jimbussell

President Obama told the world that America is no longer a Christian nation and from what I can see happening around me in this country, I would have to grudgingly concur with our president. However, I believe everyone has a desire to worship something, though. So with that in mind, what is my country’s current form of religion? Christianity has basically been outlawed in our education system and public institutions. So what has replaced it? If we look at what is being taught in our public school and professed in the hallowed hallways of the colleges of higher education, if we look what is being published in newspapers and magazines we see we as a nation worship, among other things, the current scientific theories. Our scientific community is asking us to believe, even though quantum mechanic shreds it, that we are the product of randomness. They are asking to accept that there was first nothing…and then it exploded and then somehow everything complex structure in our universe just by chance came together. This is the science of randomness. So we must ask ourselves, what is randomness? How does it relate to us, and who cares?

So, what is randomness? I pulled a definition of randomness by the Oxford English Dictionary from Wikipedia*1; Having no definite aim or purpose; not sent or guided in a particular direction; made, done, occurring, etc., without method or conscious choice; haphazard. Looking at that definition, makes me realize I have just wrapped up most of my adult life into one neat explanation. I think a lot of us could make that claim. The fact that most of my adult life was spent without God as my pilot, or even allowing him on-board my ship, is this a surprise?

Lets look at the definition again in sections. Having no definite aim or purpose…if we listen to the wise men of our day, our philosophers and scientists, that define and explain our beginning and our ultimate existence as a series of mistakes and goofs without guidance or direction and brainwash our young to accept this while teaching them to ignore the elephant in the room called fact, reality and mathematical proof, and insert these absurd notions into the educational texts that our children absorb like a sponge from the time they can read their ABCs, is it any wonder that they grow up without being able to logically explain the purpose of their life? Probably the best arguments our thinkers can come up with to explain it, using the logic of randomness, is that the purpose of life is like a bowl of multicolored marbles that you blindly choose to determine what direction your life will take.

What about the second part of the definition; not sent or guided in a particular direction…does it come as a surprise that the basic rules of morals and respect really have no place in today’s society. Instead, today’s societies are dominated by the rules of vanity and selfishness. I think of the unwritten rule I was taught as a child by my father; ‘my word is my bond’ where many multimillion dollar deals were sealed with a handshake. Now in today’s society, the rule of thumb is to use deception and lies in business and politics with professional ‘spin doctors’ on the payroll and if you don’t like it, “sue me” is the new catchphrase. The scriptures address this in Philemon;

Philemon 2:14-16 Do all things without murmurings and disputings: That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain. (NASV)

OK, the third part of the definition remains: made, done, occurring, etc., without method or conscious choice; haphazard…If you believe the tommyrot coming out of the scientific communities, the educational systems and political institutions, then the creation never happened. According to the correct thinking process of the day, Christianity and Judaism are dangerous and narrow-minded religions based on myths and legends that needs to be squelched and marginalized so the younger generations won’t be tempted to believe them and therefore become less manageable.

The current generation of thought is dangerously defective and shows the level of rot and degradation that has been injected into it since God has been removed from our schools, public instructions, and therefore our common thought processes. Deuteronomy covers this in a few places, here is one scripture that highlights what happens when we ignore Christ, our Rock of Salvation;

Deuteronomy 32:3-6 “For I proclaim the name of the LORD; Ascribe greatness to our God! “The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and upright is He. They have acted corruptly toward Him, They are not His children, because of their defect; But are a perverse and crooked generation. “Do you thus repay the LORD, O foolish and unwise people? Is not He your Father who has bought you? He has made you and established you. (NASV)

We see examples of the religion of random that creates the perversities, the crookedness and spiritual cancer of our generation all around us. The only salvation from this thought process that has been burned into the brains and hearts of the current generation and from ourselves is contained in the Holy Scriptures. We need to be like David in the Psalms:

Psalms 86:3 Be merciful unto me, O Lord: for I cry unto thee daily. (KJV)

The opposite of the definition I provided within this text is clear. Instead of “Having no definite aim or purpose; We have definite aim and purpose; to serve the Lord, who created and saved us from the world of sin we live in.

not sent or guided in a particular direction; We are sent and guided. Our direction comes from the creation of our universe and ourselves to obtain salvation so we may exist with Our Lord in his home when we become like him as we are told by John:

I John 3:2Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.(NKJV)

made, done, occurring, etc., without method or conscious choice; haphazard.” We were created to worship and honor the Lord, our salvation:

Psalms 102:18 This shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be created shall praise the LORD. (KJV)

Does the Creator of All care about this? Why don’t you be the judge as we look at just a couple of passages where The Lord ‘kind of’ gives us his opinion of those idiots…sorry…those misguided ones that worship at the altars of humanity called atheism*2.

Deuteronomy 32:18-22 “You neglected the Rock who begot you, And forgot the God who gave you birth. “The LORD saw this, and spurned them Because of the provocation of His sons and daughters. “Then He said, ‘I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end shall be; For they are a perverse generation, Sons in whom is no faithfulness. ‘They have made Me jealous with what is not God; They have provoked Me to anger with their idols. So I will make them jealous with those who are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation, For a fire is kindled in My anger, And burns to the lowest part of Sheol, And consumes the earth with its yield, And sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. (NASV)

Hosea 4:1-3 Hear the word of the LORD, You children of Israel, For the LORD brings a charge against the inhabitants of the land: “There is no truth or mercy Or knowledge of God in the land. By swearing and lying, Killing and stealing and committing adultery, They break all restraint, With bloodshed upon bloodshed. Therefore the land will mourn; And everyone who dwells there will waste away With the beasts of the field And the birds of the air; Even the fish of the sea will be taken away. (NKJV)

Romans 1:18-32For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. (NASV)

All I can say is that I am glad I am on this side of the fence and worship the One True God, rather than…whatever they call it.

God Bless, Jim

2-26-11

*1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness

*2 http://www.daylightatheism.org/2008/02/the-religion-of-humanity.html

I was raised with Christianity as the basis of my religious belief system from the time I became aware. As I believe is the case in most American households (at least the ones I knew of), my mother was the rock and the driving force behind my religious education as she did her best to make sure that I was taught to read the bible and to pray daily and to go church and worship the Lord faithfully. I also was taught to think for myself and since I was taught that the scriptures are the unassailable Word of Our Lord, I assumed that what I read was accurate, in other words, I was taught the scripture says what it means, and means what it says.

The fact I took what the bible said quite literally ended up causing some confusions and created some issues for me, for I discovered that what I was reading in the scriptures and what I was hearing from the pulpit or the Sunday-school classrooms didn’t always coincide. Therefore, because of this (and my apparent inability to keep my mouth shut and to not ask pointed questions about the seeming disparity) I became a ‘problem child’ with the Sunday School teachers when I started asking them to explain the differences between what was being taught and what I was reading. I later discovered that what I was running across at church was what is loosely referred to as allegorizing the scriptures. Without having these disparities and questions addressed and partially because of the way they discounted my concerns (I was told, in a mostly kind way, to stop questioning the teachers about these things because I apparently did not really understand the scriptures), I became more suspicious and wary and less trusting of the people that were teaching or preaching, as well as the lessons being taught at this congregation and slowly started mentally pulling away from this denomination.

Even though I had a good family structure, it couldn’t save me from the evils of the world and at the age of twelve I was sexually abused by an assistant Boy Scout leader. In today’s environment, the dangers of such things are better acknowledged and are watched for, but as a child in small town America in the 1960’s, I felt alone and lost. It didn’t help that he kept telling me how it was my fault and how everyone would blame me for it if I told anyone…so I kept it to myself. I felt I successfully hid away the pain and anguish that comes with these experiences, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the pointed fingers and the blame that I was sure would be heaped upon my head. To deal with it (or more accurately, to try to mask it and to attempt to make it go away and to not deal with it, as was the case), I turned to drugs and alcohol to numb reality. Basically from the time I became a teenager until a few years ago, I ran. I spent most of my adult life drinking or taking drugs and ended up all over the board religiously, still seeking peace from my inner torment, which resulted in me going several different directions spiritually. I dabbled in the occult and practiced American Indian religions and ceremonies while I embraced multiculturalism and the idea of many gods while calling the Christian God a quaint myth as I danced my complicated tango with Satan.

On January 15, 2010 after untold failed attempts to stop the vicious roller coaster existence of drinking and drugs, I prayed for the first time in many years to the Christian God in desperation to save me from alcohol  and myself and he answered and stopped my desire to drink right then and there. From that prayer forward, I went from not being able to imagine a day without drinking to not having a desire for anything alcoholic. That is what I call a miracle.

When I prayed that cold January evening in 2010, it was a prayer of desperation. I didn’t pray to the Lord because I loved Him, or because I respected Him. I only prayed to Him because the other gods in my life had either not answered me, or had not left me with any positive interactions or feelings (it was actually, quite the opposite). I prayed to this God because I had run out of options and I was tired of drinking and couldn’t stop and I took a chance…but the chance paid off.

In my thinking, that was an extremely crummy reason to call on The Lord, but there He was waiting for me to come to the end of myself, and there He was still listening and still responding by granting me a miracle. I therefore was reluctant to even acknowledge My Lord, much less praise Him but through all my turning away and blasphemes and curses I lashed upon Him and His people, He was still there for me and still let me know that He loves me regardless of my multitude of faults. Hallelujah dear Lord, thank you so much, My Father for not turning away from me as I turned away from You.

Jim

7-1-11 (10-9-19)