Is God on our side?

The fundamental problem is the seemingly inseparable terms "Republican" and "Christian".
Two terms so different in nature and purpose, it's a disgrace that they have become synonymous each to the other.

It presents so many needless and unrelated obstacles in bearing witness to the gospel that most often serve only to convolute and undermine the fundamental presentation of Christ's work.

How sad that anyone should have to say, "Yes I'm a Christian," and then have to follow it with the clarification ,"but I'm not one of those Christians."

Division right out of the gate.
So sad.
d (-_-) b

Jesus Only Speaks Well of One

Between pole dancers and poll dancers, there's a lot of money hidden in debasement.

Bread in my Jar

Truth is always the best policy, honesty not always so much.

Either may include or exclude the other, but by their nature they are two very different things.

That Time Is Now

At a certain point, sheer exhaustion can make it difficult to discerene the tradesman from the amature.

Dig Measuring Contest

Not many work with as much fervent tenacity as the diggers of holes. Often times hole diggers are an unstoppable force of blind ambition and become so caught up in their quest they fail to recognize that they are no longer moving up, but digging further and further down...

... and generally with no real thought for how they'll get out, or that they'll even need to.

Darbage

An investment is a calculated placement of resources with the expectation of at least a certain amount of fair return.

The placement of resources with a return based on odds is also an investment. Those returns are less certain.

However the placement of resources based on sheer luck is gambling and while those returns are rare, they do still occur.

For example, casino owners invest, while their patrons gamble, but the inevitably the house always wins.

When you have reached the point where you have lost any expectation at all of a return  on your resources and you still keep putting in, at that point you're just throwing it away.

Scott, Steve - This Sad Music

Scott, Steve - This Sad Music:
http://youtu.be/lRcCJVjSl28

This Sad Music

The whales are dying now,
hurling themselves upon the beaches
black dice reckoned under the sun's watchful gaze

There's sweat on the preacher's brow
as he talks about damnation.
The whales are in love with no one
They wanted to die without explanation

He mops his brow and quotes Malcolm Muggeridge
on - quote -
"the collapse of western civilization"
- end quote -
and the book he waves in the air
is as black as whaleskin

He urges people to "make their decision"
and the whales have made their decision

An awful silence surrounds them
Like a ruined castle they lie
still, passive, beyond explanations

Beads of sweat on the preacher's brow
like small clear animals clinging to a rock face
or like tiny transparent whales
flinging themselves from the boiling seas of his eyes
into a slow, certain dying

The sad music in their brains, a piper's lament
from that old castle in the mist-thickened night

"FIFTEEN THOUSAND CINEMAS ACROSS THIS LAND,
DEPICTING EVERY SEXUAL ACT KNOWN TO
THE HUMAN IMAGINATION!" shouts the preacher

His voice is a door slamming shut
the sea's noise is a vast intake of breath
a gesture in a room to break the silence
now the whales have broken the silence

They are the color of the preacher's harsh words

The white foam rushes to embrace them
like mother and father
The whales do not want to know, and now

There are people sprawled on the beaches
chained together by "HUMAN IMAGINATION"
All the music has bled out of them,
drained from the ends of their fingers
splashed from the loudspeakers of their wallets

And at the end of the service, people walk forward
Perhaps it is "the collapse of western civilization"
that moves them
or the sad music of their slow, certain dying
that guides their feet

And at the end of this poem
a strange light comes off the bodies of the whales
gathering up the shadows like driftwood
and splashing them against the far walls

you would think the shadows would make
the words there hard to read
However, I find it's at a time like this
I see the writing clearest of all

(c) Steve Scott 1983

Mellow Hello

Friday, April 24, 2015
Failure in the Victory Garden: Mellow Hello

I have always said that Christianity is a religion of paradoxical living. Here it is again.

Having been created and thus finite, we are left to be creatures that perceive truths and realities through the lens of our own experience and understanding. Consequently no experience or truth can be expressed without the basis of our own perceptions. 

Even when we catch glimpses of things far larger than we could ever know from those moments, by design, we try to make sense of them based on what we know in order to understand them.

