Appendix

Modern evangelicalism of the last 200 years has trashed or perverted the relation of God to this world in which we live and have our being. In so doing, the specific intent of the Bible revelation has been hidden from us.  Those who say that sin, in all its forms, is the central roadblock to God access are liars.  The Bible doesn’t so speak. The Bible says that a lack of loving concern for others, all others, is the only so-called sin that damages the God-Man relationship in this world of ours.

One of my spiritual heroes was the Reverend John Wesley (1703 to 1791). Because of one eight-word verse in the Bible, taken out of context, his memory has been largely misinterpreted and debased by the evangelical mindset. Matthew 5: 48 reads “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect”.  Evangelicalism uses these few words to condemned all God believers to a life of spiritual failure for none of us are or ever will be perfect.

Should we not ask, what may be the motive of such theologizing? The motive is power over the people. Everyone is guilty of some sin or other somewhere and evangelicalism offers partial relief, within its own cultural context. Thus, the pulpiteers of evangelicalism are impartial guilt merchants. For them, playing the guilt card feathers their nest in very practical terms. The church of my birth, crazily, from it’s beginning in 1906 had a long list of “don’ts” that somehow proved authentic spirituality.

John Wesley has been called the man of one book, the Bible. His understanding of Scripture wasn’t perfect but it was better than most other interpreters. Rev. Wesley makes the following comment in his book, “Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament”, Epworth Press, p. 35. Speaking of Matthew 5: 48, “So the original runs, referring to all that holiness which is described in the foregoing verses, which our Lord in the beginning of the chapter recommends as happiness, and in the close of it as perfection.” The only so-called sin in this passage is a lack of love or acceptance of all others, friend or foe.  Perfect love does not judge any other persons as beyond the boundless love of God and therefore the love and acceptance of all God believers. The context of this verse is King.

Why not ask of your theology, how does it measure up with the Old Testament and Jesus command to love God and our neighbors? Could our theology also be in the appendix?               

G. Goslaw

Landers, ca.

 

Drudgery

One of these days I’m going to hire a housekeeper or break down and marry one. I do so hate that unavoidable job. Oh, well.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca

Sculptor

God is like a sculptor working on a plain piece of rock, “without form and void (Genesis 1: 2)”. God sees a future world within that rock as a sculptor sees a particular form within a pile of clay or a chunk of marble. Slowly the excess matter is whittled away exposing the sculptor's desired vision. So it is with the Master Sculptor who whittles away on our world. The form is in process. In the meantime, we trust the Sculptor.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

 

Christmas

I believe in Christmas.  Jesus was not a God but I believe in Christmas.  In Christmas we celebrate those times when the God among us dramatically invades one or more of our personal spaces. This God invaded the personal space of Jesus. Christmas is, therefore, more of an event than a person. In the language of a long-ago generation, “Christmas is what’s happening brother”. Every religion of this world is rooted in a Christmas time happening.    

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

same O

1376 England

“The failure to conclude peace at Bruges had brought to a climax public resentment of corrupt royal officials, a pointless war, military mismanagement, and waste or embezzlement of the people’s money.”

Resulting in ………“the great murmur of the people”.

“A Distant Mirror”, Barbara W. Tuchman, 2014 Random House Edition, p. 304.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

Pork Again?

 

No last-minute pork bill Republicans!  Our government needs a one-month vacation. Sissies be damned. Give disaster money to the Biden administration? Congress is killing the people.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Goodness (Grace)

We arrived with nothing and will end up with everything.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Surrender

Senator Warren is the latest Democrat politician to go schizoid.  Face reality lady, you and yours lost the November Presidential election in a resounding landslide. You are done. Here you are making “demands” of the incoming Trump administration. You and your Democrat, Biden led, cronies have so trashed our country that cost cutting leadership is imperative for our survival. Trump and Musk, Ramaswamy and DOGE have the high ground. Take it like a man.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

 

Eternity

We shall all live eternally through the contributions we make or don't make to the next generation and beyond. Our lives are serious business.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Now God

There is no old school cosmic disciplinarian God. That God was invented by religion, unconsciously or otherwise, to have power over and control the people for its own survival. The true God is not out there adrift among the stars for he or she or it is in the midst of our God created world.  God is among us consistently reshaping all things toward a planned future we know not of. God’s creative process can best be summarized as, "every ending is a beginning".

Round and round we go.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Hell

If there is a God that can make sense of the goings on of this world, that God is a God for all of us, red and yellow, black and white, rich and poor, sinner and saint. We are all precious in his sight. Unless God is thus defined, then this must be a hellish Godless world.

G. Goslaw 

Landers, Ca. 

Dark Times

These days when problems seem too big to handle, I read another chapter in “A Distant Mirror”, by Barbara Tuchman. A chapter at a time is all that I can tolerate. The cover says the book is a narrative history of France and England in the 14^th century but 350 pages and I am not there yet. The 13^th century was dark enough being mostly doom and gloom, the Black plague pandemic, the strong preying on the weak with extreme brutality and everything had a price. Life was a short lived daily fight for survival for the vast majority of us.

In the midst of all this craziness, The Roman Catholic Church was there selling free passes to eternity, as if they were the gatekeepers. Some of us say that not much has changed.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Traitor

Drones or balloons, they wouldn’t fly in our skies if Joey had not given them the green light. No evidence?  If your not looking for evidence, you will find none until it is to late. Again, we continue to be sold out by traitor democrats!

