I DON'T TAKE MY CUES FROM BENEDICT XVI: CONVERSATION WITH LITURGIST: PART 3
Benedict XVI
Here are some more highlights of the things (ideas, substantially but not entirely verbatim) I've written in an on-going conversation.
Liturgy
If it moves someone to be closer to God regardless of who devised the liturgy, I won't argue against it. [Of course, this concerns liturgy, per se, and not the particulars. I'm not going to hold to this position where someone thinks child sacrifice is going to move that one close to God.]
High Church and Feeding the Lambs and Sheep
The high church or hi-church is off putting for me only where it falls into fitting with Jesus's words as follows: Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Matthew 23:23. I'm simply substituting liturgy for tithes here, as you probably would have understood without my explaining it. If we can have grand buildings and moving music with feeding all the lambs and sheep in both body and soul, who am I to stand in the way of that? I do though wholeheartedly agree with Jesus that the weightier matter is the feeding. I agree with James that leaving the flesh to starve while asking people to believe is failing to comprehend the proper sequence of events. It is a disordering of priorities. I see no reason why you wouldn't also wholeheartedly embrace it. It would be our meeting of the minds. That's exactly what we are looking for after all. We need to reach out to people to have a meeting of the minds so we may bring forth. Jesus, our brother, is calling us to it. I love it. There is nothing to hate in it at all. He's perfectly right about it.
So, to be absolutely clear, I would trade all the church buildings and traditional church services to feed the lambs and sheep as Jesus prescribed. Jesus has no building except I say the Temple is rightly his (therefore everything is his). He has no liturgy except I say his last supper and all his revealing and worshipful acts constitute his liturgy. He said we are to be worshipping fulltime in every move we make. I agree with that completely.
Divine Logic
I don't argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's a non-starter. I don't argue about transubstantiation. Jesus said, "This is." For me, when I do it (communion) in remembrance of him, it is. Is it still what it was [commonly understood wine and bread]? Well, I don't have an issue with it, because Jesus was fully man and fully God. God provisions us. We can do nothing without God. The mundane bread wouldn't be there if it weren't for God. The real bread of life is also there by God. This is not a mystery to me. It isn't a paradox to me. It's divine logic. I'm very comfortable with it. It isn't some mysticism that I don't understand. It's just the way it is, just as day follows night for awhile. I don't need a scientific experiment to prove to me that all my days here have followed all my nights. I know it without testing.
Benedict XVI
I am a believer. I don't take my cues from Benedict XVI. I take them from my heart. I've read several of Joseph Ratzinger's long philosophical papers. All have fallen woefully short.
Antichrists and the Anti-Christ
By the way, when I used the term "antichrist" [in reference to the top of the Roman Catholic Church], I wasn't meaning the Anti-Christ as the conservative, Southern Baptist fundamentalists used to mean. I'm using the term more as John wrote about there being many antichrists. Anything that doesn't run to the perfect is antichrist in the end. It's quite a narrow way Jesus blazes. It can be clearly marked out though with a softening heart. This is not to say that there isn't the Anti-Christ to come.
Norway and Ayn Rand Disciples
As for Norway and Ayn Rand, the so-called Christian capitalists are right behind the Christian-Zionists in presenting the biggest problem. The Christian-Zionists have been exposed and will continue being exposed. I'm working on the Christian capitalists now, not to punish them but to turn those who will and to warn away those who would be otherwise duped. Of course, the long-term plan is to bring forth. The Christian capitalists present a huge obstacle in that regard. They are in the palm of billionaire false-Zionists who really do hate Jesus, only they won't say it publicly on the record, yet. They are the most trolling, very contrived. They are backed by the think tanks paid for by super-rich antichrists.
Qualified Feminism
Let me also quickly state that I believe women are very often moved by the Holy Spirit as much or more than their husbands. Very often, husbands would be well advised to heed the counsel of their wives. I've seen that done where males lose none of their masculinity or status within the family but rather gained by it. They reinforce one another in working to find the truth and right approach. Therefore, I don't hold with the male-centric theology attributed to Paul (the Pauline). To clarify, I don't hold with matriarchalism over patriarchalism. They are truly to be one flesh. I haven't found that in my own life, but that's part of my cross to bear. I was a bad boy even while I was good. The nursery rhyme applies to me.
