the system, such as it is now, loves money more than men and women.

At least, if you focus on the despair it elevates your nausea to a higher level so you don’t think about having to vomit.

Surely, the least our God of love would require of us would be to devise a just economic system that is as fair and sound as our military complex is strong and fatal.

Blessings…

More About Mark

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  

Here is some more information about Mark's gospel.

People often appear surprised when I tell them that my favorite gospel is Mark.  

WHY MARK IS MY FAVORITE GOSPEL

Matthew has all that terrific Moses lore in it so we see Jesus as a great liberator.  Luke has all those parables that are not found in the other gospels.  John reveals a nearly Gnostic Jesus who is so magical, mystical, and loving that he could have been a professor at Hogwarts.

 But I simply love spare Mark for a number of reasons.

Mark is the shortest gospel.  I can read it in one sitting.  

Jesus is funnier in Mark.

Mark uses deliberate literary techniques to structure his message.  He cannot paint Jesus except with words, so he frames what is important about Jesus within events.

Mark shows Jesus doing the same thing more than once with another twist.

Mark is the least magical. 

In Mark, Jesus is so human, more so than the other gospels. I connect more easily with him.

Mark is written in the present tense.  It is translated in the past tense.  

By writing the story of Jesus in the present tense, the gospel writer is suggesting Jesus is being Jesus right now, this every minute, even as I write.

In Mark, Jesus' way of arguing with Pharisees was the way Mark’s community argued with that competing movement within Judaism that opposed them.

WHY MARK IS SO INTERESTING

   

Mark is so interesting for a number of reasons.  Mark is interesting for what it does not have as much as what it has.   

There are no birth narratives and no resurrection appearances in Mark.  It begins with Jesus' baptism and ends with a mysterious empty tomb.  

Mark is one of those gospels that shows how scribes can alter a text they believe is insufficient in some way. The resurrection material in Mark was added decades later by a scribe.

When Jesus dies in Mark, all the other criminals revile him.  That's it.  Matthew keeps that ignoble end.  Luke changes it.  John mentions it not.

In Mark, Jesus says before he dies, "My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?"

That, and a final scream, was it.

We have a Jesus in Mark who reveals so well how abandoned by God life seems to so many people.  

There is also expressed, I believe, the sense of abandonment in the early church.  Ask a Jewish survivor from Germany circa Hitler if they ever felt that way, for example.

Jesus had been crucified by the Romans like a common criminal.  The disciples fled...according to Mark.  Only some women stood from a distance to watch.

The early church was left with a Messiah cursed by God, according to Deuteronomy, and stigmatized by society, according to mores.  That's a tough sale in any world--ancient or modern.

Yet the Jesus movement continued with the message that Jesus was the son of our God of love who vindicated him by raising him from more than death: indeed, from extinction.  

From the time of Jesus’crucifixion, around 25 CE, the movement simmered until a man named Saul of Tarsus began preaching and writing about Jesus.  

Stories about Jesus were being told.  Sayings from Jesus were being told. Eventually, these things were written down.

Eventually, a writer whom we call Mark wrote in the present tense and in the Greek of the common people an original genre called a gospel.  

This document must have been copied and carried to other writers who used it to tell their community's story of Jesus even decades after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem.

Blessings...

The Gospel of Mark

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.

We have begun studying the Gospel of Mark in my Sunday School class. I would like to recall what I know about the gospel.  Before I do any research, I shall fly by the seat of my memory.

Mark is the first gospel written.  In fact, Matthew and Luke are expanded editions of Mark.

Who wrote it?

Like the other gospels, we do not know who wrote it.  

According to Eusebius’ valuable, yet biased, 4^th century work Ecclesia Historica a bishop from Hierapolis identified the writer as a man who traveled with Simon Peter. 

His name was Papias and he lived around 120 CE.

Conservative writers love to say the gospels are reliable, and Papias is reliable, and Eusebius is reliable, but they are confusing reliable with possible.

A car is reliable, or a person may be, but a historical assertion without facts is not reliable.  I would not rely on it to cement my credibility as a historian.

However, the gospels can be said to be reliable in the sense I can gain wisdom from them or God’s word.

Papias is telling the truth in the sense of truth as he understood it.  Truth in the ancient world had a lot to do with authority, vindication, being wise, and feeling good, but factual evidence was not as great a concern as it is in our time.

