First,
I ask them why they do not quote Africa, and Egypt, and all Asia, just
because in all those regions there was a cessation of that sacred
succession, by the aid of which they vaunt of having continued Churches.
They therefore fall back on the assertion, that they have the true
Church, because ever since it began to exist it was never destitute of
bishops, because they succeeded each other in an unbroken series. But
what if I bring Greece before them? Therefore, I again ask them, Why
they say that the Church perished among the Greeks, among whom there
never was any interruption in the succession of bishops - a succession,
in their opinion, the only guardian and preserver of the Church? They
make the Greeks schismatic. Why? because, by revolting from the
Apostolic See, they lost their privilege. What? Do not those who revolt
from Christ much more deserve to lose it? It follows, therefore, that
the pretence of succession is vain, if posterity do not retain the truth
of Christ, which was handed down to them by their fathers, safe and
uncorrupted, and continue in it. Calvin
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Forums / Main Forum / What Struggle?
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on: February 02, 2007, 08:54:14 AM
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"Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything
you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it."
I don't recall who made this statement, I like it.
I
am finishing the last 3 weeks of an IT Associates Degree, do you think I
might be freaking anxious. I know there is better. Prayer does a soul
good.
Youve got to remember one thing tho. The world is full of
people who have made plans that are looked on as very wise. People fill
the churches with a cultural bias that are historically unconnected to
Christo centric views. I dont know if you are older than i but in our
way of doing things as humans we tend to live on our own measurements as
to what we want and what we give. We end up with a lot of money and a lot
of grief. The world is a place were we love the comfort of our
abilities. We love to have a view of ourselves and our ability to feel
loved based upon have fast we can change our circumstances and how fast
we can change our morals. In this culture we are all in a big worldly
things oriented way of thinking. What once was easy for our parents to achieve is becoming more difficult because when people seek to develop
their one moral system with checks and balances then there will be a lot
of grief from loving this world. We raise our girls to think of career
rather than marriage, we average two children for each family, we are a
nation that is in debt. We are the most integrated personality society
that ever existed on the earth. We hate God having absolute control. We
are a nation where the old are taking from the young. We have not become
better by trying to create a better world for ourselves but we have
become detestable. Our views are so mixed with deism and independence
that we have a 50 percent divorce rate. We have denied the reality of
God publicly and we deceive ourselves into thinking that the children
will grow into loving God by our attention to them in a quality way
rather than a quantity way. We really get into the trap that we make our
own way so that when our world that we have built for ourselves becomes a
form of self identity rather than a real understanding of living under
the power of grace. It has become a personal war where we are warring
not only against the world but we are warring against the idols that are
in our churches. We preach that we should give, but we never give
attention to the young mothers who are working in order to give. We do
not consider her children of more important than the giving. We ignore
direct practical instruction to the young and to mothers and children
for the sake of the religious system. We are in a sense engulfed in a
form of slavery under a religious system that equal to that of Christ
day. These areas of deism paradigm are not fought in the political realm
but they are personal struggles in families that are confronted with
them on a daily basis. I wont mention any other statistics because they
will only support my contention.
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Forums / Main Forum / What Struggle?
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on: February 02, 2007, 07:27:57 AM
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Something more from the Corinthians resonates:
1Co 15:19 If our hope in Christ is good only for this life, we are worse off than anyone else.
1Co 15:36 Don't be foolish. A seed must die before it can sprout from the ground.
Co 15:53 Our dead and decaying bodies will be changed into bodies that won't die or decay.
1Co
15:58 My dear friends, stand firm and don't be shaken. Always keep
busy working for the Lord. You know that everything you do for him is
worthwhile.
My sense of hope is greater than the sum of the parts that I have on my own.
I
hard Jack Canfield saying that if you complain your not taking 100%
responsibility for your life and actions. Where I am today is a result
of my previous thoughts and actions. So if I want something different I
must be willing to risk creating something new by what I think, do and
say. Thats how I can utilize my free will, ideas and goals to gain a
better position in this life.
low-low, Paul in this passage is not saying that we should ignore the temporal, or that we should think that it has no weight on
our experience. There are times when our complaining is ok. As long as
we live on this earth we are going to experience pain from sin and from
being physically exhausted and sick.
