5821	Forums / Main Forum / Re: Does Christianity exaggerate mental illness?	on: December 08, 2008, 12:17:55 PM
The mis representation of truth is always brought about by the internal reality of the person who is under the general frame of that truth. I guess that there are more people who confront this in us than there are who share in this united mindset. I often wonder why God brings this so close to us. Maybe its because we would take it for granted that we know something and we would dwell on our loneliness in the trial rather than be urged on to grow by it. But it can be very lonely in this world. And that can be part of this desire to see all things perfected in Him. The community of the humble is this general awareness that it is more important to be understanding than it is to expose some evil trait. In this sense it is impossible to see how things are accomplished without some sort of focus on the requirement to perform. I mean we are totally passive in our defensive posture. Because we have the sword of the Spirit and we have all of the promises. And this awareness has a built in love of the truth that has all these different potential dangers being handled by Him. I am not sure whether the depravity of the society is easier to handle than the misrepresentation of a persons character by those who mask an interest in being christian. But either way these struggles can be a driving force to help us mature in our suffering.
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5822  Forums / Main Forum / Re: Does Christianity exaggerate mental illness? on: December 08, 2008, 11:25:55 AM Mental illness is very real and does effect a persons ability to receive the things of God, that is the spiritual understanding that is communicated in its proper time frame. It could be that a person believes that he is forgiven but because he is mentally unstable he doesn t receive the comfort in the promise. I know these things are not automatic in the divine revealing. And a lot of this communication to a person is very mysterious. In the past a person who was under a depressed frame of mind was encouraged to perform his task and not give himself time to think, because thinking was too painful and dangerous. So that he would be under a tight schedule and keep himself busy. Sorta going through the motions without having time to be tempted to dwell on the negative thoughts. The brain can be injured by how we use it. Just like a city with many streets so that cars can travel to their destination, so we develop avenues for information to flow in our brains. We can develop an unhealthy flow of information. I personally think that the new drugs are good because they help in keeping a person from injuring his brain and having to go through yrs of retraining it.  Lately i have been thinking that everyone has times where they overdevelop their brains in certain areas based upon their particular personalities and besetting sins. And then when the trouble comes they naturally are led to be dependent as a focus on how they have developed their thinking patterns. Some of us have unknowingly spent so many years in a hardened state that we have no feeling as it relates to our individual thought patterns. If we have lost one thing in this society it is that we have lost our ability to be as innocent as a child in our later yrs. We no longer enjoy things as if we were in our childhood feeling perfectly secure under the loving care of an adult. We have been so deluded about what how we are to think and how we are to react to situations that we are under the delusion that being arrogant is a good trait in adults. I think this is what Jesus was so angry about with the Pharisees. They were so used to scheming and then putting heavy troubles on others that they lost touch with their feelings as they related to life in general. If there was one thing that made them ugly it was that they were more concerned with how they looked in front of other people than they understood about being in the state of experiencing that His yoke is easy and His burdens are lite. In a sense only children have a true experience of this because they are so secure to not worry about their personal needs. In some sense they take it for granted but we as adults should grow past this tendency, yet keep our trust in Him on that level. We should have developed that feeling those things that He has done on our behalf. In this way we are dependent in the rite way.  As a person who struggles with these different paradigms of underlying causes of these different frames , ive have tried through the meditation of the Psalms to develop these healthy traits. Now this is something that is terribly difficult in the maturity process. I mean some of us are given to being very eccentric over details that do not matter. I am not sure whether focusing on Christ and then having a translation into our understanding of some kind of false awareness as a developed neurosis is from bad teaching and bad examples, or it is from a persons physical make up of the brain function. But in my experience a person can go through a trauma and then sorta drive the neurosis into the deep recesses of his being. I dont know how to describe it because it is a meta physical world in itself. But the soul of a man is very deep and we can mask how we feel about things in order to not feel the total effects of the trauma. And then over a long period of time then we begin to feel differently about a certain normal way of thinking and feeling in an area. I think the word of God and the Spirit of God are essential. I do not believe that the word is to be a hammer in that it is essentially a convicting instrument that has a strict heavy weighted effect in bringing