Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Science and Faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science and Faith. Show all posts

Saturday, January 27, 2024

The Flat Perspectivalism of Creatio Ex Nihilo Worlds...



The Flat Perspectivalism of
Creatio Ex Nihilo Worlds...

by R.E. Slater

In the writing of books and theories there is no end...
but without a beginning there can be no middle nor end;
Such is the thinking in the Land of the Living, mortal and
perishable, prone to imaginations of all sorts. Speculating
without end, forgetting the past to conjure the present,
forging the future from what once was but now is.

- re slater

Speaking generally, then specifically...

In science, it is not uncommon to alter one's thinking, if not one's beliefs, for that of a more-real form of existential reality than the one previously held on too. To understand chemistries you must accept the reality of the unseeable molecule. Similarly with mathematics, standard numerics take on newer, more helpful forms in calculi and non-linear algebraics. The same can be said of Newtonian physics when enlightened had moved rapidly to Einstinian relativities and Heisenberg-Planck-Bohr's Quantum worlds of imagination to reality.

In science all thing change... especially one's perspectives.

Hence, once learning of a previously unknown creational position within the set parameters of my former theology I had immediately grasped the newer, unknown position and as quickly - if not by necessity - rejected what I had been taught for what I was coming to rethink and reperspectivize.

What was this?


Life Is About the Struggle for Perspective -
Not the Simple Consigned Accretion of Acceptance

To rethink life's institutionalized moralities requires a bit of radicalized effort. This occurred for me far later in life than I care to admit. Most likely in my mid-fifties when breaking away from pre-scientific evangelical world to the post-evangelical reperspectizing of my Baptist beliefs when conjoining metaphysics to my earlier youth of science and math.

Such a "mid-life crisis" isn't a bad thing... in fact, though greatly disruptive in it's personal experience, I now think back on that "dark period" of my life as rare opportunity not often utilized by society to afford myself of a positively transformative experience when seeking to expand my faith towards worlds of beauty and wonder.

I still believed in God but I was beginning to see a non-Baptist view of the world and religion I couldn't see within my enculturated bubble.

I had learned science and mathematics from public school and three years of rigorous university training but then rebooted to learn my metaphysical philosophy and existential reality through my Baptist faith of church and institutional studies. That is, I obtained a BA in psychology with a minor in bible; and a Masters of Divinity degree (120 graduate credit hours in biblical theology with a minor in pastoring) along with hundreds of hours in various field ministries.

At religious school, just as I had at university, we talked about a lot things related to contemporary world and bible-world. And I tried just as hard back then to think in contemporary forms of world events and statisms when attempting to reconcile beliefs with reality and imagination.

Whether I turned to science or to religion something was missing. But life being what it was I couldn't see the forest for the trees, as the adage goes.

However, a self re-enforcing and referential existential bubble is a bubble however helpful, comforting, or nourishing it may be. For myself, coming from a quasi-religious home I had to first find a religious beginning. Thus after three years at university I turned to a qualified bible school for continuing education in theology. Though I didn't realize this at the time I was seeking a new metaphysic which was both worldly and religious after the fashion of my own thinking.

Then, like any true explorer of truth and reality, I needed to expand my existential borders-and-edges to embrace what I hadn't learned and experienced from within my own geographical and institutional settings.

...Yet this was a standard personal practice gained from holding multiple perspectives gained by extensive travel, book learning, and talking with people and listening to their experiences. Even in my youth I lived through non-standardized, rapidly transformative personal experiences. Which meant that even though when viewing myself externally from the outside everything looked staid and normalized to external eyes. my interiority of self was ever a cascading tumult of conflicting ideas and recognitions which I was quite content to hold in tension without resolving any for the simple reason that I didn't wish to. I felt too young to the immense task at hand.

And though I relied on a vast number of guides I still hadn't decided for myself in which direction I needed to go. I was waiting for that next holistic moment of explosion and reintegration which might provide a sufficiency of thought and experience my soul was seeking. Faith wasn't enough. Nor science. I needed a new world of holistic healing and sensible faith formation. I found it at last through process philosophy and theology.

This takes a bit of doing, and truth be told, may not ever be accomplished if one's religious world is sufficiently extensive and comforting in the first place, as mine was. But when profoundly collapsing into a stage of uncertainty and doubt I had at last found a productively existential way to reimagine a more expanded form of religious metaphysic than the ones I had experienced or contemplated. One which expanded all present forms, charters and beliefs of existence while simultaneously questioning them in a positively helpful, if not deconstructive, then reconstructive, form of re-educational process.


Learning to Unlearn to Relearn

In my adult maturity, and with the advantage of many years, I was able to translate and transition from a Westernized perspective of religion and dogma to a Process perspective of religion acting more philosophically when unbound from its dogmas.  This demanded an inner constitutionality of mindful growth and understanding which could not have occurred if my earlier systems hadn't collapsed in-on-themselves borne from all the external stimuli pressing down upon it.

As I have spoken to this experience many times I wish to now transition to the topic at hand... one which couldn't be allowed if I hadn't first been transformed spiritually to allow such questions and reasonings....


Let's Talk About Nothingness

This is the idea of nothingness and whether the universe had a beginning.

As stated earlier I would not have considered this perspective if I had not first allowed the question to be entertained. What was the question? Did the universe have a beginning or was it ever as it is... in cycles of evolving, devolving, over and over again and again, infinitely in progression and regression?

Come to find out, my presumption of creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing) was a conjecture, an assumption, made by the senses and not by the sciences.

For many reasons we cannot fault the ancients of their a priori logic. But now that we have the means via quantum physics to examine the universe in which we live we may now state with more assurance that something cannot come from nothing but rather something ever comes from something.

