God Code

Selfish decisions over the long term produce negative consequences in our world. 

Selfless decisions over the long term produce spiritual bonuses in our world.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Safe Space

This is a monumental day, August 20, 2024. While reading a book from a biblical scholar, which I am not, it dawned on me that at least one authority and I have found agreement about God. I gave out a yelp of joy. I will not name names for my endorsement matters little and is the kiss of death in the greater truth-seeking world.  However, I can now stop buying books, which I cannot afford anyway. Thank you, whomever.

There is no cosmic disciplinarian God (my own phrasing). However, I do remain confused about the seeming total absence of an apocalyptic God.  We can do away with end times preaching on this subject but is there not space for a God reordering in this world of ours?  Is there not room for unsolicited God interventions among us?

It seems to this neophyte to be necessary or why believe in God? Should we believe that God did his or her thing and then left this world to fend for itself? How absent is absent? From my own intuitive understanding of God as given to me, the all and the rare interventions are completed through the earthly God Code (my own phrasing).  Our world was ordered from the beginning to include this possibility at divine discretion.

Then there is the eternity awaiting all of us at death, not a worldly destruction but an eternal reordering that can best be described as apocalyptic. The question yet to be determined is what will eternity bring to us?  Some say, an ever-compacting unity that is at least a never-ending joyride.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.   

 

 

 

 

Double Down Democrats

Tomorrow August 15, the Democratic Convention will arrive.  Silence, quiet all opposing talkers, wait just a few more days.  Kamala is so far the official, unofficial presidential candidate of the Democrats. After the convention, Michelle Obama will no longer have a shot, she is the only candidate who could beat Trump.

No one believes thar Kamala can or would change the direction of the Biden administration whose policies she suddenly finds offensive. Kamala is the Biden administration. In fact, the powers that be behind the Washington throne have renamed the party by choosing Waltz as VP.  The party will be known, going forward, as the Double Down Democrats.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.    

Losers

There are two words in the Bible as written in Greek that the translators messed up. Because of their choice of words to describe the truth of scripture, great damage has been to our understanding of what God is about in this world. Allow me to highlight one of these words.

Matthew 7: 13.  Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to DESTRUCTION, and many enter through it.  (Today’s New International Version, a 2006 modern translation of the Bible from the Greek)

Matthew 7: 13. Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to DESTRUCTION, and many there be which go in thereat:     (Authorized King James Version, a 1611 translation of the Bible from the Greek)

Young’s Analytical Concordance of the Bible, Robert Young, LL.D., 1975, tells us that the word translated DESTRUCTION in both the King James Version and the modern TNIV is the Greek word APOLEIA. This word appears only 5 times in the New Testament. The basic meaning given is “loss”, not DESTRUCTION, a word that carries with it a sense of supposed finality.  

Religion has been caught again with its pants down trying to scare the reader into signing up to a perceived dogma. The dogma begins with a biblical truism. Our earthly lives are a choice, to believe in the God Reality or to choose some lesser and other God. We all have our Gods, even a choice for no God is a God.

The second part of this dogma is the falsehood, better known as a lie. Our lived-out choice will be judged in eternity as worthy of heaven or hell. The throne of God’s grace will be turned into an eternal guillotine. The Cosmic Disciplinarian God will then burn you forever if you have chosen or lived wrongly.  Are you scared?  Such a trauma driven scenario as this should at least make us think twice.

A Theological Word Book of the Bible, edited by Alan Richardson, a rather conservative rendering of the words of the Bible, prefers PERDITION as in the Revised Standard version, rather than DESTRUCTION as the proper translation of APOLEIA.  The only meaning of this word is clearly, as defined in English, eternal damnation and therefore the uniting of the dogma devotees.  

In the article by N. H. Snaith he states, “There is considerable division of opinion concerning the ultimate fate of the wicked. (p. 167)” Dr. Snaith goes on to say, “The idea of unending torment and punishment is being recognized more and more as being incompatible with the character of God.”  However, he concludes, “Jesus certainly spoke as though some would be lost, and these passages which speak of ‘perdition’ clearly portray an annihilation that is complete and final.” 

Here we go again, circular reasoning that is another lie.  How does a loss saying of Jesus turn into eternal damnation?  This rendering requires a leap big enough to jump the Grand Canyon. However it is sliced, PERDITION and DESTRUCTION are religious dogma talking.  Some of us are not sure what Matthew meant to say but the issue is rather what did Jesus mean to say?

Loss is one of the Jesus reversal sayings that kicked religion in the teeth. A possible quote from his lips may have been, in this earthly life, there are winners and losers, in eternity the earthly winners will be the losers and the losers will be the winners.  This possible understanding surely upsets the dogma table and Mathew. When I run across what the experts have to say, I’ll let you know. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca   

   

Forest

Doctrinal supposed orthodoxy is one of the divisive power dominions that the Apostle Paul called the wisdom of this world (I Cor. 1: 20). While we waste our energies on these games, God sees them as mere foolishness.  Doctrinal orthodoxies are the trees not the forest.

The trees only obscure the cosmic expanse of the God reality. The forest is about the available undeserved grace or love or acceptance of God, who says to us, come and taste.  The forest is here now while we are yet clothed in our humanness.  

Doctrinal orthodoxy, however it may be defined, will never take us there, i.e., to the forest.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.    

Joy

God salvation is not fair. God salvation does not turn right earthly wrong. God salvation is largely unknowable. God salvation is not about smarts.  God salvation is not about who you know.

God salvation is about the chase, the personal “asking” search for whatever is out there, an experiential exploration.  Our stories are as different as night and day but the chase is an equal opportunity journey in lieu of the awaiting all-inclusive eternity of joy both in the now and fully beyond death.

God salvation is a joyful childish playground.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

Origen (185- 253)

“God (Father in Greek) therefore must not be thought to be any kind of body, nor to exist in a body, but to be a simple intellectual existence, admitting in himself of no addition whatever, so that he cannot be believed to have in himself a more or a less, but is Unity, or if I might say, Oneness throughout, and the mind and fount from which originates all intellectual existence or mind.”  Page 10.

"The Son, who is the image of the invisible Father, is not the truth compared to the Father; but in relation to us, who are not able to receive the truth of God Almighty, he is a shadow and semblance of the truth." page 20, note 1.

“Origen On First Principles”, Koetschau's Text and Translation into English, Torchbook edition, 1966.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.