Appendix

Every good book has a climax. Every good book promises to take us somewhere yet unexplored. Some books do and most do not. What is God about in this world of ours?  Is God about reshaping the peoples of our world? Not so much, despite all the claims to know God, we have yet to find a worthy and engaging reflection.  Every ethic, theology, every book is but a short-term fix to a long-term human problem. This problem cannot be fixed, we are who we are. Like it or not, we are who we are.

Maybe, the only live option is to surrender. Surrender to our own and others’ expectations. Surrender to the supposed divine expectations. All the plastic surgery available to us cannot turn we who are ugly into the beautiful. All the makeup is pointless. Give up and grow up!

Ours will ever be a competitive, dog eat dog world. Why are we all born as combatants? Why were we all born to trust in something? If there be a God, the only marker available to us in this world is to trust this God, past all the craziness and beyond the grave. Somehow we as individuals are significant, somehow we matter, our lives matter. 

Living and learning to trust in the surety of God is the only meaningful earthbound viable option. It is not easy but it is not complicated.  

What have we got to lose?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

Diagnosis

"Whether we call ourselves liberals or conservatives, there remains a flaw in the human species, a sin that clings to us as tribal creatures afflicted with a seemingly incurable disease: we would rather be right than loving.  We would rather be correct than compassionate. We would rather be saved than seek justice. This is why it is so much easier to reach a verdict than to become a disciple. This is why the church is dying."

The Underground Church, Robin Meyers, 2012, p. 29.

 

 

Done

I have said my peace. What little I know of myself, I know for sure I am a good starter and a lousy finisher. This one thing I have finished well. I have shared what was given to me as I searched for the hidden God among us. No more, no less and am convinced that this God cares for us all and our country in total. This God cares for each of us despite all the evidence to the contrary. God cares as all the negative appearing earthly evidence rains down upon us as if in a thunderstorm. God cares because there is the eternal rainbow.

To all those who so choose, take it from here. For me, this is done. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

 

Mix

Eternity should properly be called the Mix. Defined as a grotesque melting pot that the God of eternity is forever stirring toward unity. We humans come into this world by a process of dispersion or scattering, our only choice is to explore or search out our earthly place. All of life in our world is a grand dispersion or scattering.

Eternity is the reverse of scattering. Eternity is a grand coming together in the Mix.  

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

More

Death is a turning of the page. Every sinew of my being says there is a God of the next page, there has to be such a joyful place for joy is such a rare earth mineral, here and there but never for very long. Life is about competition yet life has to be more than just scratching at the earth for a place in the sun. Life has to be more than heredity, gene pools and the like. There has to be more.

We arrive with nothing; we are deserving of nothing and when our page turns, all of us are nothing or we gain everything. The game does not end on the fifty-yard line, it is all or nothing. There can be no half way God. Thusly I believe or more correctly hope. A hope is far beyond wishful thinking, hope is more of an earned expectation after much searching. This is the universal constant in our earthly life equation.  

When and if the competitive fires have gone out and the dreams are no more, we alone await the turning of the page. Wait one minute, some of us scream, that may be the alive definition that some of us live out but the turning of the page more likely is a wrecking ball that intrudes into the world of this competitor. Death is an enemy, a robber that prowls the night, there are dreams yet to be lived. What say you?    

Life is not about justice or fairness, only the fight is guaranteed to us in our world, nothing more. Winning or losing is not the life barometer, the only barometer that makes us alive is our competitive life fight, win or lose.  One round or ten rounds, opportunities missed, roads not traveled, applause or condemnation, they all are of little consequence. 

The more has to be so much bigger.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

 

Sparks

Charles Darwin, among others, was born on February 12, in the year 1809. Two hundred and sixteen years later, our Christian God thinkers have failed to take into account our world as it actually exists. As a result, they have tried to keep God believers in the story time caves of ancient thought.

One hundred years after Darwin published his book, “On the Origin of Species” (1859), most of our world had agreed with Darwin. Even the God believers in the pew have awakened to the new science reality as the turmoil caused by this publication began to subsided. The caves have become increasingly irrelevant to the people, we have to live in our now world.

The Christian God thinkers, regrettably, are a cave dwelling Church protected class. Some God thinkers in the last fifty years have tried to sound hip to Darwin but I have yet to read a plausible, consistent and scientifically relevant God understanding that fits our world. Please, just give me a name of one such authority, ggoslaw@gmail.com. While I await the flood of responses, I shall continue.

The authorized Christian God thinking cave dwellers have a problem. They say, how can we speak to the people in a manner that is relevant to modern science, particularly Darwin, and at the same time remain glued to the historical doctrinal statements of the faith and the Christian Church? This Church has demanded for thousands of years conformity to the creedal statements as it labels all dissenters heretics and deserving of impoverishment if not burning at the stake.

Who can blame anyone with skin in the game for not bucking the religious system or systems? Not I but maybe this is why God has consistently picked on the nobodies of this world to breed correction. We nobodies have nothing to lose. The correction at issue is twofold, Jesus was the best nobody to have lived among us and he selflessly lived out his God given message. Second, our history as humans is of this world not the story telling improvised genealogy of the Genesis account. This is very simple and direct but the sparks will fly.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.    

      

 

Beauty

There is nothing more beautiful than a woman in labor or a woman who yields life leadership to a man while ignoring her own superior abilities.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.