Hey, I'm a pompous armchair theologian who is always down to insult some Calvinists! (Sorry. I know a few who are genuinely lovely people, but hard agree with your take on their theology.)
I actually love the main point of this piece, and totally agree that most people expect pillars of fire when God already speaks to us. "all that looking for God in fire and wind and earth is just a way to ignore it." – couldn't agree more!
However, I just want to give a few counterpoints to your statements about being created for God's glory. You expressed this in very human terms, and I fully understand that's partly an editorial choice. But worshipping God doesn't mean flattery and adulation and ego inflation. It is the nature of God to deserve (not need) worship because He is the ultimate good.
As you said, God doesn't need our worship – as the ultimate good, God's glory is already perfect and infinite. We can't materially add to something which is already complete. In that sense, that pastor was absolutely wrong due to his oversimplified language. But that's why there's the theological distinction of 'accidental glory' – deriving from the meaning of 'circumstantial', and not 'by chance', the usual meaning today.
In Catholic theology, all of creation adds to God's accidental glory. Every animal, tree, mountain and river is inherently praising God by acting in accordance with its nature as part of creation. Its participation in this act is worship. The difference is that, as creatures with free will (sorry Calvinists), when we praise God it carries the additional merit of our free choice to do so.
The annihilation of this individuality – which seems to be what you're describing later in the piece, forgive me if I've misunderstood – would mean complete dissolution to some kind of nirvana state.
Perfect unity with God by no means necessitates literally becoming God. As intelligent beings with free will, our individuality is pretty 'baked in' as part of our nature. Our eschatological telos is indeed perfect unity with the divine, which is why we can't achieve that until we're perfect ourselves, and in turn why Purgatory is a thing. Nothing imperfect can survive seeing God face-to-face, which implies that our survival as individuals is intended.
But crucially, your view on divinisation would mean that our divinely created nature is inherently imperfect and must be changed in order for us to reach our perfect end. Ironically, in defending the ordinary frumpy people in the pews as not-yet divinised, you denigrate their perfectly created nature that is simply obscured by sin. "For what is sinless and eternal except for God[...]?" Well, the angels, for one thing. Everyone else in heaven, for another. The difference is that we depend on God's will for our existence.
Worshipping God, on earth or in heaven, doesn't necessarily mean saying specific words, reciting lengthy prayers, or doing other things which you seem to find silly or cringe. We are part of God's creation, and our struggle on earth is to overcome the obstacles to the purpose for which we were created – which is to 'know Him and love Him in this life, and to be happy with Him forever in the next' (Baltimore Catechism). Our existence gives glory to God because He made us perfect, and it is in this way that we are made in His image. We just have to stop covering it up.
The Orthodox Church (The ones with all the incense and bells and such) never lost the teaching of theosis. Indeed, that is their definition of salvation.
This resonates for someone who has spent time meditating and couldn't explain where the voice/thoughts were coming from (who is watching the watcher). I think I'll pray and then listen in a similar manner. Maybe God has been there all along.
I agree that a good deal of what we are taught to identify as our "selves" will not make it into the age to come, but we are going to have individual bodies forever. The resurrection of our bodies is the Christian hope. Yes, our spirit (which is not a floaty, mystical, abstract thing, but a concrete, practical, essential part of what makes us human) will have perfect connection with God, and I'm comfortable with describing what we will be as "gods", but we will still be ourselves.
In fact, we'll truly be ourselves for the first time. All the corrosion of spirit, soul, and body will finally be stripped away, and I will be free in love and power and capability for the first time in my life. You see this already in the saints in this age: as someone draws closer to the heart of God, they become more sharply and uniquely themselves, freed from the deadness of passion (old sense) and sin.
The story doesn't end with only God existing. It doesn't end at all. It blazes on, filled with fascinating, powerful, eternal beings, each one a world of potency and memory and uniquely expressed love to each other and all of creation.
It’s common for religious ideologues to debate whose theology is correct. This is one level of investigation, inspecting the content of thought, comparing this content to that content etc.
