So what led you to become a Christian?

 

What I notice, is that folks find what they seek...........

 

Seems to me if you look for immoral Christians and decent athiests you'll find them.

Question is, do you "see" those that don't confim your own beliefs? Just because you don't see them doesn't mean that they don't exist.

 

 

I 'M a decent a'the-ist following the concept of dei-ism ... a divine love of deux parts ...

 

Is the deis ante or what as cultivated in a bicameral grove ... a gar Din spot?

 

One has to tend to the needs of des ole  thing'heh ...

 

Could be arch ache ...

My faith left, I thought, in my late teens. It returned when, at a much later age, I had children. What got me interested in fundamentalism was the showmanship and the manipulation of it. I even learned how to do faith healings.

Then I had childlren. I realized (without being concious of regaining faith), that I wanted them to have the childhood religious experience I'd had. And, to set the model, I returned to church as well.

There, I got active in social gospel. I also started a current events group in a church. When the minister asked me if I could discuss current events in a Christian context, it suddenly dawned on me that I had always done that. I had never lost my faith.

I'm not sure that the church an I see that faith in the same way. But i am quite confident of my faith.

As to good atheists and bad Christians, of course i also see bad atheists and good Christians. I realized the weakness of that sentence when I wrote. I was thinking of people who play very public roles as advocates of one side or the other. I have read books by atheists who seem to me to be quite moral. I have seen behaviour by prominent Christians, done in the name of God, that is behaviour so foul that - well...

I think of Cardinal Spellman blessing bombs that were to be dropped on Cuba, the whole kill a commie for christ movement now superseded by the kill a moslem for Jesus mood that has swept American churches.

The important point is that a person should act as God wants us to act. Believing in God is a big help. But it's not the determinant factor. Remember all those Nazi belt buckles with the words Gott mit uns.

Remember the church leader who, in war, tell their followers "We will win because God is our Commander-in-Chief." (That quotation or something much like it, has been widely used in many wars by Christian clergy on both sides.

Thank you.

How have you found if helpful that you believe in God?

Hi graeme-- Why does it just seem that your mad at the U.S.A .Also why always about  war?If you had been a minister lets say in the Koran war . What would you have said to our young men.

 I am often mad at the US because it is now the most murderous and aggressive country in the world - and the greed of its economic leaders is now the greatest threat to world survival.

Why do people get all excited if I criticize the US? If I criticize the government of China, and I often have, people don't call me anti-Chinese. If i criticize the government of New Brunswick - and I often do - am I anti-Canadian?

The US has been an aggressive, war-seeking country since it was founded. And the wars have almost always been based on greed. This year is the hundredth anniversary of the American invasion of Canada. We had done nothing to the US. The war was fought and Canadians died to satisfy American land greed. Mexico lost a third of its territory for the same reason. Brutal dictatorships were set up and supported by the US all over latin America - and in Iran. The US was complicit in the murder of the president of Vietnam and in the support for the military dictators who followed him.

It killed a quarter million innocent people in Guatemalal, over a million in Iraq, and we have no idea how many in Afghanistan.

Do you think I should stand in the street waving the starts and stripes and singing God Bless America?

It is now one of the world's most corrupt political systems in the world, with a long history of destroying democracies and replacing them with dictatorships  (Chile, guatemala, Iran, Haiti, Chiang Kai Shek in China, Karsai in Afghanistan..and the list goes on.)

Wake up. Have the courage and integrity to look at what has happened and what is happening.

What would I have told young men at the time of Korea? I would have told them that the instant the UN crossed the border, the war had ceased to be one of defence of the sounth, and had become a war of conquest. of the north.

I would have advised them to stay away from every war the US has fought since then. just as, if I were very much older, i would have advised them not to slaughter native peoples, to steal Hawaii from Hawaiians, to slaughter and steal The Philipines, to kill Mexicans and steal their land, to prop up dictators in Haiti, Guatemala, and most of central America, not to invade and kill in Grenada, not to invade Iraq or Afghanistan (in both of which there were no weapons of mass destruction and no involvement in 9/11). I would  have advised them not to join in the killing of Boer farmers to please British millionaires. I would proably have advised them to stay out of WW1.

I still think WW2 had to be fought - though I don't kid myself our motives had anything to do with the plight of Jews or the bombing of Pearl Harbour.

What is the satisfaction of believing in God? You know, I've never asked myself that. The obvious one is that I have no fear of death. I have confidence of an exstence after it - though I can have no idea what form it will take. But it's more than that.

Believing in God, I believe in the practical value of what God urges on us -truth, morality, love. Belief in God gives me confidence in myself I am not just myself.

And that doesn't begin to tell the satisfaction of believing in God. I'm going to have to think more about that to realize what it is. It h as something to do with knowing that while we can pillage, murder, even destroy the whole earth, we cannot destroy God - and with God indestructible, we are, too.

Without self criticism .... could we correct ourselves?

 

One minister calls me an evil image of Thomas Carlyle ... a gross cynic?

oh, don't worry about that. One minister once called me a darling little boy. You can't believe a word.

Indestructable creatures who pillage, murder and destroy the earth. Indestructable!? Now that's a scary thought.

well, the bodily us that pillages will not be there. What will remain is the God part of us. that's the part that's indestructible.

It is emotion coverting to latent thought ... a transcient thing-heh ... like character assassination ... and words have been corrupted since the first one befell us ... the nature of heavenly fallout ... daemons like stories as you can't tell eM to their face they're wrong ... for it is said you don't know as a pure creature of emotion.

 

Myself I like to stand on the Wahl and look over both Maases ... as they flow ... in black and white form ... mimicry of the unseen suble 4's below ... internalized thinking Zoan? Invert space ... thats green eh! Bottoms up Paddie ... chi's a dark god essence ... no one knew ... but veritably fertile ... just waiting to have some mire removed from Ur hedonistic dimension ...

 

They way the unconscious side speaks to the other ... spooky eh as a duality like two people in the mire ...

-  Hi graeme --- really some of the things you wrote about the U.S.A. could be true . The U.S.A. or any other country  don't run the world though . I Believe GOD does. Some of the places you talk about sounds like you were not listning  when they happened.Iraq  Did you never hear of dessert storm?  Afganastan they were saked to turn osam binladen  and his gang over to the usa they would not. Did you miss this? Japan attaked the usa in the 2 world war. The usa after defeating them , made them one of the riches people in asia. Go to south Korea toay and ask them who they feel about the men who died for them.Ask them if they want to join the north?Yes the u.s.a.  dose wrong , and some times right. But I thank God they are our friends and live next door. Or would you ra  ther have China---or Russia---or North Korea?

If I were a preacherman, I would preach universal unity.

 

Judging by your opening post, I think you would be a good preacherman Graeme.

 

Are you saying though that you are again a fundamentalist, as you were raised? That would be quite a different kind of preaching than what you describe in your op.

Oh, i was never a fundamentalist. If I had to pick one group that is the greatest threat to world peace, it would be the fundamentalists.

airclean, it would take me a long, long time to explain your confused views of what happened.

1. In order to turn a person over to a foreign court, it has to be shown that their is evidence against that person. The US had no evidence. I know what bin laden said at the time. But there was no evidence. Nor was there any evidence whatever that the Taliban had any connection with bin Ladin. there still isn't.

As it was, Afghanistan offered to extradite him to a neutral court as, for example, the Hague. The US refused. It insisted he had to go to a US court.

In any case, the plan to invade Aghanistan was make long before 9/11. And have you noticed the bulk of the dead are not Taliban?

BTW, the Seal team killed bin Laden. that's strange. Even children were held for questioning and torture. But they just shot the big mastermind? How hard would it have been to stuff him in  he helicopter? This was the prisoner catch of the century.

Can you imagine the intelligence to be gathered? the trial? the triumph?

But they just killed him.  why?

2. The war with japan goes back to the turn of the century. You can trace the development of it with the naval architecture of the US navy from 1919 on. The US had long been after control of Asian trade. Japan was horning in.

Common sense should tell you it was ridiculous for japan to attack the world's most powerful country at any time, let alone when Japan was over its head in a war with China.

I could go on like that for all the points you raise.

But most of all, you see the US as good - and its enemies as evil. that is simplistic.

The US deliberately slaughtered a quarter million Guatemalans. Men, women, children, all innocent. Doesn't that really sink into your mind? Do you really get the meaning of that? I'm sure you could speak passionately of the deaths of 3000 innocent Americans in New York. But you really don't give a damn about a quarter million Guatemalans. I'm not picking on you. the reality is that is a general reaction.

Islamic terrorists kill somebody. Horrors. It must be their evil religion.

Americans bomb and kill a half million Cambodians. Who cares?

Or, perhaps - you're anti-Guatemalan or anti-Cambodian. And that may explain who you really don't care about the millions of Vietnamese who were poisoned, burned and blasted.

Most people are like that.

I'll bet you see Castro as evil, too. Not a nice man like that Mr. Batista who ruled (as a US puppet) before Castro. Batista was a mass murderer, a torturer, and a thief. Castro brought public education, health care, etc. to Cuba for the first time. But Castro was evil. The Americans who supported Batista were good.

I am reminded of a scholar, an economist, who told me about how capitalism creates wealth. Has he no eyes? Hasn't he seen at least pictures of what is happening in the US? Ijn congro where capitalism rules? in Haiti?

Look at the reality.

