PaulS

No, more of an 'appreciation' for that connectedness. An understanding that it exists. I think you might 'live' an appreciation of it even if you actually think you are just being cold and analytical. I'm not talking about being all goo goo and ga ga over spirituality/connectedness, but rather that we have a sense that we are connected to everything. You are certainly aware that everything is connected - does it influence your life at all? I know it's cliche, but even rich people experience unhappiness, I am confident even those oligarchs with superyachts. Not that being poor makes one happy either, and I don't believe in any romance about not being rich making anybody happier than a rich person. What I am thinking is those who are rich or poor (or anywhere in between) possibly lead happier more fulfilled lives if they feel 'connected' to their existence. Perhaps a superyacht can help that, but I suspect it is not required.

Hi Jim, Hello back from Mandurah, Western Australia. I hope you enjoy participating here and find it to be a useful Forum. I don't know whether you noticed or not but we've just been discussing/questioning spirituality lately in the thread below. Maybe you'd like to broaden what you mean about Grace, 100% physical and 0% spiritual there? Whatever the case, I hope you enjoy it here. Cheers Paul

I think you give me more credit for a 'hocus pocus' connectedness that what I intended to convey. To me 'connectedness' is feeling that you are part of the universe unfolding, or the feeling you get when you 'connect' with other people, or the feeling some get when confronted by the awesomeness of nature. We cannot help but be connected - perhaps it's just 'depths' of feeling/acknowledging it. So perhaps like Joseph's acceptance and your understanding, our connectedness exists whether we like it or not, but maybe spirituality is better defined as awareness of that connectedness. Everything that exists come from the same source so we cannot be anything other than connected, but awareness of that connectedness perhaps helps us lead more pleasant, fulfilling and beneficial lives? Absolutely, that's what I am trying to say. And we all experience this connectedness, or awareness of it, at different levels. We even have many different ways of explaining it without accurately capturing it in a single definition that suits all. I think connectedness/spirituality is important to our lives in the sense that it gives us meaning or reason to live. Ultimately, does that matter, I'm not sure. But for this life, I think people who feel more connected to it have better outcomes both for themselves and for others. For instance, people who feel somewhat connected to nature are less likely to abuse it, a win for everyone else. People who feel connected to others are less likely to hurt others or make their lives hard. Perhaps the opposite to connectedness is selfishness. A good question.

Indeed, what 'is' spirituality? (Phil has got several more sermons to come but I'm not holding out a lot of hope at this point ). And even if it can be defined, you're right to ask "does it matter or not if we have it". I think maybe, spirituality is connectedness to existence. And I think what makes us feel connected to our existence is different for everybody, hence the difficulty in defining it precisely. So in that regard, I think spirituality/connectedness is important for our lives. I don't mean that you have to be a social person, but I think to live well one benefits from being connected to our very existence - whether that be people, nature, philosophy, etc, or a combination of things. Otherwise, I wonder what we really are? But taken a step further, after 70-90 or so years of existing, if we actually cease to exist, what does it really matter as to how we lived?

I was surprised how many people are totally unaware of 'the dark side' of Mother Teresa and her fanatical ideology limiting much compassion. So yes, to be fair to Phil, he may have never heard the counter story.

Yes, Phil has provided his permission. I captured this in the original post under the "Philip Gulley Discussion Forum" I created - see "Philip's Bio" here: Which is where I thought I had captured a link to these essays. I see that I hadn't, but have now corrected it. Thanks. I let Phil know he was welcome to participate when I first sought his permission to share his newsletter sermons. But maybe he'd like to hear from another from the TCPC Forum?