In any case, there is no evidence that Papias’ assertion was true. 

There is abundant evidence that Mark was a common name during Roman times.  Think of Marcus Brutus and Marcus Aurelius.  So the definitiveness of this Mark is rather obscure.

Also, there is evidence that apostolic names and associations were used to give a book authority.   Indeed, some of Paul’s epistles could not have been written by him, but one of his students wrote in his name.

When was it written?

Dogmatic scholars, in the interest of preserving their assertion that Jesus was a fortune teller, put the gospel around 50 CE or sooner so he could predict the destruction of Jerusalem's temple.  

Of course, if Jesus had predicted that the Romans would eventually destroy the temple, the response would have been, “Duh,” by Jews who recalled Babylon destroying Solomon’s temple and Jews who recalled Rome’s tendency to pummel any who resisted them.

In the academic world of Biblical scholarship, there is a consensus that Mark was written around 70 AD.  That would have Mark writing while the Romans were destroying Jerusalem.

Where was it written?

No one really knows that either.  Some believe it was written in Galilee.  Some believe it was written in Rome.  Others believe it was written among the Diaspora (Jews who fled Judah to abroad) near the Mediterranean Sea where persecution was heavy. 

What was the purpose of the writer?

The purpose of Mark is to present Jesus as God's son speaking to a community of Christians who are suffering persecution.

However, he is not being thought of as God’s son in the theological formulas that would come later.  Indeed, Jesus in Mark is far removed from the trinitarian formula of the 4^th century.

In Mark, Jesus is a son of god in the sense that he was a divine person who, because of heroic or wondrous deeds, is numbered among the heavenly sons of god.

We must always remember when interpreting any book of the Jewish or Christian Bibles that the near-sky/flat earth cosmology is always the cultural background to all biblical thinking.  

I do not write this to denigrate the story of Jesus.  Indeed, I write this because it is my ministry and our ministry as Christians who live in the 21^st century to explain Jesus within the cosmology we know to be true today, so he does not become irrelevant.

A New Attempt

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Good morning and welcome back.  Because of time demands from my job, I want to change when I write and how many times I post.  

Ideally, I would like to write three devotional or theological reflections throughout the day, but that is tough to do.  I find that writing in the morning is my best time so I hope to do most of my writing then and post after work.

I suspect any readers to be found out there in the blogsmology are easier found in the evening.

Let's try it.

Blessings...  

A Sabbath Prayer For You

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

May our Lord protect and defend you

May God send you from harm

May you always be in God's heart

An everlasting name.

Blessings...

God's Love for a God of Love

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  

An argument could be made that in all the Bible there is no book more profound than Job.  

The first one or two times I attempted to read Job, I drove through the opening heavenly host scene and the story of Job's life, and then ran out of gas.  

My all time favorite professor, Dr. Weisbaker, a man who presented himself professionally as an atheist to his students yet possessed a deep, tested, and personal devotion told me once that a lot of people only love God for what they can get out of the relationship.

They love God as long as there is a promise of an everlasting and blissful afterlife. Take that away and many would stop loving God.

Unlike Job, who said, "Though he slay me, I will trust him."

Dr. Weisbaker loved to lower his head ever so slightly so he could present his eyes unobscured by his spectacles.  That was a sign that something important would follow.  

And he said, "Should we not love God for being God and for no other reason?"

Think about that.

I like to say I will not cheat on my wife because I love her so much, and loving her, I cannot bear the thought of doing injury to her.

I would not want that on my conscience anytime, during those times my regrets come marching past my IMAX double 3D memory screen.

I have enough hurts I have inflicted on people.

Surely, upon God I have done the same every time I hurt others whether out of meanness, loss of temper, or retaliation.  I can say in my defense I never struck another person not wearing shoulder pads except once in 8th grade.

But still in my heart I have hated and wished destruction.  I have scorned and wished comeuppance.

Each time, I have hurt this God of love whom I love.

Surely, I must love God as God loves. So when I read that God drowned every single man, woman, child, fetus, and animal except a few on a boat held together with tar, I know it is a story about the universal experience of salvation for those blessed few who survive life's terrible throes, not about a deed done by my God of love.

I trust that patient, never wanting its own way, hoping always love.  That love works over time and space.  

One reason why I hope so gladly for everlasting life is because it will take an eternity for God to nurture me to be as loving as God is.