these delusions to the surface, or up out of the deep recesses of ones personal deep awareness. But i believe that there are methods, that is there are natural cries from the heart that mirror how we are made. God has given us a handle in the word about this. Now Jesus has said that some of these things in life require much prayer. I mean the disciples, or shepherds were totally helpless to drive the evil spirits out because they did not have the understanding required to pray in this fashion. I do not believe that evil spirits cause a person to be necessarily neurotic. But i do believe that a person can mask that kind of evil frame. But i have had meditations where i have been under great stress and then the welled up emotion over this was buried below the surface and i wasnt aware that it was so heavy in me. Then after much prayer it sorta spilled over in His presence and then all the emotion came to the surface so to speak, that frame , that evil hardness, and then it was as if it was rolled onto Him. I think the word prayed in a fashion that mirrors our design would show us this reality. And then we would learn to not carry the loads we were never required to carry. I do believe this has a lot to do with Gods normal way of dealing with us through grace. I mean at some point we should cherish this searching so that we know of this refuge, that is this being brought to tears over some deep things that are going on in us. And we should have these markers where we know that we were lighten , so that we did not develop unhealthy responses to misrepresenting His anger to be something that He never intended for us to experience in that deep grief. I hope you understand. And then it wont matter what others say of us if we are having this internal peace like a child. Reply Quote Notify

5823  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Christless Church on: December 07, 2008, 02:52:59 PM One of the reasons we focus on the wrong thing is because we do not know the object of what we think we know. And we know the doctrine that we are to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Each man has a desire for the transcendent. That s why we have a problem with making idols. Something good has been placed in man and men have gone astray. So that there are some things that are impossible for some men to love. Just because something is impossible for us to know and do does not mean that we lack the freedom to choose as we please. I mean we cannot fly and remain in one piece,  that is an impossibility, yet we can choose to and suffer death and injury. So this idea that men are restless until they have found God is because it is impossible for men to find God on their own. That s why men can go their whole lives worshiping a god that they have made with their own minds. So that for a man to find pleasure in God is only possible when God reveals Himself to that man. Because men choose what they naturally like the best. And if mans nature is not the nature of God then men will only choose what is good morally for themselves but never find the spiritually good choice. Because the nature of the cause is in the nature of the choice and then the nature of the ends.  That s why we make a distinction  in the old testament between the nation of Israel, the circumcised  , and the elect or the remnant. There is a fundamental difference of loves in each group between what is possible and what is impossible. Not what is according to a self determined choice. Maybe the problem is that we have churches filled with people of whom it impossible to know God in this context.    Reply Quote Notify

5824  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster. on: December 07, 2008, 02:00:46 AM  i think its easy for us to look at ourselves as if we are in this life going through stages. So we get excited about a certain way to overcome our problems and then we go through stage one and so on into maturity. I used to do this when i was caught in the trap of thinking that i had to do something to earn Gods forgiveness. There is something very attractive in this half God and the rest us mentality. Its like living in a mindset of forgiveness and security an on the other hand guilt and uncertainty. In a sense we set ourselves up by having some one who is wise in this world define the problem so that we might have some kind of method in order to get past the pain. So we do something and then we feel proud of ourselves for accomplishing the task. And then there is always something else to work on and so we begin to have the chasing the carrot theology. We chase the carrot in order to feel that we are going through the process of change. Oh..... do i remember that terrible bondage! But see ... now ... i think that the christian way of thinking is like having markers of truth that become more defined as we grow in the Lord. So that as we are growing we are learning the boundaries of freedom that becomes our way of thinking in order to live with as much freedom as we possibly can and yet experience the freedom while we stumble , fall, and sometimes sin greatly. In some sense we like the idea that if we focus on certain deficiencies in our personalities that we will be able to achieve a level of normality in that part. But God is determined to use things that we do not understand, that is that we cannot put a definition to in our physical senses, sight, feel , touch, and smell. God develops our spiritual senses by giving us markers in our thinking. Oh ......oh.....o .... ive got to  say one more thing .....please i have my hand lifted...... ok.... thank you! Look we have in this universe spiritual beings that are not seen by our physical eyes. We have a soul that we cannot define as if it had a figure, or as if it was actively living on the level of feeding we do to our bodies. We do not even understand the nature of the interconnection between our souls and our bodies. Uh...... paleasssse... this universe is meta physical ..... people! Now look...... heres the thing.... i know we are all uppity about our scientific discoveries. Ok so i am looking at you with this dumb stare... and i want to ask... Does the medical discoveries have any effect on the level of the morals of our society? Walla....... because there is more to the design in this universe that seeing things through a micro scope..... as he is sucking down his latte.. Reply Quote Notify