Paul is saying that our joy, or
our attitude is not determined by these circumstances. Our life is not
really made up of all of the things that we do and say and all of the
consequences we suffer as a result of sin. We do not live in the
mentality of legal responsibility. We do not measure our happiness by our
own abilities and our own discipline. We do not try to fill our lives
with so much responsibility that we see ourselves as taking care of all
the little things. No Paul is saying that he christian really lives in
another world. A christian has a home that is not here, he has a
physical existence in this world that is only temporary ,his best
friends are not in this world, his earthly treasures are not what he is
seeking, his future plans are not in this realm, his happiness is not
determined by his choices, his love is not earned , his soul is not
overburdened by philosophy and discipline. No the christian is a man is a
man who knows that he does not belong to this world, he knows that what
he feels as a result of belonging to another person whos love far
greater than any thing he knows on this earth is what calls him to think
differently. Because of Christ we can live in the heaven-lies in our
minds. Unless we are heavenly minded we will be no earthly good.
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Forums / Main Forum / Responding To Romans 7
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on: February 01, 2007, 02:11:19 PM
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hey folks,
How would you respond to a believer that thought Paul was being to
hard on himself in Romans 7? What if they didn't think it applied or
related to them?I know how I responded but I'm just looking for some
other's opinions. Thanks.RR
Well,
Paul was expressing the doctrine of grace in rom. 7. I think in rom. 7
paul was giving the christian a break. He had been saying from the beginning of rom. that all men were condemned and under sin, and under a
very negative relationship to the law. The law leads men to be silent
because after the law speaks it condemns all men. And so the world of
all men is hopelessly heading toward destruction. And so paul in essence
says that even those who think that they keep the law , they are
mistaken. Even those who have a new identity in Christ stand before the
law and are silenced. And so Paul was expressing that He loved the law,
and that He was always thinking of the law so that He was meditating on
it day and night. Got to go.
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Forums / Main Forum / Moderator Musings
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on: January 31, 2007, 03:53:32 PM
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In
flying to Christ we can be very honest to Him. We can come with all of
our weight of hate. We can go before Him in prayer and plead with Him
and His promises. We do not need to pay back anyone. We do not need to
feel that we are a slave to our anger. We have the throne of grace where
we can go and leave it at His seat. He has our best interest. Not only
does He give us what we pray for , but He offers full relief from the
hatred we receive from others and from our own sins. We learn more about
His love when we see the connections of hatred that we experience so
that we are not numb to our own experience but we are getting a sense
that His love is greater. We will not rest in Him until we have poured
out our hearts to Him, even all of our anger.
Dont hold your anger
in. Dont let it destroy you. There is only one reality when you hold
onto your anger. It will lead you to a state of hopelessness. He knows
our frame, He knows that we are weak. Those who are week receive all of
the anger from the world. The reason is because Christ is close to the
humble. And what we feel as a result of hatred is the pain of
helplessness. It is those who worship at His footstool that are receiving the hatred. We really have no where else to go. All of men
have tongues as sharp as arrows compared to Christ abiding promises,
when He speaks the His voice answers our hateful condition. We must see
that our only refuge is in Him. Once we receive such venom from men,
because men deceive themselves who are not calling out to God. Most men
pray little and do alot of work. Most men think that they are loving and
honest. Most men give out the hatred because they have never come to
terms with how much anger fills their world. They live in total denial
thinking that they are able to trade their work for keeping the hatred
at bay. It isnt until the crutch of self righteousness is broken that
they begin to make God the only refuge they have from the hatred. Unless
we are bringing God our most deepest feelings we will never ponder His
great works because we will never experience His loving us, putting His
arms around us. We will only live in the dread of our own self
righteousness.
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Forums / Main Forum / Moderator Musings
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on: January 31, 2007, 02:30:15 PM
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A
thousand hatreds to those who think that they can hate perfectly. For
what is self righteousness but hate. If God is love then our best love
is hate. Sin is hate , and the pain of sin is from hate. Hate is what
causes pain. Hate comes into the soul as a sword pierces a mans flesh.
Just as we are familiar with sin, so that what sin we have is so great
that it cannot balance the scales of acceptance with God, so at the end
of the sword of sin from without is the poison of hate. We are so
familiar with hate that it has become our blindness.
In hate we
find our only relief of the pain in Christ. There is nothing in Christ
that demands a payment. Everything that comes from Christ is love. To
love Christ is to see our inability to love. We hate when we place
ourselves as God who hates perfectly. Just as God is love, hate is
taking from the glory of Christ. All of our good works are hate because
part of the action comes from us. The only relief is to see that our
righteousness is only accepted in the righteousness of Christ and it is
given to us by grace alone. Unless we come to our inability we will only
live in the hate of human achievement. We will conclude that we are
good in ourselves, which is where hate comes from. We must fly to Christ
from our hate. We must see that the hate we feel in every pain is only
because we live in a world of hate and we are full of hate. We must see
that all hate ends in Christ love because we are giving Him the praise
whos only return is love.
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Forums / Main Forum / Is Mortal Important?
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on: January 30, 2007, 07:03:32 PM
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I
do not think you can get away from either reality. The physical earthly
reality and the eternal heavenly reality are both extremely important.
We are eternally body and spirit in unity. We do not understand how
these interact but what we expereince in our bodies does effect our
spirits and vise versa. Every second we have sensations that are in
direct result of what we are thinking. The physical sensations have an
effect on our rejoicing in Christ. When we look at a beautiful scene we
rejoice in the eternal cause. All of these sensations from seeing effect
how we rejoice in Christ.
When we suffer , we are suffering the
pains of death. We do not want to think about dieing but the we are
slowly experiencing the effects of sin and death as we grow older. We
grow weary, and experience more predujice as we grow older. The
expectations that we once had we are no longer able to acheive. Even
some of the enjoyments that were at the height of our sensational
experience have lessened.
One of the depressing realities we have
is when we have had such glorious experiences from the Holy Spirit in
which we had such sensations of divine influence in our bodies that we
did in our younger years some physically powerful effective work, and to
see that lesson as the years go by brings much sorrow.
And yet we
still are more profoundly effected in the Spirits work in our bodies. We
can not understand how the Holy Spirit brings about life to our bodies
but He has directly caused us to live longer and fuller at the minute by
minute expereince in our lives. The longer we ponder on the word the
more the Spirit sets in motion the function of the brain and the greater
freedom in the formation of brain cells. We can change the cemical
balance of our brains by how we think. So when we begin taking captive
every thought we begin by the word the Spirit causes us to have greater
physical sensations as we view the glory of Christ in the face of Jesus.
So that when we get to heaven we will recognize Him in a physical sense
by us being taught by Him through the Spirit in an eternal real way.
But because we only see through a glass darkly the reward will be for us
what the Holy Spirit has done in the transition between heaven and
earth through our prayers.
It is what we experience in the decrees,
the commands, the laws, the promises in the preaching of the word that
we are saved in. We look at Christ in a saving way through our physical
senses in the preaching of the word. How we see Him , begins to develope
in our bodies the experience of Him in the preaching. What the Holy
Spirit does secretly is regenerate us as we are hearing the word and
responding to it with joy unspeakable and full of glory. That would be
the initial regeneration, and so it is not necessarily with what we say
with our mouths as to believing in the heart. That is the whole person
becomes the mouthpeice of inexpressible glories that pass through the
senses.
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7939
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Forums / Main Forum / Admirer Or Follower?
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on: January 30, 2007, 02:51:52 PM
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There
is some good that can come out of this holy hell. If we feel our
powerlessness we will be drawn to God. We will have so much deperation
that we will long for rest under in His house. We will only know His
love and faithfulness calling when we are just coming home to our
Fathers couch , from a life of sin and dredgery. In Him is absoute
saftey, He will speak to us so that we feel like a thousand angels are
all around us fighting against the forces of evil, and clearing a path
of love in front of us. Oh to be in His house from a life of sin. Oh how
we are so prodical in our distresses. In His house we are sorrounded by
the strongest fortress. Our crying out to him in such utter
hopelessness brings about His abiding protection. We loose a sense of
our diffuculties when we find the Fathers room. We sense a lifting of
our pain and suffering as we fall into His arms. In His house we only
get hugged, and love chases us , and His faithfulness sorrounds us. We
could be in the worse of circumstances , and still lay in His arms in
His house.
There we feel so much of His presence that we are so free
to feast at His table. He bids us to come and eat with Him. We get so
much refreshment at His table that we forget the feast in front of us
and feel His love, and glory falling down. There we know that He rules
over all nations. THere we worship Him as He is exalted over all
nations. There we feel our inabilty and our helplessness so that we are
being undergirded by His love and we are being sorrounded by His love as
He works out His plan in the nations. There He gives us a sense of His
perfect contol even over the rulers of the earth. There we exist as
people with so much diffuculty, but we are exalting our loving Father.
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7941
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Forums / Theology Forum / Which One Is The Gift?
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on: January 30, 2007, 01:28:43 PM
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By necessity, i gather you mean something necessary and not poverty (pun intended)!
