The Arrival of Advent in the Storm

Advent comes to us from God, in the midst of our trouble.

The word Advent, from Latin, means “arrival,” the arrival of hope in the midst of despair.

Think of the horrific times that Joseph and Mary lived in. And consider many peoples’ tragic struggles now today in Syria, Haiti, Pakistan, Nigeria, the Congo, and Afghanistan.

Think of the young child with cancer, the elderly ones with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease...

Lying in bed day after day, staring at the ceiling, elsewhere...



Or stooped over stuck in a row of wheelchairs in a blank hall...

Wasting away, their memory gone


Yes, the storm of wrong, tragedy, and despair seems endless.



Our own bad experiences, probably, are slight in comparison. But all hurt hurts, does it not? What about the last time events blindsided you and things even seemed hopeless?

About a month ago, I faced relatively rough circumstances, one more challenging day in a slew of them. I was alone and hurting so I turned on Christian radio seeking inspiration and comfort--But tragically,
the minster was preaching,

"...all humans are without value, valueless."

Like a cancer cell, he kept repeating, expanding on his point, kept emphasizing these wretchedly wrong words—"humans are valueless, worth nothing."

According to him, God only loves a few chosen of us humans.

Another famous minister of a church in Oregon with many thousands of members even proclaimed that God created some of us humans as "toilets."

And God has created other humans as "spittoons."

And this horrific God, allegedly, does this all for his own glory!

Very angrily, I snapped off the radio both times, devastated, grieved, and despairing more than before.

When we humans suffer, we need good news, not deterministic, fatalistic despair, not being told we are worthless and depraved.

In wondrous contrast, the verses of Titus 2:11-14 in the New Testament give us the glad tidings of God’s love for everyone. Despite the worst that existence does to us, the blessed words speak comfort to our despairing hearts:
“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.”

Isn’t that last word glorious? The Good News to Mary, then to Joseph and outward from there, not limited to a certain few, but to all creation. These precious words “arrive” telling us about the incarnation—how God loves us even at our worst and isn’t willing for anyone to perish. Yes, even the natural world will eventually be redeemed.

And not only do these words of wonder bring us loving kindness now, they train us to renounce impiety and wrongful passions. They give us practical guidance and strategies of how to face our daily struggles and hard times. They give us a living blessed hope for the future.

Consider this humorous but insightful story.*

In the current severe recession, a door-to-door salesperson walked up to one more elegant house, pushed the button and waited to share his product. When the door opened, a gruff man grimaced, and said, “No we don’t want any” and shut the door.

Not discouraged, the salesperson came back the next week. This time when the door opened, the occupant cursed at him and slammed the door.

When the third week came and the salesperson walked up to the door and rang the bell, the antagonistic man raised a fist and spit in his face!

The salesperson pulled out a handkerchief, wiped his nose and eye, then looked up at the clear sky and said, “It must be raining.”

Think about it. If we had been that salesperson, we might have gone away disheartened, or angry at the man’s rudeness or disappointed, wondering why our product wasn’t of value to the customer or why he personally disliked us.

Have you been hurt lately by thoughtless words, or snippy gossip? Even been cursed out lately? Falsely accused?

How did you respond? How are you responding?

The salesperson in the spiritual parable (from a Jewish rabbi) doesn’t live in his or her circumstances, even of the spitting variety. He remembers the “worldwide company” he belongs to, is thankful he will never be fired.

No, she isn’t judged by the depressed economy, or by her success, or by how little or much money she makes...On the contrary, he is aware that his “boss” highly values him for himself alone.

This salesperson hopes that everyone will benefit from his/her product—“the love of God.” He has seen by hope the future and trusts that Truth and Love and Faith are eternally true.

So when he is spit upon, he doesn't take it personally, but thinks of dreary rain and its benefit.

Has it been raining—even hurricaning--on you today;-)?

Look up to the blessed hope of the Advent.

Prayer:
Dear Father, We thank you that You are the God of all comfort for everyone, that your love extends to all as the famous gospel song* sings,

“Could we with ink the ocean fill…
to write the love of God above
would drain the ocean dry.”

Please help us today to remember that when negative circumstances attack us, we can “reign” over them in You.

Thought for the day: When bad storms rain, God’s love pours, reigning over all for all.


