Thanks Archy! It's good to be back home, er, back to the Capernum of cyberspace. It'll be a couple weeks before I go back up to the Jerusalem of cyberspace. Wanna go with me? Did I tell you about the one scribe there with 24,492 posts who called me a troll? That's right! He had narrowed his opinion of me down to two choices: "troll" or "fruitcake". He totally overlooked C.S. Lewis' third option! So I turned the other cheek and said, "Congratulations! Follow me and I will make you a fisher of men!" Fishing...trolling...get it? Well he was not amused, and said something like, "The gospel of Thomas is a joke!" He said that because it's content was obviously - to him - "late" theology, clearly dating post-150 A.D. So I wrote back, and said, Here's a joke for you: Overlord!: How can you tell the difference between early theology and late theology? Sparko: If it's on before 10 pm it's early theology. If it's on after 10 pm it's late theology. Not long after that, I was banned! Can you believe that?! They didn't dare ask me any more questions after that. Christ!
That's what the world is set up to prove. And it does a good job of it. One could argue that it does it perfectly. Perfection is like a fingerprint...if the crime is perfectly concealed. If god were in on the crime, would you expect there to be evidence? I would suggest, that knowing his Self, god could utterly erase any evidence of his existence. Virtually, god would be "dead"...at his own expense...of his own doing. If we were that god, do you think we could get away with this kind of 'murder'? I think we could. Could we not utterly decieve ourselves...given unlimited power to do so? Admittedly, there is no evidence for an evil god, much less a good one. But then, isn't that just a little too perfect? And what if it's set up so that evidence only shows up after we decide what we want to see? If that's the case, then we are extremely decieved, and easily decieved...if we don't want the truth. The day we want the truth is the day "evidence" of it begins to surface. The more we want it, the more evidence. Is that not fair? If everything hinges on what we want, then perhaps there is not an evil god after all. Perhaps there is a good and just god, who gave us power to experience what we wanted as if it were real...regardless it is true. If that's the case, we must simply want the truth to be true to begin seeing evidence. Otherwise, we remain trapped in a matrix of our own making. In the absense of any evidence, faith in truth is not at first justified. But when sustained by desire for the dawning of truth... ...our faith will be justified. At least that is what is promised by "good news". Do you see the paradox? Do you see the fairness? Everybody gets what they want...true or not. Christ!
You have my sympathies there buddy... I'm going to go over there to that theology website and see if I can get them to explain why they don't do some very basic and simple things that the Bible, and the New Testament no less, not that silly Old One, tells them to do... I've done this in person [not at the website, in person with the persons.. that I used to know] and they get very testy, very testy indeed... and then they brand you a heretic and you are not welcome in their woman's club anymore, and take that you fruitcake, don't let the door hit you in the... you know where I'm coming from... What I found, to my great and everlasting edification is that really simple people that just do what the scripture tells them don't need theologians at all. They have the Greatest Theologian Of All Time at their beck and call... "The simple will confound the wise", where did I read that.. oh yeah it was in God's book, you guys know the one, it's the all time best seller of the planet... 8
Most everything Jesus ever said was astonishing. Hence the exclaimation marks. For that matter, "paradise" is astonishing. There's only one word for it... Christ!
Gads, they limit posts to 24,000 characters !!!!!!!!!! These jokers really argue their theology down to the finest of details apparently. I can type but I doubt I can keep up with that crowd... I'm going in... pray for me