 Job goes on to say, "I will question him to his face."

We must all question God.  Doubting, wondering, and questioning are essential elements to any relationship. 

Without question, I question.  I read Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins' books.  I marvel at how interesting and profound their objections to faith are.  

I go to God and complain about the lack of scientific evidence, as if I am a little boy with a visible friend who hides when others come into the room, and I sometimes feel stupid.

I tell God that too and repose in the great silence.

As movie Forrest Gump would say, "I found that loving God comes quite naturally to me."  

It really does and always has.  

A former classmate of mine posted on FaceBook recently Pastor Rick Warren's comment about his son's suicide.  He said that he does not question his faith, but he does question God's plan.

Indeed.

My friend, like all of us who love God, knows no book, storm, bomb, or disease that may terminate a mortal life will terminate our love.  

That, I sense, is eternal and will never end.

Yet that is not why I love God.

Blessings...

Juggling and a Mixed Bag of Love

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.

Life is a mixed bag.  I have never run across anything that was genuinely pure.  We imagine purity, often based on a good feeling, but just about everything we deem pure has something else in it that may be a necessary element.

When I think of my experiences in Campus Crusade for Christ, I am reminded of the good and bad in everything.

Campus Crusade for Christ certainly emphasized purity:  pure acts, pure thoughts, pure motives, the pure Word of God devoid of any error.  

It was an impossible standard that created guilt, and guilt became the weapon staff members could use to keep others from moving onward.

For me, Campus Crusade for Christ became oppressive, especially when I actually began reading the Bible and theology.  Once a person actually reads the Bible the idea of a pure Word of God written by men, maybe one or two women, seems silly.  

And once a person in Campus Crusade for Christ begins to voice that discovery, guilt strikes back in the form of insinuations, accusations, outright reproaches, and death wishes ensue.

Death wishes such as, “God is going to kill you or maim you if you keep thinking… like you are thinking.”

Having said that, however, Campus Crusade for Christ taught me so many things my church never taught.  

Campus Crusade for Christ taught me about the ideology of God's love.

For instance, I never knew there were two Greek words for "love" in the Christian Bible.

Incidentally, there is another famous Greek word for love, a fun word, the word eros.  It is not used in the Christian Bible.  

Eros means erotic love.  The early church had nothing to say about that.  And why would they?  Most of the writers believed the world was about to end any second. 

Eros is for a world that goes on and on and on.

Back to the two Greek words in the Christian Bible:  there is phileo or sibling love. The person who first taught that to me mentioned Philadelphia as an example.  It is the City of Brotherly Love.

Then, there's agapao.  It is the main word used for love when it describes our God’s love for us and our love for God and people.  

It is unconditional love.  It is not felt.  It is love without exception and despite reasons not to love. 

Agapao is practiced.  It is a principle or attitude towards others that must be cultivated and attempted even after numerous failures.  

Agapao is like juggling.  Anyone who has ever learned how to juggle knows it is impossible not to drop the balls, bowling pins, hacky sacks, or lemons that one attempts to toss in the air from hand to hand.  

Agapao is love that is bound to flop, but we keep tossing it from our open hands into the heart of the world and back again.

It is how our God of love loves us, and how we are empowered by practice and design to love God, our neighbors, and our enemies.  

Agapao is the only true Christian way of being in the world.  It is the good news that Jesus incarnated.

I learned of agapao from Campus Crusade for Christ.  Imagine that. 

And I am learning how to agapao through life by the everlasting example of Jesus and our God of love even when I drop the ball.

Blessings...

National Rabbis and Grumbling Among Us

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  

On this day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln, "signed a commission naming Rabbi Jacob Frankel of Rodeph Shalom Congregation in Philadelphia the first Jewish chaplain of the U.S. Army."  

I read that historical tidbit this morning in the TODAY IN HISTORY part of our newspaper.  It is always printed below the funnies.  I read the funnies first so I might live longer.  

This story pleased my soul even more.

It reminded me that the ideals upon which the United States of America are based reflect the kind of thinking that is possible for a society that seeks to live out our God of love’s commandment.  

Not at first, of course, for liberty had to work itself out through decades of slavery, war, genocide and Jim Crow, imperialism, and more wars.

However, the idea that all people have an inalienable right to liberty, and religious liberty is included in that, suggests a strong confidence that a society where such liberty reigns will be much better than any other society that has ever or ever will exist.  

