monk222 | Kristof Re-Visits the "Left Behind" Series

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Now we have the hugely profitable "Left Behind" financial empire, whose Web site flatly says that the authors "think this generation will witness the end of history." The site sells every "Left Behind" spinoff imaginable, including screen savers, regular prophecies sent to your mobile phone, children's versions of the books, audiobooks, graphic novels, videos, calendars, music and a $6.50-a-month prophesy club. This isn't religion, this is brand management.

If Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins honestly believe that the end of the world may be imminent, why not waive royalties? Why don't they use the millions of dollars in profits to help the poor - and increase their own chances of getting into heaven?

-- Nicholas D. Kristof for The NY Times

Mr. Kristof is hitting on that Christian Left Behind series again, and Monk is no less fascinated over the affair, and one really likes this hit quoted above on preaching doom while storing away treasures - these merchants of doom.

Of course, how many among us don't fancy the annihilation of the world at times? It is a delicious thought for the wounded and angry ego. But the sectarians make it too real - Christian, Muslim, whatever.

It is also interesting to see this subject re-visited soon after our last election, when we are still acutely conscious about our Red and Blue differences and the ascendancy of the Red.

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If America's secular liberals think they have it rough now, just wait till the Second Coming.

The "Left Behind" series, the best-selling novels for adults in the U.S., enthusiastically depict Jesus returning to slaughter everyone who is not a born-again Christian. The world's Hindus, Muslims, Jews and agnostics, along with many Catholics and Unitarians, are heaved into everlasting fire: "Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and . . . they tumbled in, howling and screeching."

Gosh, what an uplifting scene!

If Saudi Arabians wrote an Islamic version of this series, we would furiously demand that sensible Muslims repudiate such hatemongering. We should hold ourselves to the same standard.

Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, the co-authors of the series, have both e-mailed me (after I wrote about the "Left Behind" series in July) to protest that their books do not "celebrate" the slaughter of non-Christians but simply present the painful reality of Scripture.

"We can't read it some other way just because it sounds exclusivistic and not currently politically correct," Mr. Jenkins said in an e-mail. "That's our crucible, an offensive and divisive message in an age of plurality and tolerance."

Silly me. I'd forgotten the passage in the Bible about how Jesus intends to roast everyone from the good Samaritan to Gandhi in everlasting fire, simply because they weren't born-again Christians.

I accept that Mr. Jenkins and Mr. LaHaye are sincere. (They base their conclusions on John 3.) But I've sat down in Pakistani and Iraqi mosques with Muslim fundamentalists, and they offered the same defense: they're just applying God's word.

Now, I've often written that blue staters should be less snooty toward fundamentalist Christians, and I realize that this column will seem pretty snooty. But if I praise the good work of evangelicals - like their superb relief efforts in Darfur - I'll also condemn what I perceive as bigotry. A dialogue about faith must move past taboos and discuss differences bluntly. That's what blue staters and red staters need to do about religion and the "Left Behind" books.

For starters, it's worth pointing out that those predicting an apocalypse have a long and lousy record. In America, tens of thousands of followers of William Miller waited eagerly for Jesus to reappear on Oct. 22, 1844. Some of these Millerites had given away all their belongings, and the no-show was called the Great Disappointment.

In more recent times, the best-selling nonfiction book of the 1970's was Hal Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth," selling 18 million copies worldwide with its predictions of a Second Coming. Then, one of the hottest best sellers in 1988 was a booklet called "88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988." Oops.

Being wrong has rarely been so lucrative.

Now we have the hugely profitable "Left Behind" financial empire, whose Web site flatly says that the authors "think this generation will witness the end of history." The site sells every "Left Behind" spinoff imaginable, including screen savers, regular prophecies sent to your mobile phone, children's versions of the books, audiobooks, graphic novels, videos, calendars, music and a $6.50-a-month prophesy club. This isn't religion, this is brand management.

If Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins honestly believe that the end of the world may be imminent, why not waive royalties? Why don't they use the millions of dollars in profits to help the poor - and increase their own chances of getting into heaven?

Mr. Jenkins told me that he gives 20 to 40 percent of his income to charity, and that's commendable. But there are millions more where that came from. Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins might spend less time puzzling over obscure passages in the Book of Revelation and more time with the straightforward language of Matthew 6:19, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth." Or Matthew 19:21, where Jesus advises a rich man: "Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor. . . . It will be hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

So I challenge the authors to a bet: if the events of the Apocalypse arrive in the next 10 years, then I'll donate $500 to the battle against the Antichrist; if it doesn't, you donate $500 to a charity of my choosing that fights poverty - and bigotry.

Gentlemen, do we have a deal?

-- Nicholas D. Kristof, "Apocalypse (Almost) Now"
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Monk, for someone who isn't interested in religion, you don't half talk about it --- :)

I haven't read these books, and don't intend to. I've seen a lot of others, and those I have read have struck me as wishful thinking. If you look carefully, you can usually see the author was reading the Bible to get the conclusion they wanted, and put two and two together and came up with 5,000.

Funnily enough that is in accordance with end time prophecy; 2 Timothy 4:3-4;
For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
Some of those who write about the end times would do better to note that this word is also part of the Bible they think they are representing, and ask themselves if they are part of the process described. And perhaps those who decry such books would do well to note that they are in accordance with Bible prophecy when they do so, which they may find an odd state of affairs. :)

The rich man asked Jesus what he should do if he wished to be perfect. He got the reply appropriate to his question. Jesus didn't say that to everyone, though he might have wished they were prepared to ask the question. Let those who have given everything away criticise those who do not. I get the impression that those who have done so, have also given away the right to criticise others for not doing so, as well.

Exactly how would one donate $500 to 'the battle against the Antichrist'? This is just about as futile a thing to do as I can conceive of. No two people who spend their time looking into this part of the Bible (and ignoring the rest) seem able to agree on what the Antichrist is. I heard one theory it was Henry Kissinger (no, I don't agree). Personally I prefer Nixon as a candidate, but that is simply my sheer hatred of his political practises, not a belief about his status in end time prophecy.

The reason seems to me to be that the Antichrist is essentially a spiritual phenomenon, not a person or a movement. In simple terms, this can be defined as whatever is in nature anti-Christ. And in a lot of cases, that is the church itself. There are plenty of Protestant zealots who will tell anyone who wants (or doesn't want) to hear, that the Pope is the Antichrist. Which one, I ask. They might wonder which Pope I am referring to; this head of the Catholic church, or the previous one? But I am saying, the problem they see with the Catholic church, I see is also well represented in other denominations; often more vigorously and actively. And that is the desire to control and exploit ones' flock. The hard lesson of Revelation is that the organised church, or that is to say that which tries to prevent the individual believer from freedom in worship, is the 'Babylon' of Revelation. The church as such is the problem; which is why 'Mystery' is written on its brow. Centuries of history support this view.

So what does a believer do in a world in which the church is the problem? One response would be to write books based on the Bible, and give away their money to charity. I can't say whether the authors of this series are in that category, or of those who are selling their tales to 'itching ears'. But I also don't think Mr Kristof knows, either.

Whilst I can't say what has or has not been said regarding the fate of whoever, whenever, at the end of time; note that as far as the above reads, it suggests that it is in some way God that intervenes and causes it. This is not to be equated with a position of having individuals go and bring about a religious genocide themselves, and that really ought to be obvious to a fair minded person. Supposing, for a moment, that I anticipated God causing a genocide of those opposed to him. What do I do? I leave him to it. Nothing was said that suggested he needed me to take part. Whereas 'kill the unbelievers wherever they may be found' is a statement that encourages the individual to take matters into their own hands. I have heard it said that the Koran translates this way; perhaps those who know it can advise me if I am wrong. But if I am not, I think there is an enormous difference between the two ideas.

Silly me. I'd forgotten the passage in the Bible about how Jesus intends to roast everyone from the good Samaritan to Gandhi in everlasting fire, simply because they weren't born-again Christians.
Mr Kristof can always take ludicrous examples to talk about things he doesn't understand. Perhaps he would prefer to illustrate his point with the idea of Stalin and Hitler going to heaven, which perhaps reads a little better? My Kristof is not the arbiter of who goes to heaven or does not, and neither are the writers of these books. As for what Christ intends, note that he came to earth to die for us in order to get us out of the hell we were already in, not to find new ways of getting us roasted. So there is no reason to suppose that Jesus wants anyone roasted. He may be accused of coming here to tell us how not to be roasted, but it is clear that his view was that we start out roasted unless something is done to change things, and that he did everything he could to change things himself.

As for Gandhi, perhaps he could be allowed a word of his own -
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. Time Christians were more like Christ? This was always the case. It is the purpose of genuine, rather than ethnic, Christians to become like Christ. But Gandhi himself seems to quite like Christ. I know people who think he became a Christian before his death, but found it politically impossible to reveal this. I am not saying that this is so; merely that I would like to know more about the matter.

I must say I find it difficult to complain of people giving 20% to 40% of their income to charity. Perhaps Mr Kristof would like to consider matching what is already being done by others rather than snidely complaining that they kept any of the money. It's all very well complaining about others if you can show you are doing any better yourself. What the authors are required to do (biblically) is give 10%. Since they are doing more than that, I can't see that there is any cause for a complaint of them being hypocrites, rather Mr Kristof, who complains of their (remarkable) charitable giving, but only has a joke offer to make on his own account. What he should complain is that giving should be a matter done in secret. But if people did that, no doubt he would complain that he thought they were doing nothing. But if he thinks that he is exposing hypocrites, he has exposed at least one more than he bargained for, in my view.

Have you read them? I have heard of them, but cannot judge what I haven't read. I am quite interested to hear from those who have, but I certainly haven't the time (if I could even find them over here) to read one and check where they are coming from.