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

Obvious

Christian doctrine dumped on us so long ago, can have shaky grounding in the Bible. Who was Jesus? Was Jesus also God? Is the one God of scripture also the confusing triune God of three persons?  Some of us say that the life and death and resurrection of Jesus was and is only a God powered testimony to the spiritual reality of the one God among us. This being said, the biblical Jesus record does not include the assumption that Jesus was also God.  This is the obvious conclusion asserted by Forrest Maready in his little book, “why Some Christians don’t Believe in the Trinity”.

The book is neither a deep dive into a biblical theology nor is it a thought-out theology. The book is a plain verse by verse, common sense, summary of all that the Bible says about the nature of God, from Genesis to Revelation. No where is the Triune nature of God in three persons to be found. The biblical, so-called scholars, will make excuses for the absence of such an understanding in the words of the Bible but all of them have jobs to protect, they can’t state the obvious. Mr. Maready, whoever you are, thank you for stating the obvious.

Despite this minority opinion, the author rightly considers himself to be Christian, clinging to the remaining Christian doctrinal orthodoxy. Some of us, if only me, believe that another Christian doctrine is even more perverse and makes the Christian label, if defined by the “Creeds” of doctrine, quite impossible. There is only one God and we humans have never been angels sitting around heaven smoking a peace pipe with God. We humans are and have always been highly competitive, self-centered creatures existing for only a moment in this dog-eat-dog world. The nature of God is an issue and the nature of mankind is an issue.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

Camouflage

God lives hidden among us. Who knows where? God may be hidden in the air we inhale, the pooch on the front porch, our neighbor, our friend or even our enemy. God may be hidden in the midst of what we recognize only as a hell on earth. We never know for sure. Maybe, this reality is what Jesus found in Palestine 2000 years ago.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

Wrecking ball

President Biden’s pardon games are not about the traditional use of presidential pardons. Biden's pardons are rather sweeping criminal or even traitorous "confessions". Joe, what else are you hiding? As with President Nixon, admit your guilt, resign and then you can have your pardon. This would be the honorable path. Do you and yours know about honor?  

As always, the Biden path of deceit will be to pardon himself, all of his family and at least his administration’s major players as a coverup. No president has ever attempted a blanket pardon for all crimes not yet exposed or charged. Such thinking and hoping is wonder lust and not the expressed intent of the U. S. Constitution. Maybe, the Supreme Court needs to speak up.

The Biden wrecking ball against our democracy will stain the fortunes of all Democrats and America for 30 years, if we remain standing. 

Goslaw

Landers, Ca..                           

 

Bubble

Christian Doctrinal history is a bubble, it proves nothing, there is only our moment. Every attempt to give spirituality supposed historical boundaries has failed to be supported by modern investigations into their cultural and language contexts in the last hundred years. One thing that the Bible is not, is history. The Bible is faithed out religious history. This is true of both the Old Testament and the supposed God became flesh New Testament. In response the doctrinal folks only refer us to the orthodox doctrinal bubble as truth. 

What if, this bubble is a merely a succession of best guesses intended to give the few power over the many? 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

Playtime

Clark H. Pinnock, “Most Moved Mover”, 2001, 2019, p.6.

"God is for us and God is with us. He is not a metaphysical abstraction, but the one who makes his presence felt – actively, responsively, relationally, dynamically, and reciprocally.  God is transcendent, but does not exist in isolation from the world. He is unchangeable in character, but is not unchanging in his relations with us."

This sounds like a fun loving God to me?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.                          

 

jokester

Not only is Joe Biden a bumbling fool but in addition he is a murdering jokester.  His open border policy has led to the death of over 300,000 fentanyl overdose American deaths. Their killing is not funny but after losing the presidential election, Joey is now telling President Trump how to run America, his way.  His arrogance is laughably funny.  If need be, the military should be placed on the American side of the Rio Grande and given orders to shot anything that moves on sight. Case closed, border closed.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.                         

 

 

 

Peace

What am I thankful for this Thanksgiving? At just the right moment, I can stop buying theology (God) books. You see, after maxing out my mortgage for home improvements, cigars and then God books, a budget has become necessary.  It was fun while it lasted. God has always been a central issue in my life through no choice of my own.  I was born into this concern and try as I might, the God concern has been at times avoided but never escaped.   

Fifty years ago, was the last time I tried to make peace with my inheritance. Being a newbie to all things spiritual, I tried to fit together my own limited spiritual experience with the experience of others in the present and throughout history. The historical others list is very long and I was swamped. In the midst of my bewilderment, I discovered the Bible for the first time but much to my surprise, there wasn’t much God peace in the Bible.

The Bible is the story of many earthbound search's for spiritual authenticity. At the time, I mistakenly assumed that these were the only authentic stories, all in the past. Then I bought a house at 1990 Gibralter Rd., Landers, California.  I thank God for my home and the God peace given to me, the most undeserved of humans.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

 

mea culpa

All right, for once and only once this blog was wrong. Matt Gaetz will not be installed as Attorney General of the Justice Department as of yesterday, Wednesday the 21^st.  Apparently, he changed his mind about seeking the job. No mind, President Trump had another reformer type appointee in waiting, former Florida Attorney General, Pam Bondi. Not only is she a long time Trump loyalist, she has AG credentials. Again, President Trump is thinking ahead of the game.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

activism

Deportation of the illegals invading America over the last four years begins in the red states. Begin rounding them up with the cooperation of red state citizenry, political leaders, the national guard and law enforcement. The illegals will get the message, you are not welcome in my state.  They will flee to the blue states or go home voluntarily.

