Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool. ~ Mark Twain
Someone who is trustworthy in a small matter is also trustworthy in large ones, and someone who is dishonest in a small matter is also dishonest in large ones. ~ Luke 16:10
Christianity is founded upon the idea that God is trustworthy. That is its central claim. If God is not trustworthy then Christianity is false. But there is no proof that God even exists, let alone that he is trustworthy. So the first question is, what do Christians mean when they say that God is trustworthy? Here is a typical example from Christian artist and author Richard Gunther:
Have you ever had this experience? Someone tells you they will be coming to see you on such-an-such a time, so you stay home and wait, but they don’t come. On top of that they don’t even ring to tell you they are not coming, and when you see them they don’t apologise.
Reluctantly, I have to say that this has happened to me so often I almost expect people not to come! And this frustrating event goes for many Christians too . . . sad but true.
I have learned that people are unreliable. They cannot always be trusted. Christians are sometimes even worse than non-Christians when it comes to reliability, and of course this should not be!
But there is something else I have learned – God is always reliable. Every promise He makes is trustworthy. He is never early or late. His timetable is faultless, and we can always expect to happen what God says will happen.
When Christians say that God is trustworthy, they are clearly talking about the ordinary kind of “trustworthiness” that we expect when we go to the doctor or dentist or put our money in a bank. The Bible is filled with exhortations to trust God in this manner. Here are a few of the more famous examples:
Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. ~ Proverbs 3:5
Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. ~ Psalm 37:5
It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man. ~ Psalm 118:8
Thus said the LORD: Cursed is he who trusts in man, Who makes mere flesh his strength, And turns his thoughts from the LORD. ~ Jeremiah 17:5
This is the central teaching of the Bible – God is supposed to be more trustworthy than any human. Preachers have been preaching and believers have been parroting this blatant absurdity for two thousand years. The claim is utterly delusional. If the Christian God were only half as trustworthy as the average dentist there would be no question about his existence! It would be trivial to prove that God exists if he were actually trustworthy in any meaningful sense of the word. Christians speak gibberish when they say that God is trustworthy. The word is utterly meaningless when applied to God.
Christians are brainwashed to believe and to declare that God is trustworthy no matter how untrustworthy he actually proves to be. It’s madness, pure and simple. Nothing could be more obvious. Imagine going to a dentist who is as trustworthy as God. What are the chances your tooth would be fixed? Imagine flying on a plane which is as reliable as God. What are the chances you would survive? Imagine giving your money to a bank as trustworthy as God. Would you ever see it again? How then can Christian claim that God is more trustworthy than any person or thing?
This is why we know Christianity is false. It drives believers to assert absurdities that are literally delusional. The more God is proven to be untrustworthy, the more the believer will declare not only that he is trustworthy, but that he alone is trustworthy. They utterly empty the word of any meaning whatsoever. And when this fact is pointed out to them, they cannot see it. It doesn’t matter how clearly the truth is explained, they will not see that they are speaking gibberish.
There can be no conclusion but that central doctrine of Christianity is a strong delusion. The only way Christians can maintain the idea that God is trustworthy by denying the very meaning of the word. Consider this advice from a believer’s blog post called Is God Really Trustworthy? Do you Really Trust God?:
Lost your job? You child is rebelling? Received a bad report from the doctor? It’s only a matter of time…until God will come through. Right? Right!
Let’s test our “trust quotient.” How do you know if you’re trusting God? Here are four possible ways:
Real Trust Means:
- No timetable
- No fixes
- No worry
- No control (of mine)
Now let’s think about this for a minute. Let’s apply this definition of trust to a doctor.
- No timetable: Your child has a burst appendix. You rush to your doctor’s office. The secretary tells you the doctor knows all about the problem and that you should take a seat and wait. You wait for a few hours as your child slowly dies in agony. You tell all your friends that your doctor was the most trustworthy doctor you have ever visited. The death of your child only proved how trustworthy he really is.
- No fixes: You child is dead. You praise the doctor as the most trustworthy doctor that ever lived.
- No worry: You sat in perfect peace watching your child writhe in agony, knowing the doctor was perfectly trustworthy.
- No control (of mine): The doctor does nothing, you have no control, your child dies. You praise your doctor and recommend him to all your friends and family.
I used the death of a child because that is what this delusion leads to in real life. Parents who trust God to heal their children end up with dead children and manslaughter convictions. It’s happened many times. This is what happens when anyone actually believes the delusional Christian dogma that God is trustworthy.
How is it possible that anyone could believe something so obviously delusional and contrary to reality? There are two primary explanations. First, the religion is based on the idea that blind faith is a virtue. That’s why John has his Jesus say “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” And since faith is the only way to please God, the virtue of believing grows in direct proportion to how strongly it contradicts reality. I talk about this problem at length in my article The Art of Rationalization: A Case Study of Christian Apologist Rich Deem.
The Ultimate Delusion: Though he slay me, yet I will trust in him.
When Christians are challenged by the fact that no one can actually trust God for anything in any given situation, they typically respond with the non-sequitur that “God has answered many prayers.” Even if that were true (it is not, it is an illusion created by confirmation bias), it would not mean that they could actually trust God to answer any specific prayer. Prayer would still be a total crap shoot, and the thing about crap shoots is that they cannot be trusted to give a desired outcome.
When pressed, the believer will say that it is absurd to expect God to answer all our petty prayers. His ways are higher than our ways, and he knows best. They imply that God actively allows all the evil in the world that destroys the lives of his people because it is actually “for the best” in the long run, and we simply can’t see it from our limited perspective. I’ve watched William Lane Craig put forth this argument. The problem with it is, of course, that it presents God is an inscrutable and implacable force, functionally equivalent to Fate that cares nothing for us in the here and now. Sure, we’ll understand it all in the sweet by-and-by, but here on earth our fate is indistinguishable from that of anyone or anything else. We are on our own and cannot rely on God for anything.
Finally, when cornered by reality, they will pull out the proof text that reveals the ultimate root of their delusion – though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. (Job 13:15). What could that mean? For what are you “trusting” from the person who slays you? This verse, as understood and applied by Christians, is the ultimate admission that God cannot be trusted for anything in this life. At best believers can hope, they can pray, they can plead. But they know they cannot trust because God is not trustworthy. And as it turns out, neither is their Christian translation of the Hebrew Old Testament!
The proof text is a completely misleading error of translation. There is no hint of any “trusting God” in spite of his inscrutable but just decision to slay a believer. On the contrary, in the 13th chapter Job speaks of God as a terrifying judge before whom he will present his “legal case” even though it is likely that the judge will have him killed. He says he will “have his say, come what may” and that he knows he is risking his life when he dares to present his case to God. Here is how the Jewish Publication Society translates it:
13:11 His threat will terrify you, And His fear will seize you.
13:12 Your briefs are empty platitudes; Your responses are unsubstantial.
13:13 Keep quiet; I will have my say, Come what may upon me.
13:14 How long! I will take my flesh in my teeth; I will take my life in my hands.
13:15 He may well slay me; I may have no hope; Yet I will argue my case before Him.
13:16 In this too is my salvation: That no impious man can come into His presence.
13:17 Listen closely to my words; Give ear to my discourse.
13:18 See now, I have prepared a case; I know that I will win it.
If only Christians had such a devotion to truth! The irony is sharp. The ultimate proof text of “faith in God” is itself a blatant fraud, a deliberate false translation tailored to satisfy the demands of the customers (Bible believers – so committed to truth?). The only reason translators follow the ancient error is because there would be a lot of complaints if they corrected it. Believers are devoted to their delusions.
There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said “Faith is believing something you know ain’t so.” ~ Mark Twain
This is a beautiful article.
Mark Twain can be trusted.
A friend of mine is mentally-ill. He and his family are Catholic. His mother wants him to be cured of his illness so that he stays out of the mental hospital. She says that she has prayed for him to be healed of it. She says that unless he takes his meds he ends up back at the mental hospital for awhile.
I told her that the truth has revealed the path. The real truth. The real healing. Have faith in the truth.
The root of religious delusion is actually attributing trust to a deity whose attributes (what has been attributed to it) include the demeaning of women, the demeaning of everyone who isn’t of a certain religion, the demeaning of atheists, the demeaning of certain ethnicities and nationalities, and the demeaning of homosexuals. Not only demeaning but in fact murder on Earth and eternal torture just for being born.
Why would anyone trust such a thing in the first place? Because you thought your prayers were going to get answered or that through dehumanizing you would have eternal life?
I still know my initial interpretation of the Gospels. I realize that my confirmation bias with regard to my culture about Jesus being righteous influenced my lonely reading of the Gospels.
As to the meaning of the riddles in the Gospels, who knows? As to the nature of Jesus, if he really existed, who knows?
The Jesus that comes and burns all but the Christian is evil. The great delusion is that he is not. The Jesus that comes and proclaims Peace on Earth and oneness of existing humanity is good. The great delusion is that he is not.
Imagine that God is a real deity that answers some prayers but not all prayers. This is the situation of the “believer” today. They pray and if it comes true many times they say thanks to God. But if they pray and it does not come true what do they say to God? I know a lot of “believers” get angry at God.
Now what if God doesn’t answer any prayers but rather encourages the “believer” to find the path of truth and to trust in it. Now you can thank God but you cannot be angry at him, but you can be angry at human beings not trusting in the truth, who many times piss on it when it suits their greedy self-interest.
Hi Richard:
It seems as if you think that IF GOD does not answer a prayer in the affirmative then GOD has NOT answered the prayer! That is a false negative. GOD answers ALL TRUE prayers! So IF your prayer is genuine then the answer will come at the right time and place. But the ANSWER is NOT always what we want! The Spirit must be trusted to know what to do and by trusting I mean place our faith in the outcome which is in front of us! Faith when activated will move the desired event to the front of the line and then Spirit will make it known what is the will and mind of GOD in each situation. There is no way to alter the mind of GOD. But faith will create the proper outcome regardless of our personal desire. “Nevertheless not my will but Thine be done!” Jesus
Namaste,
Mystykal
Good morning Mystykal,
I never said that God never answers any prayers. It is not impossible that there could be a god that simply says “NO” most of the time as you suggest. But it’s also possible, and much more likely, that there is no god and your belief in prayer is a delusion based on confirmation bias. Is there any way for you to discern between random chance and answered prayer? Nope. They are logically identical. You would get exactly the results if you prayer to a milk jug, as explained in this video. But all that is irrelevant to the point of my article anyway. Even if there were a god who answers prayer as you suggest, no one could TRUST that god to actually do anything in any given situation. Prayer would remain a total crapshoot, and the thing about crapshoots is that they cannot be trusted to give a desired outcome. My point stands.
The point of my article is that there is no god that can be TRUSTED in any way at all, so the central teaching of Christianity is demonstrably false and delusional. If there were a god half as trustworthy as the average dentist, there would be no debate about his existence. People who trust god for the health of their children end up with dead children and manslaughter convictions. That was the point of my article, and nothing you wrote refutes that fact.
You can avoid this fact by imagining that God exists and “answers ALL TRUE prayers” if you like, but that merely magnifies the delusional nature of your beliefs. You have no objective definition of a “true prayer.” It appears to be combination of the “No True Scotsman” and “Texas Sharpshooter” fallacies. You explain away all failed prayers as either “not genuine” or “answered in the negative.” So rather than justifying your beliefs, you have simply demonstrated that they are indeed delusional.
Great chatting!
Richard
Ironic, ain’t it?
Excellent point. Christians often like to say that God “answers prayers” through modern medicine. The problem, of course, is that modern medicine has nothing to do with any god, and it doesn’t explain why god consistently let his people die miserable deaths even as they begged him for healing until humans finally figured out how to heal themselves. In other words, their response is delusional just like their faith in god.
Good Morning Michael,
Excellent insights. It certainly is delusional to trust a god that demeans the very people he supposedly created! Religion looks like a grand projection of human self-hatred onto god. Look at the big picture. God hates himself so much he must crucify himself? And torment all who dare not worship him? That’s just plain sick …
I see nothing wrong with having a “bias” in favor of Jesus or the Bible or Huckleberry Finn in as much as they are seen as works of art. The problem enters when they become the basis of delusional beliefs and social programs like the denial of equal rights and justification for wars, etc.
Mystykal,
Could you please explain what evidence would establish which of these four possibilities is true?
1) The prayer was genuine and God answered “no.”
2) The prayer was not genuine, so God didn’t answer at all.
3) The prayer was not answered because God does not exist.
4) The prayer was answered by random coincidence.
Thanks!
There is something missing from your analysis here. Readers of your forum with long memories will recall the two anecdotes you posted describing the two key events which led to your loss of faith. In the first, you were walking up a hill carrying your son, when you hurt your ankle. In pain, you prayed for immediate relief, but the pain did not cease in that moment as you requested. The second incident concerned your son and a stomach complaint, which again, was not instantly healed when you prayed for this to happen.
Out of interest, how is the ankle now? And your son? Hopefully both turned out fine. If so, then one might be tempted to suggest that your prayers were answered, but just not in the time-frame that you requested.
I once prayed for a one kilogram bar of gold to be delivered to my front door within 30 minutes. It never arrived. What theological conclusion should I draw?
Here’s what I think, and I offer these thoughts with nothing but respect. You have deep, unresolved feelings of anger against your father for dying suddenly, out of the blue, on you, as you so movingly describe somewhere on your site that I have read. Christianity was a means of overcoming this loss, in one sense, by forging a relationship with a Heavenly Father, one who would not abandon you in the same way when you needed him. But then, that’s just what did happen: when God failed to heal your ankle, and your son’s stomach, you took it bad, and all that unresolved anger came flooding back. Your heavenly father had not been there when you wanted and needed him, just as your earthly father had left you so suddenly. And after all the work you had done for “God”, you felt badly let down by him. This is why you are reacting so vehemently now. It’s payback time. God wouldn’t do such a simple thing for you as block out a little pain, after all you had done for him; well, you will show him. And you are. Slash, burn, slash, burn, you are cutting quite the swathe.
But for all the changes to your position, one thing hasn’t changed, and that’s the way you talk to people. Sure, there’s a veneer of friendliness at first, but as soon as your interlocutor has dared to suggest a position at odds with where you are today, and held their line, it is only a matter of time before they are an imbecilic moron, or whatever unruly title you are bestowing that day.
Where’s the love? Where’s the humility? Where’s the basic respect? Your own wife has been called a c*nt on the previous thread. That really should give you pause, not a belly laugh. There is a real lack of dignity creeping in here, and it starts with the bloghost, your good self. The one thing that hasn’t changed is you, Richard.
Maybe that’s why God didn’t answer your prayers that day. He had to send you round the long way.
Please don’t take offence at what I’ve written, or be harsh or sharp with me. No dialogue. If this is useful, then that is good. If it is not, then ignore it. Either way, the mystery of life remains.
While I’m here, I take the opportunity to correct the mis-statement with which you conclude your post.
The notion that only the Jewish translation of Job 13:15 renders the verse “I may have no hope” rather than “yet will I trust in him” and that no Christian translations do so (“because there would be a lot of complaints”) is simply untrue. Here we go:
Job 13:15 Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)
15 Behold, he will slay me; I have no hope;
yet I will defend my ways to his face.
Job 13:15 American Standard Version (ASV)
15 Behold, he will slay me; I have no hope: Nevertheless I will maintain my ways before him.
Job 13:15 Common English Bible (CEB)
15 He will slay me; I’m without hope;[a]
I will surely prove my way to his face.
Job 13:15 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
15 See, he will kill me; I have no hope;[a]
but I will defend my ways to his face.
Job 13:15 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
15 Behold, he will slay me; I have no hope;
yet I will defend my ways to his face.
So the RSV in various versions, and the Common English Bible all render it the same way as the Jewish version. There is no “blatant fraud” here, or “deliberate misrepresentation”. Just the usual variance that comes with translation.
I really appreciate your comments and criticism. Your previous comment gave me so much to think about I will be using it as the basis of a standalone article. But this criticism is without merit. I never said that only Jewish translations were accurate. My comment about “fraud” was specifically limited to the specific translations that continue to print the error. I did not say or imply that all Christian translators do that. You seem to be overreaching in your search for errors in my post.
Thank you for your gracious reply, and glad you found my comments of value.
In regards to the Job 13:15 translation: excuse me, but you said: “If only Christians had such a devotion to truth!”
This is unambiguous: you are implying that no Christian translator has had sufficient devotion to truth to have the verse translated in the way the Jewish version did. But this is plainly not so, as I have shown above. The KJV version has been changed in later versions, such as the RSV. So there has been demonstrably no barrier, whether of devotion to truth, or anything else, and certainly no complaints from the faithful, to prevent the verse being translated in the same was in the Jewish version. In this instance, therefore, the over-reaching is, if I may say, entirely on your side. But let us not dispute this further. Let the point stand as made. The reader who passes this way can make up their own mind.
I will look forward to your article inspired by my comments with great interest. Thank you.
Terry,
I am absolutely delighted to be criticized by someone with your clarity of thought, eloquence, and intelligence. It is odd that you would expect me to let your point stand without dispute since you stated it so forcefully and concluded that the error was “entirely on my side” without any ambiguity. It may seem to be a fine point not worth disputing, but it is important to me that my intent be understood, and your comment contains an ironic little key that opens a large door of understanding.
When I said “If only Christians had such devotion to truth” I was referring to Job’s words which I had just quoted and highlighted red, which revealed his total devotion to truth, namely:
Job was willing to stand up to God himself because his conscience was clean and his mind clear. That’s some serious devotion. This contrasts with the general dysfunction of faith-based religions that teach delusion as the way to God. That was the point of my whole article and that is what I meant when I said “If only Christians had such devotion to truth!”
And now for the ironic little key – you said that my intent was “unambiguous” when in fact it never occurred to me that anyone would misunderstand my words the way you did. This is why your criticism is so valuable. The only way I can find out if my words are ambiguous and misleading is if folks like you take the time to tell me how you understood them. I am very thankful to you for that.
Now let me return the favor, and help you think a little more clearly. The meaning of a word is always constrained by the context in which it is used. In the case under dispute, I was speaking specifically of Christians who demonstrate their lack of a “devotion to truth” by teaching and holding ideas that are demonstrably false. I was not thinking about Christian vs Jewish publishers since I knew that both had translated the verse accurately. I chose the Jewish translation merely because it seemed the most clear. It never occurred to me that any reader would misunderstand my intent and think that I was contrasting Jewish vs. Christian translations in general. Suppose your interpretation were true. What would it imply about me? It would imply that I am either ignorant of common translations like the RSV or that I willfully lie about such things in public. Or that I’m a sloppy, careless writer. So here is my advice: If you find that your interpretation of my words implies that I am ignorant, insane or inarticulate, it might help if you double check the presuppositions you used when coming to that judgment. Capisce?
Now that my intent is somewhat clarified, I am happy to let this point drop. But I’m also happy to continue discussing it if you feel it has not been sufficiently resolved.
I think this language issue you are having has been resolved. Richard wrote something, then Terry criticized it for being an overgeneralization, so Richard clarified. So goes the way of the path of truth.
Its when generalizations are misunderstood and then not corrected that the problem of misunderstanding arises. I’m sure what Richard stated in regard to the Job verse holds exactly true for many Christians, so it is a legitimate criticism. The word that is exchanged in the supposed mistranslation changes the whole meaning of the verse.
I can even pick apart these quotes if I tossed out the Spirit and intent of them and only adhered to the letter:
Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool. ~ Mark Twain
Of course this statement is untrue as Mark Twain is being sarcastic, and brilliantly so I might add.
Someone who is trustworthy in a small matter is also trustworthy in large ones, and someone who is dishonest in a small matter is also dishonest in large ones. ~ Luke 16:10
This verse is not always true so Jesus overgeneralized and didn’t clarify his language, but the Spirit and intent can’t be denied: BE TRUSTWORTHY IN ALL MATTERS.
Clarifying myself here:
Previously I said:
“This verse is not always true so Jesus overgeneralized and didn’t clarify his language, but the Spirit and intent can’t be denied: BE TRUSTWORTHY IN ALL MATTERS”.
Actually Jesus’ statement is a true statement and it will always be a true statement unless the person who is either trustworthy or dishonest doesn’t live long enough to experience both small and large matters in life and therefore can’t prove their trustworthiness or dishonestly by their completed deeds. Having faith in a persons trustworthiness is not the same as being able to base that trustworthiness in the truth, using evidence.
Actually my first statement stands:
“This verse is not always true so Jesus overgeneralized and didn’t clarify his language, but the Spirit and intent can’t be denied: BE TRUSTWORTHY IN ALL MATTERS”.
Sorry about the word salad.
“Trustworthy” denotes faith in a persons future behavior but “dishonest” denotes factual provability as to the nature of completed behavior. Surely someone can be dishonest in little matters and trustworthy in large matters and someone can be dishonest in large matters and trustworthy in small matters. But the Spirit and intent can’t be denied: “BE TRUSTWORTHY IN ALL MATTERS, EVEN THE SMALL MATTERS, BECAUSE THE SPIRIT IS THE SAME”.
I think you are overworking this statement. It is just a generalization. The basic idea is that the character revealed in “small matters” is a good indicator of how the person would act in large matters. It would be absurd to insist on it as an absolute statement of fact. It is easy to image a normal person who was quite trustworthy in small matters becoming corrupt by the power or adulation involved in “large matters” in which case the saying would be falsified.
I see little value in wrangling over words this way. If we can’t understand the statement as it stands, how could we add clarity with many words that involve even greater subtleties? Confusion would compound upon confusion.
I can’t agree with you more Richard.
I shouldn’t of included the quote from Jesus in my initial comment. An edit button instead of a follow up clarifying comment is much cleaner but I have to work with the tools I’ve been given.
This issue of trusting God in your article is very important. I don’t know the context of the verses in Job that you quoted, as I don’t want to read the OT, but it seems to me that Job had some issue with what was attributed to God in some scripture or oral tradition, that he knew something truthful (his case) that contradicted what was written or what was taught, so he challenged it (God). Something like that.
If this is indeed the case then the Job quotes might mirror your personal understanding and evolution in truth and righteousness and how it now conflicts with scripture (not the numerology stuff but rather the moral stuff, your falling away from unrighteousness attributed to God, that preceded your realization with regard to the numbers), hence “Richards moral case”.
Your rebuke of Numbers 31 and others is commendable. “Wrestling with God”. That you’re willing to wrestle instead of bow is badass and you know it. The human spirit is alive and well. Life itself is the only provable miracle that everyone alive has experienced
You really are full of shit.
This quotation clearly states that “translators” (note plural, not just the KJV) have not corrected the “error” (if that’s what it is), because of the complaints that would be received.
But translators DID “correct it”, for example in the RSV. So your statement is just plain wrong.
If you were aware of the other translations, then you have deliberately misrepresented the situation. You’ve been caught out making shit up. That’s far worse than just making a simple error.
So now: flip out. Get all bent out of shape. Call me names. And then go fuck yourself.
I never said nor implied that no translators fixed that error. When I referred to “translators” who “follow the ancient error” I obviously could NOT have been talking about those who did NOT follow that error. Nothing could be more plain and obvious. Your assertion is absurd. It is logically impossible for any rational person to interpret my words they way you suggest.
By your logic, your assertion that “translators DID correct it” would necessarily include those who did not correct it! Your assertion is logically incoherent. You are attempting to force my words to mean something I never intended, and indeed, could not intend. Any why? Apparently so you can have a great and glorious “gotchya” moment as if the fact that I am a fallible human would refute any of my arguments which you have been skillfully dodging. How pathetic.
But that’s only the beginning of the pathos revealed in your comment.
Well now … thank you for showing everyone your true colors. You are an excellent example of how dogmatic religion tends to corrupt the minds and morals of believers. We were having a purely intellectual discussion. You had misunderstood my words in a way I did not anticipate so I thanked you and explained what I meant. I gave you an extended explanation and you totally ignored everything I wrote. You clearly have an agenda that does not involve rational discourse. Apparently, all you care about is proving to the world that I was “making up shit.” And what was that “shit” I supposedly made up? You say that I deliberately lied about the existence of a common class of Christian translations, as if no Christian translator ever fixed the error in Job 13:15. Your game is petty and perverse. No sane person would do such an idiotic thing. And worse, your “evidence” is based on nothing but your ludicrous attempt to twist my words to force fit them into your incoherent and self-contradictory interpretation. And worse yet, nothing in your comment had anything to do with the primary point of my article! Nice work.
Now let’s review our little interaction. It should be very enlightening. In your first comment, you said that all the name calling was my fault. Here is how you put it:
Where’s the love, respect and dignity? Oh … I don’t know … I can’t find it under the pile of steaming SHIT that you just dumped on it! And why? Apparently because I “dared to suggest a position at odds with where you are today, and held my line” so it was only a matter of time (very short time at that) before you began spewing your mindless Christian vomit all over my blog. And so you demonstrate the kind of duplicity that is common to minds infected with religious delusions. You came here all meek and mild, accusing me of having no dignity or respect, and within two posts you degraded yourself to the point of spewing expletives and telling me to go fuck myself? Wow. I really can’t thank you enough. You make my work so much easier.
Terry, you have served a much greater purpose than you can imagine. Thank you!
I have answered you in a new post:
On the Couch with Psychoanalyst Terry Blanchard
Hi Richard:
I thought I would let the dust settle a little – 🙂
Man! I really enjoy talking to you! Your mind is sharp! Twisted… but sharp! lol
You previously posted:
R. A. McGough
Posted November 16, 2014 at 8:09 am | Permalink
It seems as if you think that IF GOD does not answer a prayer in the affirmative then GOD has NOT answered the prayer! That is a false negative. GOD answers ALL TRUE prayers! So IF your prayer is genuine then the answer will come at the right time and place. But the ANSWER is NOT always what we want! The Spirit must be trusted to know what to do and by trusting I mean place our faith in the outcome which is in front of us! Faith when activated will move the desired event to the front of the line and then Spirit will make it known what is the will and mind of GOD in each situation. There is no way to alter the mind of GOD. But faith will create the proper outcome regardless of our personal desire. “Nevertheless not my will but Thine be done!” Jesus
Good morning Mystykal,
I never said that God never answers any prayers. It is not impossible that there could be a god that simply says “NO” most of the time as you suggest. But it’s also possible, and much more likely, that there is no god and your belief in prayer is a delusion based on confirmation bias. Is there any way for you to discern between random chance and answered prayer? Nope. They are logically identical. You would get exactly the results if you prayer to a milk jug, as explained in this video. But all that is irrelevant to the point of my article anyway. Even if there were a god who answers prayer as you suggest, no one could TRUST that god to actually do anything in any given situation. Prayer would remain a total crapshoot, and the thing about crapshoots is that they cannot be trusted to give a desired outcome. My point stands.