I find it very unlikely that they are a completely accurate approach to Revelation, and also quite unlikely that they are completely wrong either.

The trouble with reading Revelation is that to get any sense of the rest of it, you must first identify the 'Babylon' to which it refers; and very, very few Christians are keen to accept the logical suspect - false Christianity, based on ceremonialism and controlling power structures. So failure to identify that throws them off the rest.

I don't claim to understand the lot, but some parts are already historical fact - very old historical fact - but were the future when first written. Thus I think it both important to consider the contents, and even more important not to jump to conclusions; the known fact parts almost certainly were never seen for what they were until they had already happened; and that is probably the way it will be with a lot of the rest.

Seeing how so many take religions and their ancient texts so seriously, one has to be interested in religion if one has any interest in world affairs, especially today. I just don't believe they are the road to truth. In so far as they can point to beneficial views, I believe we could've got there without having to go through religion and metaphor.

The argument that Kristof is a hypocrite on the money and charity issues doesn't work.

For example, let's say we have a serious, proseltyzing vegetarian, one who not only ostensibly maintains such dietary strictures for himself, but who works to have others do so, and who would even like to make such strictures legally mandatory - this being his biggest dream. If a non-vegetarian points out accurately and truthfully that this vegetarian in fact enjoys having barbecues and eating all that meatly goodness, as well as enjoys sneaking an occassional hamburger at McDonalds, I don't believe the one who reveals this is being hypocritical, even if he is not a vegetarian and does not subscribe to such dietary strictures.

Going back to that story of the rich man who wouldn't give up his treasures, the fact that these merchants of doom are storing their treasures shows where their true beliefs lie. They must be at least hedging their bets that the world won't end soon. And why wouldn't they prefer to be perfect under their god, especially with the end of the world coming so soon? (And I would emphasize that, if Kristof is not a believer, he would not be hypocritical if he didn't give a cent to charity, not believing in those biblical injunctions, though he reports how the supposed believers are less than wholly faithful to what they ostensibly believe.

The cultish mindset can be very creepy indeed.

I haven't read them either, but since they purport to be based on the Bible, and since I don't believe Christianity is any divine truth, I doubt very much that these books are going to impress me as much as disturb me that so many people believe something along these lines.

I think the original (Revelation) speaks for itself - provided one goes in with all the necessary background. Popularising the Bible would be one thing, the principle of fictionalising around it might be another.

I don't want to read them either as I am far too busy and I can't see what they can offer that the original doesn't; but I'm interested to hear from those who have read these books to see where they are coming from.

I think there's no getting to Ultimate Reality without first going through at least metaphor...whether one wants to consider it "religion" is another matter. But the question is choosing the right metaphor then. I do think we have to ask ourselves about the benefits of such views and one certainly can question whether or not this Left Behind stuff (or the Church as Dave thinks, or Christianty in general even as a worldview) is beneficial. To anybody. That, I think, is the underlying question/problem--external, internal, and inter-religiously--these days is that too often we forget the purpose of a thing and just blindly follow forth without real thought of whether the thing is helpful or harmful.

In this case, I think the Left Behind series--as that whole brand of Christiantiy--is harmful in that it seeks to segregate instead of unite. Then again, back to politics, part of the problem may be that people want to "unite" as in "under my banner" instead of taking actual bipartisan--or interfaith--steps to unite. People think of religion as a catchall when really there are even higher powers and higher metaphors to live by, I think. We need to come to a point where we understand that the "road to truth" is a bit more complex than science, one religion, one mindset is capable of delivering.

I tend to view Revelation as a kind of tangent that Christianity got itself into in that whole eschatological "end of the world" stuff from the apocalyptic Jewish cults of the period. I think they expected, as some now, the end of the world to be soon. And, of course, that didn't happen. I personally don't think Jesus was eschatological in the "one day down the road" sense. Or, if he was, I think it was more of a historical issue with his philosophy...an area where he was weaker philosophically and much better in the area of, say, "love your neighbor."

I think, historically, that has been one of Christianity's failings is being too focused on the future in a negative sense rather than a more positive vision. Less gloom and doom and more present attempts to change the world for the better in a non-militant way.

It is uncontroversial in Protestant circles to view the messages to the seven churches as being directly fulfilled already, whereas at the time they were written this could not have been known. Briefly: the seven churches addressed are, besides being actual physical churches existing at the time the book was written, typical of seven phases of church history that have followed. Even their names (translated from Greek) describe those phases accurately. The conclusion is, we are today living in a world in which the church believes whatever it wants to (Laodicea - the opinion of the people). Isn't that what so many argue now? I can develop that in detail, if it would be of interest.

The problem with Revelation is that people place great certainty on whimsical interpretations that they dream up themselves. If God had wanted to be any plainer, he would have been; but he didn't. The result is that the book becomes interpretable after the event, rather than a guide to what to expect in detail. Those who go after the detail usually lose the plot; if instead one confines oneself to what is most immediately relevant, you have in my view the right approach.