Without federal goodies, the blue state Democrats will have to pay the bill resulting from their own criminal enterprise.  Legislation should be passed in the Republican Congress to require an American birth certificate for enrolling in all federal programs on or after 2020.  When the blue states have to pay up for all the support of illegals, the legal citizenry of these states will turn red, that is Republican.

Sanctuary cities will then be a loose, loose. The game that the Democratic radical left has dumped upon us is hardball. This is the time for a little Republican activism.  

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.    

Fences

As a God believer of any sort, we must believe that God, however described, has a plan or a purpose for all we humans, living and dead. Every exclusive, selfish understanding of God is kooky. It makes no lived-out sense. There are no disposable humans. Death is for all therefore God is for all.

This evil deadly world demands the inclusion of all we humans in any other hoped-for reality.  The only alternative to this believing is to define our world without God. To believe rightly in God is to tear down all the fences.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Democrat Drama

No one knows how history will record the Democrat Drama of the last four years unless the principal characters involved suddenly become honest. This is not a good bet unless one of the parties involved decides to write a best seller. The obvious fact is that the radical left communist heads have been the policy deciders controlling all democrats for the last four years. The policy deciders have not been President Biden, Vice President Harris or the Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken. These folk and all democrats have been and are only puppets on a string who could not justify, before the people at election time 2024, any of their policies.   

How did winning a presidential election in 2020 by a few thousand questionable votes in a few swing states give the new Biden administration permission to unleash blanket radical change of any sort upon the American people?  The answer can only be insane arrogance.  The radical left assumption was that with all the power of government trained upon all political questioners, all future elections, as in 2024, are in the bag. Why should we worry, change is now? The slim win was, in the understanding of the power brokers, more than an election, it was a legal coup, an overthrow or undoing. Going forward the American electorate will continue to be stuffed with easily deceived useful idiots who couldn’t identify their own self-interest if their life depended upon it.  And it will.

Then came Donald Trump and the people woke up. The mandate is, we want  America as it has always been, the land of the free! 

Maybe Barack will finally retire to his estate?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

Matt Gaetz

Matt Gaetz will be the next Attorney General of the Department of Justice.  The Biden, Harris, Obama administration has forever canceled any claims to institutional political impartiality for this department of government. Sadly, American justice is no longer blind to political influence. The big government Rhino Republicans, who answer to their monied interests instead of the people, may not give “advise and consent” for the Gaetz appointment but he will be installed as AG, even if President Trump and Elon Musk have to pay for his salary.

Fresh air in the Department of Justice will bring the only change that will return the Department to a level of respectability that we the people can once again trust. The Rhinos may expose themselves as the enemy within but they are doomed to failure now and at the next election. The people have spoken.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.   

 

 

 

 

YES!

 

SCORCHED EARTH … Yes!

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA.

 

DOOMED

President elect Donald Trump, please do not walk into the lion’s den prior to the inauguration, do not trust the fat cats. A constitutional transition may not be in the works, after all, the radical left wants to trash the Constitution. The risk may be small but we the people are doomed without your leadership. At best, you will only get lies in Washington. Please, only send to Washington at this time your transition people. Only a few people know the level of desperation in that town.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Why not?

Deportation of illegals is very simple.  Take away all the free money, benefits and jobs given to them by the Democrats and they will either self deport or commit crimes which will result in their deportation. In addition, instead of returning the deportees to their home country immediately, set up in Mexico, a legal process for vetting these people. Those with verifiable skills that would fill a skill deficit in America, would be given legal status to work in America. Finally, pass legislation, if not already on the books and enforceable, making employers financially culpable for hiring illegals.

This is simple but only President Donald Trump would have the courage and moxie to make it happen.  Some of us would like to hear soon, why not?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Beware

Something is afoot. The head of the evil communist snake is Barack Obama and the snake has been exposed and cornered. Fearing obscurity, the snake has now coiled and may be ready to strike some other way. The choice is to strike with plan B or he may possibly wait 20 years for the politics to cool down, who knows? All the Biden actors in Washington are about to be summarily dismissed and who knows what additional dirt may be hiding in their closet.

The level of desperation is largely unknown. If this were a Hollywood movie, the staging has been set and some action or other is about to begin. Anything can happen in the next few weeks. Shall we trust the words of President Biden that promise respect for our Constitution and a smooth transition of power?  No way, Biden has proven over the last four years that his words are phony therefore we must prepare for any and all eventualities.  Beware all, this may get complicated.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Consequences

In the words of Barack Obama, “elections have consequences”.  Some weak knees want this political moment to be a kumbaya, all is forgiven, call for supposed unity. Professor Allan Dershowitz recommends President elect Trump give the criminal offenders of the past four years a pass in the name of unity and peace. Wrong-o-bobo, some of us believe that only the appropriate legal consequences will bring a lasting peace. We cannot play nice with the radical left. They will cut your throat while you sleep.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Governor DeSantis of Florida

A great victory has been won by President Trump and today all we believers celebrate.  Tomorrow is reality time because his and our enemies, within and without of America, while defeated, are still with us. In the next 70 days, these forces will go to plan B and President Trump needs all hands-on deck to protect his and our futures. The security of President Trump while in Florida is also your responsibility, Mr. Governor.

