Mud

In the Bible, as in every age, we find both flashes of rabid spirituality and the mud of religious judgementalism.  Jesus was 100% spirituality; the disciples didn’t get it but the mud understood the threat.  The mud slingers were in attack mode.  Jesus had many choice words for these folk.  Is it any wonder that post resurrection, the mud was mixed with the New Testament writers accounts of Jesus talk?  Which is it, Jesus or the mud?  

The textual criticism of the last 100 years is way above my pay grade, however, could the efforts of these biblical scholars have been an attempt to separate the mud from the spirituality?  Let’s hope so but their success or lack of it has not proven to be beneficial to the people, the regular folk like you and me without the intellectual and language backgrounds.  The problem, again, was the focus on the minutia of scripture avoiding the broad and obvious conflict between people of the spirit and the ever present mud slingers (Sadducees and Pharisees).

Religious judgementalism survives and thrives on threats.   What does it matter who is right, correct or in sync with the authorities?  It’s kind of like the evil of war killing.  Considering who and where we are, we will always have enemies to kill.  What would Jesus have said about that certainty?

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA  

 

 

 

 

Surprise

God has a positive spiritual eternity ready for everyone.  At birth all of we folk were gifted with an eternal passport.  If we have breath, a pulse and brain function we are said to be alive.  We call this existence on earth life but is it God’s definition of life? 

God’s definition is all about unity, togetherness, a spiritual brotherhood and sisterhood without sexual, hereditary or churchy definitions, just a spiritual gathering and bonding around the wonders of God.  There will be no qualifications for this gathering, we all shall be wowed by finding, after all the ugliness in ourselves and in this world, a joyful secure home. 

Eternity does have a special surprise for those of us who have been seekers of the God reality in the midst of our earthly aloneness.  Eternity then becomes just an extension of the journey begun in this our earthly time frame.  Don’t ask about the surprise because such a surprise can only be a surprise, if it is a surprise!   

Wait we must but the day is coming soon. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA      

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is an appropriate day to consider food.  Are you a pie guy or do you relish the dressed turkey and potatoes?  Faith is like that.  Faith in God can be some pie in the sky fairyland or a vital part of our daily lives in this our earthly existence.  Which do you prefer?  How do you know? 

By definition and central to New Testament faith in God is the pie in the sky, 2000-year-old doctrine of the Virgin Birth of Jesus.  Just because some of the disciples of Jesus and some of the biblical writers believed in the virgin birth, must we? Just because some Christian believers all through the church’s history are of this one opinion, must we share that opinion? Are we not humanoids of the 21^st century?  Is this doctrine really necessary or does it just make us feel good? 

Of course, you say, when it comes to matters of faith, the wisdom of the mind and science cannot be trusted.  However, Jesus said a day is coming when we all shall worship God in the spirt and truthfully.  If Jesus were sitting next to you or me in the pew this Sunday, what would he say?  Maybe, because of our insistence on the fairyland of faith, he would say, “Oh, you of little faith!” (Matt. 17:20,21)

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca

HELP!

I have so many opinions you might think, I think, I know it all.  I do not. Just like all of us, I am in a continual learning mode, my blog is a way of tracking notes.  Please comment on any point or blog (ggoslaw@gmail.com).  All negative or corrective arguments are most welcome.  No comments will be shared on this blog without permission.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca   

 

Search

Another disciple said to him, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."  But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury the dead.” (Matthew 8:21&22).

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

 

Evil

The most hideous and nonsensical Christian doctrine afloat in our world is that there exists out there, somewhere, a cosmic disciplinarian God who must enforce eternally an ever-changing earthbound code of personal ethics or supposed right behavior.

No one believes this crap in or out of the church, because excuses everywhere abound.  This doctrine only exists to give the church spiritual leverage with the "sinners".  After two thousand years, is it not time to change gears and find another leverage focus that speaks to each of us, sinner and saint?