Gradually, our nation since 1776 has, like a backpacker, hiked through history, shaking off the vile dust of ancient prejudices clinging to its feet by law.  

Our laws are becoming more and more just today.  Our people, and maybe the world's people, are changing too despite the violence and hatred we see today.

It has always been that way for homo sapiens.  

If I may expound on a cliché: the light of love began as a spark among our species, then disparate sparks, and then sparks that joined into flames.  Among the flames some were smothered, smoldered, yet the fire remained.

Embedded within an act such as President Lincoln's, a tiny legal shift fanned the flames that flickered towards the future.

I can imagine the grumbling among our more Puritanical brothers and sisters, and other fundamentalists--and nearly everyone was a fundamentalist back then—as well as secular others who were by upbringing intensified bigots.  

It is the same grumbling we hear when one mosque goes up on a street that already winds past ten churches.

Indeed, by nature we mistrust the other:  the one who does not look like we look or worship like we worship.  

Ironically, in the distant past the first of those ten churches on that winding street grumbled as different congregations erected their spires, steeples, or unadorned rooftops.

Our upbringing can nurture that natural mistrust and turn it into hatred.

However, once upon a time, an American president made a decision that demonstrated our American faith in religious liberty as citizens in Antietam murdered one another over competing views of what freedom meant.  

Our president's signature fit in nicely with the love our God of love commands of us all.

And what is this love?  I cannot express it more practically, that is, as something that can be perfected by daily and conscientious rote, even in the most withering environment, than the following definition:

"Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.  Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

This is not an emotional love, a felt love.

Indeed, this is an exercised love. It has faith that the commitment to love will be furthered over time by our God of love as we love.

Once it was said of us, that everyone would know us by our love.  

Then we hated, armed ourselves, and became like everyone else.

Blessings...

What Love Is Not...and Is

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I keep writing about love without explaining what I mean.  Let me try to fix that.

If we are to take seriously a sermon entitled "Sinners in the Hands of Our God of Love," then we must know what "love" is.

First, what love is not...

Praying in front of everyone at Crackerbarrel is not showing our love, but we do display our holiness for all to see and politely ignore. 

Going to church is not showing our love, but we do discuss, practice, and celebrate it. 

Picketing funerals with signs proclaiming hate is not showing our love, but we do proclaim a hating god. 

Losing our tempers is not showing our love, but we do feel better while everyone around us feels nervous.

Cussing, drinking, dancing, and playing are not showing our love, but we do create laughter and the soul’s love song is laughter.

If we are a Christian Nation, we are not showing our love when we devise, implement, and propagandize for an economic system that makes richer those who are rich already, but we do make fatter that camel trying to fit through the eye of a needle.

If we are a Christian Nation we are not showing our love when our economic system is predisposed to expanding poverty rather than ending it, but we do create a culture that has deceived itself into believing the lie that prosperity is a sign of a god’s favor.

If we are a Christian Nation we are not showing our love if we must rely on guns to make us feel the illusion of being safe, but we do reside within the belly of a false hope.

If we are a Christian Nation we are never never NEVER showing our love when we murder grandmommies, granddaddies, mommies, daddies, aunts, uncles, cousins, sons, and daughters in another country because we want their oil or their government to be ours.

But we do create survivors who despise us so much that they plan and pray for our demise in the decades to come.

If we are a Christian Nation we are never showing our love when we make war in order to create a situation in the Middle East that lays the groundwork for our woefully informed belief in Biblical fortune telling and thereby hastens the physical return of a god.

But we do create survivors who despise us so much that they cannot see our God of love dwelling within the borders of our Christian Nation.

Indeed, it’s the good news when we show our love by seeking and serving and giving and working for the rule of kindness and justice and civility and hope in this mortal life…you know…heaven on earth…such as Jesus preached.

Blessings…

Sinner's in the Hands of Our Loving God

In the beginning, the elohim created skies an earth.

Welcome back.  I hope your weekend was restful and whole.  If yours was like mine, somewhat turbulent and testy, then you must rejoice with me when on the next day there is always a new sense of being in the world.

Last Friday, I wrote about the spider metaphor in Jonathan Edward’s sermon: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

I suspect he wrote his sermon after suffering a day of excessive existential clutter and clatter.

Let us press the “refresh” button and attempt a new homily, starting with the title:  “Sinners in the Hands of Our Loving God.”

