Part 2: When Jesus is a Hard Atheist

“The almighty God of vengeance has chosen you to be the instrument of his wrath against his enemies.”

Gregory XV


“When it is a case of only upholding some spiritual tenet, such as infant baptism, original sin…we conclude the stubborn sectaries must be put to death.”

“If I had all the Franciscan friars in one house, I would set fire to it…To the fire with them!”
…Why do we not rather assault these monsters of perdition, these cardinals, these popes, and the whole swarm of the Roman Sodom, who corrupt youth and the Church of God? Why do we not rather assault them with arms and wash our hands in their blood?"

First to set fire to their [Jews’] synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord…Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed…I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb.”

Martin Luther


Preaching for the start of the 2nd Crusade:
“Fly then to arms; let a holy rage animate you in the fight, and let the Christian world resound with these words of the prophet, “Cursed be he who does not stain his sword with blood!”
“If the Lord calls you to the defense of His heritage think not that His hand has lost its power. …His goodness has caused to dawn for you a day of safety by calling on you to avenge His glory and His name."

“Christian warriors, He who gave His life for you, to-day demands yours in return. These are combats worthy of you, combats in which it is glorious to conquer and advantageous to die. Illustrious knights, generous defenders of the Cross, remember the example of your fathers who conquered Jerusalem, and whose names are inscribed in Heaven; abandon then the things that perish, to gather unfading palms, and conquer a Kingdom which has no end.”

But Christ's knights can fight their Lord's fight in safety, fearless of sin in slaughter of their adversaries and fearless of danger at their own deaths, since death suffered or dealt out on Christ's behalf holds no crime and merits great glory. Hence one gains for Christ, and then gains Christ Himself, who most willingly accepts the death of an adversary for the ends of vengeance and then even more willingly offers Himself to a knight for the end of consolation. Christ's knight deals out death in safety, as I said, and suffers death in even greater safety. He benefits himself when he suffers death, and benefits Christ when he deals out death.”

“The Christian glories in a pagan's death, because Christ is glorified;”

Bernard of Claurvaux


“I hope the Portuguese will forswear fratricidal strife with the Spaniards and bathe their swords in the blood of heretics in Europe, in the blood of Moslems, the blood of the heathen in Asia and America…conquering and subjugating all regions under one Crown and under the feet of the successor of blessed Peter…”

Antonio Vieira SJ, a sermon in Lisbon, 1642

“There is no better way of preaching than with the sword and the rod of iron…”

Anchieta, first Jesuit Provincial of Brazil


“To keep ourselves right in all things we ought to hold this point: what I see as white I would believe black if the hierarchical Church determined it so.”

Ignatius Loyola


Claiming that the Civil War slaughter was God’s will: “The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?”

Abraham Lincoln


On fighting the American revolutionaries: “…I trust I shall stand acquitted in the eyes of God and men in denouncing and executing the vengeance of the state against the willful outcasts—the messengers of justice and of wrath await them in the field; and devastation, famine and every concomitant horror that a reluctant but indispensable prosecution of military duty must occasion, will bar the way to their return.”

British General Burgoyne


“Jesus was saying was not that you will build my Kingdom, but you will build my Church with the sword….
“What I believe that He was saying was in ‘building My Kingdom, you will be attacked you will have to fight physical battles at times’. And remember, eleven of those disciples were martyred for their faith."

American General Boykin, 2010


These Christian leaders, and many others have claimed God is calling us to go to war and kill others,
BUT
in contrast
Jesus said,
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God… You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Matthew 5: 9, 43-48

In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox

When Jesus Is a Hard Atheist...

…when “God” has “decreed sin should enter this world through the disobedience of our first parents” that this “was a secret hid in His own breast.” (A.W. Pink, Christian author of the popular book, The Sovereignty of God sold at Calvary Chapels and many other Christian churches:-(

*“…the holocaust of World War II, suicide bombers etc. Indeed every sin against God's commandments, God ordains to His greatest glory…God has ordained it to come to pass, so we must conclude that this is because His greatest glory can only be served by its presence…God ordained this [Adam’s sin], as He knew it would be to His greatest glory in the end. (Presbyterian Website)

What a false god!

