Why Create A Mosaic Of Life? Life is often described as a journey or an adventure, but another way to look at it is as a mosaic. For senior citizens, creating a “Mosaic of Life” can be an important way of looking … Continue reading A Mosaic Legacy?
Here’s what I’ve learned since then. The people who scan the heavens and pore over the Bible looking for the return of Jesus aren’t any more faithful, any more Christian, any more privy to the will of God, than the rest of us. Continue reading A Miraculous Intervention…
Every once in a while, I come across an article that jerks me in a different direction. This is one of those times. It is about the story that with his last words, Jesus tore down a wall between God and earth and how Christians have been building walls ever since to replace it. Continue reading Building Walls…
All of us live our lives with great expectations. We dream of a life that is full of love, exciting challenges, and usually luxury. But, what happens when our expectations are blunted by reality? What do we do then? In … Continue reading When Expectations Don’t Meet Reality… And They Rarely Do
How’s that for a question for the ages. I would love to hear your answer to it, especially before you read mine. I usually reserve these types of questions for Sunday, of course, that is because of my Catholic school … Continue reading Without Us, Would God Be God?
I am an avid Star Wars fan and have seen all the existing movies several times. The idea of the “force” and the “dark side” has always fascinated me. The concept of light vs dark has many aspects. With this post I will discuss another one of them.
Continue reading “Light vs Dark”
This post is going to be about trying to dispel the feeling that some have that I am anti-religious. We don’t need less religion, just better versions.
Continue reading “Not Less, But Better…”
With this post I am going to bring back my Sunday talks about spirituality and my enlightened view of things religious. This post is about praying to God.
Continue reading “Are We Praying To A Narcissist God?”
The Old Testament has always been a struggle for me. I find far too many places where God’s wrath is brutally shown. This is in such a total contrast with Jesus Christ I know in the New Testament. It is almost like the good cop/bad cop scenarios that play out so much on the TV cop shows. I tend to refer to it as the all-powerful God vs. the all loving God. Can the two really co-exist or did God basically change his management style between the Old Testament and the New Testament or you could say between the old … Continue reading Contemplating the All Powerful God and the All Loving God…
Britain is becoming an increasingly faithless society, according to a new survey that has found 53% of Britons now describe themselves as having no religion. The proportion is the highest ever, up from 48% in 2015 and 31% in 1983 when the British Social Attitudes survey was begun by the independent National Centre for Social Research. The trend is evident across all age groups but is particularly marked among young people, with 71% of 18-to 24-year-olds surveyed in 2016 saying they had no religion, up from 62% percent the previous year. The majority of older people still have some faith, … Continue reading Having No Religion or Faith..
This is insane, and mainly because God patently hasn’t taken care of any of these things. Humans do these things and humans do stuff to mitigate or eradicate them. God’s still on holiday, where he has been for a few thousand years. Source: Lazy and Incoherent Theology: God Will Take Care of It I know that many of Mr. Trump’s supporters are evangelical Christians who believe that everything that happens, and especially his election, is God’s will. When things happen that they don’t like or can’t reconcile with their beliefs then they fall back on “God works in mysterious ways.” … Continue reading God’s Still On Holiday..
I am certainly one of those whose idea of God has changed drastically during my lifetime. I started out as a kid in a Catholic school in the 1950s who was taught that only Catholics would go to heaven. It is certainly not that God is changing but instead it is my idea of what God is. I have gone from the beliefs of “Only Catholics” to one of Universal Salvation. I deem this change as progress, others more fundamental (stuck in their ways) will say it is heresy. Looking at the ages, the concept of God has changed radically. … Continue reading A Changing God…A God Who Loves Us All
Before I start on my study of the history of the church I want to do an “aside” post here on another topic. I just read a very thoughtful post over at Rachel Held Evan’s blog about mysticism and evangelicalism. In it she was commenting on a book by Tim Challis about how mysticism, which he defined at any experiences with God outside of the Bible, as not being valid. I am not going to get into his arguments to back up this belief nor Rachel’s counter to it. Click on the link above to see all that. Instead I … Continue reading Replacing One Mediator With Another….
Anyone who has read much of this blog knows how I feel about the slippery slope. I believe that the very concept has damaged us theologically, politically and personally beyond anything good that could come out of it. The very concept that everything we believe about a subject becomes worthless if we come to believe that any small part of it is questionable. Here is what Tony Jones says about the slippery slope in his book The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier: That theology is local, conversational, and temporary does not mean that we must hold our beliefs without conviction. … Continue reading Skiing The Slippery Slope
One thing that seems so hard for many fundamentalist Christians is the idea that much of their religious traditions and beliefs come from man, not God. They seem totally unable to even conceive of that idea. Without that acknowledgement they have doomed their version of Christianity to the trash heap of time. Science, that they generally deem as the enemy, will eventually become just be too convincing for them to deny. Before I was excluded from a Lutheran church for my belief that the Bible is not totally literal or inerrant I had a lengthy discussion with a clergy leader … Continue reading Man’s Fingerprints…..
RJ's Corner - Having My Say 