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

-----

Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from 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

Saturday, August 13, 2016

The Choice Before Nations to Love and Forgive




In bringing the subject of religious oppression to a wider audience, I didn't
want to kick the Catholic Church but to poke a finger in the throat of theocracy
and to let it be known that people shouldn't tolerate this anymore." - Peter Mullan


"Either we learn to find our Lord in ordinary, everyday life,
or else we shall never find him." - St. Josemaria Eseriva


I apologize for my inattention to this site. My wife and I have just returned from a very long two week vacation where we travelled and visited many states, their historical & cultural sites, cities, and community events throughout Virginia, Maryland, and the Atlantic coast. In our travels we visited Jefferson's Monticello and walked the length and breadth of Washington D.C.'s memorials  and institutions reminding ourselves once again what America's charter of responsible liberties must mean to our society and world. And when these are rejected to learn first-hand of the horrors of destruction and evil when personal liberties go unobserved as was found when visiting the Civil War cities of Richmond, Petersburg, Gettysburg, the grave sites at Arlington, and the Holocaust Museum.

However, we also discovered thriving ecosystems and communities dedicated to keeping their wildlife preserves and national refuges healthy, green, and flourishing. We swam in the clean waters of the ocean, crossed its many bays and rivers, and felt the commerce of communities trying to figure out the most responsible forms of government, industry, and society with one another. But we also saw the vast interiors of our country struggling with their own remnants of once-glorious days where industry and services were fewer and far between. Where industry once had been in the coal mining towns of the Alleganies and now closed forcing townships and local communities to recreate themselves. Perhaps through a renewed dedication to agriculture and clean water, to the land, to their history, to creating a bit of Eden hidden from the world at large. In our travels we observed much, talked to as many as we could, and learned from each their hopes and dreams and aspirations.

We are now back home and in the month ahead I will attempt to catch up where I had left off several weeks ago. In the meantime I would encourage readers to read through the many sidebars I've worked on over the years on hundreds of topics devoted to a progressive, humanitarian, postmodern outlook of the world, the church, its doctrines, and ourselves.

Persecution and Oppression by the Christian Church

The Next Chapter

For myself, as well as for other Christians and non-Christians alike, I am interested in pursuing a Christianity that is contemporary, post-modern, and progressive. It must be Jesus-centered as much as I am able to discern what that compass means - and not centered in our beliefs about the bible or our doctrines emphasizing God's glory and judgments over His love and reconciliation of mankind. Our understanding of God's grace, love, and forgiveness must fill all our churches and their personal creeds and confessions without threatening unbelievers with authoritarian promises of divine wrath, judgment, and hell. For myself, as for many others, God is a God of love. Not a God of wrath and judgment. A God who reconciles and redeems. Not a God who separates and divides wheat from tare, sheep from goat, righteous from unrighteous. Nay, sin and evil does this separating, even sinful man, not God.

And it is this observation that the gospels make and not the incorrect teachings that God does this. He has given the world the gift of free will by decree. He will not control our free will. It is a free will that is the exact copy of His own free will. Which means He cannot interfere with our choices should we chose the darker sides of our natures that are not freeing. Not recreating. But what God can do is actively guide us towards making better choices; who can aide us in directing us to the free will gifts of others willing to help, heal, counsel, and provide; who can open up opportunities of nurture and nourishment from earth's bounty; who leads us unto green pastures and still waters of His blessings and away from the wastelands of our baser wants and needs. God is a nourishing, enriching, empowering God of creation and re-creation. This picture of God is vastly different from the church's fractured picture of a God dedicated to wrath and judgment. Dedicated to hell and anger. And how do we know that God is a God of love and forgiveness? Because He came and died for our sins and empowerment of recreation. He did not come to divide and "cleanse." He is a God of example as much as the Almighty God of Life and Light. He has given us Himself by right of creation and is dedicated to redeeming a world fallen unto its own depravities. A world refusing His grace gifts of beauty and wonder. This is the God I know and wish to tell of.

A Fractured World

As an American citizen, our political season this year and last (2015-2016: Trump v. Clinton) has tested the church in the areas of who and what God is, wants, and does. The media is filled with the harsh, unloving, and divisive political speeches by some of our more popular candidates for election who have demonstrated in their speech how far astray our society has come from God's ways and means. A God who is driven by love and mercy not judgment and war, not discrimination and racism, not inequality and oppression. When the church is on the wrong side of these issues the people of God must cry out and say "NO!" We cannot go in these directions regardless the nominee, the party, or the platforms! And so, I've have been spending a lot of time politicizing the gospel in its humanitarian outreach to the world. Not here at Relevancy22 but on Facebook where friends and family must be tested in their beliefs and outlooks during these incorrigible times.

For it seems our postmodern world has a few hard choices to make. Yesteryear's establishment politics has been rejected in favor of moving either more to the left - from humanitarian liberalism to (forced societal) neo-liberalism. Or more to the right - from responsible fiscal conservatism to radical (oppressive) conservatism. Each extreme end is radical in its own way even as each forces choices of bondage and oppression through deceptive political policies and ideas which stray from the foundations of America's political charters. Charters which are being worked out by each generation as to their reach and meaning. Imperfect at first, but refining as they go, as American society learns to accept the blending of new races, languages, and cultures into its own images of itself.