Mara Lago needs a National Guard enforced outer perimeter of security. No one goes in or out unless they are thoroughly checked out before the Secret Service takes over and does their thing.  Advise the president elect to remain within the security of Mara Lago.  Do not give any federal authority access to Mara Lago, especially the corrupt Justice Department and the corrupt Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Play hard ball and tell them to file a law suit. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. It is show down time.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

November 5, 2024

Just in the nick of time…..again!

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Togetherness

No God thinker has it all together.

No God thinker has nothing together.

Let us, therefore, think together.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Good News

Election day is finally upon us. The choice is monumental, this is the most important decision we the people will make in the modern history of America.  That being said, how can we be so divided? How can the election appear to be so close when the truth is as plain as the nose on your face?

The only reason the election appears to be close is because former President Trump is running against all the corrupt interests that give priority to their own pocketbooks instead of the best interest of the people and America. These are the cabals.  Our cabals are the groups among us who unite in a scheme to take or maintain control of the power of government.  These are just a few.

1. Education Cabal has become only a jobs program for adults nationwide.

2. Wall Street Cabal blindly and neurotically chases the pot of gold.

3. Big government Cabal wants more regulation and the resulting bloated agencies.

4. Union Labor Cabal, teachers, local, county, state and federal workers cling to their protected economic status.   

5. Military Industrial Complex Cabal is all about lighting the fires of war and death worldwide to sell more arms and ammunition.

We have become the new mafia, the gangland of 2024.  The good news is that the election appears to be close, we people at least have one last shot at returning to government for and by the people. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

 

 

Need

Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror, 1978, Random House Paperback, 2014.

This book is one historians picture of the 14th century. gg 

"The gap between medieval Christianity’s ruling principle and everyday life is a great pitfall of the Middle Ages. It is the problem that runs through Gibbon’s history, which he dealt with by a delicately malicious levity, pricking at every turn what seemed to him the hypocrisy of the Christian ideal as opposed to natural human functioning. I do not think, however great my appreciation of the master otherwise, that Gibbon’s method meets the problem. Man himself was the formulator of the impossible Christian ideal and tried to uphold it, if not live by it, for more than a millennium. Therefore it must represent a need, something more fundamental than Gibbon’s 18^th century enlightenment allowed for, or his elegant ironies could dispose of.  While I recognize its presence, it requires a more religious bent than mine to identify with it." (Forward, xxv and xxvi)  

Is the need religious or spiritual? Could the need be spiritual and religion the resulting natural ever failing substitute or distraction? When and if religion and spirituality intersect, the result is, indeed, special but this specialness is rare and seems to be always so short lived. The specialness of Martin Luther lost it's specialness with in a decade or less. For all of human history, there seems to have been a series of religious God thinking fades. This is just my opinion, which isn't worth much.  gg

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.     

 

 

 

 

Paradox

The God of the galaxies somehow lives for us as the God hidden among us.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Scandal

God awareness is spirituality as individually defined.  This is the state of our experience that John Courtney Murray in his 1964 book, “The Problem of God”, calls the scandal of particularity.  On page 13 he explains this scandal as follows.

“Through all the sweep of space, in all the course of time, along all the train of humanity, why is God present here and there, now and then, to this nation or man and not to others?  There is indeed a scandal for intelligence here.”

We humans have no intelligent, plausible or consistent answer. One may ask, why Billy Graham, why Jacob Boehme, why the Buddha, why Muhammed, why Mahatma Gandhi, or even why Jesus?  The best we can do is to guess. Guessing is generally a function of religion but religious guessing is merely a circling of the wagons.  Some of us would like to hear some guesses from the world-wide congregation of souls.

On what basis does the God of the galaxies, who lives among us, decide to break through into our consciousness? How does this God choose the who, the what and the where? What are the God rules? Are there any God rules? 

You got me? For now, all that can be said is that God appears to choose from those who somehow become available.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.           

 

Future

The nutshell may be deemed crazy by most in the year 2024 but hold on to your hats.  In 2125, the nutshell will be the only God understanding left standing. gg

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Nutshell

I am a radical monotheistic free will believer in the hidden God among us who has and is recruiting volunteers to populate the unfolding new world order in our short term now.  In the long term, all of us of every past generation and every succeeding generation, as we are convinced, alive or dead, will volunteer and find the goodness and acceptance of the compacting unity of the God of eternity.

I believe this to be the God wise understanding of Jesus and is the universal heart felt desire of all we mortals. This universal God implanted desire has been buried and is being buried within every form of religion postulated by humans. The only universal qualification for this new and unfolding world order is to be available, believing and listening for the messages being sent to us indiscriminately. Sharing is the fun part.

In a nutshell, this is what I have experienced and come to understand.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

 

Devils

Most professional theologians down through history of the Christian Church to this present age have been victims of their own perverted thinking about the God they purported to worship. Self-delusion has been epidemic resulting in widespread demonic fear mongering.  gg  

G, Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Cure

Is there a cure for our cosmic competitive circumstance? God says yes and God says no. We can freely respond to the divine offer to be loved timelessly in this life, that is a yes. This God love means that we commit and are empowered to move our lives toward unity with God and our fellow humans. We are, then, no longer restless wanders, our ever-real destination is in sight.

God also says no, our cosmic competitive circumstance will ever remain for us to navigate in this life, however, survival is no longer the motive of life. Just being alive is not enough. We now live to hear and respond to the eternal matrix that beckons all of us, the good, the bad and the ugly ever homeward.  This is the Gospel of God.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.     

