not deciding is a decision

Many atheists decide there is no God without defining what they mean by God. They just assume it means Supreme Being, look at Christians holding God up to ridicule and expect a more moral informed response to the world around them. Notice their definition is either borrowed or lacking since they cannot prove a negative. Proving God is a contradiction in terms and shows that since we know so little compared to all that can be known, that they are ignoring our ignorance of all that we do not know. They do this all the while we are learning there is even more that we do not know than we knew before. They cannot make an informed decision even as we are forced to make a decision without all the provable facts. Atheists are often humanists who believe in themselves rather than God. If one does not believe in God then they must, by default fill the vacuum, believe in themselves to make an informed decision and substitute Their religion for a belief in God. So it seems like a rather pompous position that accounts for their attempts to substitute their own religion of disbelief for a belief in God opposed to what the Founding Fathers incorporated in our Constitution.

lifting God up lifts us up

My mother used to say God loves praise, whereupon I would ask why? Does God have a self-esteem problem? What I did not understand at the time was that God wants us to praise Him for our own benefit. When we lift Him up, we lift ourselves up. And this is true when we speak well of every individual, here too we benefit. We can even see this linked to capitalism, when we help others the marketplace rewards us according to the extent others benefit from our help. We are rewarded for success, unlike those in the current government who reward failure.  

love in a fist

There is one single reason underlying many atheists denial God exists. It rests primarily in the example the church gives them, the witness by individual church members. The over riding impression most have is that many churchgoers either have a weak witness or no witness at all. Churches themselves seldom even broach the subject. More than a few churchgoers have an outright negative witness which in turn under girds much of the atheist position. Almost all negative witness involves the lack of love as Jesus taught it. The main fall down of followers of the letter or the law only is that, lacking the spirit of the law, they lack love. So separating the view of atheists from their view of churchgoers becomes paramount. Unfortunately perhaps this does nothing for church attendance.

starving in the pulpit

Speaking to a pastor I said, if Jesus walked in the front door of many churches 70% of those inside would run out the back door. The pastor responded, I would speak like Peter, stay away from me Jesus for I am a sinner. Notice that Peter's sins were not yet taken away on the cross. Notice that the Holy Spirit had not yet come over him. Notice it was the same for that pastor. Today we were already healed on the cross, and our sins were already taken away on the cross. I've heard boasting in the pulpit and the boaster was proud of still being a sinner and said plainly, by using the if word, that being a proud unworthy, even after reading the Bible, he had no idea of what God's will was. Many in the pulpits are fat in learning and starving for a lack of understanding.

the church as a lodge for the social life

The real Pulpit Rock was a natural rock that gave the appearance of a pulpit with off to one side a place for a choir. As children we used to pretend on this rock we were delivering sermons like the adults. This rock went back plenty far but children playing church on it went back to the 1700s when the rock was first encountered. Today the rock is gone but children continue to play church as before, only now as grown ups in real churches constructed for the purpose. As originally, the main activity is to socialize, have fun and get along with each other. Spiritual matters do not all that often come to the fore.

the spirit depends on the Spirit

The Spirit leads the Body or the Body will lead the spirit into the final end for all bodies. The concrete world is a magnification of the spirit world. Older people over 70 often encounter inexplicable depression, and as someone who has dealt extensively with old age in others and is now engaged in the same struggle, one can find events overtaking one that are overwhelming. The only help we can count one is from the spirit and the Spirit of Existence which placed us in the orbits of life. Concentration on the Spirit is vital. There is no way out of the predictament of the crumbling body concrete other than the Spirit. Nothing ends in the concrete and nothing came from the concrete.

faith is everyone's final decision

Everyone is forced to operate on faith whether they understand this, like it or not, for the reason that none of us know all that there is to be known to make a final decision. All our new learning increases our knowledge, including the knowledge that we learn that there is yet much more that we did not know than we realized before. Answered questions reveal more questions so that increasing our knowledge increases our knowledge of our ignorance. Since this means we must make a decision right now without the benefit of all knowledge, then we close the gaps in our knowledge by assumptions which must be taken on faith. Even the knowledge we have now is subject to over riding new knowledge. Anyone rejecting this definition assumes by their own definition that they know all and all there is to be known. They are then locked into this mind set until the next increase in knowledge comes along to unset this.

the dark night of the soul

I lie awake, lonely as a solitary sparrow on the roof. Psalm 102:7 Davin

in the pews and in the pulpit

We know that everything comes from the unseen, from the spirit. God is a Spirit. But God defined himself. Don't take anyone's word on who God is, what he is like, whether he exists or not. Let God do that. But there are quite a few, a tremendous number, of what could be called christian atheists. They are both in the pews and in the pulpit. They want to believe but cannot, they have doubts. They cannot really believe for certain that God sent His only begotten Son. Or that the Son said when He left He would send the Holy Spirit. This Spirit is charactereized by boldness and courage. Therefore when the ancient writers said it was reported to Moses that God said He was I am that I am, this would be existence. This is in Ezekiel. But it is hard to believe. Without all the facts of the matter, one is forced to decide intellectually what to believe, and then with this decision to believe it with their full emotion.

which man is worse off?

It is incredible how much lying is going on all around us continually. We lie to ourselves first and see if others can be convinced of it. We lie because the other persons lies. Of course, we think someone else is lying because, aren't we lying, so then why isn't he lying? This is the danger of calling someone else a liar, we may be nakedly telegraphing our perspectives. We lie without realizing it. The reason is there is a head of foam on everything we speak as it is so that when time fades, lies start popping up out of the suds all over the place. A lie is notoriously difficult to pin down. Perhaps we mis-spoke, or maybe we mis-heard. Then, if we want to box someone in where we want them and they do not want to be, we will hold them to our view of what their words meant. You are saying such and so we will say, trying to control their words with our own. If they can be targeted as a liar then it will cover the hostility we hold for their other view with which we disagree. If we could just play back a transcript of the past 24 hours of our exact dialog, it would surprise us how often we find ourselves lined up in the grey area of possibly telling a lie or some other embarrassment. But of the more deliberate lies of greater magnitude, which man is worse off, the one who tells a lie or the one who believes it?

will my little dog go to heaven?

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit you would stay out and your dog would go in, reputedly from Mark Twain. In heaven the lion will down with the sheep but the family dog cannot because he does not have a soul? There are those who cannot relate to the spirit. They may be the one without a soul. They love the technical, the legal side of things, sort of liking the letter of the law over the spirit of the law. They would paint a heaven devoid! Why do they struggle so hard to create limitations, exclusions, and lack of love instead of the opposite? There is more love in a boy's little dog's bark than the love in some adult hearts. A dog offers unconditional love and is very forgiving. A human should boast of no less.

more to belief than mere agreement

It is easy to say I believe but it may be that there is more to it than one thinks. Just saying I agree with something is not believing. To believe is not as easy as just saying I believe. It must be down into my spirit and that comes from hearing the word of God. It is a continual hearing similar to eating food everyday, I must feed my spirit everyday. Actually our spirit is fed everyday no matter what. Whether it is the mayhem on television or not, our spirits are being fed. But to believe we must actually really believe. Many believe God can heal but they are not sure He will actually do it.

Story illustrating this is told of a man who carried in his arms another man across Niagara Falls in a barrel. He carries one over and comes back to ask another who is waiting wanting to get over the Falls also. Did you see me carry that man over the Falls? Do you want to go too? Oh yes, I want to go too. Do you believe I can do it? Oh yes I can see you can do it. Then get in the barrel. Why don't you take this other person first??????

understanding unseen forces

Words are powerful weapons communicating spiritual force determining our survival success in everyday life. No one actually comes right out and says it but we are all daily engaged in this struggle. It determines the concrete outcome of what is essentially abstract forces locked in fierce battle for the concrete world. In the arena of politics we currently see attempts of the current administration to redefine other governments, hopefully so as to separate friendly forces from unfriendly ones. The single major struggle going on in the world is not over weapons of mass destruction but over words of mass communication. Defining them controls words in the attempt to define their spiritual function. In the scientific community very few voices or positions seem to take any great time to define God. If one says that God is the Creator of Love they will also say God is love. Before we can think about that however, we have to determine the attributes of existence as a very real concept just like we understand gravity to be a very real concept.

Pulpit Talk preaching...

I would rather hear a preacher witness to what he believes than hear him preach to me what I should believe. Everyone persuades themselves. Everyone speaks for their own benefit under their own incentives. Even those who help someone else is doing it because it makes them feel better about themselves. Many assume they will get in good graces with God doing good works. Some get quite satisfied with themselves about it. But atheists do good works, even Al Capone did good works. You do well to believe in God, even the demons believe in God and are afraid.

Pulpit Rock

There once was a large rock formation on a wooded path leading to a one room school house that captured the imagination of the children of the 1700s. In and on the rock they played, just like I and my schoolmates in the second grade did, pretending it was a pulpit with even a place for the choir off to the right side of the pulpit. This play pretense mirrored their adult church on Sunday.