Author: darthjedi

When can I write about something happy?

I am filled with disgust and anger at the hard hearts and the cultish minds of those that belong to the local fundamentilist unorthodox Campbellites (also known in their own circle as the Church of Christ).


They are blinded by their own minds… they can’t even see past their nose to look at their face in the mirror. They are filled with a mix of so many unchristian attitudes, and unbiblical teachings – they are as much of a cult as a cult can be – I really can’t figure out which emotion I am more overwhelmed with Anger, or Sorrow…




In truth, as much as the local group of Campbellites accuse me of trying to draw their members away – I am beginning to wish nothing more than to be able to do just that… to snatch each and every one of them out of the fire that is burning all around them.



Someday this local group (not the physical building – but the spiritual people) are going to collapse in around themselves and all that will be left is charred remains of poor wayward individuals that never knew what it was truly like to be a Christian.


Should I be angry or should I be sad – I’m overwhelmed with both…

Hypocrites

To anyone out there, that will care about someone only as long as they agree with every minute detail of their theology (no matter how poorly their theology is built and supported) – all I have to say is “goodbye and good riddens”.



Mat 23:13 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.[c]


Mat 23:15 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.


Mat 23:16 “Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’


Mat 23:17 You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?


Mat 23:18 You also say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gift on it, he is bound by his oath.’


Mat 23:19 You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred?


Mat 23:20 Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it.


Mat 23:21 And he who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it.


Mat 23:22 And he who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by the one who sits on it.


Mat 23:23 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.


Mat 23:24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.


Mat 23:25 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.


Mat 23:26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.


Mat 23:27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean.


Mat 23:28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.


Mat 23:29 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous.


Mat 23:30 And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’


Mat 23:31 So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets.


Mat 23:32 Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!


Mat 23:33 “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?


Hypocrites

The Disciple – Thomas Kempis

YOU thunder forth Your judgments over me, Lord. You shake all my bones with fear and trembling, and my soul is very much afraid. I stand in awe as I consider that the heavens are not pure in Your sight.


If You found wickedness in the angels and did not spare them, what will become of me?


Stars have fallen from heaven, and I — I who am but dust — how can I be presumptuous? They whose deeds seemed worthy of praise have fallen into the depths, and I have seen those who ate the bread of angels delighting themselves with the husks of swine.


There is no holiness, then, if You withdraw Your hand, Lord. There is no wisdom if You cease to guide, no courage if You cease to defend. No chastity is secure if You do not guard it. Our vigilance avails nothing if Your holy watchfulness does not protect us.


Left to ourselves we sink and perish, but visited by You we are lifted up and live.


We are truly unstable, but You make us strong. We grow lukewarm, but You inflame us. Oh, how humbly and lowly should I consider myself! How very little should I esteem anything that seems good in me! How profoundly should I submit to Your unfathomable judgments, Lord, where I find myself to be but nothing! O immeasurable weight! O impassable sea, where I find myself to be nothing but bare nothingness! Where, then, is glory’s hiding place? Where can there be any trust in my own virtue? All vainglory is swallowed up in the depths of Your judgments upon me.


What is all flesh in Your sight? Shall the clay glory against Him that formed it? How can he whose heart is truly subject to God be lifted up by vainglory? The whole world will not make him proud whom truth has subjected to itself. Nor shall he who has placed all his hope in God be moved by the tongues of flatterers.


For behold, even they who speak are nothing; they will pass away with the sound of their words, but the truth of the Lord remains forever.



– Thomas Kempis

Should church goers use musical instruments?

Someone asked me recently if I would be comfortable worshiping with a group of Christians that use Musical Instruments in their worship; when, as far as they could tell, the scriptures were silent on whether instruments are an acceptable form of Worship in the New Testament Church (even though they used them in the Old Testament, and they are using them in the Intermediate Heaven, even as I type).


