A very indulgent culture

Hi everyone, I hope you had a good Christmas.  I want to share an idea that might seem obviously wrong to a lot of people, but actually might be just what some people need. And the idea I have is that I think churches should just go ahead and start selling communion.  Probably for about a dollar until it makes people feel too bad to do it any more.  Some will read this as satire, but it is really the opposite extreme based on perceptions from a difficult path through experiencing people being mad and mean for no reason almost all the time.   I just think for a lot of people who don't know better, "communion for sale" would be close enough to accepting God's free gift of eternal life, and for the people who do know better, the disrespect of it would be the irresistible grace they need to be saved from further crimes against the religious people they so publicly have despised. Do I need to go on and on about theology and church history? Probably not. I am tired of trying to figure out what time period this really is, with people always wanting to play holocaust with real lives, or accuse everyone of being part of the confederacy if they call out northerners on their hypocrisy. And I think for churches who really are guilty of manipulating people and creating weird economies where everyone acts like salvation is free but then wants you to pay them back with the misguided admiration that they are really after, then selling communion could help them, too, by being the more honest expression of their intentions.

Bible Study

you can understand what is in romans without reading it. basically people have different value systems but everyone has messed up based on what they know is right. but when paul says you are only held accountable for what you know, he refers to "the" law and not "a" law. but i think “the law” could also include science and be broader so it is one law. but our knowledge is partial anyway so if people want to view it all as different belief systems they can to some extent but everyone has violated their own belief system.

 

but the question is, what if people have a belief system that is all bad. well wouldnt violating that be like saving faith. like they are bad but made a mistake and were accidentally good one time. well people say being good one time isn’t faith. it is just a random act of failing at the destruction you wanted to cause. so that is the doctrine of total depravity. if there was something that seemed good after all then the person finds out how to make it a loss by their final rejection that is like an ingratitude so bad that it would cancel that inconsistent moment anyway. that is my guess about it though really i would suspect that the mistake to be good would catch everything else on fire, destroying the evil and leaving only a saved soul who loves much because they have been forgiven much.

Things that make me feel cross

Ok everyone I have been reflecting on my faith experiences and remembering finally understanding the main thing I was tripping over about forgiveness of sins.  Basically in my mind when I thought of Jesus on the cross, I could only see the crucifixion and not the atonement.  So I could believe that the crucifixion happened for my sake, but I did not see the atonement that was also happening on the cross, which had to do with Jesus pleasing God on our behalf. The thing that was happening more than Jesus dying for me was that Jesus was pleasing God for me. So I could even take the cross out of it for a while and think okay, I was supposed to feed five thousand people and I only fed 287. But Jesus fed 5000 so things will be fine. God will say how many people did you feed. I will say 287. God will say, that is fine.  

I can see how people could then say, no, it was also his death. he had to die and it was both his life and death. And i agree, but I think it is a trap for people to accidentally put their faith and trust in Roman execution. That is really a problem that I think is more common than people know, and to try to live by it causes a crucifixion experience instead of a happy life pleasing God. But in heaven all of it will probably eventually turn to life and atonement for anyone who asks or believes at any time.

Combined Blog Posts

The first idea is something I figured out which is that if people want to be humble, one really good strategy instead of trying to feel bad about yourself is just to pay attention to what is true all the time.  You tell the truth and look for the truth and try to see things as they are and understand stuff.  It helps people be humble because the fact is that we have no reason to be arrogant.  So if instead of just trying not to be arrogant, you take an approach where you get to know people and love everyone, the humility happens more automatically.  And you actually sometimes end up feeling more positive about yourself in an acceptable way.

Okay the second idea is about the verse that says God hates dishonest scales.  It has to do with bad business practices which is something that abounds in our society. And the thing I have to say is if dishonest scales are bad, just think about how God feels about unfair algorithms and child trafficking. He is not happy with that. It is weird to me that some people don’t care if God likes them.

Ok the third thing has to do with mindfulness and Jesus being a carpenter.  He was making creations of wood and that is very temporary and present moment oriented. I think that is important.  But then he became a healer doing miracles in his community.  And the cross itself which was made out of wood took on some severe permanence in many ways.  But what does it all mean in terms of eternity?  Jesus gave people eternal life which to me is even further down the spectrum from rock and wood and more into a zone of water and spirit. But it also says Jesus is the rock where people can hide. So that is interesting.