Instead of focusing on the aloneness of eternal damnation, let's talk about the aloneness and separation curse that we each shoulder as human beings living in the now of time and space.   

The search for spiritual reality is the only fix for our aloneness, this search is it's own reward, today and tomorrow. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA   

Foundational

Owning a home has forced me to get a construction education.  This one principle is unavoidable, all successful building starts from the foundation upward.  One does not build the roof before the foundation.  The Bible speaks about a firm foundation as it applies to our lives but let’s apply the principle to our understanding of God.  How are we to understand God? 

The temptation is to start with religious dogma or descriptions and then seek confirmation elsewhere.  Christianity mostly uses the New Testament to confirm dogma, Judaism uses the Old Testament and our Muslim brothers use the Koran, their holy book.  Is not the seeking of confirmation in each case top-down thinking?

Being born into the Christian faith I will pick on our educational methodology.  The Bible is taught in every quarter top down.  Every Sermon, Bible School, Seminary or Sunday School class starts from a doctrinal premise and then teaches the student where in the Bible to find confirmation for that premise, often exaggerated as if it were evidence.  After all, the Bible is God inspired, is it not?

At least one of us believes that this top-down Bible teaching methodology is Bible abuse.  The Bible becomes a dead book, intellectualized beyond the understanding of we average Joe’s.  I am a dummy, the only good that came from my limited experience with Christian education was that I became familiar with the Bible for the first time.  I found the top-down educational method boring yet not understanding why. 

Maybe this is why believers have known little besides division for four thousand years and why most churchgoers are biblically ignorant. Once freed from the top down method many years later, the Bible became alive.  After all, the Bible is a story book, the story of different people, in different circumstance and what they experienced in their lives God wise, that is not boring.  The only downside is that this methodology is not a quick fix.

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA    

 

 

Forest

Our world forces everyone to be tree watchers but the heartfelt desire to be God Forest watchers can never be forever squashed.  Religion of every flavor is not the God Forest.  Religion only changes the trees. 

Although Jesus did not use the God Forest metaphor he told the Samaritan woman about the God Forest.  Using the Father God metaphor, Jesus said that the Father God must be worshipped in Spirit and truth for God is Spirit.  

Does this mean that Abram did not worship in Spirit, no, Abram was a God Forest watcher, communicating with God through our shared spiritual antennae. 

WOW!

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca 

Crazy

One has to be a tad crazy to believe in the existence of a God.  Our world seems to pose an unexplainable pointless reality populated with only assumptions and surmises.  Our God, if one exists, is invisible, he or she or it, has no cable TV channel and seems to be blind to our ravages of injustice that we constantly dump on one another.  Our God, if one exists, has no beginning and no end. We use the word eternal but what does that really mean?  Time is not a constant, we have a thousand questions but few answers.

At this point, the fur is standing up on the backs of God believers everywhere. These folk are the easy believers, they just want an answer, any answer, from the pulpit of religion, the podium of politics or the laboratories of science.  Subconsciously, they say, give us something to believe so that we can get on with living our lives. You know, they are missing the forest by focusing only on the trees.

Abram, later to be renamed Abraham, was not a tree watcher 4000 years ago.  Abram was seeking the believer’s forest in one of the far corners of the globe, the Ur of the Chaldees. The place is very insignificant with few trees but the ring of the name is so engaging, Ur of the Chaldees. Three of the five major worldwide religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, claim this parttime desert nomad and shepherd keeper as their spiritual father who inadvertently has reached billions of peoples with a God message.

Abram was a tad crazy.  One day, a day like every other, probably in the early morning hours pondering the stars while tending his herd of sheep, Abram believed he heard from the forest, the God Forest.  Startled, he probably reacted like you or I would react, who me?  The comedian George Carlin had a funny routine that exploited the humor in God craziness.  As children, we all had a good laugh.  Out of all the billions of earthlings, God is aware of my, Abrams, existence and this God has a plan for my, Abram’s, future.  

Crazy it is!

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA