Artifice of Eternity

Jesus the Fallible Why would we want a higher doctrine of scripture than we have of Jesus? By Peter Marty Jesus may have been an excellent carpenter. Or maybe he wasn’t. It’s possible that he made perfectly level tables but wobbly chairs. Or, if he was a stone mason, which the Greek word translated as “carpenter” in Mark 6:3 allows for, he may have chiseled stone with great precision but laid slightly crooked walls. We can’t know these details of his early life, of course. But let’s turn to the art world to broaden our perspective. In London’s Tate Britain gallery resides one of John Everett Millais’s most famous paintings,  Christ in the House of His Parents . Millais (1829–1896) depicts Joseph in his woodshop, leaning over his rough-hewn workbench to comfort his son with the touch of his hand. Wood shavings cover the floor. Jesus centers the work, a red-headed, elementary-school-age kid bleeding from a cut on his left hand. The blood, the result of a failed attempt to remove a na...

There are more kids in Texas with measles than there are trans college athletes in all of America. Guess which one they want you to focus on?

The Thugs are not christians. They are merely toxic White men who have only on supreme belief: they are superior and should rule earth. “Invoking Hiroshima to justify threatening Denmark and Greenland.  But hey ..."that's life".  Fox News Host Jesse Watters: "Being friendly to the world is what got us in this mess. We're not in high school. We don't need friends. Every country puts their interests first.  And when our interests align, we can do business. And when they don't, that's life.   If we have to burn down a few bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, we’re big boys. We dropped a-bombs on Japan and now they are our top ally in the Pacific.  We may have to burn a bridge to build a big beautiful new one to the next generation. America's not handcuffed by history." Even for Fox News, this dangerous rant is a new low. Russian state television, anyone?”

  An effort to find willing hosts for  Usha Vance ’s visit to  Greenland  went embarrassingly awry, according  to  a Danish report . U.S. officials went door to door in Greenland’s capital of Nuuk looking for residents who wanted to greet the second lady,  Jesper Steinmetz  from Denmark’s TV 2 reported. But everywhere they went, they were rejected.

The worst holders of power we’ve had. Alcoholics. Abused. People with anger problems. Idiots jeopardizing our pilots. And that’s just the Secretary of Defense. And he’s firing tens of thousands from our national defense. But wait! There’s more. Hegseth brought his wife to high level meetings at NATO headquarters in Brussels (where allied defense officials discussed the war in Ukraine) and at the Pentagon (with the U.K.’s  two top defense officials). [Jennifer Hegseth] isn’t a Defense Department employee, defense officials said. It isn’t uncommon for spouses of senior officials to possess low-level security clearances, but a Pentagon spokesperson declined to say whether Jennifer has one. Jennifer didn’t respond to requests for comment. The scandal-plagued self-proclaimed “ war fighter ” has brought his wife, former  Fox & Friends  producer Jennifer Rauchet Hegseth, to at least two meetings with foreign military counterparts during which sensitive information was discus...

“I’m black and I’m beautiful!” “You ARE somebody!” Racists use BLM as an accusation. Because they think black people are ugly and inferior. Racists like Marshal and Glenn.

Denying idiots love destroying what the WWII generation did accomplish. U.S. Presses French Companies to Comply With Trump’s Anti-Diversity Policies A letter from the American Embassy in France gave firms that do business with the U.S. government five days to indicate their agreement.

 

I keep wondering why the tribe of bible believers I’m in touch with are too fragile to engage around the actual scriptures they believe are sacrosanct - even more sacrosanct than the 3rd person of the triune god: the Holy Spirit. A few days ago I wondered about this fear and anxiety of theirs in writing on this blog as I have moment times at my brother Dan’s blog  https://throughthesewoods.blogspot.com/?m=1 Well, one showed up: Jesse.  Sure, Jesse showed up initially with empty snark. Sure, I reminded him of our earlier conversation on the 16th century idea of sola fide (coined by Luther but radicalized by Calvin and radical protestantism into a tortured anti-Catholic pike), a conversation he tried to deflect and divert from. Jesse is trying to hold on to the anti-Catholic prod of “sola fide” and so cannot address himself to Matthew 25:31-46. But the other day, the dodge stopped for a moment. Asked again to address Matt 25, Jesse wrote this: “Matthew 25 makes clear that we're ...

