Stuck

The Christian religion has been stuck for 2000 years.  This number is mindboggling, 2000 years, at least 350 generations of peoples have come and gone.  Moms, Dads, Uncles and Aunts have been relegated to mere distant memories or disappearing all together, forever, from the face of the earth. Could it be high time for the Church to take account of all those years and the opportunities either missed or realized?  How has the Church done?

There are more appropriate sources to answer that question but one more amateurish opinion will not spoil the stew.  The failure of the Church has been, for 2000 years, a lack of vision to match the times.  The Church has been stuck in the world of St. Augustine of Hippo, (354 to 430).  The life and times and visions of St. Augustine are made plain in his writings, “Confessions” and “The City of God”. Having been led for the first time to check out the importance of this early Church leader, this amateur bought the Penguin Classic editions of each book.

The “Confessions” is the life story and spiritual journey of St. Augustine as he lived it in his time and place.  Augustine’s story is a search for spiritual authenticity.  “Confessions” opens to us the chaotic world of fourth century history and culture in which Augustine searched and is a very interesting read. However, let us move on to “The City of God”.

Thank you, God, for Google.  Understanding the cultures and craziness of the time of Augustine, for me, would be impossible without the search bar.  My speed is not the speed of scholarship, just enough to get the gist of what was happening.  In my mind, Augustine was fighting the spiritual wars of his time, arguing for and defending his spiritual life choice, the Christian faith.  Augustine was a thinker who could match wits with all comers but what impressed me was his conversational tone, he was having a conversation with the religions, philosophies and cultures of his day.

The City of God is a collection of twenty-two books that St. Augustine wrote over his lifetime. Each book is further divided into Chapters and then a string of faith statements, critics and assumptions he puts out there and then explains and defends with reason and the Bible which had just been translated into the Greek, the people’s language. 

The full title is “Concerning the City of God against the Pagans”.  St. Augustine wrote throughout his lifetime in order to clearly define what it means to be Christian.  Was it confrontational?  Most definitely but also conversational, a conversation, Christian to Pagan, that would confront and at the same time be engaging. The word we use today is evangelistic, conversation with a winning motive. 

On page 894, Augustine makes a turn and the writing of the last three Books were written three years before his death. Maybe he was ill or maybe all Christian hope for the pagan culture of his world was lost.  Anyway, a condemning spirit seems to have entered his life. On page 894, the message is, “The end of the wicked”.  The Christian death threat of last resort, the threat that is unproveable speculation in our world. 

And the conversation stops.

The Church has been stuck in this “them and us mentality” for two thousand years.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.              

 

Fornicating Flies

 It’s summertime and the living is easy except for the flies. I was in hopes that if I was religious about putting away my dog’s crap, somehow there would be fewer flies. It has worked so far but summer is now here, in earnest, and the front porch is becoming uninhabitable once again. 

I must confess to becoming obsessed with these dirty little buggers.  Each morning hundreds become deceased for my backhand is lethal but my fly swatter is falling apart. Big and small, the floor is littered with their carcasses and then they feed on the dead ones. The joy of the hunt is quashing the fornicating flies, not only is it a two for one sale but it is also the demise of the thousands yet to be hatched.

However, it is a losing battle for they just keep appearing and buzzing, those dirty little buggers.  I am reminded of my favorite tune, “The Impossible Dream”, to fight the unbeatable foe, to run where the weak dare not go. 

I shall not surrender!

If you are driving down Gibralter dirt path and see this nut on the front porch swatting flies, give me a toot of encouragement, please.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

 

 

 

Shine

We males of the species are manipulators or up-front alpha males.  Most of us are somewhere in between these two extremes but all of us would like to be thought of as alpha males. That is the male modern dilemma in our world. How can the typical male responsibly assert his maleness? Most of us, due to the unpopularity of maleness, are satisfied with just picking our spots to hopefully shine. 

This is particularly true in the political area and is front and center in this presidential election season. We the voters have a choice to make, to be led by an alpha male, Donald Trump, or be manipulated from the White House and the master manipulator, Barack Obama.

The manipulators are insanely threatened by an authentic alpha male. The manipulators only want to distract the voters by trashing the opposition and avoiding any responsibility for the craziness the country has endured for the last four years.  If you are politically aware, male, female or somewhere in between, it is time to shine!