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Tom Usher
Standing Comment, all posts and pages:
To all homosexuals and their supporters, condoners, promoters, accepters, confirmers, and the like:
Unless you have something completely new that hasn't already been refuted, don't bother. It won't show up.
Rehashing what has already been refuted is a waste of everyone's time.
I'm not interested in casting pearls before swine, giving the children's bread to the dogs, or rebuking a forever scorner.
Learn or go away: There is zero wisdom in homosexuality. Homosexuality is wrong. Nothing any homosexual or anyone else can say or do will alter it. No one needs the Bible to know it either. It's prima facie. There's no such thing as an unrepentant-homosexual Christian. There never has been and never will be. That's the way of it. If you don't like it, change.
Do site searches on the various topics concerning homosexuality to determine if your "point" has already been handled. Currently, I provide three different search methods. The "WordPress" search is still the most thorough.
The same can be done regarding militarism, capitalism, coercion, and many other main issues and themes.
TREATMENT, RUDENESS, POLITENESS, OFFENSE, TRUTH
Many times over the course of this website's existence, I've had commentators complain about how I've treated them and/or others. Much less frequently has anyone taken exception to those commentator's comments. I assume that's because for one, I appear to be holding my own.
Often, I have raised the fact that Jesus called certain people "serpents." I've often also mentioned how he cleaned the temple with whip in hand, not that he used it on anyone. It certainly doesn't say that he did, and neither was he charged with it in the kangaroo court of the serpents who ended up murdering him by proxy just for, among other wonderful things, speaking out and speaking truth.
If I say that those who are engaged in serpentine behavior are the New Testament "serpents," then why take offense at my saying it rather than standing with Jesus and me about it?
If others don't like it that I treat others or them the way I have in this regard, why don't they take it up with the serpents and/or their own consciences and God?
If I wanted to catch flies, I'd use honey. I don't want flies on this level. Human beings aren't to be on the level of flies. If the truth is bitter as vinegar, then ask yourself why and learn to taste it as sweet but not sickeningly so. Why attack the message and messenger, as the serpents did, and become a serpent by so doing?
The issue is not "name calling" on some bratty, childish level. When Jesus said "serpents," he was not being as a brat. His level was completely adult to adults and children. He dared say that the children understood the clear and plain truth before the adults who, afterall, had been abused and socialized by the serpents. He still calls adults back. Those who hear him and know his voice (truth) turn around and do the other required things together as well.
What is it for a human being to be more serpentine or reptilian than what God initially gave? What was and remains Jesus's point? What is the reptilian brain versus the vastly higher human brain with its cerebral cortex and frontal and temporal lobes and specific areas of altruistic sentiments and abilities? What are those higher areas before they are damaged, before the communication pathways to them and between them are diminished by evil that is always some form of abuse? How are those pathways reestablished or created where they never were in this fleshly life?
The snake lays its eggs. The eggs hatch. The snake parent doesn't nurture or raise the offspring. It's every snake for itself. Human parents and family are not designed to be that way. Humans hand down the learning of nurturing. Many people get better training than do others, and many people have a greater aptitude for learning and predisposition for the higher and highest virtues. Many are less abused. People can change for the better and best though, no matter where the starting point. They only can't if they don't — if they reject it.
Snakes, of course, also come in venomous varieties and in strangling varieties, etc., such that they have been attackers and even devourers of humans for eons, guilty and innocent alike.
Now, Jesus knew that most people could relate to what were, and still are, largely considered "good" parenting skills and "good" "family" relations. He regularly used those concepts to get people to consider the wider implications for the whole of humanity. He did know that many would refuse. He let them go. He didn't demand secular or false-religion legislation to rein them in with threats of violence and imprisonment. He was not and is not coercive. Even his Church is a voluntary place to be.