Known as creatio continua we may now state that "our" universe is old. So old that it never had a birth and never will have a death. Radiant energy - however dense, dispersed, or defused - cannot be lost, just reconfigured in the quantum sense of things.

Just as no man is an island but finds identity and purpose in movement and relationships (sic, Alain Badiou's Being and Event metaphysic) so too can Whiteheadian metaphysics say without Being there can be no Event, and without Event there can be no Being.

That is to say that the universe always was and is and will be... that the universe is always becoming over against a state of nothingness.

We ascribe such god-like traits to God but what if God gives to pre-creational energy a nominal sense of being and in response the universe gives to God its initializing response of events. Then can we aver that the Maker of heaven and earth has quite properly, if not essentially, given to pre-creational energy it's sense of identity and purpose in relation to God's idea of things "to be and become"?


Process theology captures such a metaphysical relationship in its paradigms of processual novelty, continuum, resulting response, and organic complexity. Without saying the universe is sentient we may aver as sentient products and quotients of the universe's complexities that there is in some sense a latency - if not an extreme latency - within the universe in which we may ascribe a panpsychic quality of things most likely gained from its Organizer we claim as God.

A panpsychic experience or interiority which is best described via Whiteheadian process panentheism. Not a pantheism... panentheism. That is, the universe is not God... but something responding to God which gives to the universe it's destiny and meaning. Hence, a "panentheistic" universe responds to God's Otherness when infilled by God's inherent essence and image.

Hence, the burden of all energy, including organic life itself, is infused by the quality of God's likeness without being or becoming God itself. Divine Infusion is thus ascriptive to the very process of being and becoming.

As God is... so does creation aspire, yearn, and groan within itself towards an immortal, viable, nourishing, and benevolent life force. Whereas death defeats such possibilities in whose/which response life dies when losing purpose and meaning for mere survival and not thrival.

But in the Divine's "life blood", divine infusion (or the imago Dei of the God) may bring forward unending, continuous redemptive forces with loving, benevolent effect. This is what creatio continua (always-is creation, or "creation continually") can mean in a theologically metaphysical sense when understood to morph and evolve through its ages of revolutions against any death-like response and events attempting to disrupt and discontinue it's panentheistically-driven divine process of birthing life after life after life.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
January 27, 2024



Was The Universe Born From Nothing?
Jan 28, 2022


00:00 Introduction

04:56 The World Of Probabilities

12:05 The Quantum Of Cosmos Present

24:21 The Quantum Of Cosmos Past

31:20 The Quantum Of Cosmos Future

36:04 Looking Through The Singularity



* * * * * *


Unperspectival, Perspectival, Aperspectival:
Exploring Jean Gebser, Lesson II

by Cyntia Bourgeault  |  November 24, 2020


Jean Gebser’s cultural home base was the world of art. He was a personal friend of Pablo Picasso’s, and examples culled from art history dot the landscape of his The Ever-Present Origin, illustrating almost every significant point he makes. It’s not surprising that his master interpretive lens, perspective, should itself derive from the domain of art.

Yes, perspective. Just like you learned in elementary school art. When you first began drawing pictures, probably as a preschooler, Mommy and Daddy and your big sister were always bigger, no matter where they appeared in your picture, because that’s what they were! Then someone taught you about foreground and background, and you learned how to make things at the back of the picture smaller to show that they were farther away. You learned to turn your house at a slight angle on the page so that you could show two sides of it at once. You may or may not have consciously realized that you were learning how to proportion the various bits and pieces in relation to a hypothetical point on the horizon. But your drawings got more orderly, and they began to convey a sense of depth.

That’s exactly what we’re talking about here. Perspective. But now applied as an organizing principle for the field of consciousness.

According to Gebser, the five structures of consciousness we met up with in my November 18, 2020 post Stages Versus Structures: Exploring Jean Gebser, Lesson I (you will find the link is at the bottom of this post)—archaic, magic, mythic, mental, and integral—can be grouped into three larger categories, or three worlds, as he calls them: unperspectival, perspectival, and aperspectival. While the nomenclature may at first feel intimidating, it’s actually quite easy to master if you keep your elementary school art days in mind. Unperspectival is how you drew before you learned about foreground and background, when everything was all just jumbled onto the drawing sheet. Perspectival is the drawing sheet once you’ve learned to arrange it in relationship to that hypothetical point on the horizon. And aperspectival is what ensues once you’ve learned to convey several perspectives simultaneously, as in some of Picasso’s surrealistic artwork where he simultaneously shows you the front side and back side of a person. A heads up: in Gebser the prefix “a” always conveys the meaning of “free from.” Thus an aperspectival view is one that is free from captivity to a single central point of reference.

  • The Unperspectival World embraces the archaic, magic, and mythic structures.
  • The Perspectival World hosts the mental structure.
  • The Aperspectival World is the still-emerging integral structure.

Each of these three perspectives is properly called a world because it comprises an entire gestalt, an entire womb of meaning in which we live and move and make our connections. Each has its own distinctive fragrance, ambience, tincture. Each is an authentic pathway of participation, an authentic mode of encountering the cosmos, God, and our own selfhood. Each has its brilliant strengths and its glaring weaknesses. Compositely, they evoke “the width and length and height and depth” of our collective human journey into consciousness.


