Questions

What is consciousness?  How is it that we humanoids are not only aware of our now but also the past and possible futures? Why are we humanoids able to ask the questions, who am I, who are you? Is the male dog asking any such questions as he sniffs the behind of any female in his world? Why is there such a momentous distance or gulf between we conscious humans and all other forms of life? Does any concept of a mere natural progression provide an adequate answer to these questions?

If not, what is going on here?  If the answer is yes, we are taking the bridge to nowhere, are we not?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

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. 

 

Fog

Sin is an earthbound fog. The fog limits our vision and awareness of consequences. Sin is an atmospheric condition similar to that of any other. Sin can be seasonal or doggedly routine. Sin can be geographically located or burned off by the sun. Sin is arrogance.  What sin is not, as some make the biblical story time of the Garden of Eden to say, is an unavoidable God ordered natural human condition. Sin is an atmospheric condition.  Our world was created with the possibility of living and dealing with the arrogant fog or the choice of seeking clear skies. That was the choice given to every human as represented by the tree in the midst of the Garden of Eden. What the tree or the fog is not, is our natural human God ordered and intended destiny.

Life therefore becomes a test, a choice, that choice will reverberate into eternity. Jesus chose to walk into his God intended destiny, the humble way. When Mahatma Ghandi was invited into an unfamiliar home during his many travels, he would first go to the bathroom of that home and clean the toilet. In so doing, this saint was making practical the belief that the arrogant fog, for him, had long gone. Cleaning toilets was his way of staying out of the arrogant fog. Now that is a test.

G. Goslaw

Landers, ca.   

 

Partytime

Anyone who has read a few pages of our human history knows that three things define who we are as humans. We like our sex. We like to kill each other and we like to party. Jesus also was a party animal. Jesus screamed to his world of Palestine 2000 years ago, “hey, guy’s there is a party going on”. Drop the swords and the one upmanship and follow me to the party of all parties. The tables are set and the celebration is already happening in eternity.  The only question to be answered there, in eternity, is the seating arrangement, who shall be closest to the action at the head table?  

We shall be eternally thankful that God will decide that one but for Jesus, the seating arrangement will be about one choice we make in this life of ours. Are we satisfied to chase after the temporary big three or do we chase after the forever God. The God that cannot be defined in this world, the absentee God who beckons to every human ear.

Party on friend!

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Common Sense God

 1.   One God

 2.  One God for All of us.

 3.  One God who ever rewards the seeker of God joy.  

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca 

Never Alone

“It is a harder path to hear answers than to ask someone to give us an answer, but it is the path that many people have embarked upon.” CAR: DBB, 2012, p114.

In my own experience, it has been the only path left to me, on my front porch. No matter what we are going through in this beautiful, hazardous and frequently ugly world in which we find ourselves, we are never really left alone to face the whatever trauma of living, guaranteed. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Signing off (Maybe)

Signing off, some say signing off at last, after 939 blogs and fifteen years it is time to shift gears. It has been fun and I have discovered abilities that have been dormant for a life time. Many thanks are extended to those few readers who have been patient with my dribble. The radical left of Soros, Obama and Biden have been given a gut punch that will sideline their treachery for years to come. Our country is now in the capable hands of President Trump with a great future before us. I will be flying our house American flag tomorrow and watching all the festivities.  History will record tomorrow as a pivot point; the people shall reign.

As for the God stuff, I have arrived at a God understanding that is not traditional Christianity but it is at least for me viable going into the future in this modern world. All religion is a no go. Agree or disagree, time will tell. 

You have my best wishes and to all a good night.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Secret Place

Psalms 31: 20 The songster David describes his God.

You (God) hide them in the secret place of your presence from the conspiracies of man; You (God) keep them secretly in a shelter from the strife of tongues. NASB

We humans are social animals. Does this offend you? It shouldn’t. The Rufus monkeys are social animals. Their language is not our language but among Rufus monkeys, they relate to one another as a group, socially. So it is with we humans, verbal language or body language, we are a specific group in the animal world who are necessarily socially related. I wonder if monkeys have secrets, maybe, maybe not?

We humans do have our secrets but more importantly we have a secret God place. This place will not show up on a map or an X ray, it can be denied, laughed at and ignored but this place always has the lights on. The secret place is possibly the only place for us in this world with total privacy. Do you secretly desire such a place with total privacy, to be totally alone? Such a place is free from all the social gamesmanship of this world. That avoided desire for such freedom is a seeking after the unavoidable God secret place we find in our aloneness. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

 

 

 

Fair Play

A message for the soon to be new Secret Service, detail all the recent Woke hires to protect Joe Biden and friends! 

Need we ask the opinion of those who were burned alive and the thousands of recent homeless in the LA fires? Without competence in government, we all are doomed as a nation.  Where are the celebrities now?  

Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Many

The reality of God is not mental high jinks or accepted tradition. The reality of God is only experience, one person at a time being touched by the eternal.  If so, why so few? Are the many mere spoiled goods to be trashed or recycled? What our world has always and most needed is not a theology of the few but a God understanding of the many.  All of us, arrived with nothing and leave this world with everything.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Betrayal

The nameless writer of the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes was a thinker that today we would consider to be an existentialist. Such a thinker believes that the individual person is responsible for creating purpose and meaning in their own lives. Gods, governments, parents, teachers and all secondary authorities are only advisory. Like Friedrich Nietzsche, the God is dead philosopher, most of these thinkers do not believe in a God or Gods.