Competition

Our world is all about competition. From the beginning, call it sin or competition, we are in a fight for survival. We are living the Roman Area’s life and death games. We should rename that tree in the Garden of Eden, the Winners and Losers Tree for almost immediately, in a jealous rage, Cain kills Abel. The consequence visited upon Cain is the truth of our cosmos, the destiny and history of all of us. Devasted, Cain complains to God, “I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. (Genesis 4.14)”. 

So it is.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Get it?

Peter J. Gomes, “The Scandalous gospel of Jesus”, Harper Collins, N.Y., N.Y., 2007.

“The problem of perception is at the heart of a serious hearing of what Jesus has to say, and most people are smart enough to recognize that their immediate self-interest is served not so much by Jesus and his teaching as by the church and its preaching.  Thus, it is no accident that although Jesus came preaching a disturbing and redistributive gospel, we do not preach what Jesus preached. Instead, we preach Jesus.” P. 41.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

Certainty

Why does all the God talk have to be so damned complicated? Every God thinker/ talker has something to say to us but when the many voices are congealed, as in 6000 years of tradition, there is much confusion and wasted energy.  Few of us have the time or the inclination to sort out the supposed truth so we just accept the party line, whatever that may be. Is there not a simple kind of God talk?

As has been previously discussed, let us assume that there is a hidden God among us. One might ask, where or how can this God be found? Maybe this is the wrong question. Maybe, this hidden God among us will first, find us!  Our only place is to be available.  Maybe, being available to the possibility of God is the only qualification for experiencing the hidden God among us. How can one ponder the stars among the vast darkness and not be available?

If this is our reality, we don’t have to try sorting out all the many earthly voices, we just have to listen for the other voice and then respond positively when and if called upon. No human or institution has control over or can dictate to the hidden God among us.  As humans we are receivers, the first issue for us is, what messages are we getting from God?  Then one must choose to volunteer or not. It is in the volunteering that we experience the presence, power and healing intended for us. It is in the receiving that we gain certainty.

The biblical and historical cases in point are fascinating.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

 

Walk

The only, the real or the actual God is the hidden God among us. The hoped for God of every religious expression, the God out there, somewhere, enthroned in the heavens, timelessly pulling strings in every world, is a horrible historical excuse for God thinking. This is the Sunday School God; the God target of Plato and four thousand years of the great minds in search of understanding. All such intellectualizing or believism about God has proven to be pointless and has taken us nowhere when the God search is simply about listening. Listening to the point of experiencing a walk with the hidden God among us.

G. Goslaw

landers, Ca. 

bigots

The only racists left in America are the black ones who are being lead by the racist in chief, Barack Obama.  gg

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

salvation

God, as the giver of personal freedom to all of us in our moment, must, therefore, have a reunion (salvation) awaiting all of us in eternity. Two plus two equals four.  Our good God would not burden all of us with all the negativity (evil) of freedom, if God did not also have a blanket cure. We all matter to God.  Any other understanding is only divisive religion. 

In our moment, in this moment, our world is organized to convince and direct us to the God appointed freedom path or way for which we all urn, whether or not we acknowledge this urning.  We are free now to search it out. We are free to be all that we can be.

To all of us who have freely chosen another path, sooner or later, you will volunteer.  The God who accepts us all is a good God. gg

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

Opinion

God as the giver of freedom for all of us, in our moment, must, therefore, have a reunion/union awaiting all of us in eternity. No freedom means no evil and no eternity for any of us. God's long term inclusive plan operates in an earthly atmosphere of freedom to say yes or no to God.  God rejoices in the yes decisions, the volunteers, and God can handle rejection without threats of eternal punishment. However, such rejection means that we miss out on the true joy of earth bound life, the acceptance of God that all of us are born to experience. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

Skewed

America is a field of useful idiots or the Obama, Biden, Harris Democrats are skewing the poles as they have skewed everything else.  After the last four years, how can America still be half sane and half crazy?  How can anyone vote for more of the same?  How can this election come down to a few thousand votes in the swing states?  We are the ugly, spoiled and selfish Americans who deserve to suffer the inevitable consequences of our possible choice for endless chaos.

Some of us may assume that some of us are somehow insulated from the chaos. Should the radical left win this election, no insulation will protect anyone for the leftist pollical elites have no friends, just temporary useful idiots. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

Volunteers?

I don’t have to be nice.  I have no reputation to protect.  I say, all the God thinkers, including most of the supposedly great ones, if they are humankind condemners with a cosmic disciplinarian concept of the divine, they are profound fools.  God is bigger than their evil ways. 

Worse yet, they are the most useful as demonic weaponry, scattering more people and their spiritual potential than those they dupe. 

God is asking for free will volunteers, that is all.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.   

No Go

Process theology is sterile thinking. While much of what is said, needs to be said as opposed to classical theism, the full end of this thinking seems to be “me is God”.  It seems to be a human centered philosophical theology as clearly stated in Appendix A, “Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition”, by John B. Cobb Jr. and David Ray Griffin. The authors remark that all theology is also philosophy, therefore, we thinkers should think “rightly”.  Maybe so but sterile thinking is a no go.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca    

 

Drama

Message to Moses from the burning bush that would not be consumed, “I am, who I am” (Ex 3:14). What was God saying to Moses in the face of such an inhuman challenge (let my people go)?

Richard Rice, ‘Biblical Support for a New Perspective’: “The Openness of God”, Pinnock, Rice, Sanders, Hasker, Bassinger, InterVarsity Press, 1994, p. 49.