I am aware that I am walking the razor’s edge as I choose my words here, trying to escape the gravitational field of perspectival consciousness that would lock this all back into the evolutionary timeline. It is true, of course, that these three worlds broadly demarcate the three major epochs of Western human cultural history: ancient, medieval, and modern. But it’s always been a bit dicey to try to hold these timelines too tightly or to limit structures of consciousness to specific historical eras. We have stunning exemplars of the mental structure breaking through in ancient Greece and Israel, and the mythic still lives among us today in much of the American heartlands. Gebser’s model deftly sidesteps these all-too familiar cul de sacs by reminding us that the “worlds”—and the structures they encompass—are phenomenological, not developmental. While they appear to join the flow of linear time at specific entry points, they have in fact always been present and must continue to be present, for they are part of the ontology of the Whole.

Gebser’s visually oriented presentation allows him to make one additional very important point. From a visual standpoint, perspective is really a matter of dimensionality, and dimensionality is in turn a function of degree of separation. Gebser builds on this insight to draw powerful correlations between the emergence of perspective within the structures of consciousness and the emergence of the egoic—i.e., individual—selfhood so foundational to our modern self-understanding.

In the unperspectival world everything exists in guileless immediacy (remember preschooler art?). There is relatively little separation between viewer and viewed, the external world mirroring a self-structure that is still fluid and permeable. This is the world of “original participation” (as philosopher Owen Barfield once famously described it) where the cosmos is at its most numinous and communicative, and the sense of belonging is as oceanic as the sea itself.


As we enter the perspectival world, the double-edged sword begins to fall. The same growing capacity for abstraction that makes possible the perception of proportion and depth also—by the same measure—increases our sense of separation. We stand more on the outside, our attention fixed on that hypothetical point on the horizon which organizes our canvas and maintains the illusion of depth within a flat plane. Order is maintained, but at the cost of a necessary distancing and a strict adherence to the artifice that makes the illusion possible in the first place. Deception enters riding on the back of that abstractive power, as “original participation” gives way to a growing sense of dislocation and exile. That is essentially our modern world: “oscillating,” writes Jeremy Johnson in Seeing Through the World (pg. 58) “between a powerlessness to control the forces unleashed by the perspectival world on the one hand, and a total self-intoxicating power on the other”—in a word, “between anxiety and delight.”

It is my own observation here (rather than either Jeremy’s or Gebser’s) that the perspectival contains an inherently deceptive aspect since it is intentionally creating a sleight of hand—the illusion of three-dimensionality within a two-dimensional plane. But if I have not wandered too far off the mark, the observation gives me some strong additional leverage for emphasizing why resolutions to the perspectival crisis can never emerge from within the perspectival structure itself, and why the much-hyped “integral emergence” cannot simply be a new, improved version of our old mental habits—not even a vastly increased “paradox tolerance.” We need to get out of Flatland altogether.

For me, that is what aperspectival is essentially all about. It is an authentic transposition of consciousness from a two-dimensional plane to a sphere. Within that sphere, inner and outer world come back together again, and a sense of authentic belongingness returns. Numinosity returns as well: the felt-sense of a cosmos directly infused with the vivifying presence of Origin. Selfhood once again becomes fluid and interpenetrating even as presence becomes more centered and intensified.

The perspectival is at best a foreshadowing and at worst a mental simulacrum of authentic aperspectival three-dimensionality. The real deal can indeed be attained; in fact, it is now breaking in upon us whether we like it or not! But the cost of admission is not cheap: it entails the overhaul not only of our fundamental attitudes, but of our entire neurophysiology of perception.


I hope to circle back to this point in due course. For now, the most important thing to keep in mind is that in the Gebserian system perspective is not simply a point of view; it is a completely different world of seeing, unfolding according to its own protocols: its own core values and ways of making connections. To truly take in another’s perspective is not simply to take in another’s “position” and arrange the pieces dialectically on a mental chessboard. Rather, it is profoundly to take in another world and allow that world to touch our hearts and wash over us deeply until it, too, becomes our own. It is to listen in a whole new dimension. And I believe Gebser would argue that this dimension only truly opens up with the inbreaking of the aperspectival structure.
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*Jeremy Johnson’s book: Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness, is available from the publisher, here at Revelore Press.

 

Friday, April 3, 2020

God’s Will and the Coronavirus


God's Will and the Coronavirus
A Sermon by Professor Tom Oord
March 25, 2020




God’s Will and the Coronavirus

by Thomas J. Oord
March 17, 2020

I’m not surprised some people are blaming God. Maybe “crediting” God is more accurate.

I’m reading social media posts saying the Coronavirus (Covid 19) is God’s will. Our current suffering is part of some predetermined divine plan.

One post put it this way:

“Sorry to break up the big panic, but the Coronavirus will not take anyone outta this world unless that’s the good Lord’s plan. And you’re not gonna change that no matter what you do or what you buy.”

If this view is true, no need to worry. No need to prepare, defend, protect, sacrifice, or act. It’s all in “the good Lord’s plan.”

Not the Plan!

I don’t believe the Coronavirus is God’s plan. God is not causing a pandemic that kills some, makes many miserable, and has widespread adverse effects on society.

God did not cause this evil!

Those who say, “God is in control” often claim all that happens, good or bad, is part of a master plan. Every torture, murder, rape, disease, war, and more are part of the divine blueprint.

I don’t believe the Coronavirus is God’s plan.

Your sister’s rape? God’s plan. That miscarriage you suffered? God’s plan. Every ruthless dictator or fascist system? God’s plan. Cancer, meth addiction, leukemia, severe disability, and so on? God’s plan.

The Coronavirus? God’s plan.

I don’t buy it. I can’t believe a loving God would design that kind of plan! If that’s what God’s love is like, I want nothing to do with God!


God Allows the Virus?

Fortunately, a large number of people today reject the idea God is causing the current pandemic. Unfortunately, a large number believe God allows or permits it.

Does that make sense?