The choices of neo-liberalism's socialism from the left, and radical conservatism's fascism on the right, are neither acceptable nor compatible with Amerca's constitutional charters.  A republic which is being tested once again in its liberal democracies dedicated to the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights (and Magna Carta, in general), and its Jeffersonian principles, to name but a few. A democracy learning to re-envision what these basic charters of government must mean for today's postmodern world. And why these charters are important documents for today's citizens, immigrants, foreigners, and overseas relationships.

The Oppression of the Church upon the discriminated, the unempowered, the disenfranchised

Political Choices in the Face of Inhumanity

Does America move to a position of isolationism or to a position of responsible global leadership? And if the latter, than how does it withdraw from its past policies of use and abuse of other nations, their national resources, and their peoples, in its need for energy, food, clothing, and housing? Of an ever-guarded war-mindedness constantly making enemies of nations in their titanic struggles to be released from their own bondages, servitudes, holocausts, and inhumanities. We, as the world, have some very difficult choices to make and it is my opinion, along with many others - whether Christian or not - that Jesus' example of love and mercy must become front-and-center if we are to move forward as a world dedicated to the basic democratic principles of liberty, justice, and equality for all.

And so, I have spent this past year focusing on the political consequences of Jesus words to His church, and to mankind, in what it means for a holy God to reconcile the world to Himself using the principles of love, mercy, forgiveness, and hope. I think it means that we must do a far better job at listening to one another; respecting each other's beliefs and convictions; learning to cooperate with one another in healthy ways of personal and societal re-creation; and especially refusing to threaten each other with deceptive fears, lies, and misrepresentations.

If a "postmodern" world is to survive - one where we listen and cooperate with one another - than it must survive from its oppressive extremes, societal fears, cultural prejudices, callous uncaring lifestyles, and selfish preoccupations. This is what "post-postmodernism" means. One where fear and oppression lives and governs - whether from the radical left or the radical right. It is a people or society dedicated to a government where democracy has failed in its consitutional charters and political rights and is replaced by interpretive (or revised) policies of protectionism, isolationism, and global oppression, with the misuse-and-abuse of power that comes with these extreme political ends.

The Oppression of Religion not centered in Jesus' ethics and morals

Now is the Time to Choose For Humanity Not Against It

So I think that God has brought us to this time of national and societal reconciliation. Where we must learn how to behave ourselves towards one another across our continents and many political spectrums. Our choices are to continue i) the world's past 2000 years of nationalism and bondage in the "Christian era" or, ii) the past 4000 years of civilization's struggle to steal, kill, and discriminate between social classes in the "World History" era. Perhaps, these many millenias of sin and evil have led us to the choices today of whether to continue its inhuman oppressions or to begin healing a fractured world yearning for liberty and justice.

Since God has sacrificed Himself to make redemption possible than it is time in our lives to make choices towards living humanely with one another by observing the best of ourselves and not the worse of ourselves. If not, we re-live the pages of the book of Revelation over and over and over, again and again and again. Our inhuman apocalypse is the living Hell we read of, fear, endure, and experience through societal tragedies and inhumanities towards one another. But if Jesus is to come into our societies as promised by the Apostle John to make all things right than we must believe that He has already come and empowered humanity through Jesus' death on the cross. This was the beginning point. It is a point of hope as much as it is a point of reconciliation.

And that it is left to us, the (radical) church, and to those penitents outside the church, who must ride Jesus' white horse of judgment and healing into our Ages of destruction and evil. That we have a choice to grant freedom and justice to one another or to ignore these principles altogether while continuing in our oppressive wars with one another. Whether we continue in our unChrist-like doctrines and beliefs that God is a God of War and not a God or Love. Believing God is a God who divides and conquers as we have done as nations to one another for centuries. Thus making of God an Idol after our own craven image. Or whether God is a God who heals and binds up the wounds of neighbor and stranger. Who comes to provide justice to the oppress; freedom to those chained in bondage; liberty and life to the destitute, poor, homeless, and forgotten.

The Church of God is cautioned to forsake sin and oppression

The Choices We Must Make

My God is this latter and not the fractured God of the former. It is this God I, and others, testify of in the blog pages of our progressive and humanitarian writings of what it means to be a true Christian centered in love, mercy and forgiveness. A God who is rich in the graces of selfless servitude to the help of others desperately seeking love and mercy. Seeking housing, clothing, food, water, medicines, wholeness, and re-creation of ruined ecosystems. It is this God - and these people of God - whom we must be committed to however we think of God in our many beliefs and religions. In our many names of God or many observances of nature's highest principles of humanitarianism.

And finally, I think, we have come to this time in world history that as nations we must make the choice to work and live together with one another in responsible, societally-recreative ways. Where the watchwords are cooperation, tolerance, respect, and selfless service towards one another. If not, we will continue this dehumanizing and ungodly cycle of destruction resulting in the destruction not only of ourselves but of our ecosystem. And when these occur our end has come. Ingloriously. Pathetically. Inhumanely. Because we have rejected our humanity for its inhumanity. Rejected our Creator for something unlike His image. Rejected our future of peace and hope for war and ruin. Religion can do that to people. Especially religions based upon seeing only themselves, their ways, and their beliefs as more important than the life-and-breath of others. It is called oppression. Its called societal suicide. And any religion dedicated to oppression is a wicked thing. Not holy. But wicked.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
August 13, 2016