In general people criticise Bible prophecy from the position that there cannot be any such thing. That is a fundamentally wrong basis for investigating anything. There are commentaries on the book of Daniel, that assume it must have been written after the events described, because it describes them so accurately. However since it also describes the nature of Christ, and no one claims it was written after his life, this seems intellectually unsupportable. It makes better sense that Daniel's prophecies were exactly what they were written down as; prophecy.

It is all very well to talk about prophecy as if one could not research the matter, but with effort you can research it as a matter of fact. For instance prophecies regarding the return of the Jews to Israel were, 60 years ago, nothing more than that. 2,500 years after the prophecy was made, we have the actuality. Why should we disregard fulfillment of prophecy as evidence for its truth?

All I ask is that the same standards of research and criticism are used with prophecy as would be made in respect of any scientific or other factual claim. But people either tend to assume it is invalid and 'investigate' it on that basis, or assume they have free reign to make loony claims without properly researching them. I reject both approaches. Any approach to prophecy must be on the basis of checking facts, not rejecting them or making them up.

I am well aware a lot of people make crazy claims about what prophecy means. I spend quite some time debunking them for the sake of the credulous. It is the most worrying thing about (what is called) Christianity today; it brings properly thought out belief into disrepute by association. But it does not in any way invalidate proper research.

I don't know what quite a lot of Revelation means. I am waiting to find out, without being unduly worried. In some cases I could tell you with varying degrees of certainty how it could be applied today, but I think it sensible to see if things develop as I expect, NOT jump to conclusions. Besides the seven churches, one other thing is really clear; the organised church is the 'Babylon' that persecutes believers. It might be taken to be symptomatic of the US religious right, but I am unqualified to say.

Clearly the end of the world didn't come 'soon' in the sense that we usually use the word. This is a reasonable matter for investigation. I think that the believer was definitely intended to view the end as potentially soon, so as to focus the mind on doing from day one what was required, rather than thinking they might get around to it in retrospect. I'm open to argument.

It is quite right to say that there is a lot of Christianity that has talked itself into something tangential to the faith and that concerns me greatly. But that does not mean that Revelation is incapable of being studied or to a greater or lesser extent understood. It should be studied on the same basis anything else is studied; an honest inquiry into facts, rather than proceeding from the a priori assertion of positive or negative assumptions about it.

The supposed necessity for metaphor, aside from art, I think rests more in Reality Evasion than Ultimate Reality. We know our realities plainly enough - this world of struggle and suffering, war and tragedy.

I think it is only to try to reduce these realities that it is beneficial to try to create some great super context in which these realities are submerged. People, emotionally/psychologically, have to stipulate that this world is ultimately good and that it's beneficial for people, and this often has to take narrower forms than the bare existential acceptance that life is simple good because the only alternative is non-being. So all gets lost in a super story of Good and Evil, and all the hard realities that we know to characterize life may be obscured in the mysterious ways of god.

I just think we would go further in achieving a better world if we dropped the super story and all its metaphors (used to try to explain away the hard realities) in favor of working directly with the realities as we actually know them, and to work for our clear goods - peace, prosperity, justice.

Of course, not to get entirely philosophical, but I'm sure we wouldn't be in total disagreement if I noted that even raw reality as we perceive it via physical senses is boiled down or one big metaphor. Reality is always seen through a veil whether we talk sound and smell or even if you want to talk about something like peace, prosperity, justice. There is no way of understanding the world without some organizing system...whether we call it good and evil, colors like red and blue, or being and non-being. Everything is metaphor. Religion just seems to be a useful, large system to organize our minds. But I hear your underlying concern. Meta-systems, meta-narrative, or meta-metaphor is always tricky. It gets into the experience itself versus our framing an experience with what we know or do not know, of course. Take suffering...one can try to explain it, but suffering as an emotion is also unique to the individual. Which brings up the problem with exclusivist religion, I think....reality is always so subjective that any metaphor that tries to say it is the only one is probably only fooling itself.

I see where you are coming from in a way. I certainly think Revelation is not inconsequential--at least from the historical-worth perspective and shedding light on the evolution of Christian thought or the specifics of early Christian thought. I bridge the gap differently in that I see prophecy (as in Revelation) as existing in a kind of void...dark corners of that tangent road that need not be followed per se to their end. The whole Left Behind series (and for that matter Christianity to some extent) rests on the idea that the future is a destination rather than a journey. The idea of Jesus coming again, getting to heaven, humanity needing saved by some exterior force...seems, to me, to conflict too much with the free will that God has given. While prophets certainly can speak Truth in having metaphorical, colorful words of warning, I wouldn't go looking for truth with a small "t." The future rests too much in the hands of what we make it and no "prophet" or revelation can really tell us all that much about anything. Personally, I think better stock is taken with focus on doing God's work rather than trying to dip into God's bowl of omniscience.