Those who say God allows evil imply God could stop it singlehandedly. If God wanted, God could end this pandemic with a solo act of control. For some reason, say these people, God is allowing death, illness, and widespread harm.

Suppose one of my kids began strangling another of my children. Suppose I could step in and stop this act of violence. But suppose I allowed it – and the death of my child – saying, “I didn’t cause this killing, so don’t blame me!”

No one would consider me a loving father if I failed to prevent the evil I could have prevented. Fathers who allow their kids to strangle one another are not loving.

Those who say God is allowing the Coronavirus undermine our belief God loves everyone.

Those who say God permits the Coronavirus make a major mistake. They undermine our belief in a perfectly loving God. Just as a loving father wouldn’t allow his kids to strangle one another, a loving God wouldn’t allow a virus to wreak widespread death and destruction.

It makes no sense to say, “It isn’t God’s will, but God allows it.”


“See the Good that’s Come…”

Many who claim God causes or allows the Coronavirus will see some good that comes from our current crisis. They’ll point to stories of self-sacrifice or the good that comes from people cooperating to combat this pandemic.

Upon seeing the good that comes from the pandemic, some will use a “greater good” argument. “We’ve learned something valuable from the Coronavirus!” they might say. “This pandemic has taught us we don’t need all the stuff we thought we needed.” “It took a virus for us to learn to slow down and focus on what’s important.”

Good things will come from the evils we currently face. Count on it. But we shouldn’t say God causes or allows evil for this good. It isn’t part of some predetermined plan.

Working with a diseased creation, God works to wring whatever good can be wrung from the wrong God didn’t cause or allow.

Instead, we should think God squeezes some good from the bad God didn’t want in the first place.

God never gives up on anyone or any situation. Working with a broken and diseased creation, God works to wring whatever good can be wrung from the wrong God didn’t cause or allow.


It’s a Mystery

A growing number of people recognize the theological problems that come from saying God caused or allowed the Coronavirus. Instead of offering a better way to think about God’s action, however, they appeal to mystery.

“We don’t know why God acts this way,” they say. Some of the more sophisticated thinkers will say God doesn’t “act” in any way we can understand. What it means to say “God acts” is an absolute mystery. Finite beings can’t in any sense understand an infinite God, they say.

Others play the mystery card by saying God is uninvolved. Deists say God created the world long ago but now has a hands-off approach. This God watches the world from a distance as it suffers. This God has the power to stop the mayhem but sits on the sideline eating popcorn.

If we can’t provide plausible answers to our present struggles and biggest fears — including the Coronavirus — why believe in God at all?

I wonder why anyone believes in a God of absolute mystery. If we can’t provide plausible answers to our deepest struggles and biggest fears — including the Coronavirus — why believe in God at all?

If God’s ways are not our ways, no way is as good as any other.


A Better Way

There’s a better way to think about God’s will and the Coronavirus.

This way says God wants to defeat the virus. God desires to prevent the deaths and destruction we currently see. This way says God loves everyone and everything, from the most complex to the least. And God always actively engages the fight against the Coronavirus, at all levels of existence and society.

This better way says God can’t defeat the Coronavirus singlehandedly. God needs our help. In this time of struggle, God needs the best of medicine, the best from social leaders, the best from each of us.

I call this view “the uncontrolling love of God,” and I’ve written academic and popular books explaining its details. (For an easier read, see my best-selling book, God Can’t: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils.) This view says God’s love is inherently uncontrolling. And because God loves everyone and everything, God can’t control anyone or anything.

The uncontrolling God of love is the most potent force in the universe! But because love does not force its own way (1 Cor. 13:5), even the strongest Lover cannot control others.


God’s Will for Us

What is God’s will? In one sense, it’s the same today as every day: to love God, love others, and love all creation, including ourselves.

In our current crisis, God’s specific will changes. God calls each person, each family, each community, and each political structure to unique responses of love. These specific calls are particular to what each creature can do in each situation. God calls us all to act in loving ways in light of what’s possible.

For most, social distancing can be a significant form of love. Sharing provisions – including toilet paper – can be another. Cooperating with health officials can be a powerful expression of love. Taking reasonable precautions can be an act of love. And so on…

We are always called to love. Our present crisis presents new challenges in discovering what love now requires. I commit to doing my best to discern and then respond to God’s calls of love.

I hope you join me. God does too.

God can’t defeat the Coronavirus singlehandedly. God needs our help. In this crisis,God needs the best of medicine, the best from social leaders, the best from each of us.


Amazon Link



Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Trusting God Does Not Mean Denying Science






To my church family and friends,

Today's viral crisis has shown another church fellowship to be ill-informed.

Attending church worship or, going to church on special holidays, such as Lent or Easter this spring, has nothing to do with proving one's faithfulness to God but everything to do with accepting what modern medicine, virologists, epidemiologists, microbiologists, laboratory researchers, urban and rural regional planners, and public officials, are all saying together.

That Covid19 is not something to dare, show bravado over, prove ignorance about, or test its deadly effects. No. Until effective, proven, vaccines are developed and found safe for dispersal we are not safe as a society around one another. What we are to do is to follow acknowledged public protocols and policies such as practicing concerted social distancing.

Consider this surmise: It's not God who leaves us unprotected. He has given to us "special prophets," if you will. Men and women of wisdom who we might listen to, be taught, question, dialogue with, and together determine how to implement resultant personal, family, communal, and public practices along with any necessary subsequent societal planning. The tools are at hand. We are to use them.

We, as God's faithful, are therefore to follow God's "annointed disciples" of science and medicine. To trust the public institutions which have trained them, to acknowledge what they - and many other cross-over disciplines - are recommending. That those recommendations will be helpful in evaluating how an ancient faith based upon an ancient holy script, known as the Bible, might be read in the contemporary parlance of science and learning.