I
don't think the choice to accept Christ is ever necessary (or forced by
God), neither do i think the choice to reject Christ is ever necessary
(or forced by the nature God gave us). What is necessary is making a
choice. As the old Rush song goes: \"If you choose not to decide, you
still have made a choice.\" Jesus our God said something similar: This
is my contention about moral choices, that there must be a necessity or
the choice would come from nothing. THat is why the opposite of
necessity is impossibility, or inability. I take it that from your view
that you are saying the opposite of nothing is impossibility.
Just
look at natural ability. You can look at the created order and see that
there is a necessity that God created these things. In fact in order
for there to be an ongoing existence in creation there must be a
necessary cause. Let me just digress here an leave a little off from
moral necessity and talk about Gods passive decrees.
There is no
doubt that moral necessity is different between natural necessity in
that moral necessity has within the paradigm a choice according to the
strongest desire. And i understand the the moral choices can change the
outcome of the natural course of the universe. Yet God has decreed all
things to come to pass, even the course of things that are determined to
be sin.
I am constantly hearing how King David was to lenient with
his children. And then there is the who paradigm of he should have been
out to war instead of staying home to be tempted to adultery and murder.
Yet if David was lenient then God would need to apostatized to Solomon.
Just teaching arminist moral-ism in the scripture without considering
Gods purposes in the moral decisions of man brings about alot of miss
applications in scripture.
In fact Solomon was given earthly wealth
than any one in history, abused that wealth , and God was still giving
him the wealth even while he was abusing it. Now these things had
lasting consequences on the future state of Israel. Solomon's abuse
caused the divided kingdom and had lasting effects on many of the future
generations. There is no passive decree in arminism. And so the
covenant theology is of little consequence in the evolution of thought
in that scheme. God who is a covenant loving God gives in grace, not in
the legal sense. What we do is a result of what He has already done in
us I will get into this argument of contingency and necessity a little
bit more later..
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Forums / Main Forum / Online Relationships
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on: January 27, 2007, 04:31:34 PM
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The
society of men is a society indulgent on instant gratification. There
is no greater threat to the Spiritual welfare of society than for men to
think better of themselves by how many friends they have, or how
disciplined they are , or how much money they have. Men are soft and
cowardly in the exercise of spiritual gifts. Men naturally think that
they are the captain of their own world, that they choose for themselves
all the goodness that they have and all the good possessions that they surround themselves with. Men live in a fantasy world of luxury. Take
away the monies, houses, family and religious men will not out rite
curse God but will cringe at the thought of pouring their hearts out in
love to God. They are more interested in blaming second causes ,rather
than bowing down and seeing the terror of the Lord. The Lord is to be
feared, He is awesome, He sets one up and brings another down. The Lord
gives and the Lord takes away. But men think that they are too good for
God to not take some kind of responsibility in the out come of their
lives. They would much rather remain in the state of indifference and
managed lifestyle than to return to the Lord with all of their hearts
and bow down to Him and acknowledge that He is awesome in His discipline.
Leaders
are fearful, coveting, greedy, and most leaders are like snakes who
cannot be charmed. Leaders are not interested in acknowledging God as
having the sole rite to rule. Most leaders are full of power, free
choice power, thinking that they have a rite to develop their own form
of righteousness. They will not pray about every thing because deep down
inside they have believe the free will crap, and so they remain in
indifference thinking that one more dictate will solve the problem. They
have no understanding of the lowly, the broken hearten, the down cast ,
because they are too busy with their moral endeavors and their own
agenda to see the absolute inability to build a house unless God builds
it. Thats why prayer, reading the word , worship, are secondary to
,buildings, money, committees,and dress. Men want to develop a scheme in
which they imagine that they actually help God by being in the position
of leadership. The great Shepperd and the weight of His glory are foreign
to them because they live in a religiosity that comes from their
imaginations. There are no new converts accept those who love cleaning
the outside while leaving the poor in their helpless state. Yes mens
hearts are far from the Lord but they are religious.
| 7962
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Forums / Main Forum / Online Relationships
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on: January 27, 2007, 03:50:26 PM
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Willis
I hope you don't really think of me as a pretender of sorts. You cannot
possibly know that one way or the other so I understand if you choose
to believe the opposite. You would have had to live with me for many
years to really know about me. And even then would you really know me or
what I somehow allow other's to see?
