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No room for complacency. No comfort zone here. . . .

Started by David Pinnegar, October 11, 2013, 03:50:27 PM

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David Pinnegar

Hi!

About a month ago the other day, the local priest missed out the section of preparation - "We do not presume to come to this thy table . . . " and as a result I arrived at the rail feeling much too comfortable.

"This is His body . . . " "This is his Blood . . . "

Feeling too comfortable I pondered upon what message I should be getting . . . and realised poignantly that in order to be eating body and blood, I had had to have killed Him, as we all do when we stand by seeing good people berated, disowned, crucified, murdered by others and by circumstances and with noone standing up for them.

The incident of realisation at the altar left me shocked.

Christianity cannot be for the complacent, nor for those seeking a comfort zone.

Having put to death, we are to eat the body and the blood so that our body and blood can replace the function of He whom we have crucified. It is our duty having murdered Him to eat Him to replace Him, to make amends by doing what we have prevented Him from doing, what he would have been able to do were He to have lived, but moreso to make amends for the sin of what we have done.

How easy is it for us simply to share communion as being invited by a friend to dinner and it not really going much further, let alone inviting him back? The reality is that there is no room for a comfort zone in Christianity. Last night on Radio 3 a group called Fascinating Aida sung a song in Richard Stilgo style about modern occidental tourism trying out this superficiality of belief and that, with the punch line "The only true religion is me". The "Jesus loves me" comfort zone fashion perhaps needs to be outdated . . .

Best wishes

David P

KB7DQH

QuoteThat means, that the still popular, but incompetent notion of a primary emphasis on "sense-perception as such," falls essentially into the category of a fantasy, that actually as a particular kind of lie which has captured the beliefs of the susceptible ingenue. Instead of mere observations of sense-perceptual experiences, we should rely upon such ironies as the celebrated 1960 German film's thematic witticism: "The important thing is the effect."3 Rather than merely reciting the name assigned to an effect, identify the effect itself, but not within the crude terms of sense-perception as such: that required correction supplies the only trustworthy notion of a competently scientific approach. For example: rather than merely pointing to the name of a living process, produce the effect, and then produce the cause of action which had generated the effect.

Bearing in mind the previous, this omission you mention
Quotethe local priest missed out the section of preparation - "We do not presume to come to this thy table . . . " and as a result I arrived at the rail feeling much too comfortable.
may have been entirely intentional? 

Eric
KB7DQH
The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."

David Pinnegar

#2
Dear Eric

Intentional? Oh dear, I wish I could ascribe that degree of wisdom. She was just taking a shortcut hoping no-one would notice.

From where is your quote above? It's interesting.

I maintain that the Church is wrong in promoting Cristianity in its anthropomorphic form focussing on Jesus as God. Before the throng of 5000 do you really think he stood there in front of the crowd: "Look here mates! The Good News is that I'm going to end up on a cross and die to save you from your sins!". Instead, he would have taught, as your quotation leads to, about God as the process of life, that which gives life in the material creation or coming together of matter in its multiplicity of forms, and that which we construct in purpose in our lives.

How many people do you know stand at the margins waiting for the Big Saviour to come and rescue them? How many people sit at the bus stop for that bus that never comes? Prostitutes in the south of France sit at bus stops and stand at the side of the road. Some wait for the magic man to rescue them. Others wait for their victim on which to feed. But all wait merely to be f***ed, trading freedom for apparent convenience. For how many people is such a sad reality a metaphor, standing at the margins of thought waiting for others to do things for them and carry them along, waiting for the big politicians, the powerful men to sort out their lives, instead of constructing lives themselves?

It's in this way that Jesus teachings promoted constructing, intending, thinking and the freedom that results.

Best wishes

David P

Paul Duffy

David, as a church organist I have to say that Christianity is certainly NOT a comfort zone anymore. We're a minority. We are swimming against the tide, but perhaps we are standing up to be counted, as was Alan Greaves when he was murdered last Christmas Eve. Because I believe that Christianity is under real threat in Britain, apathy being the main problem. Apathy will ultimately create a void into which other faiths that are not of our culture will move into. The time of Christians practicing their faith in caves once again may be many years into the future, but the seeds are being sown now.

If I may say so David, you still seem a little confused on matters of faith. Perhaps you have heard the following statement: "if you are not with me, you are against me". People often get the source of this quote wrong and think Nixon said it. Well, maybe he did, but I don't need to tell an intelligent chap such as yourself where it really originated from. For me, it is a clear-cut, uncompromising statement. It says, like the old union song, "which side are you on"? I don't think you have quite decided for yourself yet, David.