But, but… but Hillary! Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth casually shared highly sensitive national security information in the Signal chat, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg wrote. In what may go down as one of the most absurd security breaches in modern U.S. history, the Trump administration’s top national security officials accidentally included The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in a Signal group chat outlining airstrike plans against Houthi targets in Yemen. The Trump administration acknowledged the messages, sent over the nongovernment encrypted chat app Signal, seem to be authentic without offering any explanation for why senior officials were discussing national defense information outside of approved classified government systems.

Stan keeps spitting out established Christian dogma about god. Today: god is omniscient! Knows it all from the beginning. And that’s all he says. Doesn't help his readers at all with the questions begged by this tenet of faith. Like… Doesn’t this kind of empty out intercessory prayer of all meaning? Is god just gaslighting Moses? "I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them.” Did Jesus may have take a narcotic before saying, "I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You m...

David Riggs is yelling - far away from here - at those with the courage to enter the arena. But he’s too fragile to show up here. When your belief is a 400 year old project of violent sectarian Whiteness, fragility is the end game.

7 days, 7 posts pointing out their weak and compartmentalized biblicist readings that habitual leave the nature of Jesus’ incarnation and the love of god closeted. They visit but they don’t speak. They seem to feel they can’t contend. Either they’re now aware they lack a commitment to truly read the whole of scripture or they’ve lost confidence in making sense out of 16th century sectarian ideology. Stan, Jesse, even Glenn, the fake Scot, you all are welcome to contend with scripture and theology. And thinking spiritually and morally, sociologically and psychologically. Nothing of that nature will be blocked. Racism and making up lies and erasing other people because we’re tied to making our identity superior, these won’t stand because they are an offense to god. And where’s Bubba. On what little evidence I have, he seems the most mature and brave interlocutor of the group.

The 16th century hits from Stan keep inexorably rolling out year after year, ad nauseum, without attention to the contradictions of scripture or logic.  1. Stan, hating on the world: “ as it turns out, humans are naturally hostile to God (Rom 8:7)” St Paul, loving the world’s desire to know truth and meaning:  “ Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.  So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the market place every day with those who chanced to be there.  Some also of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers met him. And some said, “What would this babbler say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he preached Jesus and the resurrection.  And they took hold of him and brought him to the Are-op′agus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is which you present?  For you bring some strange things to our ears;...

This morning, Stan (at  https://birdsoftheair.blogspot.com/?m=1 ) reminds us of the doctrinal belief that god is immutable: eternally one and therefore unchanging.  We say this by faith, as does any one who believes in a god/in gods. And as christians we reason about the nature of god from christian scripture. We believe there is a god, and any true god is eternal, ungenerated, perfect and absolute act (with no potential that needs to be moved to action). All powerful. And one. No parts, nothing in action while “other aspects” of god are not in action. All knowing and, of course, omnipresent. Everywhere. We say this by faith and by reasoning. But we cannot fully perceive or experience anything approaching such eternally perfect and full being. We are creatures bound by time and space - both of which are created - and continuingly changed by living in space. Therefore god’s changelessness is experienced by us in history as punctuated change. Even in the span of our own lives. W...

One of the Thugs, Craig, had to write his disgust for Catholics out loud: “ Something Fishy I'm not Roman Catholic for numerous reasons, but walking into lunch today and seeing the fish for Catholics menu I couldn't help but wonder why fish meat isn't considered meat. Does it transubstantiate somehow when it hits the cooking medium? Or is it just a deal to help Catholic owned fishmongers?” If Craig prays at all, I’m sure he prays quietly in a quiet part of the day to himself, something shortish, less than 5 minutes, maybe a few more for special things.  So why doesn’t he put on sackcloth and dust himself in ashes to show that he really is serious about praying? Craig is typical of these radical protestants: incredibly small hearts, inexhaustible desire to judge. Swallowing camels of venom but choking on gnats. Fasting as a discipline to return to devotion began very early in the Christian church. Eating fish on Good Friday and during Lent developed in medieval Christendom. ...