What he still teaches (through the written words in the New Testament and as those connect with the Old and also teaches through the Holy Spirit he definitely sent as he said he would) is, among many other things, that "good" is vastly better than has been commonly accepted and that real "family" is everyone left after all the rest have rejected the higher and highest good. He raised the standards far above the Old Testament and far above the "modern" standard.
The American Empire and the American people in general aren't even touching the hem of his garment, let alone even attempting to stand upright and side-by-side with him.
I point out that Jesus was, and is, a Real Liberal Christian. He is the one who brought back this censored truth that is the light. After he had spoken it and lived it and was murdered for doing so, the censors set about to re-censor it and did. They couldn't put it out though — couldn't completely extinguish the truth. I wouldn't be saying it now again with all credit to God, just as Jesus, if they had been able to completely block it.
I point out that each of those terms ("real," "liberal," and "Christian," along with "Church") are actually redundant terms — synonyms that are so close that they become one. The term "liberal" here is not the common usage, which common usage is a deliberate corruption of the term. There is no harm in real liberalism. There is no vileness in it. There is only beneficence. "Real" may be understood as the opposite of false-hearted, dark side, and dead of the Holy Spirit. Christian is both real and liberal in those senses. To arrive at living, doing, being those full senses requires what Jesus lives, does, and is in the highest. Finally, the Church is the whole.
Who are they who want to drag it down, censor it, work against it, lessen it, ignore it, etc.? Well, who sides with Jesus and who sides against him? Did the serpents side with him then? Do they now?
We call war-mongers "hawks." We call "peacemakers" blessed and "doves." Why do the hawks not take offense at "hawks" but do take offense at "serpents"? "Hawks" is not yet as telling to the general public, but I must tell you that all hawks are serpents. Why do some say, "Greed is good" but take offense at "serpents"? I tell you there is no difference between the selfish and the serpents. Why do people take offense at serpents when they do not take offense at homosexuality? I tell you the homosexual spirit also comes out from the dark side. It is a choice. It is harmful. Many are abused with it. Many never overcome it. Their very brain matter is transformed by it. Then they claim it is good when it remains confusion and definitely wrong and harmful.
Many arguments were put forth in support of tolerance. I understood that Jesus "tolerated," as in he did not execute wrath but rather told the truth and let the blind follow the blind (blind to the truth) into the ditch of their own making. I have watched while the movement has been corrupted into condoning what was once only to be tolerated. I have watched further while it has moved from condoning to promoting even to the youngest children to get to them before the truth does. I have seen evil at work, and I sound the alarm. I face censorship and other negative reactions for it.
As the American Empire claims to be a light to the world, it murders innocent babies by Hellfire missiles fired from predator drones controlled by armchair, video-gaming serpents in uniform. It tortures those who are not even suspects. It spies on its own without even probable cause or reasonable suspicion. It lies its way into wars for spoils and control. It neglects its poor, whom it treads down for the sakes of the superrich — for the sake of the massive flow of mammon from the bottom up (no trickledown — trickledown is a farce and always has been). All is claimed to be okay in America though — that America is headed in the right direction — because soon, even "don't tell, don't ask" will be a thing of the quaint past and homosexuals may be able to sleep together and have sex in the barracks with the "blessing" of the Empire while they practice murdering the innocent for the sake of homosexual, greedy plutocrats who own them and who, in turn, are owned by the dark-side spirit named by God and Jesus as Satan.
Whose side are you on? I speak truth to warn. I don't tell the secular government what to do other than occasionally to say what at least would be less hypocritical within their fallen, unenlightened system. I do so for spiritual reasons. What I want is the Christian Commons.
Now, if you submit a comment:
What you write here against the Real Liberal Christian Church founded by Jesus Christ will mark you in the Biblical sense unless you show that you have turned and are repenting in time to escape the damnation of your own choosing. That's the way of it. Don't be tempted by the devil to stand opposed to the call of righteousness. Overcome such evil temptation. Help others to help yet others to come to righteous behavior through-and-through.
Check out how even after reading this, people will still take it out of context and twist it to an evil end.