Finally I will get into mental illness territory and say one more idea which has to do with the trinitarian nature of nature and important elements of oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon.  To me those are the main three things. Hydrogen and Oxygen can be water or fire, and Carbon is the main element of life which is combustable as coal or can be like diamond material.  And the Bible talks about a crystal throne in heaven.  Well what if that crystal is carbon, and it refers to the human nature of Jesus Christ. So the crystal throne might refer to God’s heart which is happening all the time everywhere so we don’t wait until the book of revelation to be loved. Welcome to Kook Church Central, based on the love of God from the life of Jesus.

some links to some links

Hi everyone, there is a page I could not include in my recent book and I wanted to post it here. It is basically a list of links that have to do with the religious traditions I associate myself with:

here is a good sermon by martin luther king jr: https://www.ucc.org/sacred-conversation_dr-kings-last-sermon

mlk on youtube “love your enemies” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=522wcqUlS0Y

poem by Robert Burns: http://www.robertburns.org/works/97.shtml

Emily Dickinson poem: https://www.poetryoutloud.org/poem/much-madness-is-divinest-sense-620/

Longmobile poem: http://shelsilverstein.yolasite.com/longmobile.php

facebook share during covid: https://www.facebook.com/ChristChurchGvl/videos/518997702093891/UzpfSTgyNTU5NzY5NjoxMDE1ODUxMDcyOTc1NzY5Nw/

CS Lewis ww2 radio talks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_Christianity

book- Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott https://www.amazon.com/Traveling-Mercies-Some-Thoughts-Faith/dp/0385496095

st francis prayer: https://www.loyolapress.com/catholic-resources/prayer/traditional-catholic-prayers/saints-prayers/peace-prayer-of-saint-francis/

examples of holy fools: https://orthodoxwiki.org/Fool-for-Christ

a book about unorthodox theology: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9371/9371-h/9371-h.htm

marco rubio on twitter

revelation 17:14 They will wage war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will triumph over them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings—and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers.

new chart prayer

recent prayer

 Dear God, Please saturate the earth and sky with flip trip prayer chair crowd start wirings to supply a million prize package sequence start lines that also signal the eternal power station generators throughout fifty different time and space designation ideas to charge supply assignment program management coordination variators and begin a future reference loading coding operation simultaneous to a thousand other add on blessing pattern bestowal theme systems accumulating and diversifying according to any possible eligibility factor that creates a growing list of community based, story line inclusive, population finding exponential surprise attribution groups to receive eternal shipments for any requested person, society, or category affiliation. Please provide each access point or thousand choice option a million supply kits, nature boost resource fountains, never-ending intangible wave graph continuations with editable levels for fifteen thousand topics or factors to determine extension process and target noun over-interpreted list inclusion with fading or alternating boundaries and key access extra field other-stores to be gained and regained at any time according to hints and hunches from people or animals or comforting leadership authorized to allow and deliver joy fest hope explosive ration caravans into a modifiable generational historical accommodation bestowal.  Please identify all possible need based, surprise based, merit oriented, and related potential captain group networks and zap an invisible framework that records and amplifies all possible chain route life care with support potential and reversible problem chains that re-activate the seemingly skipped space block game supply droppers that can appear in any realm layer upon request or inkling plus reward component through type or consideration friends. Thank you for helping us and caring about people and animals and please restore any lost ground with eternal surprises for whole cultures needing hope and love and food.

hospital prayer

Favor

This blog post is just about something I am wondering.  Jesus told people to not favor people who dress in fine clothes. But recently I was helping out at a food place and some Muslim ladies dressed as princesses were in line. And I felt in my heart that it was okay to treat them kind of special based on their appearance. So here is the concept I wonder about.  If someone takes the trouble to dress like a princess, and other people don’t, then wouldn’t the wrong favoritism be more a matter of not recognizing the effort and specialness of the people who did something extra? Do you guys see what I am saying? I am saying if you really treat people the same, as Jesus said, then it would be right to acknowledge whatever greatness seems extra. And I think what I am saying is right, even though that command should not be compromised, even if it is taken literally, which might not even be the most extreme interpretation. Like you can say clothes have to do with anything in life we adorn ourselves with such as opportunities, associations, personalities, and even friends and family, which ultimately of course should not be seen as some kind of clothes or possessions.  But what I am saying is this concept is very deep and could be part of why sometimes justice seems easier said than done.

