Joel Olsteen says, "Don't look upon death as a burrial, look upon it as a planting of a seed, which needs burial in order to regenerate new growth". People try and bury their problems but it doesn't work and they only sprout wings and come back to haunt you. Take the case of Catholic Priests who molest young boys. Now the man perhaps as a teenager knew that he didn't relate to women normally. Rather than see it as a condition that needed to be "fixed" he instead hailed this malody and looked upon it as a gift of God and figured that God must be calling him into the minestry. That was his big mistake. Because though he thought his "problem" was dead and burried the seeds of it were still alive and well and sprouted anew. It is written "God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows so shall he also reap". Sometimes the very oppression itself that you so dread can actually be a means of deliverance. Christians love to relate how that the basket that baby Moses was laid in that could have served as his coffin, instead became a means of his deliverance into the house of the daughter of pharoah. Schuller has a madalian that used to say something like "If you can't go around your mountain in life, then turn that mountain into a gold mine". In like manner you've heard "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade". Joe Olsteen told the story about this farmer who had a mule. And one day the mule fell into the well. It was a useless dry well, and it was an old and broken down mule anyhow so the farmer thought to himself "Lest we have any more mishaps on my property, I'm just going to fill in this well with dirt so that nobody else will fall in". But as that old mule felt the dirt being shoveled on him he found a new will to live there at the bottom of the well. So he would just shake off the dirt. Hence a saying was coined by Joel Olsteen "When life piles dirt on you, just shake it off and step up. Shake it off and step up. Eventually you will be standing on enough dirt that you will be able to step out of the well". Of course the most dramatic incident of a resurrection in the Old Testiment is probably Ezekiel 37. This is the saga of the valley of the dried up bones. One wonders whether Ezekiel somehow in a spiritual, psychic dimension saw into the future of the bones of the Jewish people from the Nazi death camps of Daucau and Vookenvold, and somehow from this saw the germanation and rebirth of the nation of Isrial. Many people, including my late grandmother, view this event as a meracle of God. There is another saying "What goes around, comes around". The idea of "having your eyes fixed on the prize" is an old one in Christianity. We are to view Jesus as our light house, by which we steer our ship through treacherous waters.
A lot of people use the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" axiom of life. Yesterday I was watching the movie "Judgement at Nuremburg" about Nazi war attrocities. In those days, unlike now, the sins of a nation were laid out for the world to see. Some people may use as a defence, "I never knew- - -about the death camps". But indeed it was pointed out that the whole world was aware of what Adolph Hitler was up to when he came by power, and his book was translated into a host of languages the world over. Back in those days many people used another rationalisation for Nazism, and that was "It's just a temporary measure in these troubled times". That won't wash. The Jews also have a saying, "If not now, when?" If there are inequities and injustices going on NOW, the question arises "When will NOW ever end? Won't it always be NOW?" This is unlike the George W Bush adminestration because many of the measures that are "temporary" like tax cuts for the rich, the Bush adminestration wanted to make permanent, along with many provisions of the Patriot Act. We today have even less of an excuse to use the "I didn't know" excuse than the Nazis. We have the media of the 21st. Century to find out about war attrocities and abuses of peoples' civil rights. Many things the Christian Church has done it has done in the name of "temporary measures" in the name of "expediancy". Jesus taught Peace, but in the mean time, let's make war. The Church in Acts was founded upon communist asperations of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", and yet, like a successful gambling casino, the Church always manages to take in more than it gives out. The Catholic Church as we know it would hardly qualify as a non profit corporation. There were things even the Nazis didn't do. I don't think they had people drawn and quartered, or burned alive as the stake, as the church did. You know, forty years ago when I was first looking into Christian writings- they says "We have found scriptures as far back as the second century". Certainly it was "only a matter of time" before they found texts going back to 80 AD when "they" say all these Gospels were first penned. But somehow "some day" never arrived. Some may say "Well the reason why those texts didn't survive was the paper they were written on". I guess I'm thinking "If you can find texts in the 2nd. Century, what's another seventy or eighty years?" Others in the Church have even said, "We know when God comes back he shall reveal all knowledge, but in the mean time- - lets burn books- - of heritics we don't like". So today we don't have the testimony of the Gnostic logitions speaking up in their own defence. And again we hear the cries of "Well- - the paper was good enough for nineteen centuries- - but stretching it to twenty proved just too much". They say there was no "Conspiracy" to burn all those heretical writings, but that the writings simply "wore out" because they wern't copied. Well you know, at least papyrus lasts longer than modern DVD's, which apparently rust out after only a few years. But I have faith in the Truth coming to light eventually in the vast sands of history. I believe history is on the side of those seeking the Truth. Somewhere out there burried, just as the city of Pompeii was burried which ironically preserving it in a way it never could be preserved before- - somewhere is burried the Truth about the relation between the Church and the Gnostics and Marcionism and all of that.
You know there are sometimes hopeful gambels. The marines killed those three pirates yesterday and rescued the ship's captain who had offered himself as a ransom. I took a "hopeful gambel" Saturday in altering the registry on my computer, because it was my belief that it had been damaged by over-sealous anti-spyware, in this case Windows Defender. I knew the risks but did it anyway and was successful. There is that young boy who had that horrible nerve condition on Dateline where his leg was all contorted and soon it would affect his entire body so he'd be wheel chair bound, not to mention in great pain all of the time. But they took a gamble on risky brain surgery which, if things had gone wrong might have left the boy a vegetable, however one no longer in pain. The boy himself was willing to endure any risks that would get rid of the horrible wrenching pain. And the doctors were successful. But if you go to a gambling casino, even a new one just opened, like on Sixty Minutes- - - don't count on the odds being any better. Even the best gamblers in the end, end up losing net money, sooner or later. I guess I'm one of the few people who has a net gain with Nevada casinos. Of course the guy who made all the money loves pretty things like rare art and rare diamonds. But now his vision is fading. Some may wonder about Gordon Gecko's art he prides himself on. Would loss of his vision to admire the beauty he obtained as so tainted a cost be just recompence? My answer is "No". I don't believe in vengence for vengence's sake. I believe in atonement, retrobution, and redemption. I believe this applies to both Gordon Gecko and to George W Bush. I don't know what God has in store for those who refuse to repent. I don't intend on finding out. But even those people who had those Courts in South Africa believe in full disclosure and that "Honist confession is good for the soul". I believe that people who continue to harbor evil intent tword others- - will in the end be found out and unmasked. Your fruits will find you out. (Selah)
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