Hurts

They say that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Wise advice but we get it, Suzanne is hurting. Some hurts are due to our own making, and some seem to come from nowhere, like cancer. Having not had to face the undeserved hurts, this friend and admitted fool can only offer an uninformed opinion about the problem of evil, a problem that has vexed God believers from the get-go.

Why would a good and loving God put together a world such as ours? There are no safe places, risk is everywhere, the tables are constantly being turned, and our world is seemly being terrorized by this good and loving God. Why? When cancer strikes, we scream it out, why God?

Some say evil is among us to give God the opportunity to do miracles. Miracles happen but mostly they do not happen and when they do, their happening has nothing to do with the God status of those involved. Some say we humans deserve our fate because somehow, we have earned it, if not personally then through the Bible bedtime story of Adam and the tree of good and evil. Weight this opinion how you will but does it offer a remedy to the individual when cancer strikes? Do we not still scream, why me?

This is where the issue sits in traditional theology. To some of us the problem of evil is largely up in the air. Let’s ask another question, did our good and loving God put together this world to raise good chickens? This is also traditional theology. Our world is God’s henhouse. This seemingly simple solution to the problem of evil crumbles as it does not stack up against our life experience.

The writer of Ecclesiastes tells us that life is a gamble, life is a blessing and a curse, our individual fortunes are impossible to predict. The people trashed Job as evil overtook his life. “You must have done some evil to deserve your misfortune, God is punishing you! Repent before it is too late!” Most of us cannot maintain our innocence as Job did as he bucked the popular theological opinionates. Some curses we bring to our own lives while some are the consequence of just being alive. We all deal with both.

Around and around the theologians go to please an audience. Some very few of us believe that God so built this world to teach us, almost to force us, to understand and walk in freedom. God is the greatest free being who insists that we mirror the free life. Free from every tyranny this world dumps upon us, including every hurt imaginable. When it hurts, it is God doing God’s thing.

Eternity will be total freedom.              

G. "BoBo" Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

 

 

 

Other God

God is that ultimate reality who mysteriously walks among us, sharing our pain and our pleasures, so that we learn to value and choose above all else, freedom from every earthly power center. Freedom from politics and religion. Freedom from the demands of heredity, culture and society. This ultimate reality is the God that Abram chased across the desert only to settle for a ritual religion. 

In our meaningless world of division and stiff, you and I will never get to rejoice in this absolute freedom, but the rejoicing begins soon for all of us!

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

God

Question: what does God mean to you? Is God for the righteous as Christianity says? Is God for those who regularly bow down to worship the all-powerful Allah? Is God the God of the enlightened as the eastern religions say? Is God the God for the beautiful people as the liberal God thinkers insist? Is God the ruler of eternity who must be pleased in some earthly way to secure a future beyond death? Is God the God of any earthly religion? Maybe, maybe not.

All this could only be child’s play. God is bigger than all these stories about God. God is bigger than any religion. So says BoBo.

G. Goslaw

Landers. Ca.

 

Eternity

Eternity is a grand God ordered melting pot of individual consciousness into the unified consciousness of God. Our world is a grand separation and scattering of individuals to teach us all the value of freedom. What we learn of freedom here on earth will make eternity more beautiful. All other eternal understandings are child’s play. So says BoBo. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

   

 

Testing

Every one of us when we enter this world, possess a God given freedom stain or marker. Freedom as an unrestricted choice in this world, as it is in the next, is our God powered destiny. In our world a whole bunch of negative stuff delays or kills for the moment the search for our freedom destiny. Eternity will always have a solution.

The philosophers call the negative stuff of this world the presence of evil and suffering. Evil is among us to force us to value freedom. All of us know and do evil and all of us experience the resulting suffering from our own choices and those of the other guy. There are no good guy’s anywhere, just shades of grey. Our world is not the Lone Ranger’s playground.

God is working the divine freedom plan ever so slowly. The working out of this plan is so slow because freedom to be free must be tested. This is the spot you are I are in. We were born to be free; therefore, we must be tested. A passing grade is assured but we cannot avoid taking the test. The test is learning to freely choose and value freedom in the midst of our troubles. Some of us would like to ask God, isn’t there a less painful way to be free?

Should we not welcome suffering? 

G. “BoBo” Goslaw

Landers, CA.

Unique

God is unique. So very unique is God that no language, no word can capture the meaning of our other reality. Unique is also inadequate. This word requires the existence of the familiar for comparison. God is in no way familiar. Comparison is profanity. So, we feeble minded drag our unique God out of eternity with familiar names like Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Yet our unique God is whom Abram chased across the desert 8000 years ago. It is a conundrum, a riddle that somehow our totally unique God is in our midst moving the goalposts. The temptation is to avoid the chase and just settle for a name.

G. "BoBo" Goslaw

Landers, CA. 

 

Gratitude

The United States Senate at last voted on the Save America Act. The crazy Democrat politicians lined up with their radical left sponsors voting no to the last man. “Murky” Murkowski was the only Republican no vote. Republican Tom Tillis of North Carolina refused to vote, abstaining in spite of all his negativity of late. Tillis is the lame duck senator who must have finally seen the hand writing on the wall. The vote to open debate was 51 yes and 48 no.

Debate in the Senate now begins with 80 to 90 % of all American voters, Democrats and Republicans, having already made up their minds. America wants to know that their elections are righteous and we, as Americans, are united on this issue as never before. The American people want their politicians to vote for this national “do or die” legislation requiring a Photo I.D and citizenship to vote in federal elections.

Debate, however, is not a law to be signed sitting on the president’s desk. The holdup is that silly senate filibuster rule requiring 60 votes out of 100 to pass all new legislation. The rule is not in the Constitution nor is it the thinking of our founding fathers. The rule is a place for senators to hide from the prying eyes of the people. Someday the filibuster rule will be thrown out with the trash, and the senate will be again a democracy, winner (50 votes) takes all.

Some of us believe that the time to trash is now. Well maybe, maybe not? There is a dated piece of American wisdom that may apply to our political situation. The wisdom states, “Never look a gift horse in the mouth”. The wisdom is about gratitude. A gift is a gift. A gift should be graciously accepted and not inspected. A gift is a gift. Could it be that the Save Act is meant to be the Republican banner and focus for the midterm election this November? Does America still want to be American?

The November midterm will then be, not about Trump or gas prices, it will be about the people’s future. The Senate debate will kick off the midterm enthusiasm. Thanks be unto the radical left; we are grateful for the people's soon to be winning midterm election season.  Thank you!

G. “BoBo” Goslaw

Landers, Ca.