The point of my article is that there is no god that can be TRUSTED in any way at all, so the central teaching of Christianity is demonstrably false and delusional. If there were a god half as trustworthy as the average dentist, there would be no debate about his existence. People who trust god for the health of their children end up with dead children and manslaughter convictions. That was the point of my article, and nothing you wrote refutes that fact.
You can avoid this fact by imagining that God exists and “answers ALL TRUE prayers” if you like, but that merely magnifies the delusional nature of your beliefs. You have no objective definition of a “true prayer.” It appears to be combination of the “No True Scotsman” and “Texas Sharpshooter” fallacies. You explain away all failed prayers as either “not genuine” or “answered in the negative.” So rather than justifying your beliefs, you have simply demonstrated that they are indeed delusional.
Great chatting!
Richard
————————–
R. A. McGough
Posted November 16, 2014 at 9:14 am | Permalink
GOD answers ALL TRUE prayers! So IF your prayer is genuine then the answer will come at the right time and place. But the ANSWER is NOT always what we want!
Mystykal,
Could you please explain what evidence would establish which of these four possibilities is true?
1) The prayer was genuine and God answered “no.”
2) The prayer was not genuine, so God didn’t answer at all.
3) The prayer was not answered because God does not exist.
4) The prayer was answered by random coincidence.
Thanks!
The answer to all your questions are answered in the Elijah Mnt. Carmel story!….go re-read it! In a nutshell Elijah challenged the fake religions to put up or shut up! And when the answer came it came from the prayer of Faith! Cased closed! 🙂
Namaste,
Mystykal
Good morning Mystykal,
It’s odd that you would say my mind is twisted, since it seems to me that I am the one who asks straight questions and you are the one who cannot give a straight answer.
But on the other hand, I do have a kind of “twist” in my mind that penetrates and opens things. It’s the power of torque.
And there is another thing to consider – I’m a bit gnarly like an old tree. There’s strength in that too.
It seems to me my lines are straight, but they look twisted to you because your mind is like a funhouse mirror.
Oh … I get it. Your faith in faith if pure fantasy, like that story in the Bible.
Thanks! That really does clear things up!
But seriously … are you really suggesting that Bible believers are supposed to be able to call down literal fire from heaven at will? Seriously?
If that’s what you believe, then apparently no Christian has ever had real faith, and that would mean that no person has ever been saved and so your whole religion collapses to dust and ashes.
And you didn’t even answer my question! You totally ignored the fact that believers who say that God is trustworthy are totally deluded. Here is what you had asserted:
So I asked if you could you please explain what evidence would establish which of these four possibilities is true?
1) The prayer was genuine and God answered “no.”
2) The prayer was not genuine, so God didn’t answer at all.
3) The prayer was not answered because God does not exist.
4) The prayer was answered by random coincidence.
And what did I get in response? Crazy talk. You said true believers could call down fire from heaven. Wow.
Mystykal,
This is why it’s so difficult to talk to you. My article said that the normal Christian belief that God is trustworthy is delusional. You answered by asserting that God answers ALL TRUE prayers. Obviously, you were talking about the same idea. So I asked how you could tell the difference between these four possibilities:
1) The prayer was genuine and God answered “no.”
2) The prayer was not genuine, so God didn’t answer at all.
3) The prayer was not answered because God does not exist.
4) The prayer was answered by random coincidence.
And how did you answer? You suggested that Christians have SUPER POWERS like the ability to call down fire from heaven, and that’s how they know God is trustworthy. Your answer was totally delusional. It is doubtful that any Christian has ever had the powers you describe, and it is certain that 99.9999% do not.
Richard,
Of course no one can prove that prayer does anything. Of course no one can prove that God the deity exists.
Mystykal said : “It seems as if you think that IF GOD does not answer a prayer in the affirmative then GOD has NOT answered the prayer! That is a false negative. GOD answers ALL TRUE prayers! So IF your prayer is genuine then the answer will come at the right time and place. But the ANSWER is NOT always what we want! The Spirit must be trusted to know what to do and by trusting I mean place our faith in the outcome which is in front of us! Faith when activated will move the desired event to the front of the line and then Spirit will make it known what is the will and mind of GOD in each situation. There is no way to alter the mind of GOD. But faith will create the proper outcome regardless of our personal desire. “Nevertheless not my will but Thine be done!” Jesus
If Mystykal replaced the word God with the word Truth then his contention is provable and practicable:
“It seems as if you think that IF TRUTH (not a sentient being but rather a force) does not answer a prayer in the affirmative then TRUTH has NOT answered the prayer! That is a false negative. TRUTH answers ALL TRUE prayers (Truth comes to those who seek Truth)! So IF your prayer is genuine then the answer will come at the right time and place (if you were really searching for Truth). But the ANSWER is NOT always what we want (that’s the nature of Truth)! The Spirit of Truth must be trusted to know what to do and by trusting I mean place our faith in the outcome which is in front of us (I couldn’t agree more)! Truth when activated will move the desired event to the front of the line and then Spirit of Truth will make it known what is the will and mind of Truth (not a sentient being but rather a force) in each situation. There is no way to alter the Truth (I’d have it no other way). But Truth will create the proper outcome regardless of our personal desire (when Truth becomes more important than material power or greed). “Nevertheless not my will but The Truth be done!” Jesus (The Righteous One)”.
So if we seek Truth sometimes the Truth is hard to swallow. Nevertheless the Truth be done.
This is why the Gospels trip me out. Jesus, in my interpretation, made a claim to him being The Truth. The Truth that a prayer to deity does nothing but a thought to truth and the path of truth moves metaphorical mountains. Seek truth.
The truth is not fearful nor does it take vengeance. It is compassionate and loving and inclusive. It is Peace. It doesn’t throw out whole swaths of humanity because a book said it is so. It isn’t offended very much when a group of kids calls it “baldy”, so it smiles at the little pricks and tells them to go home. If a bear comes and attacks the kids “baldy” comes-a-runnin to protect the kids as best as he can.
And speaking of Elijah or Elisha, or whatever; if his proof of answered prayer is fire from heaven then the False Prophet of revelations has this locked.
The book is ludicrous and two-faced.
Bad is good and good is bad, and poof, just like that, you are threatened if you say otherwise. Put supernatural fear into the mix and you have the ingredients for a pretty effective curse. And as with all lies “who benefits”, not Mark Twain’s schoolboy, whose Father (ONLY ONE, HIS EARTHLY FATHER) taught him everything he needs to know: THAT FAITH IN WITCHCRAFT AND SHITTING ON THE TRUTH IS A CURSE, BUT THAT FAITH IN TRUTH AND SHITTING ON WITCHCRAFT IS FREEDOM.
This is my final comment on this site.
Ever since my first comment here months ago my views have changed somewhat. I thought I was defending Jesus but now I don’t know who he is. I just don’t know. My initial interpretation still holds but there is more than one interpretation of the Gospels.
The book hurts me and makes me feel bad. And I do think its witchcraft, the whole thing.
Goodbye!
Hey there Michael,
I’m glad to hear your views have changed. That’s a good thing. It shows you are thinking and growing.
I’ve always wondered how you could believe the things you did because they were so obviously idiosyncratic. You had created your own version of Jesus from the Gospels while rejecting the rest of the Bible. That kind of inconsistency made no sense to me at all. If you can’t trust most of the book, why believe you could trust some fragments of it?
Your “Jesus” was really just a product of your own imagination pieced together from shards of the Christian tradition.
That’s exactly what it is. It is a magic spell spoken with words to entrap the minds of the sheep. A powerful spell it is. The nice thing about such spells is that they can be broken in a moment. With a single pin prick of insight, the whole bubble will pop. That’s what happened to Rose and me. It’s good to see another waking up from that ancient nightmare.
All the best,
Richard
Hi Richard:
YOU SAID:
This is why it’s so difficult to talk to you. My article said that the normal Christian belief that God is trustworthy is delusional. You answered by asserting that God answers ALL TRUE prayers. Obviously, you were talking about the same idea. So I asked how you could tell the difference between these four possibilities:
1) The prayer was genuine and God answered “no.”
2) The prayer was not genuine, so God didn’t answer at all.
3) The prayer was not answered because God does not exist.
4) The prayer was answered by random coincidence.
And how did you answer? You suggested that Christians have SUPER POWERS like the ability to call down fire from heaven, and that’s how they know God is trustworthy. Your answer was totally delusional. It is doubtful that any Christian has ever had the powers you describe, and it is certain that 99.9999% do not.
—————————————
I agree with you! That is ALL those Christians out there have little to NO Faith! So of course they cannot “call down fire from heaven”, But that does not negate the FACT that TRUE Prayer IS that powerful. I guess you really do not understand that there are a few good Christians out there that do have “powers” and that their prayers do get answered in a way which cannot be ignored. ,,, They are the .0001%
Namaste,
Mystykal
Hi Richard:
I propose that you are like “doubting Thomas”. He did not believe anything until he had touched it in real time and felt it for himself…. I can appreciate that. But for you to disregard large portions if not all of Scripture which speaks of miracles and the “raising of the dead” as an example – is to deny the possibility of the REALITY of such things being real. You will forever say such things are impossible until they happen to you in front of you and you have the experience for yourself. ok, But that is NOT real faith! I suggest that real faith DOES exactly what the Bible says it does! You have milk (jug) I choose to have Faith! 🙂
Namaste,
Mystykal
A couple things about your premises: You go wrong when you say, “they are clearly talking about the ordinary kind of “trustworthiness””
So-called “christians” may say something along these lines, but the esoteric schools that produced the bible clearly did not conceive of a divine being that has anything in common with “ordinary” expectations of human personality. God is not a personality…and no, God should not be reliable in the same sense that a dentist is. That sounds like the bias of someone who has grown up in a consumerist society of instant coffee and fast food. God is a universal principle of consciousness, if God didn’t challenge manifest beings and instead gave them everything they wanted, God would be some kind of cosmic robot. Consciousness never unfolds in the way we expect. The being that expects things to conform to a routine schedule is just an automatic bundle of chemical reactions.
I would also say the “trustworthiness” of God is not the central teaching of the bible, as you claim. The entire bible is teaching that the way of God is to exert influence without any show of power. It is essentially the same as the Taoist concept of “Wei wu Wei” doing without doing. The message throughout the bible is that we cannot accomplish much by accumulating power and flexing our own strength. The love of power is nothing compared with the power of love. When you realize that God’s way is to find accomplishment through the relinquishment of the love of power, you realize that God’s way works and is trustworthy, although in a sense completely alien to our ordinary, routine self, which we are so much better off moving beyond. The gospel mythology is simply about a being who gives up all power and influences humanity more than any other king, scholar, warrior, or scientist. That alone gives the narrative its brilliance.
Dear Mr. McGough,
Thanks for being honest, Thanks for your gematria database. It has been very helpfull for me in the past year to better understand the bible.
So as you helped me, I will try to help you.
You ask “Is God trustworthy ?”, but your example of a dying child shows signs of a deeper question.
“Why is there so much pain in this world ?”
“Why do people die of Ebola ?”
“Why was that plane shot down this year over Ukrain ?”
“Why are women unequal to man in this world ?”
Thats a totally other question, which needs to be adressed first. And to be honest I don’t have an answer to that.
I can only say “There’s alway’s pain before a child is born, but still I’m waiting for the dawn” (Bono-U2)
I don’t know why there’s so much pain in this world. But I do know that one day Jesus came down from heaven, saw the people suffering, and he cried. He suffered himself on the cross and died. And he said: If your’r crying, do bring your tears to me, put them into my cup and I will drink it. I will take them with me into the fire of hell. And he said: And when morning comes I will recreate this world into a new world without pain, without sorrow, without unequallity”
How do I know that ? It took me a year to understand . It started with a man, burned black, an Ethiopian cross, a key in the shape of a fish, and so on. The story is a little bit to long for this forum, I mail it to you in a couple of weeks time, But let me tell you this:
If Jakob/Israel has finished his sleep, then the new morning will arise. Then you and I will see that God’s word is trustworthy.
In the mean time I advise you to listen to some good old music:
Like the 1979 Bob – Dylan song: When you gonna wake up ?
I like the opening line:God don’t make no promises that He don’t keep.
And i hope that if my writings don’t make much sense to you His Sprit through the music might slip through.
Hey there Mark,
I appreciate your comments, but those questions miss the point. The correct questions would be of the form “Why would a person who is able to help do nothing but stand and watch a girl be raped, tortured, and killed?” This is the problem of theism in general, and Christianity in particular. It teaches that there is a personal God who has interacted with humanity many times in the past (e.g. the Flood, the Exodus, Sodom and Gomorrah, Jesus healing thousands, etc.). This raises the question why a person like God would stand there in the presence of a rapist and his victim, silently watching the rape occur like some perverted porn addict, doing nothing to help. But the problem is deeper yet, since God also is directly enabling the rapist by causing his heart to beat! So it is God that is enabling the rapist to live and to do his wicked deed. Meanwhile, God is supposed to be helping Aunt May find her lost poodle. It strikes me as a totally irrational and immoral view of reality.
Religion is one of the primary causes of hatred, inequality, pain, and suffering. It teaches people to hate themselves as unworthy sinners. I find it quite ironic that you would think it would have anything to do with the cure.
The idea of a magically created world with no pain and suffering seems like a very shallow and meaningless fantasy. If God is ultimately going to remove it all, why did he create it in the first place? What is it’s purpose? And is it really conceivable to have a world of composite physical beings without pain and death?
It makes a lot more sense to see that life entails pain and suffering because all composite things are subject to decomposition. It’s the way of nature – or what? Will there be no plant death in heaven? The Christian views of these topics seem quite naive to me.