Again, what other choice do we have?
What choice have we been given?

It is after all how we were created and so the creator must know it, we were after all made in his image.

That said we should step carefully and make every effort not to create God in our image or present Him as such.

Although actually not doing so, by the very nature of how we were designed may be impossible, we need to make the effort to be mindful of this inour presentation of realities based on our limited understanding of them.

Failure to at least be sensitive in that regard can only lead to very limiting misconceptions about God in every aspect and we run the very real risk of a view very different from their actuality as each experience builds on the previous.

We will inevitably come to relate to God as based on our own experience, the creator of the individual, (more specifically us), rather  than taking into consideration God as the creator of all, the collective. Thus we will lend far more credibility to the authority of our own views, and far less to those of others, than may be justified.

In others words we shouldn't believe that we can understand the whole of the puzzle base on our one piece, not that we should stop trying to, since that too is how were created.

It's not so much insulting to God (I would imagine) as much as it can leads us very  astray in our pursuit of knowing Him.

Oh look a butterfly....

Ultimately, I think it's one thing to believe certain things about God, leaving room for that to evolve as we do, especially since it seems unavoidable, but a far different and damaging thing altogether to make claims of unchangeable certainty for and about God, as though we might possibly understand Him now.

I would in fact say that in doing so, in a very real sense, we attempt to make ourselves equal to God, and when we make ourselves equal to God, we make ourselves equal to the devil.

"Did God really say you can't eat of any tree?"... and so it goes.

WTFWJD?

Assume the most idealistic of mindsets when considering the answer to the following:

Is it ever right to draw a distinction between the act of simply extending grace and those which are perhaps encouraging and enabling of wrong behaviour?

Ready to Have Your Brain Exploded?

When I Grow Up

I want a job in political public relations...
I want to be a poll dancer.

Virtual Accomplishments

Not Many People Like You

Spoken versus Written: The message you take from this really could be a lesson to you about your own perception and lens of understanding.

Assume nothing negative beyond what you know and you'll be much happier.

Haters Gonna Hate, Proverbs 98

You certainly don't have to be a bible scholar to know there were very definitely people that Jesus didn't like.
He made it pretty clear.

But lately I've asked myself (and wondered if anyone else ever asks themselves),"Am I perhaps the sort of person Jesus actually wouldn't have liked?"

I don't think many people overall would set out to be the bad guy, and I'll bet even of those that did, they wouldn't consider themselves to be so (or at least admit it.)

Of course no one wants to consider that they may actually even if unwittingly, be the bad guy. I'm certain Judas didn't think that he would be. But I have to imagine some of us, and probably a lot of just might be and we don't even know it.

Then again, I guess I don't know.
Maybe we really are we just better people overall now and Jesus is much cooler, so he'd be cool with everyone doing their thing.

I mean since it always seems to be someone else and their choices that Jesus wouldn't have liked...

...certainly he would have approved us though...

right?

Solo Cristo Salva
d (-_-) b

Mind Trapped

Water into Whine

You don't want a party full of people who feel like they have to be there. Send out the invitations and let them do the rest. It's not a burden you need to bear since there's nothing more you can do about it. That much weight only slows the journey. db

More Lessons on Failure

The failure of the student is the failure of the teacher.
Neither one may be incapable as much as they may simply lack the understanding of what is required to succeed as such.
d (-_-) b

The Beasts of Burden

They Call Me, Dr. Love

It's Not an Act It's a Fact

To Me:
quit acting like you are so much better than everyone else...Karma will catch up to you...

From Me:
Stop acting like you're not as good as anyone else and you might be surprised at yourself.

Winning Pt 2

Sometimes all you need to win the fight isn't more strength and force but more tenacity and endurance.

The one left standing is declared the winner, not matter how ugly the fight.

Winning !

If you have an oven that only sporadically functions you would have the element of surprise and if your clock breaks at noon you'd have the upper hand too. It's all about perspective...

Golden Shower of Hits

For some people, some very sad people, the offer of escorting them to the door out your life isn't enough.

That's not nearly a dramatic or fun enough way to exit. It lacks a certain energy and statement of status.

