Aargh. I guess this *is* my current resentment. I cannot abide a fatalist, a determinist, the one who thinks God pulls all the strings. You know -- the person who says "everything happens for a reason." Last time it was his girlfriend who lost her job. His words to her -- "maybe you were meant to lose your job so you can't help your son [who is some kind of addict] and he'll hit bottom and recover." He entered the program five years ago (just got his medallion taday), after crashing into a state trooper while under the influence of cocaine, 'though he's mostly an alcoholic. "Maybe I was supposed to almost kill that state trooper so I would have the chance to sober up."
<anon-11...@anon.twwells.com> wrote: >Aargh. I guess this *is* my current resentment. I cannot abide a >fatalist, a determinist, the one who thinks God pulls all the strings. >You know -- the person who says "everything happens for a reason." >Last time it was his girlfriend who lost her job. His words to her -- >"maybe you were meant to lose your job so you can't help your son [who >is some kind of addict] and he'll hit bottom and recover." He entered >the program five years ago (just got his medallion taday), after >crashing into a state trooper while under the influence of cocaine, >'though he's mostly an alcoholic. "Maybe I was supposed to almost kill >that state trooper so I would have the chance to sober up."
Why don't you send old Gar some email about this and see what he thinks.
In article <120520011027096416%virtual...@innocent.com>, Virtualoso
<virtual...@innocent.com> wrote: > I'd wonder why you resent that, since you certainly don't have to parse > things like that.
Kind of like for the same reason that we (I *think* I am safe in generalizing here) resent it when we run across a practicing alcoholic -- we *know* he doesn't have to live that way and wish we could open up his brain and heart and pour in what we've learned.
Someone who runs around thinking God is responsible for everything is never going to be able to have a meaningful relationship with God. Nor ever, honestly, to accept responsibility for their own actions. And they don't need to live that way.
<anon-11...@anon.twwells.com> wrote: >Aargh. I guess this *is* my current resentment. I cannot abide a >fatalist, a determinist, the one who thinks God pulls all the strings. >You know -- the person who says "everything happens for a reason." >Last time it was his girlfriend who lost her job. His words to her -- >"maybe you were meant to lose your job so you can't help your son [who >is some kind of addict] and he'll hit bottom and recover." He entered >the program five years ago (just got his medallion taday), after >crashing into a state trooper while under the influence of cocaine, >'though he's mostly an alcoholic. "Maybe I was supposed to almost kill >that state trooper so I would have the chance to sober up."
>But I chose not to drink today.
You could always ignore it.
Or you could roll your eyes and mutter "oh jeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzz".
Of you could just figure that it's a big world, and there's room enough for many different views.
Kimba in "the option depends on what day it is" mode
"You did then what you knew how to do, and when you knew better, you did better." ---Maya Angelou
The point is that any reason is just another reason. The action to take is to let God be in charge and trust. Not to figure it out with another short sighted by default explanation. That's trying to put the ocean in a bucket. Trying to make God fit your mold.
God being in charge of all is the whole idea of God.
I am the Lord Forming the light and creating the darkness making peace and creating evil Isaias 45:6,7
Responsibility for one's actions you say... The accepting of God's will for ourselves in all things when we face in each moment the temptation to claim responsibility over God in a myriad of forms. This is the only choice I have. This choice exists. Always. Now. Free will.
And how you could see it... As an opportunity to teach peace from a place of peace and love knowing that what you do is God's will.
As I of course so easily do under all circumstances. ;))
Peace Michael H.