I don't agree with much of this article, but am posting it as part of the ongoing commitment to post from Phil's Blog. My main objection here is the suggestion that we need to stick it out a particular religion for a long period to benefit from it. Personally, I don't think spirituality should ever be that hard. Like Phil says in his article: "spirituality is like true love". Personally I think anybody who has found true love knows it when they find it and they don't have to stick it out for years to realize it. In a sense, you either have it or you don't. Any manner of 'work' so to speak to 'get there', only smacks of bias and indoctrination to me. That said, I do think he is onto something if he means taking the time to allow genuine reflection and contemplation on matters and giving theory a chance to be put into practice before expecting results. Maybe you will read Phil differently though? Over to Phil: I have a friend I’ve known about 10 years. I only see him once a year when he returns to the area. I met him at a talk I was giving, but then he moved shortly afterwards, and we’ve managed to stay in touch through email and the occasional phone call. Once every summer, he returns to see his family and friends and we meet for lunch. When I first met him, he was a Methodist, dabbling in Quakerism. Then he became enchanted with Buddhism, so poked around in that for a few years, before taking a dip in the waters of Unitarian-Universalism. When I saw him this past summer, he was exploring Hinduism. “After all,” he told me, “1.2 billion Hindus can’t be wrong.” But that was eight months ago, and since then he had sent in a sample of his DNA and discovered he was 10% Native American, so is now smoking peyote and communing with the Great Spirit. His interest in spirituality expresses itself in a fascination with the most recent thing he’s learned. Sometime in the next year, he’ll read an article about the latest trend in religion and pronounce himself a devotee of that faith. Like many people, he has assumed spiritual depth comes by leaping from one religion to another, so has never stayed in any one faith long enough to reap its benefits. He’s like a man I know who’s married six different women in search of true love. For God’s sake, I once told him, that isn’t long enough to learn their favorite toothpaste. True love takes at least 20 years. I love that scene in the movie Moonstruck when Olympia Dukakis, who plays the mother, asks her daughter Loretta, played by Cher, if she loves Ronnie Cammareri, and Loretta says, “Ma, I love him awful,” and the mother says, “Oh, God, that’s too bad.” I knew exactly what her mother meant. True love takes at least 20 years. Spirituality is like true love. It isn’t found by leaping from one fad to another. It is more often deeply rooted in a spiritual tradition someone has engaged for many years, often for a lifetime. This past January 22nd, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, passed away at the age of 95, having practiced Buddhism his entire life. He was exiled from Vietnam in 1966 after voicing his opposition to the war, then moved to southern France where he began the Plum Village Monastery. Known as the “Father of Mindfulness,” he wrote and traveled the world part of the year, spending the remainder of the year in contemplation. Rather than sampling a menu of religious traditions, he immersed himself deeply in one, reminding us that spirituality is not a smorgasbord in which we sample whatever catches our eye. It is a profound commitment to the riches of a single love. While spirituality is in conversation with other religious expressions, it remains rooted in its single love. The Dalai Lama didn’t become profound and compassionate by his stints as a Baptist or Scientologist. He became the Dalai Lama by wringing all he could from Tibetan Buddhism. Similarly, Mother Teresa didn’t learn compassion by attending a lecture on reincarnation as a teenager. Her compassion was rooted in an almost 50-year journey with the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. Spirituality is a consequence, a product, of our profound commitment to the riches of a single love. This is why it is possible to find deeply spiritual people in almost every religious tradition. They are the ones who have mined deeply the very best a religion has to offer. And that always takes time. Back when I pastored up in the city, this was in the early ‘90s, a women interested in Quakerism began attending our meeting. Within a month she was arguing with everyone in the Meeting about peace. We weren’t doing enough, we weren’t marching enough, weren’t boycotting enough, weren’t writing the president enough, weren’t teaching our children enough. Then the Bosnian War broke out in the former Yugoslavia, and she announced she was no longer a pacifist, that America needed to bomb the Serbs. I felt this kind of existential whiplash. In the space of a month, she’d gone from Mahatma Gandhi to General MacArthur, because she hadn’t invested the necessary time to plumb the depths of our peace testimony. Spirituality is about depth, not impulsive or volatile passions. It is rooted in our commitment to a set of beliefs we have reflected upon, embraced, and persisted with long enough to shape us. It isn’t predicated on our fickle devotion to the latest religious fad. Joan and I are coming up on our 39th anniversary. We’ve been with one another nearly 2/3 of our lives and I’m still learning new things about her. Just this past week, I discovered she really doesn’t like fried chicken, but has allowed me to drag her all over the Midwest to various fried chicken establishments, indulging my culinary passion without a word of complaint. You can imagine my shock! But other than questioning my wife’s judgment, my point is this: There is always something to learn when one has made a profound commitment to a single love. We must live with someone or something long enough to reap the wheat of their witness, and not just the chaff. This pattern of persisting with a single love raises an important question for us. Do we persist in our spiritual commitments and relational commitments long enough to be positively shaped by them? Or are we too easily distracted by something or someone more alluring, more exciting, more exotic? There is a saying I’m sure all of you have heard, which originated with our Buddhist brothers and sisters. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. So if this were a Quaker query, I would ask, “Are my commitments of long enough duration to learn all I am able to learn?”

I'm sure he had those thoughts (I think many of us do), but he is recognizing that those sort of thoughts are 'dangerous' - By saying "I know how these things work" he is acknowledging where that type of thinking can take us and how it is a downward spiral. He is acknowledging how he was pulling himself up from thinking that way (IMO).

I don't read Gulley that way at all. I don't think he is in any way being serious that he expected God to hear his prayer and execute Putin, or the hamburger kid for that matter. To me he is saying "I know how these things work" as not referring to knowing how 'God' works but rather how 'human nature' works. He is saying that at first this 'power' of having God strike down an evil doer, later corrupts into becoming the striking down of anybody who doesn't do exactly what we think should be done. I don't think he is literally expecting God to become such a weapon, but rather he is saying history has shown us the corrupting influence of belief being so intolerant. Much like how he earlier mentioned how 'religion' develops from persons sharing their perceived experience of the power or presence of God................................. And all is fine….UNTIL….they decide everyone else in the world must have the same perceived experience of the power or presence of God. I think this is what he means by saying "I know how these things work".

Politics - now there is some serious dualism! Not looking forward to the next 6-weeks of campaigning that'll be going on here in Australia - a Federal Election was just called yesterday (as expected). Sadly, our politics have become more like the US where each side (we are largely a two-party system) just try to convince us how bad the other is. I don't think we're as outlandish as the Republicans like MTG, Matt Gaetz or Ron DeSantis, but we're heading that way!

More from Phil: It is good to be back with you. I was in North Carolina last Sunday, speaking to Baptists at a Methodist retreat center. I drove down, but Joan stayed in Danville, hoping to avoid my habit of listening to radio preachers on long car trips. I listen not so much for personal enlightenment, but for psychological insight, wondering about the correlation between psychosis and religious broadcasting. So there I was, driving through Tennessee, listening to a radio preacher talk about how sinful and awful the world was and getting more and more depressed the further I drove. Later that night, after arriving at the conference center, I went online and learned that Tennessee has the third highest rate of depression in the United States, just after Kentucky and right before Arkansas. And what do those three states have in common? You guessed it. Lots of radio preachers telling their listeners how sinful and awful the world is. Lest you think I’m kidding, let me assure you I am not. I believe bad theology has a demoralizing effect on human happiness. It’s like the old saying among computer programmers—garbage in, garbage out. When people are fed a steady diet of toxic religion, their hearts and mind metastasize, eventually destroying their capacity for happiness. These past several weeks we’ve been talking about what it means to be spiritual. We’ve been contrasting spirituality with religion, and I want to suggest that religion is usually the culmination of someone’s spiritual experience. Someone has a profound spiritual experience, they start telling others about it, others say, “Yes, that has happened to me, too.” They meet to talk about it, rituals are created to recreate their initial spiritual experience, then rules are set up impose some order on the group, and before you know it, there are radio preachers. I have a pastor friend named Jim Dant who has a one-minute definition of religion. “An individual has a perceived experience of the power or presence of God. They find others who have had a similar perceived experience of the power or presence of God. These persons gather to share and celebrate their similar perceived experiences of the power or presence of God. They decide to write down their perceived experiences of the power or presence of God. And all is fine….UNTIL….they decide everyone else in the world must have the same perceived experience of the power or presence of God. What began as a profound, life-giving experience becomes a calcified, joy-sapping, life-extinguishing slog. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It is entirely possible to live optimistically in this world, to view the world not as ugly and antagonistic and awful, but as beautiful and cooperative and hopeful. In fact, that’s the only way we’re going to make it. I confess that my commitment to Quaker pacifism has been sorely tested the past several weeks. The other day, I caught myself praying Vladimir Putin would fall over dead. I was nice about it. I told God he didn’t have to suffer any pain, just a quick aneurysm, perhaps while giving a televised speech, so it would give pause to those tempted to behave as he has behaved. To my credit, I felt bad as soon as I prayed it. But it would solve a few problems, wouldn’t it? Still, I know how these things work. If God did that to Vladimir Putin, then someone else would come along who would annoy me, and I’d ask God to kill them too. I would lose any sense of restraint. The other day, I ordered a hamburger and told them “No mustard,” and what do you think the one thing was they put on it? So one day it’s Vladimir Putin, and the next day it’s the teenage boy who screwed up my hamburger. Here’s what I’ve started doing instead, and this might be rooted in my emerging sense of what it means to be spiritual. While it is true our world seems so savage and primal these days, it is also true that for the first time in my life, nearly all the world has united to exclude a world power from the global economy. This is unprecedented. The united response against Vladimir Putin’s evil might well be a great step forward for humanity. With the confluence of global economic connections and widespread access to media, it is now impossible for tyrants to do in light what they once did in darkness. The Dutch theologian Erasmus rightly noted, “Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.” Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself. So I’m looking for ways to give light, because that’s what it means to be spiritual, indeed what it means to be a follower of Jesus—to give light, not darkness; to bring hope, not despair; to walk in optimism, not cynicism. Can we do that together? Can you help your pastor with that, so he doesn’t end up asking God to assassinate certain people. Honestly, I don’t know if this optimism will bear fruit, but I would rather live in a spirit of optimism and hope, than a spirit of pessimism and gloom. Wouldn’t you? This is what it means to be spiritual. To see in every circumstance, no matter how dire, the potential and possibility of good, to see among the fabric of doom the threads of decency and hope. Always remember that human history is not just the story of cruelty and evil. It is also the story of courage, kindness, and compassion. The political scientist and teacher, Howard Zinn, wrote a wonderful book called A People’s History of the United States, an examination of U.S. history from the perspective of the powerless and poor. Zinn has this rare ability to admit and confront America’s shortcomings while remaining optimistic about our experiment in democracy. He wrote, “What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of present moments, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” I know nothing about Howard Zinn’s religious beliefs, but that is one of the finest summations of spirituality I have ever read―to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. So here is to marvelous victories, and to the optimism and courage that make them possible.