*Paraphrased from Mitch Albom’s book Have a Little Faith

*Frederick M. Lehman, “The Love of God”

May you experience the love of God,

Daniel Wilcox

The Paradox of Truth

Christian thought often seems dysfunctionally extreme, so very false. On one side are the exclusivists, the theological determinists (who I have already dealt with in past blogs), ones who claim God only wills to save a limited number of humans, and the rest of us are preordained to Hell for his pleasure and glory. Pray tell me where the Good News is in that hopeless despair.

On the other side, are the inclusivists, the universalists who emphasize that all humans will be saved, that Hell will eventually be emptied. This sounds so good and has found strong support among great Christians of the past from Origen to the Greek scholar William Barclay. The position has recently been championed by the Quaker writers Phillip Gulley and James Mulholland. But there is a huge problem here as well. See below.

In the New Testament, Jesus, instead, speaks in paradoxes. Consider this statement:
Matthew 7:14 NASB For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Why does Jesus talk so exclusively at this point when elsewhere in the biblical text, he is the ultimate inclusivist/universalist? He emphasizes how God is not willing for anyone to perish in his or her wrong ways, that God is like a father who longs for the return of his wayward son, like a woman who rejoices when her precious possession that was lost is found.

Here’s the key:
As appealing as the universalism of the Good News is—For God so loved the world; God sent not his son into condemn the world John 3:16-17—of what use is it to tell everyone that all people are saved, if we don’t help each individual change? For in fact, at this very moment millions of particular individuals are living in minor or major hells on earth or ‘living like hell’ hurting others. Of what use are liberal religious platitudes, no matter how wonderful they sound theoretically, if in fact we aren’t seeking to help ourselves and others to change right now? Of what use is theology claiming truth when at present Christians and Muslims are killing each other allegedly for God? Of what use is universalism when at present millions of individuals are suffering loss, being selfish, living immorally, being discriminated against, drinking to excess, abusing others or being abused, making war, living in greed, lust, envy…?

The Truth, the Good News, is only universal in the here and now when it is accepted, when we turn from our wrong thoughts, deceitful choices, egocentric ways, bad actions.

God doesn’t cease being True, Good, and Loving, but when we as humans refuse to respond to the Truth, the Good, and the Loving, God incarnate is again crucified within us and others suffer.

This is Jesus’ point! For example, Jesus loves the rich young man, but he can’t help him when the young man refuses to personally accept the truth and change.

The way to Truth is narrow though the Truth of the way is as wide as infinity:-)

In the endless Love of God,

Daniel Wilcox

Troubling Thoughts: David, a Terrorist, Thief, Liar...

David of the Jewish and Christian Bible receives much adulation from so many religious people, but I find his immoral actions very troubling. I am confused by his overly conscientious scruples but, contradictorily, brazen violations of some of the 10 Commandments in their essential meaning. This is not even considering or dealing with when he became king, committed adultery and killed one of his own soldiers. His sinful actions started long before that.

As a young adult, he lived as a terrorist in the strongholds of the desert and attacked towns (I Samuel 22:1-2, 27:9). How is he a man after God’s own heart, the apple of God’s eye when he acts like Osama ben Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban? Surely, David’s more like a rotten apple.

I guess like most of us. None of us are as we should be; certainly, I struggle, too, to live in God’s love to others, and not live in self-centeredness.

But David actions are horrible. He is supposed to be a spiritual example for us. While he feels guilty for a minor wrong action that hurt no one, he brazenly violates essential ethics. He kills two hundred men, mutilates their sexual organs, giving their foreskins to King Saul so he can marry the king’s daughter Michal! (I Samuel 18:26-30). Then the verses say that “the Lord was with David” and “that David behaved more wisely than all the servants of Saul, so that his name became highly esteemed.”

What?! No wonder that the nonreligious and the skeptical have doubts about Christian faith. Ben Laden and the Taliban don’t even act as evilly as this.

How can David be so conscientious, yet commit such abhorrent acts?

When King Saul is sleeping, David secretly cuts a corner of King Saul’s robe. I Samuel 24:5: “David’s heart troubled him because he had cut Saul’s robe.” Seems very conscientious here, does he not?

Yet, David shows no sorrowful guilt for the repeated slaughter of women as well as men (I Samuel 27:9). This wasn’t self-defense; the people hadn’t attacked him; besides, killing women smacks of modern terrorists like Ben Laden who kill not only enemy soldiers, but unarmed women.

Then David steals their possessions to boot! It’s bad enough to kill people in towns, but to then take their possessions while they lay there bleeding! That reminds me what the atheist revolutionary Che Guevara did: stole an individual’s wrist watch after killing him.

Then David lies about his terrorist acts (1 Samuel 27:10-12).

Furthermore, he then takes a widow to be his wife soon after her husband dies. Plus, he marries another woman too, Ahimoam. He thus has two wives (I Samuel 25:39-43), neither of them his wife Michal that he killed two hundred men for. Should he not have waited and tried to get Michal back, especially since she helped him escape (I Samuel 19:11-13)?

It would appear that David also violates the law against coveting too, is into revenge such as telling others to get revenge for him after his own death:-(. Etc.

But let’s stop here…

Now, of course, apologists try and excuse David’s immoral behavior. They point out that standards were different, that this was before Christ, etc. But that is all beside the point. David is supposed to be a shining example, a prefigure of Christ, which he is not, by any stretch of the imagination.

It is not so surprising that later David commits adultery and kills one of his own countrymen. He had violated the most basic of ethical truths early on in his life.
What a very sad commentary.

Don’t look to David; look to Jesus.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Be Perfect, as Your Heavenly Father is Perfect

God, contrary to what many theologians claim, isn’t self-focused, doesn’t seek his own glory, never acts for himself. On the contrary the wondrous glory of Jesus’s God, is eternal love--that of a loving, forgiving, self-sacrificing father. The opposite of the sovereign determiner, the true God is endless, limitless love for every human being ever born and ever to be born.

Of course, this doesn’t make rational factual sense; it’s the “foolishness of the Good News.” Like the foolishness of holding that all humans are created equal, when we all darn well know that no humans, from a factual scientific point of view, are equal in any shape or form—not mentally, not physically, not economically…

But ideally, spiritually, transcendentally, humans are all equal, all precious, all valued.

Consider Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son where the father waits, watching, longing, and then embracing his formerly rebellious, sinful son who squandered his inheritance. (Luke 15:11-32)

This is the God who is love of I John, I Corinthians 13, Luke.

And the message for us is that we are to be perfect like God is perfect. How is that? Obviously, not in infinite ultimateness, nor in any or all of the omni's that religious people like to throw up skyward, attempting to describe the glory of God.

No, Jesus says we are to be perfect like our heavenly father is perfect by loving all others--that means everybody. (Matthew 5:48, the Sermon on the Mount)


We are called to perfection like Martin Luther King says in his famous statement: "I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him."

We live in God's love and let God's eternal love spring up to others.

We won't become perfect for a long, long, long time, but now is the time to start:-).

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Part #1: Stories of Truth

Unlike so many Christians and other religious people of the present time who fixate on how they belong to God and are good Americans (insert your own nation) unlike "them out there"--whoever that "them" happens to be: undocumented workers, those preordained to eternal torment, people of enemy countries, heretics, those of other races, creeds, or ethnic backgrounds, the down and out, homeless transients, druggies, criminals, prostitutes...

Jesus was just the opposite--he spoke of how he had come to call all the "thems," all the lost. If anything, he tended to criticize the very religious us'es, the ones who outwardly look like they are good. Notice in the story of the rich young leader in Mark 10:17-22 and Luke 18:18-23 that Jesus reserves the adjective "good" for God alone. He won't accept the term for morally upright religious people or even for himself!

Jesus, the Son of Man loves the rich young leader who is so morally upright, but he is not impressed! Shock of shockers! It isn't enough for a human to keep all the 10 Commandments from his youth up!

Imagine the consternation and chaos and church splits, if the ministers at some of the mega-churches in the U.S. got up and said "Jesus is calling all rich Christians to give their money away for outreach to the countries where most people only earn less than a dollar a day, where millions of children die for want of basic clean water and food, where many don't even have one Bible to read"?

