A Simple Biblical theology

God is in Christ granting grace to gather everyone throughout all times around God.

G.Goslaw
Landers, ca.

Dear Bernie Goldberg,

This is a correction, if you please, and even if you don’t.  Nothing in scripture is ignorant!  There are only ignorant people who expand the words of scripture to say ignorant things.  You sir are so simple minded as to blame it on the Bible.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

Fox News

Fox News is going to the Duck’s, give us a break , please!  Your occasional listeners may not have heard Phil’s family story but we regular listeners are getting all ducked out.  The condemning I Corinthian passage in question is the only such threat in scripture, what about the rest of the Bible?  We are not all fundamentalist thinkers who regurgitate an understanding about God that is wrong, destructive and worst of all mere, culture speak.

Phil has the right to define God in any way he wants and we all support his right to regurgitation, even as we disagree with his exclusive message.  Fox News, what  is your interest in manipulating the divide amongst believers?  Is this a free speech issue or is your primary interest to sinfully entertain your audience?  Thanks.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

Credibility

Some of us have lived a long life without positive feedback.  Relax, no victim here, some of us have not earned that positive feedback.  One of my failed enterprises was “A ValuVan Line”, a trucking and moving company that barely managed to eke out positive numbers.

The dry spell for this conservative blogger, who is having fun in retirement, is now over!  Please rejoice with me, positive feedback has finally arrived after only 68 years.  The Cincinnati office of the Internal Revenue Service sent me a first time bill of $18.81 for the 2nd quarter of 2006.  I hope it’s personal!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

Aroma of Sacrifice

The sin of preaching a highly favored theology is that it places the believer in control of God, when it should be God influencing the affairs of men.  It is an extremely simplistic theological overreach that is intended to please the narcissism of the listener.  The assumption is that faith is all about me!  What do you say, those of you who have lived a least favored theology?

Saeed Abedini
Kenneth Bae
Charles Albert Poland Jr.
Jim Elliot
Wang Zhiming
Chet Bitterman
Lucian Tapiedi
Dusty Miller
Kaj Munk
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Mehdi Dibaj
Paul Carlson
John and Betty Stam
Mother Teresa
Martin Luther King
Mahatma Ma Gandhi
Nelson Mandela

The list goes on and on, these few are from the last 100 years.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

The Gathering God of the Galaxies

Matthew  23: 37  (The Father God speaking from a shared heart with Jesus … repeated in Luke 13: 34)

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

The above words were spoken by Jesus and recorded by both Matthew and Luke.  The verses are identical, unique and extremely under appreciated.  The reader easily gets caught up in the next few verses that prophesy the destruction of the temple and the pillage of Jerusalem where over a million of its citizens were killed in 70 AD.  Such fulfillment of prophesy is engaging but let us focus on verse 37, as it gives to us the clearest, short summary description of the God of the galaxies.  

Jesus has started his journey to Jerusalem and in a few days he would arrive in the power center of the religious leadership of historical Israel.  For all of his preaching time, Jesus has badmouthed the religion of his birth because that religion had left most of the people behind without hope.  The miracles of healing, the natural miracles, the parables, the teaching and preaching were all directed to restore hope in a God that cared for all the people.  This God is blind to ethnic origins, nationality, education, disease, economic success in life or social acceptability.  Jesus described that hope as the kingdom of God.

The justified disrespect of Jesus toward these religionists of Israel would be thrown right back at him.  How can the center of religion in Jerusalem respect an itinerant and uneducated carpenter’s son with questionable birth circumstances?  He has no official connection to our religious leadership and is said to perform miracles without permission.  Most of all, Jesus is a troublemaker!  The conflict would conclude in Jerusalem where Jesus will be crucified Roman style, the event being manufactured by the schemes of these same religious authorities.

Knowing the severity of the conflict that lay ahead of him, “Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.”(Luke 9:51)  He knew that these folk would kill anyone who challenged their authority.  Their hearts and intentions were exposed by their own history, “you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you”.  For 1500 years the religionists fought and killed the voices of change that God had sent into their midst.  The Old Testament Scriptures, themselves, reflect the double mindedness of the religious lords of Israel.  The task of the reader should be to separate the good stuff from the earthly manipulations of men.  One need not throw out the less valuable scriptures, only consider the source.

God gathers while humankind scatters.  Religion scatters or fragments or divides peoples and relationships while God gathers peoples and relationships together.  Jesus saw himself as the shepherd of the sheep, his task on earth was to gather together the children of the Father.  Is there anyone in the sea of humanity that can not qualify on that score?  Verse 37 notes, “how often I have longed to gather”, that longing for unity is God.  What follows is that beautiful word picture, “as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings”, there, under the wings of God is safety and a destiny to be realized.  Do we not long for the gathering God as preached to us by Jesus?

We must confess that too many of our days are wasted running from God.  As Jesus said, you will not because “you are not willing”.   We must choose to stop running and allow the gathering.  There are a few moments in every life when the clutter recedes enough to allow a change of direction.  All things above are expanding, all matter, all universes are constantly running away from each other.  Then there are the recently discovered black holes, capturing and compacting all things in their wake.  Is this not a picture of our spiritual journey, the reprocessing of the galaxies, God capturing the lost sheep?

The verse ends on a sad but true note, the heart and will of mankind has been turned to go it’s own way. We all are our own worst enemies, we all avoid the truth that we were made to be gathered.  If God is God, and if the very center of that reality is a longing to gather his children, ultimately, in this world or the next, we all shall be gathered to the Father.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

   

Fly on the Wall

In 2009 Miley Cyrus recorded a narcissistic diddle, “Fly on the Wall”.  She would like us to think that the listening public under eighteen is desperate to know her more intimately.  No comment, however, we shall make better use of the expression.  Where or when in the Bible would you like to have been “a fly on the wall”?  We could observe and listen for the subtlety of scripture.  Would you like to have been present when Jesus fed the five thousand or to be in that small, storm tossed boat with Jesus and the disciples on the Sea of Galilee?  Would you like to have witnessed the resurrection of Jesus or be among the snarling crowd as he is judged by Pilate, the Roman governor?

Every one of us would like to have been present at these exciting moments of biblical history.  What a book that would make!  One event in the life of Jesus is most intriguing but easily glossed over as we first look for the action scenes.  When Jesus was 12, he was misplaced for three days on a trip to Jerusalem at festival time.  Thinking he was with friends and relatives for the trip home, Mary and Joseph walked a full day from the city before they missed him.  Upon returning they searched a full day before finding him in the synagogue, the center of worship for the Jewish religion.  There in the midst of the worshipers was their son sharing and questioning the priests and teachers about the Jewish spiritual way.

St. Luke shared the buzz in Chapter 2, verse 47, “Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers”.  This twelve year old entering manhood in the Jewish way could more than hold his own in a religious discussion with all the gray haired priests and teachers.  If you or I were a fly on the wall of that synagogue, that day, two thousand years ago, what would we have heard?  Would we hear a recital of the two thousand year history of Israel?  Would we hear a theology to support the many rituals of the faith? How would the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob factor into the daily lives of the people?  This scripture is silent about the words of Jesus, we can only guess.

Is a wild guess our only alternative?  Might not the rest of scripture beyond the silence of the immediate context give us clues as to the mind and heart of Jesus in the synagogue?  In verse 52 St. Luke tells us, “And as Jesus grew up, he increased in wisdom and in favor with God and the people”.  Luke does not tell us that the thinking of Jesus changed, only that it increased from where it was at age twelve.  This conclusion may be more than what is warranted by the text but it seems to fit.  In the rest of the New Testament, Jesus is the peoples prophet for the religion of Israel had long placed the blessings of God beyond the reach of most of the people.      
 
This exclusivity of the grace of God is what Jesus reacted against at 12, it was the foundation of his ministry and ultimately would bring his death on the cross at the age of 33.  This point is not up for debate, no other conclusion can be reached by a sane thinking person.  Unless of course, you are a religionist.  Every time and age is filled with these folk.  Whether it is a religion about something or a religion about nothing, we humans do love and treasure our religions.

The Pharisees said one has to live well enough to deserve the love of God.  The Sadducees said that money and social status makes one worthy of the love of God.  Almost everyone said that you must be in the line of David, a practicing Jew to be worthy of the love of God.  They all were ready to quote scripture to justify their opinions and Jesus was ready to quote scripture right back at them.  Every parable that Jesus told was about the open access policy, the open door to God that is and was extended to all the people.  The Messiah was not about politics or income redistribution, he was about equal opportunity access to the God of the galaxies.  Religion had to stop that message!

