California Nuts

Don’t you just love those California pistachios?  Both delicious and nutritious, they are so good that eating just one is impossible.  There is another schoolyard definition of the word “nuts”, the children use the word to insult and dismiss an offending playmate.  On such an occasion the word means insane or just plain crazy.  We have all heard it and we have all made the accusation, your “nuts”!  When used this way, out of anger or ignorance, the words are an extreme exaggeration that is not intended nor does it have a reality in fact.

    

Mr. O’Reilly was not talking about the delicious pistachio nut on his factor show on the 3^rd of February.  The schoolyard “nuts” insult was flung by Mr. O’Reilly at all persons who disagree with his deluded understanding of Islam as just another religion.  The context for this childish insult was the visit by President Obama to a Mosque in Baltimore.  The message that the president brought to the Muslim folk was to assure them that America is about religious freedom and that an attack upon one religion is an attack upon all religions.  Frankly, the president should go back to school, banning criticism of any religion is not American religious freedom.

 

The fact that President Obama visited a Mosque is no surprise.  The fact that the president made another speech to hand out politically correct spin is certainly no surprise.  The fact that the president of these United States was somehow compelled to defend Muslim killers is no surprise.  This California nut is surprised, however, at the just plain ignorant words and simpatico of Mr. O’Reilly with the deceit of our president.  A high school student could discover the facts of Islam by checking out Wikipedia or any history book on the rise of Islam. 

The prophet Muhammad began the violence as he conquered the peoples of the Arab lands 1400 years ago.  The spiritual betterment of the people was never the primary motivation for the conquests by this religion, all the killing was and is about political control and the establishment of Caliphates.  This word does sound familiar, no?  The rise of Islam has always been by the sword, economic manipulation or at the ballot box.  Guess what is planned for America, could it be all three?  

Why would the president and Mr. O’Reilly soft peddle the threat?  Islam and all other religions will never just get along because Islam wants to control the whole earth and 1.6 billion people is a good start.  When push comes to shove, the so called peaceable Muslims in America will fall in line with their religiously defined family and real freedom will go bye, bye.

Why is it that the Islamic reform organizations fail to influence the Mosques of America?   Why are the Mosques in America funded to a large extent by the brothers in the Arabian Peninsula?  Why are there no apologies or condolences given by American Islamic leaders for the killing of Americans by these nuts? Why do mosques not inform on their radical brothers?  Why are potential terrorists not ratted out by their American families?  Terrorists blowing themselves up so that they can have perpetual sex with the virgins in heaven, this is insane craziness, you would think that even sex would get tiring after a few thousand years.

This California nut is tired of all the Ostrich like behavior from our church, political and media leaders.  These folk must get their heads out of the sand and be Americans, their blind passivity is criminal and traitorous.  The Muslim believer is a Muslim first and an American second.  Every religion asks their people to positively influence the culture through the voting process but no other religion advocates the dismantling of a national political structure.  The Muslim religion orders all secular politics be destroyed.

Allah says you must believe or die an infidel.  Are you tone deaf Mr. O'Reilly?

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

Mom 2

St. John 4:26    Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he”.

Mom loved her God and her Bible.  She held the family record for reading the Bible cover to cover, certainly much more than this her second son.  She was a lonesome reader, listening on a very personal level, intent on making another connection with our ultimate reality and of that fact the family had no doubt.  The Bible was her life, her love and her solace.

Mom owned and read almost every version of the Bible but she resorted to larger and larger giant print editions in her later years.  I believe she quit living when she could no longer live within the pages of this book, as she had done for a lifetime.  A tape recording of the words of the Bible were not the same as the book.  The doctors will have a different tale but they only deal in reports and numbers.

While sorting out her stuff, I came across one of her Bibles, a regular book bound study Bible with a paper jacket. The back paper jacket flap opened this Bible to page 1261, the Gospel of St. John, Chapter four. This was the last point of reference for Mom in this Bible or it was the most significant passage that she reread time and time again.  Either way, it is these words of Jesus that were underlined in red and yellow, “I who speak to you am he.”