By updating one's faith and one's Bible will not invalidate God. In fact, it will testify to God all the more. I will attest to this fact in my own faith. But it will demand that we read of God and His Word in a more contemporary and relevant form according to the times we are living. A reading which may provide more congruence between faith and modern societies so that considered Bible truths are more in-line with common scientific knowledge, facts, and principles.

One's Bible faith is not being lost by doing this. No, it is being re-discovered, expanded, enhanced. It is learning to become a scientifically informed faith which may perceive God in larger terms. A God of greater complexity. A God who is deeply integrated with His creation and humanity beyond ways we can imagine.

Shunning, ignoring, or being unconversant with scientific perspectives has led to misunderstanding, or misperceiving, one's faith and beliefs. Boxing them into cubicles of magic and mysticism rather than properly into a science-informed language-construct which may teach of God and His cosmos in ways not considered before.

Good, grounded, belief does not need to defend itself. Rather, it should test itself so that God is never held back from whom He fully is and has revealed Himself to be. If science shows something different from the Bible then perhaps it has been our interpretation of God and the Bible that might rather be questioned than science. Pastors, teachers, theologians are not scientists. But they should be using the results of scientific study to inform themselves of their faith by asking better questions than they have allowed themselves to ask.

This can very difficult. I had asked these questions and discovered there was much about my faith which had to be rethought. Since that time of personal doubt and uncertainty has come an expanded  (and I think, profitable) rethinking of my very fundamental and evangelical faith for some time now. The results? A picture of God which is much grander than I had expected. A Bible more helpful than imagined. A Christian witness which is more relevant to non-believers. And, in strangely familiar and warm way, a faith which has survived to live again to share, nourish, and feed, mind and heart, soul and body. Similarly, a lot of "nones and dones" are asking the church to do this very task. But until it is done sufficiently - and sufficiently well - they are left without a fellowship. Let's not let this continue to be the case.

In ancient times, Biblical narratives had no knowledge of today's contemporary sciences. They thought in profoundly different ways than we do today. The Bible in which we read of God is a Bible whose hoary narratives portray ancient multi-cultural eras, ancient thoughts, ancient superstitions, worldly ideas, and out-of-date knowledge with today's sciences.

We may continue to read the Bible's ancient narratives to learn grand spiritual truths of God and His communion with man and nature. A God of love. Of presence. Of care and nurture. This is the God of the Bible who is also supported by modern science. Who is uplifted over all creation when seen through eyes of faith and wonder enlivened by modern day academia. Science is not to be shunned but used. Integrated. Rewoven back into the faith narratives of the Bible to tell us of a God who is there though hidden by our out-of-date doctrines of faith and belief.

As God spoke and communicated with ancient humanity in the past so He continues to reach out to us today. Through people. Through our experiences. Through ready learning. Through beliefs and perceptions which are to be tested, tried out, verified, and questioned, so we are not misled by our interpretations and beliefs. The key is discerning God's voice from those who would mislead from Christ and His salvation in this world. At times this can be the church itself with its wildly outdated schemes and bravados. But under God we have a faith-world we may all participate in, share together, and find safety and help in times of crises as well as joy and thanksgiving in times of goodness. Yea Lord, help us hear again.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
April 1, 2020
Edited April 6, 2020






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#StayHome and help save lives #WithMe









IMPORTANT LINKS

CV19 Control and Prevention - https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/covid-19/controlprevention.html


CV19 Safety Rules for Work - https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/covid-19/standards.html



















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Ignoring Virus, an IL Church Held Services;
Now Most of the Congregation is Sick

by Hemant Mehta
March 27, 2020

On March 15, when COVID-19 concerns were well established in Illinois, The Life Church in Glenview, just north of Chicago, held a large event anyway. 80 people were present for an out-of-town speaker.

Now 43 of those worshipers are sick, including the pastor. And 10 of them have tested positive for the coronavirus — including the speaker, who is currently hospitalized.

Most of the people at the church haven’t been tested at all.

[Pastor Anthony] LoCascio, who has been pastor at the Life Church for 11 years, said he thought about whether to hold the service. But at the time, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases was low and a stay-at-home order had not yet been imposed. Plus, he had an out-of-town speaker coming.

“We had a guest speaker. We were promoting it,” he said. “We made the announcement, ‘If you’re sick, stay home.’ We didn’t know. No one knew.”

Lots of people knew. Lots of people were dumb enough to ignore the advice of experts, though.

It was irresponsible of LoCascio to continue holding services when a virus was clearly threatening our way of life, as if the presence of God was somehow going to make everything all better.

It’s okay to skip church during a pandemic.

It’s okay to skip church, period.

You don’t have to go just because a pastor guilt-trips you into it. In this case, LoCascio put dozens of his own church members — maybe more — in harm’s way. God isn’t going to help.



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A choir decided to go ahead with rehearsal.
Now dozens of members have COVID-19 and two are dead

By Richard Read, Seattle Bureau Chief
March 29, 2020


One of the authors of that study, Jamie Lloyd-Smith, a UCLA infectious disease
researcher, said it’s possible that the forceful breathing action of singing dispersed
iral particles in the church room that were widely inhaled. “One could imagine
that really trying to project your voice would also project more droplets
and aerosols,” he said.


Coronavirus choir outbreak
Skagit Valley Chorale members Mark Backlund and his wife, Ruth
Backlund, sing choir music Friday at their home in Anacortes, Wash.,
while  convalescing from COVID-19.(Karen Ducey / For The Times)

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. —  With the coronavirus quickly spreading in Washington state in early March, leaders of the Skagit Valley Chorale debated whether to go ahead with weekly rehearsal.