One might ask, did Jesus successfully derail the exclusivity of the religionists?  No way, they keep reappearing in one form or another through the centuries,just as the Spirit of the risen Jesus is on the earth broadcasting an open invitation to all peoples to immediately experience the love of God.  All of humanity should be thankful for this opportunity to experience God on this Thanksgiving day and every day of the year.  The scriptures for this day are in Romans and Mathew‘s gospel.

Paul encourages his folk in Rome to accept all, to include Gentile and Jew as brothers in the faith.  St. Mathew records the ministry of John the Baptist, who preached the best of the old way but pointed to a coming One who would bring spiritual fire to the earth.  The religionists twist the fire reference to mean that a special purification makes one worthy of the love of God.  Why can’t we believe the obvious?  Fire burns wherever there is fuel and oxygen, fire does not discriminate and that was and is the love of God.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.







 

   

Favor

The Sunday morning religion shows are my church, at least those that proceed Fox News Sunday.  As believers we all need repeated shots of positivism to remind us that the God of the galaxies cares.  A positive God fearing attitude will improve anyone's fortune.  However, a very successful preacher made a statement this morning that was religious schmooze.  “The Bible says that when we exercise positive faith in the goodness of God , then he will bring us special success or as he puts it, favor.”

A favor bestowing God is not found in scripture, in fact it is so opposed to the general theme of the gospel that one wonders if the "favor" theology is even Christian.  The Bible does not say that God is vested in our success, that he is vested in the good life for our days on earth.  To assume as much is to advertise a narcissistic religion that is most concerned with it’s own favor.  All supporting scripture quoted by these folk is taken out of it's context.  The Church will be silent and nonconfrontational because it does not want to upset these folk, they fear the resulting turmoil and a loss of income.  Mostly they are afraid to teach the Bible to the choir.

How can any believer conclude from scripture that Jesus lived, died and rose from the dead to give the believer the good life?  It is a profanity.  How can any lover and student of scripture be so blind?  They start with the abhorrent theology and then pick out scripture that seems to fit.  The Christ like spiritual giants, beginning with Jesus have never advocated such a perversion.  The God of the galaxies is the one who is the most upset with these folk who call out like the barker at the carnival, appealing to the worst side of our nature.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

Schmooze

Do obscure words pop into your consciousness at the weirdest moments?  The word for this day, for this moment, is schmooze.  Which corner of the deep dark recesses of my brain housed that word, I do not know?  One thing is for sure, schmooze is the best description of the operating style of President Barack O’Bama.  He is not a doer, a thinker, a leader nor a manager, only a schmoozer.  We as a country are finding that to be trusting of this president will bring the hurts to every self reliant American.

The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines schmooze as the decision “to talk to someone in a very friendly way often in order to get some advantage for yourself”.  This word is a perfect description of our president who is finally making his true schmoozer nature so obvious that no racist accusations can deflect the pain that Americans are feeling.  The advantage in his sights is the politics of the hard left, the radical liberal progressive agenda that will install government as the God of our lives.  It is a new America and ObamaCare is the centerpiece of that agenda.  Make no mistake, they are committed, every radical liberal progressive would give their life or take yours in order to reshape America in their own image.

The hard left are a small percentage of our politics but their fervor is powerful.  Only a minority percentage of Democrats are of the hard left strip but the less committed are afraid to confront the behind the scene forces calling the shots.  The president is their spokesperson, he is taking orders from the behind the scene types, he is no more than a mouth for the cause.  Barack Obama’s real job is to tell us whatever will make the success of the cause probable and to hide the intentions of the hard left behind his presidential cult of personality.

With these folk, there is no moral ground just what is seemingly advantageous to the cause.  The cause is their morality, truth is irrelevant, a lie is just another means to obtain an advantage.  To this point President O’Bama has accomplished his mission but the camouflage is receding. The Obama-Care mess is forcing the hard left to expose themselves for who they really are, they are uncaring ideologues.  The people are but a blind herd that need direction from the government and that direction will bring a take over of the country, a never before imagined power grab that may best be described as a political coup.

Wake up America, wake up all politicians and say no, reject the schmooze and reject the schmoozer!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

History

History is not factual truth.  History is a collection of interpretations about what may have been past factual events.  Unless you were there and recording a past factual event for all to experience, you are just another human opinion.  Your opinion may be the majority opinion but it is still an opinion.

In itself, history has no power or authority and proves very little because it is simply a human concoction.  So why are there those who would relegate the Bible to mere fiction?

Could it be that we really don’t want to know the truth?

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

The One

Sunday,  November 24, 2013

Jeremiah  23 : 3 -6.
“I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and will bring them back to this pasture, where they will be fruitful and increase in number.  I will place shepherds over them who will tend them, and they will no longer be afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing,” declares the Lord.

“The day is coming,” declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch,
a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land.

In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety.
This is the name by which he is called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior.”


Luke  23: 33 - 43.
When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals - one on the right, the other on the left.

Jesus said, “Father forgiven them, for they do not know what they are doing”.

And they divided up the clothes by casting lots.  The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him.  They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One”.  The soldiers also came up and mocked him.  They offered him wine vinegar and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself”.  There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah?  Save yourself and us!”

But the other criminal rebuked him, “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence?  We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve.  But this man has done nothing wrong”.  Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”.

Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise”.


Colossians 1: 19 & 20.
“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.



Are we not all grateful for the “all” of salvation, a salvation given to us by the Chosen One,  a salvation that is in the process of reconnecting our two worlds?   The God of the galaxies has made a way for us all!
     

Freedom

Freedom  ( the post of May 19,2013)

I am now racist!  I am tired of being called a racist so I might as well be one.  Send all the presidential attack dogs my way.  Send out the Washington inspector’s from OSHA, DOJ, IRS, FBI, EPA, Homeland Security and the S.S., whomever, here I am, come and get me!

American black politics has convinced this white American to not expect national black leadership for the greater good.  Black politics is only Chicago style politics probably learned in the gutter of New Orleans and it’s payola culture.  I have been turned.  No longer will I root for the underdog black man, no longer will I trust the good intentions of this black president.  The shame of it all is that the good will of white America has been ruined and all hope for another black American president will rot for the next 50 - 75 years.

A change is about to happen!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Doomsday

A Pulitzer Prize winning photo from the Vietnam War captures a Vietnamese general just before he puts a bullet to the head of a suspected Viet Cong  official on a Saigon street.  That picture gave added impetus to the growing antiwar sentiment at home.  Any religion that tries to scare and force the folk into faith is just as ugly, senseless and shortsighted.  Faith established under duress will not, in itself, bring long term spiritual depth.  The passage that we have been directed to examine this Sunday, November 17, is again in the Gospel of St. Luke, chapter 21, verses 5- 19.  Some have called this passage the doomsday scenario.

The premise of this supposed biblical theology is that God will, at some point in time, demand and instigate the complete destruction and annihilation of all things.  The exception, of course, is that this God will exempt the good guys who will be preserved for eternity.  These folk insist that this passage is one of the best biblical proofs for their doomsday scenario and that they, surprisingly, are the good guys.  It is so accepted as dogma within a certain sector of the Christian church that reputable scholarship is afraid to even consider publicly that these words from Jesus were not so intended.

The doomsday folk accentuate the frightful conditions listed in this passage, wars and uprisings, earthquakes, famines, pestilence and eclipses in the sky.  These recurring events are, indeed, frightening but they have constantly nagged our days.  The doomsday message for this world is not what Jesus is giving to his disciples.  The prophecy is about the end of religion, all religions, beginning with the Jewish religion as then practiced.  The temple is doomed.  This central focus of the Jewish religion will be flatted in the year 70 A.D, some thirty years after the crucifixion of Jesus.

Going forward, who or what is to replace the temple?   The God of the galaxies was about to destroy the religion of the men of Israel and that through Jesus he would restore the ancient simple faith of the fathers, Abraham, Issac and Jacob.  There are times in scripture when I would like to advise the authors, in this case St. Luke, “quit beating around the bush” and just say it!  Maybe it is humility or a writing style that avoids the first person at all costs, but why can’t Jesus just say in Matrix language “I am the one”.  In this passage we are left to assume as much but the assumption has been grounded in all that has gone before in this gospel.

Without wasting time on the obvious, for the time is short, in a matter of hours religion would orchestrate a plan to rid their world of this Jesus and seemingly succeed.  The God of the galaxies, however, has a better, bigger plan for Jesus who will return to earth again one grand day.  This passage again assumes we know this expectation for all the words of Jesus are about having life patience into the future.  Don’t believe every Tom, Dick and Harry that comes along to say, “I am he”, this my return will take time.  Time aplenty for persecutions, imprisonment, political trials, betrayals, hatred and death, all of which have been and continue to be the history of the faith.