Let’s just say – although I don’t think I would agree with that position of Musical Instruments being wrong [On my scale of certainty it’s about a 1 – that is; I wouldn’t teach it openly that it’s ok; but I won’t say that it’s wrong either] – so back to the discussion – let’s just say that using Musical Instruments during the Church Service is wrong, because we should be ‘singing with our hearts’ (although, I think you can still sing with your heart, even with an instrument, or even without literally singing, because the idea of the ‘heart’ transcends the tongue).


If you look over, and the person two pews down from you is not singing, rather listening, and you feel that they aren’t doing what you think God wants them to do – do they cause you to sin? What if the person playing the musical instrument isn’t singing, and they are displeasing God, does that cause you to sin?


How about in the case of someone sitting three pews down from you that was drunk on Saturday night; or recently slept with someone they aren’t married to, and they are back in services on Sunday morning singing right along with you, does the fact that you are singing with them, cause you to sin (we’re not talking about whether or not you should approach them in love, and talk to them about changing, just whether their actions cause you to sin)?


It’s not that I would normally take this argument; because I think if there were people in a worship service with pictures of Satan on their shirt, I wouldn’t feel comfortable whether I was wearing the shirt or not – but I guess what I’m saying is (And my wife said that she has always felt that way) – is that our worship to God, while done collectively, is also an individual thing; we can’t know the hearts and minds of anyone else in the building, nor can we, or should we judge the actions and motives of things that are not clearly violating scripture, as Romans says that we will all stand before God and give an account to God, and we can stand, because the power is in the Lord to make us stand.


Anyway, just a thought…

The law of the Inner Circle

“The Law of Inner Circle teaches us that the leader’s potential is determined by those closest to him, or her.” – John C. Maxwell (A World Class Mentality).


What this says to me is: Find people that you would most like to be like, and spend your time with them.


I am not Jed, I am becoming Jed

Ok, sounds strange – but let me help you understand (it’s all pretty simple).


Each and every day of my life, I have experiences from the past, and experiences in the present that change me, that mold me, that make me who I am. The Jed of tomorrow, is not the Jed of today. Because of that, when you look at it from an eternal perspective, I am not who Jed is, I am becoming who Jed is.


So what is the point you ask?


Well, when God said “I AM”, what he was saying is “I EXIST”, that is, I am the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, he was saying that he can not change.


To explain this a little further, God, being outside the constraints of time, space and matter, is never becoming God. He is never a different God tomorrow than he was yesterday because a succession of moments and experiences (God can not have a succession of moments, because he is by the definition of God – outside of time which is required for a succession of moments, and change).


So when God said “I AM” – it was a declaration of what God is – what God has to be, it is so far from human comprehension, and yet, it gives us so much understanding about his nature. He is the creator that is not created, the mover that is not moved, He is One.


Praise be to God!

An infinite nuber of moments cannot be traversed….

This is a paste from the Philosophy of Relgion website (www.philosophyofreligion.info).


Man, I love philosophy – I can’t wait to get this bachelor’s done, so I can get my Masters, then I can get my Doctorate in Philosophy… probably won’t happen till after I’m dead though….




The Impossibility of an Actual Infinite that has been Traversed


The third mathematical argument for the claim that the universe has a beginning draws on the idea that actual infinites cannot be traversed.


If I were to set out on a journey to an infinitely distant point in space, it would not just take me a long time to get there; rather, I would never get there. No matter how long I had been walking for, a part of the journey would still remain. I would never arrive at my destination. Infinite space cannot be traversed.


Similarly, if I were to start counting to infinity, it would not just take me a long time to get there; rather, I would never get there. No matter how long I had been counting for, I would still only have counted to a finite number. It is impossible to traverse the infinite set of numbers between zero and infinity. This also applies to the past. If the past were infinite, then it would not just take a long time to the present to arrive; rather, the present would never arrive. No matter how much time had passed, we would still be working through the infinite past. It is impossible to traverse an infinite period of time.


Clearly, though, the present has arrived, the past has been traversed. The past, therefore, cannot be infinite, but must rather be finite. The universe has a beginning. This is the third mathematical argument for the second premise of the kalam cosmological argument.