Religion Lie

If you were truly spiritual, you would be just like us.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Readiness

Spirituality is quiet, patient, personal, and for the helpless. Is it any wonder that spirituality is a lesser traveled journey among the religious or the secular? 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Now

What is the Radical Democrat left up to with the government shutdown? It is as plain as the nose on every American face. Everything they do, every decision is about creating chaos in America. The chaos will happen in our streets at the end of this month when Snap food benefits are stopped because of the shutdown. The Snap people will riot like never before making our Federal resources powerless. Why would the Radical left Democrat politicians, who shut down the government with their votes in the Senate, starve their own supposed political base and cause such pain?

The left cares not for people, people are expendable, they value only power, no matter the cost in American lives. More than anything, the radical left wants to destroy our America, our Constitutional Republic. it is that simple.

The Republican Senate must use the nuclear option and their simple majority to reopen the government, now! Senate tradition be hanged.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Fundamentalism

Christian Fundamentalism proved to be one of those religious fads, here today and gone tomorrow.  Jerry Falwell would be disappointed. Charles Hartshorne, one of the founders of process thinking, published his book, "Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes" in 1984 when the author was 89. Fundamentalism (he didn't use the word) was one of the glaring mistakes considered. According to the fundamentalist, the Bible is the ultimate authority for faith and life, every word supposedly being from the mouth of God. 

No thinking adult who knows the history of the Bible can defend such a claim. The Bible is full of truth but also full of contradictions, somebody has it wrong. There is no simplified version. The fundamentalist can only slander and despiritualize those who ask real questions of the Bible. In response Charles Hartshorne asks:  

“Is it desirable that religion should seem more and more an affair of the intellectually undistinguished or mediocre?”

Charles Hartshorne, “Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes”. P. 44.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Why?

Thus as Fechner, Berdyaev, Tillich, and, probably independently, Whitehead held (and Berdyaev most neatly formulated), our existence from moment to moment “enriches the divine life”. And this is the ultimate meaning of our existence.

Charles Hartshorne, “Omnipotence and the other Theological Mistakes”, p. 27.

This works for me, I have found no better understanding as to why we are here, why is this world filled with multiplied dangers, why is life so unpredictable and random? Why does life and death look like the bouncing white ball of the roulette wheel? The only answer possible is that when we look up in spite of our circumstances, it pleases God, joy gushes from his or her belly and enriches the divine life. 

Some day, if the opportunity presents itself, I shall ask God, could you not have gotten your jollies another way?   

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

No Deal

You are leaving on a long vacation, who do you trust with the keys to the house? The United Nations? An international conglomerate? The United States doesn’t want troops on the ground, so who do the Israel’s trust? Shall Gaza be divided again leaving the monsters a safe haven from which to kill again? It is time for the U.S. to get out of the deal making business in Gaza.

Give the whole mess to Israel, letting Israel do what is best for Israel!

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Fuss

Christian Universalism is as old as Christian Revivalism (Evangelicalism). Both understandings of the God plan of salvation have always been among us with the times dictating their relative popularity. The preaching of the Church of England Priest George Whitfield in the mid 1700’s began what has been named “the Great Awakening”.

In the Whitfield congregation was the Rev. John Murray who, after hearing about the universal God plan of salvation from James Riley, spoke up with questions and was summarily excommunicated from the church, the kingdom of God or whatever, who knows? Rev. John Murray went to America to share the greater atonement.

In America “The Great Awakening” already had a head of steam and Jonathan Edwards was preaching, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”.  The Rev. John Murray became an itinerant preacher on horseback in New England, spreading his Good News. The vastly different gospels were gathered from the same Bible* but one God plan was more marketable considering the times.

The times were hard for most of the people around the known world of circa. 1750. The ruling classes were busy feathering their nests but the vast majority of peoples were living on the edge of survival. Soon France would erupt into open revolt and the guillotine before the end of the century. All the while, the established clergy, of whatever flavor, took their cues from the ruling moneyed folk.

George Whitfield, John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards all blamed the people for their own lack of upward mobility and excusing God for the hard times. Desperate people will buy into anything that offers a suave for their future. It is ironic that the God suave was already in place for “the whatever” of life. Why all the fuss?

* “The Universalist’s Book of References”, Rev. E. E. Guild, 6^th Edition reprint, Boston Publishing House, 1853.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.