So what will the return of Jesus look like, how will it change our world?  The answer is not in this passage of scripture.  The doomsday folk must "prove" it elsewhere in scripture, if they can.  In the short term, blowing it up may seem justified but ultimate control is not ours, thank the Lord!  The ultimate decision remains with the God of the galaxies and one might ask, who does the Bible say he is, how is he portrayed every Sunday morning to we folk who desperately need a Savior?  What event should we expect?

Where in scripture is the dark side of God?

G.Goslaw
Landers, CA

The O'Reily factor

Mr. O'Reily is bending over to political correctness in his old age.  His book, “Killing Jesus”, is the latest case in point.  The book is not worth the reading or the buying because of a spinning of the facts surrounding the death of Jesus.  The authors have once again regurgitated the Roman hypothesis.  Mr. O'Reily will counter that his book is a history not religion, how convenient!

There is limited documented history about Jesus so what are their sources?  The story can not be told without the Bible as a primary source.  As so many do, one would have to pick and chose to conclude that the Romans killed Jesus.  If your going to use the Bible at all, tell the entire biblical account, Mr. O'Reily.

Yes, the Romans authorities pulled the trigger to kill Jesus but it would never have happened if the powers of religion had not insisted that the Romans do the deed.  Jesus was ignoring the religious leaders in Jerusalem and their control of the people was being diminished.  The Jewish religious authorities insisted and then threatened the Romans with civil unrest in order to have Jesus crucified.

How can you leave that part out, Mr. O'Reily?  Could it be that you are afraid of offending our Jewish brothers?  You are becoming the sultan of spin!

(this is a response to comments by Mr. O'Reily on his show, I have not and will not buy or read the book)

G.Goslaw
Landers, CA  

God think

Sunday, November  10, 2013

The God of the galaxies knows every hair on the head of every human that has ever lived.  Now that is God think!  It is one definition of God that is consistent with any description of an all powerful, all knowing supreme being.  Modern believers would rather have a buddy to smooth out the storms of life and this humanization of God has unintended consequences.  The other extreme is to assume that God is a remote uncaring celestial ghost who set all things in motion and we must look out for ourselves.  

In both cases we tend to lose our focus on how supreme is our God.  Can we face death with a buddy God placebo?  Everyone who will ever live, will die.  Are we so arrogant that our own death can somehow matter in the scheme of things?  Is anything left after the ashes blow in the wind?  The very best of us, those of us who have lived the most impactful lives, will be a footnote in an ancient library volume, a mere blip on the radar screen of life a 1000 years hence.

The Sadducees in the time of Jesus believed that being a functioning part of their religion, would give them intrinsic worth and their existence would count for something beyond the moment.  For this reason these folk did not believe in an eternal personal destiny beyond this life.  In addition, they considered the competing God think of the Pharisees more than a bit embarrassing, maintaining that the personal resurrection of the righteous is foolishness.  This is the Jewish religious world of the times that brought the Sadducees to Jesus as recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke, chapter 20 verses 27-40.

Taking sides on opposing views is the standard operating procedure whether it is politics or religion.  Were the Sadducees asking for spiritual enlightenment or were they seeking an ally to stand against the supposed fantasies of the Pharisees?  Were they seeking to embarrass or disparage Jesus?  It is difficult to assign a positive motive to their inquiry because of the outlandish nature of their question.  The question involved seven brothers and the custom of the next surviving brother taking to wife, the wife of the previously deceased.  Then comes the zinger in verse 33,  “Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”

The Sadducees could have just asked a straightforward question, teacher, what if anything is beyond death?  Instead, Jesus had to navigate the misconceptions and biases of his time.  Our modern understanding of the age to come is as conflicted as those folk listening to Jesus.  Similar to the Pharisee, Christianity preaches a personal resurrection of the righteous with an earthly familiarity that is as stupid as the question about marriage.  We want or expect “a face book heaven” with family and friends gathered around.  Jesus says no, that is not the age to come.

The second misunderstanding is that there are those who say that only our positive, religiously centered actions can live beyond our death.  As our lives are remembered as religiously acceptable, our lives will live on because they are respected by men and forever by God.  The reference Jesus made to Moses, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob clearly is compatible with this understanding of a religious eternity that the Sadducees advanced.  Most of our present day God think is along this line, if we are religiously connected, then we will be eternally connected to the age to come.  Really?

Jesus expended much of his ministry, his teaching and preaching confronting religion and made no such connection, anywhere at anytime.  Both the Sadducees and the Pharisees were definitely not friends of the age to come that Jesus was teaching about to the people.  Let’s move past the misconceptions, what did Jesus say positively about the age to come?  In the age to come humanity will participate in the very nature of God.  Life will no longer die for those of the resurrection will be counted as the children of God.  We would like Jesus to give more detail of the age to come but he is silent.

One detail remains, in verse 35, Jesus says that the age to come is designed for the worthy.  Why did he do that, it muddies the water!  What did he mean, worthy?  How does the God of the galaxies compute worthiness?  Jesus consistently ridiculed religion and racial biases which are not worthy of the age to come.  Who then is worthy?  Some would say it is based upon a faith in Jesus that is above or beyond religion, they build a doctrine of heaven and hell as if that is who God is.  Jesus does not go there, how does he describe God?  Verse 38 summarizes, “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”  Where their is life there is a future with God, the giver of life.

You are free to choose your own kind of God think.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca  

             








 

Scandal!

Sunday, November 3, 2013

The hunt for the true Church goes on….and on through the centuries.  You would think that so much energy would bring an answer but the church has taken what Jesus did and said and made it so complicated that we folk in the pew need a paid clergy to direct us to true spirituality, to the true church.  At least that is their angle but they are confused as well.  The church has offered many answers over the years to this question, a new answer brings temporary enthusiasm only to be replaced by the same old…. whatever.

Does salvation look like a gathering for worship, a doctrinal lecture, a biblical inspection, a confessional moment, a personal testimony, a prescribed life style, a prescribed wardrobe or the power of the spectacular.  The Christian Church has seen it all but what does salvation look like?  What is the salvation bottom line that fits every time, every place and most importantly every person?  We could do a “ask the man in the pew” segment and get a multitude of seemingly petty answers.

Why don’t we take direction from Jesus?  The answer is that what Jesus prescribed was simple yet so difficult, so difficult we avoid it like the plague.  Salvation looks like Zacchaeus in St. Luke’s Gospel, chapter 19: verses 1-10.  It does not take an Einstein to understand what is happening in this encounter with Jesus.  No society respects the tax man, no society respects the little guy, no society likes the rich man in fine clothes and every society will shun the sinner who cheats them.  If we could be totally honest, we are as socially driven as the Jericho folk were two thousand years ago.

Instead of shying away from a socially difficult situation Jesus spit in the eye of social acceptability.  “Zacchaeus, come down immediately, I must stay at your house today”(5).  Jesus had no acknowledged relationship to Zaachaeus, no invitation and the people who seemed eager to be close to Jesus, would not understand.  It was a scandal!

A scandal at the direction of Jesus in order to show us what salvation looks like.  Salvation looks like how we treat other people, all people regardless of social, religious or ethnic norms.  "Today salvation has come to Zacchaeas", because he will no longer trade on the well being of others.  A faith life should be different, a working religion should be extraordinary.  "Jesus came to seek and to save what was lost.(10)".

This is not a difficult reading of this passage, the difficult part is applying it to our daily lives, our neighbors and even our enemies.  Ouch!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Good Morning

Friday, November 1, 2013

The Apostle Paul is a literary gymnast.  The road traveled to make a theological point is not a line from A to B as we would express it but a winding road that seems to meander.  We are tempted to be turned off by the seeming confusion but if we persist the meandering adds depth and perspective to his central point.  This Sunday’s scripture is from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 1 : 1- 23.  Let us begin our Pauline tour at verse 8.  

The little phrase that is the key to this passage is “ the mystery of his will”.  What is the will of God for his creation?  The exclusionists' would like you to believe that the promised inheritance or cosmic plan is only for the redeemed in Christ.  The "us" of whom Paul speaks (3-7) , according to these folk, can only means those persons who profess faith in the Christ.  Unless you are one of us you are not in God's will for the future.   Did Paul put the Christ in such a small box?

Paul was writing to the faithful in Ephesus so that the "us" were those who had experienced the truth and wonder of personal salvation.  They were the believers to whom he was writing, "who were the first to put their hope in Christ”, those who “heard the word of truth” and “the gospel of your salvation” (13).  Paul goes on, “ When you believed you were marked in him with a seal, the promised holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance”(13,14). The new believer is adopted into the love of the Lord Jesus Christ and is an heir to an eternal future(14). This is a wondrous reality that can happen in this life as it did for Paul on the Damascus road.  This news, the broadcasting abroad of this news was Paul’s reason for living, but Paul knew this to be only a part of the divine plan.