Another level of investigation is to set the content of thought aside, and examine the nature of the medium of thought, that which we are all made of psychologically.
Once it’s seen that it’s the medium of thought itself which is generating an illusion of division between “me” and “you” and “me” and “God”, this insight puts ALL theologies in a different light.
All theologies, and all theologians, are made of thought. And thought operates by a process of division.
It’s this reality, this thought generated illusion of division, which creates the desire to “get back to God”.
The problem for all religions is that it’s rather difficult to unify with God by use of a medium whose explicit purpose is to divide.
"You can’t go into Eternity maimed. The Deaf will have to hear again, the Lame will have to start walking, the Blind will have to see..."
Yes, of course, and maybe some of that reward also comes not just from turning away from our own sins, pride and depravities ("burning off," you call it) but also from extending ourselves for the sake of others, loving one another, forsaking our own best interests.
What I'm getting at is we don't all start out equally. Some are deprived at birth or may be literally and spiritually maimed in childhood and early adolescence and what seems like easy or "normal behavior" for most really requires much more effort and struggle to overcome personally experienced evil done to them.
Not trying to anticipate or comment on how merciful the Lord must be, to whom.
Just wondering, out loud, in our own judgment of and interactions with others, when we recognize behavior or attitudes that appear to us as "maimed responses," the human handicaps some have endured may be completely unknowable to us.
So when Jesus said, "the last shall be first," we can never rely on superficial appearances, alone, who has been more or less favored or handicapped by their inheritance and/or earlier experience of life.
Not only are we all born with some completely obvious differences; socially, culturally and economically (kids born in G7 countries versus kids born to mine red cobalt in the Congo -- so the former can read substack essays on their smartphones, while the latter may only hope to survive another day without disease, starvation or brutality) there are also invisible differences between apparently similar people and we can never take for granted who are the maimed and unmained.
Anyway, thoughts for another essay, maybe. What I was thinking when I read those lines:
"You can’t go into Eternity maimed. The Deaf will have to hear again, the Lame will have to start walking, the Blind will have to see..."
In any event, thank you! Really appreciate your thoughts on this subject, I have eagerly shared already with a bunch of folks.
As a Calvinist, I’m disappointed by this narrow caricature you’ve chosen to present. Choose to disagree, fine, but at least represent the other side in good faith. Furthermore, I fail to find the humor about killing brothers in Christ over a doctrinal disagreement. No wonder Christianity is often viewed as unappealing to those watching us. I’d be happy to discuss the fleshed-out Calvinist viewpoint if you’re truly interested in a dialogue.
Not sure how Yoshi would respond, but here's something to think about:
Imagine you have a loving father (I hope you don't have to imagine too hard). You meet someone who claims to be your father's friend, but who also insists that your father is petty, vain, and psychopathically vindictive. You might feel a little confused and irritated. Then imagine that you discover there is a whole group of people committed to telling everyone that your father is this wretched, pitiful, narcissistic, bombastic, abusive, arbitrary, cruel shadow of the man you know him to be... while still insisting that they are his friends and he is really a good guy. Your response might be less than charitable.
That is the feeling I have every time I hear a Calvinist talk or write about God. I've read Calvinist works, both popular and academic, and a fair amount of Calvin's Institutes, so I'm not just reacting against some caricature of the doctrine. I've followed Christ my entire life, I love Scripture, and I consider myself fiercely orthodox.
I hate the portrait of God's character painted by Calvinist theology.
I do not think it bears any resemblance to the God revealed in the person of Jesus Christ in the gospels. I think the Calvinist or Reformed (yes, they are different, but my critique is similar for each) reading of the New Testament - especially Paul's letters, and especially especially Romans - is deeply and utterly flawed. Flawed not for the misinterpretation of a verse, but flawed in character: flawed for thinking that the text could possibly be saying that, flawed for not hating the very idea that the Scriptures could be saying that about our Father.
I have intellectual and biblical and historical arguments, but the substance of my hatred for Calvinism is a spontaneous, angry roar from the depths of my soul, "do not speak those damned lies about the God I love."
So I think I understand Yoshi's point, even if it is not nice.
By the way, someone further down the comments is looking for a defense of Calvinism. I responded, but you are probably better qualified than I am to make that defense, and you are welcome to critique or amplify the defense I made.
Whoops, a clarification, this comment is a reply to Peter Gardner, not to Yoshi M.
I hope you weren't too put out to read all the way through. Dude did apologize but moreimportantly I think he made up for the first 500 words with everything that followed that paragraph in the middle that said, 'Oh, yeah, I am writing about how to talk to God.'
Most everything from that point on was aces. (Although I was a bit offended, on behalf of a few Communist friends I have, with the mostly dismissive lines about communism that followed the 'Oh, yeah' paragraph.)
Yep, your essay bubbled away inside in my sleep. And I have more to share from the fermentation. I was incorrect in my first comment about the “occasional word” you are right about the accessible present inner word from the Lord, after all it says “Christ in you, the hope of glory” “do you not realize that Christ is in you” so it could be argued that Christians have a heaven sent beneficent, schizophrenia, inner voice of God and all. This is scary as you wrote.
This type of thing could be termed “prelest”, self deception, pride, this easy God access in the Eastern Orthodox model of spiritual formation, whoa, boy, slow down on the Theosis and do your ascetic struggle for the requisite years and years under direction! “imaginations of your own heart” is a term used in the OT. But, I don’t care, let the walk and fun with Jesus begin.
Yes, you owe the Calvinists an apology, they have a set of scriptures that strongly support their viewpoint (as we all do) They and their opponents have dueled for centuries with rapiers of verses drawn from their respective armories of scripture. Also the areas most heavily influenced by Calvinism are Switzerland, Britain, Netherlands, and the USA, places other people want to immigrate to. In fact the Brits during the American Revolution would burn down Presbyterian Churches as that Calvinist sect was seen as a hotbed of rebellion.
The Bible is a hot Godly mess of inconsistencies and contradictions when honestly considered, with verses for a myriad of viewpoints. I say this in reverence for “how unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out” even more contradictory and weird than quantum physics! Emerson said “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. So let’s jump in and swim in the loving fiery mystery of God.
“Thy kingdom come” the core of prayer according to Jesus, “Fear not little flock, the Father is pleased to give you the Kingdom” “the kingdom of God is righteousness (everything okay between God and me) peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” Romans 14:17, this verse is the only place where the kingdom of God is explicitly defined in the NT “God has shed abroad his love in our hearts by the Holy Spirit he has given us” from Romans 5, “in his presence is fullness of joy” Psalms, God’s ongoing communication to us in response to prayer is inner life, joy, peace, love with occasional words all as gift
What if worship isn’t primarily an act of sending feeble words of praise to an impossibly glorious God, but a act of remembering that our union with God is our ultimate purpose and the true answer to our spiritual hunger both now and eternity.
What if worship is the very experience of having those hungers satisfied by God himself? What if worship is having God satisfy our need for him and being glorified in that fact? What if God is most glorified in his creatures when his creatures are most satisfied in him?
Also the cartoon implies that the form of execution of hanging the victim, disemboweling and the cutting the body in quarters was used by Calvinists. It was not. It was used in England not for heresy but for ‘high treason’ and reserved for those not of high birth (who had the heads chopped off) - so, after the restoration, the nobels convicted of Charles regicide were hanged 9 (including Cook the chief prosecutor) were h,d & qeed. In our day a certain King claims he is above the law (the last one lost his head) but if he gets back in power - look out Jack Smith! “Three of the regicides, John Dixwell, Edward Whalley and William Goffe, fled to New England, where they avoided capture, despite a search” (Wickipedia) - I wonder whether their descendants are Blue or Red?