Finally, if it is true that “God don’t make no promises He don’t keep” then we must conclude that he has made no promises relating to our life in this world, since there is not one thing that anyone can trust him to actually do. I think it much more reasonable to believe that he does not exist.
All the best,
Richard
Is the good God the creator of evil ?
There obviously is pain/evil in this world. In general most people choose out of two options to make it rhyme with a good god.
1. good and evil is equal and are both present in one god. Then god is considered the cause of all evil.
2. good and evil are two antipoles and are present in two gods. god and the devil, constantly fighting with each other.
So which one of the above is right ? Obviously you reject all of the above and start argumenting like this:
If god can prevent evil, but he doesn’t ? Then he himself is evil.
If god can prevent evil, and he does want to prevent evil ? Why is there any evil in this world, so this cannot be true.
If god can not prevent evil but he does want to prevent evil ? Then he is obviously not allmighty.
If god can not prevent evil and he he does not want to prevent evil ? So why do we call him god and worship him ?
Obviously you cannot make it rhyme and so you declare God dead. That´s interesting, but doesn´t explain where good and evil come from. And it also offers no hope at all for the future.
Surprisingly, I found out that some famous Christians teach none of the above. They explain it like this:
God is good and evil exists. God does not want nor like evil. But if evil occurs God creates out of the evil something good. An example of that you can read in genesis 45. In the story about Joseph and his brothers. My conclusion is that God does not fit into a Karnaugh diagram. God is not a subject of evil. God is the ruler of everything. He is also the ruler of evil. If evil occurs, God is not afraid of it. God is a creator. God creates out of it something good.
God can prevent evil. (Note this does not start with an if ). If evil occurs then God can create out of it something good
That’s a surprisingly strange answer. To give you another example:
Jesus told, that he, himself, is like a potatoe. When you put a potatoe in the ground in spring then the potatoe dies. Wauw that´s bad. You loose a potatoe. No food, nothing left to eat. But wait, it´s not as bad as it looks, out of it comes a new plant, And after half a year new potatoes are formed into the ground. And now you have ten potatoes instead of one. And then you can harvest and enjoy your meal.
God did not promise us a safe journey. He only promised a safe arrival.
Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.
When I read your answer, At first I didn´t know what to say, so I prayed to God and he made me remember a lady, who lived during the second world war. Her name is Corrie Ten Boom. You can find her story on youtube, titled:
“Corrie Ten Boom Her testimony in her own words Full Length ”
It’s bad english, but you can listen to it. She has a lot to say, and can do it much better then I. She talks about her life during the war , saving jewish baby’s from the dead. Her friends, shot dead by the Germans. Her father died in prison. Her sister starved in a concentration kamp, she herself fearing and suffereing in a concentration-camp. But through all the evil things that she experienced she could forgive the men who betrayed her, she could forgive her camp-guards. She could praise God
So if God does not exist, where did she find the strength to survive all of this ?
The same place all humans have found their strength and love for others. In their humanity!
No, that’s not my argument. You need to read my article again. My argument is that the Bible plainly teaches that there is a God who has frequently intervened in human affairs, and who should be TRUSTED to take care of us in all things. But that is not true. The God of the Bible is absolutely untrustworthy, as you seem to admit when you say “God did not promise us a safe journey. He only promised a safe arrival.” That’s the same as saying “though he slay me, yet I will trust in him” which means that you agree that no one can actually TRUST GOD for anything in this life. That was the point of my article, and you have confirmed the truth of it.
All Christians know that God cannot be trusted and yet they assert the he is absolutely trustworthy. This is the deep, deep delusion of Christianity.
Reading some of these comments saying that God is untrustworthy amazes me. All of them are made by people who have no relationship with God and no actual experience of knowing God, and yet they presume to either say there is no God or to criticize God. I am 72 y/o and the last 20 years of my work life I worked as a Registered Nurse on psychiatric units in hospitals, so I know all of the in’s and out’s of what is a delusion and what isn’t.
One of the things that cause people to not believe that there is a God is that we in the West have grown up with a Materialist World View. We are taught in school and almost all of the media that there is only matter and energy in the Universe, that we are the physical body, that there is no after life, and that the Creation of the Universe and all life happened by accident, that God had nothing to do with that. There is a psychological principle called Cognitive Dissonance. This is the observable case that it is impossible for the human mind to believe two things that are opposite of each other. If we have the world view that there is only matter and that the Universe and Life came into being by accident then it is impossible to believe in God.
Another way that the principle of Cognitive Dissonance makes it impossible to believe in God and the Scientific belief that everything happened by accident is this. It feels to us that either we are in the body and look out at the world outside us through our eyes or that we are the body and see with our eyes. That is scientifically not the case. Electromagnetic radiation come into our eyes and impact on the retina which is the endplate of the optic nerve. The retina is only sensitive to a small portion of electromagnetic radiation. The brain/mind analyses this data and creates a picture and has the ability to cause it to seem as if we are looking out at the world when really we are seeing a picture created by our mind. One of the problems is the the picture the mind projects is influenced greatly by our world view. You may have read about the experiment that a man did many years ago. The light that hits our optic nerve is upside down and reversed just as is the film in a camera. The mind reverses that image so that we see things with the top up and not reversed.
This man wore a type of eye glasses that reversed everything and he wore them all the time. Eventually, his mind corrected the image. Then He took the glasses off (they weren’t eye glasses but that is the best way I know how to describe them) and again he saw things upside down and reversed from right to left. Eventually his mind corrected that image also. The reason I mention that experiment is that when I was in my 20’s I lived in an ashram for 2 years full time. The leader had us live, think, and see the truth of at least 4 different world views. Eventually my mind stopped projecting what I saw according to any world view and I saw things as they are! If you were to do that, when your mind stopped interpreting what you saw by the world view you were taught and see things as they really are. One thing you would see is that God is everywhere. All things are in Him and He is in all things.
Regarding trustworthy; Every human being I have ever known has let me down in one way or another. God has never let me down! I didn’t say that since the year 2000 I have been physically disable to the extent that I can’t lift more than a pound and I am in constant severe pain that gets worse as time goes on. Despite this I know without a doubt that this has happened for my best well being. When my pain or disability become too much for me to endure and I ardently ask God for help, He always causes something to happen that helps me.
I know this has been a very long comment but so many people said things in their comments that I know from personal experience are not the case and I tried to answer a number of them. I hope that someone who has taken the time to read this has gotten some help from it. God bless all of you who comment on this blog.
Hey there Albert,
What do you mean when you say that you “know without a doubt that this has happened for my best well being”? That’s exactly what every cult member says. Muslims say anything that happens is the “will of Allah” and Christians say it is the “will of Yahweh.” What’s the difference? You could believe in anything and come to the same conclusion. You could pray to a freaking milk jug and come to the same conclusion! Have you never given any thought to what you believe? Please watch this video and explain how your faith in Yahweh is any different than believing in a Milk Jug that answers prayers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk6ILZAaAMI
Thanks!
Richard
I think in my clumsy way I was just trying to suggest that the argument itself is unfair. In that it uses man’s idea of trustworthiness to judge God. I mean, we wouldn’t expect anyone else to do something they never said they were going to do but for some reason lots of people seem to expect God to do things he never promised to do. And then when he doesn’t do, what he never said he would do, they bear a grudge against Him. It seems to me that we base a lot of our lives on misconceptions.
Joseph, I’d be glad if you had the time to point out the errors in my post. I don’t mind being wrong about things.
Sorry I mean’t Josef. Auto correct.
Greetings Leslie, you write that we are all dead men! That is certainly not true because there is a God who saves.
You also make sweeping generalisations which I find unhelpful. Are you edifying Christians by writing in this way?
Josef,
Give me a straight answer to this, if there is one ounce of truth in you (hint: a “straight answer” is either a “yes” or a “no”):
Is it alright to lie to other people according to Christianity?
In David comments on the Bible Wheel and Why I Quit Christianity http://www.biblewheel.com/…/david-comments-on-the-bible-wheel-and-why-i-quit-christianity/15 Oct 2013
Richard wrote: I do choose life! And freedom, and truth! Greetings Richard, you sincerely believe that you are choosing life, freedom and truth, but in my opinion you are not, for nobody can reject the God who reveals Himself in the holy Bible and be choosing life, freedom and truth. What you are claiming is impossible because it is contrary to the witness of the sinless Son of God. He states in John 14:6 that He is the truth and the life. Only when we trust Him does God set us free! Richard, how can God set you free, if you continue to boast that you are more moral than He is? Do you think your attitude is consistent with what God blesses?
Michael, do you take the Bible seriously? Do you agree that God’s love can be a blessing to you? Until you believe that God rewards those who diligently seek him, you wll dispute what I write, because you are refusing to accept the LORD as your authority.
My authority is the truth.
Josef,
I could ask you two questions that would prove that you and your religion are delusional, but you will not answer, because you do not care about the truth, you only care about your beliefs.
The first question is: is lying forbidden in Christianity?
Anyone reading this will realize that I proposed a simple question to you, and they will realize that you, a self-professed follower of God, whom you call the truth, will not answer the most simple questions regarding truth. That’s got to feel like shit Josef.
You’ll probably reply with another load of bullshit and that’s a shame.
Take care
Leslie, just because man dies physically doesn’t mean he is walking around
as a dead man. What you wrote is nonsense. Christians and non Christians are alive! Furthermore, Christians are spiritually alive!
Leslie, I agree with your comment about many professing Christians.
I would go further than you and say a huge percentage of them have never been born again.
Let’s pray for the unsaved for billions of people don’t love God.
🙂
Question: “What did Jesus mean when He said ‘Let the dead bury the dead’ (Luke 9:60)?”
Answer: Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead,” in response to a man who wanted to spend time at home before committing himself to the Lord. Jesus said, “‘Follow me.’ But the man replied, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God’” (Luke 9:59–60).
Readers of this blog, most people do not see Christ’s beauty, nor do they hear His voice or desire to follow Him. Only those who are born again will do fathfully trust and obey Him.
The people of the world are those whom the Savior describes here as the spiritually dead who should bury the physically dead. Let people, He says, who are not interested in My work, and who are “dead in sin” (Ephesians 2:1), take care of the dead. Your duty is now to follow Me.
While we are to honor our parents (See Ephesians 6:2), obeying Lord Jesus is to come first.
Michael, you write error after error because you paylittle attention to what is taught in the Bible.
Michael, you write that the disciple was in a “dead” state. Where do you get that information from? And how do you know that the father who died repented? Nothing about that is mentioned in the Bible. Why do you keep on “making up stories”?
Josef,
The expression ‘ Dead man walking,’ is a metaphor, a figure of speech to emphasise the gravity of a situation. It comes from the prison system and was announced when a condemned prisoner walked to their execution. Obviously it’s not literal, nor are many of the countless biblical references to the dead literal. The prodigal son for example was not literally dead but by his actions he had cut himself of from the life of God and his earthy father. Had the son carried on in his rebellion until his death he would have been eternally condemned. When he walked away from his father he was a dead man walking, figuratively speaking, till he repented.
Leslie, stop writing nonsense. Unsaved man will not listen to that way of talking.
Leslie, I’m not interested in using figures of speech whose origins are worldly. I agree that the matter is serious, so where is your attempt to pray for the unsaved? Where is your attempt to pray for Richard, Rose and Michael? Do you love the unsaved? Do you love those who are perishing? Are you a man of prayer, Leslie?
This is a proper translation, with annotations for each part. Enjoy:
I’m being generous here:
Matthew 8: 18 Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave commandment to depart unto the other side. 19 And a certain scribe (a prospective new disciple) came and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. 20 And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. 21 And another of his disciples (what must be a new disciple in some form, seeing as his family lived in the area where Jesus was departing from) said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father (he sounds like a good person, who loves his father). 22 But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead (Jesus here does not forbid him to go and bury his father, but rather tells him that by continuing to follow Jesus further the disciple will find “life”: an overriding inclination to choose goodness in life. So “go and bury your father” but then come and catch up with us as we journey ahead.)
Evil Christianity:
Matthew 8: 18 Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave commandment to depart unto the other side. 19 And a certain scribe (a prospective new disciple) came and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. 20 And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. 21 And another of his disciples (what must be a new disciple in some form, seeing as his family lived in the area where Jesus was departing from) said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father (he sounds like a good person, who loves his father). 22 But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead (Here Jesus tells him to forget about his father, because his father is going to hell, and to follow Jesus in order to go heaven, avoiding the fate of his father).
The truth:
Matthew 8: 18 Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave commandment to depart unto the other side. 19 And a certain scribe (a prospective new disciple) came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. 20 And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. 21 And another of his disciples (what must be a new disciple in some form, seeing as his family lived in the area where Jesus was departing from) said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father (he sounds like a good person, who loves his father). 22But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead. And this is what the disciple should of said at this point: he tells Jesus: “I love my father. He was a good person. He is now dead. All of us who are going to bury him are alive. I have no idea what this witchcraft business is that you are telling me about “the dead burying their dead” and I don’t like it one bit. I thought you were a good person Jesus, but because you said this thing, I will no longer follow you”.
That was fun.
Michael, if you are looking for witchcraft in Jesus you will not find any. Because you are more interested in your own fun than obeying His words the LORD is allowing you to go even further astray. I used to think you were seriously looking for truth, but sadly this is nolonger the situation.
Michael, put your wholehearted trust in Bible study and give yourself a chance to grow in wisdom!
Josef,
First of all, I am not a man. I am a retired Scottish woman. If you know anything about Scotland and the Reformation you could probably guess which school of thought I tend to come from.
