thread: 2006-09-08 : Picky-choosy religion, 3 views
On 2006-09-13, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
1. Jye:
I don't get the impression that you're engaging seriously with what I'm trying to say, which makes you unique in this conversation to date. "Cosmic master criminal"? The UN Building? Karl Rove? What the hell?
I'm not talking about "alien intelligences": I'm talking about something of which the entire universe is a lesser included subset, in the same way your large intestine is a lesser included subset of you. And I'm not talking about "sovereignty over the human race or any of its members": God hasn't given either you or me any instructions about how to vote or pay our taxes, as far as I know. The issue isn't sovereignty, but salvation; not obedience, but salvation.
Please go back and read my previous posts (again, if you've already read them) in this thread, the salvation thread (http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=247), and the original "screwed expectations" thread (http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=246). At this point I don't think we're having the same conversation.
2. Poor Saint Paul
Ralph, I agree with a lot of your post, but I find myself having to defend Saint Paul, the Puritans, and the institutional Church in the Roman, Medieval, and Reformation eras—patriarchal, bigoted, and generally screwed up as they all admittedly were. I don't think we can afford to go into the history here, and I'm not sure I know it well enough, but there is tremendous good alongside the evil—as there is in most of us.
If you read Saint Paul's letters, you can find joy and openess and compassion in them alongside the contorted Platonic-meets-Talmudic logic and the injunctions to slaves to obey their masters. I'm particularly fond of Paul because I read a passage of his at the funerals of both of my grandparents:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble, or hardship, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword?... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalites, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God.
(Romans 8:35-39)
