Religion Lie

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

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Readiness

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

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Now

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

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

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

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Fundamentalism

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

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

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

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

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Why?

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

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

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

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

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

No Deal

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

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

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Fuss

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

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

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

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

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

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

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.      

 

Soft Targets

The British-American Christian revival movement of the last 250 years will pass away in the next 250 years. There is a God cycle in politics and religion, a 500 year cycle of rising and falling. Over time revivalism becomes trite or common, turning off more people to spirituality than it entraps in the corral of acceptable thinking. Just as the socialist will eventually run out of other people’s money, the revivalist will eventually run out of soft targets.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Spiritual Truth

This morning I was awakened by a tune banging around in my head. Do not fear, it is not contagious. Getting personal is not my style but please grant me this one exception. I promise that I will not burden you with repeating what has become for me personal, lifelong unfolding truth. Every tidbit of truth that God has given me can be summed up in the words of this old Christian Hymn (circa 1880) by Clara M. Scott, “Open My Eyes that I May See”.

The words are most important but it was the tune that was banging around in my head. Why a tune? Why this tune? Who knows? Maybe, I should look it up the words? The lyric is as follows.

Open my eyes that I may see

Glimpses of truth thou hast for me;

Place in my hands the wonderful key

That shall unclasp and set me free.

Second verse:

Open my ears, that I may hear

Voices of truth Thou sendest clear;

And while the wave-notes fall on my ear,

Everything false will disappear.

Third verse:

Open my mouth, and let it bear

Gladly the warm truth ev’rywhere.

Open my heart and let me prepare

Love with Thy children thus to share.

Each verse is followed by the refrain:

Silently now I wait for Thee

Ready, my God, Thy will to see;

Open my (eyes, ears and heart) –illumine me,

Spirit divine!

These words mean to me the following:

Truth is always unfolding, always personal and never static. Every given understanding is only a now deposit on the full truth that is not a part of our earthly future. Our now will ever be influenced by our history, personal circumstances and corporate culture. Religion wants to define your truth.

God is a respecter of all persons and our now truth but wants us all to never stop moving. Never shall we stop being personally led by new revelation brought to us through the Spirit of God in whatever context. Freedom resulting from the truth search in our now, it is the ultimate good to be experienced in this life, experienced over and over as we journey on. 

After all, what is truth? Truth is mine to discover. My truth is not necessarily your truth and my truth places no disrespect upon your personal truth search. We are in this life together and the truth search is much like an Easter Egg Hunt on the White House lawn. Finding one egg, as Clint Eastwood once said, “makes my day!” Tomorrow there will be another hunt, God willing.

Journey on.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Legacy

Godliness is a two headed coin. Heads is goodness and tails is freedom. Goodness alone represents God as a haughty self-righteous spirit and freedom alone is only license. Godliness is goodness/freedom that enables respectful dialogue among us all. Goodness alone builds walls between people. Maybe, the balance that Charlie Kirk brought to us should be a model going forward?

Mr. Kirk and I would not have agreed on everything, particularly the role of religion in our lives but I respected the man from afar. Charlie appeared to have a rare style; he was first a listener and then he would make a respectful faith based response without putting anybody down. Thinking out loud like that is a rare talent in colleges or our religious circles but Charlie seemed to love it. Most of America considers Charlie a friend who will be greatly missed. We extend our condolences to the family.    

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Missing?

If God can dump what some call wisdom on this 70 year old, foul, ignorant, stubborn and deluded human, all of us are potentially gifted with spiritual ears. It would seem that this is the way God impacts our world (google Jacob Boehme), one set of ears at a time. Such a slow God plan has to have a slow impact in terms of actual numbers. So many of us, for one reason or another, missed or are now missing the bus. Does God not care for those of us without a ticket?

If one claims to believe in God, a caring God, a God of order, a God with a plan, one has to believe in the unlimited seating of eternity. To believe otherwise, is to be less than a God believer. That one is only a cold religion believer.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Adult Theology

The Christian philosophers are stuck. They shall remain stuck as long as their God motive is goodness, where is it, what is it? The good God is a misnomer. We were told the minute we jumped out of the cradle, now, be good little boys and girls. Goodness to some means obedience. We have shaped our God, our theology and our philosophy to fit our human reality. Is God humanlike? Shall we define God with trite human life patterns?

The Godless philosophers tell us there is no God and ours is a completely natural world governed only by mathematics. Maybe, maybe not. Following their advice means we live only for the moment. Suppose there is another alternative? Suppose our God definition is slightly off kilter. God’s motive for our created order has to be something other or something bigger than just goodness. Goodness is always crushed in our world.

Maybe, God has created a world that teaches us about what God most clearly respects, freedom. The time has come for an adult theology, a masculine theology that is rooted in the competitive world we came from and not the Platonic bedtime stories that seemed appropriate 2500 years ago. God is freedom, total freedom, freedom is good. We are here in our now to experience freedom or the lack of freedom.

We learn best about God freedom when we don’t have it. Therefore, evil is a necessary evil in our world. We are slow learners, stubborn idiots who think that life is about gathering up all the available goodies, even when there are none to be had. We religious humans of every flavor tie up our Gods in neat humanlike packages where there is no God freedom. Grow up all "ye" God thinkers.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

justice

The uglier this your world may be, the grander the intensity of your eternity.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.