Religion without God

I think my lawyer once told me this:

A good lawyer knows the law.

A great lawyer knows the loopholes.

Yep, cuz God is an evil genie that tries to ruin your wishes, but if you word the wish just right, you can snooker the bastard.

And your lawyer works for assholes.

No. A great lawyer knows when he has a case to build upon and doesn’t con his client into unreasonable expectations. “Loopholes” are a layman’s fantasy. There is no such thing. The law is the law. Either the law is in your favour or not.

Of course, I suppose you think the legal profession is just about silly soundbites and think the opinion of a 20 year veteran is nonsense.

Why not. You think the opinion on schools of a 14 year veteran educator (me) is nonsense.

Same thing. Apples and Apples.

I’ve had a successful career. You’ve been fired and/or disciplined multiple times. My clients are happy. You get sacked on a regular basis to general extent you have to rely on charity to feed your family. You really want to go down the road of comparison?

Tell me Dayton, how do you define a loophole?

I'll take your word on that. And given that the average American only stays at a job four years, I'm not much off the average.

You ever leave a job by choice, "teacher"?

Yes.

When?

Unless a company "downsizes" (one of the most pernicious words in the language) or outsources, most people who choose to leave their jobs do so VOLUNTARILY.

I look forward to the day you join the Real World.

1997, 1998, 2003, 2010.

You quit a teaching job voluntarily to take another one?

The one I was Reduction in Forced from re expanded their coaching staff two years later so I left the school I had been at for two years to go back there as Amy worked there and of course Annalee was in school there. Not to mention we lived across from the high school.

I used to walk to my classroom late at night and use my classroom computer as it was faster than mine at home. My classroom was also closer to my house than it was the staff bathroom so if I needed to go to the can I simply walked across the street to the house.

Good times.

Well, you've certainly got your priorities straight.

Wow. You're such an inspiration.




Wait, no.







The opposite of that.

I think your opinions are nonsense, @El Chup

multiplying sevens doesn't ring a bell?

Don't need who, Satan?

Because if you're treating God as a Boogeyman, then you are practicing religion without God.

Look, growing up I was not unlike . . . certain loudly publicized segments of the Christian population. Quick to judge myself and others. Finding fault. Not at all loving my "enemies". Quick to label. Fearful of life, of others, of screwing up, of things I didn't understand. But you know what? Those are all human frailties. Most of them you can trace back to survival instincts. And I was kind of a teenager back then. And as I matured, I read the Bible and learned what was going on in there besides the cyclical few passages that get preached on every year. As I matured, I became more self-confident, I began to discern things better. I began to put away childish things that were hindering me and to set my mind to seek a higher way of life. And it was rough, and it's been slow because I'm just fundamentally stubborn and conservative. I've had to let go of ideas that made me feel safe in a world that made sense the way I wanted it to, and to seek the way God sees us and the way God wants us to be.

And nobody wants to do that. We're human beings, we want the world to be the way we want it to be. That's why we use tools, why we seek sociopolitical power, why we develop certain sciences, and it's how we have historically survived in a world of disease and violence and climates. But God makes human wisdom foolish, and as Yoda would say, sometimes you gotta unlearn what you have learned if you want to push forward.

And when I was young, sure, God was often a punishing authority figure. That's how authority figures behave when you're a child. They make you do things you don't want to do and stop you from doing things you do want. The best you can hope for is that they're just as strict with the people you don't like.

But as I've matured and improved, the important facets of God have gone from justice and punishment to grace and mercy. And that is freeing. I'm free to try big and screw up doing it, as long as I'm trying to do what's right. I'm free to ignore society's attempts to mold me, because there is a higher authority who cares about me much more. I'm free to do what needs to be done to make the world a better place, instead of worrying about what my peers will think of me (and in God's eyes we're all peers) or pinching pennies for selfish goals. All this and more, and -- setting aside external events in my life -- I know myself all too well to know I couldn't have become like this on my own, without some actual, present higher force giving me support to get there.

And that is religion with God.


(And I often don't weigh in very harshly against . . . certain board posters or segments, because I see in them echoes of where I used to be in my life's journey, and I have hope that they too are moving, even if I can't see it, toward a life that welcomes God. And my childhood timidity has matured, for better or worse, into a "first do no harm" mentality, to where I don't want to harden attitudes by attacking them poorly.

And anyway, sometimes they might have a point.

EDIT: Not, y'know, about hateful things, I'm just sayin' I don't claim to be right about everything myself.)

It is my understanding that "seventy times seven" is 490.

Which while a substantial number of times to forgive someone or turn the other cheek is still not "ad infinitum".

It's likely an expression that represents something that wouldn't necessarily be numbered. It's like saying "I would love you to the moon and back" doesn't literally mean "I will love you for approximately 6 days and 480,000 miles."

Quite possible though do you believe that turning the other cheek or extending forgiveness should be endless?

Yes.

Pretty much. After all, that's what Jesus does for HIS people. He forgives them endlessly. Of course, as Jesus himself said, "by the same measure you judge, so you shall be judged". If you only want to forgive someone 490 times, you better not commit 491 sins.

Well said, my friend. I had a rather lengthy post typed out the other night, but didn't feel like posting it because I was quite tired and I felt like it rambled. But, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head.

