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Iconoclast
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1227

Posted 11/6/2001 6:21 AM (GMT -6)

Sin is not the same as Evil

Sin

Hebrew: Chet = Error

Greek: Hamartia = Missing the mark

This term comes from archery and literally means that the arrow did not hit the target.

Evil

Hebrew: Ra =

Denotative: Loud/noisy
Connotative: Pain
Symbolic: Evil

Greek: Kakos = Evil

This is the root of the word cacophony.

The Accuser

Hebrew: Ha-Satan

Greek: Diabolos

Sin and Evil

Sin is a discrepancy between intent and impact (Intent -> Behavior -> Impact).

Evil is a “life-negating” result.

Sin leads to Evil. Seeing Sin as Evil is itself Sin (it misses the mark) and accelerates Evil infinitely.

Sin is myself missing the mark due to something always within myself – my conditioning. My responses are conditioned or programmed responses. I respond based on my past learning. I cannot just do a back handspring without a skilled teacher helping me to learn through trial and error – each time missing the mark. This is no different than my emotional responses or ideas / thought processes.

Thought happens too fast for our thinking to know where it came from – our behavior is “skilled” behavior. We produce it instantaneously without being conscious of the underlying process.

If I condemn myself for missing the mark I am then complicit in adding to evil (of course this itself is missing the mark). Condemnation / accusation only produces more sin which then produces more evil. Sin is not evil – and should not be condemned. It must be deeply understood, brought to the light, made fully aware then repentance / metanoia / transformation of the mind can actually occur. We can then comprehend the fast moving thought that is the programmed response and then we can change it. Full comprehension with intent to change produces the change.

If I condemn someone or something else outside of myself for missing the mark then I will never come to the understanding of my programmed response that is causing me to miss the mark. I will continue to miss the mark and in fact strongly invite the condemned / accused someone to miss the mark through my condemnation.

Evil is the loud, noisy, chaotic, confusing, painful result that happens because we miss the mark. It is the result. Negative results should always be condemned – which in this context and formulation simply means we choose and insist on a different result. The result – the impact was not what we intended. Our good intent produced behavior that produced a negative impact. The problem here is the disconnect between intent and behavior – again our highly skilled action producing programs in our head are flawed. A caring intent leads to an uncaring result. This especially happens in situations of potential embarrassment or threat.

From “Unfolding Meaning” by David Bohm:

Q: Isn’t there a danger here that every time I kick the cat I say, ‘Oh, that is not sin (RP: evil), I have just missed the mark and kicked the cat?’

Bohm: If you don’t mind that you have kicked the cat then there is no problem, you see.

Q: You have diminished the problem because it is no longer evil?

Bohm: No. Look. Do you mind it because it is evil, or do you mind it for some deeper reason? You see, generally people call kicking the cat evil, and therefore they say, “I feel bad because I kicked the cat. If they didn’t call it evil, then it wouldn’t bother me.” You see, I don’t think that’s the attitude. There is a deeper feeling that kicking the cat is the result of missing the mark – that I have some emotional disturbance really directed in some other way, and instead I turned it toward the cat, which is missing the mark, right? I mean, that is the thing that is wrong with it. Now if you said, ‘I enjoy kicking cats.’ (laughter) A tiger can say, ‘I pounce on the deer and this is my life and there is nothing wrong with it, it’s just getting my meal.’

Basic Argument

1.Our knowledge of good and evil is fundamentally flawed
2.We believe:

a.good = pleasure = life; and
b.evil = pain = death

3.This is a lie. There is no good and evil as we understand it.

4.There is only Life and Death.

a.Life = unity with God = Love = communion with each other = all things.
b.Death = separation from God = absence of Love = isolation = nothing.

What is the goal? What is the point?

The goal is to Love God with all our heart mind and soul and to Love our neighbor as ourselves. The goal is to grow in love and help others to grow in love. This is not saying two things it is saying one thing. It is to continue to become more fully alive. The goal is NOT to be good – to pursue this is to pursue death. It is to believe the lie that we can know what is good. Once we start doing this we separate the fullness of life into what we believe is good and what we believe is evil. This kills life. To separate the fullness of life is to separate ourselves from life and therefore to separate ourselves from God.

There is an organizational psychology model called: See – Do – Get or Worldview – Behavior – Results. We all have a worldview that influences our behavior, which determines the results we achieve, or the impact we have. The results we achieve then reinforce our worldview. Because of our fundamentally flawed understanding of good and evil and our judgment this loop becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Most people believe that to change our behavior we must change our worldview. We must come to understand more clearly what is right and what is wrong. What is good and what is evil. This actually leads to self-fulfilling prophecies whereby we then create the good and evil according to our worldview, which is then reinforced. In an organizational setting this has been clearly shown to lead to ineffective results. The insight of organizational psychologist is that people and systems do not change by attempts to change their worldview – that the only effective way to change this loop is to change the “get”. The only effective way to change this is to change our understanding and our commitment to the results we want to achieve. That our focus must be on the results. That this is what will change our worldview and allow it to expand and be more in accordance with reality.

This is what Jesus did. He made it crystal clear what the “get” is. It is Love. Love the lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and Love your neighbor as yourself. He demonstrated this by doing it. He also did everything he could to break down our good and evil worldview. This is why he went after the Pharisees so hard. They were and still are the ones who are promoting the good and evil worldview. This is why he told parables. This is why he healed on the Sabbath when he didn’t have to – he could have just as well healed the person the next day. He showed that it isn’t about our system of good and evil – it is about growing in Love – it is about Life. He showed that God gave us these laws to help us grow in Love and Life – NOT to be used by us to take away our Life. The Sabbath was for us – not us for the Sabbath.

God did an amazing thing. He became a man. He sent his son Jesus to show us what the goal is. To show us what Love looks like by loving us. He broke down our good and evil worldview. He told us what the purpose of the law is. He then freed us from judgment. He freed us from any law dictated by God and put it in our hands – what you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and what you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. We have been given the keys to kingdom of God. We are now totally free to Love God and to Love our neighbor. We are free to create systems that promote life – that promote love – we are free to discover the powerful forces and intricate loving designs that God put in place for US – because he loves us. We are free to build on that foundation – to learn – to grow – to LOVE.

Iconoclast

Edited by - Iconoclast on 11/06/2001 12:04:04 PM

Mephi2K
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713

Posted 11/6/2001 7:34 AM (GMT -6)

Iconoclast said:

quote:
There is no good and evil as we understand it.

Questions:

1) It is GOOD for any human being to promote life-affirming results in as many areas as possible.
2) It is EVIL for any human being to promote life-denying results in as many areas as possible.

Are these statements true or false?

Have I made my point? Heh...

Bottom line: I disagree with you on the fact of there not being any good or evil. I believe that human beings CANNOT get away from an idea of good and evil. Even moral relativists can't really get away from it consistently, when you really press them. I think that perhaps THIS is what could be said...

Life and death (and promotion of the two) are the FOUNDATIONS of moral evaluation!

This is something that I believe that many ethicists who follow any type of moral objectivism would agree with you on. While theistic believers would say that this ULTIMATELY comes from God, non-theistic believers would say that it doesn't. This is definitely what I believe. It goes well with what you are saying.

quote:
This is what Jesus did. He made it crystal clear what the “get” is. It is Love. Love the lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and Love your neighbor as yourself. He demonstrated this by doing it. He also did everything he could to breakdown our good and evil worldview. This is why he went after the Pharisees so hard. They were and still are the ones who are promoting the good and evil worldview. This is why he told parables. This is why he healed on the Sabbath when he didn’t have to – he could have just as well healed the person the next day. He showed that it isn’t about our system of good and evil – it is about growing in Love – it is about Life. He showed that God gave us these laws to help us grow in Love and Life – NOT to be used by us to take away our Life. The Sabbath was for us – not us for the Sabbath.

This is what I think ticked Jesus off the most. He was like:

"You people can see all this suffering and pain around you...and then WONDER what the right thing to do is?? You people can look me heal at a maimed man and have the GALL to WONDER if it's right thing to do??"

It wasn't that he didn't believe in the concept of "right" and "wrong" or "good" and "evil" It was that He believed that we fundamentally SEPARATED our evaluations from their true foundations...and that was causing us to screw stuff up.

Now, HERE's some more interesting stuff. Iconoclast said:

quote:
Most people believe that to change our behavior we must change our worldview. We must come to understand more clearly what is right and what is wrong. What is good and what is evil. This actually leads to self-fulfilling prophecies whereby we then create the good and evil according to our worldview, which is then reinforced. In an organizational setting this has been clearly shown to lead to ineffective results. The insight of organizational psychologist is that people and systems do not change by attempts to change their worldview – that the only effective way to change this loop is to change the “get”. The only effective way to change this is to change our understanding and our commitment to the results we want to achieve. That our focus must be on the results. That this is what will change our worldview and allow it to expand and be more in accordance with reality.

This seems like common sense. Think about it. Where do PARADIGM SHIFTS come from?? You know, those things that produce alterations in worldviews? They come when one becomes genuinely open to "results/the get" of life and is willing to go through the often painful task of comparing one's worldview to those results. Something occurs that is fundamentally out of their worldview to explain. Depending on one's inclination, one may either superficially explain (or blatently ignore) these things within one's worldview...OR...try to adjust one's worldview to incorporate the new information. It just makes sense to do the latter. Think about the age old axiom:

If you keep doing the same things you've always done, you will keep getting the same results you've always gotten.

Want new results? Try new methodology. Need new methodology? Rethink some of your fundamental ideas. But how does one even COME to the realization that new results are NEEDED? I think for the most part from our universal positive evaluation of life-affirming ideas and our universal negative evaluation of life-denyine ideas...which is UNALTERABLY linked to feelings of pleasure and displeasure (or BETTER SAID....happiness and NOT being happy)

Hey. It MAY be true, right?

Semeia
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522

Posted 11/6/2001 10:00 AM (GMT -6)

Iconoclast said:

quote:
There is no good and evil as we understand it.

Mephi responded: Bottom line: I disagree with you on the fact of there not being any good or evil. I believe that human beings CANNOT get away from an idea of good and evil. Even moral relativists can't really get away from it consistently, when you really press them.

Semeia says: I think the emphasis is on “There is no good and evil as we understand it.

To explain, the first pages of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s ethics:

The knowledge of good and evil seems to be the aim of all ethical reflection. The first task of Christian ethics is to invalidate this knowledge. In launching this attack on the underlying assumptions of all other ethics, Christian ethics stands so completely alone that it becomes questionable whether there is any purpose in speaking of Christian ethics at all. But if one does so notwithstanding, that can only mean that Christian ethics claims to discuss the origin of the whole problem of ethics, and thus professes to be a critique of all ethics simply as ethics.

Already in the possibility of the knowledge of good and evil Christian ethics discerns a falling away from the origin. Man at his origin knows only one thing: God. It is only in the unity of his knowledge of God that he knows of other men, of things, and of himself. He knows all things only in God, and God in all things. The knowledge of good and evil shows that he is no longer at one with this origin.

In the knowledge of good and evil man does not understand himself in the reality of the destiny appointed in his origin, but rather in his own possibilities, his possibility of being good or evil. He knows himself now as something apart from God, outside God, and this means that he now knows only himself and no longer knows God at all; for he can know God only if he knows only God. The knowledge of good and evil is therefore separation from God. Only against God can man know good and evil.

But man cannot be rid of his origin. Instead of knowing himself in the origin of God, he must now know himself as an origin. He interprets himself according to his possibilities, his possibilities of being good or evil, and he therefore conceives himself to be the origin of good and evil. Eritis sicut deus. ‘The man is become as one of us, to know good and evil’, says God (Gen. 3.22).

