Ears

The Bible is not a God totem. The Bible is not a rule book for living our lives although much of Christianity has these opinions which I have found to be short sighted. This places me in the minority but to each his own.  I have moved through these biblical understandings to another place over the many years God has given me. The Bible has, however, always been the grand love of my life and thinking. 

Please give me the opportunity to explain.  The Bible is first of all ancient literature written by a multitude of ancient contributors who relate their God understandings and experiences.  Yes, there are God inspired understandings within these pages but they are not all equally inspired by God.  Some understandings are, shall we say, ungodly.

I broke with the traditional interpreters some fifty years ago when reading about the supposedly God ordained final taking of the promised land under the supposedly God ordained leadership of Joshua. The Bible praises this genocide in the name of religion as the fulfillment of the promise given to Abraham.  The Bible commands the slaughter. Is it any wonder that Moses, who saw God rescue his people without violence, would have no part in the genocide. The outer reaches of eternity are reserved for those who kill in the name of God.

Is it sinful to ask questions of the Bible?  Is it sinful to disagree with the Bible at some points?  Is the Bible not a place to have a conversation with God? Job had some very pointed conversations with God, questioning traditional understandings. Mahatma Gandhi, who preached nonviolence, took a long look at Christianity.  I am guessing but maybe he walked away because of the seeming duplicity in the Bible.  A duplicity that is swept under the rug by tradition. An honest reader or interpreter must ask questions.

Enough said, the upside is that the book is alive. The Bible is a hearing instrument.  You know, those God messages that are bombarding our world constantly.  We can hear from eternity through the lives and struggles of the people within these pages. 

Yesterday, I was fitted with my new ears and I am hearing stuff that I haven’t heard for thirty years. Stuff like the shuffling of my own feet or the bird songs from my front porch or the squeak in my chair as I sit at the computer.  If we decide to listen, sometimes with the aid of an instrument, we will hear the eternal words for us, in the Bible or on the front porch smoking the morning cigar.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca           

 

 

Peace

The miracle of miracles of life is the gift of God given peace that overflows us when we give up dealing with life from our own emotions and say to God from the depth of our being, we want what you want God.  I trust you.

(Sunday Summary: Bel Aire Presbyterian Church, Feb. 25, 2024)

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca     

Takers

The first part of the Obama’s plan (Agenda) is to wreak havoc in America and let Joe Biden take all the heat.  This is why we have had riots in the streets, an inflationary economy and 10 million illegal aliens flooding onto our streets.  The second part is to provide a solution to the chaos and the national discontent in our nation and among Democrats. 

That solution will arrive at the Democrat Convention, August 19 to 22, in Chicago’s United Center.  Is this not appropriate?  President Biden will decline to lead the ticket in 24. In desperation, the Democrat Party will convince and choose a second Obama savior, Mrs. Michelle Obama.  Michelle will deceitfully claim that all the chaos in America is Joe Bidens fault. 

You can bet on it!  I for one will take that bet, are their any more takers?

G, Goslaw

Landers, CA

 

WARNING

President Biden is not and will not be the candidate of the Democrat Party for President in 2024.  The actual leader of the Democrat Party and the man who has been pulling all the strings of the Presidency for the last sixteen years is Barack Obama.  Even when President Trump was in office, Mr. Obama lead the vicious previously unheard-of assault on the then president, Donald Trump.  Mr. Obama is the actual Republican target in 2024, we can forget about the bumbling fool.

This is not earthshaking news as everyone knows the truth but there is only silence about Obama.  Why are you afraid of Obama?  Why have we always been afraid of Obama?  Could it be because Obama is a bullet proof black man who cannot be questioned like the rest of us? Republicans, conservatives and libertarians must correctly identify their target in this presidential campaign season and have the guts to attack. The few conservative leaning media outlets only want to talk and expose President Biden’s obvious senility.  Get over it.

The Biden agenda for America is the Obama agenda.  Republicans must attack the record and agenda of the master vicious politician former President Obama.  Politics is not the area for cowards.  The Obama agenda is a remake of America to suite the political ideology of his deceased father from African poverty.  Government control of all life decisions was the easiest fix under those circumstances of poverty but America was not and is not Africa.  In America, individual freedoms are of greater value than the bank account, that is why we have been a successful nation, the power of a free people.  That is how American was blessed at least to this present day.    

President Trump and all Republicans running for office must now go on the offense opposing the Biden/Obama agenda.  The Democrats want this presidential election to be about personality.  That focus worked for them in 2020 and will work again unless the focus becomes the agenda for America.  

It may already be too late.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca

 

 

 

Review

Religion is about top-down thinking.  The 2007 publication, “Putting Jesus in his Place”, written by Robert M. Bowman Jr. and J. Ed Komoszewski, clearly illustrates this way of quoting scripture.  The book is a claimed defense of the God on the cross theology.  It is not. The book is an embarrassment to creditable biblical scholarship because it chooses only those sympathetic biblical understandings.  Frankly, in their read, there is no scripture that cannot be twisted and any opposing understandings are blatantly ignored.   

This book was written to counter the historical record of the four centuries following the death of Jesus.  Bart D. Edmans is the devil incarnate just because he told us the story of these centuries and how the doctrinal God on the cross theology came to be unassailable.  Believers owe him a debt of gratitude despite the fact that he is wrong to assume that this history disavows the existence or relevancy of God altogether. 

From their assumption the authors present a most one-sided case whose only authority is the Bible used as a proof text.  As has been mentioned somewhere else, as in this blog, this is biblical abuse.  If taken at face value, God as the trinity of persons, is no longer a monotheism.  The authors are not scholars, they are mass market profiteers whose market is we ill-informed church goers or former church goers.

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA