Apology

My apologies are due the good people of Landers.  The swarming flies that were so much of a Landers problem last year, have not reappeared this year.  I confess to having a fly neurosis but come to find out they only swarmed because I properly did not clean up the yard dog poop. This year I have done so and the daily routine of swatting flies is no longer necessary. The reputation of Landers is still intact.  

A kind neighbor, Janet, dropped a present on the fence which appeared to me to be a badminton racket and I was confused, not recognizing what it was really about.  Months later, after reading the label, it finally dawned on me that it is a battery powered fly swatting tool. This dummy thanks you Janet, I will keep it in reserve, keep on being neighborly, you are the best we have.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca      

More

Jesus heard the beckoning call of the other reality, the other life dimension that he came to understand as the dominion of the Kingdom of God. Startled, why pick on me, the smallest of all men?  Bewildered, unable to know what or who was confusing his day, Jesus tried to run from the certainty that had invaded his life.

Running was no cure for the presence seemed to be ever present. Exhausted, and protesting his dilemma, Jesus concluded that there must be more about in this world than the ugliness that seems to fall daily on all of us.  

Yes, this one Jesus will listen, what do I have to lose?  gg

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

Guilty

“In all likelihood, a combination of Roman authority and a narrow circle of the Jewish ruling elites was responsible for his arrest and execution. Very importantly, rather than Jesus being rejected, arrested and executed by the “Jews” or the Jewish people, the final and fatal conflict was with the urban ruling elites who, rather than representing the Jewish people, were in fact oppressors of the Jewish people.”

Marcus J. Borg, “The Search for Jesus”, 1994. P. 49.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca

Quandary

Doctrinal Christianity, since St. Augustine (395 A. D.), relates to all peoples as those who are the regrettably necessary but useful idiots.  There is no ongoing conversational freedom with either the bar folk or the pew folk, only doctrinal pronouncements from the pulpit or the platform.  Why has it always been so?  

Could it be that a conversation is counterproductive to the priorities of the church, which judges success solely as contributing membership? Just guessing but one might ask, is faith doctrinal agreement or a live conversation? That quandary has played out among us for far to long.   gg

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.     

 

 

 

 

 

 

God Code

Selfish decisions over the long term produce negative consequences in our world. 

Selfless decisions over the long term produce spiritual bonuses in our world.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Safe Space

This is a monumental day, August 20, 2024. While reading a book from a biblical scholar, which I am not, it dawned on me that at least one authority and I have found agreement about God. I gave out a yelp of joy. I will not name names for my endorsement matters little and is the kiss of death in the greater truth-seeking world.  However, I can now stop buying books, which I cannot afford anyway. Thank you, whomever.

There is no cosmic disciplinarian God (my own phrasing). However, I do remain confused about the seeming total absence of an apocalyptic God.  We can do away with end times preaching on this subject but is there not space for a God reordering in this world of ours?  Is there not room for unsolicited God interventions among us?

It seems to this neophyte to be necessary or why believe in God? Should we believe that God did his or her thing and then left this world to fend for itself? How absent is absent? From my own intuitive understanding of God as given to me, the all and the rare interventions are completed through the earthly God Code (my own phrasing).  Our world was ordered from the beginning to include this possibility at divine discretion.

Then there is the eternity awaiting all of us at death, not a worldly destruction but an eternal reordering that can best be described as apocalyptic. The question yet to be determined is what will eternity bring to us?  Some say, an ever-compacting unity that is at least a never-ending joyride.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.   

 

 

 

 

Double Down Democrats

Tomorrow August 15, the Democratic Convention will arrive.  Silence, quiet all opposing talkers, wait just a few more days.  Kamala is so far the official, unofficial presidential candidate of the Democrats. After the convention, Michelle Obama will no longer have a shot, she is the only candidate who could beat Trump.

No one believes thar Kamala can or would change the direction of the Biden administration whose policies she suddenly finds offensive. Kamala is the Biden administration. In fact, the powers that be behind the Washington throne have renamed the party by choosing Waltz as VP.  The party will be known, going forward, as the Double Down Democrats.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.    

Losers

There are two words in the Bible as written in Greek that the translators messed up. Because of their choice of words to describe the truth of scripture, great damage has been to our understanding of what God is about in this world. Allow me to highlight one of these words.

Matthew 7: 13.  Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to DESTRUCTION, and many enter through it.  (Today’s New International Version, a 2006 modern translation of the Bible from the Greek)

Matthew 7: 13. Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to DESTRUCTION, and many there be which go in thereat:     (Authorized King James Version, a 1611 translation of the Bible from the Greek)

Young’s Analytical Concordance of the Bible, Robert Young, LL.D., 1975, tells us that the word translated DESTRUCTION in both the King James Version and the modern TNIV is the Greek word APOLEIA. This word appears only 5 times in the New Testament. The basic meaning given is “loss”, not DESTRUCTION, a word that carries with it a sense of supposed finality.  

Religion has been caught again with its pants down trying to scare the reader into signing up to a perceived dogma. The dogma begins with a biblical truism. Our earthly lives are a choice, to believe in the God Reality or to choose some lesser and other God. We all have our Gods, even a choice for no God is a God.

The second part of this dogma is the falsehood, better known as a lie. Our lived-out choice will be judged in eternity as worthy of heaven or hell. The throne of God’s grace will be turned into an eternal guillotine. The Cosmic Disciplinarian God will then burn you forever if you have chosen or lived wrongly.  Are you scared?  Such a trauma driven scenario as this should at least make us think twice.

A Theological Word Book of the Bible, edited by Alan Richardson, a rather conservative rendering of the words of the Bible, prefers PERDITION as in the Revised Standard version, rather than DESTRUCTION as the proper translation of APOLEIA.  The only meaning of this word is clearly, as defined in English, eternal damnation and therefore the uniting of the dogma devotees.  

In the article by N. H. Snaith he states, “There is considerable division of opinion concerning the ultimate fate of the wicked. (p. 167)” Dr. Snaith goes on to say, “The idea of unending torment and punishment is being recognized more and more as being incompatible with the character of God.”  However, he concludes, “Jesus certainly spoke as though some would be lost, and these passages which speak of ‘perdition’ clearly portray an annihilation that is complete and final.” 

Here we go again, circular reasoning that is another lie.  How does a loss saying of Jesus turn into eternal damnation?  This rendering requires a leap big enough to jump the Grand Canyon. However it is sliced, PERDITION and DESTRUCTION are religious dogma talking.  Some of us are not sure what Matthew meant to say but the issue is rather what did Jesus mean to say?

Loss is one of the Jesus reversal sayings that kicked religion in the teeth. A possible quote from his lips may have been, in this earthly life, there are winners and losers, in eternity the earthly winners will be the losers and the losers will be the winners.  This possible understanding surely upsets the dogma table and Mathew. When I run across what the experts have to say, I’ll let you know. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca   

   

Forest

Doctrinal supposed orthodoxy is one of the divisive power dominions that the Apostle Paul called the wisdom of this world (I Cor. 1: 20). While we waste our energies on these games, God sees them as mere foolishness.  Doctrinal orthodoxies are the trees not the forest.

The trees only obscure the cosmic expanse of the God reality. The forest is about the available undeserved grace or love or acceptance of God, who says to us, come and taste.  The forest is here now while we are yet clothed in our humanness.  

Doctrinal orthodoxy, however it may be defined, will never take us there, i.e., to the forest.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.    

Joy

God salvation is not fair. God salvation does not turn right earthly wrong. God salvation is largely unknowable. God salvation is not about smarts.  God salvation is not about who you know.

God salvation is about the chase, the personal “asking” search for whatever is out there, an experiential exploration.  Our stories are as different as night and day but the chase is an equal opportunity journey in lieu of the awaiting all-inclusive eternity of joy both in the now and fully beyond death.

God salvation is a joyful childish playground.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

Origen (185- 253)

“God (Father in Greek) therefore must not be thought to be any kind of body, nor to exist in a body, but to be a simple intellectual existence, admitting in himself of no addition whatever, so that he cannot be believed to have in himself a more or a less, but is Unity, or if I might say, Oneness throughout, and the mind and fount from which originates all intellectual existence or mind.”  Page 10.

"The Son, who is the image of the invisible Father, is not the truth compared to the Father; but in relation to us, who are not able to receive the truth of God Almighty, he is a shadow and semblance of the truth." page 20, note 1.

“Origen On First Principles”, Koetschau's Text and Translation into English, Torchbook edition, 1966.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Narrow Path

Dietrick Bonhoeffer was on the right path, while in prison, he gave to us religionless Christianity.  What if he had survived Hitler justice, would religionless Christianity have been enough?  Would the narrow path that he was led to walk have blossomed into a religionless spirituality?  Not the fluffy pseudo modern escapist spirituality but the courageous variety. The kind of spirituality that has no fear of the lion’s den, religious persecution or the Hitlers of this world. The narrow path that gives no quarter to the certainty of our own demise because, live or die, the narrow path is eternity bound.

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA 

Useful Idiots

The question to be decided sometime before November 5 is the following.  Are there enough useful idiots* in America voting on November 5 to give America continued Democratic control? Does America want more of the same? 

Frankly folks, we still don’t know who will be at the top of the Democrat Party ticket, as if that really matters.  I am still betting on Michelle Obama. Kamala Harris has been given a few weeks, prior to the Democratic Convention August 15, to prove she can beat Donald Trump, otherwise, the Kingmaker will also dump Kamala and install Michelle as the new old face of the party.  Michelle has recently appeared in public alongside her husband and despite all of her denials about seeking the job, that is the plan.

Bring it on Barack!  How can any thinking adult say that this plan is nothing but a dictatorship in the making? Like every other issue, you forecast what you are thinking by accusing Mr. Trump of doing what you are planning. Democracy, forget it.

Barack and Michelle will be back in the White House for good. They will stack the Supreme Court, give voting rights to illegals and force most of America on the government dole.  Barack and Michelle will ignore the Constitution with mandatory term limits.  The dollar will no longer be the international currency, business innovation will cease without a motive and inflation will skyrocket due to crazy spending while the country runs out of other people’s money. The government will be forced to tax the life out of everyone, rich and poor, unless you are a government elite and among the powerful.

There will be no recourse, on any issue beyond the government, including whether you and yours live or die. Sounds like a dictatorship, doers it not?  Only useful idiots would vote for this Obama planned version of America. We shall see.

*  Thank you for this clarification, Prime Minister of Israel, Mr. Netanyahu.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

Cosmic Flip

The message that Jesus preached was primarily as a reformer of the Hebrew religion in sync with the prophets of old.  All religion was and is a dead end.  Above religion, Jesus's message was that eternity can be tasted now as a cosmic flip of the priorities of our world. The coming flip will include, the losers becoming winners and winners losers, the pious will be exposed as sinners and the sinners will experience the respect of God, the rich will become poor and the poor rich and the masters will become servants and the servants masters.

Jesus says, believe and taste the God ordained coming cosmic flip.  2000 years later, with hindsight, we can identify the beginnings of our coming of age but most of the cosmic flip awaits us all, at our own deaths as individuals and the earthbound final fulfillment to be experienced by an unknown generation in the future.  No one has ever, can now or will ever avoid the coming cosmic flip.

Before we get all confused with traditional end times preaching, allow me to say a word about the Bible. No thinking adult can defend the understanding that all the red-letter words in the Bible were the actual words spoken by Jesus or understandings given by Jesus.  These recorded words in the Bible are the best recollections of a variety of Jesus listeners multiplied, who knows how many times, all of which were mixed with a variety of human understandings about the supposed reality of God. 

The Bible, therefore, can be thought of as an egg.  The pure words and message of Jesus are the egg yolk, given to us surrounded by layers of human listening fallibility or ineptitude. This is the albumen or egg whites.  In the Bible it is called religion.  The trick is to separate the whites from the yolk, not an easy trick. Some biblical thinkers just throw out their brains and take the written words of the Bible “as is”, in Zillow talk.  The Bible then becomes so complicated that the yolk is given no value or hidden, even taken as a joke, in our complicated world.

Much of the Bible is not history, a history that can extend us in some way into eternity beyond our own demise. Eternity is not to be thought of as heaven, a storybook dumped on the Bible.  Jesus called and expected our world to be ruled as the kingdom of God with God's eternal values endorsed and lived out by believers. Thanks to the Jesus Seminar and the Westar Institute, the Bible is being separated, fact from fiction.  Now, the question needs to be asked, what's next?  When will the next appear?

This blog is just humble enough not to make a guess as to what God is up too. For now, the kingdom of God appears to shine among us when we, as believers, order our lives to reflect eternity values. The number one value being, the inherent value of every living being that crosses our path. We shall try to make our world eternity friendly, sometimes failing and sometimes succeeding but our eternal future in God is assured for all of us.      

What a great day that will be! The flip is among us and will be the order of the day in eternity. Of course, you will not hear this from the pulpit because the institution of religion drowns out those eternal values of the kingdom. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Blinders

Our delicate sensibilities would like to believe that the assassination attempt on former President Trump was merely a case of woke Secret Service incompetence and faulty decision making.  The Butler Pennsylvania scenario, however, follows a very familiar pattern lived out in the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother, a candidate running for president, Robert Kennedy and the attempt to kill President Ronald Regan.   

In each tragedy, an obscure gunman does the deed through an obvious and unexplained hole in Secret Service protection.  That security hole, in each case, has never been fully explained and our politicians were quick to accept a leadership shuffling as an explanation. Our government is again, in 2024, hiding the truth and expecting we useful idiots to accept another leadership change deflection.

Take off the blinders, America, some power in our government has killed and will kill political threats to its invisible control. That is the simple truth. The identity of these folk cannot be quickly labelled Democrat or Republican, something bigger is going on.  Our politicians of whatever flavor, have been and are running scared and justifiably so.  This conspiracy theory is real life.

I wonder if the shooter was told that he would be allowed to get a few shots off but then he would be silenced?  Probably not.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca

Chase

We modern Americans are spoiled brats. We give no respect to the welfare of any other human being, let alone those of us who also call ourselves Americans.  Entirely self-absorbed, that is what we are, wrapped up and manipulated by any ideology that seems, for the moment, to further our own self-interest.  Yes, we are proving ourselves to be the pitiful people, the ugly Americans, content to crazily chase that illusive pot of gold just over the next hill.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.   

Weird

I’m kinda weird.  I am a believing theist, that is, I believe there is a creator God who is the source of our reality, to include all that we experience in all places and at all times.  Our reality, however, is not the only reality. Ours is not the God reality.  We exist as if in a dark cave (Plato's cave), God is the only light source in our cave but that source or God is behind us, over our shoulder.  We can only see or experience the reflections and shadows of that God reality.

Reflections and shadows are lousy bed partners, we as humans desire certainty.  Through the ages we have invented meaningful stories that give us a feeling of certainty about God but the stories are also mere shadows of that God reality. The lived-out temptation for us is to value the stories instead of or more than the God reality. In my limited understanding, there is no need to defend the stories of Hebrew, Christian or Greek traditions.

This much is fairly simple. For sure there are more heady thinkers out there but I prefer my simple minded stuff.  The more difficult question is, what in God’s name, is this God reality up too? Are we being toyed with?   Later.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca      

Sixty One Years

The more things change, the more they stay the same. gg

“But that Christianity should be equated in the public mind, inside as well as outside the Church, with ‘organized religion’ merely shows how far we have departed from the New Testament.  For the last thing the Church exists to be is an organization for the religious.  Its charter is to be the servant of the world.”   John A. T. Robinson, “Honest to God”, (1963, 2002), p.134.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.