Originally man was made in the image of God, but now his likeness to God is a stolen one. As the image of God man draws his life entirely from his origin in God, but the man who has become like God has forgotten how he was at his origin and has made himself his own creator and judge. What God had given man to be, man now desired to be through himself. But God’s gift is essentially God’s gift. It is the origin that constitutes this gift. If the origin changes, the gift changes. Indeed the gift consists solely in its origin. Man as the image of God draws his life from the origin of God, but the man who has become like God draws his life from his own origin. In appropriating the origin to himself man took to himself a secret of God which proved his undoing. The Bible describes this event with the eating of the forbidden fruit. Man now knows good and evil. This does not mean that he has acquired new knowledge in addition to what he knew before, but the knowledge of good and evil signifies the complete reversal of man’s knowledge, which hitherto had been solely knowledge of God as his origin. In knowing good and evil he knows what only the origin, God Himself, can know and ought to know. It is only with extreme reserve that even the Bible indicates to us that God is the One who knows of good and evil. It is the first indication of the mystery of predestination, the mystery of an eternal dichotomy which has its origin in the eternally One, the mystery of an eternal choice and election by Him in whom there is no darkness but only light. To know good and evil is to know oneself as the origin of good and evil, as the origin of eternal choice and election… …Instead of knowing only the God who is good to him and instead of knowing all things in Him, he now knows himself as the origin of good and evil… …Instead of knowing himself solely in the reality of being chosen and loved by God, he must now know himself in the possibility of choosing and of being the origin of good and evil. He has become like God, but against God. Herein lies the serpent’s deceit. Man knows good and evil, but because he is not the origin, because he acquires this knowledge only at the price of estrangement from the origin, the good and evil that he knows are not the good and evil of God but good and evil against God. They are good and evil of man’s own choosing, in opposition to the eternal election of God. In becoming like God man has become a god against God.

This finds its expression in the fact that man, knowing of good and evil, has finally torn himself loose from life, that is to say from the eternal life which proceeds from the choice of God. ‘And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever… he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden, Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every which way, to keep the way of the tree of life’ (Gen. 3.22 and 24). Man knows good and evil, against God, against his origin, godlessly and of his own choice, understanding himself according to his own contrary possibilities; and he is cut off from the unifying, reconciling life in God, and is delivered over to death. The secret which man has stolen from God is bringing about man’s downfall.

Man’s life is now disunion with God, with men, with things, and with himself.

Semeia’s Take: Man’s knowledge of good and evil is fatally flawed. It is not and never has been the same as God’s knowledge of good and evil. We are so steeped in our flawed view, that we cannot even have the discussion without being wrong about what we mean by our terms. As I said on another thread: Our knowledge of good and evil is fundamentally flawed. We are like creatures in flatland trying to extrapolate an elephant from points on a plane. We don’t have God’s perspective. We have no idea what it means [terrible tragedy] except that we are in horrendous pain as a result of it.

Mephi said: Life and death (and promotion of the two) are the FOUNDATIONS of moral evaluation!

Semeia: I agree. But assigning “goodness” and “badness” to them already starts you on the path to death.

Mephi: But how does one even COME to the realization that new results are NEEDED? I think for the most part from our universal positive evaluation of life-affirming ideas and our universal negative evaluation of life-denyine ideas...which is UNALTERABLY linked to feelings of pleasure and displeasure (or BETTER SAID....happiness and NOT being happy).

Semeia: I do not agree. Although being attuned to positive feelings when, as Christopher Alexander might say, forces are balanced to bring about a living pattern, can certainly be a clue—human beings in general have many things stopping them from noticing their true feelings. Ideas, for example. Opinions of right and wrong, good and evil. The Pharisees for example, were unaware of any displeasure in themselves concerning their “life-denying ideas” on their road to death. People who practiced slavery were unaware of any displeasure in themselves concerning their “life-denying ideas”. It is precisely because we are so bad at these types of evaluations that we need God. Sometimes the thing we think is making us happy is exactly what is speeding us along the highway of death.

Christ is proposing something far more radical. Christ asks us to give up our judgment; to give our judgment back to God. Christ asks us to live “in” him, and give up the commentary. GIVE IT UP!

What does this mean practically? More to come.

Semeia

"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard

Semeia
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522

Posted 11/6/2001 10:35 AM (GMT -6)

Mephi: But how does one even COME to the realization that new results are NEEDED? I think for the most part from our universal positive evaluation of life-affirming ideas and our universal negative evaluation of life-denyine ideas...which is UNALTERABLY linked to feelings of pleasure and displeasure (or BETTER SAID....happiness and NOT being happy).

Semeia: Actually, there IS a way I agree with you here. When we are able to rid ourselves of our opinions, ideas of right and wrong, judgments of good and evil, philosophies, etc., --when we are able to leave all that behind, and we are alone with God to simply FEEL, we are absolutely able to discern what gives life and what takes life. But that is not a simple matter. It means leaving behind all our most cherished beliefs and philosophies and rules, the house of cards we think supports us, and leaving our future up to something so NAIVE, so ridiculous, as a child's heart, as he swings on an old board and a couple pieces of rope thrown over the sheltering branch of a gnarled oak.

Christopher Alexander has said that if you ask a hundred people what their theory of architecture is, you will get a hundred different answers. But if you take a hundred different people to the same "sunny spot", and ask them how they "feel", they will agree to a staggering degree: 95% - 98%. We all agree on the living patterns. The difficulty is throwing away our ideas and our judgments and our evaluations to such an extent that we can discover what we feel.

God asks us to be as little children.

Semeia

"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard

Mephi2K
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713

Posted 11/6/2001 11:17 AM (GMT -6)

Semeia said:

quote:
When we are able to rid ourselves of our opinions, ideas of right and wrong, judgments of good and evil, philosophies, etc., --when we are able to leave all that behind, and we are alone with God to simply FEEL, we are absolutely able to discern what gives life and what takes life. But that is not a simple matter. It means leaving behind all our most cherished beliefs and philosophies and rules, the house of cards we think supports us, and leaving our future up to something so NAIVE, so ridiculous, as a child's heart, as he swings on an old board and a couple pieces of rope thrown over the sheltering branch of a gnarled oak.

NOW you've got it. This is JUST what I was leaning to.

Iconoclast
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1227

Posted 11/6/2001 11:30 AM (GMT -6)

Mephi: If you keep doing the same things you've always done, you will keep getting the same results you've always gotten.

Definition of insanity: Continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.

Mephi said:

quote:

Questions:

1) It is GOOD for any human being to promote life-affirming results in as many areas as possible.
2) It is EVIL for any human being to promote life-denying results in as many areas as possible.

Are these statements true or false?

Although I want to answer these questions very badly out of my own knowledge of good and evil, it just seems wrong to in this context.

Now it IS my experience that it is God's will to promote life-affirming results in as many areas as possible.

thanks,
Iconoclast

Mephi2K
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713

Posted 11/6/2001 11:34 AM (GMT -6)

I think I'm feeling you now. I think I had such a hard time with this because I'm a wannabe ethicist. Heh...

This is what I'm hearing...

You are saying that if we truly lived "IN CHRIST" (meaning "in God") the entire rubric of "ethics" would be superfluous. Right?

By separating ourselves fundamentally from our Source, we have placed ourselves as the arbiters of "good" and "evil" rather than living in our Source and Life and letting that existence SHOW us what "good" is, we keep coming up with things (philosophies, axiological ideas, etc) that cut us off FURTHER from our Source...and thereby from each other. We just keep multiplying the rules...and the judgement...to our own detriment.

For us, being IN Christ is somewhat like RETURNING to that Pre-Fall state in that, by acknowledging and just resting in our place as God's beloved creatures, MANY, if not all, of the "good/evil" judgments that we place on ourselves just don't matter anymore. But that would be ok because IN GOD, we are free to truly get more of an understanding of life and it's living. We would also be free to truly FEEL our way towards life-affirming paradigms.

I think one could bring the Spirit-led life and 2 Greatest commandments into this.

Am I somewhat close on this?

Mephi2K
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713

Posted 11/6/2001 11:41 AM (GMT -6)

Icon said:

quote:
Although I want to answer these questions very badly out of my own knowledge of good and evil, it just seems wrong to in this context. Now it IS my experience that it is God's will to promote life-affirming results in as many areas as possible.

Is God's will "good"? Uh, oh....

you KNOW I had to...

Iconoclast
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1227

Posted 11/6/2001 12:40 PM (GMT -6)

Mephi - thanks for capturing it so clearly; that is exactly what we were trying to communicate!

quote:
Is God's will "good"? Uh, oh....

you KNOW I had to...

......

thanks,
Iconoclast

Edited by - Iconoclast on 11/06/2001 5:41:25 PM

Semeia
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522

Posted 11/6/2001 5:47 PM (GMT -6)

Mephi, GREAT summation.

I wanted to get back on here and respond a bit more about the pain/pleasure thing, but I ran out of steam for today.

Later,
Semeia

"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard

writerdad
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 448

Posted 11/6/2001 5:58 PM (GMT -6)

Since you guys are much at articulating I wanted to ask your opinions:
Do people not know what is truly good and what is truly evil, or do they know but simply choose (most of the time) to do evil? John 17:3 Harold

Semeia
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522

Posted 11/7/2001 2:26 PM (GMT -6)

Writerdad, Wonderful question. I believe that most of the time, most of the people are trying to do good. Our intent is good. But because our understanding is so flawed and limited, we often get bad results. Because our intent is good, we don’t believe that the results are our fault. We know that we “mean well” so we generally don’t judge ourselves evil. But we frequently attribute bad intent to others, and label their behavior evil.

I’ve known a lot of people in my life who looked pretty “bad” on the surface: drug addicts, drug dealers, sex addicts, small time con-artists—you name it, I’ve run into them. Although “messed up” for sure, what I have observed over the course of my whole life is that people have very good reasons for why they behave the way they do. Most of those reasons are based on a faulty worldview, a set of illusions, a powerful trance that begins very early in childhood, that the world reinforces. All of the people I have known who looked “bad” on the surface, as I got to know them, I discovered were people in pain. All had been hurt, repeatedly, from early on. Often the more obnoxious and offensive their behavior, the older and deeper the scars. When I was younger people always told me their stories, often in shocking detail. In St. Louis I was befriended by a cop once, after I had called 911 because I thought the noise from the icemaker was an intruder. He used to call to tell me he was patrolling the neighborhood, since he knew I was paranoid. One night he called and sounded funny, and at a certain point I could tell he was crying. He started telling me a story about how he had once shot someone on duty. It sounded kind of dubious to me; I mean, the way he described it I didn’t think he needed to shoot the guy. I was shocked. But as I questioned him about it he slowly reveals that that’s not what he’s upset about. He tells me that years earlier he had signed up to be a “soldier” someplace like Angola or somewhere, as a paid gun. He said they went through a boot camp of sorts, only he said it was more like brainwashing. Then he told me what he did with this training when he got there, which included atrocities against civilians. As he told me he started sobbing uncontrollably, so half of it I couldn’t understand. He said that he had signed up for it because he wanted the money to buy a McDonald’s franchise with his brothers. (Which indeed he had—not that far away from where I lived.) He said he thought he was going to be a real soldier. He had no idea he would be fighting villagers. He said the training had been intense—far worse than anything he did to become a cop. He said that he was with a small group of soldiers, and that the training was abusive and violent, and that he felt he had been brainwashed. He said there was no reason he could think of why he would be capable of such acts. He said his family didn’t know to this day what he had done. He sobbed for three hours on the phone. I lay in the dark listening to him, trying to grasp what he was saying. I wondered if he could be mentally ill, and making it all up. I couldn’t see any other signs of that; in the months I had known him he had been thoughtful and kind. I was a young single woman living alone; he had never tried to hit on me or do anything even slightly untoward. He would drive by and flash his lights at around ten every night so I would feel safer. I didn’t know what to say. He had murdered people, and he didn’t know exactly why. It was worse than being a shell-shocked veteran of an unpopular war. It was a dark deep secret. I told him that I thought God would forgive him, but as I weighed it in my mind I wasn’t really sure. I asked him if maybe it was a bad idea for him to be a cop, with such a terrible history. He said he was going to quit as soon as his family could buy a second franchise. He didn’t cry like he was insane. He cried like he was lost. I had nothing to give him.

I saw him after that phone call, but we never talked about it again. Eventually I moved away. But I never thought of him as an evil person. He did the worst thing you can do, and he didn’t quite know why. I think most evil is like that. Most of the time, we don’t know why we do it. As I look back, I think the advantage my friend the cop had, is that he knew for certain he was lost.

When you listen to people it is remarkable the depth of pain below the surface of even the most average human being. Most of the time the pain is hidden behind a mask of anger, or arrogance, or self-righteousness, or friendliness, or scholarship, or dutifulness, or violence, or almost any other behavior than the one that would reveal the true hurt. We judge the anger, the arrogance, the self-righteousness, and we somehow miss the pain that’s under it all. We miss the lonely child rejected by his father, we miss the sadness in the alcoholic upbringing, we miss the lost mother, we miss the disappointing career, we miss the incest, we miss the grief, we miss all the reality behind human failure. We believe the mask, and we judge it. Often we even believe our own mask.

The person who brought me to Christ was one of the most afflicted people I have ever known. He was 38 when I knew him, tall and precariously thin. He walked with a limp, stiff, almost spastic. He said he had Multiple Sclerosis, and had been confined to a wheelchair, but had gone to Germany for a miracle cure having to do with massive intravenous vitamin treatments, and now he could walk. Lonny’s (pseudonym) fervent belief was that he had experienced a miracle, and he was a passionate believer in Jesus Christ. Before getting MS, Lonny had led a life of womanizing. He said he had slept with hundreds of women. In his present state, with his bad comb-over, his constant skin rashes, and spastic gait, it was a little hard to picture—but on the other hand Lonny had the fieriest spirit of anyone I knew: it was a blue heat. His apartment was covered top to bottom with yellow post-it notes with scrawled bible verses. He tended to shout out suddenly, “PRAISE GOD!” or “I REBUKE THEE SATAN!” in the middle of a conversation, making me jump. At some point while I knew Lonny I ran out of money and got evicted from my apartment, and he offered me the “spare bedroom” in his apartment. “You don’t have a spare bedroom, Lonny; your brother lives there.” “I know, but he sneaks out the window every night to stay with his boyfriend. I’ll just tell him you need the room; he won’t care. He’ll be glad to not have to sneak out.” My mouth dropped open. “Let me get this straight: Brett is gay. You’ve never even had a conversation with him about it, but now you’re going to tell him you know because I need the room?” “Exactly.” I mulled it over, considering the fact that I didn’t know very many people in Dallas, and didn’t have anywhere else to go, “OK, works for me.” Brett, who was sweet, bleached blond, tan, and surfer-boy handsome, indeed was fine with it. He was excited because he had just gotten a job with an airport rental car agency, even though he had to take a lie detector test, and he had lied on almost every question. “The facts of my life don’t really fit the test, but someone told me if I scrunched up all my toes after every question it would fool the test, and it worked!” He was hoping to eventually become a flight attendant.

Not long after I moved in Lonny brought home a girl not much past her mid teens. Bridget had red hair and white skin, and a baby boy like a scoop of butter who sometimes was with her, sometimes not. I have no idea where the baby was when not with her, and every once in a while when I look back I feel a pang for not finding out more about Bridget’s baby. She was gentle with him; she fed him and rocked him, but there was a detached quality in her face, an indifference when she held him. Now that I am a mother I would be alarmed, but back in my mid twenties I didn’t know what to make of it. Besides, she herself was a child. Lonny said he thought the boy was the result of an incestuous, abusive relationship Bridget had had with her stepbrother. I marveled that such a beautiful child could come out of a situation like that. I suspected Bridget might be a prostitute, but I never asked. My favorite thing to say to Lonny during this time was, “Hey Lonny, ya ever hear the phrase, ‘sixteen’ll get ya twenty’? Think about it.” Lonny was devoted to Bridget. He treated her with delicacy and respect, even though it was clear she didn’t reciprocate his feelings. Bridget had some unusual habits. For one thing, she had the disturbing habit of removing her shirt in the middle of a conversation, out of nowhere, oops, there it goes again, and suddenly you’re talking to someone naked from the waist up. The first time this happened I looked at Lonny, and Brett and his friend, and they all looked kind of sheepish, like, well, OK, she’s not perfect but you’ve got to admit it’s kind of interesting. I learned over time that after five or ten minutes if I handed her her shirt she would put it back on. Even then I had the intuition that the exhibitionist impulse came from her experience that her breasts had gotten her the most mileage in her life. She was offering what she perceived to be the best part of herself.

One morning I was alone at the apartment, and I made some toast, but I couldn’t find a knife. Suddenly the apartment was devoid of knives. As my toast grew cold, my determination grew stronger—I was NOT going to butter my toast with a spoon. I expanded my search from the kitchen to the unlikely—under beds, under the bathroom sink, on the porch, behind the TV. Finally I returned to the kitchen and reached up to a high up cupboard, and when I opened it every sort of knife came crashing down on top of me: butter and bread and paring and steak and carving knives, clattering around me, some of them actually sticking into the linoleum floor. I looked at my body to see if perhaps I had been stabbed. It was like a cartoon. When Lonny got home I accosted him, “What, are you trying to KILL ME? What is the deal with the KNIVES? I could be DEAD right now—what is the matter with you?!” Another sheepish look, “Bridget has a little problem with knives…” I’m still angry, arms crossed, “Define ‘little’.” He hesitates; there’s no good way to say it. “Well, it seems that Bridget may have stabbed her step-brother. But it was only a flesh wound.” “ONLY A FLESH WOUND? Is there any other KIND? Ya know, Lonny, CUTLERY IS NOT YOUR ONLY PROBLEM!”

Among his other problems was the fact that Lonny would occasionally wear Bridget’s undergarments under his suit. I discovered this fact when we were at a sales meeting together and he was fidgeting and scratching and finally I couldn’t take it any more, and said, “What’s the matter, Lonny—you’re like a five-year-old in church; you have a rash or something? Sit still.” That’s when he leaned over and whispered his secret. Not an image I want in my mind. I just shook my head and said, “Lonny, I’m gonna say a prayer for you; you gotta get a grip…”

By any measure of this world, Lonny was a colossal failure. He was a freak. You might wonder in reading this why I didn’t run for my life. You might be judging what is wrong with me that I didn’t run. But I didn’t see it that way at all, not then, not now.

Under his mass of afflictions, Lonny at his core was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. He worried about his brother’s destiny, but to his brother he expressed only love and protection. He treated poor Bridget like a spotless bride, and even in her lost youth and jaded confusion, around Lonny she seemed almost like a normal girl, to whom nothing bad had ever happened. If you saw her sitting down by the pool, red hair around her shoulders, green wistful eyes, white skin flushed in the sun—you would think, there’s a nice girl, perhaps wondering why she’s not in school. If you watched her long enough, you might notice the slight detached quality, of being half in the world, half out, as she absently trailed her finger in the water.