 

Hi graeme -- Your wrong about what I think of Cuba , I think the U.S.A made a mistake with Castro. I think history will show him to have been Ok.I did not say the u. s a. was perfect. But I think you read, to much into  every thing they do. I think a lot of things they do .Has to do with money , but then don't we all. Or did you not, get payed? I believe the u.s.a. would like to do good , but often does the reverse.Should we then say they should do nothing. I think not , if they had not come into the secound world war , we may well not have won.For what ever reason you think they came in.I am not one that wants war , and believe it should be avoided, if at all possible.I may not want to attack you unless you attack my family . But dose that give me the right to stand by and watch ,well they kill your family?Will my God  under stand, I could not stand by and let you die. What a choice for a Christian.The u.s.a.  has great power , and with it comes even greater responsibitly. 

 

Some people would take that to mean that only the indestructible part of us matters, and so the bodily pillaging part of us is not really all that important. But I am quite sure that's not your view, because you often share your great concern about the wrongs that we do to each other. What makes you so concerned about those things that you believe are going to pass away anyway?

 

Normally our bodies act - to pillage, etc - in response to something inside us: call it mind, soul, spirit, heart, will, or whatever. Do you think the impulse to pillage is indestructable?

The impulse to pillage is normal, if shortsighted. I think the spirit is what gives us the longer view of how to survive in this time we are in the body. Morality is practical.

The impulse to pillage will, of course, always be there. That's why we need to be aware of it, and aware of the faith that resists it.

In the end, we all die. That doesn't alter the importance of how we behave while we live here. In particular, it doesn't alter our responsibility to our own children and grandchildren and alll those who follow us.

 

Airclean - we are all people, and all much the same. nationalities are things we invent. when I say American, an image comes to your mind. It might be Obama. it might be Al Capone. If I say Canadian, it might be a mountie. (though, curiously it is not likely to be one from the "first nations".

If fact, there is no such thing as an American type or a Canadian type. Both americans and canadians are of all colours, all religions, all degrees of honesty and criminality...

There is no such thing as a British type or a Moslem type or a chinese type. they all have much in common - and much that is different from the others.

Put them in units called nations, and they might do good things or they might do evil things. Some Moslems are brutal to women?  So were lots of Canadians - and many still are. The US was pretty brutal to Afro-Americans - not just in days of slavery but for a century after. (So were most Canadians. So much for the Mountie image.)

Germany was a highly civilized nation, the pioneer of Protestantism. Within living memory, many considered that no person was educated unless he could speak German. And Germany produced the holocaust.

I like the British. Half of my own heritage is Scots. The other half is French. Lots of nice people in Britain and France. But the British are the ones who forced opium on China. And the French are the ones who tortured and murdered Algerians into very recent times.

Modern Canada's freedom was never threatened by the Germans or the Japanese. There was never the slightest possiblity they could mount a serious invasion of North American (Yes, I know all about the Japanese attack on some Alaskan islands.)

The only country in our modern history that has threatened our freedom is the United States. it was in 1812, (also 1775 with the attacks on Montreal and Quebec.)

There are lots of nice Americans. But you have to look and see the reality of what is happening.

Iran is a threat to world peace? Sure. That gives us another cartoon image of the evil moslem fanatic. In fact, Iran has suffered oppression and invasion from France, Britain and the US (all those nice Christians) for over a century. When Iran finally got a democracy established, it was overthrown by those three countries, and a brutal dictator put in power.

We are all people who are very much the same as each other and, at the same time, very different. nationality has very little to do with it. If it does, then the British should be hated today for the opium curse they laid on China, Germans should still be loathed for what they did to Jews, and you and I should be despised for what was done to our native peoples.

We all like to think we're good. We all have a tendency to think that anyone different from us is evil. That make it easy for us to be manipulated, to be taught to hate Japanese because they're Japanese, Jews because they`re Jews, Moslems because they`re Moslems.

Harper is now manipulating us to see an image of Iranians as the great threat to world peace. In a sane world, that would be laughable. The threats to world peace are those few, large countries with big and moderm military forces. Iran is nowhere close to that.

But Harper says he`s very worried about them. And people;s minds fill up with those silly images - and they`ll kill to `save democracy``, the same democracy we destroyed almost 60 years ago.

You have to look and see what`s really there.

Is the intangeable soul/mind/psyche Complex destroyed by man or just all warped out of shape by inhumane actions ...

 

If there is anything that will come back at cha (eccos) I believe it will be the infinite flash back ... keep your head down mortals who "run" with the pool ... only the ET'ICH aL will rae-Main upright ... as that insane ithch to make things better even if only in thought ... an imaginary process ... not a real thing-heh as is light that appears to come from everywhere, anytime. Like dakness you never know when a-the ought will hit!

 

After the Theism of emotions? That would be a neat parse/Paris in oenanism ... an old form of whine ... in the dark ... could be good or evil!