5825  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster. on: December 05, 2008, 05:33:55 PM All of us want to think and do the rite thing at all times in every situation. Not only do we want to think perfectly in our viewing all of the situations and people who we are being influenced by , but we also want to feel that we have a genuine understanding of their particular circumstances and our reacting in a way that would show the most amount of love. So that we have a picture in our minds of living within the reality of what is best for them and our particular interest in the matter. Heres where i want to say ...that having this kind of understanding is greater than we think it is so that the depth of the genuineness of our experience is more than just thinking that we can do something by a simple command. After all we are not dogs who do something good and we get a treat as a reward. But we are volitional , and moral reasoning creatures who define things in terms of the things we learn about God the world and our understanding of how we are to be within that particular reality. We long to be like something we are not. And in this sense the genuineness of our understanding is determined by our depth of living in a certain reality that we have an amount of control over in living beyond the normal genuine rule. This is why Christ was a man who came and revealed Himself to all the sinners and Pharisees as the most genuine man alive. If you think of it Christ understanding of men were beyond our ability to think let alone follow. He saw through every particle  in the universe at all times with the most profound illuminated knowledge that was ever seen in any man on this earth. So that He walk as tho He was the most humbled man that ever walked the earth. Because He viewed things that were beyond this earthly understanding to be genuine enough to understand. He was able to look into the thoughts and intents of other men, that is men who were depraved , and yet knew at the same time that they would think them before they thought them. I mean if you think about this it just blows your mind. And at the same time He was a man acquainted with the feelings of every person. Not only did he know what their particular behavior would be, but he knew intimately how each person would experience the outcome of that behavior whether it was by their circumstances or by personal choices. Christ know so much that He had the key to unlock a person being in bondage so that whatever image a person would be under, Christ brought them into an image of freedom in His presence in His being among sinners, so that they experienced a freedom to think, feel, and act in the rite way. And yet He has promised to be with us through His Spirit in a much greater way Reply Quote Notify

5826  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster. on: December 03, 2008, 04:20:27 PM In the climate we have in our society today there is an indirect mythology that is developed by having a sense of desperation due to the high levels of depravity. Now then living as if there are easy answers can give this mythology of success its life flow. I do believe in balance , not only in the sense of seeing these different faculties of the soul and how we develop a healthy paradigm, but i can see were this same inward reality can be like a working balance in these social norms. In other words it is incumbent on us to not over react out of a fear of finding ourselves under the burdens of a society of these supposed addictions. On the one hand we have a very disciplined view of life in which we focus on creating a culture where everyone has a behavior that finds its healthiness in these shared activities that are ordered, and on the other hand we have the personal liberties , that is a world in which we develop our identity in our individual likes and dislikes. This view is what makes us to come to a situation with an undefined method, or trying to be original in finding a solution to these different problems that present themselves as we live our lives. If we keep our view about these two extremes  then i believe we will develop a healthy balance between the desire to have new information, the ability to measure reality in a more balanced way and the avoidance of the temptation to see only our particular system of morals as better than the next guys. The one thing we do not want to do is to work ourselves into a very narrow model for free thinking and free expression. I mean in the sense of developing a healthy view of having common sense as it relates to our reasoning in these different situations. I think the revelation of God has this component of wisdom that gives us a wide variety of views to our understanding in order to have a general peaceful balanced life. This is that we should avoid at all cost being molded by this present system of the world. And it is very much of a strong temptation to divide our systems of healing and our ability to reason in the world of intuitive originality that we have this ongoing battle. The world has become a place where there is a remedy for every problem we face, a place were we are learning to develop our ideas through the process of systems and finding answers with a limited knowledge of the scope of history and the application of many facets of truth to a particular method. Reply Quote Notify