The whole  plan of salvation was and is much more expansive and is a cosmic mirrored image of the love of the Christ himself.  Please return to verses 8 and 9, "With all wisdom and pleasure, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ". It pleases God to share himself with his creation as it pleases a parent to share with their children. Our children will at times make lousy decisions but because we love or take pleasure in our kids, we will never quit on them. This is the heart of the God of the galaxies, the God to whom Paul knew. Would this God put eternal boundaries around his compassion for his creation?

Paul answers that question as we continue in verse 9, "to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment-- to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ".  Paul knew that the mystery of God's plan is time sensitive,"when the times reach", and somehow was to include "all things", that it would bring unity where there was competition, with no boundaries, on earth and in heaven.  The salvation to which God is working through the Christ is the biggest and widest possible expanse.  This God of the galaxies could not give a heavenly pass to some and shut others out, all things means all things.

It would seem that the God of the few is no God at all.  Somehow the God of the galaxies will work it all out and this passage is very appropriate for "All Saints Day".

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Thank You!

Senator Cruz, thank you for standing up for conservative principles even when it was a politically dangerous stand.  Your particular fight and warning about Obamacare may have been a loser in the short term but history has proven that those who stand on principle will eventually win.  Might may make right in the short term but if there is descent and that descent is righteous, the people will win in the end.

Shame on the many, many liberal Republicans, shame on President Obama and all Democrats for their blind obedience to the tyranny of the extreme left.  Whomever is in control in the White House, and the mouth is not in control, they will use every means, legal and criminal, to disparage we conservatives who are the only long term hope for this country.  The bottom line is that they are afraid!

They should be afraid for as we are seeing, the American people are beginning to wake up.   The change agenda of Barack Obama is not the change that is right for the people, their big government plans are doomed or we are doomed!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Good Morning

Sunday, October 27, 2013.
The Common Liturgy calls all of the world to consider for this Sunday, Luke 18: 9-14.  In my Bible the paragraph is entitled, “The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector”.

There are those religionists' who recoil at the mere mention of the possibility of Christian Phariseeism.  They recoil because it is so easy to live really close to the definition that Jesus found appalling.  The Pharisee in the time of Jesus and today is one who holds himself to be separate, set aside as the best of what spirituality should look like.  In verse 11 we are told that “The Pharisee stood by himself to pray”, it would seem that the shoe fits.  The Pharisee took pride in doing little else than a meticulous worship of the Jewish religion, to include praying, fasting and tithing.  All was accomplished from a desire to appear super spiritual, above and beyond the common crowd.  Incredibly, this self centered lifestyle did not impress Jesus.

Instead, Jesus pointed to the tax collector.  These folk were doing the dirty deeds of the Roman occupiers, they were despised and rejected by all of society who were largely Jewish.  The tax collector worshiped in the back corner of the synagogue and Jesus notes in verse 13, this tax collector would not look heavenward but “beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner’.”  Jesus declared that this heart felt utterance pleased God more than all the fancy public prayers of the Pharisee.  Verse 14 ends with these words of Jesus,“For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those that humble themselves will be exalted.”  Some of us insist that these words from Jesus are about heaven and hell but that is incorrect, so say I!

The God of the galaxies is all about mercy, is not that what Jesus is saying?  The Pharisee is about condemnation and hell, at least for the other guy!  The truth is that we all need the mercy of God, we all are on a spiritual journey toward God whether we seek it or whether we claim our supposed independence. We all can be derailed or apathetic. Yet we all will eventually experience the mercy and love of God in this world or the next, while in this world we can make progress toward a heavenly certainty.  Could it be that in heaven there will be those of us who are exalted and those of us who are humbled?  It makes sense to this dummy, heaven will be an interesting place.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Disaster

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke is running for the hills.  The economic meltdown will not happen on his watch! After six years of printing phantom money to keep the economy afloat and with three more years of the Obama lordship, he knows the coming meltdown is not far off.

In addition, the ObamaCare fiasco is hastening the demise of what was once the best economy in history. The increasingly rich stock market players are selfishly pushing for continued money irresponsibility at the Reserve and in Washington.  They are enabling each other and will not stop.  All of these pressures will send the under $40,000 a year working America and the opportunity hungry young folk over the cliff in the name of fairness.  Fairness is in the eye of the most invested in the insanity, an insanity that will make America another nation of the rich and the poor.

Why should the economically self involved care?  They don't care! This is only one of many warnings, all of whom are more credible than this source.  All these warnings have been ignored and dismissed as political propaganda.  America will not wake up until the disaster comes and then some politicians will again try to manipulate the pain of others to their own advantage.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca  

be healed

Matthew 17: 19,20&21   Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, "Why couldn't we drive it out?"  He replied, “Because you have so little faith.  Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Every difficulty is solvable if one has faith in the God of the galaxies.  That seems to be the message that Jesus spoke to his disciples who failed to heal the boy with seizures.  Matthew, who records these words, says that Jesus rebuked his disciples, to rebuke is to level “blame or scold in a sharp way”.  The disciples must have cringed in embarrassment,  both from the failure to heal the boy and then the lack of understanding from their teacher.  Are not some of our meager exercises in faith just as lame as those of the disciples?  One should ask, does “every difficulty” mean every?  Are there no impossibilities with God?

This is one of those perplexing questions that can only be answered with a “yes” and a “no”, the soup contains neither absolute.  In the New testament the power of Jesus to heal the sick is not an absolute.  There is no record of any spectacular healing in the first thirty years of his life.  During his three year ministry, Mathew, Mark and Luke record how the faith of Jesus could not override the cynicism of the people in his hometown, Nazareth.  The people heard the news of the healing in Capernaum and marveled at the teachings in the synagogue but when Jesus claimed spiritual authority from a God who was bigger than their religion, they tried to kill one of their own.

Could it be that the God of the galaxies is less a spectacular God and more of a God who works through his creation?  Look around, how often do you recognize the spectacular activity of God?  That is not to say that God does not operate in a spectacular fashion, we can list the supernatural recorded in Scripture and in our world.  But by comparing the subtle activities of God and the spectacular activities of God, we must conclude that the God of the galaxies is most comfortable operating through his creation.  All of life is His creation and the natural world is inclined to reflect the will of God.

Operative faith depends upon us but it is also a shared experience.  It is shared with others and with the creative process.  The message that Jesus was sending with the over the top ridicule is that as far as you and I are concerned, there are no limits to what God can do, should he so choose.  After all, through his creative process, mountains have been raised and others washed into the sea.  Deserts have been turned into great bodies of water and jungles have become deserts again.  Look around, look what the mustard seed has produced!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Five

The following are at least five life lessons from the Bible.  Lessons that we all prove out in our days, at the expense of others and our own well being.  A few of us, a very few of us, are quicker studies at life. Only one human being has ever been morally perfect.

1.   There is no such thing as something for nothing.  ( all things come with an earned history)

2.   If you respect the little things, you will be trusted with bigger things.  (if you value the smaller things, larger things will come your way)

3.   Treat other people the way you want to be treated.  (do unto others as you would have them do unto you.)

4.   What goes around will come around. ( what we dish out to others will come around to bite or bless us)

5.   All is either positive or negative, nothing is neutral.  (our moral universe makes every choice a search for what is good for us and others)

 All of us are moral failures, the question being, are we becoming aware and accepting of life’s lessons?

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

Jacob

Are you liking the accommodations?  Your Grandpa is no saint, he has his flaws like every other man or woman on this earth, less than some and more than others.  Yet he has your best interests at heart.

I agreed to cooperate with the court to see that certain things happened in your life and it's their way or the highway.  As much as it's in my power, I will not be manipulated.  I want us to be a family here in Landers but that is up to you. Another living situation may be more to your liking but knowing you, it will be one you think you can control.

Quite frankly, you have been blessed with above average possibilities but your selfish mindset is stomping on those possibilities.  It is such a waste and someday you will recognize the error of your ways.  I fear that at that time, it will be to late!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

The Plan

Listening to radio preachers makes me angry.  They will tell you that my anger is a result of offending the will of God in this world.  This is probably the case but would you let me attempt to explain a large part of my anger?  The radio preachers pervert the scriptures and they kidnap the message of Jesus so that it can to be used for religious purposes.  These religious purposes include, enhancing their supposed spiritual authority,  legitimizing their dogma and sending any voices of descent to a supposed fireball called hell.  Shall we not mention the close proximity of money to their message?