The virus was already killing people in the Seattle area, about an hour’s drive to the south.

But Skagit County hadn’t reported any cases, schools and businesses remained open, and prohibitions on large gatherings had yet to be announced.

On March 6, Adam Burdick, the choir’s conductor, informed the 121 members in an email that amid the “stress and strain of concerns about the virus,” practice would proceed as scheduled at Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church.

“I’m planning on being there this Tuesday March 10, and hoping many of you will be, too,” he wrote.

Sixty singers showed up. A greeter offered hand sanitizer at the door, and members refrained from the usual hugs and handshakes.

“It seemed like a normal rehearsal, except that choirs are huggy places,” Burdick recalled. “We were making music and trying to keep a certain distance between each other.”

After 2½ hours, the singers parted ways at 9 p.m.

Nearly three weeks later, 45 have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or ill with the symptoms, at least three have been hospitalized, and two are dead.

The outbreak has stunned county health officials, who have concluded that the virus was almost certainly transmitted through the air from one or more people without symptoms.

“That’s all we can think of right now,” said Polly Dubbel, a county communicable disease and environmental health manager.

In interviews with the Los Angeles Times, eight people who were at the rehearsal said that nobody there was coughing or sneezing or appeared ill.

Everybody came with their own sheet music and avoided direct physical contact. Some members helped set up or remove folding chairs. A few helped themselves to mandarins that had been put out on a table in back.

Experts said the choir outbreak is consistent with a growing body of evidence that the virus can be transmitted through aerosols — particles smaller than 5 micrometers that can float in the air for minutes or longer.

The World Health Organization has downplayed the possibility of transmission in aerosols, stressing that the virus is spread through much larger “respiratory droplets,” which are emitted when an infected person coughs or sneezes and quickly fall to a surface.

But a study published March 17 in the New England Journal of Medicine found that when the virus was suspended in a mist under laboratory conditions it remained “viable and infectious” for three hours — though researchers have said that time period would probably be no more than a half-hour in real-world conditions.

One of the authors of that study, Jamie Lloyd-Smith, a UCLA infectious disease researcher, said it’s possible that the forceful breathing action of singing dispersed viral particles in the church room that were widely inhaled.

“One could imagine that really trying to project your voice would also project more droplets and aerosols,” he said.

With three-quarters of the choir members testing positive for the virus or showing symptoms of infection, the outbreak would be considered a “super-spreading event,” he said.

Linsey Marr, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech and an expert on airborne transmission of viruses, said some people happen to be especially good at exhaling fine material, producing 1,000 times more than others.

Marr said that the choir outbreak should be seen as a powerful warning to the public.

“This may help people realize that, hey, we really need to be careful,” she said.



Tuesday, March 12, 2019

A Premier on "Open & Relational Theology " - Part 1. The God of Evolution


I am participating in Homebrewed Christianity's course discussing Open and Relational Theology over a six week period. It is hosted by Thomas Jay Oord and Tripp Fuller. Those interested may go to their website to join. Below is a small part of our opening discussion from the evangelical theologian Clark Pinnock who began writing in this area in the 1980s. His backstory is that of a fundamentalist become overtaken with a new outlook on the bible from his former days of seminary training and teaching. In many ways Pinnock's story mimics my own as I came to realize there was more to God and the bible than what I had carefully crafted and learned over many years. I've taken the liberty to update Pinnock's thoughts while adding my own language and understanding within its discussion. As such, this is an abridged commentary of Pinnock's discourse.

R.E. Slater
March 12, 2019
revised March 14, 2019


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Thomas Jay Oord – Creation Made Free: Open Theology Engaging Science

Chapter 6 – Clark Pinnock – Evangelical Theology after Darwin

Abridged Commentary by R.E. Slater

INTRODUCTION

Accepting evolution does not require abandoning belief in God. As a scientific theory it is the best scientific model out there for making sense of observable phenomena from every direction we turn our minds. Anti-Intellectualism is evolution’s chief opponent. Historically, evolution is generally accepted by Catholics after the Galileo debacle of the 17th century yet Protestants are still debating its plausibility.

Pure Reductive, Scientific Materialism opposes God-based evolution (theistic evolution). It has problems with creaturely freedom, an open future with free choices, self-transcendence, creativity, perception of the aesthetic, moral and religious values, and so forth.

1 THEISTIC EVOLUTION

Any doctrine of God must immediately account for the general theory of evolution. This is a basic axiom. If it does not it is incomplete. In the paragraphs which follow some of the major (doctrinal) themes of the bible will be interwoven into the discussion to illustrate how this might be done.

Preliminary thoughts regarding Theistic Evolution state: i) God does not impose a rigid plan on creation’s development; ii) God does, and will, experiment with different and sundry possibilities. In fact, it is built into evolution’s DNA; iii) God remains the source of all creaturely possibilities; iv) There is no coercion (or pre-determined “plan”) placed upon creation or upon its ultimate destiny (sic, its “telos”) – evolution is free to create on its own. As example, consider the corollary of raising children – they may be taught but they will usually create on their own with no fixed outcome of the parent; v) The process is adaptive. It is, and is becoming, a reality other than Godself; vi) Lastly, it has no divine constraint on its process.

Consider Natural Theology which was formerly focused on divine design (example, the human eye) rather than being focused on grander outcomes (example, quantum physics) which sees the universe unfinished, always evolving, always indefinitely in progress/process without end, and requiring a lot of time to realise its promise. God has seeded the world of evolution with possibilities; He has given the cosmos, the earth, and humanity a vast potential for life.