5827  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster. on: December 03, 2008, 11:57:46 AM The "job to do" is rather simplistic. I mean where ever you are is where God has you and you should work with all your heart. But in receiving rewards or satisfaction of the things and relationships in this world they are only as important as the weight they carry. What i am saying is that this particular set of verses is not talking about a dichotomy between the milk meat and then the responsibilities in terms of jobs ministries etc. But its saying that responsibly starts in the kind of spiritual understanding we have and the kind of inward world we have. So that the epistemology is that we must see everything in terms of the glory of God. And it is just as important to continue to gain understanding as it is to move in this world. But the difference is that this world is passing away. That is not only the choices we make, but it is the system of the world as well. So that without a constant intake of the word there is no understanding on the level of a spiritual men , then there is no maturity in discerning how to get along in this world. Reply Quote Notify

5828  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Dispairing on: December 03, 2008, 11:27:16 AM Who can separate us from His love...who can separate us from the hope of experiencing His eternal love. For we have the nature of the newness of the Spirit. Oh this is His personal promise, the most faithful Father that is beyond our understanding of a Fathers care in any personal acquaintance. Because He has always existed to do good in having Himself receive the pleasure of being on display in His Son for sinners. This is Gods unfailing love. This is His eternal love. This is His unfathomable love. This love opens our eyes to see that He is most beautiful in His glorious illuminations in this present time. Because Christ hung on the cross, then was raised to life, and is seated at the right hand of the Father in all glory, then, who can separate Him from His rule over all things. Who can separate Him from His position of power and glory? Has He not taken care of the most powerful evil person this world has ever encountered? Has He not brought down Satan and his kingdom on this earth for ever more? Then He certainly can come to us by His Spirit and give us the most glorious visions of His love and compassion. Shall we not tarry a while before Him in prayer, Him who has so wonderful in showing His compassion and faithfulness to sinners? There He is calling to us, there He is the God of all grace granting us power from on High to dwell in this eternal love displayed on the cross and we are able to break every power and authority in the name of Christ. But yet, we who are so weak in ourselves find that He dwells with the lowly. For He is the most beautiful example of a man acquainted with sorrows and grief. So that He will not only prove that nothing can separate us from His love, but He will come and convince us the He loves us so that we will rest in His pleasure and peace. Remove Reply Quote Notify

5829  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Dispairing on: December 03, 2008, 10:59:15 AM Our confidence is not in ourselves that we could be selfless enough in order to please our Heavenly Father. Since He has pour out His grace in us ,then we are only confident that it was by the grace of God that we are what we are. Now here we have the most gentle Shepherd who has our interest and struggles within His most loving and gracious hand. For where ever there is any love in a relationship there is the convergence of that gentle disposition. For He is going to find our most troubled hardness and come as the great deli ever in our saving from these different causes in our distance from Him by our lack of trust in His ability to grace us with these gifts of Christ compassion and mercy to sinners. Oh He may pity us who are born in sin, but by His grace He has determined to deal with us through delivering us from this present evil world so that we might find a rest that is uncommon and full of grace . Our Father can be extolled and praised beyond the amount of energy we have in order to give Him the glory He deserves. Because He will not share His glory with us because He is merciful to us that we could never meet that requirement in our selflessness. But He will give us more than we could ever ask or think. This is His gracious infusions of power and praise that the world could never experience. The Father of all mercy and grace over rides our weakness and comes to heal our wounds. We could never find a person on this earth who is so fully aware of our deepest needs .When we come before our loving Father we are drawn out of our hardness, that is our lack of selflessness into His arms by His loving call to us. He comes to us by His Spirit and witnesses with our spirits that we are His children. This is why we can be brought to our senses and see that His glory is the only beautiful sight that we can look upon. Because when His glory fills the room we are made to weep over this worlds degeneration and selfishness that brings such hard hardheartedness and pain. Oh this is where we were made to dwell , that is going from being sinful and unable to be in His loving care, and then He went out of the community outside the city and brought salvation and now we have open access so that no matter how much pain we have in our selfish desires, oh yes, He has determine to make us not want. And now, that is so attractive that we would sell everything just to find that He was all that we needed to go out of ourselves. Remove Reply Quote Notify