This criticism, regrettably, is the norm in almost all Christian congregations, this kind of preaching and biblical exegesis is “how it’s done”!  It is kind of like politics, there are extremes within the believers but even the best are polluted by these religious expectations.  I am an old fogy, in my younger years I believed and sought confirmation in this life for those things that are espoused by radio preachers.  Now it seems that my anger is giving way to sympathy and a pathos for their circumstance and the human limitations that religion puts upon the kingdom of God.

O.K., lets talk about the case in point.  The radio preacher in question was expounding from the passage in St. John where Jesus teachers about the need to be “born again or born anew or born from above”.  What do you know, he is sending this message to Nicodemus, a very religious Pharisee.  Nicodemus was not the typical “sinner” within the context of Jerusalem, he had the respect of all because of his religious status.  It would seem that this supposed respect and religiously ordered life means nothing to God or Jesus, it may be likened to a blind life ally.  Jesus is contrasting the flesh, this earthly life against the life in the Spirit of God that has it’s own birth, they are different.  Jesus is pitting religion against the Spirit!

The question we all have to answer is whether Jesus was teaching about freedom from religion or the proper combination of religion and the Spirit from above.  What comes over the airways from those radio preachers is freedom from all religion except their true Christian religion.  They claim that there is a divine, blessed recipe for the proper combination of Christian religious credibility and the blessings of the Spirit of God.  They do not have the courage for a 100% break with religion for combining flesh and spirit is an unspoken assumption.  Is this what Jesus was teaching?

The extreme disparity in methods to spread the news about the spirit of God on earth is the best clue to a scriptural answer this question.  Did Jesus direct his disciples to point out the “sinners”?  Did Jesus take up offerings to finance the mission?  Did Jesus start a building program in every town he was to pass?  Did Jesus erect monuments to every miracle to help the people?  Did Jesus ensure that he and his disciples had adequate housing, a sure reservation in the next town?  Did Jesus spit back in the face of rejection?  Did Jesus use these and any other sensible and very human methods?

Nooooo!  Jesus ordered his disciples, go and tell about the spirit of God on the earth and ask for nothing in return.  Leave your families, leave your homes, leave your jobs, take no money, have no plan, just go and tell of the spirit of God on earth.  Do we expect the spirit of God on earth to be influential enough to make this work, or don't we?  Our insecure response, over the centuries, we sinners have thought to have devised a few prudent but seemingly necessary additives to this plan.  The result has been two thousand years of just another religion.

What would this world be like if believers had been and are now telling it like it is?  Just imagine all the wars and killing that would never have happened.  Why then, are we so protective of our religions?  You know why.

G.Goslaw
Landers, CA    

 

Termits

The termites are coming out of the woodwork.  Our president’s political campaign to punish Syria for the use of chemical weapons is exposing evil intentions around the world and the termites are also in southern California.  Yesterday, Sunday, September 8, in Los Angeles, a few hundred vocal protesters carried signs and shouted support for the murderous, genocidal regime of Syria’s ruling ethnic minority.  A minority that has ruled Syria by employing the brutal tactics of the Assad family for over 40 years.

When will humanity grow up?  When will we humans consider and value all human life as the singular divine priority, greater than politics, racial identity and religious expressions?   When will our pride in claiming human progress be worthy of our God?

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Mercy

Jesus told a story in the religious language of the times in order to make a non-religious point.  Is that so nonsensical?  Lazarus and the poor man arrive at the same time in the afterlife, one finds fellowship with the God of the galaxies while Lazarus is separated and isolated in great pain.  The conversation between God and Lazarus reveals to us the heart of our God.  Lazarus is chastened for living a life oblivious to the needs of others, i.e. the blind beggar.  Again, the God of the galaxies is about mercy, the mercy each of us needs.

The story should not be used as a justification for a theology of hell, that somehow we choose and earn our eternal destiny by the decisions we make in this life.  According to this theology God condemns the unworthy to the eternal fires of hell.  Volumes of human discourse have been written about who is and who is not worthy.  God becomes the great manipulator in the sky!  This lame theology is preached in most all church’s to this day.  The hell believers of 2000 years ago were the Pharisees, there was not a day in the ministry of Jesus that he could avoid the schemes of the self righteous Pharisees.

The disciples of Jesus, the nonreligious believers were encouraged to be God’s agents of mercy to the people.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Message

This is the message I would like to hear on Sunday, July 14, 2013.  We all have heard a hundred sermons on the Good Samaritan through the years (Luke 10: 25-37).  The relgionist’s want us to believe that being good, money, prayer, worship and a hundred of other do’s, will proved us to be acceptable to God.  Will the very best character of religion win us any points with the God of the galaxies?  Not according to Luke, God does not expect obedience, he knows us to well. 

The God of the galaxies is about mercy, dispersing mercy and he or she would like us to do mercy toward one another.  Who will be acceptable to God?  No one, for we all stand and die needful of divine mercy!  Let us, including all of life, rejoice in the promise of the soon coming merciful arms of the Almighty.  Even those of us who find it difficult to embrace them in this life should be rejoicing.

G.Goslaw
Landers, CA

Death

A definition…..killing is a human act that separates life for selfish reasons.  Death is not killing, natural death is but a normal and inevitable unselfish process that only apparently separates life.  This death is a change agent.  In the natural realm, of which we humans are a part, natural death enables the survival of the group and therefore, the totality of life.  Killing interrupts this natural process by forcing a blind life change upon another or a group.  The motivation is centered in the individual and a negative in the order of life.  All killing inhibits life and is destructive to the order of humanity living in this moral universe.  Natural death is a positive force.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Possum Politics

Do you get those money raising phone calls from the Republican Party?  The callers are well intentioned and maintain that if we would only give, the Washington outrage would be brought to an end.  The Senate will go Republican and real change is possible if not probable.  The problem is that we regular voters have been trained by past politicians not to trust such verbiage driven by the demands of a fund raising campaign. This being the case, what should be the plan going forward for the Republican Party?

Quit the possum politics, the current Republican leadership must attack!  The confrontations would force the Democratic media to cover the issues and make politics more about ideas instead of a mere popularity contest, a contest the Democrats are riding with Obama.  We cannot assume that the average American is so dense and disinterested as to ignore the dangers of a big brother government, a danger that will impact every individual of this and every future generation.  This danger is more threatening than any form of terrorism.  America cannot be that stupid!   We hope.

G. Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Freedom

I am now racist!  I am tired of being called a racist so I might as well be one.  Send all the presidential attack dogs my way.  Send out the Washington agents for OSHA, DOJ, IRS, FBI, EPA, Homeland Security and the S.S.   Whomever, here I am, come and get me!

American black politics has convinced this white American to not expect national black leadership for the greater good.  Black politics is only Chicago style politics, probably learned in the gutter of New Orleans and it’s political payola culture.  I have been turned.  No longer will I root for the underdog black man, no longer will I trust the good intentions of this black president.  The shame of it all is that the good will of white America has been spoiled and the hopes of  another black American president will rot for the next 50 - 75 years.

A change is about to happen!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

The Way

Religion kills, all religions kill but the God of the galaxies gives life.

Godless liberal progressive secularism is as much a religion as any other religion that claims to have the ear of their God. These folk kill in the name of their humanistic philosophy instead of at the direction of God.  One could ask, is either killing righteous?

Jesus was and is the only life form to have totally lived the way to spiritual wholeness and full humanity.  He lived 100% religionless.  He gave his earthly life to the grave at the behest of religion and rose again to this world to show all of us the way.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

Regret

King George is warning we regular folk that our isolationist tendencies will reduce our footprint between nations.  This dummy would ask, is that bad?  We are finished paying the price to be the world's policeman.  Let's have a real immigration policy, enforce the borders and take care of our own.

How did your footprint in Iraq and the Arab world work out for you King George?  Was the temptation to complete your daddy's justifiable police action in Kuwait irresistible?  Please don’t forget all those weapons of mass destruction that you pressured our intelligence service into sort of finding.  Who are the beneficiaries of our sacrifice in dollars, lives and limbs?  Can you name the winners?

We are all the losers because no good came from your leadership in the Arab world.  Do you now regret your decisions?   It would prove your manhood if you would admit your regrets.  We know this is highly unlikely, regret has no place in your palatial library.  How many military contractors financed that legacy?  Please enjoy your retirement Mr. President.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

America First

The Republican Party lost the 2012 Presidential election because the establishment Republicans were in control.  We conservative thinking Republicans for smaller federal spending and smaller government went along with the pablum of Mitt Romney, fearing the reign of Barack Obama.  That reign is now here, the faulty strategy of the establishment Republicans has given us the deserved title of losers, both the party and the people.  We have earned this razor strap spanking by our failure to stand for conservative principles.  Will the establishment Republican party remain entrenched in just another form of progressive liberalism?  This entrenchment made the Obama victory possible because there was no contrasting political philosophies. The presidential election was, therefore, reduced to a mere popularity contest?