"Ted L." <anon-11...@anon.twwells.com> wrote in message
news:120520011138303954%anon-11957@anon.twwells.com... | Aargh. I guess this *is* my current resentment. I cannot abide a | fatalist, a determinist, the one who thinks God pulls all the strings. | You know -- the person who says "everything happens for a reason." | Last time it was his girlfriend who lost her job. His words to her -- | "maybe you were meant to lose your job so you can't help your son [who | is some kind of addict] and he'll hit bottom and recover." He entered | the program five years ago (just got his medallion taday), after | crashing into a state trooper while under the influence of cocaine, | 'though he's mostly an alcoholic. "Maybe I was supposed to almost kill | that state trooper so I would have the chance to sober up." | | But I chose not to drink today. | | -- | Ted L. | | Benedictus, qui venit in nomine Domini
On Sat, 12 May 2001 15:16:07 -0700, Michael H. <prmls...@mindspring.com> wrote: >Obviously... >We haven't surrendered to God here.
>The point is that any reason is just another reason. >The action to take is to let God be in charge and trust. >Not to figure it out with another short sighted by default explanation. >That's trying to put the ocean in a bucket. >Trying to make God fit your mold.
>God being in charge of all is the whole idea of God.
>I am the Lord >Forming the light and creating the darkness >making peace and creating evil >Isaias 45:6,7
>Someone who runs around thinking God is responsible for everything is >never going to be able to have a meaningful relationship with God. Nor >ever, honestly, to accept responsibility for their own actions. And >they don't need to live that way.
But but Ted. The BB says that God is everything (or he is nothing). Doesn't it follow that if God is everything, God is responsible for everything? Just teasing. But you are right, people don't have to live as if 'god is responsible for all' and therefore it must be accepted. '
I figure it this way. God left the Old Testament right after he turned over Job to Satan. (Check it out). Maybe it wasn't just a story Ted, maybe it was a symbolic story where God, at the behest of Satan, removed his protection form all of man kind. The end of the story is that some day it will all come back. Makes more sense in a symbiotic sense,d doesn't it? Doesn't make a lot literal.
Meant to say hello to you sooner. Joan and I have brought another house and sold our other one and we have been moving or preparing to move the past few weeks. Twice in one year is too much for this old man and I hope this is the last one. We got a fine home in an area which has two small lakes in the subdivision and much larger lots. Still in North Dallas. Highlands North. If you get this way....you're welcome to come and discuss 'theology'. (:>
Our grandson Taylor had his 12th birthday yesterday and he invited a dozen or so kids over for a pool birthday party. My oldest grandson will be 15 soon and that still seems a bit strange.
My oldest son had his 11th AA anniversary on April 30 and we took the time to celebrate. He's not as active in AA (seems normal to slack off after some years) but he keeps busy with his business and he runs a Cocker Rescue Society. I still remember checking him into Charter at 3 in the morning.....didn't want to wait until they 'opened up' for fear he would change his mind and not go.
Of course you noticed that I just dished back the same kind of stuff other people have been dishing out and that seemed to have pulled a chain or two. Always fun to see the 'innocent bystanders' get offended. Sigh. Devil may be do it.
Have you changed? Your post here seems like a little change from before. Just curious. There is always a tension between an intelligent man and accepting 'uncomfortable' things of faith. Of course I don't know about a God and what or what not that God is doing,if anything. I think the notion I suggested above, in that God went away and left it to Satan makes sense. Then he sent his son and he got killed....not as a sacrifice (that's what the followers had to say to justify the death and make something of that their leader was taken down so easily). So where is God? I thought that would be a good lead in for you.
> On Sat, 12 May 2001 15:16:07 -0700, Michael H. <prmls...@mindspring.com> wrote: > >Obviously... > >We haven't surrendered to God here.
> >The point is that any reason is just another reason. > >The action to take is to let God be in charge and trust. > >Not to figure it out with another short sighted by default explanation. > >That's trying to put the ocean in a bucket. > >Trying to make God fit your mold.
> >God being in charge of all is the whole idea of God.
> >I am the Lord > >Forming the light and creating the darkness > >making peace and creating evil > >Isaias 45:6,7
> One man's religion is another man's bellylaugh.