sunday post

     This meme to me is like going to church. I could just stare at it on a Sunday morning and be thankful for the imaginary animals all around me.  And in heaven at the taverns it will be so fun. I am going to be a teetotaler for no reason in heaven and sell soda to minors.

     I thought about reading Les Miserables during quarantine and decided not to but did notice something interesting about the first part of the book, which was the straightforward portrayal of a good bishop.  All of the drama in the book hinges on the bishop’s good deed of forgiving a thief and adding silver candlesticks to what was already stolen.  This symbolic act of kindness inspires goodness that becomes epic and lifelong.  In fact, it takes a thousand pages to tell the story, which I really just don’t feel like reading.  The musical will do the trick for me, I think, and I hope everyone gets to listen that that music and read the lyrics in a way similar that I was taught in high school. To make it a whole English unit, a class could read the story Babette’s Feast and bring food, which is what another teacher demonstrated in grad school later on.

    Anyway I thought I would mention the rare generosity of the bishop, which isn’t as rare as it is to find a positive Christian authority within literature now.  I guess there are reasons for what gets told and appreciated in books, and some of my favorites, like I Know This Much is True, and The Poisonwood Bible, actually are pretty representative of the modern negative views of some Christian religion.  But I think everyone will eventually get past that phase, and it will be interesting to see what resurrections happen with Christian characters in books.  I personally think there is a literary frontier to mix evangelical foibles with hyper-detailed modern humorous tell-all-possibly-even-inappropriate stuff that I somehow haven’t been able to bring myself to write yet. My feeling that some of it is beyond me could be some good news of future team work and a lot of writers on the horizon thinking of the stuff that can only be theirs to tell.

Soul Food

Well everyone, I don’t usually write about race. I prefer to express my appreciation for people in different ways.  But I think I will post this post about something I have been thinking about during quarantine days which is the idea of “soul food.” I am eating some peach ice cream right now and have been noticing that as I cook what is yummy and easiest to stock up on turns out to be food that is very southern. A lot of it is in the category that gets associated with African American “soul food” like cornbread, biscuits, grits, macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, collards, shrimp, and creative variations on rice and beans. Besides noticing that it is some of the yummiest food I have ever eaten, it also makes me think about something I have organized my prayer life around which is the idea that a lot of things in life are a food of some sort, and I am usually just asking God to feed everyone all kinds of happy comforts when I pray.  I am talking about things like education, attention, exercise, love, talent, and almost anything else that can make life worthwhile.  And to me, one way of describing that would be as “soul food.”  But that term has already been used as a label for actual food.  And I just find that to be very profound and theological in a certain way.  It suggests kind of a spiritual integrity where what feeds the soul is actual food. Maybe people already knew this as the term became commonly used, but I think it really matches a lot of Jesus’s teaching in many ways.  Even though Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone, he also spent a lot of his time and miracles on feeding multitudes, and he explicitly told people to feed the hungry.  And as tempting as it is sometimes for people to aspire to provide things that are less tangible like teaching, philosophy, and a lot of religion, going ahead and zapping people with some real food is just funnily what could end up not only being one of the highest services but could also end up being the most lofty intellectual concept that is also fulfilled completely in physical reality as the most honest food and life there is.