So here we are six months after the disastrous loss, will the establishment Republicans change?  The view from the bottom of the electorate is that the Republican party remains without a strategy and no American vision except to further cave to the Obama madness.  The slippery slope has become a stampede and it would seem that the American dream of a “shinning city on a hill” is over forever.  The people, being largely too young and dumb to know it now, are the losers.  There is only one faint hope on the horizon, a hope so faint that it has never worked in all of American history.  Out of our mess could rise a popular demand for another political party, a third political party, a people’s party that would offer an alternative to the liberal progressive insanity of our time.  Is it to late?

Yes, it is much to late unless the people stand up and demand such a conservative revival happen now!  We must stand with a warlike intensity, we must stand on the street corners, we must carry signs of protest, we must hold our politicians accountable, face to face, in any way possible.  These are desperate times and only desperate measures short of violence will bring any meaningful change.  Why should we care this much?  We care this much for the love of country and for the generations too come, future generations who may not now understand.  We care that our kid's have the chance to grow up in America, not a third world minimal democracy that will promise everything and deliver nothing.

What shall we name this new political party?  Allow me to make a suggestion.  Let us name it for what it is....the America First Party!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

senator

The great Latin hope for the Republican Party and the conservative political movement within that party, is proving himself to be a traitor to the conservative cause.  Senator Marco Rubio’s support and participation with the gang of eight is confirming that he is just another establishment Republican.  Even worse, Mr. Rubio, you are dipping your conservative credentials into the septic tank of political expediency by being the front man for this new legislation.  Could we ask why you are allowing yourself to be so used?  Have you joined the insane rush to court the Hispanic vote at any cost for some earthly gain?   How can you lie to the American people by claiming that this new legislation will lead our country, sometime in the future, to secure borders and a sane immigration policy?

Even if this were true, and it is not, this is not the border security first policy that your conservative brothers have been insisting upon for two decades.  Are your conservative brothers wrong?  These are the same empty promises that have turned the American melting pot ideal of legal immigration into the American mess.    Have you, Senator Rubio, joined the ruling class of politicians who will never stand up for the people, stand up for the interests of we legal citizens.  Do you want to assist the job giveaway, the food stamp giveaway, and the welfare giveaway that most politicians ignore for the sake of winning the next election.  Why does not one politician have the courage of their convictions?  Join the crowd senator.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Explosions

Is America now angry?  Despite the liberal progressive kissy face with Arab extremism, are we at last going to protect America and Americans?  Is our President Obama, who allowed the death of four Americans in Benghazi seven months ago, going to also roll over when the explosions reek havoc on our streets at home?
Shall we have any confidence in the tough talk coming from our leader?  At this time, only the America that can’t face the truth, can remain faithful to the word’s of Obama!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca          

Untruth

Mr. President and your media puppets,

Just because you say it, does not make it so!

G.Goslaw
Landers. Ca

The Republican Party

This blog has an opinion as to the way forward for the Republican Party after the failure to attract voters in the 2012 presidential election.  There are those Republican interests who say that the party has not kept up with  the cultural change in America.  They echo the bunk coming from President Obama that conservative ideals are old fashioned, unjust and racially bigoted.  In response, the establishment Republicans would move the party to cozy up in the lap of the liberal progressive devils.  Establishment Republicans like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, George Bush, and about 80% of the nationally elected leadership of the party are smousers who have lead the country to the brink.

If the Republican party is content with this new America, content to go with the liberal progressive flow, the party shall ever be the party who sold off the country.  Does today’s party want to die with that kind of baggage?  Maybe so but we hope not!  The party should confront without fear the liberal progressive devils with the truth!  What is the truth as understood by the Republican Party?  In order to speak the truth, the party must confess their failures of the past and that is close to impossible.  Mitt Romney cowardly failed to do it and he allowed the Obama bunk to control his future and ours.  What is the failure of the Republican Party of the last fifty years?  Like all politicians, the party only has had a vision for the next election!  The long term good of the country is somewhere in the depths of party consciousness because no one will take responsibility beyond their own pocketbooks.

The Republican Party cannot win the respect of the people by playing to the worst selfish motives of the people or by lying and spinning the truth to excuse the liberal progressive trade off.  The fact is that conservative political and economic principles are the only honest option to build up an America we can again respect.  The bigger truth is that these principles have never, ever, been given a chance to work for the people in the gutter of Washington D.C.  Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, one a Republican and one a Democrat, came closest to conservatism and both experienced economic boom times under their administrations.  George Bush tried to emulate such a boom with a dishonest liberal styled manipulation of the economy resulting in the grand theft of 2008.  This is the one point upon which President Obama and this blog agree.

 A number of state governments are experiencing revivals for the people by incorporating conservative principals despite the burden of national leadership.  The party should build on their success, come clean with America about their own liberal fumbling and effectively communicate the personal economic bounce to the people that would be inevitable if our government got out of the way.  Will Republicans remain the party of cowards?  Probably!  

The truth is that no one will listen and no one really cares enough to mitigate their own interests in order to benefit the country as a whole.  Sorry, the American experiment is over!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

The Motive

The black folk are being played by the liberal progressive devils.
The brown folk are being played by the liberal progressive devils.
Young women are being played by the liberal progressive devils.
The not yet born are being murdered by the liberal progressive devils.

Do the liberal progressive devils want what you want?  Not really!
The devils want what they want, the political power to reshape America in their own image.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca  

Democratic Healthcare

Democratic healthcare has always been an illusion in America.  An illusion, yes, but it is also true that a fair system has always been an expectation.  Consider the history of organ transplants.  Who gets the available organs, the rich and famous or the poor and expendable?  The long held medical assumption is that we all have one vote, it doesn’t matter how well endowed our bank account may be, what matters is our level of need.  Practically speaking this democratic assumption was and is full of holes but never more so than today.

In the ever newer America with an ever expanding dollar sign ethic, the democratic ideal in the realm of healthcare has now become a joke.  Life and death is largely determined by the size of one’s bank account.  How do I know?  If you have had to sit around the waiting room of an HMO doctor’s office and talk to the folks, you would know.  The disparity between the have’s and have not’s has, indeed, become a laughing matter, only because it is so frightening.  One patient quipped, “six of my friends were declared healthy as a horse, only to drop dead in a matter of months”.  Was such a joke merely over 65 anxiety?

Please allow me to share my conclusions from accessing both systems and I shall attempt to be brief. The HMO system promises good healthcare with little or no cost to the patient beyond the monthly fee taken out of our Social Security benefits each month.  The other system is those providers who, for an additional monthly fee, provide a superior level of care and more importantly a democratic choice of doctors and places of service.  The gulf between the two, for a few hundred dollars a month, is horrendous.  Quoting a doctor friend, “ the HMO is not designed for the sick, it is designed to give mass produced medicine to the healthy at the lowest possible cost to the provider”.

As William Shakespeare used to say, “and therein lies the rub”.  If you have to join an HMO for lack of retirement income or pure greed, don’t get sick!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

Discrimination

In our new America, if you are white and old, you will get screwed.  It is time to defend the fort!

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca

The Hell Scenario

Religious people are boring.  We take pleasure in attaching to a religious social structure that provides some significant level of cultural security.  We self identify with a particular group expecting to be blanketed with that groups supposed acceptableness.  One would hope that this is not the only motivation but in most cases it is the principal factor as some folk relate to the church or to religions in general.  There is no more arrogant an assumption than the Christian small business person who advertises their trustworthiness by claiming to be Christian.

Assumptions are just as dangerous when seeking to understand the ways of God as outlined in the Bible.  As children, we learn the “spiritual truth” from preachers and teachers appointed by a church to give instruction as to what the Bible says.  These leaders, from a wide variety of religious and theological spectrums, already assume they know the ways of God.  The game is to pick out those scriptures that prove their assumptions, knowing full well that it is possible to proof text almost anything somewhere in scripture.  One can be a highly educated and an adult person to live their lives playing this game.

These learned assumptions, to some degree, depose and supplant the ways of God as the intended spiritual food for the church and the individual. It is laughable that the modern church of the 21st century has no clue as to why we are losing credibility with our culture.  In short, we teach mental assumptions about God not the Bible.  The modern critical mind recognizes the charade and compensates by rejecting all that comes from the church, including a lot of good stuff.