In comedic terms, this was the punchline of a conversation between a woman drawing water from a Samaritan well and Jesus.  The entire conversation is fascinating but this punch line and the outrageous claim that it contains will change the world.   Jesus for the first and only time, clearly identifies himself as the Messiah, the long hoped for person, king or prophet who would rescue the people of Israel from centuries of interference and occupation by peoples beyond their borders.  This was the Messianic hope of the Jewish people that would hopefully soon or at least someday, usher in a reconstituted Israel.

But wait, the question needs to be asked, why is Saint John the only biblical writer to record this conversation between Jesus and the woman at the Samaritan well?  Why does Jesus avoid making this claim in Jerusalem or in his hometown of Nazareth?  Why does Jesus, according to John, reveal his Messianic identity to the Samaritan woman at the well and not his most faithful disciples?  The only possible answer to these questions is that the popularly understood Jewish definition of the Messiah at the time of Jesus was short sighted or just plain wrong.  The prophets foretold of a Messiah that would bring spiritual freedom and political freedom but they are silent about when each would happen.  Mom would not have lived within in the pages of this book if the book was solely about a political Messiah.  The politics would arrive for the Jewish people two thousand years after Jesus.

                                                        

Every God idea before the time of Jesus was founded upon the differences between peoples.  This does not mean that God recognized these differences, it means only that it is easy for we humans to assume that our God is one of our own.  Jesus asks the Samaritan women for a drink of water that she draws from the well.  In verse 9 of chapter 4, the woman asks, “How is it that you, being a Jew, asks a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?  For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.”  Though the Samaritan and the Jew had a shared religious history, at the time of Jesus, the Jew considered the religion of the Samaritan inferior, almost a gutter religion and according to the Jew every Samaritan deserved shunning.

When the disciples returned to the well they were surprised to see Jesus and the woman in conversation.  Considering how the Greek word meaning surprise or marvel is used by St. John elsewhere in his gospel, surprise may not adequately convey their reaction.  Astonishment or shock that leaves one speechless may more accurately describe their feelings.  The disciples could not understand why Jesus would bother to give her, or any Samaritan, the time of day.  We can only imagine their anxiety when the town comes out to meet Jesus and the travelers are welcomed into the Samaritan town and Jesus stays two whole days.  Can you imagine, knowing the racial prejudice that the disciples carried, sitting around and listening to Jesus share with the Samaritans for two days.  Surely, Jesus was expanding upon his conversation with the woman at the well.  One might ask, were the disciples listening to the words Jesus?  What did the disciples do during those two days?

We are not told for the disciples will remain followers of Jesus but stuck in their Jewish religious mindset with their limited and comfortable understanding of the Messiahship of Jesus.  A stuck mind is the normal human condition for all of us, it is exceedingly difficult for a stuck mind to break free and really listen.  The understandings that we have learned from childhood, taught to us by succeeding generations, have such great power over us. Religion is one of those understandings.  A stuck mind will not listen and every religion trades in stuck minds.

What will it take for the disciples to break free .... a cross?  

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA 

                                                                                                                      

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

The Voice of God to Moses

The impossible confusion in the Old Testament is a result of the commingling of two voices.  The first voice is the Voice of God to Abram and to Moses as God brings the people to the promised land and then up out of Egyptian bondage.  The other voice is the voice of religion.  This voice also came to us through Moses as he takes over control from the Voice of God at Mount Sinai.

The first time Moses comes down from the mountain he finds a party going on, breaks the message from God written in stone that is intended for the people and kills 3000 of the family.  The second time Moses comes down from Mt. Sinai he brings down a redacted version of that first message from God and this one is called the Ten Commandments.  So began the religion of Judaism.

All Old Testament theologies seem to lump these two voices together and then try to make sense of the resulting confused understanding of God.  Is God a God of love and forgiveness or a cosmic judge and killer?  Today’s New International Study Bible has the following note on Exodus 19:5, the third time Moses comes down from Mount Sinai.

“The covenant between God and Israel at Mount Sinai is the outgrowth and extension of the Lord’s covenant with Abraham 600 years earlier.  Participation in the divine blessing is conditioned on obedience added to faith (p.117).”