While I lived at Lonny’s apartment I made my way through the hundreds of scriptures on post-it notes—it was impossible not to, they covered everything. If you wanted to watch TV, you had to first remove the latest scriptures from the screen; if you wanted to brush your teeth, you had to read the latest post-its on the mirror. And this wasn’t just ANY scripture; Lonny had an ear for the dramatic. From Genesis to Job, from the Psalms to Revelations, Lonny’s post-its proclaimed the Word of the Lord. He loved things like, “VENGEANCE IS MINE, SAYETH THE LORD!” “JUDGE NOT, LEST YE BE JUDGED!” The Lord that emerged from these scriptures was different from what I had imagined. My Catholic upbringing had hidden the passion behind the words. Sometimes Lonny couldn’t contain himself, and he would shout it out as he stormed around the apartment. And most powerfully of all, the contrast between Lonny’s life, and his struggles, and the faith and hope and trust he placed in the Lord, was astonishing to me. We argued over all of it. He would post-it something Paul said about women, just to get me riled. I threw at him countless objections, and surprisingly he always had answers. When he was excited about some scripture he would shout, “That’s savage!” or “Violent!! That’s violent!” –but he didn’t mean anything bad. What he meant was, doesn’t this just split you in half—the power of it?! How can you hear it and comprehend: the power of it is so devastating.

Put in front of a psychologist or judge, Lonny and Bridget and Brett wouldn’t fare very well. They were diagnosable on many levels. But what the diagnosis and the conviction would miss is the person. The diagnosis and the conviction have to do with the mask. Christ has to do with the person.

And Lonny brought me there. To Christ. As if Lonny had some kind of genius and righteousness and power and life. Which he did, through Christ. He folded his praying mantis like body into his corvette, which we always had to park three blocks away from home because Lonny was always behind in the payments and feared the repo man, and we had the usual argument about God, except that at a certain point Lonny started shouting that I was like Saul, Saul on the road to Damascus; that the greatest Christian killer had become the greatest Christian; that God LOVED my passion and He LOVED ME and He was going to USE me. He was still shouting as he pulled into the 7-11 and pulled himself out of the car. I rolled down my window and said, “So Lonny, what’s the matter—you forget to take your Thorazine?” He laughed, “THORAZINE, what’s a little girl like you know about THORAZINE? That’s SAVAGE! You’re inSANE!”

As I sat in the car waiting for him to return, his words landed on me. My anger and my doubts and my fears and my passions were not barriers to God, they were something He could use. I thought about Saul becoming Paul. I thought about Lonny’s spirit, and his life. God had obviously taken him where he was at. When Lonny got back in the car he said, “Do you take the Lord Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior?” I said, “Of course.” He said, “Do you believe that He died on the cross for your sins, and that you are forgiven?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Praise God!”

The next day he presented me with a leather-bound gold-leafed Bible. He had written my name in it, and where it said “On the Occasion Of:” he had written, “REBIRTH”.

I moved away, and lost touch with Lonny. I tried to find him years later, calling his sister’s number in Florida. His sister answered, drunk and swearing, and said that she hoped Lonny was dead. I hung up the phone, shaking. It hit me again, the power of God—how far Lonny had come from where he had started, how little we could tell about a person from where they seem to be, from the mask that the world sees and judges.

Lonny taught me how God can take us in the depths of our weakness and suffering, and peel back the mask to reveal the person to whom he ascribes infinite worth.

I think of that apartment in Dallas covered in scripture, and in my mind I see the Spirit of the Lord rushing in, loosening the yellow post-its, swirling and rustling and tugging at the edges, peeling them off the walls and the mirrors and the furniture, gathering them in the breath of the Spirit, bringing the Word to life in Lonny, in Bridget, in Brett, and yes, in me. So flawed, and yet perfect in the Lord.

Writerdad, I believe people are trying to be good most of the time. I believe we are wrong about good and evil most of the time. I did know someone sociopathic once, but I don’t want to talk about it right now, except to say that I think it’s rare.

And Doc, in response to your third question, I’m against taking covenant vows to lead a “biblical lifestyle” because a person like Lonny would never pass muster. The church would reject, or at the very least shame, the person who brought me to Christ. For that matter, for much of my life I myself would not have passed the test. It’s one reason I was not saved by a church—because I knew I didn’t measure up. The idea that a church group would judge or pressure people who are living together is all wrong to me. Would Bridget have been better off with her stepbrother, or in the strip club, or with Lonny? These are not great options, to be sure. If only it were different. But life is messy. Unless you are very deeply in relationship with someone, I submit that you do not know what their choices are, and you may actually bring about more evil, rather than the good that you intend. Even the people who look “normal” have their secret wounds, their pain. You don’t know why the people are living together rather than being married. Perhaps the boyfriend’s father was married three times, and he was one of the families left behind, and he doesn’t want to repeat that, so he is afraid. Maybe the girlfriend saw her mother trapped in her marriage, unhappy, and she doesn’t want to be like that, and she is afraid. Maybe they both know a lot of unhappy married people, and don’t want to spoil their current happiness. Maybe you don’t have a clue what their reasons are because they themselves don’t know what their reasons are. But I assure you that deep down there are reasons, and until they become known you could easily do more damage than good.

A church group that requires a vow for membership is like a hospital that welcomes you as long as you promise not to get sick. And instead of doctors this hospital would have committees to tell you the ways in which you are sick. But you would have to get over being sick if you wanted to “keep fellowship” with the hospital. After a while you might decide it wasn’t worth it, since you weren’t getting any treatment anyway.

The church is not a “Holy Club”.

I had nothing to give to Lonny, and yet out of his own woundedness, through Jesus Christ, he gave me a new life.

There’s no explanation for that.

And if I had judged Lonny, and rejected his friendship, because of his bad lifestyle, his sin, the group of misfits around him, what would I have lost?

My life.

Semeia

"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard

Mephi2K
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713

Posted 11/7/2001 3:27 PM (GMT -6)

Cool stuff, Semeia. On the real. I really appreciate you sharing your life stories with us like that. Some thoughts that I personally had during and after reading....

1) God is a wierd, unorthodox Person who constantly goes against everything we think we know. Who can say otherwise?

2) Truth is often much "stranger" than fiction.

3) Life is @*$*ed up and beautiful at the same time. God put us in this stuff. Deal with it.

4) It's nice to hear Christians who are willing to deal with real life like the complex mess that it is.

5) I think you are pretty on point about the masks. But unfortunately, most of the time, the "masks" are ALL that ethical systems can reasonably deal with. But then again, that's the essence of your problem with ethics as a whole, right?

Darnit, God. Why don't You just end all this junk, so we can call it a day? Ragnarok already. Sheesh...