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca      

 

 

 

 

America

Who are the Liars?  Whom shall we believe? You be the judge.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca 

Mystic

Our own experience is the only rational grounding for the individual person to believe in the reality of God. However, our experience is not necessarily normative for other persons.  gg

“The New Testament records show, I believe, that Jesus was vividly aware of ‘living in the unseen presence of God', as abba, father. God, as personal living will, was as real to him as his neighbors or as the hills and rivers and lake of Galilee.”  

John Hick, “An Interpretation of Religion”, 1989, 216.

Jesus gave out repeated invitations to follow me, become a seeker of your God experience. Seek and you will find, there is a mystic in all of us. (Matt. 7: 7&8).

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca

 

Worm Turns

Other worldly messages are real.  On the 18^th the message was, “the worm turns”.  Cute phrase but what could it mean?  On the 19^th, the helicopter of the “Butcher of Iran”, president Raisi crashes killing this death merchant. He was the next in line to replace the supposed spiritual tyrant of Iran, Ali Khamenei. And he is no longer.

Call it Karma or whatever, this remote observer believes this death is divine retribution for all the killing perpetuated by the evil of Iran. This foul government has broken the God Code of this world, which is that evil will be judged by God over the long term in this world, Amen!

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA

Losers and Winners

Everyday thinkers who prefer to explore life as it actually is experienced in our world, much to quickly throughout the Bible as wishful thinking.  Maybe, as some of us do say, the Bible is an everyday document. Real life, the life we all experience day by day, is recorded within the pages of our Bible.

Old Testament faith is given to us as a song by the youthful lyrist David in Psalms 25: 10. “All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful (truth), toward those who keep the demands of his covenant.” (TNIV)

David seems to say that if we are good little boys and girls, then we are entitled to a blessed, good or happy life. We real life thinkers might ask; can life be that simple or is there more to the story?

The Old Testament Book of Job says, yes, there is more to the story. Most will say that there was not an actual person named Job but whoever wrote this story knew Job intimately. In the story, Job was a believer in David’s brand of spirituality. Life was uncomplicated, he had been blessed with family, friends, landowner status and great wealth, seemingly because of his earthly religious rule keeping.

Then the dying motif invaded Job’s world. From a great winner in life, Job became a great loser.  Family, friends, wealth and even his health were taken from him, he complained day and night crying out, my God, why?  Where or how have I sinned against you that you have taken away all your blessings? Bewildered and arguing with God, the now beggar Job questions the truth of his religion as he steadfastly claims his innocence.

The moral of this story is twofold, guilt or innocence is not the issue.  God values our trust regardless of our circumstances in this life and God values the long term as we value all the temporary short-term stuff.  After great complaining to God and the questioning of God, Job makes the biggest, gut felt faith acknowledgement in the Bible. Job cries out, as both a winner and a loser,

 “Though he (God) slay me, yet will I trust (hope) in him.” (Job 13: 15)

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca       

Agreement

“Hence, psycho-therapy can only be based on an individualistic psychology. that is, should strive to adjust the individual to himself, which means enable him to accept himself.  Such self-acceptance, regardless of the ‘milieu’, does not imply resignation; it rather signifies a new start, making it possible for the individual to do the best with himself in and with his environment.”  

Otto Rank, “Beyond Psychology”, 1941, p. 51.

“But one must remind theologians and ministers that in the fight against the anxiety of guilt by psychotherapy the idea of acceptance has received the attention and gained the significance which in the Reformation period was to be seen in phrases like ’forgiveness of sins’ or ‘justification through faith’. Accepting acceptance though being unacceptable is the basis for the courage of confidence.” 

Paul Tillich. “The Courage to Be”, 1952, Third edition, p.151,152.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca 

 

 

Home

There are God messages and then there are God messages.  Some are of the rain shower type that we routinely value.  Some God messages are like a bolt of lightning, rare but eventful.  The God lightning bolts are always associated with a pivot point because God seems to get bored with our routine spirituality.  Like with a cattle prad, we are encouraged to change.

Going back 6000 years, where and when did the God bolts happen?  What major change was forced upon us in each lightning bolt event?   The spiritual history of we humans is a mixed bag and I am no authority but it is fun to speculate.  After all, the facts are out there, it isn’t rocket science.

In the first place, the God given spiritual lightning bolt that touches the ground we walk on, is always very disruptive.  Our world when struck must adjust, modify, compensate, nullify or reject the message given.  It is a messy process.  Everyone reacts in different ways depending on their vested interests but one thing is for sure, our world after the fireworks is over, will never be quite the same. 

