You can't reason your way to freedom because our freedom flows from God's authority.
The COVID episode was not just a wholesale attack on our liberty - stripping us of our agency - but an assault on God's will.
It was one of the darkest moments I've experienced. People thought they were being 'compassionate' and 'rational' when in fact it was the opposite operating in a panicked vacuum. Reason was the first casualty of the moral panic.
Excellent article and well stated. I personally have returned to a relationship with God after a miserable hiatus of some decades. I am seeing that atheists have had their run, and didn't do too well. We are spiritual creatures, and that is not going to change. When we separate ourselves from God, we don't fare well.
Thank you for a wonderful article. As someone who works as a secretary in multiple churches, I have witnessed many people entering the church by way of trauma, addiction, loss, etc., and how it has transformed people. I've also witnessed the congregations slow decline over many years but I am optimistic seeing new faces of lately. I work with a priest who people flock to, he is the most giving person I've met, giving of himself in service or whatever monies he has to others, he is the most serene person I know and will be 90 in a couple of months (I hope he has another 10 years but I know he will probably die on the altar long before we are ready for him to go).
Another great article! I have always been a spiritual person, more so than religious. I believe in God and morals, truth, and compassion to others. I find many today do not believe and even hearing the word, "religion" gets their dander up. A friend of mine (who died 6 years ago) claimed he was an atheist and when the topic of religion came up he would say "there is no God so why do you believe there is one"? My response was, "you have no proof there isn't a God and I believe there is one so we will have to leave it at that". Again, my opinion is we are spiritual beings having a human being experience on Mother Earth.
thanks so much...much ponder as usual, and from comments. My current struggle relates to feeling at home and comfortable in established churches which have been taken over by the neo-marxist woke with their obsessions with racism, climate, etc etc even when cloaked, literally and figuratively, in tradition.....have driven many from the churches. Their failure to stand up for Christianity in education for example, has been notable. The loss to all children, maybe especially from non religious homes, of a knowledge of the Bible and the great canon of hymns and Christian music, in schools is surely a crime against our culture in which the churches have been largely complicit. Then there was covid......
I was raised without religion but in fits and starts over three-plus decades have reluctantly become a God-believer (thanks largely to a sense of wonder and an introduction to Pascal's water) and now a Christian (thanks to Christians in my life and a simple yet powerful reading of the Easter story one Easter Sunday on a camping trip that stayed with me through the years). One wonders where y'all are on your journey?
Thank you, Pairodocs, for this article. You write that people seek connection TO God. The problem is the duality. Is your identity really you? Your self-centered perspective? As long as this false entity is maintained, there's suffering. More than having connection to God, who are you? The end to human misery is to understand oneself as consciousness (God, spirit, Tao). We are only this! The mind will be terrified because truth terminates the personal identity, so it fights hard. Reflection, contemplation, and meditation, by being empty and receptive, are the way to STOP it. And God IS the source of love (not self-serving love).
A beautifully written article. I wonder if it could be more inclusive of other religions or religious traditions? After all, humility and service to others is not restricted to Christianity or even to the Abrahamic traditions. You’re words lose many readers by being both Christocentric and Theocentric. Spirit and spirituality is much broader and inclusive.
Thank you for this article! . Something profound and beyond this world happens to my mind, heart and soul when I repent and surrender fr my ways of thinking and being and seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness. In time (sometimes instantly, other struggles to get His ways over mine have taken 40 yrs!) I am transformed fr uncertain to certain, overwhelmed to settled, calm, content and have hope and giddiness about life, selfish to considering others, holding grudges to forgiveness, fear to peace, insecure to secure that God is Sovereign and no matter what happens, He's got me and will walk w me. I confessed my need for a Saviour as a young child but to this day, I am amazed and fulfilled at being enabled by His grace to live out the abundant life God promises no matter the circumstances . This does not mean happy all the time, no stress, no difficulty but it does mean I can place my trust in Him daily and He will walk w me and teach me how to navigate whatever comes. Such an adventure and so not boring to walk by faith and not by sight. I don't know why I usually attempt self reliance first and then remember oh right, seek first His Kingdom, repent, seek Him, read or remember His Word and the transformation in my own heart and mind occurs again.
Psalm 86:11 Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.
Psalm 25: 4-5 Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior.
Beautifully written Julie. (Sorry Chris, but I know you are not the psychiatrist.) I had long ago rejected organized religion mainly because it was force fed to us as children and my natural rebelliousness kicked in on religion pretty early. I remember Kevin MacMichael asking questions in our Sunday School class that were unanswerable. I loved it, but didn’t have his brain. He and I and some others were eventually expelled from the class. Neville Gilfoy(now sadly deceased) was also there, but he did not seem so rebellious at the time. When I re-encountered him later in life he turned out to be a ton of fun. Unlike Kevin, who was a brilliant musician who died way too young, I lived long enough to suffer through c19. At first, I was angry with the cowardly public health officials and politicians for stealing our freedoms and trying to force useless/dangerous shots on us, but now I see that they were all subject to the fear campaign, as were most people. Now I see the undermining of our civilization was due to the mad scientists funded by Fauci & co to bioengineer deadly bio weapons from viruses that would not otherwise bother most humans. Perhaps retreat into spirituality and religion is our only hope now, since we can’t put the spikes back into the bats. Clearly Judeo-Christian values created our “free” world and we need to sustain and reinvigorate those values as best we can. Thank you both for your stirling efforts in this regard.
Amen, and again I say Amen -I don’t even remotely know all the answers but for me John 1: says it all -and led and supported me in a life of nursing when my youngest child started school.
I've little patience for those who say the Jesus of the Bible was "a good man", "a great teacher', but that the notion that He is God is nonsensical claptrap.
I love what C.S. Lewis had to say:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
You can't reason your way to freedom because our freedom flows from God's authority.
The COVID episode was not just a wholesale attack on our liberty - stripping us of our agency - but an assault on God's will.
It was one of the darkest moments I've experienced. People thought they were being 'compassionate' and 'rational' when in fact it was the opposite operating in a panicked vacuum. Reason was the first casualty of the moral panic.
God. Use him or lose him.
Excellent article and well stated. I personally have returned to a relationship with God after a miserable hiatus of some decades. I am seeing that atheists have had their run, and didn't do too well. We are spiritual creatures, and that is not going to change. When we separate ourselves from God, we don't fare well.
Acts 4:12; "Salvation is found in no one else, for there in no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."
Thank you for a wonderful article. As someone who works as a secretary in multiple churches, I have witnessed many people entering the church by way of trauma, addiction, loss, etc., and how it has transformed people. I've also witnessed the congregations slow decline over many years but I am optimistic seeing new faces of lately. I work with a priest who people flock to, he is the most giving person I've met, giving of himself in service or whatever monies he has to others, he is the most serene person I know and will be 90 in a couple of months (I hope he has another 10 years but I know he will probably die on the altar long before we are ready for him to go).
Another great article! I have always been a spiritual person, more so than religious. I believe in God and morals, truth, and compassion to others. I find many today do not believe and even hearing the word, "religion" gets their dander up. A friend of mine (who died 6 years ago) claimed he was an atheist and when the topic of religion came up he would say "there is no God so why do you believe there is one"? My response was, "you have no proof there isn't a God and I believe there is one so we will have to leave it at that". Again, my opinion is we are spiritual beings having a human being experience on Mother Earth.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this.
thanks so much...much ponder as usual, and from comments. My current struggle relates to feeling at home and comfortable in established churches which have been taken over by the neo-marxist woke with their obsessions with racism, climate, etc etc even when cloaked, literally and figuratively, in tradition.....have driven many from the churches. Their failure to stand up for Christianity in education for example, has been notable. The loss to all children, maybe especially from non religious homes, of a knowledge of the Bible and the great canon of hymns and Christian music, in schools is surely a crime against our culture in which the churches have been largely complicit. Then there was covid......