“Thus, according to Wolfhart Pannenberg, it asserts that God “will show himself in his historical acts.” In effect, God says, “I will be there for you.” Or, to risk putting it too colloquially, “I am the one you can always count on.” At any rate, the text points to the dynamic (drama driven, gg) quality of God’s activity rather than to the static quality of the divine nature.”

The human/divine life drama without a script.  gg

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca

Window

“So we are left with the mysterious but undeniable fact of consciousness as a non-physical reality, a reality which we have to assume is capable of free self-determination.  This opens a window onto the possibility of a kind of non-physical reality to which the religions point as God, Brahman, the Dharmakaya and the Tao.”

John Hick, “The Fifth Dimension: An Exploration of the Spiritual Realm”, One World Publications, 2013, P.34.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

God

God is bi-sexual. God, our one God, is both immanent in our lives and the same God is transcendent, beyond our earthly knowing, beckoning us too another reality. God is both our nurturing creating mother and our challenging father in perfect balance. This balance was shadowed among us in the life of Jesus and possibly others, who are less familiar to us in the Judeo-Christian tradition.  gg

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca  

 

Search

Process Naturalism (God is us) and Process Theism (God is us and other)

“If human beings are the supreme realities, then the usual response, even of process thinkers, is to think in terms of intelligent planning, organizing, and controlling of events for human benefit. Of course, all of this has a place. But I believe, with Wieman, that the deeper truth is that we need to find that which is trustworthy and to trust it even when we do not know where this will lead.”

John B. Cobb, Jr., Chapter 18. “Process Theism”; from C. Robert Mesle, “Process Theology: a basic introduction”. Chalice Press, 1993. P. 135.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca

Whoopi

Whoopi Goldberg, you are so very sexy when you get your dander up. I like. This blog, however, never usually agrees with the stuff you put out on the View. This time you have done it.  We agree on one point, to hell with this shared blame stuff for hate speech. The problem is that you got that much right but the wrong offender. You and your Democrats in bondage do all (100%) of the hate speech which incites the crazies to kill to protect their delusions. You wrongly try to avoid blame by redefining what is hate speech.  All criticism or verbal exposes of the negative policy results from Democrat control is now hate speech, in your world.

Whoopi, your world is not the real world. You are an actor and a good one. But please, keep the dander flying.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

Credentials

Is it not likely (99 44/100 %) that the words of Jesus which may have been, “this is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6)”, later became interpreted to be an “I am” saying by the succeeding believing communities? Did Jesus mean to say that the billions of people worldwide must all believe in this, “I am” God, the Jesus God in the flesh, as the only hope for finding the only true spiritual reality and an eternal future?  Is Christianity, as faith in the Christ God, the only truly authorizes spiritual reality?  I wonder if we will have to check our credentials at the Pearly Gates? 

Some of us should just get over it!

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.   

Psychosis

Psychosis is a set of symptoms that can cause a person to lose touch with reality, and have difficulty distinguishing what is real and what is not. This is a medical/ dictionary definition. For one who is suffering from a psychosis facts are unreal and truth is only defined by their own delusions or hallucinations.  Our world has had the ground breaking thought of Sigmund Freud to thank for outlining the dangers and better understanding psychosis.

Dr. Freuds studies were with individuals during the rise of Hitler and Naziism in his homeland of Germany.  Being of Jewish descent, Freud was at a loss as to why the people of Germany willfully embraced such Nazi hatred.  In his book, “Moses and Monotheism”, he advanced the theory that not only are individuals vulnerable to psychosis, there is also such a condition in groups of peoples.  Germany was collectively suffering with an episode of group psychosis. Nothing else fits and we all know how that played out.

America is now in the same boat. To a large group of our people, the facts of reality do not matter, all that matters is their supposed truth, their delusions and grandiose hallucinations. The deluded will lie, defame, jail, destroy and kill all conflicting facts or persons that paint a different story.  Our people are, indeed, suffering from a group psychosis. This sickness is being played out in our politics as it did in Germany almost 100 years ago.

Who are the crazies?  Following the presidential election loss of Donald Trump in 2020, this blog made the prediction that going forward the crazies are now our rulers.  Have not the past four years proven that reality, America has seemingly gone crazy.  Before your feathers get ruffled there is a way to make a self-diagnosis in the privacy of your own head. If candidate and former President Trump were to be killed by a lunatic fringe left winger, would you still be a Democrat? Would you still vote the party line?  If the answer is yes, call the psychiatrist!

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Life

Life is like a game of solitaire. There is only one way to navigate the ups and downs of this world. The only rule for this game is, “where there is a will there is a way".  We fanatic solitaire players can best appreciate this rule. 

As long as one has the breath of life, God has a plan for our next breath, God has not called us home yet.  The new plan may not be to our liking, it may even be humiliating but he has blessings awaiting us and for all others who are sent to assist. If we choose to will God’s new plan, we shall all reap life spiritual bonuses, regardless of the circumstances.  Together we are one.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Quote

If one cannot say in a few sentences what needs to be said, what is said will find few ears. (gg)

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Pain

There is no spiritual freedom without consequence. Evil is the necessary consequence that forces us to search for our spiritual God given inheritance. If there were only pleasure and no pain, we would not search. Because this world was created by God for soul-making, evil is a necessary ingredient to be experienced.

The eternity of God is absolute freedom. Our mission in this world is to experience the lack or scarcity of freedom (bondage) so that eternity, when presented to us, will be affirmed in our soul or centeredness. It matters little how much of eternity we taste in this world as long as we taste the pain, be it physical, emotional, mental or spiritual. All of whom will never be a blind alley.  Should we not pray, therefore, Lord God, bring it on!