I had a stupiphany several years ago while reading Here I Stand - A Life of Martin Luther. I've spent the last seven years separating theological concepts into two basic columns. Those columns are labeled dogma and doctrine. When it comes to Christianity, I know many people use those terms interchangeably, but I'm trying to use them separately. I use dogma to describe things created or augmented by man and I use doctrine to describe those things of God that are evident by natural or special revelation. Namely, the holy scriptures. If any of our pendants would like to direct me to more accurate terms, I would be obliged.

But, I digress. A simplified example of dogma and doctrine can be found in Communion/The Lord's Supper. I put the decision to use wine or grape juice firmly in the dogma column. Frankly, I don't care which one you use. At the same time, I would put someone's stance on the Eucharist and transubstantiation in the doctrinal column. Another simplified example is a local church choosing to be an independent, autonomous congregation or choosing to join a presbytery body. That's dogma. I have no qualms with a local church choosing one or the other. That said, I put how the local church is actually lead, be it Elder-led or majority rule/Deacon-led, in the doctrinal column.

This has allowed me to be much more ecumenical than I have been in the past. Like someone travelling abroad, this ecumenicism has allowed me to broaden my horizons and better understand the condition of the Church in the United States and the Church around the world. My understanding is that the picture isn't pretty. Most of the arguments between denominations today are over dogma, not doctrine. Most disagreements between the Christian and the unbeliever are over dogma, not doctrine. Why?

The theological liberalization movement of the mid-19th and early-20th centuries has produced nearly six generations of biblically and spiritually illiterate Christians in the United States. This has culminated with generations of Christians not knowing what they believe or why they believe it. This has culminated in many of the popular leaders in today's evangelical movement openly disputing the deity of Christ and actively "preaching" against the doctrine of hypostatic union. That's blasphemy! It's why Billy Graham once said that he believed that 50% of the active church-goers in the United States were lost and headed to hell.

For six generations we've been working on generating converts, playing the odds, and working numbers games instead of making disciples as we were instructed in Matthew 28. I feel like we've made things complex that should be simple and we've made things simple that should be complex. The Gospel is simple. The doctrine of justification is simple (We are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ's propitiation alone, we know this because Scripture alone is the final arbiter of truth, and it's all for the glory of God alone.) But, loving your neighbor, who is from a different race, religion, ethnicity, culture, creed, or socio-economic class as I love myself is hard. Taking up our cross, daily, and feeding the new nature while combating our old, selfish, evil nature is hard. Realizing that everything I am and everything I "own" actually belongs to and was given to me by God for the purpose of being a blessing to others is hard. Reflecting grace and giving mercy when wronged is hard.

I will fail. I will fail every day. But, because of His grace, I will press on and run the race. I will persevere to the end because He strengthens me. I can't explain how liberating that is. I can't formulate words to do it justice.

They dont seem to be dropping god as much as a bad definition of god.

God is something that the more you define the more you seem to destroy. I don't think that is because it is necessarily a falsehood, but rather the concept itself becomes so large and grand that as you begin to limit it through definition you run into a paradox. For instance if you say god had a kid in jesus then you have all sorts of contradictions because jesus is a physical entity that is not very god like or may not even exist. Once you fall back on Occam's razor you cut the notion of god up to the point where you pretty much prove a lot of ideas are not god.

This here becomes the inherent problem of religion and it's purpose to a lot of people. If religion is a spirituality and group of ideas that help us find our place in the universe with all of it's grand things and perhaps understand the infinite a little better in our finite minds then great. When it is used as a system of rules and laws which set us against each other in some divine competition over who is the best in our savior's eyes it becomes a tool of man and not some almighty thing.

This should not be concluded as some end to the persuit of knowledge about the universe where we throw our hands up and declare it's uselessness, but rather we keep exploring because that leads to the enrichment of our lives and some answers just are not going to be easy.

I have met a number of interesting christian philosophers. They are adept at thought and discussion. None has ever had the audacity to claim such a thing about belief keeping a person from discussing their faith because such a thing would be shutting down of philosophy, and it is the weapon of a closed mind. However, in dayton's case there is a predisposed desire to club the fuck out of him with a clue by four and perhaps he might not want such a beating yet again. In all honesty I think a pleasant discussion of philosophy between dayton and the people here would have to occur in someplace more moderated and more forcibly polite. I would imagine any flaws and mistakes have been discussed in his area around here to a point you are not going to do much aside from rehash old arguments that have gotten to the end.

Dayton is clearly an example of how our religious and spiritual depths often arfe limited by our understanding of the universe. When we avoid seeing things for whatever reason we limit our universe to a point where it starts to conflict itself due to lack of space. But that should not necessarily be taken as an insult to dayton as someone could be perfectly happy in a limited universe. Happiness being the goal of most people it can be relative to our particular depth if we let it.

This is the part that continually baffles me - the notion that some humans, with their limited lifespans and limited (and very often erroneous) perceptions can sit there smugly saying "I know all I need to know about God."

As I see it, when it comes to inquiries about the universe around us - even the minuscule portion we can see on Earth - there should be no such thing as "all I need to know." We should remain curious and willing to learn until the day, as me Irish grandfather used to say "they puts the pennies on me eyes."

To think you can box God up and keep him in a tabernacle or a church or any one religion is, to me, the height of hubris.