Footnote: it is absolutely inconceivable that the Puritans who executed King Charles and settled America, led the revolution against England and formulated the American Constitution could even conceive that any head of state could be above the law in any way. The case presented by Cooke at the trial of King Charles did not mention the Bible or God’s law, but was based upon the fact that the people themselves were the source of the law and as a commoner prosecutor is the origin of the American dream of equality and dignity for all (see Geoffrey Robinson https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/apr/23/john-cooke-my-hero-geoffrey-robertson?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other) and his book “The Tyrannicide Brief”)
You would do well to read Marilynne Robinson on Calvin in her non fiction books to provide a sympathetic Christian perspective on Calvin. My experience you prayer is as you say. Calvin’s followers (John Piper etc) have grown rigid and forgotten that “If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian.” (Evagrios the solitary) and the praying referred to is the ascent without distraction of the intellect (mind noos) to God.
A deeper dive into Calvinism was the catalyst to the suspicion that we might not, after all, be worshiping the same God. It was the beginning of a journey back through Church history to see the deal really was, and that ultimately lead me to the Orthodox Church.
Your last sentence is the most important. That's how I KNOW Jesus never existed and all the BS related to him are the concoctions of some crafty jews wanting to brainwash and control the masses.
Half of the sentence is TRUE, God is indeed in you. But as you put it in another article, you don't realize your little pinky or your nail growing or your cell diving. Same, you don't feel the DNA , the God's signature inside every cell of your body, you only feel it when you're ill and pain is present. So, in the same way, ONE doesn't really realizes when he's happy, when he is in communion with god, BUT realizes when he's suffering, when he's departing from god and thus more or less discomfort get felt.
The easiest way to LISTEN to god, and realize his existence, is, contrary to that jew-on-a-stick saying, TO OBSERVE. To observe nature, the outdoors, the great Creation. Just sitting on a mound, or hill, or even better, on a mountain, listening to everything that surrounds you, taking everything in, I guarantee you will feel happiness, you will feel that you belong, that you are a part of that Creation, and sooner rather than later you'll feel the comfort inside you, that comfort that realizing GOD IS IN EVERYTHING AROUND: in the mountains, in the seas, in the winds, in the flowers and the bees, in the birdsongs, in the flapping of a butterfly, in the falling of a leave... that everything lives and dies according to a "mathematical" pattern, the intelligent design behind it all, THEN you'll feel that you belong, and that's the way God speak to you: through that feeling of beatitude and utmost comfort you gain when you're connected with the (as you put it yet in another article) music of the stars.
I myself I never pray, I never ask.. what I do is find it in me the drive to complete a task, to fulfil a project, to take care of myself like I would take care of another..and then I'm just thankful. Thankful for the inner will, force, and wisdom bestowed upon me by my Creator that make me live my life avoiding (most) pain, sorrow and despair.
PS the holy trinity is said to be The Father , the Son and the Holy Ghost. These are, God, Man and DNA. The Son is not some failed-and-lazy-bastard-carpenter-but-primordial-hippie-socialist-jew, IS YOU. YOU were created by your father, GOD, and insufflated with the divine DNA. There's where the soul IS. And the best proof is the bright explosion of light at the moment of creation, the meeting of a spermatozoid with an ovum (each having JUST HALF of the total chromosomes a human has), when the two halves of distinct DNA unite and forge another complete one, attracting and binding a soul into the newly created living being.
Wow, that was an eyeful of intellectual and theological gymnastics! Good job, Yoshi: very thought provoking.
Of course, when we are dealing with our ultimate union with God and the truth of the Incarnation, we are running smack into mystery, in its most profound sense. These cannot ever be fully understood , though, like Aquinas and Augustine, we should nevertheless also strive to do so. Your article is a noble attempt. Perhaps Augustine said it the best: “Tu autem eras interior intimo meo et superior summo meo!” (Confessions III, 6:II).
Hey, I'm a pompous armchair theologian who is always down to insult some Calvinists! (Sorry. I know a few who are genuinely lovely people, but hard agree with your take on their theology.)