When it comes down to it. Faith is a matter of trust.

Best wishes,
Paul.

KB7DQH

To answer David's question, the relevant paragraph was snipped from the following:http://larouchepac.com/node/28460

QuoteFor how many people is such a sad reality a metaphor, standing at the margins of thought waiting for others to do things for them and carry them along, waiting for the big politicians, the powerful men to sort out their lives, instead of constructing lives themselves?
Sadly, I suspect, all too many of us... But there is "hope"...

http://larouchepac.com/node/28175
QuoteThe important of set of points which I have just presented in this chapter so far, is the distinction of the purpose between the person who thinks of death as his permanent outcome in the universe, and the one who relies on the continuing reach of a person's mission in existence, as being that person's responsibility to the purpose of the fulfillment of an indefinitely extended mission to be performed within this universe, however that may occur, whenever, or wherever.

The issue is not that of a mere attitude; it is a commitment to the ultimate outcome of a personal human life. It is that outcome, which must be served, which must become a mission for an indefinitely extended outcome within the future of our society and as far as our universe is extended. That outlook is what might be termed "the outcome" of our mission, the sense of an obligation to steer the future of mankind into a safe arrival of missions served as if "down the line" of all generations. Living thus becomes steering the universe to what means the necessary certainty of it all: the mission of creating the necessary future.

QuoteIt's in this way that Jesus teachings promoted constructing, intending, thinking and the freedom that results.

Eric
KB7DQH

The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."

David Pinnegar

#5
Dear Paul

Thanks for your very helpful and thoughtful reply.

I'm with you in feeling that position of being squeezed in society, and standing up to be counted. But I ask myself why, and the lack of relevance that Christianity is perceived to be. It's for these reasons that I seek fundamentals and ask what Christ was really teaching. Perhaps if we look at what he was teaching it's of such relevance it becomes a matter of common sense, blindingly obvious and a matter of fact - not mere faith as a matter of choice.

In this I look at atheists such as Dawkins and see stupidity as he stares God in the face, so close under his nose he's blind to that process by which Creation is Created but which he identifies in part without recognition. I look at physicists seeking for God in the wrong place merely by reason of definition - they look for the Designer but God is described as the Creator.

We see the Girl Guides and Boy Scouts having God removed from their vows. The reason is that anthropomorphisation leads to atheism as people discover that Big Daddy is not Up There sitting on a cloud. Our language has been dumbed down and we're sold short by the anthropomorphic metaphor, the metaphor taken for the literal reality rather than merely the likeness that it is. "Our Father -which- art in heaven" is not a phrase that allows anthropomorphism to work very well.

In seeking to go beyond the message of the Church and go back to the message of Jesus, it's helpful to do away with nearly 2000 years and put ourselves in the crowd witnessing what the Great Master was doing. How would we have got there? What would we see? What would he say?

In this we find a Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 which are not two conflicting and distinct accounts of the creation but merely the coming to consciousness of life in the image of man with the capability of understanding God. This God is the Breath of Life, the life that gives Life, and described in fullness by John 1.

The Great Master understands how matter works together to make matter that lives, grows, multiplies, works together with itself and with its surroundings. This process from the heavens of understanding which comes to earth to give life. His Mother and Brothers, daughters and sons of God, are those who hear the process, understand it and do it, bringing it to life, a concept detailed in three Gospels. We hear the process and become made in the image of the process. We become the process. We sacrifice our image of our magicman and become his image on earth.

The breath, the breath of life, is so important, heard in silence through the mouth - this was why the Master breathed on his disciples after the resurrection - in which they heard the sound YHWH (see Thomas Cahill - the gifts of the Jews), the sound of that which gives life. Some translations of John give "In the beginning was the Sound" - logos - word, law, intelligence. There is something incredibly hinting at philosophy in this. The Aramaic indeed was calculated to have at least 5 different concurrent meanings, a concept revived in mediaevalism.

Understanding how matter works leads to how events work too, as matter does things in the time domain to be a sequence of events.

Combinations of matter and combinations of squences of events either work or they don't work.

How we, and everything else, is related depends upon decisions. The human intellect has the capacity to make decisions in the future, intentions.

Where two decisions meet results in a circumstance. Either an event, or matter (including a person) results at the interaction or intersection of two decisions. This surface of decisions either results in creation, or it doesn't work. Decisions which break other connexions don't work in creation in the macroscopic surface of decisions. Such breakages are caused by stealing, killing, envy and all of those things identified by Moses 10 commandments.

But the repetition of the negative, of the prohibitory, merely results in the surface of the surface of decisions not being broken so as to prevent creation. But creation demands more than this.

So our laws which say "don't do harm to your neighbour" are not enough and Jesus' understanding of how creation happens goes further in "Love your Creator: Love your neighbour"

Not doing harm to neighbours, to the environment result in under-unity of the process, each decision making only a 99% connexion with its neighbour, whereas loving our neighbours, loving our neighbour matter, earth, binds all together to bring life forward resulting from a 101% positive binding mechanism.

The human race is stagnating in wars and falling apart and destruction, self destruction, for lack of understanding of the Creator.

When one puts these sort of concepts into the stories that Jesus tells, a very clear view of Creation emerges with clear guidance coming through in wisdom and behaviour. We see through a glass darkly, then face to face.

We see humankind anthropomorphically wanting a magicman to save us, waiting at the bus stop for the bus that doesn't come, for Berlusconi to turn up and abuse us.

When we understand the process of creation we don't need the magicman to invent food to feed us; we get out the food we have with us brought out from under our cloaks to share. We don't need the magicman to turn water into wine; the miserly wine buff tells the servants to bring out his best to share with his guests without a brave guy knowing of the secreted hoard having to tell the servants to do so - or perhaps in an interpretation kinder to the bride's father knowing that anonymous benefactor nearby who's willing to share his resources without anyone losing face.

When we understand the process of creation we can ask for our debts to be forgiven as long as we are willing ourselves to forgive the debts of others.

All the teachings of Jesus add up to a profound understanding of how circumstances work together, how people play through that drama of life, and how it all happens behind the apparent surface of events, behind the scenes. In this way, Christianity is fact, beyond faith. Christ teaches the route through the cogs and gearwheel driving the mechanism of life.

The process of how life comes together then becomes a process, the God of life, from which even any atheist cannot escape.

"Faith is a matter of trust" - yes we can have that trust in the full knowledge of the mechanism of events, of matter in the production of life, the mechanism of Creation. But it is so clear a fact, beyond a faith which is optional in that which is invisible, that without it we cease to exist. It is to that point that the human race leads.

We can take comfort in the Churches' view of Christ and Christianity, but as the early Christians demonstrated, in Christianity there is no comfort zone.

We have always to be at the point of Abraham with Isaac upon the altar. Not unless we are that uncomfortable can we see the process of God. If we sacrifice our comfort zone, Christianity becomes a light for all to see. In doing so, a light of common sense shines in the darkness of people waiting at the bus stop for the bus to nowhere.

In your mention of Alan Greaves there is something most profound, the willingness to serve, to bind together and in the service of the church it is the organ and the organist so often anonymous.

Best wishes

David P


Paul Duffy

David,

I think perhaps the Church can sometimes get in the way of Christ's teachings. I am thinking particularly of man-made rules which were established a long time ago. It is these things which makes the Church lose relevance with people. But, how far do you take it? To make churches more relevant, should we make them like pubs and nightclubs because that is the culture with which the populace seems most comfortable? If I thought that would truly work, I would happily give up my place at the pipe organ and see it scrapped in favour of a DJ's set-up. Perhaps the Church should inculturate DJ equipment into its liturgy in the way it did with the pipe organ after its years of use as an accompaniment to slaughter in Roman amphitheatres!

For a highly intelligent man, Richard Dawkins behaves like an idiot. I don't think he believes his own hype. He goes out of his way to ridicule the beliefs of others but then says Grace at his old college at Oxford. If you are going to be atheist, at least be consistent.

From the Girl Guides to council prayers and the court oath, God is slowly being airbrushed out of public life. (It will be interesting to see how the Almighty is removed from the National Anthem though!) I don't agree that people are turning from God as a concept because of 'anthropomorphisation', it is purely from a standpoint of image. This turning away stems from embarrassment, because the current generation does not want to appear old fashioned. When I joined the Air Training Corps as a youngster, I had to swear an oath of allegiance and to promise to do 'my duty to God, my Country and my Queen'. I can honestly say that there was no embarrassment on our part, it was an accepted part of joining. There was no 'image problem' for us. Not so now, and it is why I feel our culture is changing, and may disappear completely one day. There is also a complete lack of a sense of occasion on the part of many people today, which is why I had to witness foul language in the hallowed cloisters of Chester Cathedral recently. I did nothing apart from mutter under my breath, but with the ugly behaviour of people these days you have to weigh up the consequence of complaining with the risk of ending up in A&E!