For all intent and purposes the obedience added to faith that is  mentioned is the obedience to religion.  Religion takes the place of God in the affairs of men and men use God as an excuse to kill.  All Old Testament theologies that place obedience to a human religion on equal or greater footing than with the Voice of God are corrupt and leave the people confused and dazed.

These two voices need to be contrasted.  The first historical Voice of God comes to Abram, a grossly insignificant tribal person living a very insignificant life.  Then the Voice of God to Abram speaks an impossible promise to an impossible Abram in Genesis chapter 12: 1-3.  The voice says:
     
         “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.
          I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
          I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you
          I will curse, and all the peoples of the earth will be blessed
                              through you”.

The only condition given to Abram is to go, put one foot in front of another believing in the reality of the only true “I .. God”, who will do whatever it take to accomplish the divine purpose and promise to Abram.  The promise to Abram is not religion, there are no maps, no guides and most of all, no killing, just the invitation to follow the “I .. God”.  There is no other long list of ethical norms, no required character, no required belief in a dictated dogma and no allegiance to an earthly demigod.

The life of Abram is a mixed bag, one moment he listens to the voice of religion, his own humanness, and the next moment the Voice of God.  Abram is full of doubt, he cowardly passes his wife Sarai off as his sister to the Pharaoh of Egypt.  The royal family catches a disease, probably the crabs from Sarai and Pharaoh angrily threw them out of the country .  Back in the promised land, Abram takes in a concubine women to give him the future that the “I .. God” had not yet fulfilled through Sarai.

In the midst of these character flaws God again blesses Abram, giving him the new name of Abraham, meaning the father of many nations.  The name Sarai is changed to Sarah.  A future for the family is again promised and sealed by making circumcision the outward sign of God’s blessing.  The “I .. God”, then renews his promise of a son, Isaac, to be born to the aged Sarah and Abraham. Not fully convinced of the promise, Abraham and Sarah poke fun at the promise of God.

The “I .. God”, true to his word, brings Isaac into this world, the son of Sarah and Abraham.  The years pass and Isaac is now at least a teenager and the beloved son of his father who believes Isaac to be the promise of God.  The Voice again is heard by Abraham.  Religion would never give such a confusing message, the  “I .. God” tells Abraham to go to the region of Moriah, to a mountain he will be shown.  There Abraham is to climb the mountain and sacrifice his son, his only son, Isaac, the God given son of promise, the son through whom the promise to Abram is being fulfilled.  It is extraordinary that the unpredictable Abraham does not hesitate.  You and I would have objected to this confusing instruction, is this not shear lunacy?  The “I .. God” could have responded with the question, in whom do you trust, biology or me, the “I ..God”?  You tried biology once Abraham, do it my way now.  At the last moment the “I .. God” provides another sacrificial option to save the life and promise of Isaac.

This is not religious obedience, Abraham gives us an example of what it means to live by the Voice of God. Religion objects on cue, it can’t be that simple, if God doesn’t bless religion, who will be in control?  Control just may be what is confusing the issue, divine freedom can not be humanly controlled nor is it predictable.

Let us contrast the message that Moses brings down from Mount Sinai the third time.  This message is recorded in Exodus chapter nineteen and unlike the message to Abram, this message is a very conditional promise.

“Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.  Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites. (Exodus 19 : 5&6)”

The question should be asked, would the "I .. God" even bother with such an arrangement rooted in this world?  The TNIV Study Bible says in the notes for 19:3 -- 24:18.  “The Sinaitic covenant is cast in the form of an ancient Near Eastern suzerainty-vassal treaties of the second millennium B.C.  It contained the divine pledge to be the Israelites Suzerain Protector, if they would be faithful to him as their covenant Lord and obedient to the stipulations of the covenant as the vassal-people of the kingdom (p.117).”

The covenant from God is now bound up in the little word “if”, it is an “if covenant”.  This conditional agreement between God and man is the very definition of religion.  To the little word “if”, add the little word “fully” and all of humanity has no hope of pleasing or being in the good graces of the “I .. God”.  Moses became a political religious tyrant who tried to kill the Voice of God and largely succeeded.  No human being can be “fully” compliant with any religion and this supposed agreement leaves all of us without hope and under the thumb of religion..

This being the reality of our human predicament, what are we to do, to whom are we to go?  The confines of religion is one life answer to which the vast majority of humankind gravitate.  Religion as an ideology, masquerading as spirituality is responsible for all manner of ugliness perpetrated on humankind in the name of God.  We quickly point to Islamic terrorism but the same can be said of the Christian Church in the midst of slavery, or the silence of the church as the Nazi ideology is roasting Jews in the ovens.  Some gravitate to a secular political ideology that rules out the very possibility of the Voice of God.  All of these and others are a brand of humanism, settling for our self involved animalism.

We can choose as Abram did, to listen for the Voice of God or we can be a Moses and choose deafness.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca  

that smell

Islam is a "dirty religion" and the bowl will stink until you clean yourselves up. Your dilemma is that you are bound to the Qur'an, your Holy Book.  The book has a lot of good stuff but the core message of the Qur'an seems to be a fundamentalist "them and us" rant whose God, Allah, rains vengeance and violence down upon all disbelievers.  To the believer goes salvation, forgiveness, a blessed life and a male dominated blessed eternity. The believer is not directly told to be the violent judgement of God upon the infidel but it is not a far reach.  The Qur'an is the problem, how does the peaceful Muslim advertise a civilized religion when at the core of this religion is a killing God?  The sole mission of Allah on earth seems to be world political conquest, one way or another.

Some would say that the peace minded Muslim believer is not an authentic Muslim. When the terrorists kill Christians and the peaceable Muslims they are sending to their own a message. Are you with the true believers and the Qur'an or do you desire the fate of the infidel?  They say to be a Muslim is to kill for Allah. As Christians we should have more respect for the honest warrior Muslim who is willing to die to make their God rule. While the storm rages elsewhere, the American Muslim is silent and claims to not be responsible for the killing.

The peaceable Muslim must make a clear choice and reject the religion of the Qur'an.  Jesus was correct when he said we cannot serve two masters for we will choose the one and hate the other. If you choose the warrior religion at least be honest. There is, however, the one true God who is waiting to come to your rescue and my rescue for he loves everyone equally. He is the equal opportunity God who has already spoken to you through your Muslim religion. Please choose the other path, another Holy Book and follow the heartbeat of a loving God who is all around us.

The world has been forced to deal with the warrior religion for about 1500 years and the battle cannot be avoided.  Try as we might, over and over again, we sniff the air and Allah reappears to take more blood, maybe yours, maybe mine.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

Cartoons Away.....

Muhammad was not God … stupid!

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca

The Muslim Menace

The most familiar usage of the word menace from my generation was the comic series and television show, “Dennis the Menace”.  The central premise of these tales was that this child would act so far beyond what is appropriate or expected that he proved himself to be dangerous.  So dangerous that at any moment he could plunge the lives of his family and friends into chaos, especially the life of George Wilson.  It is called terrorism.

In 2015, the most dangerous child in all the neighborhoods of the world is the Muslim Menace.  It is a menace that raises it’s ugly head every few hundred years to terrorize the peoples of the world.  Today’s menace is a threat that kills innocent Christians in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, the Far East and America.  This menace claims that the peoples of the world are theirs to control and they demand adherence to their radical Muslim way of thinking and living.

Are the civilized peoples of the world to ignore this threat?  Our liberal progressive brothers in the White House act as if ignorance is bliss.  They would object to the Muslim label because it would condemn all peoples of the Muslim faith.  Well, all the peoples of the Muslim faith deserve all the condemnation possible short of violence, let civilization reserve that fate for the radical terrorists.  However, the Menace is a product of your Muslim world and the Muslim religion so all of you are guilty.

If there was a branch of Christendom that terrorized and killed in the name of God, all Christian believers would be immediately condemned as evil terrorists.  It is time to stop giving Muslims the benefit of the doubt and call a spade a spade because the so-called moderate Muslims refuse to deal with the cancer in their own body.  At this point in time, the entire Muslim religion has run a muck and no longer deserves the respect of civilization.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.