The writer of Ecclesiastes was an everyday existentialist but a God believer in the long-term. To him, in the short term, all of life is meaningless and beyond our understanding.  All of life is “a chasing after the wind". (1:14; 1:17; 2:11; 2:17, 2:26; 4:4; 4:6;4:16, 6:9 TNIV) This was the short-term conclusion he arrived at after observing and experiencing all the goings on here on earth. 

“All this I tested by wisdom and I said, I am determined to be wise but this is beyond me. Whatever exists is far off and most profound-who can discover it? " (7:23,24 TNIV)

The writer tested with wisdom, today we would say we are testing the evidence. No evidence was readily available to prove the existence of God, then or now.  He looked around, concluding: 

" The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; BUT TIME AND CHANCE HAPPEN TO THEM ALL." (My Capitals: 9: 11, TNIV)

Where did the cosmic disciplinarian God go?  Surly God would be handing out benefits and bonuses to the good guys.   

"There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked how get what the righteous deserve." (8:14, TNIV) 

God did not and does not make sense in the short term. Our Gods can betray us, religion can betray us, governments can betray us, family can betray us, teachers can betray us, in whom can we trust? The only possible answer is the long-term God hiding in our midst. 

That God, the God that snuggled up to the nobody Jesus, snuggling up so close that Jesus called this God Father. That God who promised us in the words of Jesus another reality in our world and beyond death. Jesus named that reality the Kingdom of God. We arrived with nothing and leave with everything (gg). 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

 

 

Fire!

The front porch is habitable again. My porch faces east and the house is a natural shelter from the breezes that come off the ocean.  The Santa Anna winds, however, are another story. Without the sun and the winds blowing fiercely, the only shelter is indoors. My morning smoke on the porch stops when these miserable winds blow as they have the last few days.

How miserable can they get?  Just ask the folk in the Los Angeles inferno who lost their homes the last few days. I hesitate to make the winds political but there it is, Los Angeles has reaped the reward of voting for the liberal environmentalists who would rather budget social wokism than available water and fire safety. Elections do have consequences, sometimes firry consequences.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.    

 

Unity

The One hidden God living among us is the God we humans have consistently turned into a variety of religions, each of which serves only to separate we humans. No religion works to our good and they are all dead ends. Thank God, the One hidden God living among us is bigger than our petty pipe dreams. Just wait, unity will be had by all, someday soon.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

Welcome

Are there any adults among the 2025 political gathering in Washington? Just one politician is willing to say out loud what everyone knows to be the truth. Therefore, there is only one adult. Senator Rand Paul says, there can be no successful long-term money reform in Washington unless entitlements, welfare spending, Medicare and Social Security are a part of the discussion.  This is the ugly truth.

Maybe, President-elect Trump should welcome Senator Paul to the soon to happen, national cost cutting party.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

Hope

Are we as Americans in 2025 children or adults?  Are we participants in our democracy or are we merely feeding at the trough of government?    It would seem that in our time, the adults among us are few. No matter the income level, social status or education, all of us are intent on chomping down at the welfare office and the stock market. Our cries for more and more are baby talk and our politicians in Washington earn their mansions by dishing out the baby food. This is the now America.

Blame it on the politicians if you must but we every day Americans have to change or we die. We have to grow up. We must become givers who want the greater good, the elusive national good. The ancient Roman empire faced a decision point as monumental as ours and failed. Two hundred and fifty years of growth and then two hundred and fifty years of fractured dreams that ended in national suicide. Are we so special that we can somehow buck the trend of history?  2026 will be our 250^th year anniversary as a nation.

Let’s get practical. Most of America welcomes all the MAGA optimism about the future of we the people and deservedly so. Optimism has the power to influence history in the short term but optimism is not enough, optimism is not hope. Hope is long-term, hope is adult stuff. Hope says we are about paying the price now for a better future. Hope says we will feed the kids first and be content with the leftovers. We adults must join together and be better American participants.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.     

 

  

 

 

Sparrows

St. Matthew 10: 29 -31.

29. “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.  30. “But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  31. “So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.       (New American Standard Bible, 1995.)

29. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. 30. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.        (New International Version, 1978)

29. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them will not fall to the ground without your Father.  30. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.    (King James Version, 1611.)

My new (old) Bible came in the mail yesterday, New American Standard Bible 1995, Giant Print, indexed, red letter, brown that looks red, in genuine leather, $35. Love it for all these reasons but mostly my affection is based on sentiment. I discovered the Bible when I bought a NASB paperback edition in the seminary bookstore, 1977, or so. I was not a good student nor a good fit for the job but the NASB and I have been partners ever since those days. Little did I understand that the search for authenticity would take so long.

The description of God as expressed in these three verses are, in my humble opinion, the most authentic Jesus words in the Bible.  Jesus words are simple, primitive and earthy. We are like sparrows whom God cares for even in death yet we are more valuable than the sparrow to God.  Much of the remainder of Chapter 10 can best be described as what others said about what Jesus said, therefore, in my book, verses 29 to 31 stand alone.

G. Goslaw 

Landers, Ca.

 

 

Again

Woke FBI: The message in New Orleans, again, don’t believe your lying eyes! Not until President Trump is in charge of the FBI, will we be informed or given the truth about what motivated the new Orleans terrorist.  Was he an illegal alien, a mad liberal Democrat, an Iranian doing Jehad, an angry sex charge person who believed the lie that happiness is about sex or just a hate filled degenerate?  

The act itself was and will ever be intentional terrorism. Bravo Ms. Mayor. All this dying over the last four years is the Biden, Democrat legacy that they will carry for many years. Who says elections don't have consequences?    

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.