5830  Forums / Main Forum / Re: a little Leaven..And Romans 7.. on: December 02, 2008, 01:56:09 PM Let us remember that we have a new mind, we have the mind of Christ. If this is what we are to understand about who God is and what we are like then we have been entirely made new. What ever was under the imagination of what was personal to us in our former way of thinking we are not close to that willing to believe. The reason is that we were not only delivered from ourselves but we were given a power to will what we could never will in ourselves. That is how we are convinced that we can do the works of the Spirit.So that we are confident in that His grace is more powerful than our sin. Because if it is more powerful then it is not equal in its working in us to our working it out through our submitting. But grace precedes all of our willing. It is the unseen working of God in us as a withholding confidence in His will to capture our will and subdue our passions. It is the motor to keep us focused on Christ so that we cannot think and act in a old mindset that brings us under its complete bondage to go in a direction that we have no power to over come. Reply Quote Notify

5831  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Dispairing on: December 02, 2008, 12:42:50 PM We are not involved in a process where we face God who gives us the bottom line, or is using that process to keep us towing the line. But God sees the list of each series of thought process that create the reasons for our reactions to troubles and people. His searching eyes are going to make us terribly dangerous in understanding these different paradigms of thought control in the society of these miss applied authority structures. Our understanding is far greater and deeper than finding relief in a way of learning or some kind of method to protect us from the troubles and ways of this worlds systems. We go to a personal God who sees every detail of our souls. He sees and knows the future intimately, so that His awareness to the details involves His personal touch since He determined to work everything out through His infinite understanding of all things. He changes us through transforming our minds by His revealed knowledge so that from our view its as if He is voicing His understanding to us in our understanding. He deals with us beyond the reason of how we understand the way the world comes to explain these power structures and the kinds of reward and punishment that creates these different powerful paradigms. We offer more trouble to the world because we have a God who reveals Himself to us as our great defender.  This is why sometimes we have things going on in our lives that we do not understand. We are involved in a new world where these ideas are determined to free us from any kind of desire for those things that are dangerous to us and will cause us to be formed in another way so that Gods voice to us will be faint. And yet even tho we may experience a certain hardness in this communication, yet there is no point of time that God will not speak because He is determined for us to know how the intents and thoughts of our hearts are under the obligation to be responsive to His sovereignty.What ever we think about our freedom in relation to His sovereignty then, His working is perfectly performing in us in how we are confronted with the temptations from without and the struggles from within. There is at no point were we can say that He is not doing the good we need or that we are not facing a lack of confidence in what He is doing. This is why that when He speaks it is very profound in us that we sometimes are confounded with all of the inner struggles. Because He will make us more like Christ.  Remove Reply Quote Notify

5832	Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Dispairing	on: December 01, 2008, 10:09:28 PM
Thanks for responding gk. Yes this is a quite different Psalm here and the order of the Psalms i believe have a certain flow. Kind of interconnect in some ways. But the Psalms are mainly a collection of individual Psalms for the purpose of explaining the relationship between experience and something else, so that they are put in different books. This isnt my point to go into all of this. But the Psalms usually start out with a lament and then they go to a reminder of who God is, then the tone of the psalm is changed from lamenting and having some kind of grief to praise, adoration and worship. Within the Psalm there a pauses, kind of like reflections in which the Psalmist is sighing and then trying to make sense of being in a situation where he knows and feels as if he is struggling to find whatever he is searching for, in the call, the plea of faith, the past dealings with God or having the sense as if there is forgiveness in God and a peace in God alone. This is why there is this pause in the meditation. Now sometimes there are these very high experiences in the sigh, and sometimes there are very low experiences in the sigh. When there is this darkness of the providence of God then there is this desperation to find the hope in the promises of God. Now there is a tremendous struggle, but always a determination to come again to the Psalm for more relief. Well I think that Psalm 88 is the only Psalm that ends in this dark providence way. In most of the other Psalms of lament and pain the Psalmist works his way out of grief into praise. Kind of like Psalm 102. But maybe 88 is when he is having a problem when he is much older and he is the only one left of his family