Pulpit Rock in the making

 As a child, in the first four grades, I went to a two room school house.  I had to descend a gravel lane used for foot traffic to reach the school on the same location as one of the earliest school houses in the city. 

Along the lane, we passed what was called, by generations of students, Pulpit Rock. This was a huge rock with what appeared to be a pulpit and choir loft. We climbed up in it and pretended to deliver sermons, and sang in the "choir." There were accounts of similar generations of students doing the same as far back as the 1700s, almost 250 years. I read accounts of those days in the old newspapers at the city library.  

As we grew up it became quite evident to me that the adults were still playing pretend church as grown ups. Hence the title of this blog. 

Later they built homes along the lane and Pulpit Rock was blown up.  

where faith enters the seen

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

One thing have I desired of the Lord, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.  Ps 27:4

Setbacks can provide the stage to reach higher ground amid successes I did not envision at the time. So does it not say somewhere that the Lord turns evil into good? Fear not what any man can do to the body, fear what one can do to your spirit.

Fallacy of the misplaced authority tripped me up.....

 Since I was an atheist perhaps about seven years until the curtain went down on my college swing, I reflected recently, opposed  to rather belatedly, on the carte blanc moral foundation atheism offered me in the " timely" middle of my young time of life just when I knew so much with so little experience. 

I was free of the ten commandments and there was no obligation on me group-wise to live up to the guidance of any other standard except my own individual twist.  Collectively there stands a hodge podge up against the Christian outlook for me to reconsider. I wonder now how I did it. 

I did it by letting a fallacy slip by me unnoticed until I found myself under pressure which set me loose finally. Pressure can lurk in your mind for a long time before you even recognize it. It took me to my concluding college years to throw off a misjudgment I fell into when I was much younger beginning as a child. 

I thought erroneously that God was in with the adults. I even told God that if He was in with the pastor and those deacons I wanted no part of it even if He did exist. Then I was a child on my way atheism to immerge as a believer from college, where one of my better college professors told us if we were educated we would not believe in God. 

Later I was embarrassed but relieved to read that God forgave David because he was honest with Him. I grabbed ahold of that idea. I certainly was honest. Honest but dumb.

Mega churches

Church for Sale

 I've always wondered why Christians need huge, and elaborate expensive churches. The largest church with the most members in the world I last heard about was located in South Korea. Members get together in their houses, a comfortable group once a week. Every so often they hold large group gatherings. But it is in small groups, in small human sized settings, their own houses, which promote close interaction through conversational exchanges without one controlling leader standing up in front of them directing everything to his single view. This provides a close familiar learning exchanges of how to witness and increase their knowledge of Jesus Christ........ hope to elaborate later.....

Objections to churches....

I have no objections to churches so long as they do not interfere with God's work.  Brooks Atkinson

Christians are steadily shrinking ......

 I've never seen a poll yet where Christians were expanding.  My experience is that the boys yearn for the day when they can "grow up" and leave Sunday School coloring books, and boring church services as well, at 14. 

Aware children learn early that their adults say one thing in the pulpit and quite another the rest of the time. They call it Pulpit talk, meaning it is a lot of  "pretend for the kids talk." I've experienced this as late as the eleventh grade in a Christian High School.  

 

There is a confusion in some minds connecting God as a church. When a chilld I had the erroneous view, later I learned was one of the fallacies, that the pastor and deacons were in with God, and therefore I blamed God for their behavior. It was in churches where crimes were committed against Jesus  and later on many unfortunates. A situation some blame on St Paul who was himself a zealot against early Christians and later the same in favor. There are those in many churches who gather perceived power to themselves. They relate more to those they can see because the Spirit they cannot see or even conceive. The devil is not in barrooms. He sends his minions rather directly to churches where they seduce many.

Achilles heel of Christianity defeated

Problem with Jonah  believability erased simply by realizing Jonah died in the fish and his flesh restored after three days as a purcurser of Jesus in the Old and authenticated by Him in the New. Jesus preached in hell to those lost in the Flood and  Jonah prayed to God, both while dead in the flesh. Believing Jesus rose from the dead is central to believers. If you can believe it possible for Jesus then it is possible to believe the Jonah story as well

Attacking belief in Jesus....

If Jonah is unbelievable thru the intellect then one has to believe Jonah never died but rather continued alive praying inside the whale which the atheist view suggests is impossible for Jesus as well.

So Jesus did not rise from the dead because He, like Jonah did not die in the first place. This is the doubt some attempt to build. But Jonah was not said to live in the flesh inside the whale while he prayed. He died, like Jesus died, and then Jonah was spewed in flesh on the beach. Jesus was not the only one to rise from the dead, nor was He the first one. After Jonah, recall Lazarus? There were others, less prominent, as well. Big difference with Jesus was He, as a man gave Himself as the last sacrifice voluntarily, knowing everything beforehand.

If one does  not believe in Jesus  power to rise again they resemble Christians who think they believe but not in His power, his ability to rise again, in the flesh. It is as though the doubters want us to believe Jesus was the only one rise, unbelieably, from the dead into eternal life. We, this view suggests, will not. Only faith can counteract subtle opposing and erroneous arguments.

Resolving Jonah.......

I only recently resolved my  long standing problems concerning Jonah in an unexpected way. Jonah is a purcurser to Jesus, according to Jesus Himself. Yet another connection between the new and the old Testaments. If this is (obviously) true then why depart from it?   

This ironically ties in directly to my experience asking about the people drowned in the Flood. First of all if Jonah (possible) was swallowed by a whale then he eiither drowned, suffocated, or digested, probably all. Then he was after three days spewed up on the beach alive and talking after praying  inside the whale. Why not?

Did not Jesus go down into hell and preach to those lost in the flood? He, like Jonah, was dead but his Spirit was alive. The spirit once released from God never dies. It quickens the body and sometimes departs before the body is completely dead.   Getting off topic, Later...

Stumbling blocks.....coming

The weak heel of Christianity is often said by the athiest world to be the story about Jonah.  More later....

Increasing and decreasing one's faith....

I'll wager there are many chuches who send their children off to college like lambs to professors who impress upon them the fact that if one is educated then they are atheists. In church many pastors only mention the easy passages and never tackle  anything that will test ones faith.

In fact it will leave them defenseless and convince them their professors are right. I include here religious colleges and Christian high schools,  both of which I attended.  Most atheists I meet became atheists because of church experiences.

And that is what happened to me. I was an atheist seven years.