Image via Wikipedia1-2 God! Look! Enemies past counting! Enemies sprouting like mushrooms,
Mobs of them all around me, roaring their mockery:
"Hah! No help for him from God!"
3-4 But you, God, shield me on all sides;
You ground my feet, you lift my head high;
With all my might I shout up to God,
His answers thunder from the holy mountain.
5-6 I stretch myself out. I sleep.
Then I'm up again—rested, tall and steady,
Fearless before the enemy mobs
Coming at me from all sides.
7 Up, God! My God, help me!
Slap their faces,
First this cheek, then the other,
Your fist hard in their teeth!
8 Real help comes from God.
Your blessing clothes your people!
Eugene Peterson, The Message
Have a blessed day.
14 comments:
Suurre it does, Richard, suurre it does. Mental placebos are for people that can't or don't want to deal with reality.
SDC's having to face the Living God is more than he can bear so he clings to his fictional something from nothing.
Richard have you observed as have I, that materialists like SDC are missing a dimension? It is like they are a two cylinder engine running on one cylinder. Maybe its their inability/unwillingness to explore that keeps them penned up in their tiny little intellectual prison. What ever the cause, the effect is an incomplete human. Kind of 'the bran without the muffin' if you know what I mean.
I've got an SDC special post coming tomorrow. Stay tuned.
If anything, Joe, you've got it directly backwards; skeptics and scientists question everything, while brainwashed cultists like yourself are only too happy to believe in a BS non-answer like "magic man in the sky musta done it". Your cult was in power for a thousand years in Europe, and the only thing we got for it was new methods of torture, and getting people to hope that they would die quickly after having been been treated to an afternoon with a Spanish pear. Your imaginary "living god" is nothing more than a simpleton's "explanation" for something that you are unable or unwilling to find out the TRUE explanation for.
Let me guess, Richard; "magic man in the sky done it", right?
I'm not your enemy!
SDC, your view of History is a tad incorrect. Hospitals and Universities were two thing, among many that came out of Christian Europe.
Methinks that your anger against God is clouding your judgement
Rob West
Ottawa
Alex -- that's for sure, my friend!
Rob West, not to mention, you know, science!
Rob, unfortunately, methinks it is YOUR view of "history" that has been clouded by superstition; the "hospitals" set up by this cult were nothing more than rooms where people could be left to die, and the causes of disease were ascribed to "evil spirits", while their "universities" were dedicated not to actual learning, but to simply repeating the superstitious myths of this cult. For a mindset that "answers" every question with "magic man in the sky done it", there is no learning, there is only "shut up and pray", and this is why both major strains of this cult saw asking questions as "the devil's harlot".
SDC
"the "hospitals" set up by this cult were nothing more than rooms where people could be left to die"
To a degree you're right there SDC I guess the Christians spent too much time listening to the scientists.
"while their "universities" were dedicated not to actual learning, but to simply repeating the superstitious myths of this cult"
Good to see nothing has changed. All the present day universities do the same thing except their cult is now scientism.
SCD, I'm sure the people who attend Oxford and Cambridge will be interested to know that they attend an institution that teaches “superstitious myths”
Are you aware that Sir Isaac Newton, a father of modern science, wrote more about the bible than he did about science?
Are you aware that modern science and the scientific method has its roots in Christianity? That Christianity teaches that the universe is ordered and not capricious and therefore can be studied and understood?
There is a reason why the nurse is called a “sister” in many countries. It is because the church was involved in caring for the sick.
It is only when the church forsook its mandate and got involved on politics that the evil of which you speak happened.
I fear that you have a very distorted view of what the Bible teaches, Oh BTW, how much of the Bible have you read?
Rob West
Ottawa
Rob, they attend institutions that DID teach these superstitious myths as "fact", until the overwhelming weight of evidence showed them as nothing of the sort.
And yes, I do know that many of the fathers of modern science were brainwashed at an early age into thinking that your cult had some sort of relation to reality, but that doesn't mean that the myths of your cult are true, does it?