Speak for yourself my friend. I never laugh at another's religion or spiritual path. I may disagree or even find it a bit bizarre, but I never laugh. The pursuit of a spiritual life is the basis for all things good. A mind that is closed to spiritual growth can only function at a rudimentary level, thus depriving that person of true happiness, joy and freedom.
<anon-11...@anon.twwells.com> wrote: >Aargh. I guess this *is* my current resentment. I cannot abide a >fatalist, a determinist, the one who thinks God pulls all the strings.
That resentment is due to the fact you think you know it all.
<anon-11...@anon.twwells.com> wrote: >Aargh. I guess this *is* my current resentment. I cannot abide a >fatalist, a determinist, the one who thinks God pulls all the strings. >You know -- the person who says "everything happens for a reason." >Last time it was his girlfriend who lost her job. His words to her -- >"maybe you were meant to lose your job so you can't help your son [who >is some kind of addict] and he'll hit bottom and recover." He entered >the program five years ago (just got his medallion taday), after >crashing into a state trooper while under the influence of cocaine, >'though he's mostly an alcoholic. "Maybe I was supposed to almost kill >that state trooper so I would have the chance to sober up."
>But I chose not to drink today.
>-- >Ted L.
>Benedictus, qui venit in nomine Domini
I think people try to accept a tragedy by believing it *needed* to happen in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes I do this even though I don't believe there is a scheme. Out of desperation I suppose. I have a bigger problem when it is something really insignificant, like previous discussion where God helped someone find a parking place at an AA meeting.
In article <09F4DF3FF11273DB.F05DEDB6E4C9E984.1E442639A6C25...@lp.airnews.net>,
GaryE <gary...@airmail.net> wrote: > Have you changed? Your post here seems like a little change from > before.
Hi Gary. Congrats on the good stuff with the kids and grandkids. Condolances *and* congrats on the move. I assume there were emminently sound reasons for doing it twice in one year.
Have I changed? Oh, probably. What, 'though, exactly made you say that -- what change do you think *you* noticed?
At the time I wrote that I was emerging from a state of desolation* and grief so no doubt that might have colored my precise words. But the thrust of what I wrote is no different from what I've said several times. I admit it wasn't until after I'd hit the send key that I remembered the exchange with Michael H awhile ago. I see that he, also, has changed, in some ways, but his fundamental thrust hasn't.
Large parts of theology don't matter and make for fun intellectual games. But there are parts that do matter -- if only to expose to the light what someone *really* believes and doesn't. Most of us, myself included, are truthfully, lukewarm about many of our beliefs: we say we believe some point of theology, in all honesty to ourselves *and* others, but if we examine closely our actions it's clear what we say we believe doesn't influence what we do very much. Oh well, even St. Paul admitted to that little character defect.
*desolation is a technical term in spiritual direction. Go find a Jesuit and ask him about the Ignation rules for discernment.
In article <3afe91e1.2519...@news.mountain.net>, Randy D. wrote: > I > have a bigger problem when it is something really insignificant, like > previous discussion where God helped someone find a parking place at > an AA meeting.
Why not? I'm not saying that it did or didn't happen in a particular case -- only that it's perfectly credible to me that it *could* have happened. But one would have to know a lot more about the story, the person involved, and also the next several weeks, months, or years in his or her life to have a shot at discerning whether it did in any particular case. (I didn't see the discussion in question -- no, don't repeat it!)
>Have I changed? Oh, probably. What, 'though, exactly made you say >that -- what change do you think *you* noticed?
>At the time I wrote that I was emerging from a state of desolation* and >grief so no doubt that might have colored my precise words..
