Here’s a fun thought exercise for you:

You have four children: Blake, Jake, Rod, and Beth. You’re leaving them at home while you go to work. Before you leave you tell all who’s listening, “You guys take care of each other. I’ll be back soon. And no cookies until I get home with dinner.”

Upon your return you open the door to find Blake hanging upside-down from the ceiling fan, dead, bled, and obviously having been tortured. Additionally, Jake and Rod are standing there side by side, proud as shit, and bursting with excitement. They apparently expect you to issue them everlasting cookies.

You: What in shit happened here???

Jake: Your will was done Father. Blake ate of the forbidden cookies.

You: What? You killed Blake? Because he ate a miserable cookie?

Rod: We both did. He refused your message and willingly transgressed against you. We tried to make him repent, but he refused to believe your message.

You: My message??? WFT??? What about my message with regard to taking care of each other?

Jake: Oh, Father. You will be pleased. We took exceptional care of our brothers and sisters.

You: Bull shit! You killed one!!!

Rod: Blake was no brother of ours. He denied the message, and refused to join the covenant of the cookies.

You: Oh no… Where’s your sister?

Jake: Our dear sister was martyred.

You: “Martyred?” What does that mean? Who invented that word?

Jake: I did. It means she died doing your work, or according to your will.

You: My will??? What’s wrong with you? Your sister is dead? How? Doing what?

Jake: Well… You see, Blake had gotten away from us again. I was trying to break his legs with a baseball bat and hit Beth in the face instead. She died instantly. We did not morn though, for we knew, having died as a result of the service of the Father, that she would be ushered into endless cookies.

You: So I leave the house for a few hours, and you manage to kill half of my children over something I muttered walking out the door, about cookies…

Jake: We also had to pluck out one of Rod’s eyes. He was drawing pictures of cookies.

Rod: My bad.

You: Wait one damn minute here… This jar was full of cookies when I left. More than one cookies has been eaten — they’re almost gone!

Jake: Well, we of course ate some cookies, but only officially sanctioned cookies eaten in your name and according to proper custom.

You: Whaaaat? I didn’t sanction any cookie eating…

Jake: I served as your representative while you were away!

You: *sigh* So you tortured and killed your brother because he ate a cookie, in the process killed your sister, half-blinded Rod for drawing cookies, at the same time were eating about two cookies per hour each, and are expecting some kind of everlasting reward?

Come to find out, after reviewing nanny-cam footage, you see that Blake was not intentionally undermining your authority. He wasn’t in the room when you hollered out your instructions, so all he had were Rod’s and Jake’s retelling, of which he was suspicious. His suspicion and otherwise disinterest made him unwilling to join the cookie covenant.

This frustrated Jake and Rod, pushing their beliefs further and further hard lined each time they discussed the issue between themselves. By noon, Jake and Rod were furious with Blake, were not allowing him near the kitchen even for water, and were calling him a non-listener. Blake was outspoken with his belief that Jake and Rod were outright liars, using the Father’s so-called commands as a reason to hog all the cookies for themselves. Beth was simply frightened and unwilling to eat cookies either way just to be safe, and willing to nod along with anyone claiming to follow her daddy’s rules.

Eventually Blake snuck into the kitchen and had a cookie. Maybe he was wantonly breaking the rules? Maybe he simply wanted a cookie? Maybe he wanted to spite his bossy brothers? Who knows. Regardless, Jake and Rod took the opportunity to brand Blake an official rule-breaker non-listener, and took their retribution – all the while chanting, “We love our Daddy. We love our Daddy.” During the assault on Blake, Beth finally spoke out, pleading for mercy on Blake. That’s when the accident happened that killed her.

Noisy Dove wishes everyone a happy Passover and Good Friday.  

I still don’t have much love for the Creationist movement, but this Ben Stein movie is hilarious. It, among other things, follows scientists who were blacklisted for being associated with “intelligent design.” It’s pretty well done. Made me laugh.

There are plenty of words to describe an idiot who is in complete support of a regime, and usually names specific to regime. What would we call the soldiers right now deploying to Afghanistan who voted for McCain? They’re not patriots? Hell, most the soldiers I’ve had conversation with have a list of problems with the Administration (Clinton, Bush, or Obama) – or just don’t give a shit – but either way do their damn job.