I actually love the main point of this piece, and totally agree that most people expect pillars of fire when God already speaks to us. "all that looking for God in fire and wind and earth is just a way to ignore it." – couldn't agree more!
However, I just want to give a few counterpoints to your statements about being created for God's glory. You expressed this in very human terms, and I fully understand that's partly an editorial choice. But worshipping God doesn't mean flattery and adulation and ego inflation. It is the nature of God to deserve (not need) worship because He is the ultimate good.
As you said, God doesn't need our worship – as the ultimate good, God's glory is already perfect and infinite. We can't materially add to something which is already complete. In that sense, that pastor was absolutely wrong due to his oversimplified language. But that's why there's the theological distinction of 'accidental glory' – deriving from the meaning of 'circumstantial', and not 'by chance', the usual meaning today.
In Catholic theology, all of creation adds to God's accidental glory. Every animal, tree, mountain and river is inherently praising God by acting in accordance with its nature as part of creation. Its participation in this act is worship. The difference is that, as creatures with free will (sorry Calvinists), when we praise God it carries the additional merit of our free choice to do so.
The annihilation of this individuality – which seems to be what you're describing later in the piece, forgive me if I've misunderstood – would mean complete dissolution to some kind of nirvana state.
Perfect unity with God by no means necessitates literally becoming God. As intelligent beings with free will, our individuality is pretty 'baked in' as part of our nature. Our eschatological telos is indeed perfect unity with the divine, which is why we can't achieve that until we're perfect ourselves, and in turn why Purgatory is a thing. Nothing imperfect can survive seeing God face-to-face, which implies that our survival as individuals is intended.
But crucially, your view on divinisation would mean that our divinely created nature is inherently imperfect and must be changed in order for us to reach our perfect end. Ironically, in defending the ordinary frumpy people in the pews as not-yet divinised, you denigrate their perfectly created nature that is simply obscured by sin. "For what is sinless and eternal except for God[...]?" Well, the angels, for one thing. Everyone else in heaven, for another. The difference is that we depend on God's will for our existence.
Worshipping God, on earth or in heaven, doesn't necessarily mean saying specific words, reciting lengthy prayers, or doing other things which you seem to find silly or cringe. We are part of God's creation, and our struggle on earth is to overcome the obstacles to the purpose for which we were created – which is to 'know Him and love Him in this life, and to be happy with Him forever in the next' (Baltimore Catechism). Our existence gives glory to God because He made us perfect, and it is in this way that we are made in His image. We just have to stop covering it up.
Woohoo! That was some beautiful logic! God approves mightily! 👏🙌👏🙌🙏
The Orthodox Church (The ones with all the incense and bells and such) never lost the teaching of theosis. Indeed, that is their definition of salvation.
This resonates for someone who has spent time meditating and couldn't explain where the voice/thoughts were coming from (who is watching the watcher). I think I'll pray and then listen in a similar manner. Maybe God has been there all along.
I agree that a good deal of what we are taught to identify as our "selves" will not make it into the age to come, but we are going to have individual bodies forever. The resurrection of our bodies is the Christian hope. Yes, our spirit (which is not a floaty, mystical, abstract thing, but a concrete, practical, essential part of what makes us human) will have perfect connection with God, and I'm comfortable with describing what we will be as "gods", but we will still be ourselves.
In fact, we'll truly be ourselves for the first time. All the corrosion of spirit, soul, and body will finally be stripped away, and I will be free in love and power and capability for the first time in my life. You see this already in the saints in this age: as someone draws closer to the heart of God, they become more sharply and uniquely themselves, freed from the deadness of passion (old sense) and sin.
The story doesn't end with only God existing. It doesn't end at all. It blazes on, filled with fascinating, powerful, eternal beings, each one a world of potency and memory and uniquely expressed love to each other and all of creation.
How to talk to God?
Turn down the volume of thought, that which is creating the illusion of division between “me” and “God”.
https://www.tannytalk.com/p/article-series-the-nature-of-thought
It’s common for religious ideologues to debate whose theology is correct. This is one level of investigation, inspecting the content of thought, comparing this content to that content etc.