You haven't read your little magic book very much if you can claim that your cult has any sort of consistency; it goes from claiming that this imaginary invisible magic man in the sky changes from the brutal tyrant shown in the "old testament" to claiming that "god is love" and similar new-age kumbaya BS, from ordaining slavery, rape, human sacrifice and genocide to "love thy neighbour". In fact, your little magic book has so many contradictory passages in it that you can find ANY justification for ANYTHING in it, provided you look long enough.
And yes, I HAVE read your little magic book of fairy tales; it's one of the things that convinced me that your superstition has no basis in reality.
SDC
The fact that you say that the God of the OT is a brutal tyrant would indicate that you have not read it very closely, and in context.
Just for the record, rape was punishable by DEATH in the OT. I think that the passage that you are referring to say if a man SEDUCES a virgin, he was to marry her and could not divorce her. Keep in mind that this law was for Israel only, not us.
The Bible does not ordain slavery, but it does accept the fact, and tells the master to treat their slaves well.
If you are referring to the story of Abraham and Isaac, when you refer to “Human Sacrifice” you will note that it was a test for Abraham and he stopped it before Isaac was actually killed
The “genocide” you refer to was actually a punishment for people that actually did practice Human Sacrifice. You should also not that for the approx 1000 year history of Israel described in the bible, the punishment only lasted for less than 50 years, and was right at the beginning.
As a side not, the folk that were punished were given over 400 years to repent.
As for the NT the message is that we are all sinners and need to repent, and God has provided a way for us to do that. That is his Son bore the punishment for us and if we accept it we are cleansed.”
It has nothing to do with New Age, which is a pantheistic philosophy.
Taken out of context you can make it say anything, I agree, that is why it must be read in context, not only of the passage, but of the times.
BTW, why are you so angry?
Rob West
Ottawa
I most certainly HAVE read your little magic book thoroughly enough to be familiar with the many sordid examples of your imaginary "god" being portrayed as ordering, condoning, or being pleased with all of the immoral things I've already mentioned, and "context" has nothing to do with any of it. You either have to try to twist logic and morality into knots to try to claim that any of these things were moral, or you simply say that "might is right" and that your imaginary "god" is the supreme example of hypocrisy in action.
Your little magic book gives clear instructions on who can be enslaved, for how long, how their children will also be enslaved, how much they wil be bought and sold for, it allows slaves to be beaten to death (provided they die after 24 hours) because they are the master's "money", and so on and so on.
Rape is another instance where your little magic book gives multiple contradicting accounts; Deuteronomy says that the rapist has to pay the woman's father 50 silver pieces, and has to marry her. If she is raped without being able to call for help, the presumption is that she was a willing participant, an dis to be stoned to death. How is this in ANY way moral, fool?
Human sacrifice - comes into play in both the fable of "Abraham" and of "Jepthah"; in one case, it was stopped, and in the other it wasn't, and in BOTH, these are related as the "proper" way to act. once again, your little magic book contradicts itself.
Genocide - this is the exact same excuse that conquistadors used to justify slaughtering conquered peoples; how is it "moral" to dash childrens' brains out against the rocks, to slice open pregnant women so they can have their babies torn out and killed, to line up entire cities and kill everyone except the virgin girls (who, I'm sure, had nothing but milk and cookies and soothing bedtime stories waiting for them back at the Israelites' camp)?
Even if the contradicting fairy tales of this supposed "prophet"'s execution and "resurrection" were somehow true, he would have went through nothing more than thousands upon thousands of other criminals did at the time, and your cult expects me to believe that he would have had the equivalent of a bad weekend "for our sins". In reality, the four stories don't even agree with EACH OTHER as to the circumstances, and you have to be deliberately dense to claim any sort of supernatural hanky-panky can explain these claims while non-supernatural explanations cannot.
Finally, I am sick and tired of snake-oil salesmen in all aspects of life trying to sell their absolute BS, whether that BS is ancient fairy tales like these, or it's slimy politicians trying to bribe me with my own money. Worse yet, when those parasites end up coming together to the point where they are one and the same (as in many parts of the US, unfortunately) that means that the people in power are no longer making their decisions based on logic and rationality, it means they're making their decisions on based on fairy tales; when they have one finger on a button that can wipe our species out, I can't say I have any confidence in these loons to do the right thing.
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