(My take on the thought of: John Hick, "Evil and the God of Love", Revised Edition, 1978.)

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Prophecy

The traditional Democrat and Republican American politics is dead, haven’t you heard?  This election is now about the Obama, Biden, Harris fundamental change, yah or nay. No longer is the welfare of American people controlling the political agenda of this new federal government. The controlling agenda is now the Obama, Biden, Harris governmental control over all of our lives. Those of us who disagree go directly to jail.

It is so simple, why are the minds of so many thinking Americans, according to the polls, taking this election so casually?  Are you afraid or protecting your nest?  How are you dealing with the dramatic rise in the cost of everything?  Why are there no longer unfilled job opportunities awaiting the American unemployed?  Why is there a shortage of affordable housing?  Why is the real-world economy tanking?  If you are at all awake, the answer is obvious.  All is crumbling because of the Obama, Biden, Harris fundamental change that is out to destroy the middle class.

If you the voter want to green light the Obama, Biden, Harris fundamental change, vote accordingly. Be advised, however, should the gutter politics of Obama, Biden, Harris win the election in November, the double down Democrats will make the last four years seem like a Sunday School picnic. Should the double down democrats win the White House, and a majority in the House and Senate, they will do as they did after sweeping the 2020 federal election, double down with more of the same. 

Big spending will cause double digit inflation. They will double the number of justices on the supreme court freeing the federal government from any Constitutional checks and every federal election will become meaningless. The deed will be done forever, the old America will be no more. The new America will not be either Democrat or Republican, it will be the Obama, Biden, Harris fundamentally changed federal government. This is not just election talk, it is fundamental prophecy, are you awake?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

       

  

 

Evil

Why are we here?  Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is evil just around the corner?  Historic Old Testament God thinking says that evil in our world is our doing, evil reigns upon and within us as the deserved fruit of our sin. This understanding is rooted in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve and the first bit into that dammed apple. Evil is a daily occurrence among us and it is our fault, as humans we have earned our sad evil state.

The story is, however, Plato language and may not be the whole story. If the presence of evil in our world is a God judgement, this sinful miserable sinner of a hominoid would have been dead long ago. Another Old Testament God thinker, Job, also disagreed. In his story, Job experienced the loss of everything in this world except his next breath while maintaining his innocence before God. He demanded of God to know why he was experiencing such crushing evil? No answer.

While reading on this subject, I was again driven to the google search bar by the fancy word, theodicy.  A theodicy is our God thinking about the presence of evil in our world. The understanding that God could not or would not get His hands dirty creating a world with even the possibility of evil is ancient storytelling. Why was there even a tree of good and evil in the Genesis story at all?  Could it be that evil is a necessary part of God's plan for us. Maybe, God put together this world to accomplish His goal for His creation and not our petty goals. 

Maybe, God did not birth His creation in a puff of magic; maybe God is a bottom-up construction engineer. Why should we then complain?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

 

Life

“Is the future open or closed? Does the freedom God has granted us include the freedom to affect how things will turn out, or is the end point set and our only problem, how to get there?  Is life a journey or a dance?”

Taylor, Barbara Brown, “The Luminous Web: Essays on Science and Religion”, Cowley, 2000, p.72.

Why not both, a journey and a dance? gg

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Conversation

“While science disputes religion’s certainty that purpose is built into creation, religion challenges science’s certainty that such purpose is impossible.”

Taylor, Barbara Brown, “The Luminous Web: Essays on Science and Religion”, Cowley, 2000, p.73,74.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

 

Bound II

My parents didn’t talk or share about family history. It was as if all appeared in a puff of smoke, the only significant history was their now.  One of my father’s brothers spent 30 to 40 years in prison for armed robbery and I found out about it only through extended family scuttlebutt when I was close to retirement age.  My mother had a brother, a Navy Corsair fighter pilot in WWII and Korea. He died near El Centro when his plane didn’t pull out of a diving run. I learned of this from scuttlebutt when I was in my forties. What else was going on that seemed not to be important enough to share with the kids?

Was the fault of silence their inheritance or was the fault mine?  Maybe I was in a fog myself? The family history began in a small town in northwest Poland named Goslaw. Our name first appeared in Canada when immigrants from Poland must have changed their name to the town of their origin to better fit in with their new world.  Then our name popped up in upstate New York. All of this history I dug up with searches on the internet, not from a shared primary family history.

My father was a young preacher boy who deferred from WWII to attend college to prepare for an evangelical ministry.  This must have been a heavy and honorable decision but the humanness of such a decision was never shared with his children, why not?   Would we not have been better equipped to make such significant decisions in our own lives if we had a better understanding of the severity of decision making? How does one make such large decisions?  There is a consequence to every decision.

If my parents were still living, I now have many questions to ask. Would I have the courage to ask, maybe?  Simple stuff, mom and dad, how did you meet?  What attracted you to each other, physical, mental or spiritual?  I am guessing but my mother was a gifted musician and soloist who complemented the soon to be ministry of my father.  Was this the basis of their relationship?  While reorganizing the personal effects of my parents, I found a small box with school books and papers from a female personage of long ago. There must have been a very personal story in that box, why was it saved for sixty years? Mom when asked, would not answer.  I trashed it without inspecting.

