My best guess from long observation is that God is not really, really real in any vivid sense in the minds of most Christians. Maybe part real. Maybe part abstraction. Maybe somewhat of an deus ex machina spewing out goodies, benefits, uplifting 'feel goods' ... like a bubble gum machine gone mad awry.
My best guess from long observation is that God is not really, really real in any vivid sense in the minds of most Christians. Maybe part real. Maybe part abstraction. Maybe somewhat of an deus ex machina spewing out goodies, benefits, uplifting 'feel goods' ... like a bubble gum machine gone mad awry.
For example! How many folks, and that's if they had the wit to figure it out in the first place, would forgo a profit of 7x or 8x so far over the past five to years in BitCoin for reason of it being a violation of the 9th Commandment ... not to mention other injunctions against the same elsewhere? And with huge multiples of profit down the road yet to appear? Now that is a real tough decision to have to make.
For most Christians sitting in Fake Churches, their god is their comfort physical, their comfort emotional, and add in the twin gods of wealth and of the blind eye, both cauterizing of an hope to wise judgment? And why is this? Because it is very, very uncomfortable to turn pages in Foxe's Book of Martyrs and then put on a happy face. I ought to know because, and as afore mentioned elsewhere, I like gelato mint chocolate chip. And the omnipresent danger in gelato mint chip and other such seductive persuasions as may be thrown across one's pathway is that they can easily trend towards the unthinking habitual and the overriding. It is far easier to pretend the world is what it isn't.
Humanity walks a tightrope every day and knows it not.
Has not life in America been an extraordinary surreal adventure from childhood in the 1950s unto this day in the 21st Century. I could have never guessed at it afore hand.
I also think on our fathers, all of them ... both the fairly well educated and the not so well educated. None had the clue as to the world they lived in excepting outward appearances. Had they only known, they (many of them) would be aghast.
Maybe only the Elect?
My best guess from long observation is that God is not really, really real in any vivid sense in the minds of most Christians. Maybe part real. Maybe part abstraction. Maybe somewhat of an deus ex machina spewing out goodies, benefits, uplifting 'feel goods' ... like a bubble gum machine gone mad awry.
For example! How many folks, and that's if they had the wit to figure it out in the first place, would forgo a profit of 7x or 8x so far over the past five to years in BitCoin for reason of it being a violation of the 9th Commandment ... not to mention other injunctions against the same elsewhere? And with huge multiples of profit down the road yet to appear? Now that is a real tough decision to have to make.
For most Christians sitting in Fake Churches, their god is their comfort physical, their comfort emotional, and add in the twin gods of wealth and of the blind eye, both cauterizing of an hope to wise judgment? And why is this? Because it is very, very uncomfortable to turn pages in Foxe's Book of Martyrs and then put on a happy face. I ought to know because, and as afore mentioned elsewhere, I like gelato mint chocolate chip. And the omnipresent danger in gelato mint chip and other such seductive persuasions as may be thrown across one's pathway is that they can easily trend towards the unthinking habitual and the overriding. It is far easier to pretend the world is what it isn't.
Humanity walks a tightrope every day and knows it not.
You do sum up American Christianity.
Has not life in America been an extraordinary surreal adventure from childhood in the 1950s unto this day in the 21st Century. I could have never guessed at it afore hand.
I also think on our fathers, all of them ... both the fairly well educated and the not so well educated. None had the clue as to the world they lived in excepting outward appearances. Had they only known, they (many of them) would be aghast.