PS: To God: Scratch that last part. I still have some situations to help change here. That IS what you told me, right? Rage against the machine, fuul.

Semeia
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522

Posted Yesterday 5:39 AM (GMT -6)

Doc said:

quote:
2) It seems to me that there must be a distinction you're making between (say) a remarried person who is in adultery, yet going to heaven, and an adulterer who is in bondage to their behavior and, according to I Cor. 6, not going to heaven. Can you flesh this out? What, for example, would a non-bondage practicing homosexual person look and act like, as opposed to the bondage homosexual person of I Cor. 6:9.

A non-bondage practicing homosexual would look a lot like a non-bondage practicing heterosexual, except that homosexuals in most states are not allowed to marry, so long-term committed relationships would stand in the place of marriage. And sex outside of those relationships would be considered adulterous.

Most homosexuals I know look like everyone else: they work hard at their relationships, their jobs, raising their children (if they have them, through previous marriages or adoptions), and generally being good citizens. One thing I’ve noticed is that among the gay people I know are some of the most brilliantly creative, sharp-witted people I’ve ever come across. Perhaps living your life in a position of defense against constant attack sharpens the mind—who knows…

Bondage behavior in homosexuals looks a lot like bondage behavior in heterosexuals: promiscuity, sex-addiction, prostitution, dangerous activities, criminal behavior, etc. Bondage behavior shows up over time in the person’s life: they lose their job, their relationships, their freedoms—life starts to fall apart after a while.

Incidentally, that is exactly why Jesus focused far more of his energy on Phariseeism than on bondage behavior. Bondage behavior has natural negative consequences that eventually lead to a person “hitting bottom”. Most people know they need help when they reach that point, and suddenly they are more open to a different view. But there are no natural consequences to Phariseeism—in fact there are many earthly rewards for that behavior. The damage is far more insidious and far-reaching. Jesus knew the nut he had to crack—and an amazing proportion of his message was devoted to that. Jesus did not have to heal on the Sabbath; he easily could have waited until the next day. It was a totally IN YOUR FACE move against the Pharisees. You gotta love it. But Jesus also knew that people have to be tricked into knowledge, and I think we can take our cue from the parables, to use them and also come up with our own stories that deal with the irreducible paradoxes of life. There is simply no rulebook that covers all of life, and any attempt to come up with one eventually ends in Phariseeism.

Thanks,
Semeia

"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard

Edited by - Semeia on 11/08/2001 10:43:00 AM

Magneton
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 132

Posted Yesterday 6:35 AM (GMT -6)

I'm soaking this all in and enjoying is greatly. Doc's sermon last Sunday on the OUTRAGEOUS MERCY that needs to flow in the church, as opposed to the moralism and self-righteousness that is so common, was a powerful message. I'm looking forward to seeing it fleshed out both on this thread and in the church.

I'm not ready to address the "practical questions" like Doc's question #3, so I'll stick to the abstract level for now. What I'm seeing here is a discussion of BEING vs. DOING vs. KNOWING.

KNOWING good or evil = Studying Ethics = Focus on what we SHOULD do
DOING good or evil = Ethical Practice = What we DO
BEING good or evil = Our Identity = What we ARE

1. Being takes precedence over doing by recognizing and resting in our identity in Christ. Bonhoeffer expressed the priority of being as

"It is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie" (Ethics, p.67)

2. Doing takes precedence over knowing. Knowing without doing is useless and a waste of our resources. It reminds me of a saying I heard somewhere,

"There is no should; only do."

It sounds kind of Zen-like. It expresses the idea of cultivating a mindset of going about our daily tasks, doing what needs to be done. Easy to say, but hard to do, with all the things that are more fun, easier, or more tempting than what needs to be done.

Someone shared in a Bible study once that we need to purge "should" from our vocabulary. It struck me as great "homework exercise." Although this thread has mostly discussed ideas of what other people "should" do or what the world "should" be like (see also the Natural Evil thread) it applies equally to ourselves.

Perhaps you've noticed the irony in my statement above, which could be rephrased, "We should purge 'should' from our vocabulary." Although the language of "should" is intended to inspire hearers to action, I would have a much more powerful impact on you all if I could testify that I have indeed purged that word from my vocabulary. This would be a statement about what I do, and indirectly, what I am, which could inspire you by my example.

I should get back to work now.

Blessings,
Magneton

"I have plenty of common sense, I just choose to ignore it." - Calvin, from Calvin & Hobbes

Edited by - magneton on 11/08/2001 11:40:23 AM

Semeia
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522

Posted Yesterday 8:05 AM (GMT -6)

Mephi and Magneton,

Thanks to both of you for your last posts. It's so encouraging to me when anyone understands what I'm trying to say! It's such a struggle to express things sometimes that I am always a bit surprised and very grateful when anyone gets it. One thing I try to do is bridge that distance between the ideas and the reality of personal experience. But I feel very exposed, like the bridge is made of fraying rope swinging in the wind over a deep precipice. And yet transferring material from one side to the other is critically important, so I just have to keep getting back out on that swaying rope, hoping that God has it covered on both ends.

I know you'll both understand that, because I see you do it in your own writing.

Doc, too, is out on that bridge, whatever the risk.

Thanks,
Semeia

"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard

Iconoclast
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1227

Posted Yesterday 8:49 AM (GMT -6)

Doc asked:

quote:

One: if you say that the list is about behaviors that dominate people, are you not still stuck with Paul giving a pronounced judgement on certain behaviors (viz. bondage behaviors) as sin? And do you then agree that a person who is in bondage to stealing, or gossiping, or adultery, or homosexuality, etc... will not enter the kingdom of heaven? And if so, how can someone help a person in this bondage without pointing out that, whether they know it or not (and some do not), their lifestyle (bondage behavior) is destroying them and will ultimate eternally destroy them?

Paul is indeed judging these behaviors. He is both judging them in the negative (condemnation) sense and in the positive (take action to help sense). He is human. In my estimation his primary intent is to take action to help: “you are to hand this man over to the accuser (ha-satan) for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.” One might go so far as to interpret this as: “Do not enable this person and become codependent on him – allow him the full due of the consequences of his behavior so that he may “hit bottom” and freely choose to be helped back to a life-affirming path.” The birth of AA…

There are two types of people in bondage behavior: Addicts (primarily self-destructive) and Predators (primarily other-destructive). People caught in this behavior are in a death-pattern. They need help and they need it now – both for their own sake and for the sake of those around them. They are disrupting the living patterns, which invites others into a death-pattern as well. These folks are headed for very negative life-consequences – right now and potentially for eternity.