'Don't do harm to your neighbour' actually does harm, because it results in people passing by on the other side of the road. On the other hand, as you have mentioned in previous posts, some people commit terrible atrocities because of their warped view of God and their misplaced beliefs. But, as I understand it, Christ is all about a four-letter word which means far more than just a grotty Valentine's card. And that is why these idiots who gun down children at a cooking contest will never meet Him.

Best wishes,
Paul.




David Pinnegar

#7
Dear Paul

Interesting points

To make churches more relevant we don't need to make the appearance more relevant with DJs and the like, but the substance more relevant.

The problem is with expecting people to understand the four letter word is that sadly many people nowadays have grown up in a materialist society in which money buys loyalty (or slavery) but in a cocoon of material comfort devoid of the four letter word. This leaves the four letter word understood merely as and confused by the three letter word. People who have not experienced the four letter word don't know or understand how to do it. It's like telling someone who can see only black and white and even as many as fifty shades of grey what green is and how blue is the sky. The latter can be difficult in England.

So the love message does not always have a commonality of experience on which to place the metaphor.

It's for this reason that "love" being the process of empathisation, of coming together, of binding together by working together, it's possibly understood to an atheist generation as a mechanism, that they have to work at to put within their lives, and instructed how by example, by the pattern of quarks coming together as protons to tame the repulsive and negative electrons to create atoms, for atoms to work to create molecules, for proteins to work to create as DNA, for genes not to be selfish but to work together to produce working creating organisms, and we with the brain to understand the process, organisms of this creation process even us! The Creator therefore comes to life as this process, which in other words amounts to the four letter word.

It is, however, a consciousness from beyond that enables a perspective of knowing our animal instinctive reactions and fighting against them so that the active mind takes control of our reactive behaviour beyond the instincts of either hitting back or running away.

The next hurdle is that of understanding of simile. Whilst the word "like" is used as punctuation in modern likespeech like, the people who use it so don't really understand the concept. The courses in comparative religion that Christians believe something and Hindus believe something else, often taught by atheists who don't understand how to read the scriptures, do not teach how to read the scripture and how to engage in parallel thought, the interpretation of the parable. It is for this reason that under the pseudonym "Four Foot Principal" I wrote about an experience at Nice Airport being asked by some New Zealanders for tourist information about how to get to Monaco, and by the simple substitution of names the story became entirely something else in another dimension of meaning.

Yesterday I shared a long trip with a South African garage mechanic friend to go and pick up the pedal harpsichord. His father had been a pastor but he has rejected the church and he was talking about questions his 10 year old son was asking.

"On this Rock my Church is founded - so how can there be so many churches?" So I explained to my friend that he needed to explain the creation principle and that it was on this principle that the whole of Jesus' teaching is based and upon which the church is founded to spread understanding of the idea. It's a matter of understanding of the mechanism, such as that involved in an internal combustion engine. Understanding how the carburated mixture is compressed and fired by heat to explode and push a piston has enabled many churches of manufacture to exist where people go to worship daily and the result is cars made by many different brandnames, of which on the M25 a Mini, Ford, Ferrari and Rolls Royce are entirely equivalent. But this is a very different rock of understanding.

As the process of creation is everlasting, we don't have to change the appearance of what we do in church, indeed not - we have to continue the concept of the everlasting and unchanging, of the old, the ancient, and the understanding of this leading into the new.

Best wishes

David P







KB7DQH

This appeared as a reply to an article posted on Facebook...

QuotePieter Visser     I see theology as the roadmap of life. But if we only use the roadmap to look at, life wont happen. Many times in church I want to cry because so many opportunities are missed. My whole youth was consumed in a very positive way because the Triune God was always clear in all our doings. We were far from perfect, but we understood we were forgiven.

For those who don't know, Pieter Visser is a retired organbuilder here in the US...

Eric
KB7DQH
The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."

David Pinnegar

Dear Eric

That quotation about the roadmap of life is interesting.

Conversations with friends recently have focussed the mind . . .

Pondering on what we would have heard Jesus say when we were in that crowd of 5000 . . . let's take our minds back . . . He didn't then get us all enthusiastic to travel to hear him for him to say "Listen Mates - Be good and follow me because I'm going to die to save you from your sins". No. Jesus was teaching the common sense of Creation - how matter comes together to be more useful than its component parts and because it's more useful there's more created matter apparent to us than its created parts . . . and how God is this process of coming together, instructing us how to do so, to be useful. Of course, by doing so in our lives, we don't sin: we don't do things that block the process of creation.

So if Jesus could not pull the crowds telling people to come together and worship Him because he was going to die to save us from our sins, how can now the Church expect to do so?