Evolutionary Creation must work together with both i) invariant lawfulness and contingent happenings along with ii) randomness with corresponding new possibilities. Each of these spectrums all held in-tension with one another. It could be said that evolution’s process is composed of fundamental elements such as lawfulness, contingency, randomness, and possibility all mixed together in the batch of deep time. This process can be known yet unexplained; studied yet a mystery; but always held in deep relation to each other’s orbit. Throughout all of evolution’s unfolding process as the cosmos, the world, and life unfolds, we may expect to find the mutuality and relationality of the Social Trinity of the God of love in continual partnership, guidance, and engagement. In essence, God experiences creation much as we do but in an infinite sense.

2 EVOLUTION & DIVINE PROVIDENCE

Evolution should not lead us to deism (sic, the absent Creator model) or to a form of Calvinism which regards God as ever-tinkering with His divine model - or disrupting or adjusting it – with regards to creation’s initiating process. Rather, God has both a vision and a hope for what the world may become and does not need a fixed divine “plan” to sovereignly overrule creation’s unfolding events. Because of this, the Open and Relational model (OR/ORT) understands evolution as God’s sovereign design of embedding an open and dynamic ontological character into creation itself through the process of evolution. This ontological character then bespeaks of the very nature of God Himself which is embedded in evolution as it morphs and changes and creates ever new possibilities. In itself evolution has no choice but to move forward on its own without need for a determinative outcome to which other theological systems subscribe. It is complete in itself without requiring divine interventionism or coercion as it began from the heart of the God wishing to share Himself.

This then should bring a solace to the human breast. That God’s love is neither forcible nor coercive in relation to His creative design within the foundations of evolution. Consequently God’s sovereignty is at once undergirded by His grace and love which partners and participates in redemptive engagement with His creation. In contrast, the determinative model requires forcible divine omnipotence (power) to rule whereas the Open and Relational model disclaims divine omnipotence in favor of divine non-coercive love (or, non-omnipotence) to guide, participate, and engage creation’s processes.

This means then that we and creation may shape our own future fully and freely within our bounds and abilities to create. In this sense evolution is biased in the direction of complexity and consciousness. God allows for experimentation, risk taking, room for novelty, and flexibility. God may have a purpose but He does not predetermine the future. It is truly open without determinative outcome. Divine purpose does not imply divine determination.

Firstly, Divine Providence does not guarantee orderliness. Rather, disorderliness is very much a central part of creation’s process. It is good but unfinished. Some creatures adapt, some do not. A static cosmos is a lifeless/mindless cosmos.

Secondly, what we call “accidents” in nature are actuality instances of adaptation, novelty, and freedom to try something different from the present order of things. Novelty must include and allow for trial-and-error. Ontological chance thus allows for real randomness with infinite possibilities.

Thirdly, evolution can be orderly though complexly organized yet allowing for an intensification of consciousness over the course of its process as its Creator-God guides the cosmos towards a positive future. This divine direction is most likely imbued within the very fabric of evolution itself rather than as a moment-by-moment “directive” feature. As the Spirit of God breathes life into creation it lures the world to greater and greater complexity and consciousness. God is ever guiding the emerging universe and is the source of serendipitous creativity everywhere.

Evolution is compatible with the (essential) kenotic model of providence in which God self-limits Himself for the sake of love. God does not coerce obedience but participates with creation while respecting its freedom to be and to become. Open and Relational theology understands this idea as the God who is always willing to risk.

3 THE GOD OF EVOLUTION & SIN

The argument of evolution by design, though popular, is spurious. Creation is as much orderly as it is disorderly. The role of predation and violence is a necessary part of its becoming. This process is otherwise known as a necessary and imperfect adaptation within evolutionary creation which has a long history of wasteful experimentations. Paradoxically, the present orderly façade of nature masks epochs of suffering alongside epochs of amazing creativity. Then why does God allow such suffering and waste in the process of evolution?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that sin is a part of the freedom God has endowed creation with… Divine justice (theodicy) allows for sin while adjusting to its presence for optimal outcome over sin. Thus God’s self-sacrificing love is ultimately bourne through His redemption of the world in Christ Jesus. His grace becomes His suffering. It is not done in divine isolation but in full relationship to all of creation’s being, hope, and promise. In this way does divine imbuement of creation through divine redemption provide creation with a future of completeness and fullness with its Creator God. All living and dying things readily share in the suffering death of our living God as well as the redemptive hope this death has provided.

The gospel is about a new creation which will end violence, suffering and death. Not only for man but for all of creation. We live in an unfinished world with a future full of unrealised possibilities. Evolution opens the future up as God calls to the cosmos to reach beyond itself to become a fully new creation without sin in its substance. As such, the cosmic journey is heading somewhere – it is not a pointless process. That somewhere is towards a cosmic redemption. Christianity’s mission is to share this hope for a better world.

4 GOD AND HUMANITY

Evolution is the story of the emergence of the soul gradually producing creatures more self-conscious, free, and able to love. God’s Spirit is present in all life proportionate to its complexity. The emergence of the human soul is not an exception to the animating process of evolution but an intense example of it. At this point in evolutionary history humans may be the only species endowed with heightened qualities more distinct than animals - some of which bear these same qualities in a less heightened state. But this should not be expected to remain the same as homo sapiens as a species comes, and goes, and is replaced in the long history of evolution.

Regarding morality, “survival of the fittest” may be part of a reductive, materialistic theory but it doesn’t take us very far along the pathway of God as a theistic theory of evolution does. The rise of cultures and religions represents a new evolutionary stage is the cosmic story. We may therefore expect it to reduce the power of natural selection for a time as social institutions, laws, customs and beliefs act to protect (or not protect) the weak, the unfit, etc. In the area of ethics even the unfit get the opportunity to survive.