Another level of investigation is to set the content of thought aside, and examine the nature of the medium of thought, that which we are all made of psychologically.
Once it’s seen that it’s the medium of thought itself which is generating an illusion of division between “me” and “you” and “me” and “God”, this insight puts ALL theologies in a different light.
All theologies, and all theologians, are made of thought. And thought operates by a process of division.
It’s this reality, this thought generated illusion of division, which creates the desire to “get back to God”.
The problem for all religions is that it’s rather difficult to unify with God by use of a medium whose explicit purpose is to divide.
Good goal. Wrong tool.
You wrote:
"You can’t go into Eternity maimed. The Deaf will have to hear again, the Lame will have to start walking, the Blind will have to see..."
Yes, of course, and maybe some of that reward also comes not just from turning away from our own sins, pride and depravities ("burning off," you call it) but also from extending ourselves for the sake of others, loving one another, forsaking our own best interests.
What I'm getting at is we don't all start out equally. Some are deprived at birth or may be literally and spiritually maimed in childhood and early adolescence and what seems like easy or "normal behavior" for most really requires much more effort and struggle to overcome personally experienced evil done to them.
Not trying to anticipate or comment on how merciful the Lord must be, to whom.
Just wondering, out loud, in our own judgment of and interactions with others, when we recognize behavior or attitudes that appear to us as "maimed responses," the human handicaps some have endured may be completely unknowable to us.
So when Jesus said, "the last shall be first," we can never rely on superficial appearances, alone, who has been more or less favored or handicapped by their inheritance and/or earlier experience of life.
Not only are we all born with some completely obvious differences; socially, culturally and economically (kids born in G7 countries versus kids born to mine red cobalt in the Congo -- so the former can read substack essays on their smartphones, while the latter may only hope to survive another day without disease, starvation or brutality) there are also invisible differences between apparently similar people and we can never take for granted who are the maimed and unmained.
Anyway, thoughts for another essay, maybe. What I was thinking when I read those lines:
"You can’t go into Eternity maimed. The Deaf will have to hear again, the Lame will have to start walking, the Blind will have to see..."
In any event, thank you! Really appreciate your thoughts on this subject, I have eagerly shared already with a bunch of folks.
As a Calvinist, I’m disappointed by this narrow caricature you’ve chosen to present. Choose to disagree, fine, but at least represent the other side in good faith. Furthermore, I fail to find the humor about killing brothers in Christ over a doctrinal disagreement. No wonder Christianity is often viewed as unappealing to those watching us. I’d be happy to discuss the fleshed-out Calvinist viewpoint if you’re truly interested in a dialogue.
Not sure how Yoshi would respond, but here's something to think about:
Imagine you have a loving father (I hope you don't have to imagine too hard). You meet someone who claims to be your father's friend, but who also insists that your father is petty, vain, and psychopathically vindictive. You might feel a little confused and irritated. Then imagine that you discover there is a whole group of people committed to telling everyone that your father is this wretched, pitiful, narcissistic, bombastic, abusive, arbitrary, cruel shadow of the man you know him to be... while still insisting that they are his friends and he is really a good guy. Your response might be less than charitable.
That is the feeling I have every time I hear a Calvinist talk or write about God. I've read Calvinist works, both popular and academic, and a fair amount of Calvin's Institutes, so I'm not just reacting against some caricature of the doctrine. I've followed Christ my entire life, I love Scripture, and I consider myself fiercely orthodox.
I hate the portrait of God's character painted by Calvinist theology.
I do not think it bears any resemblance to the God revealed in the person of Jesus Christ in the gospels. I think the Calvinist or Reformed (yes, they are different, but my critique is similar for each) reading of the New Testament - especially Paul's letters, and especially especially Romans - is deeply and utterly flawed. Flawed not for the misinterpretation of a verse, but flawed in character: flawed for thinking that the text could possibly be saying that, flawed for not hating the very idea that the Scriptures could be saying that about our Father.