Reminiscent

Ok everyone, I am sure people thought I would not say something like this, but I am at least going to mention the spiritual topic of plagues as cures. It doesn’t have to be about coronavirus and of course I am sad about people dying. 50 MTA subway workers have died so far, and cops, health workers, and all kinds of people who I of course would not want to ever have died.  But our world has a lot of problems right now worse than death, even if people refuse to ever acknowledge that fact while abusers get away with more and more child abuse, torture, and exploitation of workers essentially on the level of lifelong slavery. As good things come from people abruptly facing mortality and having to adapt to sudden lifestyle changes, some of the bad business people are more obvious, the government problems can’t be denied, and a calling to young people to act on what they have learned is on the table.  And I will not pretend that I don’t hope that God is intervening with some of our society’s ills while we genuinely fight this terrible pandemic that retains its tragic nature even while catalyzing some needed recognition of what is right and wrong. It does not need to be erroneously seen as a blessing of any sort, but God’s wielding of all the bad things in life to get rid of the worse things that people did not fight as well is something I will not ignore and will not keep to myself in case other people can look back in history and see that God has cared all along and always intervened faithfully in ways that outsmarted all of our worst foes and villains.

The Whole World Times

Well hi everyone. I think what I am about to say in this blog post is really good sermon material and probably one of my best ideas to share.  It has to do with Presbyterian theology and a verse in the bible that says “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Well I will say that the both the verse itself and Presbyterian theology have both been a source of stress for me at various times because of my mental illness.  The Presybterian ideas have to do with everything already being in God’s control or already decided, which is some of the best news but can be distorted in your mind to make you think there is no hope for some people’s salvation.  And the verse about not being ashamed of the gospel has driven me crazy personally because I have continual awkward scrupulosity about sharing my faith. People like me imagine that verse sometimes and feel pressure to share things at the wrong times to some people who have often made things more awkward on purpose.  But if you combine those two ideas, the theology of God being in charge of all reality, and the idea of not being ashamed of the gospel, you can realize a tool that can provide some relief to some of our worst angst.  And the idea is simply that because God is good and all loving and in control, then all of reality is the gospel.  It is good news, and an antidote to shame.  You can’t zoom in and get illogical about it and say that tragedies are good, and that is not what I am saying at all.  But I am saying that because all things work out for our benefit, then for some of the problems that we feel really bad about, and truly ashamed even, then we can say instead, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” I am talking about not being ashamed of having said the wrong thing, done the wrong thing, being video-taped making rude gestures or being mad at people, failing at a job, embarrassing health problems, a messy apartment, and even our worst sins that maybe we kind of should feel bad about sometimes.  But instead we have full permission to view it all as part of God’s plan and we can tell ourselves, “I am not ashamed of having all the belongings in my apartment ruined by mice and bugs, because it has the power to save.  I am not ashamed of accidentally hitting myself in a zoom meeting, because it is part of the whole gospel of Jesus Christ. Do you guys see this trick I am saying? I really think it could work for some of us who are so tormented by our problems that seem to not have a purpose but actually do.

One of my friends rose from the dead.

    Today is Easter. Jesus died and some of his friends went to check on the grave and someone said “He is not here, he is risen.”  Well that is great news because he had said that he would rise again in three days if people destroyed him. I do not know if some people still had hope about that or not after the bad cross incident but I am sure they were very excited when his prediction or promise turned out to be true. I am going to be excited when I get to heaven and have a stone cottage with a bookstore basement that attaches to the underground lazy river network. 

     I don’t think it will be awkward when people meet Jesus in heaven. I pray in ways that I would never talk to someone face to face, like just a steady stream of requests, but I think that is how it was meant to be and that is the way that I get to experience having God as a boss for some of my most real professions in life, which have to do with prayer and life that can’t be taken away by other jobs and responsibilities. I think that in that way, God is an artist using psychological distance to create the relational effects he wants, and I should be happy for my amount of psychiatric problems that do impact my ability to feel love and happiness from God or anyone else. And what have I learned from it all? Well it is what I would tell people who just arrived at the scene. I would just tell anyone to ask God for 45 million dollars, blessings, or jackpots every day, either as a one-time request for the future or to ask him for it each day. And if there is something that seems better, then ask for that instead. And you will find out that the greatest thing was being able to ask at all.