Patriot are the people that made this free world of ours. I doubt many of those boys that climbed into those damned Higgins boats and ran out onto the beaches of Normandy under fire from MG-40s did so because they agreed with some asshole in Washington. They knew what was going on. They saw Germany taking over Europe. They could have stayed safe at home and dealt peacefully with Hitler, kept selling him shit. You know, plenty of people wanted to do it that way. But we had plenty of young men willing to go all the way over there, train up, and go fight even after puking on their boots and shitting in their pants. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t in order to achieve self actualization, it wasn’t blind allegiance, it wasn’t for pay or reward – it was their duty to their loved one, free society, and the loving God.

And Divinity Dove, I’d say you are living in one of the few societies at one of the few times when you can be a true Christian and a true patriot – because our nation was founded on principles that include the free practice of religion, and many other core Christian values (not killing and all that, as long as you get your head out anyway).

So, with Denmark promoting Lutheranism, and the US pushing sanctions, I’d say a Patriot could easily appose such sanctions in the regular way – voting and e-mailing Bill O’reilly. It would be so illogical that all patriots would have to say something! Seriously, what if we put sanctions on all the Islamic countries for “promoting” Islam? LOL

But then, what if Denmark were imposing Lutheranism on its citizens. Then I think you would be a good Christin and patriot to support sanctions against them, especially since any such move would almost certainly have some stupid political motivation behind it, and not be anything approaching the will of God, and could soon see regime change along with a new religion imposed contrary to Christianity.

Interesting. We each seem to nurse a different though similar definition of patriotism. Dr. Dove, I don’t think you strayed at all. Do I understand correctly that patriot for you equals someone in total agreement with the current powers that be?

I’m wondering if I am a patriot. Now that I am an adult, do I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America? I don’t think I do. I pledge allegiance to the interests of God and his Church. I’ll be obedient to USA’s laws until they conflict with that first allegiance. By your definition of patriot, Noisy Dove, the society I put before myself is the Church.

I will preach that sin is wrong. I will proselytize all who’ll listen. Any woman being forced into abortion will find shelter in my home. Today these aren’t issues – in America. But they are elsewhere right now in the world, and it is feasible they may one day reach these shores. Americans will say, “These laws are best for us.” I will say different. Does that make me the true patriot, rising above popular opinion to seek the truest best interest for American society, or does it make me part of a subversive counter-cultural underground? I think the latter, and I think the latter is who we are called to be. ?

Professor Dove, if the free practice of your faith was illegal, would you still consider yourself an American patriot?

Isn’t our first loyalty as Christians called to be for other Christians? If the US pushes sanctions against Denmark for promoting Lutheranism against other religions, on whose side do we stand?

I did hear of Pat Robertson’s comments. I know next to nothing about the supposed pact though. It apparently comes from a single book. Some say it is true, others say it is not. Either way, Robertson certainly wasn’t being intentionally hateful. The program he said the comment on was dedicated to raising relief money for the Haitian victims. Immediately after the comment he added something like, “so let’s reach out and help these people….” The comment was meant to move his viewers to compassion for a lost and struggling people.

Of course, there were Christian Haitians injured and killed in this incident, and that is regularly the case; the righteous and unrighteous suffer together so that the righteous can show the unrighteous how to suffer as trusting creatures of Almighty God.

There is good reason to see this situation as the doing of humans rather than demons, though. So many buildings collapsed because they were hazardous buildings. So many are now destitute because they were already in poverty. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Why only now are the richer nations of the world rushing out their hands with commitments of long-term help? Perhaps this earthquake will be the turning point for Haiti. New resources. Better government. Stronger communities. If God did send the quake, he might have sent it to wake us up!

I think to start, if there were rumors of our own ancestors having made a pact with the devil, I would want to organize a ceremony dedicating us and our children forever to the Lord. Just in case. Just to be clear.

Activity and Ontology.

Ontology (a static condition):

Something is to be labeled evil when it is in opposition to God’s desires.

Evil is a label, not a unit of measurement. There is no degree or scale to the label. Something is in conflict with God’s desires, or it is not.

Every human is born into a condition opposite of what God desires.

Every human is evil.

Activity (fluid decisions):

How often each human chooses to actively engage inclinations proceeding from their evil condition is a matter of personal decision.

Illustration: Jane is a sexual creature. That condition she did not choose and cannot unchoose (repress, yes, but not unchoose). How often and to what degrees she chooses to express that condition is a choice she constantly makes.

(  Excursus: This is why Paul taught that we are doubly guilty; (1) we were born into a condition we cannot change, and (2) all have at one time or another made choices in accordance with that condition.  )

The effect of these two realities:

Jane jaywalks and John eats babies. Both humans are evil. And one is choosing to participate in that condition to agreater degree than the other.

How will God handle these varying degrees of participation at the last judgment? He hasn’t told us. Dante in his Divine Comedy suggests that the degree of each person’s suffering in hell is related to their degree of participation in their evil condition through this life. That doesn’t seem likely to me as hell isn’t pitchforks but separation from God’s relational presence and the bearing of his image. Will there be degrees, then, of separation from bearing God’s image and experiencing his presence? I don’t think we’re going to know before it happens.

Saudi Arabia has done 40 public executions already this year. It must not be working that well to deter crime.

How is it for you? The day’s I believe in a Christian God I’m against the death penalty. But the days I’m feeling more like a non-theist I’m very fond of killing or otherwise harming – bringing justice to – those who harm others.

When the last surrender finally ended World War 2 in 1945, another crisis was already staring the world in the face: stabilization. For six years humanity had bombed, burned, and bled their existence on Earth. From water pipelines to government officials, entire nations had to be rebuilt from rubble and debris. In that process some boundaries were redrawn and others were newly created. A part of this global reshuffling was the founding of the modern nation of Israel in 1948. The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine facilitated this national independence that against immense odds still endures today.

This modern story is said by some to have been foretold thousands of years ago. They believe that in ancient books of the Bible, Israel’s ancestors prophesied their 1948 declaration of independence. The passages most frequently appealed to as such prophesies are the following Old Testament excerpts. Other passages exist, but these suffice as characteristic examples:

Ezekiel 37:21-22
This is what the sovereign LORD says: “Look, I am about to take the Israelites from among the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from round about and bring them to their land. I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel, and one king will rule over them all. They will never again be two nations and never again be divided into two kingdoms.”

Ezekiel 34:13
I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them to their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the streams, and in all the inhabited places of the land.

Amos 9:14-15
I will bring back my people, Israel; they will rebuild the cities lying in rubble and settle down. They will plant vineyards and drink the wine they produce; they will grow orchards and eat the fruit they produce. I will plant them on their land and they will never again be uprooted from the land I have given them, says the LORD your God.

Jeremiah 31:10
Hear what the LORD has to say, O nations. Proclaim it in the faraway lands along the sea. Say, “The one who scattered Israel will regather them. He will watch over his people like a shepherd watches over his flock.”

These passages and others that refer to a scattering and regathering of Israel are from books of the Bible written by prophets preaching before and during Israel’s exile in the 6^th century BC. This is an important observation.

As part of God’s plan for that time, the kingdom of Israel was conquered and deported by Babylon. Later, the Israelites returned to their homeland under the protection of Persian King Cyrus. The Old Testament book of Ezra is the record of this feat.

It seems to me the above passages are promises from God to return his people to their homeland, and those promises were fulfilled with the proclamation of King Cyrus of Persia (see Ezra chapter 1).

To the best of my knowledge, no prophecies of another scattering and regathering of Israel occur in any Old Testament book written after the Babylonian exile. This is further evidence that the prophecies about Israel returning to their homeland were fulfilled circa 538 BC as recorded in the book of Ezra.

So while it is possible that the Bible could contain prophecies of Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence, the Old Testament passages normally appealed to as such prophecies were almost certainly already fulfilled 2,500 years before modern Israel was born.

Below is a chart that places the Old Testament writing prophets in their respective times. The chart shows how prophets like Ezekiel who prophesied about a regathering wrote during the Israelite exile in Babylon. The chart also shows the prophets like Haggai who do not prophesy about a future regathering wrote after the exile.

Click on the image to enlarge

Oh Bill, LOL…

http://www.pjtv.com/v/2377