Re: Acceptance and growth

I found that I still went on at some
length. Oh well.

Long posts attract long answers.


On Apr 1, 7:09=A0pm, Bob Crowley <bobcrow...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]


Re this last: See if you can find a copy of the 1983
book _The Gravedigger File_, by Os Guinness. It's
in the same genre as _The Screwtape Letters_,
memos from the Other Side, except that it has
to do with the subversion of the whole Church
rather than an individual. The key sentence in
the book (which Guinness italicized in its
entirety) is: "Christianity created the modern
world; the modern world, in turn, has undermined
Christianity; Christianity has become its own
gravedigger."

Any status quo is sooner or later challenged. You're probably aware
of Malcolm Muggeridge's cynical prediction of Western man becoming a
brontosaurus, and destroying himself. It's not Christianity that
will be destroyed in the end, but the West. The Church will undergo
testing, and Pope John Paul II commented that one of the unalterable
facts of Christian doctrine is that the church must undergo a final,
horrific test. But it will survive.

[snip]



God is still active and He still speaks.


And He picks and chooses. Rather hard luck
on those of us to whom He doesn't choose to
speak, though; and He doesn't seem to care.

[sizable snip]

I claim to have had the experience of my father turning up in my room
the night he died in some form. He started by apologising, and ended
with a terryfying scream before disappearing. During the event, which
probably lasted no more than a couple of minutes in real time (if it
was in real time), he made one comment which I still find hard to
accept.

At one stage he looked a bit alarmed, and said "I always was doomed!
I didn't really have any choice!" I argued back saying that couldn't
be right (just). He replied, "Oh, it's right, all right. YOu can see
that from here."

Later in the exchange he said "I was WILLING" (to do the things he
did). So on the one hand there appears to be an element of
predestination (which I don't like), but on the other he admitted he
was very willing to do what he did. Judas appears to be predestined
eg. ".. the one who must be lost ...", "Go, do what you must do". On
the other hand he was willing to do what he did.

It's no good asking me - I don't know, or necessarily like, the answer
either. In one sense if God is omnipotent, He can only give us free
choice by abdication in certain areas.



God is just in the sense that He judges truthfully.


Except Himself.

I think He does scrutinise Himself. Remember Paul's words that the
Holy Spirit searches out the deep things of God.

The problem we face is what is the meaning of "love" when applied to
an omnipotent being? What does "love" mean?


I remember complaining to the old pastor "what the hell did God make
the devil for?" =A0He thought about it for a minute, shrugged, and said
"Oh, he's got a job to do I suppose". =A0And in the end, that's probably
what he's there for, a catalyst in human affairs, such that we are
forced to decide who we're going to serve - God or the devil.


Try reading "The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell", by William Blake. As Blake
obliquely alludes to in that work, Satan,
not God, Messiah, or Adam. is arguably
the real hero of Milton's "Paradise Lost".
The others are all rather lame characters;
God and Messiah win because they're
supposed to, not because of their qualities
of character,

That's not an uncommon thesis. I've often read actors state they like
playing bad guys. One reason is that they seem "more interesting".
The other is that we humans find it easier to indentify with evil than
good. How often do missionaries get time in the news? But tyrants
get air time every night of the week.


:Remember that I've written before about
:how Jesus healed one person at the pool
:of Bethesda (John 5) AND LEFT THE
:REST SICK!! =A0That's unforgivable.

When I read this episode I get the impression the bloke didn't want to
get healed.



My point was not about the bloke whom
Jesus actually healed; it was about all
the other blokes (and perhaps the female
equivalent thereof, but I don't know the
Aussie slang)

.... sheila ... (although that's a bit dated these days)

who were right there,
some of them probably begging for
healing, and none of them receiving it.
(If Jesus had healed more, surely the
author, who admits in John 20:31 that
the book is a propaganda piece, would
have said so; he wanted to present
Jesus in the best possible light.)
I can imagine a rain of (well-justified)
curses descending upon Jesus's
disappearing back after that episode.