or relatives. But there is in this Psalm the reality that God has these times for the believer so that we might find all of our hope in Him. Now there is the positive angle and the negative angle. The positive angle is gaining a certian contentment in going through the rough times in life and finding out that even tho there are other things we could love, yet our longings have been refined (for a better word) so that we are experiencing the stronger desires for God than for these other things. Kind of like a child being weened by his mother so that he is resting from something. The other angle is that we are so burdened by a trial that we find very little comfort in this life. Our desires have been so much under the amount of trouble that we are struggling to find our way out of the darkness of the trial to find relief in Him. And so its interesting that this Psalm 88 leaves us in this dark trial. If your not able to handle how this ending is then dont read this next part. But in a way we are the most miserable creatures under the judgment of Adam for our sin. Here we are looking for hope in this life and it is a succession of struggles. We find relief in Him only to find that it was short lived and we are back to struggling. And yet there is hope over the long haul that the depth of the pain and the length of the pain is less effecting our general peaceful disposition. But then here is where we are it was all going to end here on this earth, its only a sojourn here. Those closest to us pass, good friends move on, relationships take on a different paradigm and we come to the end and find that everyone we depended on is gone. So this is the reality of just how much control we have over our own lives. We cannot escape death and some of us wont escape this darkness of loss. So it is best to hope in Him in the good times and the bad. This is why we have His promises. 5836  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Understanding on: November 30, 2008, 06:53:02 PM Quote from: Backagain on November 30, 2008, 06:44:43 PM My thought's were towards a more literal meaning of what you said. Another words do we have the right's to our mind.  Just a thought.  I sense that you and I process info and look at thing's from a very different angle.  You seem to like life in black and white.  We're just different. I really don't know why we have what we have in what we call the World.  i dont think you can do something that you do not want to do for what ever reason.Maybe you might not act on some thoughts but you act on others. The question is what motivates the action. Just because you do not understand in a complete way the reasons behind your motives doesnt mean you can say it wasnt your choice.It comes down to you saying i didnt want to do what i did, or i didnt do what i did. This is one angle of a variety of paradigms. I do believe in balance here. Reply Quote Notify 5837  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Understanding on: November 30, 2008, 06:27:16 PM Quote from: Backagain on November 30, 2008, 06:19:18 PM Does anyone have a mind of thier own. . . . . That's something to think about.  Are you saying that what we have in the world is a result of mindlessness. I would say that what is made actually shows the personal nature of being able to translate thought into a reasonable explanation of personal identity Reply Quote Notify 5838  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Understanding on: November 30, 2008, 06:14:30 PM No i think its the other way around. Your the one who doesnt have a mind of his own and we are t he ones who think for ourselves. We understand more than you do about truth. Sir if you can give me something that i havent thought about that you have , and at least i have already considered it foolish then i sure would like to hear this deep insight. 5841  Forums / Current Events / Re: Illegitmacy on: November 30, 2008, 02:40:34 PM Because of our identity in Christ we not only have a potential identity in experience, but we are already one in Him as if all of the working energy has been wrapped up in our experiencing Him as our source and the end for which we are confident of what we are unaware of in this life because of faith. With this attachment to the present configuration of our thoughts and from without that give us a certain level of confidence in our understanding the working of His working power that goes before us. There are these determinations of how the general awareness of societal morals and norms that bring about these allusions in supporting our understanding that play on our understanding of this paradigm of these working powers.We must explore these areas of illegitimacy in its working that gives us a general hardness in the working out of our original renewal and our healthy attachments as our source of a healthy disposition. Remove Reply Quote Notify 5842  Forums / Current Events / Re: Illegitmacy on: November 30, 2008, 02:39:50 PM Exploring the eternal nature of the Son of God then is in the expression of bringing about this adopted effect in all of the history of the world. This is what we call redemption. So that we can look at the incarnation as the revealing of the man Jesus who suffered in a world that determined the community paradigm as being illegitimate.So that His presence in the old testament was in the expression of His love toward the stranger,the sojourner,the fatherless, and the widow. If it was anyone who plunged the depths of the strangeness of illegitimacy it was Jesus human experience in that society in which he came into this world. He came to set the captive free by being a captive to the norms of sinful men who expressed that hatred in falsely accusing Him of being a child of