Jesus is a hard Atheist of A.W. Pink’s and the Presbyterians’ god.

For Jesus said, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5: 48 ESV

The only true GOD is perfect and would NEVER “ordain/order/appoint/decree/establish/foreordain” sin, evil,

NOR

does GOD ever do anything for himself! God IS love (I Corinthians 13).

The GOD of Jesus is perfect love, perfect goodness, perfect truth, perfect justice, perfect mercy, perfect holiness, perfect glory—perfection infinitely.

As the New Testament emphasizes, GOD does, in response to us humans’ free choice to choose contrary to His perfect will, bring goodness out of evil.

But GOD is never the original “ordainer” of sin and evil, never.

Jesus is a hard Atheist toward A.W. Pink’s god.

To be continued...

In the Light of the ONLY TRUE GOD,

Daniel Wilcox

Living Toward the Garden: Part 2

Back before my recent battles against the hellish dragons of modern Christian theology and politics, I was ruminating on my ‘fishy’ eating habits ;-):

Hear about the ugly friar at the monastery, who visitors said looked like a chipmunk? He got kicked out of the monastery because he preferred fish and chips instead of meat, not just during Lent, but year round, and would often sneak fish and chips into his room at night.

He was known as a “’finished’ ‘chip monk’ who got ‘cod’ eating.” Groan…

Photo by Joachim Muller

My fairly recent move toward vegetarianism (in the last 10-15 years, since turning 50) isn’t intellectually driven, but more of an emotional/ethical intuition, an inclination toward the ideal world of Creation before death and decay, before tooth and claw, before kill or/and be killed. The move is toward the perfect world of the future in the Chosen One.

And on the levels of commitment, my choice is only an educated opinion, not doctrine or conviction. When I began the move, I didn't even tell anyone of my change--just stopped eating pork, then beef, and finally cut back on chicken and turkey. Only when family members asked did I briefly mention I was focusing on fish, but didn’t explain.

I still do eat some ‘foul’ food sometimes with my family and relatives. In harkening toward Heaven in the field of cuisine, I’m not a legalist at all; it's more about heavenly and healthful eating. And if medical professionals—not likely—came out with a scientific study proving that humans should eat chicken or sausage or even steak, I probably would.

I don’t inhabit health food stores, don’t try and find “organic” food, but often buy my eats at Wal-Mart:-)

Though I am amazed by and sometimes buy from Whole Foods Market.

Another feeling and reason why I’ve made the move down the food levels toward non-sentient life is I empathize with conscious animal life. I suppose so, more than many humans.

However, I'm not an animal rights activist, or nearly as concerned with animals as the biologist Richard Dawkins is (on the valuable worth of monkeys), or as much as C.S. Lewis was against animal vivisection. Though in the case of both I do think animals are of worth and that vivisection ought to be stopped.

Also, our insurance provider and our doctor have emphasized that I need to fill up on anti-inflammatory food, medicine, etc.

So I do.

Now where’s that salmon I want to smoke with the nonalcoholic mixed drink of Mountain Dew/Strawberry-Lemonade and wedge-fries from BJ’s?

I’m not in the least famished by what I choose not to eat, but am now fin-ished;-).

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Why I Don't Call Myself Quaker or Christian Any Longer

NOW:
"As a Quaker Pagan, I'm often accused…of being a closet Christian. Nope.
I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Jesus Club…
and being Quaker myself has taught me how to approach Christian messages by "listening in tongues," I have yet to feel a call to Jesus."

And “We didn’t need Jesus.”

Quaker Writer Cat Chapin-Bishop

VERSUS

THEN:
“When all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing upwardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said,
‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition’; and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy.”

George Fox
__


NOW:

“The world for whom Christ died cannot mean the entire human family."

R.C. Sproul

“Christ died for….some men…he died for the unbelief of the elect so that God's punitive wrath is appeased toward them.”
…the death of Christ was designed for the salvation of God's people, not for every individual."