The portion I share is a small part of a larger loving witness to our God of love.

The text upon which we base our sermon is part of a sentence in the letter called 1 John:  “God is love.”

The entire verse is a thought extracted from a larger context that is calling upon men and women to prove their love by showing it. 

Our sermon is grounded within a larger, ancient, unrecognized, unserved, and Christian pretext that preaches our God of love is sending everyone to heaven.

Indeed, everyone deserves heaven, if for no other reason than being a huge “I apologize” from God for all of us having to suffer those godforsaken spaces and times of existence created by godforsaking people.

Below are Jonathan Edwards’ words from his sermon with a slight alteration:

Our God of love yearns to keep you forever--much as one who observes the life cycle of a spider and grieves its end when it dies--adores you, and is dreadfully provoked to sadness when you are gone. 

God’s love towards you burns like fire that incinerates the mortality that harms you and kills you and blinds you to God’s love. 

God looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be blessed as you pass beyond this wail of tears.

God is of purer eyes than we have to see.  We are ten thousand times more loved in God’s eyes, than in any man’s or any woman’s heart.

We have comprehended God infinitely less than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but God’s love that holds us every moment.

It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that we did not go to heaven the last night; that we suffered to awake again in this world, after we closed our eyes to sleep.

And there is no other reason to be given, why we have not dropped or risen up or passed onward to heaven since we arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held us here.

There is no other reason to be given why we have not gone to heaven, since we have sat here in the house of God, provoking

God’s pure love despite our sinful wicked hearts celebrating God’s blessed adoration.

Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why we do not this very moment drop down or rise up or pass onward into heaven.

Knowing our God of love to be this, let us likewise live our lives.

Ponder that.  Blessings…

Sabbath

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

May our God of love compose and complete you.

May our God of love send you from harm's way.

May our God of love inspire devotion to

Divine that one commandment we must obey.

Blessings...

Sinners in the Hands of a Hating God

In the beginning, the elohim created skies an earth.

Welcome back. 

Let me share Edward’s sermon that has the spider metaphor.  The sermon is “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

The portion I share is a small part of a larger incendiary witness against our God of love.

The text upon which Edwards based his sermon is part of a sentence in Deuteronomy 32:35.

 

“Their foot shall slide in due time.”  Deuteronomy 32:35

The entire verse is part of Moses’ farewell poem.  The context is an affirmation that God will punish the enemies of God’s children.  Edwards did not have the benefit of modern Biblical scholarship at his disposal so he could read Deuteronomy within its historical context, and thus, read it better as a Christian, not so badly as a Puritan.

Incidentally, it is popular, even among some of my fundamentalist brothers who preach today (the sisters are not allowed), to rip out from a Biblical context those few words that vindicate their belief in a God not of love and to do it with a big smile on their faces.

Edwards’ sermon is grounded within a larger, older, reactionary, and Calvinistic pretext that preaches our God of love is sending everyone to hell. 

Indeed, everyone deserves hell that is, burning while alive forever within a concentration camp less humane than one which uses cyanide.  But our God of love has enough love to spare a few who are called the elect.

Why does God spare them?  Because he loves us?  Because he loves them?  Why…yes.  And that is the only reason. 

Below are Jonathan Edwards’ words from his sermon:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep.

And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship.

Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

Ponder that.  Blessings…

A Proper Southern Lady

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Yesterday, I wrote about Jonathan Edward's use of the spider metaphor in his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."  

I would like share a spider metaphor that points to our God of love, but first a little background:

Aragog lives outside our apartment door.  She is a lovely arachnid with a lovely street name:  the golden silk orb weaver. 

She has woven a sweeping web that protrudes slightly over our neighbor’s flower bed below. One end of her web is attached to our patio rail; the other end is attached to the corner of our unit’s vanilla stucco wall. 

Between her exterior web and our patio web, she has spun an interior web.  She is a busy girl.

She is quite impressive.  My daughter, as I wrote before, mentioned Aragog's size, using that faddish new adjective, "ginormous," which is obviously a combination of "gigantic" and "enormous," and may well move beyond popular culture to our national lexicon someday should "ginormous" appear frequently, nationally, even globally, enough by gimillions of people.  

My neighbor who has seen Aragog from below also commented on her size.

"Huge" and "supermalifactorlciousdeathlyomnitrocious" are the words she used. 