Do you believe the universe has been created, or not? If you also believe, in any way at all, about God, then who do you think made it? And if you ascribe that God made it, how do you think he is in any difficulty about the nature of time? All that is necessary is to understand that God is not constrained by time; without the universe, there is no time; how can one create a thing that you are yourself constrained by?

If we understand that God is not constrained by time, and created it, rather than being subject to it, then there is no difficulty for him in knowing in advance what is going to happen - for him there is no meaning in things happening in a certain order, unless he bothers to consider our point of view. Therefore there is no problem of free will, as it is only necessary for God to know in advance what is going to happen, to tell us what it will be.

You might think that creates paradoxes; that is an easier thing for God to understand than for us, but being a Physicist does help me. But the idea of a God that can create or not create free will, and create the universe (if not he then who else?), but somehow remain constrained by time, is hopelessly illogical. I consider atheism a far more sensible position than ideas such as you refer to.

I appreciate that all kinds of ideas about theology have ben peddled by people over the ages, and I doubt that this one originates with yourself, but speaking as a graduate physicist, you can either have one or the other; an omnipotent God, or none at all.

I cannot speak for the Left Behind series. I would point out to those that want to have a fixed view about Revelation, just how badly wrong the vast majority of the Jews were about Messianic prophecy, from a Christian point of view. Prophecy is not always intended to be easily understood, but sometimes to provoke thought; responsible, sensible thought.

Any version of theology that precludes God from being in control of creation, and in some way limited by what he has created, is nothing more than an invention of mens minds about a God who the Bible does not refer to at all. It is also fundamentally illogical. There is either a God who can create the universe, or none that the Bible recognises as such. I far prefer people to make one choice or the other, than rely on belief systems that make no intellectual sense whatever. Again, I don't think you thought this up. Don't swallow this stuff, or wild illogical interpretations of Revelation either.

Not really meaning to get into a discussion of higher level theology. LOL But I think God as such is not constrained by time, but human beings are at least in our physical selves. God cannot know all that will ever happen in the traditional human-time sense because God gave human beings free will and choice to pick an outcome. If we are really free, God cannot know the future per se. Rather, I tend to think that God knows all but in a bit different sense than humans simplistically tend to think of. God is, as you point out, timeless. I lean more towards a panentheist outlook though. I tend to see God as working through human beings and present everywhere so that we're sort of all prophets of whatever divine future will exist--that God both Knows and does not knows. God knows the final outcome in the Infinite sense of us all being united with the Divine in the grand cosmic scheme...but on the smaller human scale I think the beauty of Creation is that we're left to our own devices to decide an outcome.

Given what we do agree on about God, the rest isn't theology, it is Physics. I can see you are well intentioned, but to be unconstrained by time, and not to know the future, is like having a telescope and not being able to see the stars. I cannot see how you can model time to be this way. From our point of view there is only one set of events that ever happens. Therefore if you can see the end of those events from the beginning, which is what it means to be unconstrained by time, you foreknow everything by definition.

Also, it means that if God also has freewill - it would be remarkable if he did not - that he can intervene in human affairs to affirm his will, like a chaos butterfly - through very small interventions in small ways, he can cause major consequences without being seen to do so, if he wishes. He need only move the one person that matters - with their agreement - to cause a chain of events that he completely foreknows, but which are utterly mysterious to our way of thinking.

For instance Constantine. He had a dream before the night of a battle in which he saw himself victorious underneath the banner of a sign he did not know of. So next day he went out and used that banner, and won. Then he excitedly went out to find out what that banner was. The result? The Holy Roman Empire. The banner was that of the cross. Take away one dream, and world history is totally different.

If you don't believe that God can speak through dreams, then I can vouch for that myself. I recently walked into a situation that I had seen in a dream over ten years ago. The dream concerned events in the life of the church, and in the life of someone known to me. The things I saw in her life came true, and then last month I walked into the final scene of that dream - a worship service in an ex-industrial building with very identifiable exposed roof beams and ivory coloured walls, just as I had seen in the dream. As I walked into the building, the first view I had was that which I had seen in the dream.

Coincidence? Not when you realise that because of what God told me through that dream, I had refused to go into a church for seven years, and I had never seen the building concerned before in my life. I even wrote poetry about that - you might find it in my journal right here on LJ; I certainly put it on Blurty.