Like a dog pissing on a firehydrant, these people need to make their mark before they leave so you know they owned it!

Rest assured they'll usually return to sniff around later, & maybe see if they can piss on things again.

Good God, Good Meet

Among the many things I may be, good is not one of them. I have always known it to be so on many levels.

Please never set that bar for me I will inevitably let you down and suggesting otherwise makes me wonder how well you might really know me at all.

Hot Stuff

Meme Streaks

Life Begins at Perception

Uniquely Unoriginal

From failure and success, beginnings and ends, there are infinite tales to be told of great adversity and everyday lives. Each story unique in setting and circumstance, but only to their players. For at the very core of them all not one differs from the other in nature.

As you consider others remember, chances are pretty good that beyond setting and circumstance your greatest differences are your personal experiences.

Unique but not alone, this is the human thread.

Solo Cristo Salva
d (-_-) b

Jesus Loves You, Everyone Else Thinks You're a Jerk

Sometimes love just looks like a tree in the front yard that has a crappy strand of christmas lights dangling in the desert wind in the blistering heat of June.

Sometimes grief looks like the guy in front of who's driving too slowly for your liking because he can barely see through his tears. The driver who fails to punch the gas at the very moment the light turns green.

And sometimes, maybe more often than we realize giving up is disguised in those things we call being driven, failure the pursuit of success, and so on.

I have seen fear mistakenly called hate, and inquiry mistakenly labeled rebellion.

We shouldn't always expect that the symptoms of the hidden things of the heart will look the same in others as they do in ourselves, if we can be so introspective to recognize and acknowledge them.

Who knows what drives other people to do the things that they do when so often we may not be able to answer the same of ourselves.

That said, wouldn't everyone be better off if we could simply extend the benefit of the doubt to others, instead of instantly assuming the worst without even knowing?

How can we hope to make the world a better place in doing otherwise?

Be good to yourselves, but foremost be good to each other.

d (-_-) b

Grinning From Here to Hear

Originally Published Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Grinning From Here To Hear

I don't actually understand it myself, so I won't pretend to know why it happens,  or try to convince you about what happens afterward, but for some reason we are here.

If we are here first, or only here ever, is an answer that you alone must decide, make peace with that and be certain enough of to live and die in it without regret.

It is a journey of sorts. More of a process than a product and all that beautifully glorious, horrifically tragic, mundane shit that we all experience before we die, well we call that life.

Life is for living.
Enjoy it while you can
Endure it when you must.

However short or long it may seem, in this brief moment, it will always be too short for someone and too long for someone else. We all get the same in the end, a lifetime.

In the big picture though it is as it should be, exactly the length it is and no more and who are we to say otherwise?

Whatever it may consist of in length, it is very brief in the grand scheme. Perhaps it is brief so the end will be visible from the beginning. Perhaps it is to make it more than simply endurable, but enjoyable as well.

The end looms larger as we approach it but we also gain the advantage of hindsight and perspective as we approach it.

I have come to find that a great deal of life ultimately means very little, but that there is a very little bit of it that in fact means a great deal more than we care to consider sometimes.

We are given life to live it.
This too shall pass.

It ours alone... but it somehow takes on greater significance when we realize that we are not at all alone in our humanity.  That our lives and the choices we make can and will impact the lives of others we may barely or not even know and for far longer than we will ever live to see.

Yet, as mysterious as each of our lives are we can at times hold very little regard for the value of our own or those of others. We manage to live in denial about our ultimate fates, until we are forced to face them. Until one day when one of those lives intersecting our own is abruptly removed and a void in their absence is left.
A void that will never quite be fully filled.

Like hearing a noise for so long that it becomes as silence to us over time, only after its source is permanently removed do we begin to realize what a beautiful sound it was after all.

Whatever the reason, the purpose, the meaning, the significance, we are here.

We are small to be sure.
Our existence perhaps barely noticible.
It is true, we are only one of millions, billions in fact.
But we are not insignificant...
...or so the prophets of truths and the tellers of stories would have us believe.