The only way to point this out to these folks is through consequences clearly tied to their behavior. Accusation and condemnation just won’t cut it.

We all know that there are things in the world that we can become addicted to, become deluded and become very, very sick. In our day I think we need to add: anorexia, bulimia, crack, heroin, and so on. As a society we have learned some powerful techniques for helping people out of this kind of bondage – these techniques never involve condemnation – they do involve loving confrontation from loved ones about consequences they have suffered – and, interestingly enough they also involve a “higher” power.

There are also people who seek to get life from preying on other people. As a society I think we have learned less how to help these folks. They typically end up in our legal system, which is clearly ineffective for helping the predator – most likely because it is “condemnatory” based. It is effective in limiting the societal damage these folks can do. As a church we typically do not have to deal with these issues that often. Clearly we know that enabling doesn’t help nor does condemnation – power begets power – and these folks are power-players.

In my view the core issue here in any case is us not judging good and evil or in any way condemning our brother. There is only the one goal: Love the lord God and Love each other. Part of our charter is to help create a society – a living pattern of interactions, social rules and so on that encourages this. Allowing behavior that destroys the living patterns is not loving and must be addressed. “A little leaven …” However we must be very careful in how we address this so that we don’t ourselves destroy the living patterns by resorting to our own knowledge of good and evil. We do this by always keeping at the forefront of our attention what our goal is and by continuing to allow ourselves to be transformed into His image.

Make no mistake – this bondage behavior has natural and logical consequences. The Pharisees behavior however does not – and can actually lead to the unforgivable sin – seeing good and calling it evil.

thanks,
Iconoclast

might-be-don
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 830

Posted Today 4:50 AM (GMT -6)

Semeia,

You give me hope.

peace and love, don

A quote from Rev. Gregory A. Boyd, PhD ... " Has anyone seen my keys? "

Semeia
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522

Posted Today 6:47 AM (GMT -6)

quote:
Semeia,

You give me hope.

peace and love, don

Don, I just want to tell you that I cried for five minutes when I read that.

Sometimes I feel like I'm going insane.

Semeia

"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard

GregBoyd
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818

Posted Today 1:52 PM (GMT -6)

You need to write novels Semeia. Honestly. Your testimonial was powerful. What I'd give to be able to tell stories like that! You gave hope to Don! I know Don... and sister, beleive me, YOU GOTTA BE GOOD. (Me and Don are always clawing at each other. Its our love language

.)

Where do I weigh in?

Just sitt'n on the bridge, sort'n it all out. But so long as I say careless words (Mt 12:36), I can't speak or think any judge any of Semeia's friends.

Doc

"Three is the magic number, oh yes it is, it's the Magic Number" - De La Soul

faith
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2001
Total Posts : 34

Posted 11/11/2001 6:03 PM (GMT -6)

quote:

You need to write novels Semeia. Honestly. Your testimonial was powerful. What I'd give to be able to tell stories like that!

Semeia, I agree with Doc. Thank you for sharing your testimony -- it was profoundly moving. You have an incredible gift with words. Bless you.

"The most dangerous place in the world's eyes is actually the safest place you can be -- if God puts you there." -- Corrie ten Boom

Edited by - faith on 11/11/2001 11:05:26 PM

writerdad
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 448

Posted 11/11/2001 7:25 PM (GMT -6)

Semeia: That was a beautiful testimony! Have you read any of Brennan Manning's books? You would like him. Or Yancey's latest, Soul Survivor: How my Faith Survived The Church.
I think that we are usually wrong about most things, not just good and evil. It seems that it is a human trait to want to think of ourselves as good while at the same time condemning others as something workable in the sight of God.
A small story (a dull story): I just started work at a Bible book store (no, big deal, I just quit one). On the first day I asked a co-worker how she liked the job. Boring she said, I don't know if I am going to stay here. I thought, man, what is her deal. She's been working here a month. What a poor worker! Is this how God would want her to act (you know, all that pious crap one can think). That was last week. Yesterday, as we talked some more I realized she was in the youth group at my church (we have a big church) and she ended up leading worship at church today with several of the youth and she has this incredible voice that makes you just want to worship God more.
As I was singing I started reflecting on the fact that we are all flawed and if I get caught up in my judgments of how other people ought to be in God, I lose out on the opportunity that God is doing in this moment. God calls us to accept what they are in that moment and respond by loving them in that moment. We are all flawed, all falling apart. God is gracious, but to truly serve him we must be gracious as well. John 17:3 Harold PS thanks again for sharing. The people you spoke of sound like the people my sister works with...she's a social worker

Semeia
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522

Posted 11/11/2001 8:15 PM (GMT -6)

Thank you Faith and Writerdad for your supportive words. I appreciate it more than I am able to say. I am relieved that people have received it in the spirit in which it was given. Thank you.

I haven't read those books Writerdad, but I will add them to my list. This website has been a great source for hearing about good books.

Your sister has my respect. Social work is one of those thankless, difficult, depressing jobs that only a person of courage and persistence can handle for any length of time.

We had an incredibly annointed singer in church today, too. She was a joy to listen to and watch. She made me smile and cry at the same time with the kind of voice that lifts you up and lets God in. It was an incredible worship time.

By the way, Doc, a sermon doesn't get any better than that. We were amazed. Thank you.

Semeia

"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard

trosie
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 550

Posted 11/12/2001 3:29 AM (GMT -6)

quote:
Semeia: By the way, Doc, a sermon doesn't get any better than that. We were amazed. Thank you

I second that! I think that those of you who did not get the opportunity of hearing the past two weeks of Doc's sermons might want to request them. His sermons brought this whole thread together beautifully!

whasssuuuppp
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 210

Posted 12/1/2001 7:45 AM (GMT -6)

Per request of Semeia, I'm posting here to bring this thread back onto the first page. In light of several ongoing discussions (Can you remove offensive thread?, God loves gay people, etc.), this thread is WELL WORTH READING, especially if you have not read the WHOLE thread yet. Semeia and others have put a lot of time into expressing their ideas here.

Peace out my friends

**********************

If we are going to change the world at all we must first be a little crazy.
-Wislawa

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