well if you really want to examine religions. look at the histroy of man and the way religions evolved. the first relgions were pegans. there was a god for everything. if man did not understand it it was ruled by a god. women held a high role in thoses pegan beginings since she was the one who held the home and hearth toghter while the men hunted. but as man changed so did their relgiouse needs. they needed more solid reasons for being. the bible came along. one god who created all and controled all. the bible put man in a much higher postion. men no longer hunted for long piriods of time now they had polatics, wars and kingdoms. and science was based on the bible. then along came a man named Darwen. he said one word that changed much, "Evalution". now man is smarter, he has science that explains a world that seems to be a cosmic creation, not a god made place. nor is it god controlled. but now man is also lost because he nolonger has any gods to turn to. so he looks for relgion that is not relgion. he ask many qaustions about what religion is. he wonders if science has stollen his right to beleive there is a god. for to be in a world with out a god means to be in a world controlled by man himself. a world of our own making. there is evil, evil with in man and there is good with in man. Many good people suffer, and man does not know how to fix it. for man is not god and man needs a god to fix it. so man will always wonder is there a god? a god to fix the ills of this world. someone to blame other than myself? some one to take the responsabily from me? one can only look in their own heart to find the answer. for if there is a god of any kind the only way to truely know is to believe with your heart not your mind.

you are so right monk.

And there is just too much of that creepiness going around these day...

Well, I think in both theology or physics you quickly reach that place where to talk about either one is grasping at straws with things that are not ever really within the realm of what can be known. The ultimate nature of something way bigger than ourselves, parallel universes, multiple outcomes of cause and effect events.

I suppose my first thought theologically does deal with physics and that is that human beings sometimes are biased in that we assume that God is bound by our same cause and effect rules, that there is only one outcome for any event--the one in our universe, etc.. To say that God knows the future you have to ask which future? Is the future as we know it something that is able to be known by even the omniscient God? I say that God is more concerned with macro level Universe events rather than whatever happens in our little corner of the universe. If I'm deciding to watch TV and can't pick a channel, somewhere another version of me is watching the channel I didn't pick here. So it gets a bit dicey talking what God knows and doesn't know...or even what our purpose is here if you ask me.

I think that's always a good thing for one to remember--esp. talking politics--when talking about sin or good and evil. How we perceive is often, as I mentioned with metaphor above, through a glass darkly. I think, in the end, the outcome of world events or human existence is not so much predetermined but not important on the grander level. It certainly is important for us to learn while we are here to be good to each other. But that is only because it makes good sense that we are all equal in receiving this gift of life and that we allow each other the freedom to enjoy said gift.

But I tend to think God is far less concerned with affairs of earthly life than we give him "credit" for. There are bigger fish to fry in the Cosmos. Saying God can or cannot know the future is too bound by human sense of time...since time is subjective afterall and has to do with the speed of objects in our physical universe and our temporal nature. If time doesn't exist for God there can really be no "cause and effect" to have a future. What we experience as free will and time is, in a way, like video game time. It's all well and good but when you shut off the game it doesn't exist. I know that in one branch of, say, Pac-Man that he chews all the little ghosts and dots, but can I say I "know the future?" Tricky. Somewhere, another person (manifestation of the divine, perhaps?) playing Pac-Man and gets eaten by the ghost. Which "future" is the one that is really happening? They are, of course, both happening at the same time, but both bound by certain external rules on a higher level.

As I've debated with Monk before, however, I think faith on one hand is wonderful...but I think knowing the divine can also be a rational exercise for the human mind. Sometimes more rewarding if you ask me. True, as humanity has progressed forward our definitions of God have changed...our search for where we came from and why we are here has gotten easier and in other ways more difficult. The more you complicate life, the more you necessarily complicate whatever the divine is. Not that God is changing at all in that time. We've always been the same human beings fumbling through existence at core. I think it is not that humanity lacks responsbility or wants someone to blame for more complex problems...I think it's that we've actually gotten a greater understanding of just how fragile our condition is through the ages. The more we do feel like we can control our own destiny, the more we have to realize with our wisdom what is out of our hands. I'm not sure God can fix the "ills of the world" per se. It's more that humanity finds greater understanding of life as we know it when we can see the bigger picture that there is more out there in the universe than this daily struggle. All the suffering, all the evil, all the good out there are a tiny fraction of the energy vibrating out there in the universe.

Parallel universes or whatever are, should they be real, not our problem. We can only live in one at once. And neither Physics nor religion as in the Bible show any indication of them at all.

The ultimate question here is really this: can I assert that you are six feet two, blond, bearded, and one legged, and tell everyone this? If I were to assert such things about you, it would make sense first either to make an effort to meet you or someone who knows you and find out. The hidden assumption in everything you say is that it is not possible to communicate with God, or perhaps that you think that it is but you cannot be bothered. Well if one cannot, fundamentally, communicate with God there is no point in having any opinion about him at all. I am no more interested in my opinion than I am in yours. The entire Bible presents God as wishing to communicate with us, but having terms for doing so. It is entirely testable, and could not be more worth testing. Do you want to develop a concept of God as a sort of philosophical game, or do you want to know God if he can be known? I really cannot understand why, when the Bible claims God can be known, that people have to go about imagining what they would like him to be when they can find out for themselves. I would be very happy for you to know God better than I do, and to tell me more about him than I already know, from your greater experience. But what good does it do you to talk about God as if you could cause him to be what you wanted him to be? And if it is not possible to communicate with him, then why should it bother you what he is like?