Whatever you may believe, whether by default or design, we are somehow here, and it seems that at the heart of most matters it is the heart that matters most if we are to have a life worth living.

Be good to yourselves, more importantly, be good to each other.

Solo Cristo Salva
d (-_-) b

roberto esponja at 14.1.15

Bake for Them Two Cakes

We don't know much about Jesus' life pre ministry and it seems to me that only the most significant  points of His life and lessons during His three year public ministry must be recorded.

So my question is this why, at his mother's request,  did Jesus turn water into wine for a wedding party that had been drinking for days and thus consumed all the wine provided by the party host?

There was clearly no physical need being met, and yet he produced wine of note able excellence so the party might continue.

Is there actually a lesson in this?
There just might be...

The Limited Unlimited God

I do not believe that God is a God without limits. This is a cornerstone of my faith.

His limits are two-fold:
He has self imposed limits or those things which he has committed not to do by his own will, and the limit of being true to his own nature. Although he can and does do as he pleases, we must understand that his very nature dictates those things which he pleases to do.

If God could violate his own nature he would not then be an unchanging God. This is what I believe is meant when he claims to be so, he cannot and will not violate his own pure and righteous nature.

This does not however mean that he is unable or unwilling to redirect his actions provided that in doing so he is still true to his character. For example when prior to creating Adam, God exemplifying his triunal state, debates with himself about man's fate following his fall.

I also do not believe that God is subject to his own creation(s), perhaps more accurately he is not limited by them. They are his to with as he pleases except in those instances when he has willingly committed to being so for the benefit of them. For example again bestowing man with freewill in the choice to or not to pursue God. Though God does pursue man, man is free to reject God.

As I always say:
What can man actually give to God that God did not afford him in the first place. What is it that he would not, could not take from him in spite of his great desire for it?
Love.
That and that alone is man's to give.
.

I digress...

That said, another creation of God's to  which he is not limited is time. To be subject to time disallows the notion of an eternal nature since time inherently marks a beginning and an end.

If we believe that God is subject to time as being within it, rather than outside of it, we must then believe in things such as a literal 7 day creation story, or that he is not all knowing since he, just as we, have not yet experienced the future. He would therefore be limited in his ability to maintain order in his own creation for in so being he may change the course of events but to what end he could not know. We would have made God in our own image to believe it so.

All of this to ask the following: At what point did prayer become a means of petitioning God to not simply intervene but to heed our desires and undo what has already been done? And why would he?

There are many examples in the Bible where he, as many fathers do, has chosen to do indulge the requests of his children. There are many reasons why I as a father do so, but I am finite and limited just as my children are.  I simply have the benefit of experience which really only allows me to make more informed guesses about what may be best, nevertheless they are still guesses.

I don't believe that God guesses. I also believe that being outside of time and thus all knowing, God is able to undo that which has been done and so with certainty rather than informed guesses entertain the requests of his children.

The father is not subject to the will of his child except in those instances which he allows it to be so. That's just logical parenting. But God calls himself Father and we his children.

So why does God actually change his previously determined courses of action? 
It is an overwhelming concept to me. Especially when I consider the examples of prayer given to us by Jesus, setting forth a pattern which really only allows us to pray for God's will rather than the fulfillment of our desires, though we are allowed to express our desires... like not wanting to be crucified.

I must admit that a fair amount of this curiosity came from my reading of the Jew that felt so free to haggle with God about his conditions for saving Sodom and Gomorrah. Down and down he brought the price, from a seemingly certain destruction. But we know how that story ended as well I suppose.

I've really gotten off track but this in part my questioning about the relationship between God and man. The finite grasping to comprehend the infinite.

Good thing I'm using my phone,  this could have been much longer.

Solo Cristo Salva
db

Giving Up 1

You can do almost anything once you give up, because you release the binds of fear.

It may in fact be the greatest asset one acquired in obtaining that initial objective.

That said however, the liberation that results from the freedom of certain fears is a very distant second to the freedom that comes from the love which casts out all fear.

d (-_-) b

Dream

Had a dream that I pulled money out of my mouth. Not whole dollars, pieces of torn up money from between the gum & teeth upper front teeth.