We don't know. JOhn engaged in a bit of hyperbole about the sheer
number of Jesus' miracles saying all the books of the world couldn't
hold them. The Gospels aren't complete. We're told Christ spoke with
the two disciples on the road after his resurrection, yet we're hardly
given a word of dialogue despite the fact he was supposed to have
expounded the Scriptures to them for the rest of the trip. Not
everything was in fact reported - a lot is missing, in reality.

[snip]



No one said Paul was perfect, least of all Paul himself.


Even near the end of his life, Paul was
anything but forgiving. Look at II Timothy
4:14, where Paul obviously would like God
to zap Alexander the coppersmith. That
is not even up to the standards of Stephen,
let alone Jesus, at their deaths.

[snip]

Paul displayed human fallibility on a number of occasions. He wasn't
Christ, nor was he meant to be. EVery Christian displays
fallibility.



:1) =A0How can one logically conceive of God suffering
:any kind of pain? =A0That would mean that something
:had the power to cause God pain, and would thus
:deny God's omnipotence.

For God to create anything, He has to at least have an intellectual
idea of it.



But the idea that He can be subjected to
whatever He would perceive as pain by
the actions of others, as I said, denies
God's omnipotence.

[snip]

Part of HIs omnipotence is that He can choose to be hurt, just as He
has chosen to abdicate somewhat in order to allow us free will. He
could, to quote CS Lewis, carry out the whole human plan in the blink
of an eyelid, but he lets us do slowly and blunderingly what He could
do perfectly and in an instant.



:2) If God could "feel our pain" (a la Bill e
:Clinton's infamous phrase), He wouldn't
:let it go on so long. =A0Of course that's not
:strictly relevant to your paragraph. =A0But I
:can't conceive of God as feeling *any* pain
:or, therefore, paying any price.

If we're made in His image, then He must have something that equates
to emotions. =A0I know He can get angry - I've felt it on occasion. =A0I
also know He has a sense of humour, from experience. =A0Our sense of
humour is a shadow of His. =A0He also feels pity - I know that from
experience. =A0And He can have his feelings hurt.



That last sounds like an out-and-out
impossibility. It's no skin off His
(metaphorical) nose if someone does
something which, if done to a human,
would hurt that human's feelings.
To me, God must necessarily be
incapable of suffering, "impassible"
to use a fancy word, or else He's
not God.

I think God is capable of suffering through His creatures. Christ
told us that when we mistreat the least of His brothers, we mistreat
Him. I think it's more than merely symbolic - I think He's in them,
and so as we mistreat them, we mistreat Him.

He's in them by His own choice.


:3) Supposing a life after this earthly
:life exists, a) why should anyone assume
:that a God who treats us so scurvily on
:earth will be any nicer after we die --
:i.e., why would anyone believe it will
:actually be a *heaven*, b) therefore,
:why would we want "a place in heaven"?

A lot of mistreatment is caused by humans when it is all said and
done.



-- with God's approval; even many of the
sufferings of Job were caused by humans.

I've been reading a book "Weeds among the wheat". In a sense the
weeds are necessary for Christian purification. However the weeds, at
least human weeds, have willpower. The raiders did what they did by
their own will. Hitler did what he did by his own will, and the
supportive will of others. He could not have possibly have done it
alone. Our wills come into it.


True there are natural disasters and disease, but with
cooperative effort we can do a lot to minimise the effects.


Yeah, but ain't it funny that the phrase
"act of God" *always* means a disaster,
not something nice?

That's because we only think of it in insurance terms. A nice day is
an "act of God". A butterfly is an act of God. The pleasure of
sexual intercourse is an "act of God" (since He designed it). The
taste of a good meal is an "act of God" since He ultimately designed
both the raw materials of the meal, the aromatic chemicals and our
sense of taste. An outstanding day of surfing waves is an "act of
God".


I think the harshness might also be God's warning to us that He IS
going to judge us. =A0And the indications are that He's not very soft.


A hanging judge, eh? He's been through
the mill Himself (according to standard
Christian doctrine), knows what it's like, and
still won't cut us some slack? Many humans
would be more just than that.

I'm Catholic, and I believe in PUrgatory. If someone's in Purgatory
they'll get into heaven eventually ("There you will stay " I tell you,
"until you have paid every last penny of your fine" - "He who did not
know what was requiredk, and did not do it, will be punished with a
light whipping".) Heaven is literal perfection. This means that
nothing that is imperfect will get in. On the other hand I believe
God has made provision for refinement, even after death, for many.
But it's a lot easier to start now.



I suppose it boils down to faith. =A0Meanwhile the devil will do all he
can to discourage our faith, usually by disconsolation.


To my mind, *God* did all he could to
discourage my faith. Maybe my faith
was of a childish variety, but when God
for years doesn't answer prayers, it's
clear that He doesn't care.

[snip]



My human father treated me with contempt.


Mine with, pretty much, abandonment. My
parents divorced when I was 8, and my father
often defaulted on his child support payments
(hate to say this about the dead, but he was,
for a time, a deadbeat dad before it became
fashionable); for a while my mother and I
did not even know where he was. I became
a Christian because I expected (based on
the propaganda I had heard) to get the love
I did not get from my parents (my mother
was not the warmest person either, and
with the pressures of earning her own
living and raising a kid, she was under
a good bit of stress). But alas, the
Heavenly Father turned out to be just
as distant as my earthly father.

[snip]

I can understand your feelings. But remember Christ's words "If
anyone causes one of these little ones who believes in me to lose
faith, it would be better if he were etc."

This problem of "fatherhood" exists when natural fathers don't do what
they should do. I had a "vision" once where somebody seemed to say to
me that in regards to these men who father children and then abandon
them, "I really punish them!"

However that doesn't get you past this sense of abandonment yourself.
In all truth I don't relate to God as Father. I go through the
motions, but it doesn't really gel. I know He's there - I've had far
too many experiences for that. But "Father?" - No, not at this stage,
anyway. And any priest who tells me that God's fatherhood is an
important part of His relationship with us has missed the point.


:In a sense my faith is still there; note my
:implied call, earlier in this article, to a
:Christianity purer than the Mammonolatry
:that is often sold under the Christian brand.
:But I don't really have any place else to
:turn for support; it's a pity that the person
:from whom I get the most support is not
:conveniently located to meet [it's a long
:drive, with poor roads, across the Pacific :-)].

You're unlikely to change the Mammonolatry. =A0What you can do however
is live your own Christian life. =A0And two blokes recently rowed across
the Tasman Sea. =A0You never know.



Actually 1) I was a bit unjust to my cousins
and other friends, from whom I've received
some support mostly by email (though my
nearest cousin is 400 miles away); 2) I'm
more likely to live a Nietzschean life than
a Christian one at this point (Nietzsche
ends his book _The Anti-Christ_ by saying
that Christianity is the worst thing ever
to happen to the world). Blake's "The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell" alluded to
above actually anticipated Nietzsche to
some degree, though I don't know if
Nietzsche read it; both of them (Blake
especially) seem to be much more in
tune with the way things actually work.

[snip a bit]

I can think of more than a few things that are worse.



Peter flunked.
Thomas flunked.
The disciples flunked.
John Newton (Amazing Grace) flunked.
The Borgia Popes flunked (really flunked).


But from my point of view, God flunked.

I don't know if He has. I think that when God does break through on
you, you might have a very deep faith, having been through so much
frustation. Moses probably thought God had flunked. The people were
still in slavery, and he himself, having murdered an Egyptian slave
driver in an effort to help his own people, found himself all washed
up on the backside of the desert watching a bunch of sheep for forty
years. But one day there was this burning bush ...

God works in strange ways. I get this sense He's got a particular
role for you, but I don't know what it is.




My family are all dead. =A0My sister died nearly 3 years ago from
leukaemia leaving 2 teens and a young son behind, although they had
the benefit of an outstanding husband and father who remained.