I have intellectual and biblical and historical arguments, but the substance of my hatred for Calvinism is a spontaneous, angry roar from the depths of my soul, "do not speak those damned lies about the God I love."
So I think I understand Yoshi's point, even if it is not nice.
By the way, someone further down the comments is looking for a defense of Calvinism. I responded, but you are probably better qualified than I am to make that defense, and you are welcome to critique or amplify the defense I made.
Whoops, a clarification, this comment is a reply to Peter Gardner, not to Yoshi M.
I hope you weren't too put out to read all the way through. Dude did apologize but moreimportantly I think he made up for the first 500 words with everything that followed that paragraph in the middle that said, 'Oh, yeah, I am writing about how to talk to God.'
Most everything from that point on was aces. (Although I was a bit offended, on behalf of a few Communist friends I have, with the mostly dismissive lines about communism that followed the 'Oh, yeah' paragraph.)
Yep, your essay bubbled away inside in my sleep. And I have more to share from the fermentation. I was incorrect in my first comment about the “occasional word” you are right about the accessible present inner word from the Lord, after all it says “Christ in you, the hope of glory” “do you not realize that Christ is in you” so it could be argued that Christians have a heaven sent beneficent, schizophrenia, inner voice of God and all. This is scary as you wrote.
This type of thing could be termed “prelest”, self deception, pride, this easy God access in the Eastern Orthodox model of spiritual formation, whoa, boy, slow down on the Theosis and do your ascetic struggle for the requisite years and years under direction! “imaginations of your own heart” is a term used in the OT. But, I don’t care, let the walk and fun with Jesus begin.
Yes, you owe the Calvinists an apology, they have a set of scriptures that strongly support their viewpoint (as we all do) They and their opponents have dueled for centuries with rapiers of verses drawn from their respective armories of scripture. Also the areas most heavily influenced by Calvinism are Switzerland, Britain, Netherlands, and the USA, places other people want to immigrate to. In fact the Brits during the American Revolution would burn down Presbyterian Churches as that Calvinist sect was seen as a hotbed of rebellion.
The Bible is a hot Godly mess of inconsistencies and contradictions when honestly considered, with verses for a myriad of viewpoints. I say this in reverence for “how unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out” even more contradictory and weird than quantum physics! Emerson said “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. So let’s jump in and swim in the loving fiery mystery of God.
“Thy kingdom come” the core of prayer according to Jesus, “Fear not little flock, the Father is pleased to give you the Kingdom” “the kingdom of God is righteousness (everything okay between God and me) peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” Romans 14:17, this verse is the only place where the kingdom of God is explicitly defined in the NT “God has shed abroad his love in our hearts by the Holy Spirit he has given us” from Romans 5, “in his presence is fullness of joy” Psalms, God’s ongoing communication to us in response to prayer is inner life, joy, peace, love with occasional words all as gift
What if worship isn’t primarily an act of sending feeble words of praise to an impossibly glorious God, but a act of remembering that our union with God is our ultimate purpose and the true answer to our spiritual hunger both now and eternity.
What if worship is the very experience of having those hungers satisfied by God himself? What if worship is having God satisfy our need for him and being glorified in that fact? What if God is most glorified in his creatures when his creatures are most satisfied in him?
Also the cartoon implies that the form of execution of hanging the victim, disemboweling and the cutting the body in quarters was used by Calvinists. It was not. It was used in England not for heresy but for ‘high treason’ and reserved for those not of high birth (who had the heads chopped off) - so, after the restoration, the nobels convicted of Charles regicide were hanged 9 (including Cook the chief prosecutor) were h,d & qeed. In our day a certain King claims he is above the law (the last one lost his head) but if he gets back in power - look out Jack Smith! “Three of the regicides, John Dixwell, Edward Whalley and William Goffe, fled to New England, where they avoided capture, despite a search” (Wickipedia) - I wonder whether their descendants are Blue or Red?