a human father in wondering just who His father was. Remove Reply Quote Notify 5843  Forums / Current Events / Illegitmacy on: November 30, 2008, 02:38:12 PM Now sin can get to a level in society where the normality of the values of people are turned upside down. This is the root cause of the pain experience by a degenerate society. It is the standard of the bible to measure all levels of these different paradigms of stigmas attached to social disorders to begin with how treacherous is its practice. So that we have the divine standard that is spoken through grace into this divine order of things. And yet God requires of us to think and speak as He does. This is how we come to live in a functional manner and what constitutes the standard of dysfunction. Now it has always amazed me how in the old testament that the stranger was always accommodated into the fabric of that society as if he were without any of this dysfunctional stigma. Whether there is a general tendency to find the free flow of sins power in a society of pragmatism by incorporating these different standards of conduct may be the nexus of one having problems with his own household. We can think of Gods definition of man under the bonds of sin as being different than the working definition of man in his freedom of expression. Man lives as if his healthy outlook was determined by his family norms and values. But God looks at all men through the system of adoption , so that there is a certain tendency to have the identity of strangeness in this world. I mean how can we determine what effect mans self will has on his environment unless it translates into some form of pain in the pox. After all then society functions through acceptance in a world of desired effect rather than a world defined by the self determination of men. So there is this love and hate that attends how men are accepted in that society. And this is what standard the bible has as the nexus between what is defined by Christ as murder and what is defined as acceptance. I will write later. This is terribly 5848  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Spitiual Mysticism vs. Spiritual Maturity on: November 26, 2008, 12:34:53 PM We do not understand half the things that are revealed. Ok, we can agree on the doctrines of salvation. But then even those things that are revealed we cant agree on. And then we may think we know but then we are always coming to the place in the future were we realize we know nothing or we have wasted all that time trying to understand. I think its because God has so much knowledge that we are always confounded when He has an expression of it through us. Well, man , there is this attitude that we have arrived and the process of knowing is all absolutely sure. In a sense thats when we stop letting God be God. But even in heaven we will be learning for eternity. Remove Reply Quote Notify 5849  Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Spitiual Mysticism vs. Spiritual Maturity on: November 26, 2008, 12:14:12 PM I think we would all be more sure of this spiritual community if we had people around us who could answer all of our questions, give us personal instruction, and give us an assurance that we are doing the rite things. I mean we are dumb sheep after all. I really do not want to take sides here. Cause i think we can quench the Spirit as well as put God in a box. So i am trying to live with the reality that these things are not bringing us to the conclusion that if we just do certain things or fall in line with how we think we are gifted and everyone around us is to act according to their particular gifts and their ministries that we are satisfied with this kind of fellowship. For one we are not primarily a mechanistic functioning community. We are an organism that is functioning on a very undefinable attributes that are to be displayed in a particular situation. I mean in considering a certain method, do we really have a grasp on how we are to perform as if we are able to think about those different experiences that we have no knowledge of or that we have no personal experience in so that we can match the proper medicine with the diseased part of the functioning life flow of the body? I dont know, but i think there is more waiting here for an answer, there is more giving without expecting, there is more consoling than ordering. I mean we find the order in the advancement of spiritual vitality. Yes, there are meetings, people who have an opinion and a purpose in trying to feel that they are part of something bigger. But maybe the answer is in not having an answer until we find the answer in living without all the answers together. Remove Reply Quote Notify 5850  Forums / Politics Forum / Re: This is where we are on: November 26, 2008, 11:43:37 AM OK, We all know that the reason there is terrorist who can generate dollars is not because of the attractiveness of the occupation they are in. We all know what the source of their financial backing comes from. Shall we say OIL? Its foolish to think that the war is just about ending terrorism. Do you think we would give a rats a ss if there was no regional value in this whole war on terror? I mean, is the source of the power of terrorist in Afghanistan? Are you crazy? The only real potential of disaster is a war of the worlds resources. We are just about as crazy as the environmentalist. I mean we are a divided nation. Ok, look, the problems in our economy are not just related to the war on terror. I mean we are just as foolish as the terrorist if we cannot become energy independent. All of that money spent on keeping the resources flowing may prove in the end to be a waste, but its obvious we are a divided country. I think this is the real struggle.