Well Ted,, you seem to be different. Instead of making an answer conform to some belief which you had to hold, you just said, well, maybe it ain't that way. Seemed different to me. I think (and its purely my opinion) that God deals are personally intense in the early stages. Its when the world is black and white, right and wrong, us and them. Early stages doesn't necessarily mean that you haven't run a lifetime in the Lutheran church, but early in a 'experience' (like AA or white light coming from its own kind of 'desperation' or need when one is told that all else has failed. It would be like having any deadly condition and medicine is beat and the only thing left is 'the supernatural'.........People grip God in a vise and the parade God around so others can see that one has God all to his self. Something like that. But that's a wish, a hope, a fervent hope based on a dire need for a sad soul to think God is their own personal power. In effect, they are God because they speak for God. (The Father and I are one).
Eventually the grip loosens and reality begins to look like the same old reality it always has been and the mind looks for an accommodation for reality. Some don't, mind you. They usually become fanatics because they vest so much (my opinion based on my experience with more than one fanatic in more than one 'cause') of their person and they can's seem to moderate. They have to create some fanatical hard world that doesn't accommodate anything but 'believers.' They are at war with anyone who dare say anything within earshot that 'offends' their belief, ergo their selves. They make sort of little Gods of themselves judging and pontificating and interpreting and being authoritarian. Mostly damning others...God 101.
From time to time, you looked like you were headed that way. And then I think you caught yourself and you saw what it looked like. Anyway, you seem less tense.., less dogmatic....just an impression from reading a few of your posts recently.
My own experience has shown me that unless I am free to choose, to examine, to consider any and all alternatives, I am not really 'free' to make my own choices rather than the ones 'expected' of a believer and expected using high pressure to conform...including the usual insults, ridicule, anything to make someone exercising their freedom to look like they are some kind of nut, psycho, all the things that the fanatics are. (">
Tell me this. You may be sure in your own mind that God is real and God is this or that, but is it really important that someone else really see things they way you do? I mean, one of the first things I concluded was sort of an epiphany in that it didn't matter if I was the only person in the world who believed as I did, it was OK with me and that was all that mattered. I can still believe what I want and I can still change my mind about what I believe or don't believe. That may seem like an obvious statement and well, 'who couldn't'? I don't think everyone can. The road to agnosticism for me was very difficult even though I knew in my mind that was honesty for me...it meant I had to let go of a lot of ideas and emotions...and some were pretty scary Ted. No., not talking hellfire, just the possibility that I was moving away from someone who really cared and who really was looking after me.
I'm interested in 'journeys'. I'm interested in honest emotions and doubts and ideas.
In article <379FB93FD01DB436.E7FB7AC441D7C822.9212D93AF00CB...@lp.airnews.net>,
GaryE <gary...@airmail.net> wrote: > From time to time, you looked like you were headed that way. And then > I think you caught yourself and you saw what it looked like. Anyway, > you seem less tense.., less dogmatic....just an impression from > reading a few of your posts recently.
Nah, you just caught me off guard <g>. My dogmatism varies. A lot of things affect it.
> Tell me this. You may be sure in your own mind that God is real and > God is this or that, but is it really important that someone else > really see things they way you do?
I think a couple of things have happened there. One is that I've learned a little loneliness -- sometimes a lot of loneliness -- comes with the territory. That I have to seek out a few close friends that I share such things with but that it won't do much good to share with others. You may not completely believe me Gary, but most of my talking about my beliefs has *not* been to change anybody else's mind, unless they are already at that point, but simply to look for kindred souls. The case where that's not true is where I think someone truly has a destructive belief -- perhaps not in the short run, but in the long run. (Hence the post that started this.) Even though it became readily apparent quite early on, I'm also getting a little more comfortable with how much of all this God's deal, not ours: I know no magic formula that will bring about a spiritual awakening in any predictable period of time. Some claim otherwise. Perhaps I'm also getting a little be wiser, or lazier, about what battles to fight and what not.
Thanks for the observation, Gary. Self-analysis is always suspect.
On Sun, 13 May 2001 22:00:51 -0500, GaryE <gary...@airmail.net> wrote: >I mean, one of the first things I >concluded was sort of an epiphany in that it didn't matter if I was >the only person in the world who believed as I did, it was OK with me >and that was all that mattered.