My daughter is terrified that Aragog might leap away from her web, hunt her down, and eat her--or worse, bite her so that she dies a long, agonizing death.  

At first I did not know Aragog was a girl.  I just thought she was the prettiest spider I ever saw, and I tend to associate being pretty with being feminine.  

Imagine this girl who comes at your eye with autumn yellow splendor.  Her long legs are covered with black coverlets on her knees.  Her shoes are long black heels only with no insoles for feet.  She could not be any fancier were she atop a diamond broach.

In the morning, before my daily perambulation, I stop to admire how she glows in the stage light cast from our porch bulb.  She eight steps slowly over her web to spin a patch where life has ripped a tear.

During the day, she rarely moves at all.  The greater bulb in the sky reveals her to be a well adorned and proper Southern lady.  

One day, I noticed a small spider standing unmoved near her.  I did not know a whole lot about spiders, short of what I read in Charlotte's Web and saw in the movies, so I did not know much about the tiny newcomer.  

He is a plain sort of fellow.  Brown or black, it’s hard to tell, and not much bigger than a button.  I gave him a name too:  Little Forest.

Every time I pass them by to live my life such as it is outside my home, they give me pause, a good long pause, and I wish I could communicate to them how the moments of amazement they give me make me so happy.

I asked my wife what kind of spider she was.  Uh…Aragog…not my wife.

“A banana spider,” she called up to me where I stood on the balcony one morning as she was getting into her car to go to work.  I went up to google banana spider.  I found a lot of pictures of other golden silk orb weavers. 

Next time, I will share what I learned.

Blessings…

God and Spiders

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I hope anyone reading this enjoys it and is given occasion to ponder, for pondering is praying when we ponder our God of love.

Yesterday, I wrote about my golden silk orb weaver, Aragog. Today I will write about how one American Christian worked the metaphor of the spider into a famous sermon, and then I would like to share my own metaphor.

Spiders figure prominently in at least one American writer whose sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" was said to have been so powerful many who heard it fell onto the floor.

Really?  It was the so-called Great Awakening.

Well, I have read it on numerous occasions.  I am an English teacher, afterall, and the sermon is included in the 11^th grade English textbook for American literature.

 Jonathan Edwards wrote it and preached it.  I suppose it is the sign of our times, and science, that I can read his sermon, admire his writing style, but disdain his message.

I did fall to the floor laughing the first time I read it.

Edwards actually says that God, our God, our God of love, “Abhors you.” 

Think about that. Abhor is a strong word.  God does not just hate you, but God really really really hates you, me, and everyone else who has ever been born.

Now, unless Edwards expanded on that idea elsewhere, I must believe he meant it.

His primary metaphor was that of the spider, being dangled by God over flames, into which God would drop the poor creature because, like my daughter and Ronald Weasley, God loathes spiders. 

It is the image of many of my brothers and sisters: the God who is inhumane and cruel, who created eternal fired up concentration camps for anyone who does not follow the correct doctrine some ignorant person imagined centuries ago.

Ahem.

Let me say this: if there were no Christianity and all we had was the Jewish Bible, I believe such a doctrine is truly justified. 

Of course, there would be Jewish teachers over the centuries, such as there were before Jesus lived, who would teach that Jehovah is a God of love.

Maybe the idea would have caught on.  It struggles to do so today, still. 

The doctrine certainly drives hearts among many Jewish people today, although the rabbi we Christians seek to emulate surely has had some influence on that.

I can’t imagine that a Jewish person, or any devout person, would want to be upstaged by a sect from their own religion that peaches the greatest news, the true gospel, that God loves us, and we must love God, love God’s creation, and therefore love all men and women. 

In history, religious groups are changed by those who split off from them.  So even without Jesus the truth that God is love would have existed within Judaism, but certainly with Jesus all religions have been affected. 

However, without that gospel, I can see how someone could read the Jewish Bible and conclude that God hates men and women.

God thinks we are dirty, defiled, unclean,unkosher—especially us Gentiles—you know…like spiders.

Dropping a sinner into a fire is as easy for God, right?

Of course, according to Edwards’ Calvinism, it is God’s love that saves some of us, the elected ones, from God’s hatred. 

That metaphor stinks to high heaven.  It should be dropped into a fire.

Next time, I will share another metaphor about spiders that is more Jesusy, more like good news.

Blessings…