[AslansTraveller]

Quote

4. How might the words of these two scholars Mitroff and Bennis apply to religions of our day? “If humans cannot control the realities with which they are faced, then they will invent unrealities over which they can maintain the illusion of control.”

Very wise. The only caveat I would put on Point 6 is this: I am absolutely certain that I am loved by a personal, loving, passionate God. I have no doubt about any of that. What that means in all the chaos of my life and world I'm learning little by little.

The above quote from the scholars explains why so many people don't worship a living God, but a straw man, a limited God, a set of characteristics or rules or ideas which can be easily manipulated and controlled. We cannot control God. To the extent that we think we can, what we are controlling can't be God.

But the history of religion is of the offer of freedom and love being turned into Law, Rules, Philosophy, Ideology, you name it. We are more comfortable with those things. They fit our expectations, rest easily in our little boxes and don't challenge our categories. But the real Yahweh . . .!

"The Spirit blows whither S/He will . . . "

And who was it in the Bible who said "It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the Living God!"?

[Kay]

AslansTraveller, on Aug 3 2006, 10:11 AM, said:

The above quote from the scholars explains why so many people don't worship a living God, but a straw man, a limited God, a set of characteristics or rules or ideas which can be easily manipulated and controlled.

That's pretty much where I've been stuck over the past few years.

My God had become a set of ontological and philosophical suppositions with no life. As you put in another post somewhere, God became "first principle" which, while perhaps philosophically sound, I found to be wrong, nonetheless.

[AslansTraveller]

Quote

My God had become a set of ontological and philosophical suppositions with no life.

YES!!

That's exactly where I was. I had wonderfully consistent, logical and well defined categories and ideas that I treated as God, but had lost contact with the living God. You know what helped put me back in perspective?

The movies of Kevin Smith

Yep, the guy who made Dogma, Clerks and the like. I was reading a review of his new movie "Clerks II" and the reviewer had a line, something like: "The characters spend their time discussing sex and life in such obscene tems both as a way to fight boredom and to deal with the messy and surprising reality of being human."

"The messy reality of being human". That phrase hit me right between the eyes and I found my self faced with the contradiction of my life: what I believed and how I lived, the reality of the life around me and the life I was looking at through a filter. From there I began to examine and let go of a lot of my categories and certainties, urgent to push aside all the filters and come face-to-face with that living God, the one Jesus revealed (you remember Jesus, the guy hanging out with the hookers, drunks and criminals!).

Smiths' movies keep speaking to me (whether he intended that or not) by celebrating life in all it's woundedness, fallenness and messiness. "Here's life" , they say. And I realize, this is the life, the people, the reality God loves and Jesus died for. Not the clean, well scrubbed (and all too fictional) life of so much conservative theology, but the real one that hits me in the face every day.

As Andrew Greeley liked to say: "God writes straight with crooked lines."

[Kay]

OK, this is totally off topic, but I just had to mention it.

Up until a week or so ago, I was using your current avatar on another site.

The link to Kevin Smiths newest movie is viewaskew, and my husbands online persona is "skewedview."

We seem to like the same authors (Wright, Smith and Schuon).

There's the "Dust of the Rabbi" thing.

And the "wrestling with the angel" thing.

OK - I'll let the whole "synchronicities are cool" thing go now.

This post has been edited by Kay: 11 August 2006 - 03:59 PM

[AslansTraveller]

Or we could just call it, "Great minds think alike"

[Kay]

AslansTraveller, on Aug 12 2006, 10:47 AM, said:

Or we could just call it, "Great minds think alike"

[McKenna]

AslansTraveller, on Aug 3 2006, 10:11 AM, said:

Very wise. The only caveat I would put on Point 6 is this: I am absolutely certain that I am loved by a personal, loving, passionate God. I have no doubt about any of that. What that means in all the chaos of my life and world I'm learning little by little.

The above quote from the scholars explains why so many people don't worship a living God, but a straw man, a limited God, a set of characteristics or rules or ideas which can be easily manipulated and controlled. We cannot control God. To the extent that we think we can, what we are controlling can't be God.

But the history of religion is of the offer of freedom and love being turned into Law, Rules, Philosophy, Ideology, you name it. We are more comfortable with those things. They fit our expectations, rest easily in our little boxes and don't challenge our categories. But the real Yahweh . . .!

"The Spirit blows whither S/He will . . . "

And who was it in the Bible who said "It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the Living God!"?

Love your ideas. I'm trapped somewhere in between the "set of rules" God and the Living God. I'm still grappling. Where did you get such certainty for your caveat?

[tinythinker]

The quote cited from the study guide reminded me of a Hindu/Buddhist quote (that seemed apt and which could be readily adapted to a Christian theme if one wished by using "Satan" instead of "Mara"...):

One day Mara, the Evil One, was travelling through the villages of India with his attendants. He saw a man doing walking meditation whose face was lit up on wonder. The man had just discovered something on the ground in front of him.

Mara's attendant asked what that was and Mara replied, "A piece of truth."

"Doesn't this bother you when someone finds a piece of truth, O Evil One?" his attendant asked.

"No," Mara replied. "Right after this, they usually make a belief out of it."

-From 108 Treasures for the Heart: A Guide for Daily Living by Benny Liow

Yup, yup, yup.