On the Bart Erhman blog (https://ehrmanblog.org/member-landing-page/), Bart has been discussing the ideology of domination in the book of Revelation. Although the bulk of his posts are only fully available with a subscription ($30/yr), his summary around this topic has been posted in its entirety for free, so I have taken the opportunity to replicate it here for people to read if interested. Over to Bart: The Apocalypse of John and the Gospel of Jesus: My Final Thoughts April 9, 2022 Here now is the conclusion to my lecture on the ideology of domination in the book of Revelation. ****************************** I conclude with several more focused reflections on whether the Revelation of John represents the Gospel of Jesus. To sum up what I have been emphasizing: there is not a single word in all of Revelation about God loving others and no instruction to the followers of Christ to do so either. Instead, they are called to be “conquerors” – and once they overwhelm the rest of the earth with divine military might, they become its rulers, kings who control “the nations with a rod of iron.” Whether John meant this literally is beside the point. This is how he sees God, Christ, his followers, and the rest of the human race: powerful rulers and abject subjects. Is this what Jesus meant when he told his followers to abandon all desire for greatness? To live lives of service to others? To become slaves? In the book of Revelation Christ’s followers are slaves, but only to God. They despise everyone outside their rank and want their blood to spill, just as Christ himself is explicitly said to hate those who are not true believers – even members of his own churches. The slaves of God are not instructed to love, serve, or help anyone – even when they have the power to do so. They live in the new Jerusalem, a city constructed of gold, jewels, and pearls, where their every need is met and life is so good that they no longer ever shed a tear, for all eternity. Do they use the city’s wealth to help those outside? No. Those outside don’t matter, except to the extent that they bring their own wealth into the city. But no one who engages in abomination or falsehood can do so, because no sinners could possibly set foot in the golden city where Christ resides. Was that Jesus’ view? Did he shun sinners? In Revelation, Jesus and his followers do not come to serve and to give their lives for others. They come to destroy the lives of others and to be served. It is difficult indeed to see how Jesus would countenance such a view. John of Patmos is certainly a committed Christian. He is a passionate follower of the Lamb who wreaks vengeance on earth, a slave of God to the very end. But is he the kind of Christian that Jesus would recognize? In his Quest of the Historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer famously argued that each generation of scholars has painted Jesus in their own image. That is to say, the historical and cultural contexts of biblical scholars affect how they understand Jesus; they invariably portray him as a person of their own time who proclaimed their own perspectives. Enlightenment scholars who rejected the supernatural wrote accounts of a non-miraculous Jesus, where his alleged “miracles” were simply misunderstood by the pre-Enlightenment authors of the Gospels, and so on. Schweitzer’s view has been borne out with a vengeance over the past forty years, including, ironically, among scholars who read and cite his analysis. More than ever, it has become de rigueur to portray Jesus according to one’s own ideological perspectives. And so we have scholars (not to mention preachers) who celebrate the Capitalist Jesus, the Marxist Jesus, the Feminist Jesus, the Counter-cultural Jesus, and the Political Revolutionary Jesus. The Nazis had an Aryan Jesus. Among us today there is a White Nationalist Jesus. Name your ideological preference and write your book. This phenomenon has real-life consequences. Not only do people interested in Jesus paint him in their own image, they also model their lives on the image of Jesus they have painted. Those who see Jesus as a pacifist tend to oppose war and work for peace. Those who see Jesus as an advocate for the poor and needy often engage in volunteer work and generously share their own resources. Those who take to heart Jesus’ teaching, “Judge not lest you be judged” are often open to the opinions and perspectives of others – not to mention their gender identity, race, nationality, religion, and everything else about them that makes them human. Those who see Jesus as one who loves and saves all people equally often work to bring justice and equality to the world. Scriptural portraits of Jesus in these modes can and do make the Christian message a beneficial reality. But what about a portrait of Jesus that shows him as vengeful? Filled with wrath against those who do not believe in him? Infinitely powerful and determined to use his almighty force to dominate those he disapproves of – to harm them, torture them, and massacre them? The Jesus who once suffered and is now out to destroy his persecutors? The Jesus who is interested in material wealth, whose followers will be rewarded with power and domination and allowed to rule the peoples of earth with “a rod of iron”? This is not the Jesus of the Gospels, but it is the wrathful Lamb of the Apocalypse. It is also the portrait of Christ many people prefer today. It is a portrait that enables and encourages Jesus’ followers to embrace violence, vengeance, domination, and exploitation — to do whatever it takes to assert their will on others. Some of these people have been our neighbors. Some of them have been our leaders. Some of them very much want to be our leaders. What would the Jesus of the Gospels make of them? For those of us who choose to follow Jesus – whatever kind of Christian we are or even if we do not identify as Christian — whether we are fundamentalist Christians, evangelicals, liberal main-line Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, agnostics and/or atheists, or anything else our understanding of Jesus will almost certainly affect how we model our lives. Is he the loving, peaceful Jesus found in the Gospels, ever attentive to the needs of others? Or is he the wrathful, vengeful Jesus of the Apocalypse, who seeks to hurt and destroy everyone outside his band? Each of us has to decide.

It makes perfect sense, I just don't believe in that sort of a God. I think, in everything I do, I am already in relationship and communicating with 'God'. For me, God isn't a separate entity that I can talk 'to', but rather if anything, God is something that I experience constantly. I get that that isn't a mainstream Christian understanding, but a God that is separate to me is something that I just don't believe in any more.

I'm a little bit like Rom on this one - if the bible is to be believed where Paul says in Ephesians 4:6 "one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all." It seems to me, that we can't be separate from any God and so therefore we don't have to do anything to 'connect', we already are. I do find meditation and nature help me slow down, reflect more, be more open to love, gratitude and community. That is maybe a sort of connect, but I see it more of stripping away some of the 'other' that distracts me from existing connectedness with everything (i.e God).

I think the first thing Elizabeth, is to not feel stupid about your old beliefs. Billions of people throughout time have believed in a God or Gods of one sort or another. I wonder if a Viking of old brought into today's world would feel stupid about their beliefs in Thor, or if we had an old Egyptian Pharaoh in today's society if he would feel dumb about worshipping the Sun. I think it's normal to desire a protector God or a "it'll-all-be-alright-in-the-end" God figure, in an often harsh and unjust world. About 15 years ago I was pretty much suicidal because I wanted to believe in the "Jesus-saves-us-from-Hell" model, but simply couldn't because I knew it wasn't true. I had read too much about the bible, about history, and about Christianity to believe that tired, old narrative any more. Yet still, I wanted it badly. All I can say about this is "keep breathing". Each day will help a little bit. For me personally, I found it helped reading people like Bart Erhman and Bishop Shelby Spong. I also found it very helpful reading about the history of the bible and Christianity. I found it all helped over the course of the first year or so, and continues on to this day. Don't play down the significance of talking things through with a psychologist either. I found that probably the most immensely helpful process. Plus talking to friends here! The best I can offer is to try and make the most of what time you do have alive and enjoy it as much as you can. I firmly believe that one of two things will happen when we die - 1. we won't know about it as we'll be dead or 2. Everything will be alright. It's a win-win for me, so don't beat yourself up over your non-belief. Any God worth half his measure would understand.

G'day Noodles, I'm in Australia and very happy to say that we don't really have super conservative towns over here (religion's not that much of a big deal in Australia), but can imagine your pain. I'm glad you're finding some sense of community with your online Church. Welcome to the Forum and I hope you enjoy reading and participating here. Feel free to browse (there are heaps of previous discussion threads), comment on any thread, or even start your own thread to kick something off. Thanks for the info about the TOS - I'll look into that. Cheers Paul

Welcome to the Forum, Soliloquy. There is also a heap of previous conversations and subject matter within the archives. Many, many people who have participated here over the years have been through similar experiences. Feel free to comment on or reinvigorate any of them if you would like to. It's not easy coming to the conclusion that what you have been taught and believed all your life, actually has some major flaws that you can no longer ignore. The social aspect alone of no longer believing 'the same' as others, as you point out, can be very ostracizing and unsettling. I wish you and your husband well in this journey. Cheers Paul

Sorry, I have no idea and have never experienced this. It sounds a bit like 'Preview Pane' in File Explorer, but I don't know.

But he couldn't have known about honey because the Quran wasn't written yet!

It is remarkable to me that Christians and Muslims alike, don't question simply why God or Allah left it for so long in our history to come up with a book of so-called wisdom! Surely by their own logic this should have been communicated in full, like the day immediately after creation!

I think you can only be who you are. If what you are learning is changing how you view Christianity, then you really just won't have any choice. We can only deny the cognitive dissonance for so long. For what it's worth, I think once you've worn in your new shoes you'll probably wonder why you ever stuck with the old ones for so long! All the best. Cheers Paul

Maybe, maybe, instead of observing 'us' doing stuff as though God is separate to the universe, somehow the universe is part of God and our experience is the experience for God? I feel that is different to observing vs experiencing. Sagan's Dragon isn't really helpful - it just makes the point that without being able to prove or disprove something, we are free to let our imaginations run free. I fully agree with that. But science also used to be convinced that the sun rotated around the earth, that there were canals on Mars, and that we were born with our minds a blank slate. What I mean is, just because something cannot be proved now doesn't mean that it won't be. Frustrating to be sure, but it stands. My own conscious experience at one level, but then the panentheistic God's experience of my experience, which is actually God's experience in its entirety. Maybe the panetheistic God is like a mother ship - comprising of a zillion souls that experience the universe as all sorts of different atoms, only to eventually return with that experience now included in the entirety that is God? Maybe we don't know that we are actually part of God experiencing the universe unfolding, but one day we will realize it?

I don't think 'God is love' is a necessary requirement for panentheism, but indeed it is an axiom that perhaps many would come up with. For what it's worth, I can't imagine God being nothing but love - if one could ever accurately capture what that means. To me, love is an emotion and when we describe love we can also be talking about lying, deceit, punitive action to persuade, etc. But rather than judging creation as loving or not, I do presently see it as just 'being'. Perhaps that's what a panentheistic God could be - a God that just 'is'? Of course this itself could be an axiom, so maybe we are no closer to the truth, but I have to admit it is beyond me what other strategies there may be determine the answer. For me, I can only imagine such a God to be an existence and to be experiencing the universe unfolding perhaps. I don't imagine a panentheistic to be an observer, but rather an experiencer of what is within it. But again, this is not my held belief - I just find it a bit easier to imagine than most other concepts of God. Yeah, I have to admit that this topic didn't really go anywhere for me. I've really enjoyed a lot of his other sermons, and I thought this one might go down a useful route. But like you, I'm none the wiser as to how he defines spiritual.

I tend to rely on logic and intuition- two totally unreliable strategies! 😆 Yep, other than it comes with a clear disclaimer - i.e. “I have no idea of it’s veracity!”

I guess you should spend your time wherever it suits you best, Rom. But if we don't have free will, then perhaps you and I have no say in the matter anyway as to how we should spend our inquisitive hours. Who knows - I mean the Fairy Investigation Society could have been on the cusp of a huge discovery if they had not given up! Like anything in life, it's a balance. I'm pretty comfortable with the amount of time I spend inquiring about this matter compared to where I am currently at. Like I said, not having answered it doesn't keep me awake at night but I do have time to ponder a bit.