The basic issue in the bible as far as we humans are concerned is life and death. In a myriad of ways the same motif and the same choice is set before us.
“To those who are perishing we are the dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved we are a life giving perfume. 2Co 2:16 NLT
“……..I have set before you LIFE and DEATH, blessings and cursing. Now choose LIFE so that you and your seed may live.” Deu 30:19
Why should I be expected to give you evidence of who and what I pray for? Who are you?
Leslie, if you are a woman of prayer you will delight to pray for unsaved man! One of the traits of the Lord is that He prayed for the unsaved. Will you make an effort to do this?
Leslie, I am a student of the Bible and in my opinion you needed reminding that Richard, Rose and Michael are unsaved. Do you love them? If yes, then you will pray that the LORD draws them to His beloved Son..
Leslie, you write that lots of disciples left Jesus because His sayings were too hard.
In my opinion what you are writing is false! Jesus’ sayings are not too hard. They left Jesus because they didn’t persevere. Their hearts were prideful so they said in their heart this saying is too hard. Because they lacked wisdom they didn’t ask for Jesus to explain, in greater detail, what He was teaching.
Leslie, Jesus is love. He didn’t teach harsh and unloving things. He taught the truth in love. The Bible is totally trustworthy! Let’s stop making excuses for our fellowman and encourage them to study it. God’s looking for people to trust and obey His word, not disfigure it.
Very good, Leslie. We will all read your words, for mine are nonsense!
Following Leslie? Who could resist such an opportunity?
Josef,
(I meant to say this in this thread. If you respond to this comment please respond to it In this thread).
You know full well that I don’t bow to: lying, thefts, physical assaults, rape, murder, torture, or enslavement. I’m a simple person and I judge simply.
You say that my father Gary is being tortured by your God in hell. Please do not pray to your God about me. I have no business with your God. This is my right to ask you to not pray to your God about me personally.
Take care.
Michael, you say that you have no business with author of the teachings in the holy Bible, but you say that misunderstanding the situation, for every human being has to do with the author of life.
Michael, do you know that the author of life doesn’t just stand back and do nothing when He sees us go astray. If He did nothing not a single person would have any living faith in Him.
When I went astray He didn’t say: Josef is a lost cause. He didn’t say, I’m not going to waste My time on that immoral, disrespectful, self-seeking man.
No, He said: I am here to teach you, Josef. Start trusting and obeying me and I will show you wondrous things.
One of the wonderful things the LORD showed me or blessed me with before He saved me was a desire to acknowledge Him verbally.
This had been missing in my life, but about three years before I was saved I became very desirous to acknowledge Him. A very beautiful verse to study is Psalm 100:4. Michael, may you grow to cherish this Psalm.
Josef,
When I was maybe five to seven years old I almost drowned in a swimming pool. I had a near-death experience and was going to Heaven. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was smiling and happy and comforted.
When I was around twenty years old I came home one day and looked at my curtain, which normally had only flowers on it with no writing, but what I saw was the name “Jesus” on my curtain, and it was glowing. I immediately thought that it was impossible, and thought to turn and look away and then to look back again to see if it was real, so I turned and looked away and looked back, and it was gone. I was “physically” shocked. I tried for several days to make the stems of the flowers on the curtain say “Jesus”, contorting them to form a word, and all I could make it says was “Jesus” in a contrived way. What I saw that day is a miracle and was written as clear as this type here.
What seems like several years later I came home one day and went and laid down on my bed, but I wasn’t trying to sleep, I was just trying to rest with my eyes closed, I sat up in bed and looked around my room and then looked down at my bed and I saw my body. My soul had came out of my body and was looking at my body.
Heaven.
Jesus.
Soul.
These are not beliefs Josef, they are truth.
I don’t lie Josef. Jesus revealed himself to me. Christianity cannot steal righteousness from the truth.
I’ve seen much more Josef. Too many things.
Your doctrines are lies, thefts, and murders.
The day is coming Josef. Be prepared.
Stop writing about me here. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. You’re a fool if you think I would ever bow to evil, which your made-up doctrines are.
Take care.
Put your wholehearted trust in the LORD
No. I am simply saying that God does not fit the definition of trustworthy. Pretty simple stuff. Do you think Allah is trustworthy? Or the Tooth Fairy? Or Santa Claus? If not, why not?
If you think God is trustworthy, then please explain one thing that anyone can actually trust God to do.
There is no logical error because my argument is not based on the assertion that “God does not exist.” I have consistently stated that there could be some sort of God that I know nothing about. The point of my argument is that it is demonstrably delusional for Christians (or Jews or Muslims) to say that Yahweh (or Allah) is trustworthy because in fact he is not. This then can be used as a proof the he doesn’t exist because he does not have the property that defines him.
No, it’s not trivial at all. It is the essence of an argument for the non-existence of A:
1) Define an entity A as having property B.
2) Show no entity has property B.
3) Therefore, A does not exist.
Pretty simply logic.
Your logic relating to predicates applied to non-existent entities seems blatantly self-contradictory. Your mistake is that you have taken the statement “A is not B” as universally true for all non-existent A. But that’s absurd in the case when A = “Something that does not exist” and B = “nonexistent.” In that case, you are asserting the absurdity that “Something that does not exist is not nonexistent.” Nice work with that logic! Better be careful, you are playing with a very sharp knife. I don’t want to see you hurt yourself.
Again, there is no logical error because I did not begin with the presumption that God does not exist. On the contrary, I am saying that on the assumption that God exists, we can prove he is not trustworthy. But this means that God does not have the property of trustworthiness attributed in the Bible, so that God (Yahweh) cannot be the true God (assuming there is one).
Again, my argument was that if there is a God, he is not the God of the Bible. You have not written a word that contradicts or even challenges my argument.
If the proposition “God is trustworthy” is sensible, then so is its negation. Any proposition P can be negated. The negation of a sensible proposition is itself sensible. But only one of them can be true. This is the law of excluded middle (one of the most fundamental laws of logic) which could not be stated if this were not true. Either P or Not P is true. P = Not Not P. If Not P is nonsense, then Not Not P would also be nonsense since the negation of nonsense is still nonsense since you could not know what you are negating.
I now would invite you to actually address the argument I presented in the opening post which stands unrefuted.
If there’s one thing I hate most about the god of this world and those deceived thereby, it’s the simple fact that they’re liars and ALWAYS turn the truth around and say the opposite..
The Title of this article is a prime example..
“The Root of Religious DELUSION”
See it.. the writer here is applying DELUSION to those that actually believe the truth of the holy scriptures, while in fact the very ones who are sent strong DELUSION are those who reject the love of the truth that they might be saved.
It’s always the case with the god of this world who is a liar and a coward.. he accuses others of the exact thing pertaining to himself.
It’s like when liars say that the US is the great Satan and that Israel is the little Satan.. the very ones who are delusional and deceived by the god of this present evil world.. it could never be about them, only about those who actually believe the truth. They’re so DELUSIONAL that the god of this world gets them to believe that they’re doing god service when they murder Jews or Christians.
So once again, I’ll gladly and praise-fully rest in what the scriptures teach me with respect to those who are DELUSIONAL.
Of course the Truth will be banned here.. that’s what the god of this world does.. He sells the truth, to some for a little silver, and to others for some high minded cognitive bias.
Pretty soon all you’ll have left here is the lies of the godless sin mockers..
What a surprise that is hey.. LOL
Merely asserting that your blind moronic religious dogmas are “truth” is the ultimate delusion.
You have not presented any evidence supporting your words. You have not shown any error in anything I have written. Yet you think of your delusions as “Truth” with a capital T!
It’s amazing to see how deep your delusion runs. You don’t even have a concept of the meaning of cognitive bias. You deny the one thing that could set you free from the chains of your religious brainwashing. You need to question what you’ve been told and think for yourself. You need to ask yourself why you believe any of it and become skeptical about your own religion as you are of all the others that you reject as of the devil. Only then will you find freedom and truth.
Judgment requires evidence. You have presented no evidence. You merely repeat what you have been told to believe by your religious authorities.
How are you any different than a Mormon, Muslim, or Jehovah’s Witness?
I presume you using the Biblical definition of “soon” so I’ll start worrying in about 2000 years! LOL
You are the mocker dude. You make a mockery of truth and reality, living in your ludicrous little world where you think you have the “Truth” with a capital T but can’t defend a word of it.
You make a mockery of intelligence and what it means to be a human being.
All the evidence in the world can’t convince those who sell the truth because they’re sent strong delusion.
How’s that for evidence?
How about the evidence of the scoffers and sin mockers right here who claim that there is no coming judgment? That they don’t even have sin…
No evidence there right?
Now the big bang.. there’s some evidence.. LOL
Sure it does. That’s why Christians have always been right about their predictions of the end of the world.
Harold Camping much? LOL Millerites? 88 Reasons Why Jesus is Returning in 1988? Christianity has the longest running record of failed predictions in the world. Only an ignorant fool could believe what you have written.
And don’t worry about taking that mark on your right hand or your forehead.. they’ll be sure to hush any objections with a little dose (or should I say dross) of cognitive bias.
And don’t worry about the New World order of things.. I’m sure it’ll be fine.. the beast and false prophet will probably end up being good buddies with ya.. they love men who sell the truth and buy the lies.
FAIL.
You don’t even know the meaning of evidence! Wow.
FAIL. The fact that people don’t agree with your unfounded religious dogmas does not constitute “evidence.”
Actually, that’s something for which we have mountains of evidence.
The circle is now complete. You accept the mythological cosmology of the Bible written by men utterly ignorant of how the world really works, and reject modern science which has been proven ten trillion times with cell phones, computers, and rockets to the moon.
Your light is darkness, and that’s the truth.
I’l admit that I’m not really really really smart like you think that you are.. I’m delusional and you speak the truth right?
You mock sin, you mock the sin bearer, and you bask in your elite high mindedness.
Hey, who can challenge that?
Thanks for filling out the details of your delusions:
1) You reject modern science like the big bang and evolution.
2) You believe that the Bible is true and that there is much evidence supporting it.
3) You believe in raving conspiracy theories about things like the New World Order.
Anything else you want to enlighten us about? Global Warming hoax? Illuminati rule the world? 911 Conspiracy? Sandy Hook? Moon Landing? Young Earth? Flat Earth?
Thank you for confirming my argument: Religion leads to all kinds of delusion.
Funny thing is, you already agree with me about 99% of all religions are delusional! You think they are all delusional except yours. LOL
I doubt if there’s any evidence of these things..
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
Must be cognitive bias on my part.
Sorry.
Then as the LORD says..
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also..
Cognitive bias..
And again, if you’re going to sell the truth at least get some gold for it or something.
I think that you’re getting the short end of the deal here.. LOL
All I mean is don’t let the devil get off this cheap.. make him pay up.. he has the kingdoms of this world at his disposal and gives them to whoever will bow and worship him..
It sounds to me like you’re practically there already. don’t sell yourself short here.. I mean, cognitive bias?
I’ll bet you can do much better than this.
We can’t all be as wise and wonderful as you now Rich, can we?
I mean you’re really really really really ssssmmmmmmmmmmmmaaaaaaaart…
I’d rather be the biggest fool on earth than to be one like you who sells the truth.. especially for a little cognitive bias, and then starts blogs about how delusional believers are.
But hey, that’s just me.
Here’s what the Apostle has to say on the matter.
For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:
Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
Here’s another Apostle speaking on sin;
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
Then this in 1 John 2 about who the liars are..
Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.
Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.
What a mindless load of crap you post! I have never said or suggested that I am smarter than anyone else. I have presented arguments based on logic and facts and you can’t show any error in anything I write so you spew mindless insults like a deeply disturbed adolescent. The only thing you prove is that your mind and morals are utterly corrupt. You despise truth. How. Freaking. Pathetic.
Why do yo continue to spew such ludicrous gibberish? I didn’t sell anything for “cognitive bias.” You apparently don’t even know what that word means. Your ignorance is exceeded only by your satanic arrogance. You are all the proof anyone needs to see how fundamentalist Christianity tends to corrupt the minds and morals of believers.
If those words were true, you’d be destined for the lake of fire judging by the unjust slander and contempt for truth that you’ve displayed here.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Have you shown any error in anything I’ve written? Nope. Therefore, your assertions are baseless and you are a slanderer of the kind condemned by the Bible you pretend to believe. If anyone has the spirit of “antichrist” it is you.
The wonderful thing about the Truth is that He lives within the believer and takes them from glory to glory.. it’s not always easy either.. there’s always going to be the struggle between our old man and the new man, Christ in us.
The flesh always wars against the Spirit and they’re contrary to one another.
This is exemplified for us in Abraham’s two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. The one born of the flesh and of the bondwoman and the other the miraculous gift of God after Sarah was beyond her child bearing age.
Now Abraham had pleaded with the LORD that Ishmael could live before Him, but the LORD told him that His covenant would be through the son of promise, Isaac.
Unbelievers do not have this conflict within their earthen vessel, there’s only the old nature, the flesh.
It’s not until a man is born again that he begins to understand this sanctification process.
We really can’t expect unbelievers to understand anything at all, they’re operating completely from the flesh.
There can still be conviction.. although the Spirit doesn’t strive with men forever.. He doesn’t force anyone to come to Him..
Now Satan on the other hand.. as soon as he takes the realm and is cast down to the earth.. he is going to force all, small and great, rich and poor, bond and free, to either worship him or be killed.
That’s why he’s busy building this IOT so that he and his minions can track your every move.. he’s not omniscient as the LORD is. One again, the technology is already available.. it’s just a matter of when the rulers of this dark world force this upon everyone.
So says every cult member on the planet. Are you Catholic? Orthodox? One of the ten thousand varieties of Protestant? Mormon? Your words are utterly empty bullshit.
I told you that I am not going to allow you to splatter your preaching bullshit all over my blog. If you want to discuss the reasons anyone should believe your religion, then fine, I would be happy to discuss it with you. If you want to continue posting here you will have to answer my comments. If not, then you will be banned.
This is your second warning.
NOW when you read and study the prophets.. this is where you’ll find that the end times are going to once again center upon the nation of Israel and their being led to repentance by the goodness of God.
We know that Israel is presently blinded in part until the fulness of gentile believers come in.
So, for an excellent study on this I like to share what I consider some of the best Christian writers of all time.. you can find them at stempublishing.com
STEM as you’ll see stands for Sound Teaching On Electronic Media.
Check them out, some of these authors will make your hair stand on end they’re so good.
Ah … so you think Jesus is a false prophet? He said the end would come when the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. And the entire NT expliclitly confirms that the “end times” happened in the first century. So you are denying the entire New Testament. No surprise there, given that you also spit on its moral teachings.
One of the best studies of all is the study of the DAY OF THE LORD.
Satan hates this one.. it’s his doomsday although not immediately.. he gets complete dominion over the planet for 42 months or 3.5 years.
THEN his beast and false prophet are taken alive at the coming of the LORD and cast into the Lake of fire.
Satan is then bound for the thousand years.. and the millennial kingdom of Christ rules the earth.. this is also the judgment of the quick (living) when the LORD sits upon the throne of His glory in Jerusalem, the city of the great King.
Then he is released and goes out to deceive the nations once again and surrounds the camp of the saints.. Satan is ultimately cast into the lake of fire where the beast and his false prophet will have been for a thousand years.
Then it’s the judgment of the dead.
Ha! Looks like you’ve fallen for the utterly unbiblical eschatology of the dispensational crowd. Wow. They are the primary propagators of the ludicrous false predictions like Harold “L. Ron” Camping.
This will also be the conclusion of Daniel’s 70th week, the time of JACOB’s trouble.
It’s amazing stuff, all foretold in wonderful ways even in the OT. The Revelation also gives us much greater detail as to this coming Day.
Oh yes … Daniel’s 70th Week created by inventing an magical stretchy 2000+ year “gap” to fill so each generation can delude themselves into thinking they are the “last generation.” This has been going on for centuries, reaching a fevered pitch of madness in the last 70 years since the foundation of the modern unbiblical secular state of Israel. With every post, you demonstrate how your cult breeds delusion and contempt for the truth.
Ha! If it was foretold, why have Christians been spewing out false predictions for the last two thousand years? Your religion is madness. You continue repeating the same errors as all the previous generations of Christians. You are truly incorrigible. (Look it up.)
NOW of course the rulers of this dark world want everyone to believe that this is all in the past. That’s why they come up with the nonsense of preterism and things of that nature and teach the exact opposite of the truth.
In the END Israel is delivered.
The liars say that in the end (70 AD) Israel is destroyed.
Now everyone with half a brain cell left knows that Christ has not yet come again.. the preterists say it happened in AD70.
The last thing in the world that they want any man to think or to know is that it’s in the future.
The rulers of this dark world are doing a good job, they have plenty of men duped into thinking that Christ came in AD70 and wiped out Israel and that was the end.
A Christian with the Spirit of Christ in them knows better, they’re still waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. The Spirit of Truth also tells us of things to come.. that’s another reason why unregenerated men can’t see past their nose.. because they have not the Spirit of Christ to show them these things.
So you call Jesus a liar. No surprise here.
You don’t think the destruction of the Temple is past?
You don’t think the first century is past?
Jesus said the end would come during the lifetime of his first century audience, which he referred to as “this generation.” He said it would happen when the Temple was destroyed (70 AD).
The entire NT says the “end times” happened in the first century.
John said that it was the “last hour” back then, in the first century.
Your beliefs are entirely contrary to the entire Bible. Fact.
And that’s the ultimate delusion! You actually believe that the Bible gives real knowledge about the future? Why then have Christians littered history with ten thousand failed predictions about the future?
How can you be so blind? The light in you is darkness. True Darkness.
That’s one of my favorite things about the holy scriptures.. they tell us plainly about that coming day and the writer to the Hebrews mentions that we should all be gathering together more and more as we see the day approaching.
And once again, we must understand that any man without the Spirit of Christ in Him can’t see any of this.. that’s why they must make a mockery of sin and the sin bearer and tell Christians that they’re delusional.
Of course most men can’t admit that they’re deceived in this way.. nobody actually believes that they’re deceived until the Spirit reveals the truth to them.
NOW when a man sells the truth, all he has left is the lies of the deceiver.
Anyone with half a brain cell knows that the Bible is filled with errors, contradictions, absurdities, and gross immoralities and irrationalities attributed to its god. Anyone with half a brain cell knows absolutely that neither God nor the Bible can be trusted in any way.
And how exactly do you know who has the Spirit of Christ? I presume you have a strict standard: If they agree with you and your personal interpretation of the Bible then they have the Spirit of Christ. Brilliant! No way that could be delusional.
If that were true why has no Christian in the history of the world been able to predict the future, though thousands have tried and failed?
Your delusion runs deep. Very deep.
If I have erred in anything I would admit it in a heartbeat. The problem is that you have not even tried to show any error in anything I’ve written, so there is nothing for me to admit.
I, on the other hand, have proven quite conclusively that you are utterly deluded, and you have not refuted a word I have written.
And that’s how it is. You confirm your delusion every time you repeat your false accusations against me and refuse to deal with the evidence I presented.
As we speak, the technology is pretty much already here to get everyone micro-chipped. They’ll most likely demand that it’s necessary because of the terrorists or something along those lines. It will be for our own safety etc.. that sort of thing.
I wonder how far men will go in their denial of what’s coming upon the world?
And you can bet your last dollar that the Christians are doing to be labeled the biggest fools on earth because of their knowing about these things. The bible will most likely be banned or something like that..
The Christians hope is His appearing as the bright and morning star which appears before the day, that coming dreadful day of the LORD when the Dragon is cast down to the earth..
Then it’s going to be hell on earth.. and the sad thing is that we can escape if we’re the ones who are alive and remain.. otherwise you’re going to be here for the great tribulation..
If your convicted that these things are coming upon the world, and you want to escape.. simply call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.
I wouldn’t wait another second. Seriously, I would be on my face prostrate before the LORD and asking Him to deliver me..
You’ll find He is trustworthy, as every single born again believer has.
Ha! Back in the 70s people thought Social Security numbers would be the mark of the beast. Then it was bar codes. Now it’s RFD chips. Your cult is totally delusional. It’s like a conspiracy theory on religious steroids.
Knowing about these things? Like when Christians “knew” that Christ would return in 1981 because 1948 + 40 – 7 = 1981? LOL
Or that they “knew” he’d be coming in 2000 because 1967 + 40 – 7 = 2000?
Or that they “knew” that the “Bible guaranteed” that the Rapture would happen on May 21, 2011?
Etc., etc., etc. Your religion began as a failed doomsday cult and nothing has changed in 2000 years.
So what exactly do you mean when you say Jesus is coming “soon”? Should we expect to wait another 2000 years?
Madness. Delusion. Insanity. That is the fruit of your religion.
Oh really? Please name one demonstrable thing that anyone could “trust” God to actually do for them. Just one.
The truth is trustworthy:
Fact: doing violence to non-violent people is evil.
Fact: the Christian God is said to do violence to non-violent non-Christians.
Fact: the Christian God is evil.
Non-violent non-Christians who follow the truth and that have integrity and true love for non-violence would never bow to a violent God, and we are justified in truth.
Word.
Hello Richard,
I would like to say that your Bible Wheel creation undertakings was a brilliant example of intellect and hard work at its core and for me personally, an example of something which could only have been created by someone who had the capacity to perform as a calling for a higher purpose.
I believe that you are connected to something which cannot be conceptually explained in words and that your mathematical prowess was utilized as a substitute to deliver the messages which religion cannot make sense. of.
I am grateful to who you are as a person and as a higher being. I do hope you understand who I am and implore you to consider your Bible Wheel creation as something bigger than just its interpretation to you.
Hey there Glenn,
Thanks for the good words and interesting questions. I have answered in a new post called Is there “something bigger” to the Bible Wheel? We can continue the conversation there.
Richard
Hi Richard,
I have been seeing the numbers 22, 33, and 44 many more times a day than statistically probable, and came to your website in search of what it might mean. Can I just say, I think the Bible Wheel you have constructed is brilliant – I myself write about the scriptures, and will be informed by your excellent findings.
Please see here: http://www.secretbible.co.uk/jesus-is-a-loaf-of-bread-why-biblical-literalism-makes-no-sense/
I see you have grown disillusioned with Christianity – the same thing happened to me, and I spent many years in my youth as an atheist as a result. In my early twenties, I had a number of mystical experiences which completely challenged my rational/materialistic worldview, and was led to reading the scriptures myself to see what they actually had to say. I still disavow mainstream Christianity – I think the main reason is that the Bible is a book about spirituality, and is meant to be read spiritually, rather than literally. Israel, Egypt, the jews, and even death, the lake of fire, and satan are all metaphors. The Bible is its own dictionary, and you discover what these things mean by searching for them within the bible itself, and also looking at the original hebrew word. Perhaps your misgivings are with the mainstream, literal interpretation of the scripture more than anything else. For example, as a woman, I took exception to the passages commanding women to be subordinate to men – this was until I discovered that the early Christians including the Gnostics and the Essenes used ‘woman’ to signify both the created, material world (i.e. the earth becomes impregnanted, and gives birth to organic life) and ‘man’ to signify ‘Christ’ or divine man. The woman is also used as a metaphor for wisdom, and for the church. Hence, understanding the figurative elements at work, we can see that the injunction for wives to be subordinate to husbands refers to making decisions based on divine principles, rather than earthly, carnal ones. There are many biblical passages which support this:
Another parable He spoke to them: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.”
Matthew 13:33
Both ‘taking’ and ‘hiding’ are not good things – understanding that ‘the woman’ Christ is referring to is the church – or religion – gives a new dimension.
Listen to “Woman Wisdom”
Wisdom shouts in the street;in the public square she raises her voice.
Proverbs 1:20
Galatians 4:26 ESV
But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.
Read Proverbs 31 with the ‘Mother’ as jerusalem (higher wisdom) and the ‘wife’ as the church/organised religion; https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+31
Death is also used metaphorically in the bible to describe both spiritual sleep, and separation. The notion of first borns and second borns, with one usually being killed, is a motif which runs throughout the scriptures – the implication again being carnal man (adam) vs. Spiritual man (christ). Hence the story of Esau (meaning ‘hairy’, hence, carnal man) and Jacob (‘supplanter’) who later became ISRAEL (‘May God prevail. He struggles with God. God perseveres; contends’). The scriptures reveal the jews were symbolic of spiritual initiation:
Romans 2:28-29
For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.
Galatians 3:28 ESV
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Egypt itself is symbolic – as revealed in the Book of Revelation:
Revelation 11:8
And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.
You also mentioned that other mystic books have numerical patterns – but I don’t see why these books can’t be called divinely inspired either. By the way, the number 19 is a karmic number, I believe. The Bible says there is only one God, but it doesn’t specify what name, form, or cultural conception God takes. In the Bible alone, God is described as: rock, love, clouds, fire (bringing a new meaning to the ‘lake of fire’ concept, light, etc. Ezekiel’s psychedelic vision of God describes a very bizarre four faced creature. It would seem that God is quite the shapeshifter, appearing in different ways to different people.
You have talked about unanswered prayers and have doubted the notion of a God who allows suffering. You said that our suffering is diminished not by God, but by man healing himself.
Bingo!
We are supposed to heal ourselves, and others – Christ was a healer. He also taught that suffering is a necessary part of the path to enlightenment. Why? Because suffering robs us of our illusions.
Watch this, and you may begin to see the scriptures – and your own findings – in a new light: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Vd0FQ2V6xw
‘The world is full of sorrow, the root of sorrow is desire. The uprooting of sorrow is desirelessness…’
Good morning Suzi,
It is good to meet you. Thanks for the good word. I don’t have much time right now since I gotta get to work, but just wanted to get the conversation going by letting you know that I appreciate a non-literal approach to the Bible. I think a lot that is taken as literal by modern fundamentalists was intended as metaphor and allegory by the original writers. The Bible is a tremendously valuable book when for what it really is rather than as the “Word of God” because it reveals so much about the human psyche.
As for the your sense about the “statistical frequency” of numbers like 22, 33, and 44 – I think you have fallen subject to a very common illusion known as confirmation bias. Once you begin noticing something like that your mind picks them out and count the hits and ignore the misses. So you really have no proper sense of the “statistics” at all.
Well, gotta get to work.