Christian John Piper

“What does this famous verse [John 3:16] teach about fallen man’s ability to choose Christ? The answer, simply, is nothing. The argument used by non-Reformed people is that the text teaches that everybody in the world has it in their power to accept or reject Christ. A careful look at the text reveals, however, that it teaches nothing of the kind.”

Christian R.C. Sproul


VERSUS

THEN:

“For God so loved the world [in Greek: Cosmos], that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

John 3:16

To be continued,

In the Light of God’s love through Jesus the “Chosen One” for every single person!

Daniel Wilcox

Time for a Romantic Interlude:-)

Getting tired of the seemingly endless tragedy and horror and absurdity of religion and politics...?

How about a time's timely romantic interlude...

Canoe on over the stream of love to vox poetica where my new romantic poem, "two hands" has just been published.
http://poemblog.voxpoetica.com/

Share the lyric with your sweetheart.

Then, get to the heart of sweet romance with other love poems at these urls:

"Summer of Love in Philadephia"
http://www.wildviolet.net/blue_moon/summer_love.html


"A Song of Songs into Olding"
http://outwardlink.net/features/danielwilcox/song_of_songs_into_olding.html



Later if you are still in the need of commentary on theology and philosophy and politics and science and nature by all means check out my main websites:-)

http://www.psalmsyawpshowls.com/

http://www.selahriver.com/

http://lightwaveseeker.weebly.com/

http://buddingzin.weebly.com/

http://lastthings.weebly.com/


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Part #2: Receding for God

Once a career, but twice in diapers, however the second time around often leads down to dementia and always to demise, where we humans lose all our learning and skills and achievement so diligently accomplished. Gone with the leaving...barren winter approaching, white and none.

But why? All that work gone and us receding physically, and worst of all mentally…So despairing like Poe spoke of in his hauntingly powerful meditation on loss and death.*

What a tragic losing, often, pathetic, indeed absurd lessening…
Again, for what purpose?

There seems none. Over 2,500 years ago, Qoheleth, (“Gatherer”) in the pessimistic Jewish book of Ecclesiastes (“Qoheleth”) concluded, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”, “Vapor of vapor, all is vapor” (a more literal translation of the Hebrew). Sometimes this seems more accurate than the hopefulness of Paul’s Philippians’’ “Rejoice always.”

In the end, Life will leave us breathless...all our accomplishments a transient vapor.

Without serious doubt this is why biblical faith and vision brings hope to many of us in the midst of this life’s worst, when Jesus speaks of God’s everlasting love for all of us, every single human, every last one, and that we can have trust in God’s promise to bring us into glory. Revelation 21; 3-4 “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

But the glorious future isn't now. This week I asked my wife about her great grandparents. She knew nothing of them. Not a single story, not a memorable moment, nothing, gone like a vapor vanished in the past. Same for my relatives. Gone with the wind, with the morning's vapor, with the transient breath.*

True, we do have a genealogy book in the garage stacks of her father’s family going back hundreds of years, but all that’s left in that volume here in this present now are the squiggles of meaningless names covering many pages—begetting/begatting one to boredom.

Gone forever (except in the Mind of God) are their vivid stories, their unique contributions, deep inner thoughts and special reflections, their fun times, and shared moments, those time of communion with loved ones and God.

So what of Life in these the olden years (nothing golden there—unless its fools’ gold)? And for what purpose does God have us here when we seem good for nothing, unable to accomplish the most basic of our own needs, let alone achieve new goals? And all past accomplishments a dissipated vapor?

We are created in God’s image but with the onset of dementia, where is that beauty of form and creativity and achievement any longer?

For everyone time lessens, and we recede.

Every several days when I pass down the line/hall in the convalescent home (isn’t that an irony of words?), there lined down against the wall in wheelchairs sit hunched over old codgers* and old maids with slack jaws and vacant eyes. I say, “Hi” and wave but most don’t register or respond. They’re physically present but absent. No one home:-(

Are they immersed in memories or only vegetating like shriveled potatoes, long past their prime in the musty cellar of life?