Second, when the spiritual lightning bolt strikes, it always strikes an individual. Zap, message given, message received.  One would think the message would be dumped on someone in a leadership position who could affect the desired change.  History has proven just the opposite, the lightning bolt strikes an individual in obscurity, all the time, every time. 

Third, the message God sends is filtered in varying degrees through the human understanding of said individual.  There is no 100% clear message. The message does not make the individual superhuman, the message given, to some extent, is always garbled.  However, in the flow of history of time and place, the core message is always clear, whether we choose to deal with it or remain blind. 

Lightning bolt # 1. Abram: the message, “God can be heard”.

   The religious wait for the next lightning bolt, 700 years.

Lightning bolt # 2. Moses: the message “God is the fix for all chosen”.    

    The religious wait for the next lightning bolt, about 1500 years.

Lightning bolt #3. Jesus:  the message, “God can be tasted now”.

    The next religious wait: a decade or so.

Lightning bolt #4. Apostle Paul: the message, “God is the God of all peoples".    

     The next religious wait:  about 1500 years.

Lightning bolt #5. Martin Luther: “God’s acceptance is by faith”.      

      Just waiting religiously for the next bolt of lightning.

This is our story but it is also our God leading us toward authentic spirituality.  The qualifier is time and space.  If our hidden God slowly reveals truth to us, religion of any shape or size can not be an ultimate fix.  This is why some of us believe in the universal love of God.

The trillions of peoples who missed, for whatever reason, God’s progressive revelation are not doomed as collateral damage. All of us have a home awaiting us in eternity.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca

 

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Death

Yes, Yes, sympatico Paul Tillich (Courage To Be).  The God above God, that is the quest. The God above all religions. This is the God that Abram chased across the desert, it is the “I am” God that Moses discovered as an eternal burning fire on the mountaintop. 

This God is the God that Jesus the Nazarene called his Father.  This Father God sent Jesus to Jerusalem to confront the narrowly defined religious orthodoxy of his day.  Confront he did, not with words or violence but with his mere presence, infuriating said doctrinal orthodoxy.

Because Jesus knew who he is, knew he had a shared being with the God above Gods, he confidently, ignoring the chaos and certain death, proved that shared expected destiny by willingly submitting to the ugliness of the cross. This shared being is available to all of us, in and out of religion, who climb the mountain, join the chase or follow the way of Jesus.

What a holy death!  A death that is worthy of resurrection and reunion.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca

 

 

 

 

 

Let us Listen

Saint Mathews Gospel:  Chapter Six: verses 7 and 8.

“And when you pray, do not keep babbling like the pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.  Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” TNIV

Some people just like to shoot their mouth off, they can’t stop talking. I guess it’s a personality issue.  Maybe prayer is about listening instead of talking. We are not beggars of the Divine Reality. We are not “poor me” believers.

Rather than wetting our fingers and sticking them into the spiritual winds every time our lives are not doing well, maybe we should take on every adversity with the aplomb of faith alone.  And then just go with the flow.  

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA

Nutshell

God is ultimate unity.  Therefore, if our God is the designer and ruler of our reality, both temporal and eternal, something has to give.  Either the divine will is schizophrenic or God has willed a positive life outcome for everyone and everyone will somehow be worked into the blessedness of eternity.

In protest some will say, “what about sin”?  In response we might say, “well, what about sin”?  Are we not rather familiar with sin?  Do we not tend to overvalue our fractured reality, is that not sin? 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca 

 

 

Snip, Snip

The only way to save America as our Republic that serves the people is simple.  The deep state is the enemy of the people.  We never would have known of their power from within if it were not for President Donald Trump. Sure, the Democrats are co-conspirators but only because they want to share the deep state’s power over the people.

Electing Donald Trump again is only a good beginning, what comes next?  To free the people and take back our country the balls of the deep state must be cut off, snip, snip.  This must include the top 20% of the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the FBI, the IRS and most of all, the ignorant Intelligence Department.  In addition, there needs to be a 20% top down house cleaning of all bureaucrats in Washington, whatever it takes!

This purge will not happen without Congressional support to rewrite our dumb job security laws for government employees. Why should they have job security and the people don't?  People, please identify the co-conspirators with the deep state of both parties and vote accordingly.    

Snip, Snip means freedom again.

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA   

 

Simple

William James, “The Will to Believe”

“In whatever other respects the divine personality may differ from ours or resemble it, the two are consanguineous (of the same blood or origin) at least in this, - that both have purposes for which they care, and each can hear the other’s call.”

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA