The Lost Ball in th the Tall Weeds Is Found and Returned to this Forum

[Deadworm]

J was just searching;the internet for a progressive Christian forum in my flight from the offensive dogmatism and judgmental spirit of the various conservative Christian sites online.  When I found this "new" site, I wondered if I might find it interesting to camp out here.  But when I tried to sign up, I was told I had already joined.  So I signed in and realized to my great dismay that I had already joined 5+ years ago and had even started a thread in the journey section, which I had just started and then strangely abandoned for no reason.  Djd a progressjve alien erase my memory, so that I utterly forgot that I registered and started that post.  LOL.  Well, I'm baaaaack!  I'll continue my abandoned thread.  Let me know if you have any questions about any of the experiences reported there.

When Billy Graham retired, he became more progressive to the point where he is now villified by many evangelicals.  He is the source for 1 of my favorite quotes:

"Theological understanding is the booby prize because it offers just enough spirituality to inoculate you against the real thing."

Bv "real thing" he meant life-changing transformative experience of the divine.  I grew up Pentecostal before I rebelled against its fundamentalism.  But for all its faults, it did transform me into a  kind of mystic with many paranormal experiences that I treasure, even if I can't fit them all into a coherent worldview.

My other favorite quote is from G K. Chesterton's essay "Twelve Men," written to oppose the movement in Britan to eliminate the jury of ordinary people and replace them with lawyers.

Against this, Chesterton pithily replies, "The more a man looks at a thing the less he can see it, and the more a man learns a thing the less he knows it."

I thiink this saying might also apply to spiritual quests, mine included.  I tend to live in my head too much and not enough from my heart and intuition.

[PaulS]

Welcome back to the Forum, Deadworm, even if found a second-time accidentally!

[tariki]

On 10/11/2024 at 5:39 AM, Deadworm said:

 Chesterton's 

Thanks. Liked the G K Chesterton quotes. My favourite of his is:-

 

"One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak."

 

 Its often said that the reason many can never "see" God is because they never look low enough.

I happen to think that there is in fact NO theology in the Bible. Constructing one from it simply kills revelation stone dead.

 

On quotes:-

There is much to be learned from older ways of thinking about religion. We have seen that far from regarding revelation as static, fixed and unchanging, Jews, Christians and Muslims all knew that revealed truth was symbolic, that scripture could not be interpreted literally, and that sacred texts had multiple meaning and could lead to entirely fresh insights. Revelation was not an event that had happened once in the distant past, but was an ongoing, creative process that required human ingenuity. They understood that revelation did not provide us with infallible information about the divine, because this would always remain beyond our ken.

(Karen Armstrong)

 

That's enough, just very tired at the moment. 

Welcome back to the forum.