But then one dumpy lady—looking a little like sallow clay in her countenance--suddenly brightens, her whole face going aglow and responds, “Hello.”

And my own dark mood lightens/brightens. She’s brought hope, showing how even in her final receding, she can still—however small and brief—-bring help to another passing her way, a momentary communion. "Where 2 or 3 are gathered..."*

And maybe that’s in the last analysis, the one hope we can rejoice in no matter how hard our lot in life, no matter how far down toward the last negation we fail, there is the spiritual communion of a fleeting moment, the beauty of a vapor, however brief.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

--


*A Dream within a Dream

by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-

You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-

How few! Yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!

O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! Can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?


* Codger
The origin of codger seems to lie in the complex links between cadger and codger (not as a contraction of 'coffin-dodger', as one of my more inventive correspondents has suggested). In some parts of England the two words were used interchangeably, whereas in other regions they were separate words, one meaning 'beggar' and the other 'eccentric/grotesque fellow'. The latter meaning is the one used in an early example of 'old codger', David Garrick's farce Bon Ton, 1775: "My Lord's servants call you an old out-of-fashion'd Codger."

Men who had fallen on hard times and had resorted to any means possible to keep body and soul together were often those who were too old to find work. A cadger was likely to be a grizzled character wanting to borrow or steal from you; a codger was a peculiar and unfashionable chap, and both were likely to be old. 'Old codger' is most likely to be the linguistic merging of all those images.
David Garrick's farce Bon Ton, 1775: "My Lord's servants call you an old out-of-fashion'd Codger."
Urban Dictionary

*Nothing like throwing a heavy-handed allusion into the mix;-)

*“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” ESV

May God Comfort the Grieving People of Oklahoma, and Censure the Lies of Calvinists

May God Comfort the Grieving People, especially the Parents in Oklahoma and
may God Severely Censure
the Lies of the Calvinists

The Good News of Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son…”
John 3:16

“Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people, 14but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 19: 13-14

Contrast that
with this Horrid News of the Reformed:-(

May 21, 2013
“Here is…the formation of the tornado that began in Newcastle, Oklahoma which later moved to Moor, Oklahoma…it is the finger of God.”

Calvinist Joel Taylor

And March 5, 2012, during last year’s tornados:

“Why would God reach down his hand and drag his fierce fingers across rural America killing at least 38 people with 90 tornadoes in 12 states, and leaving some small towns with scarcely a building standing, including churches?
…God alone has the last say in where and how the wind blows. If a tornado twists at 175 miles an hour and stays on the ground like a massive lawnmower for 50 miles, God gave the command…

Jesus rules the wind. The tornadoes were his.”

Calvinist John Piper

And John Calvin says “…no wind ever arises or increases except by God’s express command.”
Institutes of the Christian Religion Chapter XVI

Here is an opposing comment on this abusive theology of Calvinism:

“Piper’s god is like an abusive father, filled with unpredictable rage. His family must walk on eggshells, afraid of suddenly enraging him. Should he be provoked, this god will lash out with deadly, earthquakes, tsunamis, violence and war."

"When his family cries out in anguish, he reminds them that they deserve no better. They are despicable, rotten to the core, so even in their pain they are doing “better than they deserve.” The fact that any have been spared merely proves his “love.”

“This theology is, in a word, abusive, for it blames the victim for whatever calamity, abuse, or tragedy she suffers and says it is deserved."

"According to this theology, the children who died in Oklahoma this week got what they 'deserved.'”

"The victims of the Boston bombing got what they 'deserved.'"

"The people caught in the Twin Towers on 9-11 got what the 'deserved.'”

"The victims of the Holocaust got what they “deserved.”

"If you think this theology is merely cerebral, with no real-world implications, consider the case of Sovereign Grace Ministries...”

From Rachel Held Evans
http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/abusive-theology-piper-mahaney

May God deliver us from all this horrific theology.

We pray for all of you in Oklahoma. Lift you up in the Light.

Daniel Wilcox