My condolences. My father too died of leukemia.
Any sister I might have had disappeared when my
mother had a miscarriage about a year before I
was born, much too early in the pregnancy to
determine the sex of the lost embryo in those
pre-DNA test days. Some would say that my
subsequent birth was a miscarriage of justice :-).

There was a stillborn between my sister and I. She was six years
younger than me. Again we don't know the sex, but had the child been
born it probably would have suffered the same sort of stuff we did.


This life is often unfair. =A0The Bible never said it would be fair,
unless one takes a few somewhat wishful OT proverbs as ultimate
guides. =A0The Jews weren't treated fairly, despite being "God's
people".


So if everybody, including "God's people",
gets the shaft, one might well apply Occam's
Razor and eliminate the idea of God as an
unnecessary hypothesis. That might actually
be less unhappy for us than the idea of a God
Who watches us suffer and just blithely lets it
happen without lifting a (metaphorical) finger,
quite contrary to many Old Testament (not only
Proverbs, but Psalms and various prophets)
depictions of Him.

Whether we like it or not, suffering is part of Christian faith. "Let
him pick up his cross and follow me".

That's why there's so much emphasis on the next world, or "not of this
world". God doesn't want His people to feel at home in this world.
One of the things I've found most frustrating in my life has been what
might be called lack of career development or intellectual
development. I used to do pretty well at school, and other people
think I've flunked. I think God's responsible to some extent. My old
pastor commented "All He's done is humiliate you! What have you done
to deserve all this?" My CAtholic psychiatrist said "You've been
nobbled. He wants you to write. otherwise you'd be doing all these
other things". (I've been resisting the writing, incidentally).

During the exchange with my father the night he died, I raised this
frustration of career blues, which my father also had a hand in
causing. At one stage he used to ridicule me for having a job in the
public service. He ridiculed me for just about everything if it comes
to that. But during the exchange the night he died, at one stage he
said "it's (career development) not even important!" (Another one of
those things he could see 'from there', I suppose). When I challenged
that statement, and said "Then what is", his reply was "How you treat
other people".

I may as well ask you here, "How well do you treat other people?".


Maybe God's forcing you to an arid dryness that will burn everything
else away so that in the end all that's left is Him.


This would indeed accord with Malachi 3:2, that
refers to God as "a refiner's fire", which Handel
wisely set in a minor key in _Messiah_, as well
as that "shaking" passage from Hebrews (with
its reference to, I believe, Haggai 2:6 -- it is
not an exact quote) which you quoted.


Well, either God is a consuming fire or He isn't. If He isn't we can
probably disregard Him. But if He isn't, then why are you having so
much difficulty and frustration?


This 'shaking' isn't very pleasant. =A0In the end all that is left is
the solid core. =A0Everything else is stripped away.


But all this begs the question: Why should
we care? Why should we have any interest
in existence, let alone what is euphemistically
called "growth", in the first place? Why should
we want the result that this is supposed to be
leading toward? Why did God create at all,
and then use the most cruel and inefficient
means possible to, if standard doctrine be
true, make us like His Son? Our existence
is no good to Him (He needs nothing!) and
no good to us, so what's the point of being
here at all, let alone of suffering?

He had a plan to bring people to "GLORY", which means not just a
place, but a state. However to reach that state, they have to want to
be involved. What is "GLORY"? There's a film by the name, about a
negro battalion or company in the US Civil War. Towards the end the
commanding white officer is riding his horse on the beach, when he
knows there's a good chance he'll be killed in attacking a confederate
fort.

The camera pans in on the ocean. The sun is coming up, and it's
brilliant rays are turning the ocean gold. Seabirds are wheeling and
crying over the waves, oblivious of the human drama being played out
on the shore. The waves themselves continue to roll in. But the
glory of the sun is lighting the whole scene.

If Christianity is correct, God is trying to make little suns, small
replicas of Himself. What is that going to take? How do you change a
flimsy creature of mortal flesh and blood, possibly riding a horse, or
trudging wearily on the sand, into something that is eternal and
shines like a star?

.