I intentionally avoided
naming names or pointing fingers, but you apparently saw yourself
somewhere in some of my comments. That was not my intention, though you
may not believe that. In your case, you have proven beyond all doubt (to
me) that you are playing a role to at least some degree since you can't
deny a history of adopting new identities and until recently not making
it clear that the new role was in fact you. As you yourself have
expressed concern about, that has led to some unfair attacks on some
newbies who (probably) were NOT you. I can live with all that and ask
that you accept the above comments as mere observations and not an
attempt to provoke you. I agree that I cannot really know you
except by what you've chosen to reveal. So this may all be just a game
to you or your online personality may be an accurate representation of
your true personality. You are right to say that I cannot really know
for sure. As for my implication that some may be other than they
appear to be. Again I want to emphasize that I actually was NOT thinking
of you in this case. I was thinking more along the lines of--let me
pick someone just as an example and I hope they will forgive me--say,
Genezbubba. Perhaps he is a 35-year-old, physically fit inmate who
accesses the internet via a terminal in the Folsom Prison library.
Perhaps he really is who he says he is or perhaps he is just having a
thrill duping all of us naive Christians. You are right. Who really
knows? Unless we meet in person (and even not then perhaps?) can any of
us really know who we are communicating with? So all we have to go on is
what each of us chooses to share and then we have to make our best
decisions based on that limited amount of information. Is this so
different than in "real" life? Do not plenty of people make their
livings by, both legally and fraudulently, revealing or hiding
information to suit their own purposes? How do we sort through such
information and make decisions? Discernment is required and to be
perfectly frank, I've always been one who assumes the best in people and
that makes me a pretty lousy judge of character in "real" life. I will
freely admit that I've been burned more than once when people have not
turned out to be the people I thought they were and that has contributed
to my reclusiveness somewhat. Actually, given enough time, I think I
can discern a person's true character more accurately through this
medium than I can by personal contact. That's just me and I surely don't
expect that to be true for you or anyone else in particular.
You
seem to be level headed. It sounds like sour grapes to me tho. I am
glad that you are admitting that you have struggle with trusting people.
If anyone is going to let you down the chances are greater in this
forum atmosphere than in real life. In fact i have yet to meet a person
who has not let me down in some way. I have found from personal
experience that being social is not a matter of trusting people as much
as it is a matter of enjoying people. I do not believe that people who
spend alot of time interacting do it on the basis of whether they get
hurt or not. Most people who are interacting alot just enjoy having
their social needs met more than worrying about how people are going to
treat them.
The truth is there is no one who can be trusted. There
are more people that cannot be trusted then can be trusted. The world is
filled with sinners. Trusting men can be a form of idolatry. And the
attitudes we have about how we view sinners will effect us as to how we
morn over sin in ourselves in the view of our social interaction.
Because society is corrupted, everyone deep down inside are more
interested in how they look in social settings over how they help others
to be drawn out.
The number of people who are against us are
greater than the number of our hairs. Which equals the number of our
sins that we struggle with. There are very few believers who consider
the nature of men because they have a false concept of society because
they want to put a positive spin on their setting so that they will feel
a sense of control over the abilities of others as well as themselves.
But if the truth prevails it will always divide men and take away a certain kind of security. As long as men deceive themselves into
believing that they are ok then at some point they are going to bring
about imagined view of themselves and those around them. I speak of
myself as well.
We live in a integrated personality environment and we
are being inoculated from ministering to one another in a personal way
in the gifts of the Spirit. Most of the time we leave each other in a
carnal self gratification relationship kind of existence. We are in a
sess pool of deism. Oh that we could have revival.
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7965
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Forums / Main Forum / Self- Absorbed
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on: January 27, 2007, 10:50:20 AM
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I wasn't pointing anyone out. I was just pointing out something about life from my view.
I'm absorbed with self. No doubt about it as I understand myself.
Does that make me a bad person or just what would be considered normal?
I'm
not talking about being absorbed in self to the point of acting like
other's don't matter. Or to the point of being paranoid about it. It's
more about accepting what is and what isn't. Learning to be comfortable
with it. Maybe when you admit to something and learn to look at it
instead of ignoring it you grow.
Whether
one is self absorbed or not begs the question. The amount of time
ignoring self equals the amount of time being self deceived is an equation that needs an answer and only makes sense when it begins to be
worked out. Self is only understood in the light of knowledge. Self knowledge begins with self consciousness. This is what makes us different
than any other creation. We have the ability to look at ourselves. It
really is not evil to be self conscious. The ultimate act of self hatred
is suicide. But suicide begins with an evolution of resignation to ones
self consciousness and those around him. The only answer is for one to
loose themselves for Christ (by self denial). Because true self
reflection begins with being self conscious in the glory of Christ sort
of lost in His purpose of bringing glory to Himself, because He is the
only one who can reflect on Himself with absolute pleasure. In His
pleasure we see ourselves in true joy.
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