Okay, I cannot muster the enthusiasm to type out the rest, Revelation 21.9-22.21 (which you may certainly read if you wish) finding it as surly and infected with the spirits of self-righteousness & condemnation as the rest, without much to add except 22.5: "And night shall be no more; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they shall reign for ever & ever." {Reign? Over whom? All those bad folks on the outside?
Nuff of that; I think I'll try taking this from the top (Genesis 1 etc) and pray for more participation!!!
July 22, 2008
July 03, 2008
Revelation 21.1-8
Then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth, for the first Heaven and the first Earth had passed away.
And the sea was no more.
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away."
And he who sat upon the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new!" Also he said: "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true." And he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the fountain of the water of life without payment.
"He who conquers shall have this heritage, and I will be his God and he shall be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death."
And the sea was no more.
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away."
And he who sat upon the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new!" Also he said: "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true." And he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the fountain of the water of life without payment.
"He who conquers shall have this heritage, and I will be his God and he shall be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death."
June 26, 2008
Revelation 20.11->
Then I saw a great white throne, and him who sat upon it--From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them.
And I saw the dead--great and small--standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life.
And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done.
And the sea gave up the dead in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done.
Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.
This is the second death--the lake of fire--And if any one's name was not found written in the book of life he was thrown into the lake of fire.
And I saw the dead--great and small--standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life.
And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done.
And the sea gave up the dead in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done.
Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.
This is the second death--the lake of fire--And if any one's name was not found written in the book of life he was thrown into the lake of fire.
June 24, 2008
All Right, So What's a Demon?
Phew! (I must be determined to have some argument here!)
But I have been receiving hints on this question for some time, starting with Wink and the intractability of institutional Policies & Personalities, digging up some wonderful stuff by William Stringfellow, who had a somewhat different bestiary of Powers & Principalities--and a slightly different conception of them. "Paul"--that is, the man who wrote 'Ephesians'--gives us only a hint--And what we see of Palestinian demons in their native habitat, being exorcized by Jesus, is quite a puzzle to a Modern (or "Post-modern," or even to a "Postpost-modern" (mine, for example?) mind.
Okay, a "demon" is something like a subroutine!
That is, it's something like a program a human mind can execute, much as a computer follows a structure of machine instructions.
Since no one has commented yet, let me go into more detail
There are many possible starting points; I like Stephen Gaskin's way of saying that we are all One: that we are all, at some level we don't typically notice, telepathic.
Jung spoke of a "Collective Unconscious"--the sort of mental process people sometimes do without conscious attention, ie in adding two numbers or in locking a door on leaving work--happening equally automatically, without the supervision of any one individual mind, but dealing with vaster questions, whether for a tribe or for a nation or for all sentient beings. (Jung wasn't concerned about postulating any physical structure to carry out such computations, nor need we be. Something connects us, at different levels of coherence, benevolence, universality for different people, much as our physical environment is dense with radio signals, while any one radio receiver will be tuned into one of them at a time. & by analogy, the highest manifestation of God we can relate to would be making a sort of vast background hum connecting it all--to speak muy figuratively, but not allegorically about this!)
So one could think of "a spirit" as a subroutine running on the Collective Unconscious.
The original meaning of "daemon," as we all know, was morally indeterminant. For an ancient Greek this might be anything from a pixie to a god, benevolent or merely dangerous. The first Christians, being Jews and hostile to small-g gods, started with the assumption that the spirits the Greeks knew must be evil beings, rivals for the devotion rightly due to God. But angels, in the Jewish scheme of things, were formerly imagined as much the same sort of entity, whether they were the unruly angels of nations hostile to Israel, or angels properly engaged in their God-given duties.
We first find stories of people possessed by "demons"--Where? In 1st Century Judea, among a pious Jewish population suppressed under the Hellenized power of Rome. Those foreign devils get into native Jews, who suffer conflict because they can neither accept the ways of the Gentiles nor entirely fend them off. And Jesus, somehow, heals the confusion, sending the foreign spirits packing! By his sheer personal authority, in the gospel accounts--but I think those writers were as mystified by how he did it as we today are mystified by the stories themselves!
So what would it mean to torment "the Devil" forever? How does one torment a subroutine, anyhow?
"The Devil" is described as "the god of This World." What world? The world of physical fears & desires, of force & strategems for grabbing what one wants & enjoying all one can get of it. For a dinosaur, this is a perfectly adequate religion. For a human being, not so good!