The most difficult question would be, what were my early years like?  My memories are few with significant gaps. How do you remember those preschool years?  Can you make sense of my snapshots?  

                            - to be continued -

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

 

 

 

 

Death Divide

From my extra-orthodox reading, eternity will be a homecoming (unity) for all we humans or a blank dark space for all we humans, to await the homecoming (unity). Sin as defined by how we fail to contribute to the well-being of others is of this world but will be an embarrassment to be carried with us into eternity.

Either/or: it is good and not our choice.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Silence

Those of us who find it necessary to deny a life circumstance are themselves in an emotional state of denial. Maybe, silence is golden or said another way, of God. Jesus was accused of all manner of craziness yet he remained silent to the point of death, guilt or innocence was and is not the important issue, the bigger issue is our personal trust in the beyond of God.  (gg)

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Going Home

In the long term of eternity (gg) …….

“What I have argued thus far, then, is that since man has been created by God for God, and is basically oriented towards him, there is no final opposition between God’s saving will and our human nature acting in freedom; and that accordingly the universalist argument is not at all undermined by the fact of human freedom.”

John Hick, “Death and Eternal life”, Westminster/ Jon Knox Press, 1994. P. 254.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Fraud Alert

“It seems like an oddly futile enterprise to forgive humans for what they can’t help doing and will continue doing. Until you consider how it gives the church enormous power. The doctrine of original sin created the ultimate spiritual franchise, diagnosing the human race with a disease that only the church could cure.”

Robin E. Meyers, “Saving God from Religion”, Convergent Books, 2020, p. 80.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca    

Bound

1990 Gibralter Road has been God’s way of teaching me about life, my life. In a fundamental way this place has been my salvation. At sixty-seven years, my life was still bound as it always had been, by what, I did not know or understand. My father had gone, my older brother had gone, my faithful courageous wife had gone and my mother had just been admitted to hospice care and soon to be also among the dead.

My life was a trainwreck, every opportunity given to me in life was sabotaged by me, no one else. I was bewildered and befuddled at the value of even being alive, all seemed to be lost as sinking into a bottomless quagmire. Maybe it was desperation or possibly insanity but for some unknown reason, I decided try to buy a house.  This was an almost insane decision, from whence this hope came to me, I knew not at the time.

This loser and the greater family had lived for over thirty years in a community that had grown to be unaffordable so with my meager resources I began to search the outer regions of civilization. In 2012, the first place I looked was down the road but still in the high desert of California. I had recalled trucking down the 247 in 1992 following the earthquake when we were detoured around a section of the road that had dropped three or four feet. I'll check it out.

Following the Landers sign east from the 247, I quickly found that Landers is a Post Office, a Community Center and a Moose Lodge, that's it, perfect. The search for a house was another story, frustrated and disappointed, I called a real estate agent. When we talked and I shared my meager resources,  I shall ever wonder why Herbert did not laugh, maybe he and our unseen force had a plan.

Amazingly we set a day to begin a search, a two-bedroom abode for one and of practically any condition with enough land to be semi-private.  Minimal is the word that would best define our search.  After viewing a few properties that had potential but would never qualify for financing, we drove two miles down a very ever bumpy dirt road in Landers, California.

                                -to be continued- 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

Stalemate

I can not prove I’m right and you can’t prove I’m wrong.  I guess we’ll just have to keep the conversation going.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca

Blank

Bad cosmology does not necessarily mean no cosmology. Just because some or most of the saints have been wrong for three or four thousand years does not mean that God, however that reality may be defined, is not up to something other. If not heaven and hell, what pray tell? 

Some of us say that the total extent of what God is up to is only my present, my personal earthly search for spiritual authenticity.  With their limited cosmology, the only goal afforded us can be measured with word salads like the process of becoming fully human, expanded consciousness and autonomy.  The God of Christianity is dead but we can find happiness, they say, as solo souls of this redefined community of believers.   

In an attempt to be fair and inclusive, there is an element of truth to this search but these folk seem to assume that if enough of us apply this ballooned personal spirituality to our lives it will unloose a truly loving world-wide, religion-less community of all we human God believers.  As they say in Missouri, show me.

By touting the personal spiritual priority these folk seem to deny or at least ignore any form or activity of their God beyond their solo supposed salvation, however that may be defined. Was the God of Ecclesiastes right, all is vanity? Speaking personally, this one seeker needs a God bigger than just me. I am the ass end of all believers but need a hope or a way of contributing toward a righteous cosmology beyond this person.  

Maybe death is a blank space, maybe the place of darkness as envisioned by early Hebrew believers is most accurate.  Maybe the extending of faith only in our time is enough. But maybe their vision as ours and many others, are and have been at times shortsighted. The God of historical Christian orthodoxy is dead but the mystery of God remains, now and forever.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Heretics

 "The church is a museum, and museums are not in the business of pioneering. Thus any attempt to reconnect Christianity with the leading edge of spiritual development must appear naïve, incongruous and ridiculous. It is likely to be mocked inside the church as outside it, for the faithful love the museum and most theologians love being scholarly museum curators. There are only a few dissidents."

"The dissidents or heretics are people who, in spite of all that has happened, still hope it is possible to reconnect religion with modernity."

Don Cupitt, “Taking Leave of God”, Crossroads, 1980, page 155.

 

Soup

If you are one of the ingredients in the condensed soup of all life, past, present and future, existing on this planet, what would your first question be toward the God of eternity?  Only one question is of any consequence.  God, if you be God, why go to all this trouble? gg

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca

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.