August 15, 2007

Man's tension is seeking a known good in a world of wrong.

Without guidance, he ends up destroying what is right in order to explain what is wrong.

August 15, 2007

Does God determine every single event in the universe? If He does, this raises some real thorny questions one must answer. Why will one person's life be spared and not the other? Why will one person be healed and not the other?

These days, you hear from the pulpit a lot about God's destiny and divine will for your life. God has a special plan for your life and if you will just seek Him, it will be shown to you.

The problem with this special plan is what about now? Here you are listening to someone telling you to believe God to show you your way and suddenly you realize by default, you're not in God's plan.

You may be married and suddenly you can ask if this is the one God meant for you to marry. What is happening is, you are being told to find a plan from God and really a plan has already been made. Who gave this person the right to say you are not in God's plan now? You may have raised children and put them through college and what are you to do now?

This is a form of manipulation to appeal to your sense of wanting to do right, especially if you are in a church and acknowledge a God to whom you have pledged an allegiance.

You find this a lot in the TV evangelists when they ask for money. They say give what's on your heart or whatever God speaks to you about. This is putting you in the situation of proving God would speak to you personally. If you do not give something, you cannot possibly be spiritual. Crowd mentality is real and anyone can succumb to it.

July 19, 2007

Having to assume/believe in the historical authenticity of the Bible, physically written by men and yet claiming to be God's communique to man, is a total act of trust. Unless one comes as a child, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

Man's intellect grows on assumptions fed to him through knowledge and experiences.

God has compiled His testimony in such a way as to appeal to the reason of man and to demand trust from the reason of man. By accepting the Bible as what it claims to be, you are putting your entire life and trust in the assumption of men from antiquity claiming to have seen the Christ raised from the dead.

If your eternal life is based on this assumption, you had better make sure the claims these men make are cogent with the reality you live in. After a while of studying the Bible, you understand man could not produce such a consistent discourse through the time in which the Bible was written. You begin to see your trust is not in the hands of men who physically wrote the Bible but in the God they claim. Assuming something is true is done every day. Having adequate reasons for your assumptions is quite another matter.

June 27, 2007

People are trying to credit God with these acts {i.e. hurricane Katrina} against sin when sin has already been taken care of at the cross. To say sin is the reason for a particular event or condition of a country is to forget that sin will be judged by God in the future.

May 19, 2007

We do not proclaim a formula but a hope. Christianity today is more about leading people into a formula to believe rather than of a hope to believe in. We attract people to our churches with programs instead of truth. I believe if you want to get people to be interested in your philosophy [concept of truth] do not try to make it relevant with the current competing philosophies but make it rational.

May 15, 2007

The Bible speaks of spiritual realities but it does not promote a method of how to perform spiritual realities. All these preachers who go to college and learn how to interpret scripture get jobs where all they seem to do is allegorize scripture. They present meaning in metaphors and similes instead of teaching their flocks how to read scripture themselves. I think we as a flock have become accustomed to hearing what we think is inspirational instead of understanding inspiration [encouraging] comes from intellectual understanding. Real inspiration believes in something with courage, and knowledge is the only way to know what you believe in. Without a confidence in what we believe we can't stand for what God has taught.

May 2, 2007

I am not worshiping a God who will not pour out His wrath. I am worshiping a God who desires not to pour out His wrath.

The Bible is about what God has done, not what you are to obtain.

I [cleaned the carpet at a] house today and saw all the pictures of his late wife. The fact of her being alive even now was just overwhelming. I know she is as alive as I am and if she is in the presence of God, she is even more so. I understand you can go to her grave site and pull up her body today. I also know when people remember her, they don't necessarily consider the physical body as who she was. It will be the personality who will be discussed and remembered, not her body. Her person is alive now wherever she is.