I was raised without religion but in fits and starts over three-plus decades have reluctantly become a God-believer (thanks largely to a sense of wonder and an introduction to Pascal's water) and now a Christian (thanks to Christians in my life and a simple yet powerful reading of the Easter story one Easter Sunday on a camping trip that stayed with me through the years). One wonders where y'all are on your journey?
Thank you, Pairodocs, for this article. You write that people seek connection TO God. The problem is the duality. Is your identity really you? Your self-centered perspective? As long as this false entity is maintained, there's suffering. More than having connection to God, who are you? The end to human misery is to understand oneself as consciousness (God, spirit, Tao). We are only this! The mind will be terrified because truth terminates the personal identity, so it fights hard. Reflection, contemplation, and meditation, by being empty and receptive, are the way to STOP it. And God IS the source of love (not self-serving love).
A beautifully written article. I wonder if it could be more inclusive of other religions or religious traditions? After all, humility and service to others is not restricted to Christianity or even to the Abrahamic traditions. You’re words lose many readers by being both Christocentric and Theocentric. Spirit and spirituality is much broader and inclusive.
Thank you for this article! . Something profound and beyond this world happens to my mind, heart and soul when I repent and surrender fr my ways of thinking and being and seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness. In time (sometimes instantly, other struggles to get His ways over mine have taken 40 yrs!) I am transformed fr uncertain to certain, overwhelmed to settled, calm, content and have hope and giddiness about life, selfish to considering others, holding grudges to forgiveness, fear to peace, insecure to secure that God is Sovereign and no matter what happens, He's got me and will walk w me. I confessed my need for a Saviour as a young child but to this day, I am amazed and fulfilled at being enabled by His grace to live out the abundant life God promises no matter the circumstances . This does not mean happy all the time, no stress, no difficulty but it does mean I can place my trust in Him daily and He will walk w me and teach me how to navigate whatever comes. Such an adventure and so not boring to walk by faith and not by sight. I don't know why I usually attempt self reliance first and then remember oh right, seek first His Kingdom, repent, seek Him, read or remember His Word and the transformation in my own heart and mind occurs again.
Psalm 86:11 Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.
Psalm 25: 4-5 Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior.
Beautifully written Julie. (Sorry Chris, but I know you are not the psychiatrist.) I had long ago rejected organized religion mainly because it was force fed to us as children and my natural rebelliousness kicked in on religion pretty early. I remember Kevin MacMichael asking questions in our Sunday School class that were unanswerable. I loved it, but didn’t have his brain. He and I and some others were eventually expelled from the class. Neville Gilfoy(now sadly deceased) was also there, but he did not seem so rebellious at the time. When I re-encountered him later in life he turned out to be a ton of fun. Unlike Kevin, who was a brilliant musician who died way too young, I lived long enough to suffer through c19. At first, I was angry with the cowardly public health officials and politicians for stealing our freedoms and trying to force useless/dangerous shots on us, but now I see that they were all subject to the fear campaign, as were most people. Now I see the undermining of our civilization was due to the mad scientists funded by Fauci & co to bioengineer deadly bio weapons from viruses that would not otherwise bother most humans. Perhaps retreat into spirituality and religion is our only hope now, since we can’t put the spikes back into the bats. Clearly Judeo-Christian values created our “free” world and we need to sustain and reinvigorate those values as best we can. Thank you both for your stirling efforts in this regard.
Amen, and again I say Amen -I don’t even remotely know all the answers but for me John 1: says it all -and led and supported me in a life of nursing when my youngest child started school.
Thank you for this, great read.
I've little patience for those who say the Jesus of the Bible was "a good man", "a great teacher', but that the notion that He is God is nonsensical claptrap.
I love what C.S. Lewis had to say:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Good article. I don't see why there is any conflict between being a believer in God and being a scientist.
Great article, well reasoned and articulate. Thanks!