Regarding original sin, we can recognize the concept without purporting or ascribing to it its biblical legacy recounted in the story of Genesis. Unlike many other biblical doctrines, sin, as a concept,  is a truth well attested to empirically throughout the cosmic and human story. Essentially, the doctrine of sin testifies to the truth that creation - as well as humans - are estranged from God and need a Savior. That all things everywhere are deeply flawed because of sin. Only God can save us. Or rather, redeem us. This is the concept of original sin without requirement for a single human couple, a garden, a possessed snake, and so forth.

Unlike Reductive Materialism, Theistic Evolution requires the need for a cosmic Christology, whereas Reductionism or Materialism does not. Jesus has defeated the powers of darkness and has begun to set the universe right. God’s power and love are radiating throughout the whole world revealing the magnitude of His redemptive love. Hence, theistic evolution should stimulate us to recover the themes of a cosmic Christology. It can be the occasion for a renewed and expanded Christology. In short, Jesus is the guarantee that the self-transcendence of creation will come to pass because it has already come to pass in Christ. Jesus is therefore the start of a new cosmology. Restated, history is headed towards redemption with-or-without the human species.

5 EVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN HOPE

Evolution is a very big story. The universe has been advancing and evolving in the direction of increasingly organized complexity for a very long time. It has passed through many stages over many aeons and is now at work guiding human communities towards a redemptive future. During its course societal consciousness has grown in proportion to the increase in organized social and physical complexity (such as a social/spiritual morality, ethics, the human body and mind, etc.).

The end goal of evolution is what Teilard de Chardin called the Omega Point: Essentially, “things are going somewhere.” In theistic terms, God is drawing the whole universe to Himself. Historical time is always moving towards a good and redemptive ends. It began with the physical geo-sphere, has continued through the biological bio-sphere and is moving towards the heart of humanity, the soul of man – the noo-sphere. This is the direction to the story of evolution even though the text will meander in its long journey.

Creation is becoming newer and newer in its unstoppable process of becoming whatever it will become both in the near future and the far future beyond. It is restless. It is pregnant with hope. We must not expect that God will preserve some state of “status quo” nor be a deity of coercive rather than persuasive power from which order and novelty arise. God’s world is a world open to possibility yet ever driving towards a new creation in Christ. We may then see in evolution an intensification of God’s consciousness into the cosmos. This is a most salient point full of possibilities. But within this divine consciousness God has left the future undetermined. Creation is free to create any future it wishes to move towards. We live in a truly open future moving towards the redemption God has provided the cosmos through Christ.

Nor does God force the universe into a rigid design but calls creation to listen and follow His voice. God has made a world in which chance and randomness exist alongside order because God values order and novelty. Even random occurrences play a role in an unfinished and open universe. The present order is continually moving away from its older order to make way for a newer order. True, suffering, pain, death, are a part of this journey but as Christians we trust and believe that the power of God’s love will prove more influential than coercive, deterministic power. Nature’s beauty, vitality and creativity are intimations of this new creation and the promises of God’s love.

Lastly, ours is a world that gives joy to God while giving joy to creation itself. In giving Himself away God has added valuable experiences from His life to ours. God’s love is self-giving. It is also self-realizing. His love grants new kinds of value, freedom, and community. Certainly such a world adds value to God’s divine experience even as it does to creation itself or to our experiences. Ours is a world capable of becoming the Kingdom of God. The purpose of our lives is to carry forward the values of the divine spark of creation. Sin is the refusal to participate in this arrangement. We may think of the Omega Point not as a rigid goal but as God’s vision for the world and what it may become as He calls forth the possibilities that are inherent in the very fabric of the cosmic order He has created.


Abridged Commentary: Clark Pinnock by R.E. Slater


Sources:

Amazon Link




Sunday, November 27, 2016

Science Mike + Mars Hill - The Psalms + The Stars



I recently met and spoke with Mick McHargue not long ago and would recommend his podcasts and science critiques of sharing God's "evolutionary creationism" and the searching questions he asks in the context of the bible. Like myself, Mike went through a period of spiritual crisis in his life where God turned his world upside down before propelling him forward into the teaching of his Word.

Now evolutionary creationism is not the pseudo-science-7-day-creationism-stuff but the real, hard-core, Darwinian evolutionary schemata placed into a post-evangelical theological context as we have discussed here at Relevancy22 in hundreds of past articles. My church, Mars Hill, recently began its science series in the late fall of 2016 starting with Science Mike whose vimeo link is listed first with an introduction by our newest pastor AJ Sherrill. The remaining three vimeo links are from AJ himself, but the deep stuff, the scientific stuff, can be found on Science Mike's website that I've linked directly below.

Enjoy!

R.E. Slater
Thanksgiving 2016


More on Science Mike - http://mikemchargue.com/





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The Series: "The Psalms + The Stars," by AJ Sherrill

I.
The Psalms + The Stars: Psalm 147
Posted on October 30, 2016 | Pastor: AJ SherrillScience Mike



II.
The Psalms + The Stars: Psalm 8
Posted on November 6, 2016 | Pastor: AJ Sherrill



III.
The Psalms + The Stars: Psalm 13
Posted on November 13, 2016 | Pastor: AJ Sherrill



IV.
The Psalms + The Stars: Psalm 133
Posted on November 20, 2016 | Pastor: AJ Sherrill

11/20/16 - AJ Sherrill - The Psalms + The Stars: Psalm 133


"Don't you just love it when coming to God's Creation
to discover that He SINGS all the time, and especially
when creating both the worlds and our own souls!?"
- R.E. Slater