A variety of theological assumptions not directly supported  by a consensus of Scripture, have always been with the church.  There are old assumptions and faddish new assumptions that pop up from time to time that feed our desire for perceived exclusivity.  Some can hold sway for centuries and some loose traction in a few short years. One assumption that has always been with the church, is hell as a God appointed place of eternal punishment and banishment for the many.   Three mental assumptions dictate our understanding of the hell scenario.
Assumption # 1    Physical earthly death seals our eternal fate.
Assumption # 2    God is the sadistic ruler of eternity for most of humanity.
Assumption # 3    The love of God is meant only for the few right living persons.

At the time of death, so these assumptions state, God is obligated to deal with those of us unworthy of eternity, as the sadistic ruler God of the torture chamber called hell.  This warlike God has been preached right along side the good news of God’s forgiveness, grace and compassion.  After growing weary of both sides talking past each other with supposed scriptural backup, I would like to say how I have settled the issue.

The following biblical passages clearly convey the hell scenario. To qualify as a relevant scripture, it must teach that there is a place, a place that God has designed, a place of unending torment and that God will choose or judge those of us who will be banished to this place.  There are those theologians who want us to believe that our eternal souls are merely snuffed out if we fail to qualify for paradise but this is the most offensive of all assumptions.

Daniel 12.2  (Old Testament prophet Daniel)
Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake; some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.

St. Matthew  25.46  (Jesus)
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

2 Thessalonians  1: 5-10  (St. Paul)
All of this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering.  God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well.  This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels.  He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.  They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed.  This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.
                                                                                                                                     
Rev. 14. 9- 12  (St. John)
A third angel followed them and said in aloud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on their forehead or on their hand, they, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which he has poured full strength into the cup of his wrath.  They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.  And the smoke of their torment will rise forever and ever.

Rev. 20: 11 to 15  (St. John)
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it.  The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them.  And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne,  and the books were opened.  Another book is opened, which is the book of life.  The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.  The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and everyone was judged according to what they had done.  Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.  The lake of fire is the second death.  All whose names were not written in the book of life were thrown into the lake of fire.


Are you startled, there are only five?  The entire Bible has 31,103 verses, minus these five, leaving 31,098 verses which do not speak directly to this point.  The hell scenario would seem to be a minority opinion.  I am not a biblical expert so I may have missed a couple, but would you not concede that this minority assumption has minimal merit?  Of course there are hundreds of others that give us pieces of the puzzle, still, the five are not the overwhelming biblical evidence claimed by those who believe the hell doctrine.  One may ask, with such limited biblical foundation, how did such a hellish doctrine come to be the norm in the Christian Church?  Why has the Church so tragically defined biblical orthodoxy on such skimpy biblical clarity?

In my opinion the simplest and best answer is that this doctrine was and is intended to frighten the folk into submission to the Church.  The damnation motive, through the centuries of Church history, was front and center because this doctrine enabled the reign of the institutional church.  The doctrine is institutionalized fear mongering.  There are plenty of reasons to discount my largely personal opinion but the qualified are strangely yet understandably silent.

May I suggest the following post death scenario?  We all die, we all will be judged by God, all of us, except Jesus.  We all will experience temporary discomfort until we wake up, accept and surrender unconditionally by asking for the control of God.  The severity and duration of the discomfort is the only question that this life may influence.  The invitations are out for all of humanity but until we ask to be included, on this side of death or the other side, death will be an unpleasant yet glorious experience.

This scenario is in sync with the hundreds of scriptures that allude to our eternal destiny.  Biblical words such as sin, the judgment of God, the wrath of God, righteousness, the lake of fire, the mercy of God and eternal life need not ignite our human assumptions of the hell scenario.  Just the mention of such words is not enough evidence for anyone to construct a hell theology.

In an attempt to be fair, the Old testament prophet Daniel, Jesus himself, St. John and St. Paul made the above five statements that clearly state the hell scenario.  The Bible reader and thinker must make a choice to ask of these verses, are they intended to fully describe eternity?   Rather, are they not true statements spoken in the context of this earthly life and using the language very recognizable in New testament times.  The hell scenario was popularized by the theology of the self righteous Pharisees.

The fear factor alone has never given birth to true disciples.  Modern man is even less motivated to make positive change when threatened by the damnation doctrine because we are not so easily frightened.  Our place in nature without a faith in God is as tenable as it has always been but there are fewer obvious threats that breed insecurity in the short term.  Five centuries ago a theologian, scientist, mathematician and inventor, on the fringes of the church, recognized the limits of fear as a religious (spiritual) motivation.

“The way of God, who disposes all things with gentleness, is to instil religion into our minds with reasoned arguments and into our hearts with grace, but attempting to instil it into hearts and minds with force and threats is to instil not religion but terror.”  Pascal,  F 172  “Three Outsiders”, Diogenes Allen, Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, 2006, p. 34.

Since there is an eternal divine party, the loving, forgiving God, being who He is, will always open the door to those who ask.  The celebration will be ours to enjoy forever!  Joining the party in this life is it’s own reward.

G.Goslaw
Landers, CA

Going Criminal

In 1963 Bob Dylan’s, “The Times They Are A Changin”, alerted America to the coming social and political revolution.  In fact, the new America had already crashed upon the status quo.  The country established by the “greatest generation” in post war America became taken over by the young crowd, the conscious of whom could not abide with the evils of the war profiteers and racial violence.  America did change.  The social revolution was unavoidable and had both positive and  negative consequences to our national way of life.  The truth is that America earned it’s revolution because America had tolerated injustices that had to be addressed in any way possible.

Fifty years later, America, again, is a changin!  The social revolution we have earned has no folk songs, no rebellious minorities illuminating injustice, just the criminal progressive politics of Barack Obama.  This new America with our new leader has no conscience, no legal expectations, there is no search for truth, there is only politics.  Our country has lost any sense of community responsibility, any sense of a national life that has any truck with the concept of sacrifice.  Our country has displaced the “golden rule” with a narcissistic self preoccupation, instead of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, we Americans, devoid of a conscience, are grabbing all the gusto for our own individual existence and priorities.

The list of offenders is long, this new national narcissism permeates every corner of our society.  It has destroyed the goodness of professional sports and created a new religion, the pop culture idolatry.  The narcissism is on Wall Street, which resulted in the great theft of 2008 and an American economic collapse.  The narcissism now permeates every corner of government.  The public sector union culture insists upon the good life at taxpayer expense.  We the people want it all, without paying for it, without paying taxes and budgets are not important.  Send the check to every succeeding generation.  Nowhere is it more exposed than in the politics of Washington, D. C., where our politicians rubber stamp our narcissism while each politician constantly prunes in the fund raising mirror.

Today’s America is going criminal. Each American, from the time he or she is born carries the banner, “life is all about me!”. The national narcissism has reached a critical mass resulting in the reelection of Barack Obama who played up for political gain the dark side of the people.  Is it any surprise that the national madness has spawned a string of mad men, radical narcissists who have used mass murder as a protest and  communication tool?  The Christopher Dorner saga is the latest of the news making narcissist madmen.  The scary reality is that he is not far removed from you or I.

Why should we, who have tried in good conscience to play by the rules, not join this new America by also going criminal?

G.Goslaw
Landers, CA

   

The Questions

In my spare moments, I enjoy watching those old black and white westerns.  They are simple and predictable, so what is the attraction?  Could it be that they are representative of a simpler America?  Could it be that in their time America expected good to triumph over evil?  Have we not exchanged good expectations for the predictably selfish?  Have we not exchanged hard work for playing the lotto?  Have we not redefined justice by ignoring the white collar thief who steals billions while sending the drug user to jail? Have we not redefined America as a place where might makes right?  In our America, is not who you know more important than who you are?  Is it not true that in this new America, because the personally rewarding can be done it, therefore, should be done regardless of the cost to others?

Or, it may only be that everyone in those old black and white westerns is dead!

G.Goslaw
Landers, CA

Hi Adam

I’m reading this book about a possible 21st century understanding of God.  The following quote may help us as biblical interpreters.

“This approach (what he calls the constitutional method) if you haven’t realized it yet, defies both conservative and liberal categories.  On the one hand, the conservative constitutional view claims to put us “under” Scripture’s authority, yet I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noticed that some of the most pompous and defensive people anywhere are found among those who stand and shout,  “The Bible says!” Nor am I the only one to notice that before the Bible can serve as a constitution, it must be interpreted as one, which renders amazing authority to those interpreters.  The Bible they want to put us “under” tends to be the Bible as they have interpreted it, which unsurprisingly means we are under their authority as they stand over us with the Bible in hand.

On the other hand, the liberal view reacts strongly against all this conservative slight of hand and largely resists using the language of authority at all when it speaks of the Bible.  The liberal view ends up bequeathing a great deal of authority to liberal scholars who deconstruct the Bible, just as the conservative view does to the scholars of its tribe who constitutionalize it.”
Brian D. McLaren,  “A New Kind of Christianity”, 2010, p. 96.

