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.
“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
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.
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
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.
"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.
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