Richard
I see you have grown disillusioned with Christianity – the same thing happened to me, and I spent many years in my youth as an atheist as a result. In my early twenties, I had a number of mystical experiences which completely challenged my rational/materialistic worldview, and was led to reading the scriptures myself to see what they actually had to say. I still disavow mainstream Christianity – I think the main reason is that the Bible is a book about spirituality, and is meant to be read spiritually, rather than literally. Israel, Egypt, the jews, and even death, the lake of fire, and satan are all metaphors. The Bible is its own dictionary, and you discover what these things mean by searching for them within the bible itself, and also looking at the original hebrew word. Perhaps your misgivings are with the mainstream, literal interpretation of the scripture more than anything else. For example, as a woman, I took exception to the passages commanding women to be subordinate to men – this was until I discovered that the early Christians including the Gnostics and the Essenes used ‘woman’ to signify both the created, material world (i.e. the earth becomes impregnanted, and gives birth to organic life) and ‘man’ to signify ‘Christ’ or divine man. The woman is also used as a metaphor for wisdom, and for the church. Hence, understanding the figurative elements at work, we can see that the injunction for wives to be subordinate to husbands refers to making decisions based on divine principles, rather than earthly, carnal ones. There are many biblical passages which support this:
Dear Richard, I came upon your page because I had a dream about the number 21. I am a believer in Christ. I’m just writing to encourage you to get in touch with Dean Braxton,a former fellow Washingtonian, who died for almost 2 hours, went to heaven and returned to tell. That’s all. Blessings to you!
People learn over time, and sometimes come to different conclusions from what they previously thought. Every comment I have made on this site is null and void.
Hey there Michael,
Your words may be truer than you think because I may not be able to recover most of the comments you have made since the server crashed and the host doesn’t have any backups.
But on the other hand, is it really true that you’ve changed so much that ALL of your previous comments are now “null and void”? If so, it would be interesting to know what you now believe.
Richard
hi there Richard – maybe the programmer has poor grammar & occasionally makes mystics?
love your site u r a most interesting & complex character
if u r up 4 a chat … let me know …
Hey there u gene. Always open for a chat. Let me know a convenient time.
Good day to all of you.
I read some of the posts here and it seem to me that you all are missing an importent thing which is to define what “God” is, before you start talking about “God”. If you all have different concept and view of “God”, how can you possibly discuss it without just talking around and misunderstand each other?
That’s an excellent point Meyou, but I think I identified the “God” I was talking about with sufficient clarity in the OP. It is any “God” that could be called “trustworthy,” with a focus on the God of “Christianity.” Of course, there are many different forms of Christianity and Christians differ about some of their gods’ properties, but the one thing they all claim is that “God is trustworthy.” I reject that assertion. There has never been any god of any religion that has been shown to be “trustworthy.”
Lean not to your own understanding of higher than our brain was intended to process thoughts. Also God confounds the wisdom of the wise, and makes them foolish…and His foolishness is greater than our wisdom. As the Bible clearly states… it’s impossible to please God without first believing that He Is…and that He is a Rewarder of those who Diligently Seek Him.
Also God is a title…it represents what you hold in highest esteem…got some that is themselves… other’s that is other’s…some create their own gods, and others just look around and trust the one that holds existence together… because even science can back up the fact that without the slightest factors we would cease to be…that therefore means we live in trust that we exist… period. Peace and Love.
We live in trust that we exist… therefore we do,and when we no longer do as a whole species… that’s when all falls apart and it won’t matter what we think… we can see this playing out in this generation…which I believe is the last…but that’s me; is what I meant to write. Yah Bless you.
Every trial I have gone through with God turned out to be to my advantage. I had to risk my life – many times. What a fantastic future I have now!
Your work is amazing. Don’t give up on your soul!:-)
You will never, ever get to know God through your reason. Romans 8:7. Talk to God as a child and He will help you!
Robert
Funny how God works. I opened my laptop to do a word study using biblehub.com and after typing “bible,” I pressed the letter “w” by accident and “biblewheel.com” appeared as a suggested website. Since the name sounded interesting, I went to the site and spent an hour reading the blog hosts comments and articles. I see that he left the Christian faith and does not believe in the existence of the God of the Bible. When I decided to actually get to my word study and stop reading some of his evasive conversations, I then noticed: “Oh, snap! He’s one of them.” “One of them”, refers to the group I intended to do a word study on: an apostate. Funny how God works.
I’m doing a word study on “Apostates and Backsliders” and funny enough, I land on an apostates website.
I thought about this when I was reading: “The Case for Christ” by journalist Lee Strobel is a great book. He was an atheist but became a believer when he sought to disprove the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. He could not define the medical, historical, and experiential evidence that the crucifixion occurred as the Bible says. Apostle Paul says that if the crucifixion isn’t true we have no faith to stand on, our sins aren’t forgiven and we should be pitied.
But to apostasize from the faith…? Mr. Bloghost, you better hope your “inclinations” are correct, because if you missed it by a little, you have missed it by a mile.
Hey there William,
Thanks for commenting. I can see why you would attribute that coincidence to an “act of God” – I interpreted coincidences the same way when I was a believer. Thing is, we humans do that all that time. Catholics see the Virgin Mary in burnt toast, Muslims see the name of Allah in the markings on various animals, etc., etc, etc. So the challenge is to learn to discern between truth and what we want to believe. That’s not an easy task.
I find it interesting that you talk about the necessity of “faith” in the comments under my article explaining why I think “faith” itself is rendered meaningless in Christianity because God is said to be “faithful” when in fact there is not one thing anyone can actually trust God to do for anyone in this life. What do you think about this point? Do you see that if God were actually trustworthy there would be no debate about his existence? This is because he could be proven to exist when he is proven to be trustworthy. Pretty simple stuff, really.
Now as for my “apostasy” – yes, I reject every one of the confused and contradictory versions of Christianity that I have ever seen. The only way I could be a “Christian” would be defined the term to mean whatever religion I happened to choose from the muddle morass of “Christianities” that have come before me, or to invent my own. Neither option seems viable. What do you think about this?
Which version of Christianity do you hold to? The answer doesn’t matter, because if your personal religious “inclinations” are off by a little, you will have missed by a mile!
Great chatting!
All of this is very interesting. Because any point that anyone would now present to you as an example of your apostasy – you can point from another way of their delusion.
And that cycle continues on forever – except you validate your points because of the work that you have done, and attempt to show them the small box they are in that doesn’t exist.
And while the most obvious point against what you’ve said – that would induce as many fallacies as you could produce against it – is that your faith seemed to be derived from an intellectual understanding and pillars that do not exist. More faith in the Bible Wheel, than the Bible itself.
The pillars would be the very fact that none of the work that you did added or took away from what the Bible. None of the work that you have done has given any more or less validity to any of it – because for it to be able to do that, you, when you believed would have had to have thought you were capable of such a thing. So you made yourself an authority in something ancillary, but you won’t say that you could still be wrong. To make any definite statements proving that you’ve cracked something that you made, just as an idea, don’t you think that is a little ironic?
It seems like you made your own god, then tore that one down.
In terms of the very nature of the universe, you are clearly a smart man and understand that we have no clue about how all this really happened. There are so many things that we can’t know until we make something that can verify what we can’t know – even if we aren’t speaking in religious terms at all.
But to say that you have debunked the Bible, or that you have proved in any way that God isn’t real – even to think that something you made gave definitive proof that God is real – both of those things are impossible to do from an intellectual mindset. And no one can prove that God doesn’t exist, that is not even possible to do. Even the staunchest critics can say that there is a possibility. And you would have to also allow for the possibility that you are wrong about everything else – of course I would have to allow for the same thing on my end.
And it’s not the point of the Bible anyway. Faith is the point. You and your wifes reasonings are also quite baffling, but they make total sense. If your idea of what the world is and what God needs to become from an internal need to validate the world around you – that would stem from a faulty understanding of what this was about to begin with, as if the higher levels of being a Christian mean that you find more and more “proof” lol. It’s really the opposite of that, you become more and more like a child. So the direction was doomed for failure at the onset.
I know that I am speaking in generalities, but it’s because the specifics of any of these statements don’t matter as there is always going to be an opposite point that can be brought up from your point of view that you have decoded the Bible, and then you proved yourself wrong.
Another very interesting thing that I find when people either believe and then don’t or never believed at all – is speaking about the nature of God.
This statement, “Do you see that if God were actually trustworthy there would be no debate about his existence? This is because he could be proven to exist when he is proven to be trustworthy. Pretty simple stuff, really.”
I just wonder – what did you actually think the purpose was of creating all of this? And was the Bible wheel and the strength of what you came up with the foundation of your faith?
From your point of view do you think that you were focused on the relationship with Christ, or was it focused on looking at the proof of what you had come up with?
It’s all just very fascinating because I wonder what was the personal event or thing that you prayed for that made you think of God as untrustworthy, and what would you consider a trustworthy God? Wouldn’t that just be making life perfect?
This renouncing of faith couldn’t have simply come from your constructed towers incompletion. It’s always personal because had you gotten the version of God that you created in your life, you never would have stopped believing in the first place.
Now this last statement:
Which version of Christianity do you hold to? The answer doesn’t matter, because if your personal religious “inclinations” are off by a little, you will have missed by a mile!
Could you give an example of what you mean here? That if you are off by a “little” that the whole thing is off.
You are clearly a very passionate individual and while we do not share the same convictions – I do respect your level of dedication.
Many blessings
Given that you have spent a substantial amount of your life on something you now consider to be false, maybe it’s time to take a break from loudly taking a position. In one way, you have come to a deeper understanding- the Bible Wheel was beyond bizarre, and it depended on medieval versification and the very much happenstance arrangement of a 39 book Protestant Old Testament canon. To understand its falsehood is a step forward, at least on that front. But to turn around, almost immediately, and start pushing for some other position- come on, man. One wonders whether you have really learned anything at all. Once you were convinced that the Bible Wheel was the key by which everything else is illuminated, now you are convinced that atheism makes sense of life and that the cosmos is plainly a self-perpetuating machine lacking intrinsic purpose or meaning.
At least you put some original work into the Bible Wheel, as bizarre and fallacious as it was. Here, you just seem to be defaulting to pretty standard irreligious rhetoric. Most arguments for any position will be poor, because mankind has just begun to really grapple with universal literacy and access to information. The sorts of virtues and habits that we need to develop collectively to make responsible handling of information the rule rather than the exception are habits which take intense commitment among millions of people over decades at least. Needless to say, we aren’t there.
But that means that sure, most religious arguments are baloney. But so are most arguments for anything- people in general are lazy and don’t know what they don’t know, and finding the exceptions to that rule is a tough job. I know I’m commenting on something five years old- maybe you’ve had an epiphany since then. But if I had just found the project into which I poured decades of my life to be hollow and empty, I hope that I would manifest a little intellectual humility- I hope that I’d recognize that this is an enormous world, rich, complex, and beautiful wherever you turn. And I hope I’d realize that I didn’t have a good track record at the moment, and so wouldn’t start spewing standard irreligious cliches with all the happy confidence I had about the completely opposite position five minutes prior.
Pardon my tone- I think you are probably brilliant, perhaps even a genius. But your comments above tell me that you don’t have intellectual discipline. As pretentious as this sounds, it’s the truth. Things like “if God were actually trustworthy there would be no debate about his existence” are sophomoric in the extreme. Really? It’s not that difficult to answer such arguments, but typically the interlocutor will respond to such answers with psychoanalyses. I’m sure you know what I’m speaking about. If I give a reason *internal to the classical Christian view of the world* for why God permits intellectual doubt about His existence, that reason is waved off with “you’re rationalizing” or “this is a defense mechanism” or whatever.
Let’s just take this particular claim as an example. Instead of writing something out because it sounds persuasive at an intuitive level, we have to take it apart and probe it. This is the case especially for those statements which seem the most obvious to us. So let’s take this- if God is trustworthy- trustworthy to do what?
Create belief? This seems to be the idea undergirding your argument- God has the power to create belief, God wishes for all people to believe that He exists. So He should create belief by a clear and verifiable declaration of Himself. But Christianity has never held that God is concerned to ensure that people believe He exists. In fact, considered in itself, it holds that He doesn’t care. A person who believes that God exists but ignores Him altogether is worse off than the atheist.
And do you really think this is not a scenario which plays out daily? How many young men and women do you think actually, on a factual, empirical level believe that God created the world and raised Jesus from the dead- but at the same time sleep with their significant others and bully those weaker than themselves on a regular basis? Nobody can deny that this is quite common. So it appears that our makeup is not such that empirical belief is the deciding factor in our actions. And since God doesn’t care about belief in and of itself- only as a precondition to the development of man as a friend and son of God participating with Him in His original creative purpose (a fancy way of saying “sanctification” and “glorification”), the premise of your statement is totally wrong.
Let me add one more thing to this. If Christianity is to be accepted or rejected, one has to take it as a whole. If you are saying that Christianity is false because were it true, God would have publicly and verifiably declared Himself, then you are saying that it is a belief inherent to – or at least perfectly consistent with- the Christian faith that a direct revelation of God’s presence is a sufficient condition to produce genuine faith and repentance. But the problem is that this not only is not a teaching of the Christian faith, it is flatly and constantly contradicted by it. Think of any major biblical story. Jesus is resurrected and appears to the disciples. While He stands there, Matthew says “some doubted.” The presence of God visibly divides Israel from Egypt after sending plague after plague on the Egyptians- Israel still says “was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us out here to die?” The Creator audibly announces that Israel is to worship no other deities- as His presence visibly burns on Sinai. Within a couple weeks they are worshiping an idol.
You don’t believe that these things happened. Fine. But it’s not reasonable to snap these elements away from Christianity and then complain that the Christian God isn’t conforming to your expectations of what He ought to do. The Christian picture of the world stands or falls as a single portrait, and only when it is taken as a proper whole can its success in accurately describing the world really be weighed. And in fact, I think we both have had plenty of experience with the portrait of human nature that I’ve just noted in the biblical story. Obstinate, often refusing to acknowledge that truth which stares them in the face. This is what you accuse religious people of doing, after all- you and countless other atheists aren’t merely saying that we’ve made a subtle error on a sophisticated and immensely complex question. You have stated that there are obvious truths which stare us in the face and which we still reject.