Of course, some individuals do heed Jesus' call to live sacrificially for God. The millionaire founder of Habitat for Humanity gave sacrificially of his large resources. R. G. LeTourneu the inventor of earthmoving equipment, allegedly was giving 90% of his income away by the time of his death!

Then is the meaning of the story of the rich young leader that we are "in" if we give up all our money?

No, Jesus is speaking much more broadly and much more deeply than that. He is speaking to our inner heart, our deepest motivations, our ultimate concern (to use the phrase of the theologian Paul Tillich). Until each of us gives up putting some finite thing, interest, person--including ourself--as ultimately important...and give our all to God, we are lost and have no opportunity to live in God's presence, the ultimately Good.

God the Truth and Love must come first. Even nice people fail to measure up to such Truth, even those who try and keep all the 10 Commandments.

Some of us, if not all of us, at this point may feel that this is an impossible demand of Jesus.

But it's not. Jesus says we must come to Truth like a little child comes to her loving father or mother--openly, sincerely, spontaneously, humbly... We need to realize that such little children are what God's reign is like. And we need to remember, contrary to how most religious people spend much of time putting down others different from themselves, that Jesus is not willing that any human should perish, be lost. Jesus is seeking those who are are spiritually needy.

And he emphasizes that God rejoices when even one person "changes his mind" (metanoia in Greek). This is far more important than all the seemingly nice people in the Christian churches who seem to, at least outwardly, need no repentance.

To emphasize this, Jesus tells the story of a rancher who has lost a cow and is trying to find it.(Well, that's my version since I used to work in Montana and grew up in Nebraska--the beef state;-)

To be continued

In the Light of the limitless love of God,

Daniel Wilcox

Part 2: The Abyss of Meaninglessness

Ecclesiastes 1:2 "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." (NIV version) and Ecclesiastes 1:14, 17-18 I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is futility and striving after the wind...to know wisdom...is also striving after the wind. Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge, increasing pain.

Rather totally pessimistic about everything, isn't the Speaker?

But there is some superficial truth, I suppose to his nihilism. When I was a young Christian fundamentalist growing up in a small village in Nebraska--before I had gone to several universities, read extensively, suffered tragedy, lived in various places in the world, met humans with totally contrary worldviews, etc.--I didn't understand this hopeless wail.

I thought I understood life and God and the world. However, I was ensconced in much illusion and some delusion, though I didn't know it.

So I was happy and productive and filled with hopes and dreams. Aren't most kids, before the harsh realities of life wear us down?

But even after some very tough times, I still wouldn't have identified with the Speaker's utter feeling of futility, because I had a secure foundation in my faith in Christ.

My faith in God gave me a deep spiritual life. Thank God, I didn't live on the surface of life chasing after this world's glitter or, worse, its glut.

But then tragedies came...

And the worst one of all is when I discovered at 17 years of age that most Christian leaders for 1,700 years (beginning with Augustine) had claimed that God doesn't love most people, that infants are "in essence, evil," etc.

I battled against this horrific version of Christianity for most 50 years, until I finally realized to my deepest self that Christianity can't be true, that the Good News version I heard as a kid and young teen was a delusionary aberration.

Well, you get the point...


And now at 62, after doing spiritual battle against Augustinian-Reformed theology, and for so many years against inner failings and testings, and destructive worldviews, trying to help others caught in confusion and dysfunction and sin, and grieving over unanswered prayers, and experiencing deep heartache, I, too, understand what the Speaker means when he finds even wisdom to be a striving after the wind.

And what do we do, when even more and more modern Quakers are supporting Augustinian-Reformed thinkers or at the opposite extreme, claiming that there is no Ultimate Meaning or Purpose to existence?

Why do so many leading Christians now and in the past adamantly support theological determinism which claims the vast majority of us humans are preordained to eternal torment/damnation?

And why are so many modern Friends, exactly contrary, denying that God even exists?

It's so much like the horrific wall in Herman Melville's conundrummed short story, "Bartleby."

And then there are the everyday heartaches, trials, and tribulations...

And when a certain political figure, President Barrack Obama, is elected on the theme of hope, but then reverses many of his solemn pledges and ideals.

And when the natural world heaves, and the striving of hurricane winds and drought and disease and more disasters kill millions.

Yet the vast majority of leading Muslim, Christian, and New Age thinkers claim God planned and foreordained all that evil!

