Eels and Seals

I recently was thinking about staying out of touch with some people so I would not be grieved by problems that I did not want to know about, and I also have been thinking about how Jesus told his disciples to shake the dust off their feet when they left the houses of people who rejected the faith in Christ that was offered to them.  I wondered if Jesus told them to do that with their feet because there could be demonic snake spirits trying to hurt them and maybe they could be physically flung off.  I really have wondered if there are all kinds of warnings about that stuff in the Bible that is not that obvious so as not to scare everyone.  But anyway, both of these trains of thought made me think about something from when I was a kid, which is my consistent policy of never wearing goggles when I am swimming in the ocean.  I simply do not want to know what is lurking in the waters. And I think it is something to think about when there are all kinds of things we do not understand or do not know.  It might be that one of the purposes behind simple faith and a flashlight in life that only shows part of the path is that we are better off just getting through stuff and then later watching the movie that shows the giant dragons and monsters and leeches that wanted to hurt everyone, or even the kind angels and angel pets whose love would have distracted us from getting to all the goals ahead of us, which sometimes might include calling some kind of pest control.

Patron Atheists of Saints

Well everyone, I am writing this blog post in the middle of the night and I think that it will be kind of condensed compared to what it could have been with a little more thought.  But now is when I feel like writing it.  It is about something that I have known for a long time and only think about occasionally, and it has to do with the frequent greatness of atheists.  Well people might immediately detect some evangelical flattery like here I am trying to butter up the atheists so they will convert.  But that is really not what I am doing, precisely because I have learned that so many atheists truly are so great the way they are and are helpful not just to people in general but to Christians, and especially Christians with religion problems. I could share my testimony about this sometime in a church, which might not really be welcome, but I actually think it would still match the Christian teaching about all humans being made in God's image and therefore all having the potential or maybe even guaranteed destiny of reflecting his greatness.  I used to want to write a book called "The Heathens Declare the Glory of God," but gave up after a google search that did not list that many good deeds by atheists.  But there are a lot of good deeds, and I think that their honest confessions of atheism can be some of the good that they do.  It does provide instant intellectual accountability to all the so called theologians, and it also is an acceptance of responsibility to get stuff done without waiting for prayers to be answered.  That could seem like such a sin, but I am thinking that it often could be less of a sin than leaving stuff undone because of either a belief that it wasn't up to us or a lazy decision to convince people that something was God's responsibility apart from humans.

    I also think that there can be a purity of motives among atheists who are not seeking rewards from heaven from their friendships and who are not deliberately trying to advance an ideology they have limited knowledge of during every single interaction with people.  As much as not having a conscious Christian purpose might really be a waste for a lot of people, it can also free them to fulfill potential in other ways that still benefit humanity, including church people, who might have had to give up some otherwise very worthwhile endeavors to live their whole lives guessing what a fisherman from 2000 years ago wants them to do.

   The fact is that the atheist souls and minds can be such a relief to be around, and for all the times Christians have used "unbelievers" to improve our own stats, so many atheists' forgiveness and service and unyielding promotion of the good news of God's patience and mercy should also be acknowledged as a very uncommon grace and special revelation.

Is glory something different from recognition, and much less stealable?

   Well everyone, I have thought of a little blog post idea that I think actually is theological, and it is about glory, what it is, and what it means to try to glorify yourself and take credit that does not belong to you.  I am actually truly wondering something that might have more to do with the definition of glory, and whether it is some kind of greatness, or instead, some kind of acknowledgement of greatness.

    What I am wondering is whether glory is an objective thing that belongs to God no matter what and "trying to take the glory for yourself" is a matter of trying to take credit for the glory, and possibly deceiving others so that people's perception, and only their perception, is erroneous.  To look at it this way could still mean that whatever is glorious, like a touchdown or a well cooked meal, is still glorious and the glory still belongs to God, but that people's acknowledgement of that reality is what is the problem.

   To me, the other possibility is that the glory is the credit, and when people glorify themselves, they actually have truly taken the glory itself away from where it belongs and have acquired something that was up for grabs in some way.  So they now possess something that was not supposed to be theirs. 

     A third possibility is that there is still some glory outside of the credit and recognition and it is stealable, kind of like the blessing that Jacob in the Bible got so sneakily.  That sounds confusing, but in another story, which is the Mt. Sinai story in the Bible when Moses or someone has to hide in the cleft of the mountain as God walks by, there is some kind of glory that is dangerous to behold, and it seems a little different than the kind of "giving credit where it is due" recognition that so many people talk about today.

    I think there might be Bible verses that support either view, but I lean toward thinking that glory is some aspect of reality that happens because of God's goodness, so it already belongs to him, and the credit is something different that also belongs to him, and any problem that the humans are having with recognition, no matter on what kind of scale it is, is just some weird mind trick that leaves people being fooled but can't take any actual glory away from anyone in reality or in the view that most matters, which is God's continual accurate perception of all that he has created and made great.
    It may be that simple dictionary definitions could clear this up, or that this is something basic that all pastors learn in seminary and have talked about while I have been at Starbucks, but to me it seems like what people usually talk about when they talk about glory has to do with kneeling in football endzones, and I feel like there might be something else that is, thankfully, unstealable, and knowing this could take some pressure off people.  It could also help people focus on doing truly great things instead of doing mediocre things while spending their real concentration on making it all an ad campaign for Christianity.