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not including Doodles
not including Doodles
Page 49 of 131, posts 241 - 245 of 655
One day long ago, at the beginning of a break from college, I sat down in my mom's back yard with the practically untouched Bible she'd given me years before for my catechism, and I read the four gospels for myself, really for the first time.
Answered many questions, raised many more.
I was persuaded by nothing more than those records — and have never had cause to be dissuaded since — of Jesus' historic reality, and indeed the general accuracy of what he was reported to have said and done. Miracles and all.
I'm no inerrantist. (I always say every word of the Judeo-Christian scripture may be divinely perfect, but that doesn't necessarily mean every passage means what we think it means.) However, I find the gospels all the more persuasive in that despite seeming contradictions and some general confusion of sequence (how many times did he do the mass feedings?), despite intervening centuries, and recopying glitches and translation problems known and unknown...
Jesus stands there, confounding the 'wise' while both amusing and uplifting the commoners, and readers centuries later,
replacing crippling ceremony with liberating simplicity a child can understand (good Samaritan),
forgiving his 'enemies' even as they're nailing him to the cross,
living his teachings magnificently, through all trials, to the horrifying glorious end,
concerned even to the last about others, his mother, his followers, the thief the next cross over,
and when it was finally at an end, when his mortal brain was expiring, going down reciting Psalms.
Then coming back like a Boss.
Among other immortal highlights from his saga.
You know the saying, you can't make stuff like this up? I am persuaded that nobody alive then could have made this up.
Which leaves this reader confronted with a personal call across two thousand years that I still strive to answer.
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Click on any image to embiggen
I'm going all out for the ticket this election!
Even though it's more than two years off!
It's an act of love that takes a village!
Here's the original Soviet-style iconic Hillary poster:
by Tony Puryear
Here's some "variations":
and the ever-popular
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This was the saddest day on earth.
Jesus was dead. There was no question about it.
The Romans were experts, and everybody knew it. He was dead, thoroughly dead, in the most public possible way.
Absolutely everyone knew without question that he was dead.
The crucified might take lingering days to die. Because of the objections of the Jews to leaving the crucified lingering over the holidays, the Romans in this case dispatched the three crucified early, two by breaking their legs, which quickly caused suffocation.
Except one of the crucified, unusually, was already dead. With typical Roman skill, they put a spear up under the ribs into the heart, anyway, to be absolutely sure. We know they pieced his heart by report of the draining from the sword wound of blood and pericardial effusion.
You don't get deader than Romans made you.
Jesus was dead, that one thing was certain.
Searching for an image for this article, I found the depictions shown (depending on your display) on the left and right side. The images on the right are the originals.
Which side is your heart on?
"But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out." -John 19:34
"When these soldiers arrived at Golgotha, they did accordingly to the two thieves, but they found Jesus already dead, much to their surprise. However, in order to make sure of his death, one of the soldiers pierced his left side with his spear. Though it was common for the victims of crucifixion to linger alive upon the cross for even two or three days, the overwhelming emotional agony and the acute spiritual anguish of Jesus brought an end to his mortal life in the flesh in a little less than five and one-half hours." —Urantia Paper 187
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One man's enlightened truth is another's heresy. As Jesus' arrest, trial, & execution most eternally, vividly demonstrated, you buck the Powers That Be at risk of your very life.
Jesus was born into the greatest monotheism on earth, no question. Almost like it was planned. 
But he found it woven with both truth and error. He sought to dramatize, amplify, glorify the truths. He didn't waste time correcting the error, but was not reticent to condemn it and show the better way. For this heresy, he paid the full price.
Christianity today is like Judaism of Jesus' day, the mightiest truth encumbered with innumerable superstitious and philosophical flaws. Considering the wildly conflicting variety of what is called or considered Christian, this seems undeniable.
Error has a range, from harmless misconception which might actually transiently strengthen belief, to the inversion of truth which undermines faith.
The harmless really should not be corrected precipitously: the young-earth believer who comes to understand geology may, lacking good counsel, throw out the baby of faith with the bathwater of misinterpretation. (Apologies to all young-earthers, especially any whose weak, belief-based faith I've just crushed.)
Grievous error, however, is inimical to one's spiritual progress, and to promulgation of the gospel. That which Jesus cited were the potential, and eventual, doom of his people: nationalistic pride, false messianic beliefs, basically the problem as old as the prophets, subversion of their spiritual value to mere worldly things.
Evil won in the small when the leadership in Jerusalem, and the masses who can be fooled most of the time, chose to reject their greatest prophet. Good won in the large, naturally, as "the stone which the builders rejected became the cornerstone" of a new religion. That was only the backup plan, though, and it had some problems of its own.
Besides their theological readiness for Jesus' uplifting truth, Judaism's strengths, as a people, were their unity through Jerusalem while yet being threaded through all the world; from Britain to East Asia there were Jews. They traveled; they kept in touch. Had Jesus' preachment been accepted, this ready network would have been the means of proliferation of the new truth, peacefully infiltrating the world's peoples.
The Greeks, the Romans, and the raggedy bunch of ex-pat Jews who took up Christ did not have the same kind of central temple, tribal loyalty, nor theological and philosophical foundation as a group, as basis for the most faithful representation of Jesus' actual gospel, as free as possible from superstitious barnacles.
Needless to say, the new religion also suffered from a lack of the continuing presence of the Teacher, at least in the flesh, to guide new understanding and weed out error, as he might have done for decades if he had been permitted to live, accepted and appreciated by his people.
What errors of Christianity are relatively harmless and which are dangerous surely varies from Christian order to Christian order, from congregation to congregation, from Christian to Christian. Some have flotsam of belief which are not required for faith, but which keep their faith afloat for now, and to take that away can only be done by showing first that one is safely on dry land. Some have exclusivist ideas which I deem Jesus would disapprove, and which they will cling to, unto death; not their death, but maybe yours if you try to correct them, depending on the century and location.
What if there is a flaw in Christianity that is so fundamental it must be addressed, for the sake of Christianity's very survival as the messenger of Jesus' gospel? What if teachers of a better way, not the many who think they have a better way when they really only bring more old baggage, but a true new and better way, what if such teachers came to Christianity today? Would Christianity learn from history? repeat it?
What if the prime error of Christianity is its purported prime tenet? What if Christianity is in effect two religions, admixed, the teaching of Jesus, and the beliefs of men, and the time has come for purification, enhancement of truth and disavowal of faith- and gospel-encumbering error?
Would the preponderance of Christian authority conspire with state authority to effect the annihilation of the new truth and its adherents?
Nawww. That kind of thing never happens.
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We had just moved the family to Oklahoma from Chicago one year before. Our neighbor asked, had I heard about the explosion in OKC? I tuned in to TV; Tulsa channel was carrying OKC channel.
I remember, right at the first, the sketches of John Doe the Iraqi. The reports of multiple bombs still in the building. The latter may have been fog of war, the former...?
And the babies...!
I will always vividly remember, after watching the news a while, walking out and looking up at that beautiful blue Oklahoma morning sky, so like today, just wondering that anyone would do this.
One consideration for our relocation had been, we were living in a Major Target City and I had a funny feeling the WTC bombing was just a beginning. Then the worst terrorist attack to date happens 90 miles down the road. Felt a little like that Hiroshima survivor who thought the mushroom cloud had followed him home to Nagasaki.
That friend of McVeigh's who knew but didn't tell? I still wonder if he knows more than he's told. Or, anyway, than we know about. There are mysteries....
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