Even most Atheists, too, claim that all horrific human choices for slaughter and rape and rapine, and all natural disasters were determined at the moment of the Big Bang!
We humans are only "illusions," "wet robots," "puppets," etc.

So much nihilism in human philosophy.

No doubt, someone will point out that this is the way life has always been--tragic, brief, and short.

And, no doubt, the person is correct. That is why Ecclesiastes came to be written by a Jew living about 250 B.C., because so many of the promises of God in the Torah and the Prophets and in Proverbs and the Psalms hadn't come true.

Where had the Psalmist been hiding that he could claim, "I have been young and now I am old, Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken Or his descendants begging bread (Psalm 37:25)?

So sometimes, like millions of others at present, or in the past, I too drown in the abyss of meaninglessness, plummet for days down into the bottomless pit of despair.

If as the Speaker emphasizes through most of the book, we only have this life, we then are only like a live dog versus billions of dead lions and dead dogs who have gone before us.

Is not this life then a senseless striving after the wind?

An emptiness and meaninglessness like a transient vapor--here and then gone?

This is where Paul's statement in the New Testament shocked contradictorily and was life-saving: "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21) until I realized finally that it can't be true.

As I teen, I loved the first part of that verse. Jesus was my ideal, my hero, my best friend.

As for the latter part, I couldn't see Paul's view at all. But now many years later, past innumerable struggles and heartaches, I can see how, for Paul who suffered much, that Heaven did beckon.

But now I realize that there is no afterlife, that religion is mostly delusion.

Thankfully, however, I do hope in God yet--that despite all those tragic details which I briefly explained.

I do hope with all of my brief finite self, that there is Meaning and Purpose in our existence even though we humans don't know what it is beyond seeking to live compassionately and to support human rights and justice...

To seek the Good, the True, the Reasonable, and the Beautiful

in the Light,


Daniel Wilcox

Of Skepticism and Meaninglessness

Speaker of one among the gathering (Ecclesiastes 1:2-4a)
Vapor of vapor, says the speaker,
vapor of vapor! All is vapor.
What's the profit of all the hard work under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes..

Not very encouraging words. But then the Bible isn't often a pie-in-the-sky book, contrary to what many people think. Consider that this is the volume which quotes the Son of God as saying, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" It is a book which often dwells upon the worst and the most horrible in life. If you doubt this, read through Judges and several of the prophetic books in one day. For Jeremiah, things weren't getting better and better. Then there's Job...

True, at the end of the Scripture, Goodness, Meaning, and Purpose do win, but that is getting ahead of the story:-) and of this particular reflection.

Most of us are in the middle of life somewhere, not either still bright-eyed and tale-dreaming, very young ones with endless hopes and dreams, nor old codgers (and codgerettes;-) at death's door, living in pain and suffering, There are a few oldsters who are healthy, spry, and accomplished with no regrets. I heard of one who still drives his own car at 106 years of age and cares for his younger wife!

But that isn't the experience of my own extended family or anyone I know personally. Most humans deal with plenty of problems, sometimes so overwhelming they seem hopeless. Or when successful, still ask, "Is that all"?

Even the rich and famous and brilliant, (as the news this week repeatedly showed), suffer and come to the end of their rope. It doesn't matter if it is threaded with gold cordage. As the Speaker says, "a live dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know they will die; but the dead do not know anything..." E.9:4

But most of us live in the middle, in transit--experiencing both the positive and negative of life, though too often for too many, the negatives far out weigh the positives. At least that is where I live.

I know that outwardly, when it comes to necessities and creature comforts, my family and I are in the top 1% of humans who have ever lived. But then why am I so dissatisfied, so often given to a vivid sense that life doesn't make sense, that at times it seems pointless, empty, meaningless, fleeting, futile, etc.?

And this empty despairing place is where the Speaker complains from. He, indeed, is so pessimistic, I've often wondered how his book ever got included in the Jewish and Christian Bibles. Yes, in my time, I've heard plenty of sermons on the book, but most of them seemed to be reading a book other than the one that is in front of me. They mostly seemed to read and speak of Ecclesiastes through rose-colored glasses.

Instead, the book has much more in common with Albert Camus, the French Existentialist who said that life is absurd.

So here we go...