I appreciate that generations of theologists have peddled this sort of approach, but I am saying to you right here and now that the only thing that limits God talking to me out loud each day is that he knows I will have to obey his word, and he cherishes my free will; so he says as much as I can bear and no more than gives me the freedom to do his will from my heart. Anyone who wishes to know the truth about God can ask him what it is for themselves. And if they are not prepared to try that, then I cannot see why anyone should be interested in philosophising about concepts that are unknowable and cannot benefit them. If you doubt me, it is most intellectually honest to repeat my experiment, and show me how the results do not match the ones that I have got. I am quite sure that if you will make the effort to talk to God and ask him to reveal himself to you, in time he will do so; however he will have a great deal of misconceptions to fight his way through before that can happen. In my case it took four years, which I attribute to my own sheer stubbornness; but I am quite certain in retrospect that from the day I asked God to make himself known to me, my life inexorably was steered to the point that it became a reality. And once it became real, I counted that four years as nothing compared to the reality of knowing God.

Know God, or no god. One or the other. Everything else is futile.

And I suppose it is what I was getting at that it is here we must part ways and disagree about the nature of God. I would agree that God wishes to communicate with us, but I disagree on what terms and how--ie is the divine plain-spoken or more mysterious? I'm a bit more of a mystic and think God communicates on levels more sophisticated than the Bible alone could ever manage. God is a bit of a philosophical game if you ask me. Which isn't to say at the same time that God can't be known...though I suppose it depends on what level one wants to know. The fuller the knowledge, the more complex and ineffable the result. Personally, I went down the whole "talk to God and ask for help" route and I got nuthin'. More full answers--and a better enjoyment and understanding of life--came with a different approach. Which is not to say that I think the Bible is complete BS. It has its moments, but I do think it errors making God something that is capable of being known more fully than is really possible. Any god capable of being known, simply put, is not the True God. Maybe facets of the divine...but the God above God, if you will, is something difficult to get one's mind around that takes years of theological study and difficult reflection and meditation. And, of course, even then, how many enlightened individuals have actually existed? A handful? Hence my problem--and possibly yours to some extent--with organized religion. But even larger, I prefer to pick and choose from world faiths about what works for me because I've yet to see a fully realized attempt at communicating or understanding the divine. Some come closer than others...I think Buddhism is on the right track more than some others.

Personally, I went down the whole "talk to God and ask for help" route and I got nuthin'.

This is where blogging about the matter is so very difficult. I don't know what you said, and I can't go through it with you in infinite detail. I personally came to believe intellectually, and wondered what the heck to do about it; hence one query of God, and a four year wait.

To know God, his terms are (though he has been known to make exceptions) to recognise that there is such a thing as sin and that one is a sinner (I was a cracking sinner, and I've no desire to get people to say they were sinners for my own pleasure; they should call the church 'sinners anonymous'; it's when you get people in them who think that others, and not they, are sinners that you get the excesses that I think we both loath); to want to change; to want to know God personally, and ask to receive the Holy Spirit. After that you find you cannot change yourself, but asking God gets you changed rapidly.

Once one believes and acts on that bare minimum, God will take the opportunity to convince you of the remainder, whether you believed anything else or not. But it does help to be in a supportive environment to get through all the questions and surprises that naturally arise, just as if you want to study law it helps to go to university; so churches have their place (if only they stayed in it --).

I am really sorry that you 'got nuthin'. I may have mentioned the scientific approach of 'repeating the experiment'. The thing is to repeat the exact conditions of the experiment. Those are as above. Though simple in principle, it is getting people to genuinely believe those things that is the difficulty. It is so common to believe that we can define sin for ourselves. That will never work with God.

Personally, my breakthrough moment was realizing that if we all are sinners perhaps God doesn't care in some twisted judgmental way. That God made sin, too. We all just have to struggle daily to be better human beings and God will love us no matter what we do though. I think that, again in my opinion, is the great tragedy of religion sometimes is that people come away with the idea that they need to change because "God is watching" in some way. But that misses the point...we have to change for ourselves and not for God. God doesn't care per se if we are sinners or not. He made us and I don't think he's an evil God to create us only to judge us based on our sin that is part of our being He created...of course, God would rather humans not sin, but "what are you gonna do?" LOL

So in away, my great spiritual awakening was when I realized there is no such thing as sin and that I wasn't a sinner. But, I suppose that gets complicated because it is more of discovering something within and then realizing that God put that something there to be discovered. But it goes back to how one best gets to know God.

God created us with freewill. So we don't always do right. But that is our fault.

God made us well; the core of what we are is a wonderful God made. The church forgets this. But we are raised in a world where we learn our ways from other human beings. Human behaviour is far from sinless, and yet sin is so deep rooted that we cannot see what it is. I thought I was doing well dealing with sin until it occurred to me God might know something about sin that I had as yet not even considered. Since then life has completely changed!