Different Kinds of Trusts

All my life I have heard people talk about trusting God, and how it is his main wish and expectation for us. It is most often the advice offered to help with anxiety, and I am currently learning to have more faith and less fear.  However, as someone who has had a lot of chronic burdens and ongoing threats of ruin, and as a person who has also had to manage my own bad tendencies with an exhausting vigilance, I just want to stick up for all the people who suffer with stress and say that doing what you know you are supposed to while feeling extreme stress and danger is also a way of trusting God.  Obedience anyway and doing what God wants while feeling scared to death is not only a form of trust but possibly the most important kind that yields the most long term peace.  Social work mindfulness practices often affect me in the same way as a lot of psychological encouragement to trust God, and those perspectives do sometimes provide temporary relief that can increase endurance for long-term challenges. But those difficulties that are in fact inherently stressful can also be where the real trust is. When there are things like keeping medical insurance, or for some people, working at their callings without medical insurance, or people taking care of kids who need a lot of supervision and monitoring, or life with tough budget requirements, or managing health conditions, or whatever else those anxiety provoking things are, the courage to go ahead and face it with literal responsibility is also a form of dependence on God. Anxiety is a difficult challenge of recent times, and people we will meet in heaven may not have had even a taste of that kind of stress in their lives. They had their own struggles, and I can really see a different world as I schedule out my groceries for the coronoravirus quarantine and think about old times. But I just want to say for anyone else who has sometimes felt pressure to just let it all go and leave all the responsibilities behind in the name of letting God handle everything, that going ahead and carrying a heavy cross, or really any cross or burden, can be the extreme trust that goes unrecognized as simple faith.

Limiting the News

Well everyone, I have been thinking a lot about religion as it relates to the virus outbreak, and the risk of it all has made me think about what counts as the gospel of Jesus Christ and what exactly is promised to who.  It is one of the main things that has gotten confused and confusing in our times, and many people are very mad at any religious person at all because of the way a lot of us tried to convert people for credit, or turned what could have really been good news into a weird warning, like, “you’re going to hell if you don’t believe the same thing I learned at a church camp in middle school.” But in these scary times,  I must say that I think that it is nice that God’s love can be expressed as either something you don’t have to do anything at all to earn, or actually the opposite, which is that there is something you can do, and it is a simple prayer. It is nice in a crisis to have practical steps to take for safety and a sense of agency, and for the matter of eternal destination to be securable with a simple request to God for mercy and salvation is really a great provision that to me surpasses even the bomb shelters fully stocked with groceries and hoarded supplies being sold for five thousand dollars in a culture that cracks down on gouging for cleaning supplies but doesn’t care that almost all the real estate people gouge everyone for rent all year round. Anyway. I don’t need to go on a tangent but some people are going to go on quite a tangent all the way to hell if they think they are going to get away with what has happened in our country for the past 30 years of discrimination, abuse, and healthcare scams against sick people who chose the wrong epidemics to qualify for medical care and government aid. But anyway what was I saying. Ok I was saying there is a prayer that people can pray and a fountain of blood that has the antibodies needed for the worst problems in the world, which is the greed and evil behind all the bad behavior that has come to light in recent days, or unfortunately continues in ways unknown to many but always apparent to an all-knowing God. I meant for this post to be comforting but some people might be comforted by people not knowing what prayer to pray.

Quantity, Quality, and Quarflety

Yesterday, when I was thinking of quarantines and the expressions of consideration for others that can happen in situations that involve disease and health and contagion, I had a philosophical breakthrough about something I have been trying to figure out for a while.  Basically, for about ten years, I have wondered if there is a third Qu word that would complete a trio with quality and quantity.  Those are two things that are often measured when assessing the worth of something, or just measuring some aspect of it, and I have been thinking that there could be a third thing, and trying to figure out what it is.  And I haven’t been able to figure it out at all. Quantity and quality. I mean that is it. The essence and composition of something, or the amount of it.  But I think I figured out what quarflety is, and it could have to do with external value of the thing in question. It would have to do with how it is regarded or valued, so it would be an exterior source’s assessment of it.  The word “value” could be used and is already used sometimes to describe how much people care about something, but sometimes it is used more like the word quality and refers to something more like an objective worth that is not connected to subjective appreciation.  But I think that subjective appreciation, value, or regard could be that third thing, called quarflety, that creates a trio of definition for something that could be understood to have quantity, quality, and quarflety.

