Posts Tagged ‘god’
The 4 Generations – Pessimist – Part 2 of 7
Image courtesy of Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Lets get practical. What exactly do these generations look like? How do they operate, and how do they interact with each other?
We’ll start with Socrates… he seems fairly original. Read the rest of this entry »
The 4 Generations – Intro – Part 1 of 7
Image courtesy of worradmu / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I tend to think of biblical figures as heroes. Moses comes out of retirement and starts working at 80, Abraham has a child at 90, Paul faces death all day, and Daniel survives a den of hungry lions. But have you ever thought that they would consider us as heroes? Read the rest of this entry »
Self-righting
It’s amazing to me that the Church has always been redeemed from within. This is constant throughout its history and I can’t think of another movement for which this is true. Read the rest of this entry »
The Lion and the hunter
This is an Easter story for little people.
Glossary:
Baba = Father
Mamba = an aggressive and venomous snake from Africa
Umfaan = a small boy
———————-
“Umfaan, eat your food slowly, you are not a wild animal.”
“I am a lion, Baba. A wild lion.”
“Ahh, Umfaan, the lion is wild; but there was a time when he was much more polite… and much more wild!”
“When was that Baba?”
“That was a very long time ago, Umfaan; when the animals could speak. Do you want to hear about it?”
“Yes please Baba. I want to hear about when the animals could speak!”
“Well then you need to sit nicely, eat slowly and politely, and I will tell you…” Read the rest of this entry »
Don’t Panic.
It seems pretty clear that something more is going on in the world today. Wars breakout with Twitter support, massive earthquakes are a regular occurrence, storms and floods, tsunamis, tornados, fires and record heat and cold. What’s going on and what should we do about it? Read the rest of this entry »
But David 2 – David’s Courage
1 Samuel 17:33-37 “Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth.” But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” Saul said to David, “Go, and the LORD be with you.”
David often used his eloquence to successfully defend his contrary position, like Daniel who would come after him (Daniel 1:8-13). Saul could not refuse such an powerful request such convincing determination. However it’s one thing stating the case, doing the job is something completely different. But when a man speaks like this in these kinds of circumstances it is never without a real, underlying courage.
The kind of courage David displayed is the kind we are in desperate need of. Fortitude, CS Lewis calls it; it’s the kind of courage that endures. Read the rest of this entry »
Fact and Faith
There seems to me to be a forced division between science and faith based systems of thought. I think there is a lot more overlap than each camp’s fundamentalists will grant. Each side wants to replace the other’s term with “Fiction”. But the truth is that theories require faith, even proved ones; and faith requires reason, especially real faith.
But there is a truly magical (and very real) place where these two elements, Fact and Faith come together, hand in hand almost, and demand that we give them equal portions, like siblings requiring the equal division of a packet of candy.
It is only in the realm of inter-personal relationships where fact matters as much as faith.
The Plurality of Persons
Martin Heidegger said “Philosophizing is to ask the question ‘why are their beings instead of nothing?’”
Signs for Sale – Daniel 3
“What the philosophers say about reality is often as deceptive as when you see a sign in a second-hand store that reads: Pressing Done Here. If you went in with your clothes to have them pressed you would be fooled; the sign is for sale.” Søren Kierkegaard in “Either/Or”
The Decent of Man
There is nothing benign about secularist atheism.
Dawkins says, “We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage.” (The God Delusion)
Really? Now wouldn’t that be lovely?
Does Dawkins propose any examples of this actually happening?
Darwin says: “With savages the weak in body and mind are soon eliminated. We civilized, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile; the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” (The Decent of Man – 1871)
Paul Pot: “Since he is of no use anymore, there is no gain if he lives and no loss if he dies.” “Look at me now. Am I a savage person? My conscience is clear.”
Every ancient national story is one of conquer and rule. Every mythology is one of powerful gods cheating and revenging each other like kindergarten kids.
Then I read Joshua 9, the first account of a national conscience, a treasured heritage if ever there was one. “We have given them our oath by the LORD, the God of Israel, and we cannot touch them now.”
Give up belief in God and you give up all your treasured heritage, eventually you give up your very self.
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