well, I do weight lifting. I'm hoping, in the foreseeable future, to be beautiful.

It seems to me that it would help if more "Christians" started acting like Christians.

My.02

My point precisely.

Hi graeme, thank you for the chuckle.  Maybe it is the outcome of being a teacher and outdoor enthusiast before entering ministry.   I will keep your comments in mind as I work on both my looking ahead posts and my sermons.

you bait  all the time graeme

There is an old saying about power corrupting ...

Then there is a verse about God being humble ...

Could people that believe they have to power of religion behind eM ... reconcile this sense of diversity?

It would appear to take a broad base of wisdom ... then many ministers say don't thnk and preach about staying away from the tree of knowledge and all related events. The garden collapsed into Gehenna ... go fig Ur ... was it just a challenge for mediums? These things are not well-accepted in the temple ...

But if we keep our neighbours in the dark ... whose advantage is that?

"Go teach my children"! Appears to be received in many churches as so much bull. Consider the effect of spending trillions in the Middle East teaching broad based knowledge rather than peddling the mechanics of war; would that be a road to change?

Yet in the eyes of many ignorance is good ... a state of bliss ... not knowing! Sometimes a fine break leading us back to that different reality ...

The "church" does imho speak up re political issues...the church is made up of individual believers ...the church is not a denomination or a building.....I don't think we should be looking for particular "groups " to be coming out with political statements and broadbrushing everyone in that group has having the same convictions on an issue...but if an individual believer feels a conviction to speak up about injustices...they sould do that. 

Yes. I think the emphasis should be on the Christian context rather than the cause

Even that has its own dangers, though, as some people can come to rather peculiar ideas of what the Bible says.

I feel uncomfortable with the church itself adopting a cause - even if I agree with the cause. It should, perhaps, be more a place where people are encouraged think of what a Christian context means and, quite separately from the worship serivce, a place that acts as a clearing house and contact centre for organizations that might interest congregants.

I think churches should have produced CCF leaders like Woodsworth and Douglas. But I don't think the Methodist/United/Baptist church should have campaigned for them.

One group that was designed to produce children who would think in an independent but Christian context was the CGIT (Canadian Grandmothers in Trousers, as we called them.) I don't know how effective the group was. but the idea of it was interesting.

Context ... would that include past and future conceptions in consideration of how we do things today ... or just continue in the present mode without a clue for syntax ... how the communication connects ... mostly a dis connect in the present strenghts ... where wecannot go there  ... to the past lessons (ancient wisdom literacy) or how the present  errors might lead on ... to further rapture ... vacant thoughts? How it isn't!

Then, I can speakof non sense for tomorrow, for who really gives a chit beyond today ...? keeps the genus happy ... ignorance about how it all play soude ...

Is ignorance like an unconscious mind? In cognate reception of the alien ...

Life sucks much of the time. So does government and so does church. We each must make our own relationship with God, however we conceive of God. We can no longer believe the fairy tales and myth. We must become spiritual and not religious. How can we be expected to believe things that were written by people far removed from our time and culture who, compared to our western technological society, lived in ignorance. We don't know who they were, what they thought, what their beliefs were or anything about them. We must come to our own relationship with god; one that makes sense to us. It does take committment, a lot of reading and discussing and meditation and prayer. The joy is in the journey. It doesn't happen simply by going to church for an hour on Sunday.

Well, yogggiii, you really are a Yogi, eh?

That would be true of what is written pertaining to actual worldly things including religions created by mankind. It need not include the ideals behind those religions if they lead mankind in a direction less aggressive and oppressive, a thinking universal across time..

following that line of thought, where do we get our idea of what a relationship with God should be?Anybody out there who is doing that from scratch must be very, very brilliant, indeed.

Thank you. lol

This is one of my sources Graeme, 24 books written by Alice A. Bailey and the Tibetan Master Djwhal Khul between 1922 and 1949.

It doesn't take a genius to figure what it is that mankind does wrong, nor the solution. It would take a super human being to follow the ways of goodness daily, not once justifying deeds, be they good or evil. It only takes a regular human being to try.

Well said, not4prophet!

Superhuman is that beyond or just in the abstract ... imaginary side of soul?

There is a certain sense of paraiah about IT ... as if anonymous, unknown ... and God we hate unknowns and don't wish to know eM!

Most wishes are fulfilled, some of us get bi ID ...