We sin because everyone else sins; our parents taught us how; and we are incapable of stopping. But none of this is God's fault; he has done everything he can to get us out of the mess we made. But while we want to stay in it, we are allowed to stay; because our freewill is respected.

Sin separates us from God in this life, let alone the next. On the cross Christ said, 'why have you forsaken me?' By taking blame for our sin, even he was separated from God on the cross. Anyone who has felt Gods presence, and known how wonderful it is, knows sin is just not worth it. You cannot knowingly continue in sin, and find Gods presence.

Judgement is not twisted. It is sin that is condemned. The question is, do we use our freewill to cling to what is already condemned, or to do God's will.

If we try to be better people, we will fail. What works, is for the believer to ask God to change them. Everyone who knows me says I have changed (for the better) more than anyone they know. This simple principle is the only reason; I no longer try myself, but ask God.

We do need to change for our own benefit; sin does not benefit anyone. The problem is to know what sin is, rather than what it is caricatured as. If you do something and never stops wanting more, yet are never fulfilled, that's sin. It's not the only definition, but it is a useful one.

The trouble with your great spiritual awakening is it is contrary to the Bible. That introduces these problems:

It's clear God is not acting openly. Note that Jesus does not try to prove he is the Messiah, until he will be killed for saying it. All he does is ask the disciples who they think he is. The reason is the same one we don't see the divine as easily as some seem to think we must for 'it' to be there.

Suppose Jesus had said 'I am the Messiah'. People 'knew' what that was supposed to mean. They had fixed ideas about what the Messiah was to be like; they were pre-occupied with having one who would get rid of the Romans. So if Jesus had said 'I am the Messiah', no one would listen to a word he said; they would have a fixed idea of who he was, and kill him for not being that. In the end, they did - at the right time.

So it is with the Father. Unless we have to find him, we will never know who he is. If his omnipotence is clear, there is little point making up our minds about sin; we would be sinless from sheer necessity. That is not what God wants.

But so we can find him, he has left a way to do so. Not to do so, would prove he did not want to be found (and would not be).

Either God has left us a way to find him - and to find out what the words really mean - or he does not want to be found at all.

If we cannot find God by pre-existing accounts, he must make himself totally clear to us, as he did to Moses, or there is no God at all. Making up our own imaginings by contradicting what is recorded, is futile. By not getting a response by talking to a God of your description who does not exist, you have proved it futile. But you did not see that this was the problem; instead you placed 'God' under your control, and now the entire universe heaves under the might of your imagination, to create afresh the God that created the universe, in your chosen image.

If you look for God as he is described in the Bible I am quite certain you will find him. I am used to operating in the power of the Holy Spirit as described in the book of Acts, which leaves me no room for doubt; despite believing nothing when I graduated as a Physicist. I have learned to hold God to his written promises, and found that when I do so, he keeps them. But if you seek a God to suit your preferences, you are just engaging in wishful thinking.

LOL As I said, I think it is here that we must part ways theologically. I'm sure much of what I believe about God is probably contrary to the Bible, but as I've mentioned I take the Bible with a grain of salt. It has much Truth...but is also not all it is cracked up to be. There are parts of the divine on its pages but it was written by men who are often mistaken or have no clue what they are talking about--to be blunt.

I take a more holistic approach to the divine--not so much one that suits my preferences, but one that is...less specific to some Judeo-Christian heaven-hell or sin-God duality. Not to insult whatever your beliefs are, but I just personally feel the Western versions of God can often be petty, weak, overly simplistic. That's no God at all in my mind. Sin certainly is a reality in this life, but I firmly believe it does not separate us from God. If it did, God would be quite the evil one for creating us with freewill and then having that freewill come back to bite us.

I tend to think God acts openly but one doesn't necessarily need a Bible to decipher the Mystery. Which brings me sort of to another point where I think we have to agree to disagree is that I think God doesn't necessarily need "finding" at all. He's all around and you simply have to acknowledge it. Which is not to say that you can't put God under the microscope for years and cease coming up with fascinating discoveries. But I think mostly God works through people helping them change themselves and other people. One could, for instance, not have the Bible or Jesus, and still know God. Dunno where you personally stand on that. But it is often what prevents me from throwing my hat into the ring as a Christian is that many/most Christians seem to think "Jesus is the answer" or the Bible or both. I think there is enough room in the universe for God that there are many paths to Him.

Which brings up another perhaps tangent issue in that I think on another hand--not sure what I really think about fully embracing what I am about to say--but I think sometimes the closest we can get to God is to leave God out of it. That is, the best way to know God is to just try to live a full existence. Live life, experience it, breathe in all the good and bad in the world. Afterall, life itself is perhaps the best way to get in touch with whatever Creative or Ultimate Force exists in the Universe.

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Kristof Re-Visits the "Left Behind" Series

Kristof Re-Visits the "Left Behind" Series

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