But that dinosaur-level is the level of moral-ethical development we find in nation-states, corporations, and religious institutions. An institution under the rule of Christ, as Stringfellow imagined, would take no thought for its own perpetuation, merely seek to carry out the will of God even at the risk of bankrupcy! What we see driving a typical human institution is otherwise.
So if that "whatever it takes" spirit were to be displaced by a different spirit, a spirit of loving our brother _as_ ourself... as he is, like it or not!...
But I have been receiving hints on this question for some time, starting with Wink and the intractability of institutional Policies & Personalities, digging up some wonderful stuff by William Stringfellow, who had a somewhat different bestiary of Powers & Principalities--and a slightly different conception of them. "Paul"--that is, the man who wrote 'Ephesians'--gives us only a hint--And what we see of Palestinian demons in their native habitat, being exorcized by Jesus, is quite a puzzle to a Modern (or "Post-modern," or even to a "Postpost-modern" (mine, for example?) mind.
Okay, a "demon" is something like a subroutine!
That is, it's something like a program a human mind can execute, much as a computer follows a structure of machine instructions.
Since no one has commented yet, let me go into more detail
There are many possible starting points; I like Stephen Gaskin's way of saying that we are all One: that we are all, at some level we don't typically notice, telepathic.
Jung spoke of a "Collective Unconscious"--the sort of mental process people sometimes do without conscious attention, ie in adding two numbers or in locking a door on leaving work--happening equally automatically, without the supervision of any one individual mind, but dealing with vaster questions, whether for a tribe or for a nation or for all sentient beings. (Jung wasn't concerned about postulating any physical structure to carry out such computations, nor need we be. Something connects us, at different levels of coherence, benevolence, universality for different people, much as our physical environment is dense with radio signals, while any one radio receiver will be tuned into one of them at a time. & by analogy, the highest manifestation of God we can relate to would be making a sort of vast background hum connecting it all--to speak muy figuratively, but not allegorically about this!)
So one could think of "a spirit" as a subroutine running on the Collective Unconscious.
The original meaning of "daemon," as we all know, was morally indeterminant. For an ancient Greek this might be anything from a pixie to a god, benevolent or merely dangerous. The first Christians, being Jews and hostile to small-g gods, started with the assumption that the spirits the Greeks knew must be evil beings, rivals for the devotion rightly due to God. But angels, in the Jewish scheme of things, were formerly imagined as much the same sort of entity, whether they were the unruly angels of nations hostile to Israel, or angels properly engaged in their God-given duties.
We first find stories of people possessed by "demons"--Where? In 1st Century Judea, among a pious Jewish population suppressed under the Hellenized power of Rome. Those foreign devils get into native Jews, who suffer conflict because they can neither accept the ways of the Gentiles nor entirely fend them off. And Jesus, somehow, heals the confusion, sending the foreign spirits packing! By his sheer personal authority, in the gospel accounts--but I think those writers were as mystified by how he did it as we today are mystified by the stories themselves!
So what would it mean to torment "the Devil" forever? How does one torment a subroutine, anyhow?
"The Devil" is described as "the god of This World." What world? The world of physical fears & desires, of force & strategems for grabbing what one wants & enjoying all one can get of it. For a dinosaur, this is a perfectly adequate religion. For a human being, not so good!
But that dinosaur-level is the level of moral-ethical development we find in nation-states, corporations, and religious institutions. An institution under the rule of Christ, as Stringfellow imagined, would take no thought for its own perpetuation, merely seek to carry out the will of God even at the risk of bankrupcy! What we see driving a typical human institution is otherwise.
So if that "whatever it takes" spirit were to be displaced by a different spirit, a spirit of loving our brother _as_ ourself... as he is, like it or not!...
Revelation 20.4-10
Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom judgment was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and to the word of God, who had not worshipped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or on their hands. They came to life, and reigned with Christ 1000 years.
The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign with him 1000 years.
And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the world--that is, Gog and Magog--to gather them for battle; their number is as the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad Earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from Heaven and consumed them. And the Devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur where the beast and the false prophet were, and the will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign with him 1000 years.
And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the world--that is, Gog and Magog--to gather them for battle; their number is as the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad Earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from Heaven and consumed them. And the Devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur where the beast and the false prophet were, and the will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
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