Acceptance and growth

=A0A sense of rejection is one of the most powerful factors that hinder
personal, social and spiritual growth.

Exactly. And since I have experienced nothing but rejection
from God no matter how I have cried to Him and confessed
my sins, it's no wonder that my "personal, social, and
spiritual growth" has been "hinder"ed.

[snip]

To the backsliding people of Israel, God's instruction was, "Only
acknowledge your sin" (Je.3:13). That was to be the starting point for
their recovery. To encourage them to do that, God kept telling them
about how He really loved them and what all He wanted to do for them.
He knew that only if they were convinced that they were 'safe' in His
love they would open up to Him. That is what we can bank on - His
mercy, forgiveness and acceptance - when we go to Him.

Oh, I felt I was safe, and I opened up -- and nothing happened!
No mercy, no forgiveness, no acceptance!

[snip]

But with God we can be open and
still be certain about His acceptance. This is something we receive by
faith, and then we become more convinced about it through experience.

I received it by faith, and then became LESS convinced about it
through experience. Do you have actual experience, or are
you just quoting propaganda you've read? If you do have
experience, then it follows that God plays favorites rather than
loving "whosoever" equally. Though that would agree with
some parts of the Bible, especially that horrible passage
Romans 9:15ff., which truly makes God look like a
scumbucket, it does not agree with the idea of a God
Who is love for all.

[snip]

(Moderator: Please note that this is not an _ad hominem_
attack, rather _ad Deum_; those you have allowed before.
Note also that I've courteously refrained from posting for
several weeks while your arm healed. I've had a broken
arm once -- though admittedly my left -- so I know what
it is to type one-handed!)

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent, ***@go.com

Doodle

2008-03-07 03:45:47 UTC

Post by Jacob
To the backsliding people of Israel, God's instruction was, "Only
acknowledge your sin" (Je.3:13). That was to be the starting point for
their recovery. To encourage them to do that, God kept telling them
about how He really loved them and what all He wanted to do for them.
He knew that only if they were convinced that they were 'safe' in His
love they would open up to Him. That is what we can bank on - His
mercy, forgiveness and acceptance - when we go to Him.

Oh, I felt I was safe, and I opened up -- and nothing happened!
No mercy, no forgiveness, no acceptance!

What makes you think there was no mercy, forgiveness or acceptance?

Bob Crowley

2008-03-07 03:45:48 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
Exactly. And since I have experienced nothing but rejection
from God no matter how I have cried to Him and confessed
my sins, it's no wonder that my "personal, social, and
spiritual growth" has been "hinder"ed.
Oh, I felt I was safe, and I opened up -- and nothing happened!
No mercy, no forgiveness, no acceptance!
I received it by faith, and then became LESS convinced about it
through experience. Do you have actual experience, or are
you just quoting propaganda you've read? If you do have
experience, then it follows that God plays favorites rather than
loving "whosoever" equally. Though that would agree with
some parts of the Bible, especially that horrible passage
Romans 9:15ff., which truly makes God look like a
scumbucket, it does not agree with the idea of a God
Who is love for all.

Being a casual visitor to this site, I was unaware the moderator's arm
was broken. Gotta watch those Nintendo games.

I'm curious why Jeffrey J Sargent is adamant he has not received
mercy, acceptance or forgiveness from God? Has God told you so
Himself? Or is that your own negative perception? Has somebody else
said it? If so, what makes you sure they're right?

Or is it the complete and utter lack of God's presence which you feel,
and which you're seeking, in part by posting on this site?

I'd be interested to know why you are so sure you're unforgiven.
Because I think you're wrong. I think you've been forgiven, but
because there seems to be no Damascus experience in your case, you
think you've been ignored.

I mention this because for a long time I had a very wise pastor, who
unfortunately also managed to do a good job of discouraging me. I
ended up thinking I was the only sinner in his church. In actual fact
I'd been through a series of discouragements which would have
destroyed a lot of people, and that's not boasting either.

In the end he apologised, but not before he'd done quite a good job of
long term discouragement. As a sidenote, I've made the claim
elsewhere that on the night my father died, he rather abruptly
appeared in my room, and apologised, and exited with a tremendous
scream a couple of minutes later. However during the exchange, he
said at one stage "You'll meet a pastor. You'll think he's great, but
all he'll do is discourage you even more!"

I didn't meet the pastor till almost four years later, and about eight
or so years after that, I had the experience of having the pastor say
in his office, "I owe you an apology. You needed encouragement, and
all I've done is discourage you even more!" I'd already told him
about the business of my father appearing the night he died, but I
then told him what my father had said about him. I think that was the
first time he really believed I was telling the truth. In short, my
father predicted the pastor's discouragement, and the pastor himself
used almost the very same words my father did. Something odd happened
that night.

However that doesn't mean God hadn't forgiven me. In fact, I
sometimes find it hard to forgive God. I think I could justly claim
that compared to the lives of some other Christians I've seen, God has
been pretty unfair to me in some ways. Even the old pastor said that,
saying "All He's done is humiliate you all your life! What have you
done to deserve all this?"

He also commented. "Maybe God wants you to forgive Him. He's had to
forgive you for a few things". Maybe God wants a two way exchange
sometimes. Maybe He gets a bit tired of being the only one doing the
forgiving, particularly when He wants to call us His friends. Perhaps
He wants a quid pro quo occasionally, a barney between mates.

I'm just wondering if your faith isn't being tested rather severely.

So, why are you so sure you haven't been forgiven?

---

[Not from Nintendo games. But it's pretty much OK at this point.
--clh]

steveo

2008-03-17 00:19:54 UTC

=A0A sense of rejection is one of the most powerful factors that hinder
personal, social and spiritual growth.

A man decides to live a healthy lifestyle. He changes his diet to include
more vegetables and less fats. He begins a daily regimen of walking for 30
minutes, flossing, and getting adequate rest.

The man working from the negative proposition--fear of heart attacks,
cancer, etc--will not see the benefits his body is receiving and will end
his disciplined lifestyle in favor of the old. How can he measure how much
longer he will live? What if there is no benefit to what he has chosen to
do because they were the incorrect things? What is a car runs him over and
all his hard work is all for naught? Even if he should become fit and
healthy, what good is it if no one like him, or if he should be fired from
his job?

The man working from the positive proposition--the better I take care of
this body the longer it will be able support me in enjoying this wonderful
life--will see the benefits in everyday experiences he has and continue his
program indefinitely. He wakes up each day refreshed and excited. He
enjoys the early morning cool and brightening sky as he begins his journey
to work. He enjoys the kiss of his wife when he returns home in the
evening. Even in times of trouble, this man can find comfort in the sight
of little ones playing in a park or in returning a shopping cart to the
appropriate place instead of in the adjacent space.

In my experience, God answers in the little things. I hope you see the
answer you were looking for - always keep your eyes open.

j***@go.com

2008-03-17 00:19:56 UTC

Since Bob Crowley wrote a reasonable response
to my posting, I owe him one. He's a decent
fellow, and if I ever make it to Australia (whatever
part of it he lives in), I'll look him up. (This should
also answer the brief posting from Doodle.)

Post by Bob Crowley
I'm curious why Jeffrey J Sargent is adamant he has not received
mercy, acceptance or forgiveness from God? =A0Has God told you so
Himself?

In effect, yes. My life got into a tailspin because in the same
year I both lost my job (as I see it, for prophesying against
a dehumanizing company) and, a few months later, had it
brought home to me very painfully that I was a sinner --
a discovery I believe many Christians never really make,
they just parrot the doctrine. Signs of forgiveness would
have included God's putting my life back together, treating
me as if He cared, helping me find new work, bringing
people into my life who could help heal my emotional
and spiritual wounds. None of this happened. I landed up
living with my aging mother (with whom I had personality
clashes that may be inevitable given the generation and
gender gaps), while (at first) begging for a sign from God
to tell me where to go to get a real job and a better life
(after all, God is the one with all the inside contacts, and
Biblically, He owns all the companies anyway so should
be able to pull strings to get me a job). But now I'm in
even more of a mess, because my mother died somewhat
unexpectedly a few weeks ago (another reason, indeed
the principal one, I didn't post for a while) and my life
still isn't settled, but rather more unsettled.

God has given me no help and no direction and no
love, and I know better than to go to the churches to
look for love; churches offer only religion, not love,
and this is especially true of the right-wingers who
think they're the truest Christians!

Post by Bob Crowley
=A0Or is that your own negative perception? =A0Has somebody else
said it? =A0If so, what makes you sure they're right?

No, no one else told me this; it's a perception
based on the way any sane person would
interpret the facts. If someone treats you as
if they don't care about you at all, it is reasonable
to believe that that someone doesn't care --
especially if that someone is God, who, being
all-powerful, could treat me well if He wanted to.
It follows that He doesn't want to.

Post by Bob Crowley
Or is it the complete and utter lack of God's presence which you feel,
and which you're seeking, in part by posting on this site?

This is pretty much answered above.

Post by Bob Crowley
I'd be interested to know why you are so sure you're unforgiven.
Because I think you're wrong. =A0I think you've been forgiven, but
because there seems to be no Damascus experience in your case,
you think you've been ignored.

Well, when I first became a Christian as a callow teenager,
there was a very small "Damascus experience", where things
seemed to fall into place. But since then, after putting myself
on the line for Him (and being, in a small way, martyred by
losing my job), then confessing the sins I abruptly and
agonizingly discovered in myself, and still finding no help,
no comfort, no love from Him, I cannot but conclude that
He's kicked me in the face and thrown me out!

[story of discouraging pastor here]

No pastor in my life has matched the discouragement
which that pastor inflicted on you. But sometimes one
will get that from Christian books. Back when I thought
I might have a reasonable chance of getting married
someday (rather than requiring a small miracle to bring
that about), I read some Christian books on marriage.
They could be summed up, "Whoever is reading this
book should do all the work in the marriage and expect
no reward." Most other Christian teaching in books,
etc. is similar. (Some books start out talking about
grace and hope, but end up putting the burden back
on the reader and leaving him worse off than before.)
Now I find that everybody in the world is out to get
money from me, to pay either my mother's bills or
my own. But God doesn't give me any clue where
to go to get money coming in. (My mother's savings
are not all that big, and the only thing that would
give her house a chance of selling in this market
is that it's in a fairly convenient location.)

So Christianity and the world, supposedly diametrical
enemies, work exactly the same: Everybody gets some
but me!

Post by Bob Crowley
However that doesn't mean God hadn't forgiven me. =A0In fact, I
sometimes find it hard to forgive God. =A0I think I could justly claim
that compared to the lives of some other Christians I've seen, God has
been pretty unfair to me in some ways. =A0Even the old pastor said that,
saying "All He's done is humiliate you all your life! =A0What have you
done to deserve all this?"

I can identify with all of this (except the first sentence).
Certainly I've been humiliated a lot (especially, but not
exclusively, in dealings with women). And an old
high-school friend of mine, now a reasonably successful
pastor, has emailed me a couple of photos of his
fine-looking happy family. I warned him that he's in
the same situation as Job was before Satan got after
him -- with God's full approval, be it noted.

Post by Bob Crowley
He also commented. "Maybe God wants you to forgive Him. =A0He's had to
forgive you for a few things". =A0Maybe God wants a two way exchange
sometimes. =A0Maybe He gets a bit tired of being the only one doing the
forgiving, particularly when He wants to call us His friends. =A0Perhaps
He wants a quid pro quo occasionally, a barney between mates.

1) Uh.... If God is sinless, He doesn't need forgiving.
Assuming that to be true, the contrapositive of it,
which actually obtains, is logically also true:
Since God needs forgiving, He's not sinless.

2) He's in the position of power, the One Whom
Jesus described with relish as having the power
to cast body and soul into hell. If He wants to
be friends, He'd better act friendly, and He
doesn't. He needs to demonstrate love in a
way that an American (or an Australian) born
in the 20th century will recognize as love --
not by a means that only a 1st-century religious
fanatic (Saul of Tarsus/Paul) could call love only
by frantic theologizing (Romans 5:8 for instance).

3) Speaking of Romans, rather than saying that
all the bad things described in Romans 8:35ff.
cannot separate us from the love of God, is it
not more sensible to say that they disprove it?
Rather than saying "He that spared not his own
Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall
he not with him also freely give us all things?"
(Romans 8:32), does it not make more sense
and accord more with real-life experience to
say, "He that spared not his own Son, how
much less will He spare us"?

Post by Bob Crowley
I'm just wondering if your faith isn't being tested rather severely.

I Corinthians 10:13 says God won't let us be
tempted (really "tested", if I correctly understand
the Strong's concordance entry at

http://cf.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/Lexicon.cfm?Strongs=3DG3985

[or 3986]) beyond what we are able, but will
provide a way out. Didn't work that way.
Obviously, if God exists at all, He *has*
allowed me to be tested beyond what I was
able to bear and provided no way out.

Post by Bob Crowley
So, why are you so sure you haven't been forgiven?

What else can I reasonably conclude?

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

j***@go.com

2008-03-19 00:17:14 UTC

Somehow, the URL in the article I posted
recently got garbled, with a couple of
extraneous characters being added.
I don't know how this happened, but
it doesn't matter. The correct URL
(or at least one that works) for the
reference to the Greek for "test"
or "tempt" is:

http://cf.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G3985

Change the last term to G3986 to get
to the entry for "temptation" or
"testing".

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

Bob Crowley

2008-03-19 00:17:15 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
Since Bob Crowley wrote a reasonable response
to my posting, I owe him one. =A0He's a decent
fellow, and if I ever make it to Australia (whatever
part of it he lives in), I'll look him up. =A0(This should
also answer the brief posting from Doodle.)

If you do get here, let me know one way or the other, and I'll give
you the address. I think you'll be disillusioned by my "ordinariness"
however. But that's hypothetical for the moment.

Post by Bob Crowley
I'm curious why Jeffrey J Sargent is adamant he has not received
mercy, acceptance or forgiveness from God? =3DA0Has God told you so
Himself?

In effect, yes. =A0My life got into a tailspin because in the same
year I both lost my job (as I see it, for prophesying against
a dehumanizing company) and, a few months later, had it
brought home to me very painfully that I was a sinner --
a discovery I believe many Christians never really make,
they just parrot the doctrine. =A0Signs of forgiveness would
have included God's putting my life back together, treating
me as if He cared, helping me find new work, bringing
people into my life who could help heal my emotional
and spiritual wounds. =A0None of this happened. =A0I landed up
living with my aging mother (with whom I had personality
clashes that may be inevitable given the generation and
gender gaps), while (at first) begging for a sign from God
to tell me where to go to get a real job and a better life
(after all, God is the one with all the inside contacts, and
Biblically, He owns all the companies anyway so should
be able to pull strings to get me a job). =A0But now I'm in
even more of a mess, because my mother died somewhat
unexpectedly a few weeks ago (another reason, indeed
the principal one, I didn't post for a while) and my life
still isn't settled, but rather more unsettled.

You aren't the first to lose a job fairly or unfairly and you won't be
the last. As a way of shared experience, I lost a job about twelve
years ago, partly through my own fault but what was most galling about
the experience was that I also believe there was a bit of a conspiracy
against me, including some "Christians", to get me out anyway. You
may not believe me but fairly early on in my Christian life (I was
probably about 30) I had a "vision" in which somebody said "Mr.
Missenden will come to you with a job offer. I want you to take it.
If you stay where you are, in a few years there'll be a conspiracy
against you and you'll lose your job".

A couple of days later, the pastor, the above "Mr Missenden" came to
me with a possible job offer, administration working with the disabled
it seems, and said, "There won't be much money in it, but I think if
you stay where you are there'll be a conspiracy against you in a few
years, and you'll lose your job".

I didn't take the job, and a few years later I lost the one I had. I
suspect a certain pastor in the Presbyterian church of having a hand
in this (I happened to cross paths with a Catholic psychiatrist later,
and he informed me he'd treated eight Presbyterian pastors for stress
related breakdown. In every single case, they named the same pastor
whom I believed to be involved in my job loss as being part of the
cause. He's a Pharisee, pure and simple, a legalist to the core, and
can only expect a Pharisee's reward when he dies.

However Rev. Missenden also said, years later, "I think you'd have had
trouble down the track anyway even if you had taken the disability
job, as I think you'll become Catholic. It's mainly a Protestant
outfit." So....

Down the track I did become Catholic. Old Rev. Missenden had a pretty
fair idea of what was going to happen. The point is that you
sometimes are going to get "friendly fire" from other Christians, and
even plain "unfriendly fire" at times.

Post by j***@go.com
God has given me no help and no direction and no
love, and I know better than to go to the churches to
look for love; churches offer only religion, not love,
and this is especially true of the right-wingers who
think they're the truest Christians!

Right wingers can be arrogant,and quite un-Christian when it comes to
judgementalism.

As for no help and no direction, one of the tests of faith is when God
leaves you in what might be called a "dark night of the soul". For
Christians with a deep mystical slant, this may mean something
different, but for a Christian in the world, a "dark night of the
soul" can simply be His perceived absence. As CS Lewis wrote
somewhere, it's the sort of situation where you stand at the door
knocking, in desperate need of encouragement, and the only sound you
hear is the door being double and triple bolted on the other side.

In today's affluent society we don't hear much of suffering, but one
of Christ's promises is that we'll suffer. If Christians don't
suffer, what's the difference between them and their equally affluent
atheist neighbour? Practically nothing.

Post by Bob Crowley
=3DA0Or is that your own negative perception? =3DA0Has somebody else
said it? =3DA0If so, what makes you sure they're right?

No, no one else told me this; it's a perception
based on the way any sane person would
interpret the facts. =A0If someone treats you as
if they don't care about you at all, it is reasonable
to believe that that someone doesn't care --
especially if that someone is God, who, being
all-powerful, could treat me well if He wanted to.
It follows that He doesn't want to.

True, but when Paul was having his back slashed by the thirty nine
lashes, do you think he felt God's overwhelming assurance. How about
Christ's desolation? "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"
Easter time, too.

Post by Bob Crowley
Or is it the complete and utter lack of God's presence which you feel,
and which you're seeking, in part by posting on this site?

This is pretty much answered above.

Post by Bob Crowley
I'd be interested to know why you are so sure you're unforgiven.
Because I think you're wrong. =3DA0I think you've been forgiven, but
because there seems to be no Damascus experience in your case,
you think you've been ignored.

Well, when I first became a Christian as a callow teenager,
there was a very small "Damascus experience", where things
seemed to fall into place. =A0But since then, after putting myself
on the line for Him (and being, in a small way, martyred by
losing my job), then confessing the sins I abruptly and
agonizingly discovered in myself, and still finding no help,
no comfort, no love from Him, I cannot but conclude that
He's kicked me in the face and thrown me out!

I found life pretty easy until I was about fifteen, and then one night
I had an experience where somebody seemed to say He was going to
humiliate me. When I asked the speaker how long this was supposed to
last, He said "Oh, about thirty years. What happens after that is up
to you". Life abruptly went from good to bad, and I suppose life
didn't turn around for about that period of time, and even now I
struggle in areas of "career" and "study".

Post by j***@go.com
[story of discouraging pastor here]
No pastor in my life has matched the discouragement
which that pastor inflicted on you. =A0But sometimes one
will get that from Christian books. =A0Back when I thought
I might have a reasonable chance of getting married
someday (rather than requiring a small miracle to bring
that about), I read some Christian books on marriage.
They could be summed up, "Whoever is reading this
book should do all the work in the marriage and expect
no reward." =A0Most other Christian teaching in books,
etc. is similar. =A0(Some books start out talking about
grace and hope, but end up putting the burden back
on the reader and leaving him worse off than before.)
Now I find that everybody in the world is out to get
money from me, to pay either my mother's bills or
my own. =A0But God doesn't give me any clue where
to go to get money coming in. =A0(My mother's savings
are not all that big, and the only thing that would
give her house a chance of selling in this market
is that it's in a fairly convenient location.)

Suggest you go to a Christian singles group, but don't get too carried
away or too agressive. That's how (blush) I met my (second) wife.
After all in a singles group you're both looking for the same thing.
Some people do very well just from advertising, but be careful.

Post by j***@go.com
So Christianity and the world, supposedly diametrical
enemies, work exactly the same: Everybody gets some
but me!

I think you're being tested. You're probably pretty tough, although
you may not think so. Tough stuff requires tough testing.

Post by Bob Crowley
However that doesn't mean God hadn't forgiven me. =3DA0In fact, I
sometimes find it hard to forgive God. =3DA0I think I could justly claim=
that compared to the lives of some other Christians I've seen, God has
been pretty unfair to me in some ways. =3DA0Even the old pastor said tha=

Post by Bob Crowley
saying "All He's done is humiliate you all your life! =3DA0What have you=
done to deserve all this?"

I can identify with all of this (except the first sentence).
Certainly I've been humiliated a lot (especially, but not
exclusively, in dealings with women). =A0And an old
high-school friend of mine, now a reasonably successful
pastor, has emailed me a couple of photos of his
fine-looking happy family. =A0I warned him that he's in
the same situation as Job was before Satan got after
him -- with God's full approval, be it noted.

I'd lay off the moralising if I were you. If he is going to be
subject to a "Job" experience that will be only if God decides to do
so, and not because you're feeling resentful. This sort of pre-
emptive and unnecessary action may be a part of your difficulty, and
to that extent self-inflicted.

Post by Bob Crowley
He also commented. "Maybe God wants you to forgive Him. =3DA0He's had to=
forgive you for a few things". =3DA0Maybe God wants a two way exchange
sometimes. =3DA0Maybe He gets a bit tired of being the only one doing th=

Post by Bob Crowley
forgiving, particularly when He wants to call us His friends. =3DA0Perha=

Post by Bob Crowley
He wants a quid pro quo occasionally, a barney between mates.

1) Uh.... =A0If God is sinless, He doesn't need forgiving.
Assuming that to be true, the contrapositive of it,
Since God needs forgiving, He's not sinless.

Forgiveness from the point of view of the forgiver is an emotional
experience. God may not need forgiveness in the sense that He is
supreme, but He can be very hurtful, and to be quite truthful,
unfair. He's actually unfair to a lot of people in this life.
Therefore it pleases God, and makes Him feel like He's got a friend,
when one of His people is prepared to forgive His "unfairness".

In my own case I waver, between forgiveness and bitterness.

Post by j***@go.com
2) He's in the position of power, the One Whom
Jesus described with relish as having the power
to cast body and soul into hell. =A0If He wants to
be friends, He'd better act friendly, and He
doesn't. =A0He needs to demonstrate love in a
way that an American (or an Australian) born
in the 20th century will recognize as love --
not by a means that only a 1st-century religious
fanatic (Saul of Tarsus/Paul) could call love only
by frantic theologizing (Romans 5:8 for instance).

Then look at Christ rather than Paul. And as you read Paul, you find
that as his writings reflect increased experience as a Christian, he
seems to soften. He was after all a Pharisee to begin with, and a
martyr to finish. Even Paul would have taken time to mellow.

Post by j***@go.com
3) Speaking of Romans, rather than saying that
all the bad things described in Romans 8:35ff.
cannot separate us from the love of God, is it
not more sensible to say that they disprove it?
Rather than saying "He that spared not his own
Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall
he not with him also freely give us all things?"
(Romans 8:32), does it not make more sense
and accord more with real-life experience to
say, "He that spared not his own Son, how
much less will He spare us"?

I don't think we know what it cost God to give up His Son. What Paul
was saying was that if God was prepared to suffer such intense
emotional and spiritual pain as He experienced in letting Christ be
crucified, then He must be prepared to give us a place in heaven. Or
He would not have demanded such a high price of Christ or Himself.

On the other hand, it would be most unwise to reject Christ on the
same grounds. Holding God in that contempt would then mean He would
hold us in equal contempt. I had the experience of my father suddenly
appearing in my room the night he died. After discussion and mutual
recriminations, he screamed terribly and disappeared. He'd made his
choice.

Post by Bob Crowley
I'm just wondering if your faith isn't being tested rather severely.

I Corinthians 10:13 says God won't let us be
tempted (really "tested", if I correctly understand
the Strong's concordance entry at
http://cf.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/Lexicon.cfm?Strongs=3D3DG3985
[or 3986]) beyond what we are able, but will
provide a way out. =A0Didn't work that way.
Obviously, if God exists at all, He *has*
allowed me to be tested beyond what I was
able to bear and provided no way out.

You're still here, and you haven't given up, or you wouldn't be
arguing the case on this site. Your faith is still there - what you
are really saying is that you've suffered, and continue to suffer,
immense discouragement and disillusionment.

Post by Bob Crowley
So, why are you so sure you haven't been forgiven?

What else can I reasonably conclude?

I'll say it again. I think you're fairly tough, and you're being
harshly tested.

Bob Crowley

j***@go.com

2008-03-31 02:35:12 UTC

Sorry for the delay, Mr. Crowley; I haven't
had much chance to get on the Internet
lately. I'll try not to run too long and to
trim as much as I can.
[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
Signs of forgiveness would
have included God's putting my life back together...

This phrasing I used last time came from a song
I remember from my ancient days in a Christian
youth group. The song was entitled "The Moment
of Truth", and, referring to God, it said (approx.
quote from memory): "He'll help you get it all
together when your life is falling all apart."
He didn't do that; this has added to my
disillusionment.

[job loss, etc. story here]

Post by j***@go.com
God has given me no help and no direction and no
love....

As for no help and no direction, one of the tests of faith is when God
leaves you in what might be called a "dark night of the soul". =A0For
Christians with a deep mystical slant, this may mean something
different, but for a Christian in the world, a "dark night of the
soul" can simply be His perceived absence.

I'm well aware of the term and its origin in the
writings of John of the Cross. (FYI, I've recently
done something I should have known better than
to do: read a book by a best-selling author, in
this case the ex-Catholic monk Thomas Moore.
The book in question: _Dark Nights of the Soul_;
I can't say I got much out of it.) The obvious
rejoinder is: If God wants us to do His will,
He's defeating His own purpose if He doesn't
tell us what it is.