So that explains why he never gets upset here on arna when somebody disagrees with him.
"Ted L." <anon-11...@anon.twwells.com> wrote in message > In article <3afe91e1.2519...@news.mountain.net>, Randy D. wrote:
> > I have a bigger problem when it is something really insignificant, like > > previous discussion where God helped someone find a parking place at > > an AA meeting.
> Why not? I'm not saying that it did or didn't happen in a particular > case -- only that it's perfectly credible to me that it *could* have > happened.
I understand you are a Harvard trained physicist, Ted. How much low level divine intervention can you find credible before you must scrap the laws of physics entirely? God may be able to do whatever He wants whenever He wants. But, if He does it very often, the only reasonable answer to any question is: "Because it is God's will."
What will become of all the unemployed physicists?
i'mnot a big reader, but a book that was given me some years ago and is now falling apart is one i read all the time and every time i do i still say ah ha, like it wasn't there before..The Spirituality of Imperfection by Ernest Kurtz. artie
In article <9dp59q$j9gs...@ID-49274.news.dfncis.de>, David M
<dh...@home.com> wrote: > I understand you are a Harvard trained physicist, Ted. How much > low level divine intervention can you find credible before you > must scrap the laws of physics entirely? God may be able to do > whatever He wants whenever He wants. But, if He does it very > often, the only reasonable answer to any question is: "Because it > is God's will."
If He did it very often it wouldn't be called a miracle. Doesn't take a Harvard degree to know *that*!
On the other hand, even though I'm just as culturally conditioned to it as anyone else, I do not particularly like the term "intervention" as referring to God's actions. My current favorite metaphor is that of the cosmic dance. God is throwing a big costume ball for us -- *we* are the guest of honor, the prince or princess whose hand is being wooed in marriage. All the suitors -- including God -- are masked. They have to be -- if we could see God clearly we would have *no* choice but to pick Him (or Her) as our bride or groom. God does not want our love if we do not give it freely. Most of the time we are free to dance with whomever we want, to learn the steps from whomever can teach them. In time we will learn to recognize the one suitor that loves us most, and to learn the most equisite and beautiful dance steps possible from him or her -- more graceful, more in tune with each other than the reigning ballroom champions. But now and then we will stumble, may find ourselves out on the terrace not knowing how to get back in, even really awkward at some new step -- and God will come forward to help -- especially if we ask for it. From time to time if we are found dancing with someone totally unsuitable, but succeeding too well in pretending they are not who they really are, God will cut in and rescue us. But we can always refuse.
It is precisely because I am trained as a physicist that I believe in miracles David. And it is because of miracles that I can trust the laws of physics. "Creator of the rolling spheres, ineffably sublime" is one of the most beautiful phrases set to music.
On Mon, 14 May 2001 16:58:15 -0400 (EDT), as71...@webtv.net <as71...@webtv.net> wrote:
> i'mnot a big reader, but a book that was given me some years ago and is > now falling apart is one i read all the time and every time i do i still > say ah ha, like it wasn't there before..The Spirituality of Imperfection > by Ernest Kurtz. artie
Absolutely one of the best books I've ever read. I've given copies to many of my friends.
David M wrote: > I understand you are a Harvard trained physicist, Ted. How much > low level divine intervention can you find credible before you > must scrap the laws of physics entirely? God may be able to do > whatever He wants whenever He wants. But, if He does it very > often, the only reasonable answer to any question is: "Because it > is God's will."
> What will become of all the unemployed physicists?
I'm not sure that the concept of "natural laws" is any less metaphysical than the concept of God. I suspect that the laws of physics are patterns, rather than guarantees of obedience. As we scrutinize the world in greater and greater particularity, the pattern becomes more problematical. So, God or no God, I suspect there's always going to be some unusual events that just have to be written off as flukes.
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