Let's take our minds back to the time of the lifetimes of people who had heard Jesus teaching in real life, before the documents of the New Testament were writ and affixed onto paper. A reading in the C of E a week back is of interest, the letter of Paul to Timothy, 2 Timothy 4:
Quote
3 For the time will come when people 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. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

At the time this was written, sound doctrine referred to what Jesus was teaching remembered first hand, the doctrine of Jesus, not the Church . . . the doctrine of common sense, of working together, of understanding how Creation happens, our God being the Creator and not a magicman even though application of the process of creation can work magic, and before Jesus the magicman became myth, told and retold by generation after generation not with the breathing spirit of understanding of creation, but with the status of myth mistaking the messenger for the message.

So we see from the perspective of entering the time how true prophecy the Scripture we read was to be. Not understanding the message, not understanding the process of creation, the church split into stupid arguments about wafer thin shades of meaning, 2 Timothy 4:3 - the doctrine referred to being that of Jesus, now mistaken for the doctrine of the Church.

We live in a time of increasing difficulty. Anyone who looks at
https://sites.google.com/site/architecturearticles/home/article-007---britain-future-climate-and-architecture
will see that in order to survive, we have to work together, to prepare. This warning painstakenly derived from the consequences of the consciousness that oil is a finite resource, sending prices through the roof (and by definition a collapse of banking with all in infinite debt), and not by some nebulous prediction of the end of the world or a comet that is about to hit us and won't or some odd legend of another planet visiting the solar system. Followers of those liking such scenarios are focussing on Comet Ison and Planet Niburu. But no, the end of the world that is upon us is the collapse of manufacturing and transport and all derived from oil.

We have just 7 years of plenty in which to prepare for the coming famine.

. . . Preparation not for ourselves but for our neighbours, our community, our country, our world. If we prepare only for ourselves Godlessly, then we will be destroyed by the marauding godless masses who will kill, take and destroy.

It is a preparation of sufficiency, for ourselves and our neighbours. Energy, food, practical skills.

It is in this way that the instruction of Jesus has relevance today. The Church has the potential to be of relevance today in a way never before. There is work to do. Both in the realms of the practical and in the mind also. By giving the message of Jesus rather than the Church, the Churches may draw those crowds that Jesus did. Whatever its source http://www.thenazareneway.com/essene_gospel_of_peace_book1.htm is interesting. *

Open minds are now essential even for our bare survival.

The opening of minds . . . I have now met two people who tell me that they have converted their cars to run on water. No "fuel". Clearly they are merely cult leaders wanting to draw attention. . . . or more? The experiments have to be done, but they are not. Lots of people can do them. Of particular interest to me is Thane's transformer http://www.free-energy-info.tuks.nl/Chapt3.html

I am looking for an apprentice, a gap year student, an undergraduate in holidays, a graduate without yet a job, to painstakingly invest time in repeating some of those experiments. Food, board and lodging and a little pocket money will be the only immediate reward . . . but we may, may just find humanity's escape from oiltocracy.

Because Quantum Physics and General Relativity are mutually incompatible, we can expect experimenal results from the inbetween.

Best wishes

David P

*
QuoteAnd Jesus himself sat down in their midst and said: "I tell you truly, none can be happy, except he do the Law."

And the others answered: "We all do the laws of Moses, our lawgiver, even as they are written in the holy scriptures."

And Jesus answered: "Seek not the law in your scriptures, for the law is life, whereas the scripture is dead. I tell you truly, Moses received not his laws from God in writing, but through the living word. The law is living word of living God to living prophets for living men. In everything that is life is the law written. You find it in the grass, in the tree, in the river, in the mountain, in the birds of heaven, in the fishes of the sea; but seek it chiefly in yourselves. For I tell you truly, all living things are nearer to God than the scripture which is without life. God so made life and all living things that they might by the everlasting word teach the laws of the true God to man. God wrote not the laws in the pages of books, but in your heart and in your spirit. They are in your breath, your blood, your bone; in your flesh, your bowels, your eyes, your ears, and in every little part of your body. They are present in the air, in the water, in the earth, in the plants, in th e sunbeams, in the depths and in the heights. They all speak to you that you may understand the tongue and the will of the living God. But you shut your eyes that you may not see, and you shut your ears that you may not hear. I tell you truly, that the scripture is the work of man, but life and all its hosts are the work of our God. Wherefore do you not listen to the words of God which are written in His works? And wherefore do you study the dead scriptures which are the work of the hands of men?"
Many of these passages are recognisable from the epistles but their collection together here bears an authenticity.