So don’t you think it’s inconsistent to assume that God making Himself obvious and directly present will lead to much success? If people are skilled at ignoring the obvious as you and other unbelievers (right on the general principle, wrong on this application) regularly insist, it’s not reasonable to say that God making His existence obvious would solve the problem. People are great at rejecting the obvious.
If God revealed Himself directly to most atheists without a lengthy period of providentially bringing about introspection, preparation, life events- you know what would happen. They would check themselves into a mental health clinic, because hallucinations are real, they feel real, and are experienced as real. I’m not making fun- if you truly think that God makes no sense at all in terms of the real world and also understand that sometimes our senses can dramatically mislead us, you will think yourself misled by your senses if “God” suddenly appears to you. As someone who has been dramatically influenced by hallucinogenic drugs, I imagine that this would be your immediate reaction. And it’s not an entirely unjustified reaction- thus my point. Your suggested plan for God is obviously flawed in every respect. And so using the non-utilization of your suggestion for God as an indicator of His nonexistence is silliness.
I’ve spent a lot of time picking apart one statement of yours almost at random, but they are everywhere. I do it in the genuine hope not that you will listen to this or that particular argument by yours truly or William Lane Craig or your neighbor’s sweet Baptist grandmother or the Mormon Church. I do it in the hope that you will recognize the fact that you must make a systematic effort to get at the truth of things, an effort that extends far beyond- and sometimes even against- the intoxicating feeling of having an epiphany revealing one or another position to be true. I know that feeling- how suddenly, it seems that a given way of looking at the world makes sense out of everything, that facts which once caused one cognitive stress and anxiety slipped neatly into place. That feeling is intoxicating. Thing is, over time as I learned more I began to have it about lots of contradictory worldviews- and I realized that the feeling was more likely to mislead than to illumine. Most “a-ha” moments aren’t “a-ha” moments, but people think that the feeling of having one is proof that one has actually occurred. So I genuinely do ask that you step back for a few moments- or weeks, months, or years, stop trying to persuade people that your worldview- whatever it is- is the key to illuminating all things, and begin to pursue truth in a rigorous, systematic, and serious manner. You can always ask God for help- if He’s not there, asking for help does no harm. If He is, it can do great good. This is the proper application of Pascal’s Wager- people cannot choose what they believe, but saying a thirty second prayer for help is a no-brainer. Thanks for reading.
Sorry to add a double comment- bad form, I know. But after posting, I stumbled across your asking the question of why God would create a world He’s just going to toss aside. It’s a good and legitimate question in itself, but traditionally Christians have held that the world will certainly not be tossed aside- rather, as Paul says, “in the Lord the work you do is not in vain” because of the resurrection of the body. As he says, the whole creation groans as it awaits its rebirth into the world to come- a glorified physical world.
As to the point in the beginning- and what I think is still the point- God created a world which was good, beautiful, but like a little baby. It was young, it was to grow into something richer and more glorious. Into that world God placed His Image, whom He invited to participate with Him in this project. And while man slipped, in the end, the original purpose stands- as Paul says, the resurrection of the body and the final wrapping up of this historical plane only takes place once every “rule and authority and power and dominion” has been destroyed- the Church’s purpose is not to save those unfortunate souls who chance upon a loud street preacher. It is rather to be the focal point of God’s integration and enriching of all creation in the eternal Son and Logos of God. This is what we read in Revelation 21- a picture far bigger than individual souls getting saved. We see nations healed, wisdom learned, beauty shaped, and cities built.
Perhaps I am a bit too dismissive of folks like yourself who dismiss Christianity. I often forget how absolutely uncompelling many of its popular presentations are. Not in terms of “they don’t make a case for the historical authenticity of the Bible” but rather “this has very little to do with the actual concrete reality of the world over which this God is supposed to be sovereign.” Let me just copy and paste something I wrote in an explanatory message to someone else.
It’s lengthy. I post it only in the hopes that it present a larger and more compelling (at an aesthetic level- I think the popular “Four Spiritual Laws” idea that you see in many Baptist and evangelical churches is just ugly and inelegant in addition to being false) vision of the world than the one you and perhaps other readers are familiar with. And perhaps it might be interesting enough for someone to ask themselves whether they’ve really given Christianity the fair shake.
If you become interested in investigating these questions, my actual email address is tommytcph@gmail.com . I certainly don’t expect to magick you into belief, but I post it only because I want to leave the possibility of sparking genuine interest (it has happened occasionally!) open. Anyway, here is my attempt to spell out the authentic- and indeed, traditionally biblical and Christian- vision of the cosmos.
1. God will not and has never intended to throw the material world away. It was a distinguishing feature of Christianity the early centuries that it insisted on the fundamental goodness of matter. “Heaven”, when understood as the place to which the souls of the saved go after death, was never the end of the story. It’s a waystation at which the person stops on a much longer journey. This is the essence of Jesus’ work. His resurrection from the dead was much more than simply making a dead body alive again. In being resurrected, Jesus entered into a radically transfigured form of embodiment. The body itself was joined and suffused with the presence of God. We read in the Gospels about the Apostles almost not recognizing Jesus- there was something ineffably different about Him, something almost impossible to put into words. This is the biggest misconception that people have about the Christian story, including Christians. The scriptures are clear- texts like Romans 8 and Revelation 21 state it plainly- God is bringing renewal and resurrection and celestial life to the entirety of the created order. He made it for a reason and will not trash it. Mankind is the spiritual core (more on this below) of creation, so that Paul says in Romans 8 that the whole creation waits with eager longing for the rebirth of mankind in its glorified embodiment. Man is the Image of God- an angled mirror. Man gathers up the glories and beauties of creation and refracts them up towards God just as he receives divine light and reflects it into the world. Man, the human family, is the vessel and instrument by which God unifies all things and makes them infinitely beautiful. Our redemption is the means for the redemption of all creation.
2. With this in mind- that the ultimate end of things features a renewal of all creation and the resurrection and glorification of the human body, I think we can move to the Biblical and Christian view of the beginning of things. A proper doctrine of creation- why God created and what the nature of creatures is- is the pillar on which the plausibility of Christianity will rise or fall. We ourselves are members of that creation and our entire life is lived in the context of the creation. Christianity purports to be the authentic revelation of creation, that which illustrates its purpose from beginning to end. The standard by which one evaluates the truth of any worldview will be on its concordance with the creation as it is known to us.
3. The arc of the Christian story of the world is not principally about salvation from sin and the Devil. This is one of the most important subplots- but it is not the main plot. In reality, the main plot is the development of the created order, through mankind, from goodness into perfection. In scriptural terms, “goodness” means that a thing lacks a flaw. “Perfection”, however, means that a thing is grown, fully developed, and completed. Consider it in terms of development from childhood to maturity. Paul speaks of Israel under the Torah as “children.” He says that Jesus is the true human who “brings many sons to glory.” Mankind, in Jesus, is grown up and thereby equipped to carry out the purpose appointed to them by the Creator. We see this in Genesis 1-3.
4. On the first day of creation, God created from nothing all the “stuff” or raw material of the world. Over the six days, God takes that stuff and shapes it into more glorious stuff by His Word. Think of how musical notes on water creates rich mathematical and beautiful patterns (if you are not familiar with this, it’s amazing). The creation is described in terms of mathematically elegant patterns. This is a good analogy for what God was doing over the six days. He did not create stars from nothing, but shaped them from the raw material made from nothing on the first day- the “primordial ocean” known in many creation myths from around the world. The earth was “formless, and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.” God then gives form and structure to this world, fills it with sophisticated and beautiful creatures, and brightens it with the celestial lights. Man is called the “Image and Likeness of God” in this context. God instructs man to be “fruitful and multiply” and most importantly, to “subdue” the creation. Man is then called in Genesis 2:4 the “generations of the Heavens and the Earth.” This phrase “generations of” always means “offspring.” Mankind is the coming-together of the heavenly and the earthly. The Spirit/Breath of Life is poured into the dust of the ground. As such, man is the “linking point” by which the heavenly and earthly are joined with each other in glory. That is, after all, how the Scriptures conclude- the city of God in Revelation 21-22 descends and links together the Heaven of God and our cosmos.
5. God’s instructions to man constitute an invitation for man to co-participate with God in His work of creation. God has begun the work of creation and rested in a very good world- but the world was an infant, as was man. Man, after all, was naked as a baby. The scriptures conclude not with a return to nakedness, but with the robing of the children of God in glorious light. The word “subdue” is the same word for “conquer”, but it only acquires military connotations after the fall. Indeed, the prophets of Israel speak of the messianic age as an age in which “swords and spears” are transformed into tools- plowshares and pruning hooks. The prophet Zechariah speaks of the toolmakers conquering the false worship of the enemy. We therefore see that redemption from sin is designed in order to allow man to complete and fulfill the purpose for which he was made- to delight in the Creator and to enrich the creation with beauty.
6. I think this is a much fuller vision of Christianity than the typical one found in many evangelical Protestant and other Protestant circles. Paul says that “in the Lord our work is not in vain” in explaining the implications of the glorification and resurrection of the body. What this means is that it is the goodness inherent in all of our work which will be carried into the renewed, glorified creation. We are given by God the gift of participating with Him in pouring richness into the world. Solomon tells us that “it is the glory of God to conceal a thing, the glory of kings to search things out.” (Prov. 25:2) According to the Scriptures, we are all, through the Spirit, anointed priests and kings who inherit the world together with Jesus the Messiah- we are adopted by the Father as members of His royal family. And so the quest for wisdom about the world- learning wisdom through the study of philosophy and metaphysics, learning about the creation in all its richness through the natural sciences- this is crucial to mankind’s purpose.
7. And so, what is the purpose of the work of Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ is the eternal Son. What this means is that He flows from the Father as a river flows from its source. He depends upon the Father for His existence, but as the Father exists necessarily (like how a number or “law of logic” must exist and could not be different than they are – Christians have traditionally understood these things to be ideas in the mind of God- which is why they and He are necessary together) precisely as the Father, so the Son always flows from Him as the Son. The Spirit flows from the Father as the love He has for the Son. God is therefore both one and many at the same time and in an equally ultimate sense. This is why unity and diversity exist together in the creation at all its levels. We are made after the pattern of the Son- made to be sons, to be likened unto Him, to share in His life and glory and thereby be the instruments for the whole world to be made like Him and glorified with Him. The Gospel of John says that all things were made through Him and that He is the Logos, or essential Idea of the world. This is something like Plato’s forms- the things that make creatures and the whole creation what they are are ideas which are found eternally in the person of the Son. Paul says that God wishes to unite all things in Christ. As such, most Christians have held that even if there was no fall and death had never come into the world, Christ would still have come to fill the universe with glory and unite the world with Himself. The principal purpose of the work of Christ is to unite the world and mankind with God- since Christ is both eternally God and truly man, a full participant in the creation. He therefore is the “canal” between celestial glory and our world, drawing them both together as the ultimate “son of Heaven and Earth.” Why the cross?
8. In the understanding of ancient Christian theologians, death came into the world because man chose to seek something above God. God, as the only being who exists of necessity, is the only possible source of life and being. When Adam and Eve chose to live on their own terms rather than God’s (there are many ways in which Genesis 2-3 are misread, but I don’t have the space to explore that text in detail), they directed their life towards that which was not God. Because of this, they lost their connection with the life of God and began to decay towards nonexistence and corruption. Jesus Christ, eternal God, is crucified and dies in order to repair that primordial separation. He does have life in Himself by necessity- consequently, when He enters into death as the Living One, death itself is filled with life and broken. We still die, but what’s new is that death is no longer a “dead end” (pun honestly not intended), but a door towards the resurrection of the body in glory.
9. In this light, I think we ought to examine the fundamental optimism in the scriptural message about mankind. Many Christians seem to expect the work of God to fail- for the majority of the human family to be lost forever and for Jesus to return and destroy the enemy once the Church fails in its mandate to disciple all nations. In my strongly held view, this is not what the Scriptures teach. When God gives a commandment, He intends for it to be fulfilled. Jesus commands the Church to “baptize” and “disciple” all nations. He issues this commandment in the New Testament four different ways- in Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21. The Holy Spirit Himself is then given to the Church to empower them to carry out this mission. The prophets of Israel and the psalms of David speak over and over about all nations coming to acknowledge and celebrate life in the one God. Isaiah 19 speaks of a world where Israel and its historic oppressors- Egypt and Assyria- are converted and are at peace with each other, each taking delight in the Creator and in His creation of many nations. Thus, I think that we are early in church history- I do not believe Jesus will return for many thousands of years. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 states clearly that Jesus will destroy death in the bodily resurrection of all the children of Adam only after He has first subdued “every rule and authority and power and dominion.”
This text and Ephesians 1- which uses many of the same terms and phrases- make clear that Jesus does this work through the Church, which is His body, suffused and animated with the Spirit. And so I think that the Lord Jesus will return to crown the work of His children- after the family of Adam has been successfully converted for countless generations. The conversion and healing of the nations is the first step in the program, and after all nations are converted, there is still the essential task given to Adam- to study the creation, to learn its ins and outs, and to shape it and enrich it with technology, art, and culture. Today, I think we are at a turning point in the history of the human family, and the development of high technology and instant communication is a deep challenge- but something which is ultimately designed to fulfill God’s purpose.
—
Thus ends the c/p. All the best- for what it’s worth, I will try to pray for you when I remember. And I don’t mean that in a passive-aggressive way. 🙂
Cheers, CP
Sounds like the problem is you need a new wife.