Footnote: it is absolutely inconceivable that the Puritans who executed King Charles and settled America, led the revolution against England and formulated the American Constitution could even conceive that any head of state could be above the law in any way. The case presented by Cooke at the trial of King Charles did not mention the Bible or God’s law, but was based upon the fact that the people themselves were the source of the law and as a commoner prosecutor is the origin of the American dream of equality and dignity for all (see Geoffrey Robinson https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/apr/23/john-cooke-my-hero-geoffrey-robertson?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other) and his book “The Tyrannicide Brief”)
You would do well to read Marilynne Robinson on Calvin in her non fiction books to provide a sympathetic Christian perspective on Calvin. My experience you prayer is as you say. Calvin’s followers (John Piper etc) have grown rigid and forgotten that “If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian.” (Evagrios the solitary) and the praying referred to is the ascent without distraction of the intellect (mind noos) to God.
A deeper dive into Calvinism was the catalyst to the suspicion that we might not, after all, be worshiping the same God. It was the beginning of a journey back through Church history to see the deal really was, and that ultimately lead me to the Orthodox Church.
Your last sentence is the most important. That's how I KNOW Jesus never existed and all the BS related to him are the concoctions of some crafty jews wanting to brainwash and control the masses.
Half of the sentence is TRUE, God is indeed in you. But as you put it in another article, you don't realize your little pinky or your nail growing or your cell diving. Same, you don't feel the DNA , the God's signature inside every cell of your body, you only feel it when you're ill and pain is present. So, in the same way, ONE doesn't really realizes when he's happy, when he is in communion with god, BUT realizes when he's suffering, when he's departing from god and thus more or less discomfort get felt.
The easiest way to LISTEN to god, and realize his existence, is, contrary to that jew-on-a-stick saying, TO OBSERVE. To observe nature, the outdoors, the great Creation. Just sitting on a mound, or hill, or even better, on a mountain, listening to everything that surrounds you, taking everything in, I guarantee you will feel happiness, you will feel that you belong, that you are a part of that Creation, and sooner rather than later you'll feel the comfort inside you, that comfort that realizing GOD IS IN EVERYTHING AROUND: in the mountains, in the seas, in the winds, in the flowers and the bees, in the birdsongs, in the flapping of a butterfly, in the falling of a leave... that everything lives and dies according to a "mathematical" pattern, the intelligent design behind it all, THEN you'll feel that you belong, and that's the way God speak to you: through that feeling of beatitude and utmost comfort you gain when you're connected with the (as you put it yet in another article) music of the stars.
I myself I never pray, I never ask.. what I do is find it in me the drive to complete a task, to fulfil a project, to take care of myself like I would take care of another..and then I'm just thankful. Thankful for the inner will, force, and wisdom bestowed upon me by my Creator that make me live my life avoiding (most) pain, sorrow and despair.
PS the holy trinity is said to be The Father , the Son and the Holy Ghost. These are, God, Man and DNA. The Son is not some failed-and-lazy-bastard-carpenter-but-primordial-hippie-socialist-jew, IS YOU. YOU were created by your father, GOD, and insufflated with the divine DNA. There's where the soul IS. And the best proof is the bright explosion of light at the moment of creation, the meeting of a spermatozoid with an ovum (each having JUST HALF of the total chromosomes a human has), when the two halves of distinct DNA unite and forge another complete one, attracting and binding a soul into the newly created living being.
"if you talk to god you're religious, if god talks to you you're psychotic." -Dr.House
Wow, that was an eyeful of intellectual and theological gymnastics! Good job, Yoshi: very thought provoking.
Of course, when we are dealing with our ultimate union with God and the truth of the Incarnation, we are running smack into mystery, in its most profound sense. These cannot ever be fully understood , though, like Aquinas and Augustine, we should nevertheless also strive to do so. Your article is a noble attempt. Perhaps Augustine said it the best: “Tu autem eras interior intimo meo et superior summo meo!” (Confessions III, 6:II).