A good strategy for Bible reading

      There is something that I like to do when I read the Bible, which is to look for actual “good news” that is contained within verses and stories that come across as having a different function, like as a warning, or instructions, or even some kind of bad news. It is a fun and happy thing to discover a side to scary verses that makes you realize how much everything can be in our favor, even when it seems like we might get in trouble, or have our lives ruined by various problems.  To give a few examples, I might look at a verse like “You will give an account for every idle word,” which to me, one of the more extreme Judgement Day warnings.  But I think it could really be some of the best news, which is that God is going to let us tell our side of any story, explaining our every motive and reason behind things we have done as suffering people, possibly in a therapeutic court system filled with the love of Jesus Christ.  It can also be seen as a promise of a debriefing session where God will take all the time necessary to comfort us about things that either went wrong or that we did not understand, or to let us explain such contexts where people brought out the worst in us and only added to the sacrifices we made all along. It is good news after all.  Another verse like that to me could be the verse where God instructs us to say when we get a reward for our obedience on any level at any time, that we were just mere servants doing what was expected.  That seems strict, and to me, you could see this and think that you are not going to get much credit for a lot of work and faithfulness. But really, what it could mean is that the blessings of heaven are so great that we will not be able to help but say that anything right we ever did was truly the least that could be offered in comparison to the gain.  And would we really need to vigilantly keep that plan in mind as we live and die, to rehearse our speech and constantly brace ourselves for an encounter with a holy and almighty God?  I think that it is more likely for that to be the probable automatic reaction from the good heart in our soul that could only ever be provided by God and that will not fail to react in the right way.  

      Finally, one last verse that obviously is one of the scary verses is the verse “they will lie down in torment.” Well it doesn’t get worse than that, except that lying down is exactly what I want to do every time I am in torment.  It is a sign of grace and a consolation for the worst of violators.  So we can know that indeed there is a hell and the bad people won’t get away with anything, but that some kind of mercy may be built in to literally every aspect of creation, even in the far-most realms where people have been cast out and have forfeited everything for reasons that no one would argue with.

      That kind of reading can be done with any section of the Bible, and can be a nice thing to look for along the way, beyond just being thankful for the usual salvation, but to see those blessings expanded into an all-encompassing reality where there ultimately will be nothing to lament, regret, or even fear.

Another fun strategy for Bible reading

This post is like that other post but has a different kind of thing to look for in readings of Bible verses and stories, which has to do with just practical truth that comes to light in stories that seem and really are about other topics.  I don’t know how incidental some of the information would be, but I think that God and Jesus consciously and deliberately provided helpful and basic knowledge about survival and wise living all throughout stories and descriptions that seemed like they were about other spiritual topics.  One example I have noticed before is in the series of stories Jesus tells about someone looking for a coin, someone looking for a lost sheep, and the story about the lost son. The order of those stories becomes an illustration of what should be prioritized and valued, with money being the least and human life being generally the most important.  That is not the main point of the stories, but it is there in the context.  Another example that comes to mind seems so stupid but is contained within Jesus’s sermon on the mount when he tells people they are the light of the world and the salt of the earth.  I really think that as great as those statements are, and truly some of the happiest verses, it could also just be a reminder to use actual salt for various purposes. It could literally be an advertisement for salt, in case individuals or whole cultures have not thought to make use of that cooking resource.  That sounds stupid, but that is exactly what I am saying about the practical knowledge in otherwise shocking or important stories. One more extreme example might have to do with the time that Jesus was doing some stuff and told his disciples about the location of a donkey that they could untie and use. It might have been for palm Sunday. I think that even though it was an example of Jesus’s special supernatural life that was unfolding in a certain unprecedented and unrepeatable way, he was also revealing how some spiritual gifts can work, much like another time when he told Peter or someone else that they could find a fish with a coin in its mouth from another location. Jesus could see stuff, and even though it was because he was the son of God, I think that people who want to do those kinds of things can learn how, and Jesus was making it known that people can see stuff in other locations if they have certain abilities given to them by God, or acquired through some kind of obedience or work of the Holy Spirit. I decided to go ahead and use an example that seems kind of unbelievable in addition to Jesus just saying “please pass the salt.” But the main thing I am saying is that the amount of that helpful and seemingly incidental knowledge in the Bible is amazing and can be very fun to read about and focus on sometimes instead of the more obvious purposes of stories and facts.