[short snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
In today's affluent society we don't hear much of suffering, but one
of Christ's promises is that we'll suffer. =A0If Christians don't
suffer, what's the difference between them and their equally affluent
atheist neighbour? =A0Practically nothing.

Ah-HAH! You've put the finger right on the disease
of a good many upscale Christians who don't
recognize that that phrase is arguably an
oxymoron, who apparently believe that they
CAN serve God and Mammon [heck, during
the recent stretch with Republicans controlling
both Congress and the White House, that was
enacted into U.S. law! 1/2 :-) ]. Curiously,
God does nothing to disabuse them of this
belief -- another reason to avoid the churches;
seeing that "Judgment must begin at the house
of God" (I Peter 4:17), that's the last place one
wants to be if God ever starts judging, which tons
of Christian preachers (especially broadcasters)
make tons of hay out of claiming the imminence of.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
when Paul was having his back slashed by the thirty nine
lashes, do you think he felt God's overwhelming assurance.

I don't know about *God's* assurance. Remember, he was
a fairly unreconstructed Pharisee, who, in keeping with many
religious extremists (perhaps, in an unusual way, including
myself), swung from one extreme to the other; thus he may
well have been assured of his *own* rightness, quite enough
to carry him through.

Post by Bob Crowley
=A0How about
Christ's desolation? =A0"My God, my God, why have you
abandoned me? Easter time, too.

That ties up with my previous point about rewriting
Romans 8:32, that if God didn't spare His own Son,
He certainly won't spare us. Anyway, it wasn't
"Easter" until after the Resurrection, if such an
event occurred.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
I found life pretty easy until I was about fifteen, and then one night
I had an experience where somebody seemed to say He was going to
humiliate me. When I asked the speaker how long this was supposed to
last, He said "Oh, about thirty years. =A0What happens after that is up
to you". =A0Life abruptly went from good to bad, and I suppose life
didn't turn around for about that period of time, and even now I
struggle in areas of "career" and "study".

Why you didn't bail on God right there and then
I don't know, just as I don't understand why
Abraham didn't bail on God after God told him
his descendants would be enslaved for 400
years. Maybe I can understand Abraham ---
after all, God still promised that he would
*have* descendants, though He did torture
Abraham by keeping him waiting way too
long, hence Ishmael, whose descendants,
as promised, have long clashed with the
rest of the world -- but I can't understand you.

If the writings of Ayn Rand are available in
Australia, I would recommend them as a
useful corrective even though you may not
agree with everything in them (just as I'm
not saying that I do). I remember that in
her novel _Atlas Shrugged_, one of the
good characters (maybe the heroine, but
I don't remember for sure) has an internal
monologue reading in part, "There is no
necessity for pain -- why, then, is the
worst pain reserved for those who will
not accept its necessity?" And in _The
Fountainhead_, which I read for the first
time recently, one character who could
have been a hero but messed up says
(approximate quote from memory):
"By what right can anyone tell you
that man should live for anything but
his own joy?"

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
Suggest you go to a Christian singles group, but don't get too carried
away or too agressive. =A0That's how (blush) I met my (second) wife.

I've got at least two, if not three strikes (OK, pardon
the baseballism) against me in such a milieu:
1) I'm not really a Christian any more.
2) I'm overweight, perhaps even clinically
obese, with a sizable paunch.
3) I'm old enough that some people in
restaurants have started giving me the
senior discount, even though I'm not
old enough to actually qualify for it yet;
I guess I just look like a soon-to-be corpse.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
I think you're being tested. =A0You're probably pretty tough, although
you may not think so. =A0Tough stuff requires tough testing.

Maybe I *used* to be tough, when I stood up
to what was then part of AT&T, prophesying
as I described, but that was probably the
courage of despair, not real heart and certainly
not real toughness (that's reserved for heroes
in Louis L'Amour's fiction, most of it set in
the American West of the 1800s -- my
reading is remarkably diverse).

Post by j***@go.com
And an old
high-school friend of mine, now a reasonably successful
pastor, has emailed me a couple of photos of his
fine-looking happy family. I warned him that he's in
the same situation as Job was before Satan got after
him -- with God's full approval, be it noted.

I'd lay off the moralising if I were you. =A0If he is going to be
subject to a "Job" experience that will be only if God decides to do
so, and not because you're feeling resentful. =A0This sort of pre-
emptive and unnecessary action may be a part of your difficulty, and
to that extent self-inflicted.

What action? All I did was warn him that
another person in a somewhat similar pleasant
situation (though Job was probably richer)
suddenly found himself in the deep stuff with
God's full knowledge and approval.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
Forgiveness from the point of view of the forgiver is an emotional
experience. =A0God may not need forgiveness in the sense that He is
supreme, but He can be very hurtful, and to be quite truthful,
unfair. =A0He's actually unfair to a lot of people in this life.
Therefore it pleases God, and makes Him feel like He's got a friend,
when one of His people is prepared to forgive His "unfairness".

Hmmm??? Let's see: God, who is supposed to be
perfectly just, isn't; He doesn't live up to His own
standards. An imperfect human being can be forgiven
for sins and failures, but to do so is often very
difficult, especially when the human being is
oneself. One who claims to be perfect, and Whom
all His propagandists claim to be perfect, cannot
be forgiven when He isn't. This is not being
legalistic; it's a visceral case of utter disillusionment
-- i.e., removal of an illusion, the illusion that God
is good and will be good to us. According to the
Trinitarian formulation (though I have to agree with
the people who think that a bit bizarre), He's got
friends within Himself anyway; He doesn't need us.

[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
2) He's in the position of power, the One Whom
Jesus described with relish as having the power
to cast body and soul into hell. If He wants to
be friends, He'd better act friendly, and He
doesn't. He needs to demonstrate love in a
way that an American (or an Australian) born
in the 20th century will recognize as love --
not by a means that only a 1st-century religious
fanatic (Saul of Tarsus/Paul) could call love only
by frantic theologizing (Romans 5:8 for instance).

Then look at Christ rather than Paul.

I did, in the first sentence of the above
paragraph, and He didn't look too good.
Remember that I've written before about
how Jesus healed one person at the pool
of Bethesda (John 5) AND LEFT THE
REST SICK!! That's unforgivable.

Post by Bob Crowley
=A0And as you read Paul, you find
that as his writings reflect increased experience as a Christian, he
seems to soften. =A0He was after all a Pharisee to begin with, and a
martyr to finish. =A0Even Paul would have taken time to mellow.

Evidently; look at the anathemas he
pronounced with such fervor in Galatians
1:8-9 on those who disagreed with him
-- anathemas which have, unfortunately,
been considered "the Word of God" ever
since. If Paul had truly been acting with
love, he would have prayed that those who
disagreed with him, preaching "another
gospel", would have a Damascus Road
experience like his and be saved -- not
that they be accursed.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
I don't think we know what it cost God to give up His Son. =A0What Paul
was saying was that if God was prepared to suffer such intense
emotional and spiritual pain as He experienced in letting Christ be
crucified, then He must be prepared to give us a place in heaven. =A0Or
He would not have demanded such a high price of Christ or Himself.

I have multiple difficulties with this paragraph:
1) How can one logically conceive of God suffering
any kind of pain? That would mean that something
had the power to cause God pain, and would thus
deny God's omnipotence.
2) If God could "feel our pain" (a la Bill
Clinton's infamous phrase), He wouldn't
let it go on so long. Of course that's not
strictly relevant to your paragraph. But I
can't conceive of God as feeling *any* pain
or, therefore, paying any price.
3) Supposing a life after this earthly
life exists, a) why should anyone assume
that a God who treats us so scurvily on
earth will be any nicer after we die --
i.e., why would anyone believe it will
actually be a *heaven*, b) therefore,
why would we want "a place in heaven"?

Post by Bob Crowley
On the other hand, it would be most unwise to reject Christ on the
same grounds. =A0Holding God in that contempt would then mean He would
hold us in equal contempt.

I still say God's actions show that He already
holds us in contempt. If you treated someone
you knew the way you say God has treated
you, especially for such a long period, you
would be considered to have acted with
contempt and therefore richly deserving of
contempt; so is He.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
You're still here, and you haven't given up, or you wouldn't be
arguing the case on this site. =A0Your faith is still there - what you
are really saying is that you've suffered, and continue to suffer,
immense discouragement and disillusionment.

In a sense my faith is still there; note my
implied call, earlier in this article, to a
Christianity purer than the Mammonolatry
that is often sold under the Christian brand.
But I don't really have any place else to
turn for support; it's a pity that the person
from whom I get the most support is not
conveniently located to meet [it's a long
drive, with poor roads, across the Pacific :-)].

Post by Bob Crowley
I'll say it again. =A0I think you're fairly tough, and you're being
harshly tested.

OK, I flunked. And if He wanted to
test *me*, He didn't have to let my
mother (remember, I mentioned she
died a couple of months ago) be
collateral damage. He wasn't
fair to her, except in that she
won't have to deal with some of
the problems of old age.

The only possible good coming out of
all this, including my inability to get
interested in anything (the "years...
when [I] say 'I have no pleasure in
them'" [Ecclesiastes 12:1] having
arrived awfully early), is that I begin
to ask what I really am at bottom,
what sort of life would spring from the
innermost parts of my being if it
could -- i.e., how to live a genuinely
authentic life, rather than working
hard to be authentic (i.e., faking
authenticity, another oxymoron).
God or gods as conceived by any
major religion can only interfere
with this process; even an old
pagan god I feel friendly toward
(Odin) probably won't be much help.

So in that aspect I may be making
a wee modicum of progress. But
I'm hardly tough -- or happy.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

Bob Crowley

2008-04-02 02:09:59 UTC

I typed out 3/4 of my reply, and then somehow lost it. So this time I
put it on Notepad first.

[Unfortunately Bob didn't separate the original from his
responses. I've added : to what I *think* is the posting
he was responding to. --clh]

8888888888888888888888

:This phrasing I used last time came from a song
:I remember from my ancient days in a Christian
:youth group. The song was entitled "The Moment
:of Truth", and, referring to God, it said (approx.
:quote from memory): "He'll help you get it all
:together when your life is falling all apart."
:He didn't do that; this has added to my
:disillusionment.

[job loss, etc. story here]

There have been times when I've been pretty disillusioned with God.
The most accurately prophetic person I've known was my first
Protestant pastor, although I'm Catholic now. He once said he thought
there'd come a time when I'd become "completely disillusioned" with
God. I suppose as yet unknown, although suspected, personal and
collective experiences will have something to do with that.

I won't say much about suspected individual experiences, but since God
has been sending Mary with dire warnings for about 150 years (I think
she's the woman of the sun in Chapter 12 of Revelation) and given Pope
Leo XIII had a dire vision around 1884 of the devil boasting he could
destroy the church given enough time, and being granted about a
century, and considering human history since that time (2 world wars,
concentration camps, holocaust, gulags, more Christian martyrs than
all the rest of history combined, the nuclear bomb, bioligical and
chemical warfare, the enormous number of abortions where we kill our
own unborn, the proliferationg drug trade, terrorism, global warming,
the exploitation of poor by rich), it seems the vision was real. You
can find references on the net.

And I think we're in for more.
,

Post by j***@go.com
God has given me no help and no direction and no
love....

:I'm well aware of the term and its origin in the
:writings of John of the Cross. (FYI, I've recently
:done something I should have known better than
:to do: read a book by a best-selling author, in
:this case the ex-Catholic monk Thomas Moore.
:The book in question: _Dark Nights of the Soul_;
:I can't say I got much out of it.) The obvious
:rejoinder is: If God wants us to do His will,
:He's defeating His own purpose if He doesn't
:tell us what it is.

[short snip]

I suppose I've got the advantages of some personal experiences which
means I can't deny God's existence or "interference" for that matter.
To give an example of somebody else's experience - I see a Catholic
psychiatrist a couple of times a year - the tail end of treatment for
depression. I saw him last Wednesday, and I mentioned a couple of
instances of voices telling me relevant things, he told me of his own
recent experience. He was sitting in his office, minding his own
business, when a voice suddenly said "Go to Maclean". Maclean is a
small town in Northern New South Wales in Australia. A couple of
months later he was running a 'family healing' session at Lismore not
far from Maclean. After the service an aborigional woman came up to
him, and said, "I don't want to sound silly, or interfere, but I seem
to be told you should go to Maclean."

Obviously he'd been primed by the voice. Now God doesn't work as we'd
expect. Out of a trillion galaxies, He zeroed down to this planet,
and out of 6 billion people, zeroed down to one psychiatrist, one of
His people, and gave him a three word message. He knew the man would
meet the aboriginal woman and that there was some need the
psychiatrist could fulfit. The psychiatrist ended up on an island in
the local river where Aboriginals used to be incarcerated in bygone
days.

God is still active and He still speaks.

:Ah-HAH! You've put the finger right on the disease
:of a good many upscale Christians who don't
:recognize that that phrase is arguably an
:oxymoron, who apparently believe that they
:CAN serve God and Mammon [heck, during
:the recent stretch with Republey icans controlling
:both Congress and the White House, that was
:enacted into U.S. law! 1/2 :-) ]. Curiously,
:God does nothing to disabuse them of this
:belief -- another reason to avoid the churches;
:seeing that "Judgment must begin at the house
:of God" (I Peter 4:17), that's the last place one
:wants to be if God ever starts judging, which tons
:of Christian preachers (especially broadcasters)
:make tons of hay out of claiming the imminence of.

[snip]

God won't disabuse them either. They'll go on believing it, despite
what Christ said about a rich man having great difficulty getting into
heaven. They believe not because God's told them to believe it, but
because they've told themselves what they want to believe. He might
get through to a handful, but most of them will go on and then wonder
why their riches are held against them at the judgement.

Post by Bob Crowley
when Paul was having his back slashed by the thirty nine
lashes, do you think he felt God's overwhelming assurance.

:I don't know about *God's* assurance. Remember, he was
:a fairly unreconstructed Pharisee, wh', in keeping with many
:religious extremists (perhaps, in an unusual way, including
:myself), swung from one extreme to the other; thus he may
:well have been assured of his *own* rightness, quite enough
:to carry him through.

I suspect Paul had an advantage in the business about the "third
heaven". While He didn't know if it was real or a vision (visions are
like that, besides being extremely rapid, in the sense they seem to
give a great deal of sensory input in a very short time), it obviously
stayed with him. Christ also had a similar advantage, when Moses and
Elijah (representing the law and the prophets) appeared at the
Transfiguration, despite being physically dead for centuries, and
there was the angel who "strengthened" him.

Post by Bob Crowley
=A0How about
Christ's desolation? =A0"My God, my God, why have you
abandoned me? Easter time, too.

:That ties up with my previous point about rewriting
:Romans 8:32, that if God didn't spare His own Son,
:He certainly won't spare us. Anyway, it wasn't
:"Easter" until after the Resurrection, if such an
:event occurred.

It occurred. Otherwise there'd be no church,and the history of the
Jews would be immensely different. Easter reminds us it occurred.

Post by Bob Crowley
I found life pretty easy until I was about fifteen, and then one night

:Why you didn't bail on God right there and then
:I don't know, just as I don't understand why
:Abraham didn't bail on God after God told him
:his descendants would be enslaved for 400
:years. Maybe I can understand Abraham ---
:after all, God still promised that he would
:*have* descendants, though He did torture
:Abraham by keeping him waiting way too
:long, hence Ishmael, whose descendants,
:as promised, have long clashed with the
:rest of the world -- but I can't understand you.
:
:If the writings of Ayn Rand are available in
:Australia, I would recommend them as a
:useful corrective even though you may not
:agree with everything in them (just as I'm
:not saying that I do). I remember that in
:her novel _Atlas Shrugged_, one of the
:good characters (maybe the heroine, but
:I don't remember for sure) has an internal
:monologue reading in part, "There is no
:necessity for pain -- why, then, is the
:worst pain reserved for those who will
:not accept its necessity?" And in _The
:Fountainhead_, which I read for the first
:time recently, one character who could
:have been a hero but messed up says
:(approximate quote from memory):
:"By what right can anyone tell you
:that man should live for anything but
:his own joy?"

[snip]

I did bail out on God for a while, but it didn't do me much good. I
read "Atlas Shrugged" years ago, and it is the only Ayn Rand book I've
read. I don't think much of her self centred philosophy. Christ told
us to be servants, and to be the greatest one had to be the least.

The business about whether we live for our own joy or not, will be
determined by the Judgement. Christ warned us what would happen if we
made a habit of ignoring the "least of his brothers", no matter how
much we relied on "Faith alone".

Post by Bob Crowley
Suggest you go to a Christian singles group, but don't get too carried

:I've got at least two, if not three strikes (OK, pardon
:the baseballism) against me in such a milieu:
:1) I'm not really a Christian any more.
:2) I'm overweight, perhaps even clinically
:obese, with a sizable paunch.
:3) I'm old enough that some people in
:restaurants have started giving me the
:senior discount, even though I'm not
:old enough to actually qualify for it yet;
:I guess I just look like a soon-to-be corpse.

You're the only one who can do anything about that, assuming there's
no medical cause, other than overeating and too little exercise. It
sounds like you need an exercise program, although if you're depressed
and negative you'll find it hard to get started.

Post by Bob Crowley
I think you're being tested. =A0You're probably pretty tough, although

:Maybe I *used* to be tough, when I stood up
:to what was then part of AT&T, prophesying
:as I described, but that was probably the
:courage of despair, not real heart and certainly
:not real toughness (that's reserved for heroes
:in Louis L'Amour's fiction, most of it set in
:the American West of the 1800s -- my
:reading is remarkably diverse).

Post by j***@go.com
I'd lay off the moralising if I were you. =A0If he is going to be

:What action? All I did was warn him that
:another person in a somewhat similar pleasant
:situation (though Job was probably richer)
:suddenly found himself in the deep stuff with
:God's full knowledge and approval.

[snip]

Getting back to my old pastor, only once did he ever preach a sermon
at a particular individual. Apparently some bloke really had been
causing a lot of trouble in one of his churches. So he preached a
sermon at him. Everybody else in the church knew it too.

At the end of the service, the very man came up to the pastor, slapped
him heartily on the back, shook his hand very warmly, and said in a
loud voice, "Good on you, Brother! That was JUST what THEY needed!"

The pastor wondered if the Lord was trying to tell him something. He
never again preached at anybody. That didn't mean the rest of us
always felt comfortable during his sermons.

Unless the Lord gives you a specific message for someone, it is most
unwise to "preach" or "prophesy" at them.

:Hmmm??? Let's see: God, who is supposed to be
:perfectly just, isn't; He doesn't live up to His own
:standards. An imperfect human being can be forgiven
:for sins and failures, but to do so is often very
:difficult, especially when the human being is
:oneself. One who claims to be perfect, and Whom
:all His propagandists claim to be perfect, cannot
:be forgiven when He isn't. This is not being
:legalistic; it's a visceral case of utter disillusionment
:-- i.e., removal of an illusion, the illusion that God
:is good and will be good to us. According to the
:Trinitarian formulation (though I have to agree with
:the people who think that a bit bizarre), He's got
:friends within Himself anyway; He doesn't need us.

[snip]

God is just in the sense that He judges truthfully. Injustice and
immorality between humans (which is what it usually boils down to) is
for God a tool. Even the devil's a tool.

I remember complaining to the old pastor "what the hell did God make
the devil for?" He thought about it for a minute, shrugged, and said
"Oh, he's got a job to do I suppose". And in the end, that's probably
what he's there for, a catalyst in human affairs, such that we are
forced to decide who we're going to serve - God or the devil.

Post by Bob Crowley
Then look at Christ rather than Paul.

:I did, in the first sentence of the above
:paragraph, and He didn't look too good.
:Remember that I've written before about
:how Jesus healed one person at the pool
:of Bethesda (John 5) AND LEFT THE
:REST SICK!! That's unforgivable.

When I read this episode I get the impression the bloke didn't want to
get healed. He could lie there for years on end, in pleasant
surroundings, do no work, take no responsibility, make no hard
decisions, and get everybody to feel sorry for him. Christ's later
warning to him that "Something worse might happen" carries with the
implication that finally something worse did happen to him. Nor are
we told if Christ healed other people there or not. For some reason
the Gospel writer wrote about this invalid who preferred to stay an
invalid.

Post by Bob Crowley
=A0And as you read Paul, you find

:Evidently; look at the anathemas he
:pronounced with such fervor in Galatians
:1:8-9 on those who disagreed with him
:-- anathemas which have, unfortunately,
:been considered "the Word of God" ever
:since. If Paul had truly been acting with
:love, he would have prayed that those who
:disagreed with him, preaching "another
:gospel", would have a Damascus Road
:experience like his and be saved -- not
:that they be accursed.

[snip]
No one said Paul was perfect, least of all Paul himself.

As for paradoxes in the Bible and human history, there are scores of
them. Ananias and Sapphira died after one lie at Peter's command -
Manasseh, possibly Israel's worst king ruled for 55 years. Dietrich
Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis at around 40 years of age -
Stalin died in his bed as an old man. They're all over the place. Why
were Cambodians subject to Pol Pot and not Americans? Why did the US
have a civil war, and Australia not?

:I have multiple difficulties with this paragraph:
:1) How can one logically conceive of God suffering
:any kind of pain? That would mean that something
:had the power to cause God pain, and would thus
:deny God's omnipotence.

For God to create anything, He has to at least have an intellectual
idea of it. He doesn't need food or water or air or sex or material
items, yet He created the lot based on His own imagination. That must
include pain. And what is "pain"? For us it's a message from the
brain, based on a minute electrical current, conveyed by certain nerve
cells. For spiritual beings, it must be something else again, since
they have no body. But it's real enough as we all know. It can be
used to warn that something is wrong and needs to be fixed.

It can also be used to punish. A sea of fire mixed with glass doesn't
sound promising from the anaesthetic point of view.

:2) If God could "feel our pain" (a la Bill e
:Clinton's infamous phrase), He wouldn't
:let it go on so long. Of course that's not
:strictly relevant to your paragraph. But I
:can't conceive of God as feeling *any* pain
:or, therefore, paying any price.

If we're made in His image, then He must have something that equates
to emotions. I know He can get angry - I've felt it on occasion. I
also know He has a sense of humour, from experience. Our sense of
humour is a shadow of His. He also feels pity - I know that from
experience. And He can have his feelings hurt.

:3) Supposing a life after this earthly
:life exists, a) why should anyone assume
:that a God who treats us so scurvily on
:earth will be any nicer after we die --
:i.e., why would anyone believe it will
:actually be a *heaven*, b) therefore,
:why would we want "a place in heaven"?

A lot of mistreatment is caused by humans when it is all said and
done. True there are natural disasters and disease, but with
cooperative effort we can do a lot to minimise the effects. But most
deliberate suffering - war, injustice, economic selfishness,
environmental stupidity, is caused by humans.

I think the harshness might also be God's warning to us that He IS
going to judge us. And the indications are that He's not very soft.

I suppose it boils down to faith. Meanwhile the devil will do all he
can to discourage our faith, usually by disconsolation.

Post by Bob Crowley
On the other hand, it would be most unwise to reject Christ on the

:I still say God's actions show that He already
:holds us in contempt. If you treated someone
:you knew the way you say God has treated
:you, especially for such a long period, you
:would be considered to have acted with
:contempt and therefore richly deserving of
:contempt; so is He.

[snip]

My human father treated me with contempt. The old pastor, while I
admired him, also discouraged me. In the end he apologised also. So
my natural father was cruel and contemptous; my spritual father was
discouraging. That is why I tend to be cynical about God's
"fatherhood". Incidentally the night my human father died, he turned
up in my room, and started with an apology (odd, since he died ten
kilometres away). Since it was nearly 30 years ago now, I don't
remember if he said "I've come to apologise ..." or "I've been sent to
apologise ..." I think it was the latter. At the very end he gave
this terrifying scream and promptly disappeared.

I think God may have sent him to apologise, after which he went to
Hell.

Post by Bob Crowley
You're still here, and you haven't given up, or you wouldn't be

:In a sense my faith is still there; note my
:implied call, earlier in this article, to a
:Christianity purer than the Mammonolatry
:that is often sold under the Christian brand.
:But I don't really have any place else to
:turn for support; it's a pity that the person
:from whom I get the most support is not
:conveniently located to meet [it's a long
:drive, with poor roads, across the Pacific :-)].

You're unlikely to change the Mammonolatry. What you can do however
is live your own Christian life. And two blokes recently rowed across
the Tasman Sea. You never know.

Post by Bob Crowley
I'll say it again. =A0I think you're fairly tough, and you're being
harshly tested.

:OK, I flunked. And if He wanted to
:test *me*,

Peter flunked.
Thomas flunked.
The disciples flunked.
John Newton (Amazing Grace) flunked.
The Borgia Popes flunked (really flunked).

:He didn't have to let my
:mother (remember, I mentioned she
:died a couple of months ago) be
:collateral damage. He wasn't
:fair to her, except in that she
:won't have to deal with some of
:the problems of old age.

Christ's step father died when Christ was young (although I believe
Joseph was probably a cruel stepfather).
My family are all dead. My sister died nearly 3 years ago from
leukaemia leaving 2 teens and a young son behind, although they had
the benefit of an outstanding husband and father who remained.

This life is often unfair. The Bible never said it would be fair,
unless one takes a few somewhat wishful OT proverbs as ultimate
guides. The Jews weren't treated fairly, despite being "God's
people".

:The only possible good coming out of
:all this, including my inability to get
:interested in anything (the "years...
:when [I] say 'I have no pleasure in
:them'" [Ecclesiastes 12:1] having
:arrived awfully early), is that I begin
:to ask what I really am at bottom,
:what sort of life would spring from the
:innermost parts of my being if it
:could -- i.e., how to live a genuinely
:authentic life, rather than working
:hard to be authentic (i.e., faking
:authenticity, another oxymoron).
:God or gods as conceived by any
:major religion can only interfere
:with this process; even an old
:pagan god I feel friendly toward
:(Odin) probably won't be much help.
:
:o in that aspect I may be making
:a wee modicum of progress. But
:I'm hardly tough -- or happy.

Maybe God's forcing you to an arid dryness that will burn everything
else away so that in the end all that's left is Him.

Hebrews 12:25-29 "See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking:
for if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them
on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns
them from heaven! At that time his voice shook the earth; but now he
has promised, "Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also
the heaven. This phrase, "Yet once more," indicates the removal of
what is shaken - that is, created things - so that what cannot be
shaken will remain...."

************************************

This 'shaking' isn't very pleasant. In the end all that is left is
the solid core. Everything else is stripped away.

j***@go.com

2008-04-07 02:27:26 UTC

I'm probably (I hope!) going to trim out
most of Bob Crowley's patient reply.
However, I assure you, Bob, I did
read it all. Coming back and rereading
this, I found that I still went on at some
length. Oh well.

On Apr 1, 7:09=A0pm, Bob Crowley <***@acenet.net.au> wrote:
[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
I won't say much about suspected individual experiences, but since God
has been sending Mary with dire warnings for about 150 years (I think
she's the woman of the sun in Chapter 12 of Revelation) and given Pope
Leo XIII had a dire vision around 1884 of the devil boasting he could
destroy the church given enough time.... [snip]

Re this last: See if you can find a copy of the 1983
book _The Gravedigger File_, by Os Guinness. It's
in the same genre as _The Screwtape Letters_,
memos from the Other Side, except that it has
to do with the subversion of the whole Church
rather than an individual. The key sentence in
the book (which Guinness italicized in its
entirety) is: "Christianity created the modern
world; the modern world, in turn, has undermined
Christianity; Christianity has become its own
gravedigger."

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
God is still active and He still speaks.

And He picks and chooses. Rather hard luck
on those of us to whom He doesn't choose to
speak, though; and He doesn't seem to care.

[sizable snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
God is just in the sense that He judges truthfully.

Except Himself.

Post by Bob Crowley
I remember complaining to the old pastor "what the hell did God make
the devil for?" =A0He thought about it for a minute, shrugged, and said
"Oh, he's got a job to do I suppose". =A0And in the end, that's probably
what he's there for, a catalyst in human affairs, such that we are
forced to decide who we're going to serve - God or the devil.

Post by Bob Crowley
:Remember that I've written before about
:how Jesus healed one person at the pool
:of Bethesda (John 5) AND LEFT THE
:REST SICK!! =A0That's unforgivable.
When I read this episode I get the impression the bloke didn't want to
get healed.

My point was not about the bloke whom
Jesus actually healed; it was about all
the other blokes (and perhaps the female
equivalent thereof, but I don't know the
Aussie slang) who were right there,
some of them probably begging for
healing, and none of them receiving it.
(If Jesus had healed more, surely the
author, who admits in John 20:31 that
the book is a propaganda piece, would
have said so; he wanted to present
Jesus in the best possible light.)
I can imagine a rain of (well-justified)
curses descending upon Jesus's
disappearing back after that episode.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
No one said Paul was perfect, least of all Paul himself.

Post by Bob Crowley
:1) =A0How can one logically conceive of God suffering
:any kind of pain? =A0That would mean that something
:had the power to cause God pain, and would thus
:deny God's omnipotence.
For God to create anything, He has to at least have an intellectual
idea of it.

But the idea that He can be subjected to
whatever He would perceive as pain by
the actions of others, as I said, denies
God's omnipotence.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
:2) If God could "feel our pain" (a la Bill e
:Clinton's infamous phrase), He wouldn't
:let it go on so long. =A0Of course that's not
:strictly relevant to your paragraph. =A0But I
:can't conceive of God as feeling *any* pain
:or, therefore, paying any price.
If we're made in His image, then He must have something that equates
to emotions. =A0I know He can get angry - I've felt it on occasion. =A0I
also know He has a sense of humour, from experience. =A0Our sense of
humour is a shadow of His. =A0He also feels pity - I know that from
experience. =A0And He can have his feelings hurt.

Post by Bob Crowley
:3) Supposing a life after this earthly
:life exists, a) why should anyone assume
:that a God who treats us so scurvily on
:earth will be any nicer after we die --
:i.e., why would anyone believe it will
:actually be a *heaven*, b) therefore,
:why would we want "a place in heaven"?
A lot of mistreatment is caused by humans when it is all said and
done.

-- with God's approval; even many of the
sufferings of Job were caused by humans.

Post by Bob Crowley
True there are natural disasters and disease, but with
cooperative effort we can do a lot to minimise the effects.

Yeah, but ain't it funny that the phrase
"act of God" *always* means a disaster,
not something nice?

Post by Bob Crowley
I think the harshness might also be God's warning to us that He IS
going to judge us. =A0And the indications are that He's not very soft.

A hanging judge, eh? He's been through
the mill Himself (according to standard
Christian doctrine), knows what it's like, and
still won't cut us some slack? Many humans
would be more just than that.

Post by Bob Crowley
I suppose it boils down to faith. =A0Meanwhile the devil will do all he
can to discourage our faith, usually by disconsolation.

To my mind, *God* did all he could to
discourage my faith. Maybe my faith
was of a childish variety, but when God
for years doesn't answer prayers, it's
clear that He doesn't care.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
My human father treated me with contempt.

Post by Bob Crowley
:In a sense my faith is still there; note my
:implied call, earlier in this article, to a
:Christianity purer than the Mammonolatry
:that is often sold under the Christian brand.
:But I don't really have any place else to
:turn for support; it's a pity that the person
:from whom I get the most support is not
:conveniently located to meet [it's a long
:drive, with poor roads, across the Pacific :-)].
You're unlikely to change the Mammonolatry. =A0What you can do however
is live your own Christian life. =A0And two blokes recently rowed across
the Tasman Sea. =A0You never know.

Actually 1) I was a bit unjust to my cousins
and other friends, from whom I've received
some support mostly by email (though my
nearest cousin is 400 miles away); 2) I'm
more likely to live a Nietzschean life than
a Christian one at this point (Nietzsche
ends his book _The Anti-Christ_ by saying
that Christianity is the worst thing ever
to happen to the world). Blake's "The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell" alluded to
above actually anticipated Nietzsche to
some degree, though I don't know if
Nietzsche read it; both of them (Blake
especially) seem to be much more in
tune with the way things actually work.

[snip a bit]

Post by Bob Crowley
Peter flunked.
Thomas flunked.
The disciples flunked.
John Newton (Amazing Grace) flunked.
The Borgia Popes flunked (really flunked).

But from my point of view, God flunked.

Post by Bob Crowley
My family are all dead. =A0My sister died nearly 3 years ago from
leukaemia leaving 2 teens and a young son behind, although they had
the benefit of an outstanding husband and father who remained.

Post by Bob Crowley
This life is often unfair. =A0The Bible never said it would be fair,
unless one takes a few somewhat wishful OT proverbs as ultimate
guides. =A0The Jews weren't treated fairly, despite being "God's
people".

Post by Bob Crowley
Maybe God's forcing you to an arid dryness that will burn everything
else away so that in the end all that's left is Him.

Post by Bob Crowley
This 'shaking' isn't very pleasant. =A0In the end all that is left is
the solid core. =A0Everything else is stripped away.

Bob Crowley

2008-04-08 02:38:15 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
I found that I still went on at some

length. Oh well.

Long posts attract long answers.

On Apr 1, 7:09=A0pm, Bob Crowley <***@acenet.net.au> wrote:
[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
Re this last: See if you can find a copy of the 1983

book _The Gravedigger File_, by Os Guinness. It's
in the same genre as _The Screwtape Letters_,
memos from the Other Side, except that it has
to do with the subversion of the whole Church
rather than an individual. The key sentence in
the book (which Guinness italicized in its
entirety) is: "Christianity created the modern
world; the modern world, in turn, has undermined
Christianity; Christianity has become its own
gravedigger."

Any status quo is sooner or later challenged. You're probably aware
of Malcolm Muggeridge's cynical prediction of Western man becoming a
brontosaurus, and destroying himself. It's not Christianity that
will be destroyed in the end, but the West. The Church will undergo
testing, and Pope John Paul II commented that one of the unalterable
facts of Christian doctrine is that the church must undergo a final,
horrific test. But it will survive.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
God is still active and He still speaks.

And He picks and chooses. Rather hard luck
on those of us to whom He doesn't choose to
speak, though; and He doesn't seem to care.

[sizable snip]

I claim to have had the experience of my father turning up in my room
the night he died in some form. He started by apologising, and ended
with a terryfying scream before disappearing. During the event, which
probably lasted no more than a couple of minutes in real time (if it
was in real time), he made one comment which I still find hard to
accept.

At one stage he looked a bit alarmed, and said "I always was doomed!
I didn't really have any choice!" I argued back saying that couldn't
be right (just). He replied, "Oh, it's right, all right. YOu can see
that from here."

Later in the exchange he said "I was WILLING" (to do the things he
did). So on the one hand there appears to be an element of
predestination (which I don't like), but on the other he admitted he
was very willing to do what he did. Judas appears to be predestined
eg. ".. the one who must be lost ...", "Go, do what you must do". On
the other hand he was willing to do what he did.

It's no good asking me - I don't know, or necessarily like, the answer
either. In one sense if God is omnipotent, He can only give us free
choice by abdication in certain areas.

Post by Bob Crowley
God is just in the sense that He judges truthfully.

Except Himself.

I think He does scrutinise Himself. Remember Paul's words that the
Holy Spirit searches out the deep things of God.

The problem we face is what is the meaning of "love" when applied to
an omnipotent being? What does "love" mean?

Try reading "The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell", by William Blake. As Blake
obliquely alludes to in that work, Satan,
not God, Messiah, or Adam. is arguably
the real hero of Milton's "Paradise Lost".
The others are all rather lame characters;
God and Messiah win because they're
supposed to, not because of their qualities
of character,

That's not an uncommon thesis. I've often read actors state they like
playing bad guys. One reason is that they seem "more interesting".
The other is that we humans find it easier to indentify with evil than
good. How often do missionaries get time in the news? But tyrants
get air time every night of the week.

My point was not about the bloke whom
Jesus actually healed; it was about all
the other blokes (and perhaps the female
equivalent thereof, but I don't know the
Aussie slang)

... sheila ... (although that's a bit dated these days)

who were right there,
some of them probably begging for
healing, and none of them receiving it.
(If Jesus had healed more, surely the
author, who admits in John 20:31 that
the book is a propaganda piece, would
have said so; he wanted to present
Jesus in the best possible light.)
I can imagine a rain of (well-justified)
curses descending upon Jesus's
disappearing back after that episode.

We don't know. JOhn engaged in a bit of hyperbole about the sheer
number of Jesus' miracles saying all the books of the world couldn't
hold them. The Gospels aren't complete. We're told Christ spoke with
the two disciples on the road after his resurrection, yet we're hardly
given a word of dialogue despite the fact he was supposed to have
expounded the Scriptures to them for the rest of the trip. Not
everything was in fact reported - a lot is missing, in reality.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
No one said Paul was perfect, least of all Paul himself.

Even near the end of his life, Paul was
anything but forgiving. Look at II Timothy
4:14, where Paul obviously would like God
to zap Alexander the coppersmith. That
is not even up to the standards of Stephen,
let alone Jesus, at their deaths.

[snip]

Paul displayed human fallibility on a number of occasions. He wasn't
Christ, nor was he meant to be. EVery Christian displays
fallibility.

But the idea that He can be subjected to
whatever He would perceive as pain by
the actions of others, as I said, denies
God's omnipotence.

[snip]

Part of HIs omnipotence is that He can choose to be hurt, just as He
has chosen to abdicate somewhat in order to allow us free will. He
could, to quote CS Lewis, carry out the whole human plan in the blink
of an eyelid, but he lets us do slowly and blunderingly what He could
do perfectly and in an instant.

That last sounds like an out-and-out
impossibility. It's no skin off His
(metaphorical) nose if someone does
something which, if done to a human,
would hurt that human's feelings.
To me, God must necessarily be
incapable of suffering, "impassible"
to use a fancy word, or else He's
not God.

I think God is capable of suffering through His creatures. Christ
told us that when we mistreat the least of His brothers, we mistreat
Him. I think it's more than merely symbolic - I think He's in them,
and so as we mistreat them, we mistreat Him.

He's in them by His own choice.

-- with God's approval; even many of the
sufferings of Job were caused by humans.

I've been reading a book "Weeds among the wheat". In a sense the
weeds are necessary for Christian purification. However the weeds, at
least human weeds, have willpower. The raiders did what they did by
their own will. Hitler did what he did by his own will, and the
supportive will of others. He could not have possibly have done it
alone. Our wills come into it.

Post by Bob Crowley
True there are natural disasters and disease, but with
cooperative effort we can do a lot to minimise the effects.

Yeah, but ain't it funny that the phrase
"act of God" *always* means a disaster,
not something nice?

That's because we only think of it in insurance terms. A nice day is
an "act of God". A butterfly is an act of God. The pleasure of
sexual intercourse is an "act of God" (since He designed it). The
taste of a good meal is an "act of God" since He ultimately designed
both the raw materials of the meal, the aromatic chemicals and our
sense of taste. An outstanding day of surfing waves is an "act of
God".

Post by Bob Crowley
I think the harshness might also be God's warning to us that He IS
going to judge us. =A0And the indications are that He's not very soft.

A hanging judge, eh? He's been through
the mill Himself (according to standard
Christian doctrine), knows what it's like, and
still won't cut us some slack? Many humans
would be more just than that.

I'm Catholic, and I believe in PUrgatory. If someone's in Purgatory
they'll get into heaven eventually ("There you will stay " I tell you,
"until you have paid every last penny of your fine" - "He who did not
know what was requiredk, and did not do it, will be punished with a
light whipping".) Heaven is literal perfection. This means that
nothing that is imperfect will get in. On the other hand I believe
God has made provision for refinement, even after death, for many.
But it's a lot easier to start now.

Post by Bob Crowley
I suppose it boils down to faith. =A0Meanwhile the devil will do all he
can to discourage our faith, usually by disconsolation.

To my mind, *God* did all he could to
discourage my faith. Maybe my faith
was of a childish variety, but when God
for years doesn't answer prayers, it's
clear that He doesn't care.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
My human father treated me with contempt.

Mine with, pretty much, abandonment. My
parents divorced when I was 8, and my father
often defaulted on his child support payments
(hate to say this about the dead, but he was,
for a time, a deadbeat dad before it became
fashionable); for a while my mother and I
did not even know where he was. I became
a Christian because I expected (based on
the propaganda I had heard) to get the love
I did not get from my parents (my mother
was not the warmest person either, and
with the pressures of earning her own
living and raising a kid, she was under
a good bit of stress). But alas, the
Heavenly Father turned out to be just
as distant as my earthly father.

[snip]

I can understand your feelings. But remember Christ's words "If
anyone causes one of these little ones who believes in me to lose
faith, it would be better if he were etc."

This problem of "fatherhood" exists when natural fathers don't do what
they should do. I had a "vision" once where somebody seemed to say to
me that in regards to these men who father children and then abandon
them, "I really punish them!"

However that doesn't get you past this sense of abandonment yourself.
In all truth I don't relate to God as Father. I go through the
motions, but it doesn't really gel. I know He's there - I've had far
too many experiences for that. But "Father?" - No, not at this stage,
anyway. And any priest who tells me that God's fatherhood is an
important part of His relationship with us has missed the point.

Post by Bob Crowley
Peter flunked.
Thomas flunked.
The disciples flunked.
John Newton (Amazing Grace) flunked.
The Borgia Popes flunked (really flunked).

But from my point of view, God flunked.

I don't know if He has. I think that when God does break through on
you, you might have a very deep faith, having been through so much
frustation. Moses probably thought God had flunked. The people were
still in slavery, and he himself, having murdered an Egyptian slave
driver in an effort to help his own people, found himself all washed
up on the backside of the desert watching a bunch of sheep for forty
years. But one day there was this burning bush ...

God works in strange ways. I get this sense He's got a particular
role for you, but I don't know what it is.

My condolences. My father too died of leukemia.
Any sister I might have had disappeared when my
mother had a miscarriage about a year before I
was born, much too early in the pregnancy to
determine the sex of the lost embryo in those
pre-DNA test days. Some would say that my
subsequent birth was a miscarriage of justice :-).

There was a stillborn between my sister and I. She was six years
younger than me. Again we don't know the sex, but had the child been
born it probably would have suffered the same sort of stuff we did.

So if everybody, including "God's people",
gets the shaft, one might well apply Occam's
Razor and eliminate the idea of God as an
unnecessary hypothesis. That might actually
be less unhappy for us than the idea of a God
Who watches us suffer and just blithely lets it
happen without lifting a (metaphorical) finger,
quite contrary to many Old Testament (not only
Proverbs, but Psalms and various prophets)
depictions of Him.

Whether we like it or not, suffering is part of Christian faith. "Let
him pick up his cross and follow me".

That's why there's so much emphasis on the next world, or "not of this
world". God doesn't want His people to feel at home in this world.
One of the things I've found most frustrating in my life has been what
might be called lack of career development or intellectual
development. I used to do pretty well at school, and other people
think I've flunked. I think God's responsible to some extent. My old
pastor commented "All He's done is humiliate you! What have you done
to deserve all this?" My CAtholic psychiatrist said "You've been
nobbled. He wants you to write. otherwise you'd be doing all these
other things". (I've been resisting the writing, incidentally).

During the exchange with my father the night he died, I raised this
frustration of career blues, which my father also had a hand in
causing. At one stage he used to ridicule me for having a job in the
public service. He ridiculed me for just about everything if it comes
to that. But during the exchange the night he died, at one stage he
said "it's (career development) not even important!" (Another one of
those things he could see 'from there', I suppose). When I challenged
that statement, and said "Then what is", his reply was "How you treat
other people".

I may as well ask you here, "How well do you treat other people?".

Post by Bob Crowley
Maybe God's forcing you to an arid dryness that will burn everything
else away so that in the end all that's left is Him.

This would indeed accord with Malachi 3:2, that
refers to God as "a refiner's fire", which Handel
wisely set in a minor key in _Messiah_, as well
as that "shaking" passage from Hebrews (with
its reference to, I believe, Haggai 2:6 -- it is
not an exact quote) which you quoted.

Well, either God is a consuming fire or He isn't. If He isn't we can
probably disregard Him. But if He isn't, then why are you having so
much difficulty and frustration?

Post by Bob Crowley
This 'shaking' isn't very pleasant. =A0In the end all that is left is
the solid core. =A0Everything else is stripped away.

But all this begs the question: Why should
we care? Why should we have any interest
in existence, let alone what is euphemistically
called "growth", in the first place? Why should
we want the result that this is supposed to be
leading toward? Why did God create at all,
and then use the most cruel and inefficient
means possible to, if standard doctrine be
true, make us like His Son? Our existence
is no good to Him (He needs nothing!) and
no good to us, so what's the point of being
here at all, let alone of suffering?

He had a plan to bring people to "GLORY", which means not just a
place, but a state. However to reach that state, they have to want to
be involved. What is "GLORY"? There's a film by the name, about a
negro battalion or company in the US Civil War. Towards the end the
commanding white officer is riding his horse on the beach, when he
knows there's a good chance he'll be killed in attacking a confederate
fort.

The camera pans in on the ocean. The sun is coming up, and it's
brilliant rays are turning the ocean gold. Seabirds are wheeling and
crying over the waves, oblivious of the human drama being played out
on the shore. The waves themselves continue to roll in. But the
glory of the sun is lighting the whole scene.

If Christianity is correct, God is trying to make little suns, small
replicas of Himself. What is that going to take? How do you change a
flimsy creature of mortal flesh and blood, possibly riding a horse, or
trudging wearily on the sand, into something that is eternal and
shines like a star?

j***@go.com

2008-04-10 03:58:14 UTC

And now, in the center ring, Jeff Sargent
will attempt to not ramble forever in
response to Bob Crowley, seeing as
how Bob, Jeff, and the moderator are
probably the only 3 people in the world
reading all this. Curious that the
original poster has not responded
to any of the followups to his posting.

I'll start with more on Ayn Rand and related topics
that I didn't think of earlier. Bob didn't like Rand's
emphasis on the self; but if one doesn't take care
of the self, one can't do much for others. Ayn
Rand and Erich Fromm use the word "selfishness"
somewhat differently, Fromm in more nearly its
conventional sense; Fromm wrote in _Man For
Himself_ that "Selfishness and self-love, far from
being identical, are really opposites." Fromm
points out that one *cannot* love others unless
one has a healthy love for oneself. I would point
out also that if one is piloting a pressurized
aircraft at high altitude and it suddenly loses
cabin pressure, one *must* take care of oneself
first, get oneself on oxygen, before one can do
anything to help the passengers; similarly if an
adult passenger is traveling with a small child in
that situation, parental instinct must be resisted --
the adult must get on oxygen first in order to be
conscious long enough to get the child on oxygen.
Similarly, in life in general, one has to take care
of oneself before one can love others.

In one flashback in _Atlas Shrugged_, one
character (Francisco d'Anconia) warns his
girlfriend in every sense (Dagny Taggart) that
he will be doing some things she will neither
like nor understand, and that she will not want
to see him in the future. He tells her (this is
from memory), "I will have a reason for what
I will do. But I can't tell you the reason and
you will be right to damn me." He also says
(and this seems to me the most important):
"I am not committing the contemptible act
of asking you to take me on faith. You will
have to use your own judgment."

Francisco treated Dagny better than God
treats us. He doesn't give us the right to
damn him, and He does commit the
contemptible act of asking us to take Him
on faith and not use our judgment!

On Apr 7, 7:38 pm, Bob Crowley <***@acenet.net.au> wrote:
[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
The Church will undergo
testing, and Pope John Paul II commented that one of the unalterable
facts of Christian doctrine is that the church must undergo a final,
horrific test. But it will survive.

The question is, is that a Good Thing?

I have to agree that your experience with your
father suggests predestination, much like that
horrid passage in Romans 9 where God is said
to have made Pharaoh resist him. Not a pretty
picture, not a decent God.

Re Judas, about whom it was said he'd be
better off if he hadn't been born, I've often
thought that's true of every one of us.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
I've often read actors state they like
playing bad guys. One reason is that they seem "more interesting".
The other is that we humans find it easier to indentify with evil than
good.

This is probably also why C.S. Lewis, in the final
volume of his space trilogy (_That Hideous Strength_),
fell into the trap of making his villains more
interesting than his good guys (except Merlin
and *maybe* Ransom). Not more likable or
admirable, but more interesting.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
Part of HIs omnipotence is that He can choose to be hurt, just as He
has chosen to abdicate somewhat in order to allow us free will. He
could, to quote CS Lewis, carry out the whole human plan in the blink
of an eyelid, but he lets us do slowly and blunderingly what He could
do perfectly and in an instant.

Well, that sounds bizarre, insane, and idiotic. If that's
a defense of God, I'd hate to see an attack.

[fair-sized snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
I'm Catholic, and I believe in PUrgatory. If someone's in Purgatory
they'll get into heaven eventually ("There you will stay " I tell you,
"until you have paid every last penny of your fine" - "He who did not
know what was requiredk, and did not do it, will be punished with a
light whipping".) Heaven is literal perfection. This means that
nothing that is imperfect will get in. On the other hand I believe
God has made provision for refinement, even after death, for many.
But it's a lot easier to start now.

One would be a lot less uptight if one followed the
philosophy expressed by the title character in
_Zorba the Greek_, by Nikos Kazantzakis. Zorba
remarks that his picture of the way God treats
someone after death is like this (again, this is from
memory; it's been years since I read it): The dead
person, completely naked (without even a body),
approaches God fearfully. God puts on a mean,
tough face, though actually snickering up his sleeve.
Then, after psyching the person out enough, God
pulls out a big sponge, wipes the person clean, and
with a big, jolly laugh, welcomes him into heaven.

[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
To my mind, *God* did all he could to
discourage my faith. Maybe my faith
was of a childish variety, but when God
for years doesn't answer prayers, it's
clear that He doesn't care.

I can understand your feelings. But remember Christ's words "If
anyone causes one of these little ones who believes in me to lose
faith, it would be better if he were etc."

So God should jump in the sea with a
millstone around His neck.

Post by j***@go.com
But from my point of view, God flunked.

I don't know if He has. I think that when God does break through on
you, you might have a very deep faith, having been through so much
frustation. Moses probably thought God had flunked. The people were
still in slavery, and he himself, having murdered an Egyptian slave
driver in an effort to help his own people, found himself all washed
up on the backside of the desert watching a bunch of sheep for forty
years. But one day there was this burning bush ...
God works in strange ways. I get this sense He's got a particular
role for you, but I don't know what it is.

You may be right. 25 years ago a friend of mine called
me a prophet, after hearing the one and only sermon
I've ever preached. Like a fool, I lived that out on my job.
I don't know if that's still my calling or if, like Daniel
(12:9 and 13), I'm let off the hook. (It's interesting to note
how two Old Testament heroes, Joseph and Daniel, both
were successful in *this* world as capable government
officials.)

[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
So if everybody, including "God's people",
gets the shaft, one might well apply Occam's
Razor and eliminate the idea of God as an
unnecessary hypothesis. That might actually
be less unhappy for us than the idea of a God
Who watches us suffer and just blithely lets it
happen without lifting a (metaphorical) finger,
quite contrary to many Old Testament (not only
Proverbs, but Psalms and various prophets)
depictions of Him.

Whether we like it or not, suffering is part of Christian faith. "Let
him pick up his cross and follow me".

Then it sounds as if we can toss all those
Old Testament verses into the ashcan.

Post by Bob Crowley
That's why there's so much emphasis on the next world, or "not of this
world". God doesn't want His people to feel at home in this world.

But the result of His actions, at least in my case
and apparently in yours, is that we don't feel at
home with Him, and thus won't feel at home in
the next world. We're screwed no matter what.

Post by Bob Crowley
One of the things I've found most frustrating in my life has been what
might be called lack of career development or intellectual
development. I used to do pretty well at school, and other people
think I've flunked.

I know that feeling exactly. I'm fond of joking that
"I used to be intelligent". Most Americans graduate
from high school around age 18; I was not quite 16.
Most who go on to college receive their Bachelor's
degrees in their early 20's; I was 19.5 and still got it
_summa cum laude_. But I haven't done anything
special since.

Post by Bob Crowley
I think God's responsible to some extent. My old
pastor commented "All He's done is humiliate you! What have you done
to deserve all this?"

Again, we both think the same about our
respective lives in this regard.

Post by Bob Crowley
My CAtholic psychiatrist said "You've been
nobbled. He wants you to write. otherwise you'd be doing all these
other things". (I've been resisting the writing, incidentally).

I don't know what "nobbled" means, but I note
that at least when I'm around, you do a fair
amount of writing. Perhaps I'm the same;
one cousin of mine called me a writer --
with some accuracy; the last two people
of my mother's generation (my mother and
her sister) died 23 days apart (my mother
dying second); I wrote long, heart-wrenching
emails to my cousins on that side, that
seeming the easiest and most natural way
to cope with my grief; the sister's son (my
cousin) did not, apparently finding other
coping mechanisms.

But anyway, apparently I am to you like
iron sharpening iron (Proverbs 27:17).

[small snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
But during the exchange the night he [Bob's father] died, at one stage he
said "it's (career development) not even important!" (Another one of
those things he could see 'from there', I suppose). When I challenged
that statement, and said "Then what is", his reply was "How you treat
other people".
I may as well ask you here, "How well do you treat other people?"

Well, I'd treat them a lot better if I were treated
better by God. "We love, because He first loved
us" (I John 4:19); if He hasn't loved me, there's
not a lot I can do. If I had a decent income, I
think I would donate some to outfits such as
food banks.

A bit over a week ago I attended the service
at which an old friend of mine, once my
youth pastor, retired as senior pastor of
a Baptist church. I told him that I didn't
understand how a grown-up could believe
anything as simplistic as his version of
Christianity; but I also told him that
despite our disagreement, I still consider
him a friend (and he said likewise).

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
He had a plan to bring people to "GLORY", which means not just a
place, but a state. However to reach that state, they have to want to
be involved.... [snip]
If Christianity is correct, God is trying to make little suns, small
replicas of Himself. What is that going to take? How do you change a
flimsy creature of mortal flesh and blood, possibly riding a horse, or
trudging wearily on the sand, into something that is eternal and
shines like a star?

I always have to ask: From God's point of view,
what's the percentage? How is this a gain for
HIm? How is it possible to conceive of *anything*
being a gain for a perfect God who needs nothing?

And again, this is a godawful inefficient and
cruel way for God to accomplish His goal.
If He wanted "little suns, small replicas of
Himself", He could have made them straight
out rather than futzing around with (and
torturing) mortal flesh and blood.

And from our point of view, what's the
percentage? If we'd never existed, we'd
never know or care that we hadn't. And
to become a replica of a God who cannot
but arouse ambivalent feelings at best
is not all a good thing. I cannot help
but feel that Malachi was too hard on
God's critics (Malachi 3:13-15, NIV):

"You have said harsh things against me,"
says the Lord.

"Yet you ask, 'What have we said against you?'

"You have said, 'It is futile to serve God. What
did we gain by carrying out his requirements
and going about like mourners before the Lord
Almighty? But now we call the arrogant blessed.
Certainly the evildoers prosper, and even those
who challenge God escape.' "

[end quote]

You have to admit that those critics
had a point; they described the way
things work exactly.

You can collect all your responses to me,
edit them appropriately, and publish them
in a nice book called _Replies to a Skeptic_
or something like that. See what a favor
I'm doing you? [1/2 :-) ]

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

Matthew Johnson

2008-04-11 02:20:27 UTC

Nearly correct;) I usually give up after the first couple of
paragraphs, but since this time, you mentioned Rand and Fromm on
'selfishness', I felt it was appropriate to explain my sigfile, and
how that quote corrects and refutes _both_ Rand and Fromm.

Curious that the original poster has not responded to any of the
followups to his posting.

Well, I can't say I find it very curious.

I'll start with more on Ayn Rand and related topics that I didn't
think of earlier. Bob didn't like Rand's emphasis on the self;

I don't blame him. Rand's 'philosophy' is a pretty disappointing
counterfeit of _real_ philosophy. Her emphasis on self was one of her
bigger mistakes, but far from the only one.

but if one doesn't take care of the self, one can't do much for
others.

So one might think. But this is what Augustine so brilliantly
corrected in Sermon's 96 & 330, so that I extracted his key phrase for
my sigfile.

Ayn Rand and Erich Fromm use the word "selfishness" somewhat
in _Man For Himself_ that "Selfishness and self-love, far from being
identical, are really opposites."

That sounds paradoxical, doesn't it? At least Fromm got that much
right. What a pity he couldn't get the rest right!

Fromm points out that one *cannot* love others unless one has a
healthy love for oneself.

Now if only he know what 'healthy' has to mean here! For Fromm
completely missed the point Augustine made so brilliantly, that even
what 'healthy' must mean here is already paradoxical: the man who
wants to capture the truly good self-love, must hate and withdraw from
the evil self-love, even to the point of stealthily stealing himself
away from himself, to give himself to God. Then he relies not on
himself to take care of himself, but he relies on God.

That is what he so brilliantly and pithily expressed in that short,
untranslatable gnomic wisdom: subducat se sibi, ut haereat Deo;
quidquid boni habet, tribuat illi [Deo] a quo factum est. (It is from
a sermon on the Martyrs, and on Mat 16:21-27, verses conveniently
"under-interpreted" by so many Protestants, especially among the
Baptists and Calvinists.

I would point out also that if one is piloting a pressurized aircraft
at high altitude and it suddenly loses cabin pressure, one *must*
take care of oneself first, get oneself on oxygen, before one can do
anything to help the passengers; similarly if an adult passenger is
traveling with a small child in that situation, parental instinct
must be resisted -- the adult must get on oxygen first in order to be
conscious long enough to get the child on oxygen. Similarly, in life
in general, one has to take care of oneself before one can love
others.

Yet as you point out, parental instinct suggests the opposite. Are you
going to claim that parental instinct is _always _ wrong in this
regard? Or only in exceptional cases, such as the cabin pressure loss
case?

In one flashback in _Atlas Shrugged_, one character (Francisco
d'Anconia) warns his girlfriend in every sense (Dagny Taggart) that
he will be doing some things she will neither like nor understand,
and that she will not want to see him in the future. He tells her
(this is from memory), "I will have a reason for what I will do. But
I can't tell you the reason and you will be right to damn me." He
also says (and this seems to me the most important): "I am not
committing the contemptible act of asking you to take me on faith.
You will have to use your own judgment."
Francisco treated Dagny better than God
treats us.

That is a matter of opinion, isn't it? My opinion is that no,
Francisco did no such thing. Expect my opinion to be more popular than
yours in this NG;)

He doesn't give us the right to damn him, and He does commit the
contemptible act of asking us to take Him on faith and not use our
judgment!

Ah, now this is your mistake, not Fromm's or Rand's. You have fallen
into the far too common trap of _opposing_ faith and judgment. This is
typical of people who live in a culture where "intelligent obedience"
sounds like an oxymoron.

[snip]

The Church will undergo testing, and Pope John Paul II commented
that one of the unalterable facts of Christian doctrine is that the
church must undergo a final, horrific test. But it will survive.

The question is, is that a Good Thing?

Is it _the_ question? The answer is, in any case, yes (Pro 17:3). Of
course, I know better than to expect that you will _accept_ the
answer, but how to get you to do _that_ is a different question;)

But even if you reject it out of hand as 'trite' or worse, there is no
getting around the truth Solomon expressed:

The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold; but the LORD
trieth the hearts. (Pro 17:3 JPS)

This 'trying' is _necessary_ and it is even for our own greatest good
(Jam 1:12). But there will certainly be times when this seems
impossible.

I have to agree that your experience with your father suggests
predestination, much like that horrid passage in Romans 9 where God
is said to have made Pharaoh resist him. Not a pretty picture, not a
decent God.

Well, it would not be a pretty picture if your interpretation of it,
which is the classic _Calvinist_ interpretation, were correct. But it
is not. Indeed: even I never realized how _wildly_ off it was until I
read St. Symeon the New Theologian's sermon on Romans 8:32+, of which

Re Judas, about whom it was said he'd be
better off if he hadn't been born, I've often
thought that's true of every one of us.

Think differently about it; for your own sake. And read the excerpt
from St. Symeon.

[snip]

--
------------------------------
Subducat se sibi ut haereat Deo
Quidquid boni habet tribuat illi a quo factus est
(Sanctus Aurelius Augustinus, Ser. 96)

2008-04-17 00:33:03 UTC

=3DA0A sense of rejection is one of the most powerful factors that hinde=

personal, social and spiritual growth.

Exactly. =A0And since I have experienced nothing but rejection
from God no matter how I have cried to Him and confessed
my sins, it's no wonder that my "personal, social, and
spiritual growth" has been "hinder"ed.
[snip]

B - perhaps you've experienced nothing but rejection from humanity
surrounding you as a majority but why do you think that God has
rejected you? Do you not see your negative experiences as teaching you
anything? are you listening to that still small voice I wonder or just
to people barking bible verses at you?

=2E

Oh, I felt I was safe, and I opened up -- and nothing happened!
No mercy, no forgiveness, no acceptance!

B - again...do you not see that within this problem you are learning
things about strength,truth, what matters? When you ask thinking that
you may not get it...that is also a problem...you put that negative
energy out there and manifest it so. Have mercy on yourself...forgive
yourself...accept yourself. No one said it is easy in this earth
school. You've got access to a computer..there are people starving out
there without homes...can you not be gratitude for what you DO have?

I received it by faith, and then became LESS convinced about it

through experience. =A0Do you have actual experience, or are
you just quoting propaganda you've read? =A0If you do have
experience, then it follows that God plays favorites rather than
loving "whosoever" equally. =A0Though that would agree with
some parts of the Bible, especially that horrible passage
Romans 9:15ff., which truly makes God look like a
scumbucket, it does not agree with the idea of a God
Who is love for all.

B - why accept the interpretations of man as Gods word? The Bible is
second or further down from God itself which exists as well within you
waiting for you to listen. Don't confuse the Bible with God...too many
people seem too unfortunately. Reclaim Christ from those that make
Christ seem small.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

Don't lose your love of God...know that you are learning and you're
just not "there" yet.
In my interp of what I see as God within telling me.(in other
words..my opinion)

B.

j***@go.com

2008-04-18 04:49:36 UTC

Post by B
B - perhaps you've experienced nothing but rejection from humanity
surrounding you as a majority but why do you think that God has
rejected you?

If I pray and beg and nothing happens,
that's rejection by God, pure and simple.
And I don't know that humanity *rejects* me
-- some of my old Christian friends and I
still consider each other friends, despite
my apostasy -- but I don't have the sense
that anyone could really *understand* me.

Post by B
Do you not see your negative experiences as teaching you
anything?

Yeah, not to rely on God; He's not
going to come through in the clutch.
I'm not starving, but my life still sucks,
and He has done nothing to help.
He has proven Himself a "broken reed"
(Isaiah 36:6).

Post by B
are you listening to that still small voice I wonder or just
to people barking bible verses at you?

I'm one of the most introspective men
I've ever run across, so if anyone could
hear a "still small voice", it is I. Not that
I would recognize it, supposing it were
there. And since I practically never go
to church any more, the only place I'd
hear Bible verses (and passages from
Christian writers) barked is in s.r.c.

Post by B
B - =A0again...do you not see that within this problem you are learning
things about strength,truth, what matters?

I'm learning that nothing matters, that
existence is absurd and pointless.

Post by B
When you ask thinking that
you may not get it...that is also a problem...you put that negative
energy out there and manifest it so.

Wait a minute. I thought God was
sovereign. He can overcome this
"negative energy"; He's not bound
by what we think. And if my faith
is insufficient, that's God's fault too,
since faith is His gift (Eph 2:8).

Post by B
Have mercy on yourself...forgive
yourself...accept yourself.

I admit that's tougher, especially
for someone who a) started out as
an academic star, b) was a big fan
of Spock on the original Star Trek.
Vulcans don't cut slack.

Post by B
No one said it is easy in this earth
school.

Hmmm.... My late father, who believed
in reincarnation, also used to say that
each incarnation was a day in school.
But to both of you I cannot but ask:
What's the purpose of this "education"?
What are we being trained for? And,
since you're operating from the Christian
paradigm, I can ask you: Whatever it
is, why can't the all-powerful God do it
Himself?

Post by B
You've got access to a computer..

Wise of you not to go beyond the
observable facts. I have *access* at
libraries and community centers; I do
not have a computer of my own; this
is why my postings are infrequent.

Post by B
there are people starving out
there without homes...can you not be gratitude for what you DO have?

I admit that it is sometimes difficult for
an American to remember the misfortunes
of others; I have a tendency to contrast
my situation with the ideal, rather than
with that of others worse off. One of the
"Murphy's Law" books includes one thing
that's called somebody's Asymmetry (I
forget the name):

"If you add a spoonful of wine to a barrelful
of sewage, you get sewage.
If you add a spoonful of sewage to a
barrelful of wine, you get sewage."

In other words, the least imperfection
vitiates the good.

Post by B
B - why accept the interpretations of man as Gods word? The Bible is
second or further down from God itself which exists as well within you
waiting for you to listen. Don't confuse the Bible with God...too many
people seem too unfortunately. Reclaim Christ from those that make
Christ seem small.

I have myself said (to those who seem
to idolize the Bible) that the Bible is not
God. But, as I have described (to
unanimous disagreement), the Bible
itself can make Christ seem small,
since the plain interpretation of John 5
is that Jesus healed one person and
left the rest sick (otherwise the
Propagandist, commonly called the
Evangelist, would have told us how
Jesus healed a whole bunch).

But the thing is, even if there is a God
within waiting for me to listen, that is
insufficient to provide motivation, will,
hope, love, energy, desire. If all I am
expected to listen to is the *demands*
of God, which is the way one can
easily interpret what you wrote, that
just takes more out of me than I can
give and is of no value to me. By no
demonstration have I seen anything
to convince me that God *loves* me.

Post by B
Don't lose your love of God...know that you are learning and you're
just not "there" yet.

I've already lost my love of God. There is
still a residue of conscientious seeking
for *truth*, but even that is no longer a
passion, just going through the motions
_faute de mieux_ (a phrase I first met in
C.S. Lewis's _Out of the Silent Planet_).

But thank you for at least making
a decent attempt to write a helpful,
understanding, encouraging posting.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

Matthew Johnson

2008-04-21 02:10:45 UTC

In article <ALVNj.16179$***@trndny05>, ***@go.com says...
[snip]

Post by B
are you listening to that still small voice I wonder or just
to people barking bible verses at you?

I'm one of the most introspective men
I've ever run across,

?? Really?? If you ran across someone more introspective, how would you know?

Post by j***@go.com
so if anyone could
hear a "still small voice", it is I. Not that
I would recognize it, supposing it were
there. And since I practically never go
to church any more, the only place I'd
hear Bible verses (and passages from
Christian writers) barked is in s.r.c.

Probably the worst place to go to hear the barking:(

Post by B
B - =A0again...do you not see that within this problem you are learning
things about strength,truth, what matters?

I'm learning that nothing matters, that
existence is absurd and pointless.

So much for the idea that he is learning about strength or truth:(

[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
I admit that's tougher, especially
for someone who a) started out as
an academic star, b) was a big fan
of Spock on the original Star Trek.
Vulcans don't cut slack.

Aha! So _that_ is the problem! You may have a long road to recovery ahead of
you, but step one is to recognize that Vulcans don't exist, and even if they
did, they would be _really_ poor models for _human_ behavior.

You will have to wait for step two;)

[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
In other words, the least imperfection
vitiates the good.

But like all generalizations, it has its limits. You clearly push the
generalization well past its reasonable limits. Vulcans don't do that, so why
are you doing it?

[snip]

--
------------------------------
Subducat se sibi ut haereat Deo
Quidquid boni habet tribuat illi a quo factus est
(Sanctus Aurelius Augustinus, Ser. 96)

2008-04-21 02:10:46 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
I've already lost my love of God. There is
still a residue of conscientious seeking
for *truth*, but even that is no longer a
passion, just going through the motions
_faute de mieux_ (a phrase I first met in
C.S. Lewis's _Out of the Silent Planet_).
But thank you for at least making
a decent attempt to write a helpful,
understanding, encouraging posting.
-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

B - You are welcome. Seeing that you are here..there is still a part
of you that wants to understand..that wants that relationship. It just
seems to me that your take on God has been more shaped by going
against the literalists than in reclaiming God for yourself. I can't
live your life for you...nor you I. All I can do is hope that whatever
you are looking for..you find. I'm a fairly happy person and yet I
have some problems too.... however I am blissfully in love with God
because I know (KNOW) that my life is the way it is because I chose
it..to learn lessons. If God intercepted in everything I had planned
for myself..where would the learning be? Why do we have to learn?
because for one..we have free will...for two...we originally believed
in the lie of separation..the lie that we are separate or can be
separate from God and not that we manifestations of the macrocosm and
that we are experiencing for God. In that original belief in this
separation..fear was created..and in fear..the ego and when that took
over we build layers of disbelief of our true natures over ourselves.
Why we are here is to rid ourselves of these layers to get back to our
full light and we do this by our lessons on earth school. Jesus was
one who had shed his layers and was helping us to speed up our
enlightenment process. We are indeed a part of God and God ....the
microcosm of the macrocosm. This is what I "KNOW". I can't however
explain why I know..or even prove that I know so I couch my statements
as subjectivism because I cannot prove a thing. My interpretation of
what I consider "the God within" is in the end subjective..but I
personally KNOW or am in Gnosis of truth. I have a long way to go...I
have a large amount to learn as well. I hope that you find what you
are looking for and that you find happiness. Your Christ speaks to you
when you are kind to another..when you do various kindnesses to each
other and your self..you are hearing it.

Blessings B.

j***@go.com

2008-05-01 00:44:40 UTC

I don't plan to go on disputing with Matthew Johnson
when even my side of the argument is lifeless and
mechanical. The only response I will make to the
specifics of his April 10 posting is that I agree that
Ayn Rand was mistaken in one way, and she
exposed this mistake at the end of her novel
_Anthem_, when she referred to "this god: EGO."
I don't want to be a god; it's too much pressure.
I just want to be a healthy, happy human being,
and I can't say that Christianity has been much
conducive to that.

But there's something else I need to say to
Mr. Johnson, and I think he needs to hear:

Jesus did not say, in John 17:3, that eternal life
consisted in knowing a great deal *about* God,
even if it's written by a great many people both
famous and obscure, over many centuries, in
several languages. He said that eternal life was
to know *God* and Jesus Christ, whom He had
sent. I have to ask Matthew Johnson, despite
all his knowledge and otherwise admirable
erudition *about* God:

Do you actually know God?

(supposing for the sake of this discussion that
He's there to be known). It was, quite possibly,
about those who would consider themselves
His most vociferous partisans that Jesus said
in Luke 18:8, "When the Son of Man comes,
will He find faith on the earth?"

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

Bob Crowley

2008-05-02 02:44:32 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
I don't plan to go on disputing with Matthew Johnson
when even my side of the argument is lifeless and
mechanical. The only response I will make to the
specifics of his April 10 posting is that I agree that
Ayn Rand was mistaken in one way, and she
exposed this mistake at the end of her novel
_Anthem_, when she referred to "this god: EGO."
I don't want to be a god; it's too much pressure.
I just want to be a healthy, happy human being,
and I can't say that Christianity has been much
conducive to that.
But there's something else I need to say to
Jesus did not say, in John 17:3, that eternal life
consisted in knowing a great deal *about* God,
even if it's written by a great many people both
famous and obscure, over many centuries, in
several languages. He said that eternal life was
to know *God* and Jesus Christ, whom He had
sent. I have to ask Matthew Johnson, despite
all his knowledge and otherwise admirable
Do you actually know God?
(supposing for the sake of this discussion that
He's there to be known). It was, quite possibly,
about those who would consider themselves
His most vociferous partisans that Jesus said
in Luke 18:8, "When the Son of Man comes,
will He find faith on the earth?"
-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

You're correct in saying we need to know God personally more than we
need to know about Him. This is not to cast aspersions on Matthew
Johnson's character. Matthew is clearly well vesed in Orthodox
Christianity, it's history, liturgy and theology.

The quote of Luke 18:8 almost begs the answer that faith would seem to
be lukewarm or missing.

One of the clearest elements in the New Testament is that Christ will
return when we least expect it. This also implies that humanity, at
that point in time, won't be expecting His return. The Jews, for all
their faults, were at least expecting a Messiah when Christ arrived
for the first time.

He seems to say Himself that when He comes the second time, we won't
be expecting Him. In itself this implies a lack of faith.

That's also one of the reasons I don't agree with the fundamentalist
expectation that He's going to return pretty soon.

Personally I think Islam is going to become the dominant religion for
some time, and I also think God is going to drive us off the planet
out into the universe which He put there. It seems a bit big to be
merely a backdrop. And since He has allowed us to develop robotics,
computers, rocketry, artificial intelligence, nuclear power and those
things which would be necessary preludes to such an undertaking, then
it seems to me His vision is not earthbound, even if "Biblical"
exponents tend to be earth minded. The other thing that intrigues me
is that in regard to modern "prophecy", hardly one of our self styled
end times evangelists predicted the resurgence of Islam. Barely
one.

Matthew Johnson

2008-05-05 01:43:06 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
I don't plan to go on disputing with Matthew Johnson
when even my side of the argument is lifeless and
mechanical.

So you say, but you went and did it anyway.

Post by j***@go.com
The only response I will make to the
specifics of his April 10 posting is that I agree that
Ayn Rand was mistaken in one way, and she
exposed this mistake at the end of her novel
_Anthem_, when she referred to "this god: EGO."

It is unfortunate that that is the _only_ response you chose to make. For it
shows that you missed the point.

Post by j***@go.com
I don't want to be a god; it's too much pressure.
I just want to be a healthy, happy human being,
and I can't say that Christianity has been much
conducive to that.

And judging from your posts over the past several months, I would say that you
are misplacing the blame. It is not Christianity per se that is responsible for
this. Unfortunately, judging from those same posts, you do not _know_
"Christianity per se". You know only a tragic distortion of it. Whether that
distortion is due to the bad influences around you or to your own heart's
ability to pervert the call from God, I cannot say.

Post by j***@go.com
But there's something else I need to say to

And your thinking this is another error, a fundamental one.

Post by j***@go.com
Jesus did not say, in John 17:3, that eternal life
consisted in knowing a great deal *about* God,

What? You think I don't already know this? Why? Of course I know it. That you
_presume_ I do not is a sign of presumption on your part -- in both senses of
the word.

Post by j***@go.com
even if it's written by a great many people both
famous and obscure, over many centuries, in
several languages. He said that eternal life was
to know *God* and Jesus Christ, whom He had
sent. I have to ask Matthew Johnson, despite
all his knowledge and otherwise admirable
Do you actually know God?

You should be asking that question of yourself, since the 'God' you describe is
such a monstrous perversion of the Christian God.

People who _do_ know God say as St. John Chrysostom said as he was dying in
exile: "glory to God for all things". They do not wilt under suffering and blame
God for their distress.

[snip]

--
------------------------------
Subducat se sibi ut haereat Deo
Quidquid boni habet tribuat illi a quo factus est
(Sanctus Aurelius Augustinus, Ser. 96)

j***@go.com

2008-05-09 01:44:51 UTC

I'll keep this as short as possible.
[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
Do you actually know God?

You should be asking that question of yourself, since the 'God' you descri=

be is

such a monstrous perversion of the Christian God.

You ignored the question as regards yourself.
Don't answer it too glibly. Be thoroughly,
deeply honest with yourself and with God
(if such there be); you're not required to tell me
what you find out. If you do honestly believe
you know God, I'm not sure that what you know
is not also a perversion of the Christian God
(I don't observe much that comes across as
love for your neighbor). Whether this is a
communication problem or an actual problem
with the content of your faith I'm not sure.

People who _do_ know God say as St. John Chrysostom said as he was dying i=

exile: "glory to God for all things". They do not wilt under suffering and=

blame

God for their distress.

Yes, but what would *you* do in similar distress?
Heck, you don't even say "Glory to God for
that pain in the rear Jeff Sargent", much less
for any more severe troubles you may have.
(Which brings up one side point: I'm capable,
as I just demonstrated, of self-deprecating
humor; are you? I have my doubts.)

As for me, my view is quite simple: if God
is sovereign, He logically -- *necessarily* --
is responsible for all suffering. He even said so,
in Isaiah 45:7. He's no friend.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

----

[I understand the reason for the question. But Usenet does not bring
out the best in many people. I try to refrain from drawing conclusions
about people's spiritual state from how they participate in these
discussions, no matter how tempting that may be. --clh]

j***@go.com

2008-05-09 01:44:51 UTC

On May 1, 7:44=A0pm, Bob Crowley <***@acenet.net.au> wrote:
[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
One of the clearest elements in the New Testament is that Christ will
return when we least expect it. =A0This also implies that humanity, at
that point in time, won't be expecting His return.

The Gospels can be read both ways. Yes, Christ did
say that He would return at a time no one expected
(Matthew 24:44, Luke 12:40); but there are also the
much-quoted passages (including one in the same
chapter, Matthew 24:33) saying that when you see
these signs (which are arguably occurring, hence the
glee of the fundamentalists), He or it (the end, perhaps)
is near, at the door, and His followers should lift up
their heads and all that. One wonders why Jesus
should seem to contradict Himself in such a short time.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
The other thing that intrigues me
is that in regard to modern "prophecy", hardly one of our self styled
end times evangelists predicted the resurgence of Islam.

Obviously you meant this seriously, but I can't
help thinking it needs a rim shot, because it is
amusing, now that you mention it. Of course
Islam per se didn't exist at the time the Bible
was written, but I agree with you that the
preachers on prophecy ought to have picked
up on predictions regarding the *countries*
that are now predominantly Islamic, assuming
such predictions exist; considering how much
prophecy there is about all sorts of odd
countries that no one but Biblical scholars
can identify, there must have been *some*
clues in there which an astute reader could
pick up on. Oh well.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

Matthew Johnson

2008-05-12 02:37:06 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
I'll keep this as short as possible.

Once again, you break your word. You did not "keep this as short as
possible." Not even close.

Post by j***@go.com
[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
Do you actually know God?

You should be asking that question of yourself, since the 'God' you
describe is such a monstrous perversion of the Christian God.

You ignored the question as regards yourself.

I gave it all the attention it deserves -- and then some;) After all,
despite your false accusation, I _did_ address the question, though
not very directly. You just failed to notice.

But true to form, just as you pin the blame for your distress on God
in post after post, now you try to pin the blame on me for 'ignoring'
you, when it was you who failed to notice that I -did- address the
question, by making a general characterization of who it is who _does_
know God.

Post by j***@go.com
Don't answer it too glibly.

No need to worry yourself about _that_ possibility;)

Post by j***@go.com
Be thoroughly, deeply honest with yourself and with God (if such
there be);

Am I the only one to see the tragic irony here? You ask me to be
"deeply honest" with someone you doubt exists? Be "deeply honest" with
yourself and recognize how nonsensical this is. Either admit that He
exists, and not as the Deist God, or admit there is nothing for me to
be "deeply honest" with.

Post by j***@go.com
you're not required to tell me what you find out.

Again: no need to worry yourself about _that_ possibility;)

Post by j***@go.com
If you do honestly believe you know God, I'm not sure that what you
know is not also a perversion of the Christian God (I don't observe
much that comes across as love for your neighbor).

This is a perfect example of how you did not "keep this as short as
possible": there was no need to say this, since your other words made
it all too painfully obvious, that you yourself 'observe' nothing that
comes across as love for your neighbor.

Post by j***@go.com
Whether this is a communication problem or an actual problem with the
content of your faith I'm not sure.

The problem is with the content of _your_ faith, as I showed in my
previous post. And it is you who is ignoring that.

Post by Matthew Johnson
People who _do_ know God say as St. John Chrysostom said as he was
dying in exile: "glory to God for all things". They do not wilt
under suffering and blame God for their distress.

Yes, but what would *you* do in similar distress?

I have considered telling you what similar distress I have had. I
decided against it. Why? Because I can tell from your posts, that even
if I did, you would dismiss my words groundlessly and
presumptuously. You would fool yourself into believing that your own
suffering was greater than mine, just like every farbissiner Schlimazl
before you has done with everybody else.

Why, you just _confirmed_ that my decision was correct. For your
suffering was _nothing_ compared to St. John's death in exile. Yet
here you dismiss his words and refuse his saving example, like a dog
to his vomit returning to blaming God for your distress.

Post by j***@go.com
Heck, you don't even say "Glory to God for that pain in the rear Jeff
Sargent", much less for any more severe troubles you may have.

You don't know that. You are once more making presumptuous
assumptions.

Post by j***@go.com
(Which brings up one side point: I'm capable, as I just demonstrated,
of self-deprecating humor; are you? I have my doubts.)

All the more reason to leave that point on the side;)
Lots of wrong views are simple. Why would yours be an exception?

Post by j***@go.com
if God is sovereign, He logically -- *necessarily* -- is responsible
for all suffering. He even said so, in Isaiah 45:7.

Not true. Augustine, Basil, Peter Lombard and Aquinas all explained
this (why you are wrong) in _great_ detail. What is your excuse for
passing judgment on the topic without first understanding their
achievements?

I would repeat the explanation here, but it is too painfully obvious
that you are not paying attention.

Post by j***@go.com
He's no friend.

Again, not true. True to your Baptist background, you are reading Isa
45:7 out of context. Is your Baptist background also your excuse for
rejecting out of hand the Saints's explanation of Isa 45:7?

For that matter, you are still ignoring the point I made to you
earlier, that:

The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold; but the LORD
trieth the hearts. (Pro 17:3 JPS)

This 'trying' is _necessary_ and it is even for our own greatest good
(Jam 1:12). But there will certainly be times when this seems
impossible.

Admit it: you have no sound reason for denying that this is one of
those times.

Admit it: by _ignoring_ this, you have done yourself a great disfavor,
far worse than my _alleged_ ignoring of your impertinent question.

Post by j***@go.com
[I understand the reason for the question. But Usenet does not bring
out the best in many people. I try to refrain from drawing
conclusions about people's spiritual state from how they participate
in these discussions, no matter how tempting that may be. --clh]

And I will agree that in your posted words, Charles, you have shown
that restraint. If there has been even one exception to that rule, I
cannot remember it. And no, I don't care to try to verify it in
Google. It is too far off topic.

--
------------------------------
Subducat se sibi ut haereat Deo
Quidquid boni habet tribuat illi a quo factus est
(Sanctus Aurelius Augustinus, Ser. 96)

Bob Crowley

2008-05-12 02:37:07 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
I'll keep this as short as possible.
[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
Do you actually know God?

You should be asking that question of yourself, since the 'God' you desc=

ri=3D

Post by j***@go.com
be is

such a monstrous perversion of the Christian God.

You ignored the question as regards yourself.
Don't answer it too glibly. =A0Be thoroughly,
deeply honest with yourself and with God
(if such there be); you're not required to tell me
what you find out. =A0If you do honestly believe
you know God, I'm not sure that what you know
is not also a perversion of the Christian God
(I don't observe much that comes across as
love for your neighbor). =A0Whether this is a
communication problem or an actual problem
with the content of your faith I'm not sure.

People who _do_ know God say as St. John Chrysostom said as he was dying=

i=3D

Post by j***@go.com
n

exile: "glory to God for all things". They do not wilt under suffering a=

nd=3D

Post by j***@go.com
=A0blame

God for their distress.

Yes, but what would *you* do in similar distress?
Heck, you don't even say "Glory to God for
that pain in the rear Jeff Sargent", much less
for any more severe troubles you may have.
(Which brings up one side point: =A0I'm capable,
as I just demonstrated, of self-deprecating
humor; are you? =A0I have my doubts.)
As for me, my view is quite simple: =A0if God
is sovereign, He logically -- *necessarily* --
is responsible for all suffering. =A0He even said so,
in Isaiah 45:7. =A0He's no friend.
-- Jeffrey J. Sargent
=A0 ----
[I understand the reason for the question. But Usenet does not bring
out the best in many people. I try to refrain from drawing conclusions
about people's spiritual state from how they participate in these
discussions, no matter how tempting that may be. --clh]

An extract from "The love of God and affliction" by Simone Weil - she
was a French Jew who died at 34 in 1943 in Britain, partly because she
refused to eat more than the rations allowed her countrymen under Nazi
rule (in actual fact her countrymen usually found a way to get around
the rules).

Suffering (affliction) caused by nature eg. "The sea is not less
beautiful in our eyes becasue we know that sometimes ships are
wrecked. On the contrary this adds to its beauty. If it altered the
movement of its waves to spare a boat, it would be a creature gifted
with discernment and choice and not this fluid, perfectly obedient to
every external pressure. It is this perfect obedience which
constitutes the sea's beauty."

On men ..."Men can never escape from obedience to God. A creature
cannot but obey. The only choice given to men, as intelligent and
free creatures, is to desire obedience or not to desire it. If a man
does not desire it, he obeys nevertheless, perpetually, in as much as
he is a thing subject to mechanical necessity. If he desires it, he
is still subject to mechanical necessity, but a new necessity is added
to it, a necessity constituted by laws belonging to supernatural
beings. Certain actions have become impossible to him, others are
done by his agency, sometimes almost in spite of himself."

I've said before my father appeared to me the night he died. Amongst
other things he commented "I always was doomed. I didn't really have
any choice!". Later in the proceedings he admitted "I was
willing ....".

The point there is that he was still subject to God's will, even
though he had long ago decided he didn't desire it. It caught up with
him in the end, whether he desired it or not. We may not desire to
obey gravity, and might step off a cliff to prove our point. For a
short time we may even have a sense of exhilarating weightlessness.
Then comes the reality. We're subject to it whether we desire it or
not.

Because of personal experiences like this, and a significant number of
cases of unfair treatment, including "discouragement" by my old
pastor, for which he apologised, but like my father too late as the
damage was already done, I don't have a Santa Claus view of God. I
don't even like Him sometimes. I think He's pretty unfair, at least
in this life. Perhaps He makes up for it in the next, serving His
people Himself if one of Christ's parables is correct. I should at
least hope He makes up for it in some way.

In the end however the decision to desire or not desire God's will in
our lives is a matter of our own wills. When we're in a dry gully, to
desire His will may be all we've got left.

j***@go.com

2008-05-26 18:05:02 UTC

Walt Whitman (whose poetry is, not in a
conventional but a deeper sense, surprisingly
religious) wrote in "Song of the Open Road":

I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence.

Jesus arguably convinced by His presence
(see "The Ballad of the Goodly Fere" by
Ezra Pound), but He wouldn't have made it
past the moderator, because His language
was often immoderate (e.g., His tirade against
the scribes & Pharisees in Matthew 23).
Alas, most Christians do not convince by
their presence at all. Matthew Johnson,
since your language toward me was a trifle
immoderate but slid through, I can tell you
that your attempts to -- well, not convince
by argument, but lecture condescendingly --
give you a presence that is anything but
Christlike (as He is usually conceived).
You come off as a combination of the
worst of scribe and Pharisee combined --
a pedantic show-off, self-righteous, snobbish,
and cold, all brain and no heart.

In fact, I have sometimes thought, not
entirely facetiously, that "Matthew Johnson"
is not a human being at all, but a sophisticated
artificial-intelligence program backed up by a
huge, minutely indexed database of Christian
literature; the program analyzes its input
(articles in s.r.c) and comes out with
appropriate quotes and references from
the database.

But I'll reply to some of the program's
points anyway, futile though it will
probably be.

[Y]our suffering was _nothing_ compared to St. John
[Chrysostom]'s death in exile.

I don't know; being stuck in this desert (the fastest-
growing hellhole in the U.S., metropolitan Phoenix)
is akin to exile. But as I recall, Paul in II Timothy,
about to be executed, did not moan, "Oh, if I could
only see Tarsus or Jerusalem again"; he was looking
ahead. By comparison, Chrysostom comes off like
a wuss, from what you've written about him, if dying
in exile bothered him at all.

Of course, any saint's saying "Glory to God" for
pain, or considering torture to be love (willing
victims of _1984_), marks that saint as a
*masochist*, a nutjob, not a healthy human being
and not someone I would want to emulate.

Post by j***@go.com
if God is sovereign, He logically -- *necessarily* -- is responsible
for all suffering. =A0He even said so, in Isaiah 45:7.

Theodicy (such as those gentlemen wrote) is
always unconvincing, except to those predisposed
to be convinced; it cannot be rigorous. In fact,
going on at great length to deny the plain sense
of Scripture (as you've just admitted they did)
counts as *lying* in my book; I suspect that the
person each writer most wanted to deceive was
himself, because he dared not admit that in his
heart, he actually believed more along the lines
that I have written.

The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold; but the LORD
trieth the hearts. =A0(Pro 17:3 JPS)
This 'trying' is _necessary_ and it is even for our own greatest good
(Jam 1:12).

These verses and similar ones indicate that God
is both an idiot and a sadist. An idiot, because
a) He created for no reason that makes any sense
(He doesn't need anything, as He never wearies of
saying), b) He uses the slowest, most inefficient
method conceivable to "refine" us, rather than
creating us right the first time. A sadist, because
He also selects a very painful method of "refining".
These verses make God look like hell, literally.

Nothing you have written, ostensibly in defense
of God, makes God appear desirable, so why
have you wasted your time and mine (and the
moderator's) writing it?

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

----

[You're right. Things that make sense in a personal
interaction can cause trouble in news discussions.
--clh]

j***@go.com

2008-05-26 18:05:03 UTC

I don't have time to reply to much of Bob Crowley's

[quoting Simone Weil:]
"Men can never escape from obedience to God. =A0A creature
cannot but obey. =A0The only choice given to men, as intelligent and
free creatures, is to desire obedience or not to desire it. =A0If a man
does not desire it, he obeys nevertheless, perpetually, in as much as
he is a thing subject to mechanical necessity. =A0If he desires it, he
is still subject to mechanical necessity, but a new necessity is added
to it, a necessity constituted by laws belonging to supernatural
beings. =A0Certain actions have become impossible to him, others are
done by his agency, sometimes almost in spite of himself."

How can a "free creature" "desire obedience"?? And if
things are done "in spite of himself", what's the point of
his existing at all? And how can it be said that one
gains anything but a burden and suffering by having
"a new necessity added"? None of this makes God
look good at all.

I don't have a Santa Claus view of God. =A0I
don't even like Him sometimes. =A0I think He's pretty unfair, at least
in this life. =A0Perhaps He makes up for it in the next, serving His
people Himself if one of Christ's parables is correct. =A0I should at
least hope He makes up for it in some way.

At least you're honest about this. But if it's
the same God in both cases, why should we
expect any better treatment in the next life
than in this one? What difference would the
mere loss of our physical bodies make to
God's attitude toward us?

In the end however the decision to desire or not desire God's will in
our lives is a matter of our own wills. =A0When we're in a dry gully, to
desire His will may be all we've got left.

The only reason I've seen you give for desiring
God's will is the threat of hell, as indicated by
your father's words in his remarkable appearance
to you just before he died. That doesn't really
give us anything to *desire*, just to *avoid*.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

Bob Crowley

2008-05-31 03:19:16 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
I don't have time to reply to much of Bob Crowley's

[quoting Simone Weil:]
"Men can never escape from obedience to God. =3DA0A creature
cannot but obey. =3DA0The only choice given to men, as intelligent and
free creatures, is to desire obedience or not to desire it. =3DA0If a ma=

does not desire it, he obeys nevertheless, perpetually, in as much as
he is a thing subject to mechanical necessity. =3DA0If he desires it, he=
is still subject to mechanical necessity, but a new necessity is added
to it, a necessity constituted by laws belonging to supernatural
beings. =3DA0Certain actions have become impossible to him, others are
done by his agency, sometimes almost in spite of himself."

I was listening today to a DVD of retreats given by (Catholic) Bishop
Fulton Sheen in his later years before he died. He quoted a friend of
his who related an experience about a young Vietnamese girl in
Vietman. Apparently she was rather ugly, about 12 years old. The
other kids were scared of her, and he went to investigate. He found
himself talking to her, a Vietnamese village girl, in perfect French,
Spanish and Latin, although she hadn't been educated in the last two
at all. He took what we Catholics call the "blessed sacrament" to her
and she became very aggressive and violent. He removed the sacrament
and just held up the empty frame. She laughed at him. He had to
assume she was possessed in some sense so he went through an exorcism,
and she was healed. No more Latin or Spanish though - none at all.

The point is that the spiritual world is real.

In the end there's just God and us, really, however much we may wish
to avoid Him. The issue is one of choice - for God or against Him.
In the end it's the only ultimate choice. Everytthing else - career,
family, house, finance - is filling in the gaps, and they won't go
with us anyway. So we're faced with one ultimate choice. Which way
do we go. In the end we'll face God anyway, and in so far as He has a
plan, we must fit into the overall design, one way or the other. The
nail may not like being hammered on the head, but whether it likes it
or not, it's going into the house the architect designed. The
difference is that we have a choice - the nail doesn't.

How God goes about these things is, I admit, not easy to accept. But
His grace can only be poured into us if we're empty. And with our
strong egos, we don't like being empty. So we'll fill up the
spiritual space with anything - career, drugs, sex, and most of all,
"I did it my way".

I don't have a Santa Claus view of God. =3DA0I
don't even like Him sometimes. =3DA0I think He's pretty unfair, at least=
in this life. =3DA0Perhaps He makes up for it in the next, serving His
people Himself if one of Christ's parables is correct. =3DA0I should at
least hope He makes up for it in some way.

I suppose we take it on trust. There may be difficulties in our
life. But there are hints of heaven around us also. But if God wants
to do something with a person, it seems that He always hurts that
person first. That's been the common experience of almost every great
Christian. And when I hear what might be called the "prosperity
doctrines" of some modern preachers, I wonder if they're serving God
or Mammon.

In the end however the decision to desire or not desire God's will in
our lives is a matter of our own wills. =3DA0When we're in a dry gully, =

desire His will may be all we've got left.

Actually it wasn't just before he died. He was dead. During the
exchange I actually asked "What is this - a dream or something?" to
which he replied, with a look of bemusement, "No, it's not a dream. I
died tonight."

I admit that the desire to "avoid" may be part of a person's
conversion motivation. But as one becomes more deeply embedded in the
Christian life, the fear of judgment tends to recede. The "desitre"
may come in bouts of joy from time to time, usually separated by long
periods of what might be called "dark nights of the soul" as coined by
by St. John of the Cross.

Christianity is not "cheap grace". It costs. Christ told us to "pick
up your cross and follow Me". Human nature wants to get rid of the
cross. But since Christ is God, He won't allow us to.

I'll grant you the problem of suffering is not an easy one to solve.
Usually we quote the Book of Job (who wasn't even Jewish) but I find
it not particularly helpful. I did once have a vision however of a
rather ugly individual saying to me "I've been given permission to
wreck your career". Within four weeks, my "career" had been wrecked.

There might be more to God's granting the devil permission that we
commonly think. I suppose you've read the story of Pope Pope Leo
XIII=92s vision and the resulting prayer to St. Michael viz.

"Composed over 100 years ago, and then suppressed due to its startling
content, Pope Leo XIII=92s original Prayer to St. Michael is one of the
most interesting and controversial prayers relating to the present
situation in which the true Catholic Church finds itself. On
September 25, 1888, following his morning Mass, Pope Leo XIII became
traumatized to the point that he collapsed. Those in attendance
thought that he was dead. After coming to consciousness, the Pope
described a frightful conversation that he had heard coming from near
the tabernacle. The conversation consisted of two voices =96 voices
which Pope Leo XIII clearly understood to be the voices of Jesus
Christ and the devil. The devil boasted that he could destroy the
Church, if he were granted 75 years to carry out his plan (or 100
years, according to some accounts). The devil also asked permission
for =93a greater influence over those who will give themselves to my
service.=94 To the devil=92s requests, Our Lord reportedly replied: =93you
will be given the time and the power.=94"

One wonders what sort of game God and the devil are playing. I think
you're well aware of the events that took place over the next 100
years. From 1888 to 1988/9 the human race went through two world
wars, the great depression, the cold war, the gulags, the purges, the
numerous 'wars of liberation', the nuclear bomb, gas warfare,
bioligical warfare, the Holocaust etc.

Where do you think Adolf Hitler got his power from?

j***@go.com

2008-06-06 02:37:22 UTC

On May 30, 8:19=A0pm, Bob Crowley <***@acenet.net.au> wrote:

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
In the end there's just God and us, really, however much we may wish
to avoid Him. =A0The issue is one of choice - for God or against Him.

Were this true, one would expect that God would make
the "for" choice somewhat easier -- i.e., indicate more
plainly that He is for us (if that be the case).

Post by Bob Crowley
In the end it's the only ultimate choice. =A0Everytthing else - career,
family, house, finance - is filling in the gaps, and they won't go
with us anyway. =A0So we're faced with one ultimate choice. =A0Which way
do we go.

I'll go with you this far: We may have some
choice as to what sort of character we
exhibit, whether we perform what would
be considered good actions from good
motivations. I'm not sure this is 100%
true, however, because I do not know if
I have the capability of truly loving anyone
or anything. I have some capacity to be
interested in ideas and activities, and to
form cathexis with and affection for people
(else I would not have grieved my mother's
death, as I still do some). But the Bible
(I John 4:19) says that we love because
God first loves us; and if we don't experience
the love of God (as I have not), it's not easy,
perhaps not possible, to love.

Post by Bob Crowley
=A0In the end we'll face God anyway, and in so far as He has a
plan, we must fit into the overall design, one way or the other. =A0The
nail may not like being hammered on the head, but whether it likes it
or not, it's going into the house the architect designed. =A0The
difference is that we have a choice - the nail doesn't.

As I think I implied in my previous article,
"our choice" and "God's plan" cannot coexist.
Either we're nails or we're free humans; I see
no middle ground.

Post by Bob Crowley
How God goes about these things is, I admit, not easy to accept. =A0But
His grace can only be poured into us if we're empty. =A0And with our
strong egos, we don't like being empty. =A0So we'll fill up the
spiritual space with anything - career, drugs, sex, and most of all,
"I did it my way".

That last may not be entirely bad. I have
recently reread the classic _Escape From
Freedom_ by Erich Fromm, and recognized
a good deal of the malformation of character
he describes as present in my own character.
(Christians should read that book to understand
how much of the same malformation of character
got incorporated into some of the basic ideas
of Protestantism -- notably Calvin's merciless
God Who condemns some people for no reason
at all -- and thus, centuries later, enabled a
movement veritably founded on such bad
character, Nazism.) But anyway, to do it
my way -- to act freely rather than in fearful
obedience -- may be the only way to health
and happiness for me.

At least you're honest about this. =A0But if it's
the same God in both cases, why should we
expect any better treatment in the next life
than in this one? =A0What difference would the
mere loss of our physical bodies make to
God's attitude toward us?

I suppose we take it on trust.

And on what basis is this trust founded?
What has God done to prove Himself
trustworthy?

OK, I'll grant that _Escape From Freedom_
mentions the concept of the "magic helper" --
some entity outside oneself whom one
expects to solve all one's problems if one
properly propitiates that entity; and I'll
grant that I treated God as a "magic helper"
and was greatly disappointed when He
didn't act as one. But the mere fact of
God's not being a magic helper does not
imply that other ideas about God are true,
or that He even exists.

Post by Bob Crowley
And when I hear what might be called the "prosperity
doctrines" of some modern preachers, I wonder if they're serving God
or Mammon.

Here I'm with you. Indeed, when I hear some
preachers spouting political doctrines that one
might rather expect from the Chamber of Commerce,
I wonder the same.

[from previous articles by Crowley and me:]

Post by Bob Crowley
In the end however the decision to desire or not desire God's will in
our lives is a matter of our own wills. =3D3DA0When we're in a dry gul=

ly, =3D

Post by Bob Crowley
to

Post by Bob Crowley
desire His will may be all we've got left.

I'll admit the possibility of desiring truth and
of desiring the seemingly impossible dream
of being a good person, being able to stand
to be oneself. But there's no way I can any
more desire God, nor (for reasons explained
above) do I think it's healthful for me to think
in terms of desiring His will. That's masochistic.

The only reason I've seen you give for desiring
God's will is the threat of hell, as indicated by
your father's words in his remarkable appearance
to you just before he died. =A0That doesn't really
give us anything to *desire*, just to *avoid*.

Actually it wasn't just before he died. =A0He was dead. =A0During the
exchange I actually asked "What is this - a dream or something?" to
which he replied, with a look of bemusement, "No, it's not a dream. =A0I
died tonight."

Sorry, my mistake; my memory was imperfect.

Post by Bob Crowley
I admit that the desire to "avoid" may be part of a person's
conversion motivation. =A0But as one becomes more deeply embedded in the
Christian life, the fear of judgment tends to recede.

I'm not so sure that's true. If one has tried hard
for many years to be good, then discovers that one
has actually, in one's heart of hearts, been exceedingly
wicked, the fear of judgment and the begging for a
forgiveness that doesn't come in any perceptible way
are quite in the foreground.

[short snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
Christianity is not "cheap grace". =A0It costs. =A0Christ told us to "pick=
up your cross and follow Me". =A0Human nature wants to get rid of the
cross. =A0But since Christ is God, He won't allow us to.
I'll grant you the problem of suffering is not an easy one to solve.

As I wrote in my reply to Matthew Johnson (that
reply is in Google's archive if it's already aged
out of your machine), this whole paradigm makes
God look like "both an idiot and a sadist. An idiot,
because a) He created for no reason that makes
any sense (He doesn't need anything, as He never
wearies of saying), b) He uses the slowest, most
inefficient method conceivable to 'refine' us, rather
than creating us right the first time. A sadist,
because He also selects a very painful method
of 'refining'."

Post by Bob Crowley
There might be more to God's granting the devil permission that we
commonly think. =A0I suppose you've read the story of Pope Pope Leo
XIII=3D92s vision and the resulting prayer to St. Michael viz.

Never heard of it till now. But then, I've never been
a Catholic.

Post by Bob Crowley
[snip] The devil boasted that he could destroy the
Church, if he were granted 75 years to carry out his plan (or 100
years, according to some accounts). =A0The devil also asked permission
for =A0'greater influence over those who will give themselves to my
service.' =A0To the devil's requests, Our Lord reportedly replied: 'you
will be given the time and the power.'"
One wonders what sort of game God and the devil are playing. =A0I think
you're well aware of the events that took place over the next 100
years. [snip]

I don't know if the violence you described is really
the principal work whereby the devil (supposing
*he* exists) aimed to make good on his boast.
In fact you alluded to his real work earlier in your
comment about prosperity preachers. Back in
1983 Os Guinness came out with a book which
ought to be considered a modern classic, _The
Gravedigger File_; it is in the genre of C.S. Lewis's
_The Screwtape Letters_, i.e. memos from the
Other Side, but in this case having to do with
subverting the whole church rather than one
individual. The key sentence in the book
(printed entirely in italics, as I recall) is:
"Christianity created the modern world;
the modern world, in turn, has undermined
Christianity; Christianity has become its
own gravedigger." Worldliness, not violence,
is what is really destroying the church.

Post by Bob Crowley
Where do you think Adolf Hitler got his power from?

Doesn't Romans 13 indicate (not in these
exact words) that *all* powers are appointed
by God? That doesn't say just the good ones.
According to Romans 13, the (informally)
sainted Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who plotted to
assassinate Hitler, was actually drawing
damnation to himself by that act. According
to Romans 13, the American Revolutionaries
(whom so many conservative Churchians revere,
especially the Revolutionaries who happened
to be religious) were equally damned for their
actions in throwing off the rule of George III.
According to Romans 13, the divine right of
kings, dictators, bad presidents, etc. is
alive and well. And therefore neither
Hitler nor Stalin nor anyone else (I wanted
to write "Bush", but I have to admit he's not
nearly so bad as those two) can be blamed
if it was God's will that they come to power
and stay in it for as long as they did. Even
your account of Pope Leo's vision has God
saying to the devil, "You will be given the
time and the power" -- i.e., so ultimately
the whole messy history of the past few
generations is still God's responsibility.
So how can He be a God Who is Love?

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

Matthew Johnson

2008-06-09 00:23:30 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
In the end there's just God and us, really, however much we may wish
to avoid Him. =A0The issue is one of choice - for God or against Him.

Were this true, one would expect that God would make
the "for" choice somewhat easier -- i.e., indicate more
plainly that He is for us (if that be the case).

But WHY would you expect this? After all, it seems that you expect it only
because you misunderstand why He makes us choose in the first place:

The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold;
but the LORD trieth the hearts.
(Pro 17:3 JPS)

--
------------------------------
Subducat se sibi ut haereat Deo
Quidquid boni habet tribuat illi a quo factus est
(Sanctus Aurelius Augustinus, Ser. 96)

2008-06-09 00:23:33 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
time and the power" -- i.e., so ultimately
the whole messy history of the past few
generations is still God's responsibility.
So how can He be a God Who is Love?
-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

B - if someone gives you a knife out of love..it is still up to you
what you do with it. God, in my opinion, gave us as co-creators, free
will to be with it or believe in the lie of separation and ego. When
we believe in ego. (that we are separate from God and somehow God is
outside of ourselves only and will always have a distance) we have
fear and fear causes us to be afraid "of other" ...even though their
is no "other" but only variations on ONE. That is where we go
wrong..our reliance on ego (which for some can be a symbolic "devil")
is where we cause all of our own problems. WE simply apply what has
been given us in a wrong way. We make that choice. God is always
love.

I.M.O
Bren

Bob Crowley

2008-06-10 02:26:55 UTC

I don't seee that God would have to make it easier since it is His
plan, not ours. Nor would it boil down to faith if He did. I don't
know what your own family background is like, but in a normal family
the parents continue to love their offspring, but they also expect
them to stand on their own two feet as time goes by.

God expects the same. This means allowing the "children" to
participate in life's hurdles.

In a sense, I suppose God lives through His children. Let's assume
there was a time when there was God alone, omnipotent, omniscient and
omnipresent. At this stage He's all potential, but He hasn't done
anything yet. What then is He going to do? Whatever He does must, by
necessity, be due to His own thought. If He is going to create other
beings, they all derive from Him and owe their existence to Him. Now
if He is "love" as the textbooks say, He's going to want love
reflected. So the first port of call is the Trinity - God from God,
true God from true God, Light from Light etc (lifted erratically from
the Nicene Creed which is the Catholic Church's 'official' creed).

The next cab off the rank will be spiritual beings, pure spirit like
God, but limited and derived from Him. They can reflect God's love
back to Him or reject it, hence angels and demons. But in creating
them, He gives a part of Himself. They're intelligent - highly so.
In fact, they could probably be described as pure intelligences.

If however He wants love returned under more difficult circumstances,
He must hide Himself from those He has planned to be the linchpin of
His plan. Again He must give a part of Himself to create them, at
least in the spiritual sense. And to create more of them, and yet
remain hidden from them, He must give them the ability to procreate.

Now the second creation, the spirits, can view the third creation,
mankind and this universe etc, in one of three ways - support,
indifference or hostility. But since God has created them, He has to
allow the interplay of all three creations to continue, until it has
served His purpose.

And so we get good and evil, love and hate, kindness and cruelty,
charity and selfishness.

Whether we like it or not, we're caught up in His plan. It's the only
one in town.

j***@go.com

2008-06-19 01:11:10 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
In the end there's just God and us, really, however much we may wish
to avoid Him. =3DA0The issue is one of choice - for God or against Him=

Post by j***@go.com
Were this true, one would expect that God would make
the "for" choice somewhat easier -- i.e., indicate more
plainly that He is for us (if that be the case).

But WHY would you expect this?

If He wants people to love Him, one would
think He would have the sense to be lovable.
The only way to get people to love you is to
love them in a way that a sane person would
recognize as love. He doesn't.

Post by Matthew Johnson
After all, it seems that you expect it only
The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold;
but the LORD trieth the hearts.
(Pro 17:3 JPS)

This verse does not in the least explain why God
makes us choose! I don't understand your logic
at all.

But never mind that. I replied to this verse (or a
similar one) in an earlier response to you, stating
that it made God look like both an idiot and a sadist.
You did not respond to that. Either you did not see
that article at all for some reason, or you glanced
at it so cursorily that you did not recognize it as a
reply to you, perhaps because it began with a quote
from Walt Whitman and did not start quoting and
responding to your article until about halfway through.
(Or you snubbed it.) In case that article has aged out
of your machine, it is available in Google's archives at

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.religion.christian/msg/ed90db11c4efdf61

and let's hope that URL doesn't get garbled as
they sometimes do.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

j***@go.com

2008-06-20 01:03:31 UTC

I apologize to Bob Crowley because I probably won't
have time to give his latest effort the full thoughtful
response it deserves, but then, it should be clear
by now that someone who left Christianity for
*visceral* reasons is not likely to be convinced
by thought and argument, no matter how calm,
concerned, and well-reasoned.

Post by Bob Crowley
I don't seee that God would have to make it easier since it is His
plan, not ours.

As I mentioned in a reply to Matthew Johnson
a moment ago, one who wants to be loved needs
to be lovable, and that includes God. If He doesn't
have the sense to love in a way that we can
recognize as love, how can He expect to be loved?

Post by Bob Crowley
=A0Nor would it boil down to faith if He did.

It shouldn't have to. Trust among humans is
based upon demonstrated reliability. The same
criterion applies to God; if He does not demonstrate
His trustworthiness, He is not trusted.

Post by Bob Crowley
=A0I don't
know what your own family background is like, but in a normal family
the parents continue to love their offspring, but they also expect
them to stand on their own two feet as time goes by.
God expects the same. =A0This means allowing the "children" to
participate in life's hurdles.

First, this is not an exact analogy. God (if such
there be) does not stand to us in the same relation
as our earthly parents.

Second, even earthly parents will help out their
adult children as much as they can when they
(the offspring) are in trouble. Earthly parents
who are in a position to do so will guide their
children to opportunities where they can stand
on their own feet. But God, no matter how much
I begged Him, gave me no guidance, and no help
except through the good graces of my hapless
mother, as long as she lasted and as long as
her money lasts.

Third, life would not have "hurdles" if God
did not will it so.

Post by Bob Crowley
In a sense, I suppose God lives through His children.

Any earthly parent who did that would be considered
sick, deficient, parasitic. Why should He involve us
in His neurosis?

Post by Bob Crowley
=A0Let's assume
there was a time when there was God alone,
omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent.

Actually, if He hasn't created 3-D space yet, He
can't be omnipresent.

Post by Bob Crowley
[snip]=A0Now
if He is "love" as the textbooks say, He's going to want love
reflected.

My point exactly; He needs to shine love
our way if He wants it reflected. He doesn't.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
If however He wants love returned under more difficult circumstances,
He must hide Himself from those He has planned to be the linchpin of
His plan.

That makes absolutely no sense! The only way we
*can* return love is if we receive it, not if it's so well
hidden as to be in effect nonexistent!

Post by Bob Crowley
Now the second creation, the spirits, can view the third creation,
mankind and this universe etc, in one of three ways - support,
indifference or hostility. =A0But since God has created them, He has to
allow the interplay of all three creations to continue, until it has
served His purpose.

Pretty dippy purpose if He wants/allows it to go on
in such a messy and painful way. God, of all entities,
is the one we should expect to get it right the first
time; not for one instant should His creation be so
horrendously wrong.

Post by Bob Crowley
And so we get good and evil, love and hate, kindness and cruelty,
charity and selfishness.

The only way to handle this, seeing that we're stuck
in this ridiculous and extraordinarily poorly planned
situation (so poorly planned that the idea that it
wasn't planned at all but developed at random is
quite persuasive), is via Nietzsche's paradoxical dictum
from _Thus Spake Zarathustra_: "Man must become
better and more evil."

Post by Bob Crowley
Whether we like it or not, we're caught up in His plan. =A0It's the only
one in town.

This is partially right. This is the only game
in town. But explaining it in Christian terms
is not the only, or the most believable, game
in town.

Actually, there are some ideas in Christianity
that are perfectly valid out of a Christian
context, such as self-acceptance not based
on performance, or the idea of discarding one's
old character in favor of a new one. One does
not need to buy the whole comically overblown
panoply of Christian theology and doctrine to
accept these. In regard to the Bible and other
religious writings, I follow what I understand is
the advice provided in 12-step groups (e.g.,
Alcoholics Anonymous) re any sort of possibly
helpful writings: "Take what you need and
leave the rest."

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

Matthew Johnson

2008-06-23 22:32:49 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
In the end there's just God and us, really, however much we may wish
to avoid Him. =3DA0The issue is one of choice - for God or against Him=

Post by j***@go.com
Were this true, one would expect that God would make
the "for" choice somewhat easier -- i.e., indicate more
plainly that He is for us (if that be the case).

But WHY would you expect this?

If He wants people to love Him, one would
think He would have the sense to be lovable.

And He is lovable. We know this because so many have loved Him to the point of
giving their lives for Him. Perhaps you have not spent enough time reading the
Lives of the 20th Century Martyrs.

Post by Matthew Johnson
The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold;
but the LORD trieth the hearts.
(Pro 17:3 JPS)

This verse does not in the least explain why God
makes us choose! I don't understand your logic
at all.

It does not surprise me that you do not understand it. But it does explain it.
Those who turn out to be the refined silver and gold understand it well. Others
turn out to be the impurities driven out by the fire. Which are you?

--
------------------------------
Subducat se sibi ut haereat Deo
Quidquid boni habet tribuat illi a quo factus est
(Sanctus Aurelius Augustinus, Ser. 96)

j***@go.com

2008-06-27 01:08:15 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
If He wants people to love Him, one would
think He would have the sense to be lovable.

And He is lovable. We know this because so many have loved Him to the poi=

nt of

giving their lives for Him.

I question whether "love" is the true word.
"Masochistic submission" is likelier.

Another way to look at it is that giving one's
life for a cause doesn't necessarily imply that
it's a good cause. I've just been reading a
history of Russian revolutionaries prior to the
Bolsheviks, many of whom were executed
for their actions on behalf of the revolution.
That doesn't mean they were wise to do
what they did, or that what they did was
beneficial to anyone -- just as the actions
of those who sacrificed their lives for their
belief in God doesn't imply that either their
lives or their deaths did any good. Remember
that a number of Muslims have sacrificed their
lives -- usually taking others in the process --
for their belief in Allah and what they consider
(erroneously in the view even of many Muslims,
but none the less passionately) to be the will
of Allah; their sacrifice does not imply the
goodness or truth of either their belief or
their actions (although I have suggested
that the actions of those who did exactly
this on 9/11 were to America just the same
as the barbarians God brought against
ancient Israel, and for the same reasons).

So martyrdom proves NOTHING.

Post by Matthew Johnson
The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold;
but the LORD trieth the hearts.
(Pro 17:3 JPS)

This verse does not in the least explain why God
makes us choose! =A0I don't understand your logic
at all.

It does not surprise me that you do not understand it. But it does explai=

n it.

Those who turn out to be the refined silver and gold understand it well. =

Others

turn out to be the impurities driven out by the fire. Which are you?

The gold, silver, and impurities do not choose.
Therefore it's a bad analogy. The Bible is full
of bad analogies.

If you're the gold and silver, it's better to be
dross! (See the article referred to in my
previous reponse to you.)

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

Matthew Johnson

2008-06-28 15:38:35 UTC

In article <34X8k.117$***@trndny05>, ***@go.com says...

[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
So martyrdom proves NOTHING.

Correction: martyrdom per se proves little, but Christian martyrdom proves much
more.

[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
The gold, silver, and impurities do not choose.
Therefore it's a bad analogy.

That is a non sequitur. Analgies do not run on all fours, as Aristotle said.

Post by j***@go.com
The Bible is full
of bad analogies.

No, it has the best analogies. You just don't like what they say, so you search
desperately for ways to criticize them.

[snip]

--
------------------------------
Subducat se sibi ut haereat Deo
Quidquid boni habet tribuat illi a quo factus est
(Sanctus Aurelius Augustinus, Ser. 96)

Bob Crowley

2008-06-28 15:38:35 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
If He wants people to love Him, one would
think He would have the sense to be lovable.

And He is lovable. We know this because so many have loved Him to the poi=

nt of

giving their lives for Him.

I question whether "love" is the true word.
"Masochistic submission" is likelier.
Another way to look at it is that giving one's
life for a cause doesn't necessarily imply that
it's a good cause. I've just been reading a
history of Russian revolutionaries prior to the
Bolsheviks, many of whom were executed
for their actions on behalf of the revolution.
That doesn't mean they were wise to do
what they did, or that what they did was
beneficial to anyone -- just as the actions
of those who sacrificed their lives for their
belief in God doesn't imply that either their
lives or their deaths did any good. Remember
that a number of Muslims have sacrificed their
lives -- usually taking others in the process --
for their belief in Allah and what they consider
(erroneously in the view even of many Muslims,
but none the less passionately) to be the will
of Allah; their sacrifice does not imply the
goodness or truth of either their belief or
their actions (although I have suggested
that the actions of those who did exactly
this on 9/11 were to America just the same
as the barbarians God brought against
ancient Israel, and for the same reasons).
So martyrdom proves NOTHING.

Post by Matthew Johnson
The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold;
but the LORD trieth the hearts.
(Pro 17:3 JPS)

This verse does not in the least explain why God
makes us choose! =A0I don't understand your logic
at all.

It does not surprise me that you do not understand it. But it does explai=

n it.

Those who turn out to be the refined silver and gold understand it well. =

Others

turn out to be the impurities driven out by the fire. Which are you?

The gold, silver, and impurities do not choose.
Therefore it's a bad analogy. The Bible is full
of bad analogies.
If you're the gold and silver, it's better to be
dross! (See the article referred to in my
previous reponse to you.)
-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

A lot of people have died for their beliefs down the centuries,
regardless of what their beliefs were. I suppose the fanatics of the
Nazi SS come to mind - they were cruel and immoral in the way they
treated people, but were by the same token quite prepared to fight to
the death for what they believed. There were a lot of communists who
died for what they believed.

Simply dying for something one believes in doesn't prove it's true -
it merely proves the person's dedication to their belief.

In a chapter on "Forms of the Implicit Love of God", Simone Weil wrote
the following (she was probably writing during World War II, when
suffering was everywhere) -

"Since the commandment 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God' is laid upon
us so imperatively, it is to be inferred that the love in question is
not only the love which a soul can give or refuse when God comes in
person to take the hand of his future bride, but also a love preceding
this visit, for a permanent obligation is implied.

This previous love cannot have God for its object, since God is not
present to the soul and has never yet been so. It must then have
another object. Yet it is destined to become the love of God. We can
call it the indirect or implicit love of God.......

The implicit love of God can only have three immediate objects, the
only three things here below in which God is really though secretly
present. These are religious ceremonies, the beauty of the world and
our neighbour. Accordingly there are three loves ...."

If you read Christ's words, one finds that in regard to religious
ceremonies, He was found in the Temple at age 12 and his first
recorded sermon was in a synagogue. He instituted the eucharist via
the Last Supper. He sometimes mentioned the beauty of the world -
the birds, the lilies. And he definitely mentioned our neighbour.

And of course there's friendship, which is a form of affection.

She goes on to say about evil ...

"The great enigma of human life is not suffering but affliction. It
is not surprising that the innocent are killed, tortured, driven from
their country, made destitute or reduced to slavery, imprisoned in
camps or cells, since there are criminals to perform such actions. It
is not surprising either that disease is the cause of long sufferings,
since nature is at the mercy of the blind play of mechanical
necessities. But it is surprising that God should have given
affliction the power to seize the very souls of the innocent and to
take possession of them as their sovereign lord. At the very best, he
who is branded by affliction will only keep half his soul.....

The true God is the God we think of as almighty, but as not exercising
his power everywhere, for he is only found in the heavens or in secret
here below......

The spectacle of this world is another, more certain proof. Pure
goodness is not anywhere to be found in it. Either God is not
almighty, or he is not absolutely good, or else he does not command
everywhere where he has the power to do so.

Thus the existence of evil here below, far from disproving the reality
of God is the very thing which reveals him in his truth...."

Bear in mind Simone Weil (French Jew) was writing from a quasi
Catholic position, so she had a pre-emptive view of God. The point
however is that suffering does not disprove the existence of God, nor
does it prove He's a sadist. He refrains from commanding in all
positions, and thus evil is allowed a certain amount of latitude.
Quite a lot of latitude sometimes.

j***@go.com

2008-07-08 02:01:25 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
So martyrdom proves NOTHING.

Correction: martyrdom per se proves little, but Christian martyrdom prove=

s much

more.

Only to those who believe _a priori_ that Christian
martyrdom is special. If one does not do that,
it proves nothing. You seem to be falling into
the fallacy of assuming your conclusion.

You, being Orthodox, probably know about the
Old Believers in Czarist Russia. In the 17th Century
the Church made some reforms (I gather they were
at the behest of the government); those who did not
go along with the changes were willing to suffer
imprisonment and even death over the question
of whether to cross oneself with two fingers (the
old way) or three (the new). That is Christian
martyrdom that to a sensible outsider looks
absolutely silly.

[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
The Bible is full
of bad analogies.

No, it has the =A0best analogies. You just don't like what they say, so y=

ou search

desperately for ways to criticize them.

Another one is the potter analogy. Just as
the gold and silver don't feel, neither does
the clay; but humans do, so again it's a bad
analogy. You just don't dare see that. Your
faith is apparently not in God, but in words.
That is called idolatry.

I think I ought to repost that article of mine
of mine addressed principally to you which
you seem to have missed. You'll probably
find it offensive instead of the way you ought
to find it (thought-provoking), since I, among
other things, "dis" some of your favorite authors.
If you're interested, and with the moderator's
permission, I'll repost it.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

j***@go.com

2008-07-08 02:01:26 UTC

On Jun 28, 8:38=A0am, Bob Crowley <***@acenet.net.au> wrote:
[snip most]

[quoting Simone Weil:]

The spectacle of this world is another, more certain proof. =A0Pure
goodness is not anywhere to be found in it. =A0Either God is not
almighty, or he is not absolutely good, or else he does not command
everywhere where he has the power to do so.

If God does not command where He can, and therefore
chooses to let evil go on and hurt people, and therefore
gives His implicit support to evil, the third case reduces
to the second, that He is not absolutely good.

I find Nietzsche's description of his sufferings and his
handling thereof (e.g., in his odd autobiography,
_Ecce Homo_) much more helpful than any Christian
theodicy; as I've said before, theodicy (such as that
of Weil's which you quoted) is always unconvincing.
Indeed, I find Nietzsche's writings in general more
bracing and healthful than Christian writings.
I would not go so far as to say of *all* Christians
what Nietzsche wrote -- that he felt the need to
wash his hands after contact with religious people --
but I can see his point. I have gradually come to
feel freer and healthier since I left Christianity than
I ever did while I was a Christian; perhaps I might
still have gotten some of the insights I have gotten
had I remained a Christian, but I believe having the
latitude to be secular has really been helpful.
(Indeed, Harvey Cox in his classic [1965] book
_The Secular City_ suggested that secularization --
the disappearance of Christianity from its total
influence over every aspect of society -- is a
realization of the Kingdom of God.)

Ernest Renan, who wrote a controversial
_Life of Jesus_ in the 1800s, imagined Christ
saying to him, "You must leave Me if you would
be My disciple." Even Voltaire, who regarding
the Church famously said "Ecrasez l'infame!"
(Crush the infamous thing!), prayed to God,
"I am not a Christian but that is to love You
better." Perhaps I am in the same line as those
two Frenchmen, despite having very little French
ancestry....

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

Bob Crowley

2008-07-14 04:11:10 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
[snip most]
[quoting Simone Weil:]

I fail to see where He gives implicit support to evil by simply not
commanding everywhere where he can. To command everywhere where He
can is to entirely remover our freedom of choice. We'd have as much
choice as the Honda Robot, no matter how cleverly designed.

To use a hackneyed example, a parent lets go of his or her children in
the HOPE that they'll make right decisions, but they make well make
very bad decisions. But it's their choice. That doesn't mean the
parent supports the drug dealer who enslaves them, or the siren who
allures them into a destructive relationship. But it's the parents
will that the risk be taken.

To say that He Himself is not absolutely good is not logical. His own
behaviour is absolutely good. But by the very fact He restricts
Himself, He therefore allows room for what the Catholic Church calls
the "Mystery of Iniquity". Clearly the same rule applies to the
spiritual world as well, for rebellion was permitted even there.

We keep forgetting however that He has promised to punish such
behaviour. There is a day of reckoning. He's given us the freedom,
but we're all going to answer for what we've done with it.

Post by j***@go.com
I find Nietzsche's description of his sufferings and his
handling thereof (e.g., in his odd autobiography,
_Ecce Homo_) much more helpful than any Christian
theodicy; as I've said before, theodicy (such as that
of Weil's which you quoted) is always unconvincing.
Indeed, I find Nietzsche's writings in general more
bracing and healthful than Christian writings.
I would not go so far as to say of *all* Christians
what Nietzsche wrote -- that he felt the need to
wash his hands after contact with religious people --
but I can see his point. I have gradually come to
feel freer and healthier since I left Christianity than
I ever did while I was a Christian; perhaps I might
still have gotten some of the insights I have gotten
had I remained a Christian, but I believe having the
latitude to be secular has really been helpful.
(Indeed, Harvey Cox in his classic [1965] book
_The Secular City_ suggested that secularization --
the disappearance of Christianity from its total
influence over every aspect of society -- is a
realization of the Kingdom of God.)

Bonhoeffer wrote of a world coming of age. After 2000 years I suppose
God might have hoped the laity would be sufficiently christianised
that Man would make moral choices.

It doesn't seem that Man is making good moral choices, but we're
certainly far more aware of what might be called "Ethics". It's a
field of tertiary study these days.

In short perhaps God wants the sheep to start making their own right
choices and stop leaving all the responsibility to the shepherds.

Post by j***@go.com
Ernest Renan, who wrote a controversial
_Life of Jesus_ in the 1800s, imagined Christ
saying to him, "You must leave Me if you would
be My disciple." Even Voltaire, who regarding
the Church famously said "Ecrasez l'infame!"
(Crush the infamous thing!), prayed to God,
"I am not a Christian but that is to love You
better." Perhaps I am in the same line as those
two Frenchmen, despite having very little French
ancestry....
-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

Well, I suppose with the ascension, Christ in a sense left the
apostles. He said as much - "If I do not go, I cannot send the Holy
Spiriit."

They had to assume the role of leadership that He had formerly taken
on. He was with them still spiritually, but that's not quite the same
thing as having your trusted compatriot walking right by your physical
side.

He might be expecting you to stand on your own two feet as a
Christian, rather than complaining all the time.

Matthew Johnson

2008-07-15 03:09:41 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
[snip most]
[quoting Simone Weil:]

This has the deceptive appearance of a valid syllogism with true premises, but
it it false. It simply does not follow that the third case reduces to the
second.

How could that be "implicit support to evil", when His own example on the Cross
shows how He uses it not to 'support', but to defeat evil?

And yes, He really does use His permissive will to defeat evil, making some good
out of it, as Augustine explained so well in the Enchiridion.

You should have read the Enchiridion instead of Nietzshe.

--
------------------------------
Subducat se sibi ut haereat Deo
Quidquid boni habet tribuat illi a quo factus est
(Sanctus Aurelius Augustinus, Ser. 96)

j***@go.com

2008-07-21 02:57:00 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
If God does not command where He can, and therefore
chooses to let evil go on and hurt people, and therefore
gives His implicit support to evil, the third case reduces
to the second, that He is not absolutely good.

This has the deceptive appearance of a valid syllogism with true premises=

, but

it it false. It simply does not follow that the third case reduces to the
second.

I haven't seen you or anyone prove it false.
All you've done is adduce Christian assumptions,
neither logic nor facts.

How could that be "implicit support to evil", when His own example on the=

Cross

shows how He uses it not to 'support', but to defeat evil?

Jesus said something like "It must needs be that offenses
come" -- i.e., they're in the scheme of things *as God
wills it to be*. Then, most unfairly, He blames the man:
"But woe to him through whom they come." That's
just as bad as Paul's (in Romans 9) blaming the man
for misdeeds caused by God.

And yes, He really does use His permissive will to defeat evil, making so=

me good

out of it, as Augustine explained so well in the Enchiridion.
You should have read the Enchiridion instead of Nietzshe.

You should have read _Irrational Man_, by William
Barrett, his intelligent but readable 1958 introduction to
Existentialism, including its roots from many centuries
before its 20th-century full flowering. Consider this
passage from the chapter "Christian Sources":

The opposition or duality in Augustine can be
illustrated on one crucial point: the problem of evil.
On page after page of the _Confessions_ he reveals
to us with marvelous power the presence of the evil
and the negative in our existence; but as a formal
theologian, in his _Enchiridion_ (a manual of theology),
he has to make the negative disappear from that
existence or be sublimated into some larger harmony.
All evil, he tells us, is a lack of being, hence a form
of non-being; and since the negative is not real, as
positive being is, we are somehow to be consoled.
St. Augustine was here engaged in an effort at theodicy,
a justification of the goodness of God's cosmos....
[W]e are forced today to take the side of Augustine's
_Confessions_ against his _Enchiridion_ because we
recognize theodicy for what it is, the tragicomedy of
rationalism _in extremis_. Theodicy is an attempt to
deal with God as a metaphysical object, to reason
demonstratively about Him and His cosmos, to the
end that the perfection of both emerges as a rational
certainty. Behind this lies the human need to seek
security in a world where man feels homeless. But
reason cannot give that security; if it could, faith
would be neither necessary nor so difficult. In the
age-old struggle between the rational and the vital,
the modern revolt against theodicy (or, equally, the
modern recognition of its impossibility) is on the side
of the vital, since it alone holds firm to those
inexpugnable elements of our existence that
Augustine described in his _Confessions_, but then
as metaphysician attempted to think away.

Or, in simpler terms more relevant to our situation:
Theoretical writings *about* God seem convincing
only to those already convinced. I've said many
times that my rejection of God (based on His
actions, or inactions, which by all rational criteria
would have to be considered as rejection of me)
was initially visceral, not intellectual. It is, as you
have seen, not difficult to find intellectual grounds
to support that rejection, grounds which are
pellucidly clear, perfectly simple, but Christian
partisans either cannot or dare not recognize this,
and therefore must twist their thinking into pretzel
shapes in order not to recognize the awful truth.
I wrote before that those writers of yours who
explained away the plain sense of Isaiah 45:7
were by that act *lying*, and that the person
each most wanted to deceive was himself,
lest he discover that at heart he believed more
along the lines I've been expounding.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

j***@go.com

2008-07-27 23:57:01 UTC

Post by Bob Crowley
I fail to see where He gives implicit support to evil by simply not
commanding everywhere where he can. =A0To command everywhere
where He can is to entirely remove our freedom of choice.

God chooses that evil shall happen. He chooses evil.
According to you, He does so in order to avoid what
you consider a greater evil (depriving us of all freedom);
I'll grant you that. But there is no good choice in the
situation. How can a good God be responsible, as
CEO (one contributor to this group or a predecessor
years ago said that GOD stood for General Operations
Director), for such a setup, where good is impossible?

Post by Bob Crowley
To use a hackneyed example, a parent lets go of his or her children in
the HOPE that they'll make right decisions, but they make well make
very bad decisions. =A0But it's their choice. =A0That doesn't mean the
parent supports the drug dealer who enslaves them, or the siren who
allures them into a destructive relationship. =A0But it's the parents
will that the risk be taken.

The usual bad analogy. Parents are not omnipotent,
omniscient, omnipresent, and all that. And maybe I'd
have been ultimately healthier, psychologically, if I had
met such a siren. But that's a side issue.

I will admit to playing both sides. Using the
analogy of God as a Father who's also an
omnipotent CEO, I've expected Him to do what
a good businessman father might do for his son:
give him a job or at least point him toward where
he can for certain get a job and have a good life.
God has not done this and therefore has been
a worthless father from my perspective.
I became a Christian hoping for a Father who
was more loving than my own parents, and
I didn't get one. Even you don't describe one.

Post by Bob Crowley
To say that He Himself is not absolutely good is not logical. =A0His own
behaviour is absolutely good.

Only if you consider destruction, and creation of
suffering, as good. Ask the victims of the tsunami
a few years back, the recent Chinese earthquake,
the recent floods in the American heartland whether
God is good. (OK, the floods were partly due to
breaks in levees that humans didn't build well enough,
but they were mainly caused by the area getting way
too much rain.) I grant that in other fields some have
considered destruction to be good, as in economist
Joseph Schumpeter's phrase "creative destruction"
and revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin's idea that "the
passion for destruction is a creative passion"; but
those on the receiving end of this destruction would
disagree.

Christianity's trouble is that it's monotheistic, so
its God has to incorporate everything. As I (very
imperfectly and sketchily) understand Hinduism,
it has three major gods who are creator, sustainer
-- and destroyer; but the Christian God has to be
all three of these, so His behavior has to be destructive
as well as beneficial. Do you really wish to call that
good? Might it not be accurate to say that Christianity's
God is actually bigger than any other precisely because
He necessarily contains both good and evil as humans
understand them?

Post by Bob Crowley
=A0But by the very fact He restricts
Himself, He therefore allows room for what the Catholic Church calls
the "Mystery of Iniquity".

He allows room for the Church to befog
the issue with convenient language, to
try to keep the sheep from asking the
inconvenient questions. I ask them.

Post by Bob Crowley
We keep forgetting however that He has promised to punish such
behaviour. =A0There is a day of reckoning. =A0He's given us the freedom,
but we're all going to answer for what we've done with it.

Yes. That's why He Himself in the person of
Christ, if traditional Trinitarian doctrine be true,
had to go to the Cross -- to receive His own
punishment for His own evil behavior.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
In short perhaps God wants the sheep to start making their own right
choices and stop leaving all the responsibility to the shepherds.

What if we don't know what's right -- in other
words, what will work to produce good for us
and others? If we ask for guidance when we
really don't know what to do, and we receive
no guidance, this reflects ill on God.

[I wrote:]

Post by j***@go.com
Ernest Renan, who wrote a controversial
_Life of Jesus_ in the 1800s, imagined Christ
saying to him, "You must leave Me if you would
be My disciple." =A0Even Voltaire, who regarding
the Church famously said "Ecrasez l'infame!"
(Crush the infamous thing!), prayed to God,
"I am not a Christian but that is to love You
better." ...

Well, I suppose with the ascension, Christ in a sense
left the apostles.

That's different. The point Renan and Voltaire were
making is that one may need to leave Christianity
in order to find the truth and even the good.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
He might be expecting you to stand on your own two feet as a
Christian, rather than complaining all the time.

If I'm really out of my depth, I cannot stand on my
feet, but He evidently doesn't care about that.
He didn't keep His promise in Isaiah 43:2. If
I can't rely on His promises, then He's no good.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

AJA

2008-07-29 01:17:20 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
If I'm really out of my depth, I cannot stand on my
feet, but He evidently doesn't care about that.
He didn't keep His promise in Isaiah 43:2. If
I can't rely on His promises, then He's no good.

I've been reading you in this thread for awhile. You seem to have passed
through the waters and rivers; by your own telling you have been trough
fire, and you have not been overwhelmed or consumed. You are still
thinking, writing thousands of words, pouring out your anger at God, no? You
are very much alive in your anger, and very much connected with God even in
your great anger. You expected justice, like that handed down by a human
court. Someone said that often the source of our anger is that being human
we constantly want an appeal. Trouble is, there is no higher court to
appeal to than God. So now what? I keep waiting to hear from you the
answer to that question. Now what? Keep doing what you are doing? Or
change in some way?

Blessings,
Ann

Antares 531

2008-07-29 01:17:20 UTC

My interpretation of this is that God allowed evil to dominate the
mortal phase of our existence for the prime purpose of giving us means
for learning enough about evil to assure God that we would never ever
want to go back and explore it any further, once we have been granted
absolute sovereignty and immortality. A paucity of understanding of
the long-reaching effects of evil was what caused Satan to stumble. To
avoid this same kind of stumble by some or all of us, it is imperative
that we have a "hands-on learning" process during which we are to
learn, jointly and separately, enough about evil and rebellion to
satisfy our curiosity eternally. Gordon

d***@aol.com

2008-07-29 01:17:21 UTC

Post by Bob Crowley
I fail to see where He gives implicit support to evil by simply not
commanding everywhere where he can. =3DA0To command everywhere
where He can is to entirely remove our freedom of choice.

God chooses that evil shall happen. =A0He chooses evil.
According to you, He does so in order to avoid what
you consider a greater evil (depriving us of all freedom);
I'll grant you that. =A0But there is no good choice in the
situation. =A0How can a good God be responsible, as
CEO (one contributor to this group or a predecessor
years ago said that GOD stood for General Operations
Director), for such a setup, where good is impossible?

There is a difference between permitting evil to happen and choosing
or even wanting it to happen. There has been a good amount written on
the subject, I am not going to send you to some book because I hate
that myself. But thinking about it, it seems pretty evident to me that
if God wanted there to be creatures like us, and wanted us to freely
turn to Him, He also had to allow that we would turn away... that
would have consequences that had nothing to do with what He wished.

Post by Bob Crowley
To use a hackneyed example, a parent lets go of his or her children in
the HOPE that they'll make right decisions, but they make well make
very bad decisions. =3DA0But it's their choice. =3DA0That doesn't mean =

the

Post by Bob Crowley
parent supports the drug dealer who enslaves them, or the siren who
allures them into a destructive relationship. =3DA0But it's the parents
will that the risk be taken.

The usual bad analogy. =A0Parents are not omnipotent,
omniscient, omnipresent, and all that. =A0And maybe I'd
have been ultimately healthier, psychologically, if I had
met such a siren. =A0But that's a side issue.

Yet God is a modest God, and does not exercise His power in every
circumstance, He evidently does not want automatons.

I will admit to playing both sides. =A0Using the
analogy of God as a Father who's also an
omnipotent CEO, I've expected Him to do what
give him a job or at least point him toward where
he can for certain get a job and have a good life.
God has not done this and therefore has been
a worthless father from my perspective.
I became a Christian hoping for a Father who
was more loving than my own parents, and
I didn't get one. =A0Even you don't describe one.

You had one to begin with, as did the prodigal son, what you think is
best for you may not be at all, as Garth Brooks noted, sometimes the
greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. Feeding your desires, here, in
this world, may be very costly in the end. There are people in harder
circumstances than yours, that still choose to be happy or at least to
trust God.

Post by Bob Crowley
To say that He Himself is not absolutely good is not logical. =3DA0His =

own

Post by Bob Crowley
behaviour is absolutely good.

Only if you consider destruction, and creation of
suffering, as good. =A0Ask the victims of the tsunami
a few years back, the recent Chinese earthquake,
the recent floods in the American heartland whether
God is good. =A0(OK, the floods were partly due to
breaks in levees that humans didn't build well enough,
but they were mainly caused by the area getting way
too much rain.)

Have you considered the consequences if the transfer of heat and
atmospheric energy were not allowed? There are consequences to
everything God does. Ever watch "Bruce Almighty?"

As to the suffering, we can only get a narrow picture of what is
happening, Job was told as much. I don't know why there is suffering
either, I know it causes God pain too, and I know He values us for
being faithful through it.

=A0I grant that in other fields some have

considered destruction to be good, as in economist
Joseph Schumpeter's phrase "creative destruction"
and revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin's idea that "the
passion for destruction is a creative passion"; but
those on the receiving end of this destruction would
disagree.
Christianity's trouble is that it's monotheistic, so
its God has to incorporate everything. =A0As I (very
imperfectly and sketchily) understand Hinduism,
it has three major gods who are creator, sustainer
-- and destroyer; but the Christian God has to be
all three of these, so His behavior has to be destructive
as well as beneficial. =A0Do you really wish to call that
good?

I don't really think we are in a position to judge what God is doing.
You assume He has been destructive but that may simply be the
consequence of necessary forces and/or our own choices. You seem to
think it would be a good thing if we lived here forever with no pain
or discomfort, but this is not our home, we are strangers in a strange
land and we cannot really see how things aught to be.

BTW just wondering what you consider to be the standard for good?

=A0Might it not be accurate to say that Christianity's

God is actually bigger than any other precisely because
He necessarily contains both good and evil as humans
understand them?

No, humans are really not good at defining either good or evil. We
just don't have enough information.

Post by Bob Crowley
=3DA0But by the very fact He restricts
Himself, He therefore allows room for what the Catholic Church calls
the "Mystery of Iniquity".

He allows room for the Church to befog
the issue with convenient language, to
try to keep the sheep from asking the
inconvenient questions. =A0I ask them.

And if the answers are not ones you like, if they require you to do
something that perhaps you don't want to do, or endure something you
don't want to endure, then they are necessarily the wrong answer.

Post by Bob Crowley
We keep forgetting however that He has promised to punish such
behaviour. =3DA0There is a day of reckoning. =3DA0He's given us the fre=

edom,

Post by Bob Crowley
but we're all going to answer for what we've done with it.

Yes. =A0That's why He Himself in the person of
Christ, if traditional Trinitarian doctrine be true,
had to go to the Cross -- to receive His own
punishment for His own evil behavior.

And if the alternative was that none of us could be allowed to exist,
that would be good? You think God is responsible for our choices?

Post by Bob Crowley
In short perhaps God wants the sheep to start making their own right
choices and stop leaving all the responsibility to the shepherds.

What if we don't know what's right -- in other
words, what will work to produce good for us
and others? =A0If we ask for guidance when we
really don't know what to do, and we receive
no guidance, this reflects ill on God.

Ahh, you never learned to read, or perhaps to listen? Maybe the
guidance was just guidence you didn't like.

[I wrote:]

Post by j***@go.com
Ernest Renan, who wrote a controversial
_Life of Jesus_ in the 1800s, imagined Christ
saying to him, "You must leave Me if you would
be My disciple." =3DA0Even Voltaire, who regarding
the Church famously said "Ecrasez l'infame!"
(Crush the infamous thing!), prayed to God,
"I am not a Christian but that is to love You
better." ...

If I'm really out of my depth, I cannot stand on my
feet, but He evidently doesn't care about that.
He didn't keep His promise in Isaiah 43:2. =A0If
I can't rely on His promises, then He's no good.

You really think your predicament worse than any other? Evidently you
can still write and see, there are those that can't yet still trust
God. He is there, and will heal what really needs to be healed, but
not always in the way you want, and not always on our schedule.

Daryl

Matthew Johnson

2008-07-29 01:17:21 UTC

God chooses that evil shall happen. He chooses evil.

Yet again, as if you had not already made this mistake far too often
already, you are far too confident of your conclusions.

Post by j***@go.com
According to you, He does so in order to avoid what
you consider a greater evil (depriving us of all freedom);
I'll grant you that.

An overdue concession.

Post by j***@go.com
But there is no good choice in the situation.

Yet again, as if you had not already made this mistake far too often
already, you are far too confident of your conclusions.

Post by j***@go.com
How can a good God be responsible, as CEO (one contributor to this
group or a predecessor years ago said that GOD stood for General
Operations Director), for such a setup, where good is impossible?

And yet again, as if you had not already made this mistake far too
often already, you are far too confident of your conclusions. You
should not be so confident that "good is impossible".

Not to mention: you should not assume that God runs things the same
way a CEO does. This too is fatal to your reasoning.

Post by Bob Crowley
To use a hackneyed example, a parent lets go of his or her children
in the HOPE that they'll make right decisions, but they make well
make very bad decisions. =A0But it's their choice. =A0That doesn't
mean the parent supports the drug dealer who enslaves them, or the
siren who allures them into a destructive relationship. But it's
the parents will that the risk be taken.

The usual bad analogy.

So you say. But you sa so on insufficient grounds. Very insufficient.

Post by j***@go.com
Parents are not omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and all that.

True. And this is the difficulty of using this example. But it is not
a fatal difficulty.

Perhaps you would have noticed this, if you did not presumptuously
dismiss what the great theologian and philosopher Augustine had to say
on the topic.

Post by j***@go.com
And maybe I'd have been ultimately healthier, psychologically, if I
had met such a siren.

No, you would not be. That is why God did not present you with such a
'siren'. There are few things we can be certain about in theodicy, but
this is one of them.

Post by j***@go.com
But that's a side issue.

But is it really? If it really is, then why did you bring it up at
all?

Post by j***@go.com
I will admit to playing both sides.

Another overdue concession.

Post by j***@go.com
Using the analogy of God as a Father who's also an omnipotent CEO,
I've expected Him to do what a good businessman father might do for
his son: give him a job or at least point him toward where he can for
certain get a job and have a good life. God has not done this and
therefore has been a worthless father from my perspective.

Now if only you could figure out how flawed your 'perspective' is;)

Post by j***@go.com
I became a Christian hoping for a Father who was more loving than my
own parents, and I didn't get one. Even you don't describe one.

Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the real problem here is what
you think it a "loving parent"?

Post by Bob Crowley
To say that He Himself is not absolutely good is not logical. His
own behaviour is absolutely good.

Only if you consider destruction, and creation of
suffering, as good.

Your 'rebuttal' suffers badly from the shell game you are playing with
words. Crowley said "absolutely good", but you are saying merely
'good'. Why are you playing this shell game?

Post by j***@go.com
Ask the victims of the tsunami a few years back, the recent Chinese
earthquake, the recent floods in the American heartland whether God
is good.

I can't speak for them all, but I do know that many, MANY of the
'victims' of the American floods will insist that yes, God is
good. Why are you so quick to decide that they are wrong, and those
who join you in blashpeming are right?

Post by j***@go.com
(OK, the floods were partly due to breaks in levees that humans
didn't build well enough, but they were mainly caused by the area
getting way too much rain.) I grant that in other fields some have
considered destruction to be good, as in economist Joseph
Schumpeter's phrase "creative destruction" and revolutionary Mikhail
Bakunin's idea that "the passion for destruction is a creative
passion"; but those on the receiving end of this destruction would
disagree.

Bakunin was a notorious nihilist. Are you expressing your deep
sympathy for the bankrupt 'philosophy' of Nihilism by citing Bakunin?

Considering how you cited Nietsche earlier, this would not be much of
a surprise.

Post by j***@go.com
Christianity's trouble is that it's monotheistic, so
its God has to incorporate everything.

Once more, you are using biased language to support your conclusion,
sweeping under the rug the fallacies you use to support it. It is not
a 'trouble' at all.

Post by j***@go.com
As I (veryimperfectly and sketchily) understand Hinduism, it has
three major gods who are creator, sustainer -- and destroyer; but the
Christian God has to be all three of these,

Wrong.

Post by j***@go.com
so His behavior has to be destructive as well as beneficial. Do you
really wish to call that good? Might it not be accurate to say that
Christianity's God is actually bigger than any other precisely
because He necessarily contains both good and evil as humans
understand them?

Post by Bob Crowley
But by the very fact He restricts Himself, He therefore allows room
for what the Catholic Church calls the "Mystery of Iniquity".

He allows room for the Church to befog the issue with convenient
language, to try to keep the sheep from asking the inconvenient
questions. I ask them.

But you 'ask' questions put in biased language, and when you are
already far too sure of the answers. Such dishonest behavior
guarantees that you exclude yourself from the sheep and place yourself
with the wolves.

Post by Bob Crowley
We keep forgetting however that He has promised to punish such
behaviour. There is a day of reckoning. He's given us the freedom,
but we're all going to answer for what we've done with it.

Yes.

You -say- 'yes', but then you immediately follow this with an example
of your own insistence on the behavior you -say- you agreed is to be
punished.

Post by j***@go.com
That's why He Himself in the person of Christ, if traditional
Trinitarian doctrine be true, had to go to the Cross -- to receive
His own punishment for His own evil behavior.
[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
In short perhaps God wants the sheep to start making their own
right choices and stop leaving all the responsibility to the
shepherds.

What if we don't know what's right -- in other words, what will work
to produce good for us and others? If we ask for guidance when we
really don't know what to do, and we receive no guidance, this
reflects ill on God.
[I wrote:]

Ernest Renan, who wrote a controversial _Life of Jesus_ in the
1800s, imagined Christ saying to him, "You must leave Me if you
would be My disciple." =A0Even Voltaire, who regarding the Church
famously said "Ecrasez l'infame!" (Crush the infamous thing!),
prayed to God, "I am not a Christian but that is to love You
better." ...

Well, I suppose with the ascension, Christ in a sense
left the apostles.

That's different. The point Renan and Voltaire were making is that
one may need to leave Christianity in order to find the truth and
even the good.

But the 'point' both of them made is wrong. Fatally wrong.

Post by j***@go.com
[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
He might be expecting you to stand on your own two feet as a
Christian, rather than complaining all the time.

If I'm really out of my depth, I cannot stand on my feet, but He
evidently doesn't care about that. He didn't keep His promise in
Isaiah 43:2.
If I can't rely on His promises, then He's no good.

But if He makes the promise, and you accuse Him of breaking it, when
He has not broken it, THEN who is "no good"?

Unfortunately, you really did accuse Him falsely here. Why, have you
ever even read the passage? This promise was to the nation of Israel
as a whole, not to you. So you really are making a false accusation
when you accuse Him of breaking a promise to you based on this
passage.

Besides: if you read Isaiah in context, you would realize: there were
still a number of individual Israelis who suffered far worse than you
ever did, who heard these lines of Isaiah, and believed. They did not
jump to conclusions as you did, thinking that the promise was broken.

Nor is this unique to that time: we see the same in King David's
suffering persecution from Saul. He expressed great sorrow at the
persecution, even fear for his life, but he always believe God was
helping him, as he expressed in the Psalms.

Why should we believe you and not them? We should not. Even you should
not believe you instead of them;)

--
------------------------------
Subducat se sibi ut haereat Deo
Quidquid boni habet tribuat illi a quo factus est
(Sanctus Aurelius Augustinus, Ser. 96)

j***@go.com

2008-08-01 00:50:40 UTC

Post by AJA
I've been reading you in this thread for awhile.

Good. I was afraid it was just Crowley and Johnson.

Post by AJA
=A0You seem to have passed
through the waters and rivers; by your own telling you have been trough
fire, and you have not been overwhelmed or consumed.

Oh, but I have. If a person actually *discovers*
(as I have) that he is a sinner, and there is no
*real-life* indication of God's forgiveness and help,
that's pretty overwhelming.

Post by AJA
[snip]. =A0You expected justice, like that handed down
by a human court.

No, actually I expected mercy; I expected God
to keep His promise of being merciful to a sinner.
I haven't seen that.

Post by AJA
[snip] So now what? =A0I keep waiting to hear from you the
answer to that question. =A0Now what? =A0Keep doing what you are doing? =

=A0Or

Post by AJA
change in some way?

So? What would you recommend? If God
won't or can't help, why bother? If God is not
for us (as the evidence indicates), what can
we do?

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

AJA

2008-08-04 02:05:30 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
Oh, but I have. If a person actually *discovers*
(as I have) that he is a sinner, and there is no
*real-life* indication of God's forgiveness and help,
that's pretty overwhelming.

What was your sin? How did you discover you were a sinner?
Not one of us is righteous. What 'real life' indication did you expect?
Pretty overwhelming is not _consumed_.

Post by AJA
[snip]. =A0You expected justice, like that handed down
by a human court.

No, actually I expected mercy; I expected God
to keep His promise of being merciful to a sinner.
I haven't seen that.

Are you in prison? As San Quentin? I believe you're suffering, but I just
don't get it.
Is this suffering of your own making in some way? What have you done to
seek
help?

Post by AJA
[snip] So now what? =A0I keep waiting to hear from you the
answer to that question. =A0Now what? =A0Keep doing what you are doing? =

=A0Or

Post by AJA
change in some way?

So? What would you recommend? If God
won't or can't help, why bother? If God is not
for us (as the evidence indicates), what can
we do?

What is the evidence? Depression? Bi-polar disease?
Do you have friends? Do you go out?
I don't know what to recommend. It's like hearing a broken record playing
and
no one making a move to shut it off. You go over and over the same ground,
here. And if what you write here is evidence, you're stuck on the same one
theme in your life. I don't know why I started to follow this thread. Some
draw of the horrifying?
One recommendation: Problems such as you have described can never be solved
in a newsgroup. I recommend face to face help, as with a spiritual
counselor.

(How ironic is the title of this thread.)

All I can do is pray for you.
Blessings,
Ann

j***@go.com

2008-08-04 02:05:31 UTC

Post by Matthew Johnson
Yet again, as if you had not already made this mistake far too often
already, you are far too confident of your conclusions.

Ummm.... I'm not the only one. Look in the mirror.

[snip]

Post by Matthew Johnson
Not to mention: you should not assume that God runs things the same
way a CEO does.

Of course; God is much *more* powerful than
a CEO. "This too is fatal to your reasoning."

[snip]

Post by Matthew Johnson
Perhaps you would have noticed this, if you did not presumptuously
dismiss what the great theologian and philosopher Augustine had to say
on the topic.

I've noticed that more than once you have
presumptuously dismissed my replies to you,
not even deigning to reply to articles on which
I have spent some time (e.g., the recent one
with the long, thoughtful quote from Barrett's
_Irrational Man_ about Augustine's Confessions
and Enchiridion). How can you reconcile this
discourtesy with Christianity?

[snip]

Post by Matthew Johnson
[Crowley] >> To say that He Himself is not absolutely good is not logical=

. His

Post by Bob Crowley
own behaviour is absolutely good.

[Sargent] >Only if you consider destruction, and creation of

Post by j***@go.com
suffering, as good.

Your 'rebuttal' suffers badly from the shell game you are playing with
words. Crowley said "absolutely good", but you are saying merely
'good'. Why are you playing this shell game?

You're the one playing with words here, like
a pettifogging scribe/lawyer. I was replying
to Crowley's thought without any idea of
making an over-subtle distinction. Your
unrepentantly jaundiced attitude toward me
caused you to read into my words something
that was not there. Do you really wish to
practice injustice in that fashion?

[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
I grant that in other fields some have
considered destruction to be good, as in economist Joseph
Schumpeter's phrase "creative destruction" and revolutionary Mikhail
Bakunin's idea that "the passion for destruction is a creative
passion"; but those on the receiving end of this destruction would
disagree.

Bakunin was a notorious nihilist. Are you expressing your deep
sympathy for the bankrupt 'philosophy' of Nihilism by citing Bakunin?

1) Isn't Nihilism more in accord with real life? Isn't it
what a good many people in the world actually live by,
even if they're not aware of it?
2) Note that I am saying that both Bakunin and God
favor destruction. Are you saying that God is a nihilist?

[snip]

Wrong.

Really? Don't just assert, prove. The Christian
God is a God of wrath and destruction too, as
even a superficial reading of the New Testament
makes abundantly clear (with what relish Jesus
talked about throwing people into "outer darkness"!).

[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
If I'm really out of my depth, I cannot stand on my feet, but He
evidently doesn't care about that. =A0He didn't keep His promise in
Isaiah 43:2. If I can't rely on His promises, then He's no good.

But if He makes the promise, and you accuse Him of breaking it, when
He has not broken it, THEN who is "no good"?

Do you have any proof He hasn't? No, just
an assumption, as usual.

Post by Matthew Johnson
Unfortunately, you really did accuse Him falsely here. Why, have you
ever even read the passage? This promise was to the nation of Israel
as a whole, not to you. So you really are making a false accusation
when you accuse Him of breaking a promise to you based on this
passage.

Hmmm.... A very interesting conclusion indeed
can be drawn from what you write here. Are you
saying that much of the Bible should be thrown
out, since it applies only to the nation of Israel?
This would shock a great many Christians who
consider that every verse is relevant to Christians;
one of their most popular ones to quote is Jeremiah
29:11 ("For I know the thoughts that I think toward
you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of
evil, to give you a future and a hope." NKJV), but
you'd throw that out too, since it was addressed
to the Jewish exiles in Babylon.

Actually, you're probably right about both passages;
they don't apply to us.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

2008-08-04 02:05:32 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
So? What would you recommend? If God
won't or can't help, why bother? If God is not
for us (as the evidence indicates), what can
we do?
-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

B - terrible things happening to me have taught me much more about
love and life and spirit than any good could at the same rate of
speed. Evil and illusions have honed my blade ...made me stronger. We
are in school. This life is a school period. WE are all of God and in
God..there is no separation. When we do good..that is God. When we do
not so good..that is our ego getting in the way (fear of separation).
If a mother gives her child clay and the child chose to fashion
something that could kill....would we say that the mother killed?
surely the child is of the mother but is not the child choosing the
killing? So we all experience and learn for God...this is my belief.
Maybe you can't see the "help" that God is giving you constantly. If I
would hold someone so that he/she would never fall down and get
hurt...they would cease to learn how to walk. We can't keep someone
from their lessons. We cripple those by holding them back. Can you
imagine that you chose this life you have to learn? that having God
intercede every time you come up against a huge perceived obstacle
you learn nothing? It may sound harsh..but for me we choose every
thing that happens to us in life so that we learn and enlighten. Those
that have the toughest lives are learning at an excelerated speed and
they are to be applauded and respected for doing so. We should all be
patting ourselves on the back for picking this dimension to learn in
for it's the closest to hell that we shall ever know. This is my
opinion. May we continue to learn. Love Brenda

Matthew Johnson

2008-08-05 03:09:15 UTC

Post by Matthew Johnson
Yet again, as if you had not already made this mistake far too
often already, you are far too confident of your conclusions.

Ummm.... I'm not the only one. Look in the mirror.

That is a total failure as a retort.

Post by j***@go.com
[snip]

Post by Matthew Johnson
Not to mention: you should not assume that God runs things the same
way a CEO does.

Of course; God is much *more* powerful than a CEO. "This too is
fatal to your reasoning."

Not to -my- reasoning. You can't even quote my own words back at me
without confusing your own argument.

Post by j***@go.com
[snip]

Post by Matthew Johnson
Perhaps you would have noticed this, if you did not presumptuously
dismiss what the great theologian and philosopher Augustine had to
say on the topic.

I've noticed that more than once you have presumptuously dismissed my
replies to you,

Nothing 'presumptuous' about it. But since Augustine was such a great,
seminal thinker in both philosophy and theology, your dismissal of him
really is presumptuous and very much so.

Post by j***@go.com
not even deigning to reply to articles on which I have spent some
time (e.g., the recent one with the long, thoughtful quote from
Barrett's _Irrational Man_ about Augustine's Confessions and
Enchiridion). How can you reconcile this discourtesy with
Christianity?

It isn't 'discourtesy'. I never asked you to spend so much time
writing nonsense. Come to think of it, nobody did.

In fact, you look pretty silly making this complaint. That would be
like the authors of spam complaining about all the people who delete
their spam w/o reading it.

Oh, and BTW: there was nothing 'thoughtful' about your quote from
Barrett. Nor would there have been anything thoughtful about
encouraging you to believe that there was.

Post by j***@go.com
[snip]

Post by Matthew Johnson
[Crowley] >> To say that He Himself is not absolutely good is not logical=

. His

Post by Bob Crowley
own behaviour is absolutely good.

[Sargent] >Only if you consider destruction, and creation of

Post by j***@go.com
suffering, as good.

Your 'rebuttal' suffers badly from the shell game you are playing with
words. Crowley said "absolutely good", but you are saying merely
'good'. Why are you playing this shell game?

You're the one playing with words here, like a pettifogging
scribe/lawyer.

No, that is your offense. You made a big change by dropping
'absolutely' in "absolutely good". It is you who is playing the
pettifogging shell game, not me.

Post by j***@go.com
I was replying to Crowley's thought without any idea of making an
over-subtle distinction.

No, you were not. You were replying to a different thought, while
playing this shell game to fool the reader into thinking you were
replying to the same thought.

Post by j***@go.com
Your unrepentantly jaundiced

Oh, now -this- is funny. You are the -king- of 'jaundice' in this NG
lately. And yet you dream of making this accusation stick on me? Give
it up, you have already lost that battle.

Post by j***@go.com
attitude toward me caused you to read into my words something that
was not there. Do you really wish to practice injustice in that
fashion?

Again, you fling at me the accusation that fits you best. You have
displaying nothing short of the most audacious injustice, accusing God
of evil. Yet now -you- are playing the pettifogging games, trying to
make it look like you have a right to take offense, when it is you who
are so unjust.

Post by j***@go.com
[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
I grant that in other fields some have considered destruction to
be good, as in economist Joseph Schumpeter's phrase "creative
destruction" and revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin's idea that "the
passion for destruction is a creative passion"; but those on the
receiving end of this destruction would disagree.

Bakunin was a notorious nihilist. Are you expressing your deep
sympathy for the bankrupt 'philosophy' of Nihilism by citing Bakunin?

1) Isn't Nihilism more in accord with real life?

Obviously Nihilists believe this. I can't imagine why anyone else
should. Or are you admiting to being a Nihilist?

Post by j***@go.com
Isn't it what a good many people in the world actually live by, even
if they're not aware of it?

That is no excuse for imitating their error.

Post by j***@go.com
2) Note that I am saying that both Bakunin and God favor destruction.
Are you saying that God is a nihilist?

Of course not. That you would try to accuse me of such blasphemy is a
perfect example of your injustice.

Post by j***@go.com
[snip]

Wrong.

Really? Don't just assert, prove.

Practice what you preach: you have never proved your vicious
accusations against God, nor your equally vicious Nihilism.

Besides: I did give proof, you snipped it without reply -- as you have
been doing for quite some time now.

Post by j***@go.com
The Christian God is a God of wrath and destruction too, as even a
superficial reading of the New Testament makes abundantly clear (with
what relish Jesus talked about throwing people into "outer
darkness"!).

Ah, but you just admitted the problem with this 'reading'. It is
SUPERFICIAL. And you are relying on your evil imagination when you
claim Jesus talked about that with 'relish'.

Are you really so immature that you haven't figured it out yet?
Superficial readings always fall short, and are very often simply
wrong.

Your superficial reading is no exception. It is very wrong.

Post by j***@go.com
[snip]

But if He makes the promise, and you accuse Him of breaking it, when
He has not broken it, THEN who is "no good"?

Do you have any proof He hasn't? No, just an assumption, as usual.

Now ths is a perfect example of your blindness and hypocrisy. The
burden of proof -- if such a proof were even possible -- is squarely
on you. YOU are the one who is claiming that He broke His promise.

Besides: yet again, I did give the proof, you even agree with it
below. So you are again being dishonest when you claim I had only an
assumption.

When will you give up your vanity and face reality? You cannot
understand Christianity or Scripture or Theodicy as long as you
blindfold yourself with such dishonesty. For both philosophy and
theology require of the thinker that he think honestly. But this is
what you repeatedly refuse to do.

Hmmm.... A very interesting conclusion indeed can be drawn from what
you write here. Are you saying that much of the Bible should be
thrown out, since it applies only to the nation of Israel?

This is yet more dishonest reasoning on your part. By NO means did I
say any such thing.

Post by j***@go.com
This would shock a great many Christians who
consider that every verse is relevant to Christians;

But a promise made to Israel long ago can still have relevance to
Christians today, WITHOUT being a promise to us today.

Your failure to account for this possibility is too big a failure to
be explained any other way: you are being dishonest in your thoughts
and words.

Post by j***@go.com
one of their most popular ones to quote is Jeremiah 29:11 ("For I
know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of
peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." NKJV), but
you'd throw that out too, since it was addressed to the Jewish exiles
in Babylon.

Not at all. On the contrary: they are an important example of the very
truth about theodicy that you are so desperate to trample on and
ignore: that even such evils as the Babylonian Captivity are directed
by God's Providence for our own benefit.

In fact, it is really ironic how you miss this. Have you ever read
the rest of the chapter? Have you noticed how he is talking about
people who, like you, were misled by listening to false teaching
about God's Providence? In their case, it was the people who listened
to false prophets (Jer 29:8).

And even more important, look at how much patience He is demanding:
they have to wait 70 years to return, which means most of them will
not be alive when the nation finally returns. Your patience failed you
long before this point.

Post by j***@go.com
Actually, you're probably right about both passages;he
they don't apply to us.

Wrong again: they do apply to us, just not so directly. They are
examples of the theodicy you are hiding from, the theodicy you are
bound and determined to misunderstand, all to rationalize your evil
grumbling against God's Providence.

j***@go.com

2008-08-20 23:32:52 UTC

I had been meditating a lengthy response to
Matthew Johnson, but I will cut this down to
the bare bones, since I intend to cut off this
fruitless discussion (though I may respond
to others in this thread and this newsgroup).

Post by j***@go.com
I was replying to Crowley's thought without any idea of making an
over-subtle distinction.

No, you were not. You were replying to a different thought, while
playing this shell game to fool the reader into thinking you were
replying to the same thought.

Talk about presumptuous: You actually believe that
you know better than I do what I thought and meant.
This is proof that you are out of touch with reality,
and therefore no further attention need be paid to
anything you write.

Further proof is your evident belief (exemplified in
this exchange) that you are incapable of sin and
error. To put this in terms you'll accept, I remind
you that when Paul said "Christ came into the world
to save sinners, of whom I am chief" (I Timothy 1:15),
or when he twice wrote in Romans 7 words to the
effect of "I don't do the good I want to do; but the evil
I don't want to do, that's what I do", he used the
present tense, implying that this was not a problem
that disappeared when he became a Christian, but
rather one that continued throughout his ministry.
Paul trusted Christ to help him with this problem.
You don't, to judge by your insistence on your own
perfection; you prefer the paradigm of Romans 10:3.

Post by j***@go.com
Your unrepentantly jaundiced

Oh, now -this- is funny.

Funny? You have no idea of the comic (and pathetic)
effect *you* produce by your apparent total unawareness
of how you come across: an unreconstructed Pharisee.

Post by Matthew Johnson
You are the -king- of 'jaundice' in this NG
lately. And yet you dream of making this accusation stick on me? Give
it up, you have already lost that battle.

Come now. It is quite obvious that you, like
far too many conservative "Christians", harbor
unremitting personal hostility toward me and
anyone else who disagrees with you. This is
not at all in keeping with the spirit of Christ's
exhortation to "Love your enemies" (though I
don't consider myself your enemy) and "Bless
those who curse you" (though I don't curse you),
or even with Ben Franklin's wry but wise advice,
"Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults"
(I certainly do that!).

Meanwhile, I'm trying to help you, buddy!
I'm trying to crack your obdurate heart open
to, if not grace (whose existence is debatable),
at least conviction, a recognition of what you
really are. How ironic that I, who don't
believe it, end up by preaching the Gospel
to you.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

Matthew Johnson

2008-08-25 03:09:39 UTC

I had been meditating a lengthy response to Matthew Johnson, but I
will cut this down to the bare bones, since I intend to cut off this
fruitless discussion (though I may respond to others in this thread
and this newsgroup).

You say it is 'fruitless', yet here you are continuing it! What is
worse, you are continuing precisely the behavior that makes it
'fruitless'.

Post by j***@go.com
I was replying to Crowley's thought without any idea of making an
over-subtle distinction.

No, you were not. You were replying to a different thought, while
playing this shell game to fool the reader into thinking you were
replying to the same thought.

Talk about presumptuous: You actually believe that
you know better than I do what I thought and meant.

No, I simply do not believe you when you claim that your thought was
what you say it is. You are being dishonest. Not just with me, but
with the whole NG, and even with yourself. That is why I called your
accomplishment a "shell game".

This is proof that you are out of touch with reality, and therefore
no further attention need be paid to anything you write.

No, if I believed you, that would prove that I am "out of touch with
reality".

Further proof is your evident belief (exemplified in this exchange)
that you are incapable of sin and error.

I neither said nor implied this. It must be your indisciplined and
overly fertile imagination working overtime that came up with this
one.

To put this in terms you'll accept, I remind you that when Paul said
"Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief" (I
Timothy 1:15),

So when will you admit that you sin every time you attribute evil to
God and blame Him for all your suffering?

[snip]

Funny? You have no idea of the comic (and pathetic) effect *you*
produce by your apparent total unawareness of how you come across: an
unreconstructed Pharisee.

The perceptive reader will have already noticed that it is YOU who
imitates the hypocritical pharisee, not me. You do this when you dream
(below) of being able to preach the Gospel -- even as you deny the God
of the Gospel.

Post by Matthew Johnson
You are the -king- of 'jaundice' in this NG lately. And yet you
dream of making this accusation stick on me? Give it up, you have
already lost that battle.

[snip]

Meanwhile, I'm trying to help you, buddy!

Newsflash: I don't believe you. I don't believe you even know the
difference between 'help' and 'hurt', since you have wandered in your
own personal darkness for far too long. That has blinded you to the
difference between help and harm.

Your "personal darkness", of course, is your habit of blaming God for
your suffering -- and even for evil in general.

How ironic that I, who don't believe it, end up by preaching the
Gospel to you.

This is the dream I referred to above. It is a vain dream indeed to
dream of "preaching the Gospel", when you yourself do not believe it.

j***@go.com

2008-09-16 01:21:04 UTC

I'll skip most of Johnson's reply for reasons already
outlined in the article to which he's replying (namely,
that it's hopeless to try to reason with him) --

Post by Matthew Johnson
No, I simply do not believe you when you claim that your thought was
what you say it is. You are being dishonest.

In the old days, this was called giving someone
the Lie Direct, and might well lead to a duel.
Similarly, in the American Old West, calling someone
a liar (as you have done here) was a good way to get
into a shootout. This is yet another reason why
it's impossible to hold a serious discussion with you;
you're not polite (and therefore not serious) enough.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

----

[I agree that calling someone a liar is inappropriate in this gruoup.
I apologize for not catching it. However if you're going to get into
a duel, please don't do it here. I hate blood on the floor. --clh]

Matthew Johnson

2008-09-17 01:12:01 UTC

Post by j***@go.com
I'll skip most of Johnson's reply for reasons already
outlined in the article to which he's replying (namely,
that it's hopeless to try to reason with him) --

IOW, you will skip over most of it for no good reason. I wish I could say I was
surprised.

[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
[I agree that calling someone a liar is inappropriate in this gruoup.

Unfortunately, your moderation policy has a blatant double-standard here: it is
OK by your policy to publish outrageous lies, but not OK to call them out on it.

Post by j***@go.com
I apologize for not catching it.

Apologizing for the minor thing while being silent about the major makes the
'apology' worthless.

However if you're going to get into

Post by j***@go.com
a duel, please don't do it here. I hate blood on the floor. --clh]

----

[You have every freedom to tell us what is wrong with other postings.
The problem is personal attack. --clh]

j***@go.com

2008-09-22 00:15:25 UTC

IOW, you will skip over most of it for no good reason. I wish I could say=

I was

surprised.

Just as you (to no one's surprise) skipped over the part
of my earlier article where I called you out on your
manifest hostility, quite contrary to Christ's teachings,
toward all who disagree with you. Truth hurts, huh?

There's a quote attributed to Nietzsche (possibly
apocryphally): "If Christians want me to believe in
their Redeemer, they'd better start looking a little
more redeemed." He might have had you in mind.
As I wrote in another thread (so far with no followups),
you are an example of your faith; when you proclaim
your beliefs, you are implicitly saying, "Believe this
and you will become like me." I would not want to
become like you; I was not unlike you once, and
I've spent a lot of years growing out of it.

Unfortunately, your moderation policy has a blatant double-standard here:=

it is

OK by your policy to publish outrageous lies, but not OK to call them out=

on it.

I called you out on your -- well, not quite outrageous
lie, but persistent misinterpretation of what I wrote;
and the moderator allowed it. I'd like to say that was
a deliberate misinterpretation (another word for a lie),
but I can't be sure that's the case; in fact I suspect it
was just a knee-jerk reaction driven by your uncontrolled
hostility, not a consciously chosen lie.

The stuff I write in general is not lies from my
perspective; it's based on real-life experience
(and my interpretation thereof in the most
straightforward manner). You are free to think
me in error, and to try to correct this in a
spirit of love; but you have no justification
whatever for calling me a liar.

Let me finish here by pointing out some
Scriptural principles I have tried (not always
in so many words) to bring to your attention
and get you to follow (since you claim to be
a Christian), but to no avail:

I ask you to examine yourself (I Cor. 11:28 --
admittedly that's in the context of the Lord's
Supper, but it's still an applicable general
principle -- and II Cor. 13:5). I point out
facts that might guide your examination
to conclusions you won't like. To all
appearances, you don't look at yourself.
You don't see what is excruciatingly
obvious to *everyone* else. To borrow
Jesus's words in John 9:41, if you were blind
you would have no sin, but since you claim
to see, your sin remains. You're almost
like a hero in a stage tragedy, who doesn't
know what the audience knows about what
will lead him to destruction. You ought to
arouse pity, not scorn; but I still can't help
laughing at you.

I suggest that you humble yourself even to the
small extent of admitting that you were wrong
about your manufactured interpretation of what I
wrote (as well as to the greater extent of admitting
and repenting of your hatred for those who disagree
with you). You will not do this, flying in the face of
Jesus's repeated warning that one who exalts himself
(and boy, do you do that) will be humbled, but one
who humbles himself (have you ever done that?)
will be exalted.

I remind you that "Pride goeth before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall" (Prov. 16:18).
You display these undesirable qualities copiously,
and I'm just passing on the warning. How and when
you'll be humbled, take a fall, or meet destruction
I don't know; it won't be my doing; I've got more
important things to do. As for me, I've already
taken a fall in my life, so trying to bounce this
verse back at me would be a waste of your time.

And finally, please consider how you exemplify
the first half of the following sentence (from
I Cor. 8:1) horrendously, and the second half
not at all: "Knowledge puffs up, but love
builds up." I don't think I've ever encountered
anyone more puffed up with knowledge than
you, not even myself in my long-vanished
teenage days.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

Matthew Johnson

2008-09-26 03:10:21 UTC

Post by Matthew Johnson
IOW, you will skip over most of it for no good reason. I wish I
could say I was surprised.

I guess the truth hurts you, since what I skipped over was off topic
for this thread, but what YOU skipped over was not.

since I intend to cut off this fruitless discussion (though I may
respond to others in this thread and this newsgroup).

Yet here you are still responding. So I guess the truth that hurts is
that you do not keep your word. Or is "the truth that hurts" the fact
that it is your own obstinacy and arroagance that has made this
discussion 'fruitless'?
You cannot prove anything by saying what someone might have said --
unless, of course, you wish to prove your own incompetence and/or
unwillingness for true debate.

"If Christians want me to believe in their Redeemer, they'd better
start looking a little more redeemed." He might have had you in
mind.

This is a perfect example. It is not only off-topic, it is speculative
and ad hominem. It is the "fallacy of circumstantial ad hominem".

As I wrote in another thread (so far with no followups),
you are an example of your faith; when you proclaim
your beliefs, you are implicitly saying, "Believe this
and you will become like me." I would not want to
become like you; I was not unlike you once, and
I've spent a lot of years growing out of it.

More speculative, off-topic ad hominem. And you say you are not like me?

Post by Matthew Johnson
Unfortunately, your moderation policy has a blatant double-standard
here: it is OK by your policy to publish outrageous lies, but not
OK to call them out on it.

I called you out on your -- well, not quite outrageous
lie, but persistent misinterpretation of what I wrote;

Only in your wild imagination did you do this.

and the moderator allowed it.

His mistake.

I'd like to say that was a deliberate misinterpretation (another word
for a lie), but I can't be sure that's the case; in fact I suspect it
was just a knee-jerk reaction driven by your uncontrolled hostility,
not a consciously chosen lie.

And this is a personal attack, which is precisely what the moderator
SAYS he objects to. It is indeed a personal attack to claim that I am
"driven by uncrontrolled hostility".

The stuff I write in general is not lies from my perspective;

Your 'perspective' is irrelevant.

it's
based on real-life experience

No, it is not. It is based on your own perversely biased
mis-interpretation of that "real-life experience".

(and my interpretation thereof in the most straightforward manner).
You are free to think me in error, and to try to correct this in a
spirit of love; but you have no justification whatever for calling me
a liar.

First of all, I never did this. Try Googling for the word 'liar'. So
now who is the liar? Let's see: I never used the word in any thread
with you in it, but you are saying I did. That makes you the liar.

Let me finish here by pointing out some Scriptural principles I have
tried (not always in so many words) to bring to your attention and
get you to follow (since you claim to be a Christian), but to no

Get yourself to follow them before you try to get others to. You
haven't even begun.

[snip]

I point out facts that might guide your examination to conclusions
you won't like.

And when I do the same to you, you respond with hurt, angry false
accusations, such as when you claim I called you 'liar'.

To all appearances, you don't look at yourself.

But these 'appearances' are in WHOSE eyes? Why should we trust YOUR
judgment? Answer: we should not.

You don't see what is excruciatingly obvious to *everyone* else.

Newsflash: what is "excruciatingly obvious to *everyone* else" is that
you are embittered against God, all because God would not do what YOU
wanted Him to do; you could not submit yourself to God's
will. Instead, you hate Him for not bending to your will. What
insanity!

[snip]

j***@go.com

2008-10-01 00:39:42 UTC

s...

I guess the truth hurts you, since what I skipped over was off topic
for this thread, but what YOU skipped over was not.

What you skipped was directly relevant to
the question of "Acceptance and growth".
You insist on your own perfection --
perfection of both knowledge and
righteousness. (I have never once seen
you admit in this newsgroup that you
were wrong, even when you clearly were.)
The only reason I can think of to insist on
your own perfection is that you're AFRAID,
afraid that if you're not perfect, you'll be
nothing, you'll be hopeless, lost, helpless,
cast away, damned. In other words, you
really have no more faith in the grace of
God than I do. I know that feeling of fear;
"I feel your pain"; I suspect I understand
you better than you understand yourself,
and certainly better than you understand me.

since I intend to cut off this fruitless discussion (though I may
respond to others in this thread and this newsgroup).

Yet here you are still responding. So I guess the truth that hurts is
that you do not keep your word.

The truth (which doesn't hurt) is a) that it is
much too tempting to respond to you, b)
that it is needful that you hear what I have
to say. I should not be surprised that you
don't; this is in the same spirit as I Cor 14:21
("with the lips of foreigners I will speak to this
people, but they won't hear me"); we use the
same language, but being that I am no longer
a Christian, you consider me a foreigner.
Besides, most people of ancient Israel and
Judah did not listen to prophets who spoke
their language; a friend of mine named me
a prophet 25 years ago; I think she was right,
but I suffer the same fate as most prophets.

Post by Matthew Johnson
Or is "the truth that hurts" the fact
that it is your own obstinacy and arroagance that has made this
discussion 'fruitless'?

No, yours. Do you not know how
arrogant you are?

I called you out on your -- well, not quite outrageous
lie, but persistent misinterpretation of what I wrote;

Only in your wild imagination did you do this.

Check it out in Google's archives. I did
what I said here.

[snip]

And this is a personal attack, which is precisely what the moderator
SAYS he objects to. It is indeed a personal attack to claim that I am
"driven by uncrontrolled hostility".

If the moderator allows it, maybe it's because
it's an obvious fact, not a personal attack.
As I said, I'm trying to make you see yourself
for what you are, a most un-Christlike person,
so that you may repent; but to no avail.

The stuff I write in general is not lies from my perspective;

Your 'perspective' is irrelevant.

Nonsense. The only way I could be a liar
is if I were doing it deliberately. I'm not.

[snip]

You are free to think me in error, and to try to correct this in a
spirit of love; but you have no justification whatever for calling me
a liar.

You're right when you say "I never did this": you
never corrected me in a spirit of love. You did not,
technically, call me a liar; but you did say I was
being dishonest, which means the same thing.
You're pettifogging about words again, while I
go by your meaning, which was plain.

Get yourself to follow them before you try to get others to. You
haven't even begun.

I no longer claim to be a Christian. You do.
Therefore if you don't follow them (as you
so often don't), it vitiates your witness.
And your claim that I haven't even begun
to follow my own advice (a claim you could
have no way of knowing the truth or falsity
of, since you don't know me except through
my writings) is false; I do many of the things
I suggested you do.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

---

[Folks, let's back off the personal discussions to something
relevant to the charter. --clh]

j***@go.com

2008-09-15 00:51:33 UTC