A middle ground is, indeed, rare air!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

Capsule Theology

There is a God of the galaxies who is in control of all things.

1.  This God gives free will to all of mankind.
         (Mythological Tree of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden)

2.  This God gives “temporary” spiritual hardening to some of mankind, individuals or peoples.
        (the ancients, Cain, Pharaoh, Jews, N.T. predestination, secularism, etc.)

3.  This God gives unqualified eternal grace, destiny and unification with God to “all” mankind.
        (the past, present and future Kingdom of God)

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

Message to Prez

If you cover up the truth, as in Benghazi, the truth will come around and bit you in the ass, as in Algeria!
This is a bloody lesson when it is not your blood, tough guy!

G.Goslaw
Landers, CA

A Book Report

The repetitious use of the “I” pronoun is offensive in others and to be avoided in any discourse.  I shall take the risk.  The following is my reaction and reflection upon the book by Richard H. Bell, entitled, “The Irrevocable Call of God”, 2005.  I stumbled upon this book investigating the pro’s and con’s of Christian universalism which maintains that all of mankind, past present and future, is being gathered together by Christ to rest for all eternity in the arms of our father God.  About four years ago I equated such a hypothesis with the pagan cults and was certain that the Bible would never support such an intellectual pipe dream.

I am an amateur biblical theologian and an amateur Christian who has embraced a life long romance with the Bible.  Having read three or four more popular books about this subject, the title of Dr. Bell’s book intrigued me.  If God had an eternal destiny in mind for the people of Israel, the people who have rejected the Messiah for over 2000 years, could not this same destiny await all peoples?  Paying over $100 for a book gave me a few moments pause but I was curious enough to take the plunge.

The author was a complete unknown to me so I began reading as if in the dark.  The Greek, Hebrew and German is way above my pay grade but it is sprinkled through the text so that it allowed frequent skipping without loosing the train of thought.  There are footnotes galore, probably close to half the text, citing mostly current biblical scholars of the last fifty years.  Dr. Bell contrasts the work of recent systemic theologians and biblical scholars with a sprinkling of theologians of historical note.  The text is 422 pages with another 130 pages of reference material in the back of the book.

This man is a thinker with multiple degrees in science, theology and he teaches philosophy.  One would think that scholarship at this level would make this book difficult to follow but this is not the case.  I was hooked within the first few pages.  Everything is an argument, everything is a collection of contrasting opinions from familiar minds that force the reader to think right along with the author.   Most impressive is  the way he handles scripture, his is a hermeneutic for the 21st century.

A case in point is the tension in the writings of St. Paul regarding the religion of Israel and the spiritual destiny of the Jew.  The author uses the word “development” to describe the unavoidable change in Paul’s thinking between his early letters and the last letter to the Romans.  How can one with a narrow static hermeneutic account for this obvious difference, one should ask, which Paul is correct?  I would guess that the author would say they are both correct but that the more mature Roman perspective is the way forward.  Possibly, all scripture is true but all scripture must be weighed as if on a scale.  The Roman perspective on the future of Israel is a 10 while the Galatian perspective is an immature 3.  Please don’t blame this methodology on the author.

This is a book that meticulously details the relevant scripture, particularly in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.  You may find an answer to the biblical question of our time, does “all” mean “all”?  Did the apostle Paul mean "all"?

You may read this book and at least have an informed opinion.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

The Chaff

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Acts 8: 14-17
When the Apostles in Jerusalem had heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria.  When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.  Then Peter and John laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in there hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah.  John answered them all, “I baptize you with water.  But one who is more powerful than I will come, the thongs of his sandals I am not worthy to untie.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather his wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

The Chaff

The Holy Spirit is the arm of God in this world.  His presence, power and priority is acknowledged as center stage in every worshiping congregation.  The Holy Spirit is the soul of the church.  The Holy Spirit gives the priesthood the power to forgive sin.  The Holy Spirit is Christ with us.  The Holy Spirit enables speaking in unknown languages.  The Holy Spirit is an ethical life enabler.  The Holy Spirit is a guide to making right life decisions.  The Holy Spirit is the power that draws all men toward God.  The Holy Spirit is the executioner in Christian conversion.  The Holy Spirit blesses prayer as more than mere words.  The Holy Spirit is the giver of Christian assurance.  The Holy Spirit is the giver of biblical wisdom and truth.  The Holy Spirit is an ally in times of trouble and heartache.

The job description of the Holy Spirit may be extended further and further but does it not seem that we, the church, have become immune or overly familiar with the rhetoric?  Every believer in the Christ wants his or her life experience to be impacted by the actions of the Holy Spirit, in theory at least nothing is more important.  These two passages this Sunday announce a change, the working pattern of the Holy Spirit is to be different with the arrival of Jesus upon the human horizon.  It might help our understanding of the Holy Spirit if we explore these words of scripture.

At it’s best the faith of Israel had a reverence for God and for others to include the forgiveness of spiritual and ethical error but this faith at the time of Jesus had degraded to mere rule keeping.  Most of the folk believed that they were incapable of doing these many rules and regulations.  They also believed that their disenfranchisement mattered little to the leaders of the Temple.  They were correct for the prevalent spiritual motif of the time was the self righteousness of the Pharisees.  This sect of believers in the God of Israel were all about rule keeping and not about people.  The people, however,  flocked to hear the open invitation of John and were eager for a new beginning by being baptized in water.  The preaching of John the Baptist was the best of the old way.

John saw into the future and believed that the long expected Jewish Messiah would bring a new way marked by the preeminence of the Holy Spirit.  “But one who is more powerful than I will come, the thongs of his sandals I am not worthy to untie.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”  This is not to say that the Holy Spirit was not an effective advocate for God in Old Testament times but his actions seemed to be available mostly for the few.  The Spirit was directing and leading the people only as they followed those few who were in touch with the Spirit.  According to John, the coming Messiah would now make the Holy Spirit available to all seeking believers, who wished to implement the ways and power of the Holy Spirit into their lives.

As the centuries passed in the history of the church this universal availability of the Holy Spirit was at times withdrawn into the hierarchy of the church to be properly dispensed.  This withdrawal was always marked by an overwhelming lack of spiritual integrity among the people, some would characterize these times as the church in darkness.  The Reformation of the 15th century again gave back to the people the Bible and an awakening sense of the availability of the Holy Spirit.  This revival evolved into the understanding to be known as the priesthood of all believers.  If each believer is gifted with the Spirit of God, then the priest or the preacher is not the lone spiritual authority in the church.  Clearly, Peter and John could not envision the proper operation of the new church in Samaria without the blessing of the Holy Spirit gifted to the people.

Today’s church seems to be in turmoil and loosing credibility with the people beyond the church walls. The secular culture is making new converts everyday.  What are we to do?  The first step is repentance as in John’s baptism in water.  Instead of blaming liberal theology, irreverence for the Bible as we understand it and sin parading through the culture, we should question the language we are sending out.  Our impotence is not to be blamed on someone or something else, it rests upon the church to rephrase how the gospel message is communicated to the 21st century.  This creeping change will happen but only as the pain becomes unbearable.

If the goodness of God is what the church represents, then that God must be so superficial.  Much as was the religiousness at the time of Jesus, today’s Pharisaical church is seemingly content to construct it’s own Christian culture and then defend the walls.  Defending the walls means condemning and consigning that sinful world, all those liars, thieves, murders and promiscuous persons to the fires of hell.  Of course we tell them about Jesus but do we really care about such people?  The bigger question is how does god feel about these people?  That question will be answered according to how we understand the mission of the Holy Spirit.

Chaff is the unusable, worthless outer shell of the wheat grain.  The old way to separate the chaff from the grain was to throw the whole grain into the air letting the wind carry the worthless chaff away.  The grain would fall onto the threshing floor to be gathered for storage.  John the Baptist goes on to say that the coming Messiah, who will bring the Holy Spirit, “he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire”.  Does John equate people with chaff so that this is a warning or a threat of hell toward whomever may be considered a sinner?  There is a segment of immature, yardstick Christians who think this way.

They are wrong!  The chaff of our lives is the hard outer shell of selfishness and self indulgence that hides the man or woman God intended us to be from the beginning.  This chaff, when separated from our lives by the winds of the Holy Spirit, will be burned, never again to cloud our God given dignity.  That is what the life, death and resurrection of Jesus accomplished and this assurance of salvation is to be carried to us in our generation by the Holy Spirit.  Since and because of our gifted faith in the Christ, the believer has been judged perfect, at least in the eyes of God.  The unconditional love of God the father will accept us into eternity.

May those yardstick Christians be carried to hell, if there was such a place.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca