A Question

"How do we cope with such people who think evil is outside of themselves?":

This question was raised in a youtube clip of a seminar with Ravi Zacharias and others

My answer, here expanded from a post on youtube,  is this:

Show them a love that they cannot deny and cannot refute. What did Jesus say? To paraphrase his prayer  "Father make them one that the world will know you have sent the Son"

When we have this all the words they  have will  have no meaning for they are exposed as empty talk and this not by our words but by our  lives.

I must add here  that I am not denying the value of our words as regards truth content, but their persuasiveness is compromised when being loveless we are nothing but hypocrites. And without love we are indeed nothing but hypocrites

But we do not have this love. All we have is empty talk which makes a mockery of all our apologetics and even our preaching.

And the unbelievers will not be impressed.

Neither am I.

When an unbeliever asks "Why does a good God allow suffering ?" the question is likely an excuse whereby he can blame God. It is a taunt, a sneer.  I did this myself .

But if he were ever to ask "what have you got? I want it," then we know we have an attentive hearer. Oh, the other questions will be answered later  but given the nature of the human heart I assert that they are almost always excuses.

However if we do not have something that they want, commonly known as love joy peace and the rest of them, as well as the Sabbath Rest of the Believer (see  the letter to the Hebrews), then they have no reason to ask what we have or even want it.

The Kingdom is not words but power, as the Apostle said. The distortions, and they are gross, to which the likes of Pentecostals subject this to notwithstanding, if we do not have the love of Christ exuding from our very pores, we have no power, not the power that counts.

We have only dead letter, which is another term for empty words

Requests, please

My head is so full of ideas that I cannot make up my mind which to write about. So I am taking requests. Firstly that might motivate me to write something and secondly it might show that someone is paying attention to this here blog, presuming, of course I get any requests  at all. So, as they say, "Bring 'em on"

Put your responses, if any, in the comments. Of course it should go without saying that the subjects I can or will respond to are in line with the interests I described in my welcome post, which is to say I have no interest whatsoever in any sporting meets, football or any other.  But even if your  requests meet that criterion I don't promise to be forthcoming with anything,  but it will be the sober and unvarnished truth if I do  (well, no, just kidding. If too many people think they produce this when they don't what makes me different?

My Testimony

This piece was written some 12 years ago, hence the age given in this piece

My name is Steve Meikle, I am 43 and a professional classical double bass player
albeit in an orchestra that can only fund itself on a part time basis.

I live in Christchurch, New Zealand

I was an intellectually gifted child, equally involved in the sciences and the arts at
primary school. Intellectually, from the time I could start thinking for myself, I was an
atheist convinced that science had rendered God irrelevant and all religion untrue.
Even though I had two brushes with Sunday school, one at age eight the other at age
12, my thinking was rationalist (for an intelligent pre teen and teenager, that is) and I
took it for granted that rationality implied atheism.

However, emotionally speaking, my flirting with church even in my childhood (there
was no compulsion from my parents to believe anything either way pertaining to any
religious matter at all, for which I thank god) may be revealing of something else
altogether . . .

But at age 19 (1978) with adulthood looming my atheism was more desperate. I was
frantically searching for meaning as I became a nihilist within weeks of my starting
university that year. I was a music student but one would not have guessed this as I did
side papers in philosophy and Russian literature, and philosophy was my
preoccupation.

Gradually my atheism assumed all the torment of a character in a Dostoyevsky novel.
And the depression that hit when I was 16 and concluded that life was indeed
meaningless was consolidating itself as my life style and conviction.

 I raved about philosophy to any who would listen, one so afflicted by me suggested I
come to her church where the pastor had a degree in philosophy. This was fateful as
this church, in my own home neighbourhood was one I had had dealings before (age
12) and it was the one I later joined.

I spoke to the pastor but he was unimpressive. I went to the church over three weeks
but was only impressed by the wrong things (as I now see in retrospect).

On the third week I went to a young adults supper after the service but had already
decided that they had nothing to offer and that I would not be returning. I embarrassed
myself by my raving philosophy at the party. They gave me a lift home. I got into my
room at about 11:45 p.m. Sunday 30 July 1978. I looked in the mirror and a powerful
inner voice spoke to me saying "YOU FRAUD". But though powerful it was not
condemnatory. There was no fear or violence. But interestingly enough no intellect
was involved at all. That was to come later yet the anti intellectual implications I drew
in part from this and from what the church told me were totally wrong as well

 I fell to my knees as if knocked down and asked Jesus to be my lord or saviour or
something to that effect (I do not remember the exact words).

And then I was flooded by the most wonderful peace and joy I had ever known.

Hence my conversion was a la Damascus Road but without the visions St Paul saw

However the next morning the doubt hit me. I had always defined religious experience
as wish fulfillment fantasy (and seriously think now, 24 years later that most indeed
are just that). Of course my response to these was wrong.

Had I accepted both what the Lord told me then and the implications of it I would
have been spared years of suffering. But my experience persuaded me,  quite wrongly,
that other Christians had the same or even deeper, and that they were to be trusted. I
am forced to concede that this is indeed a mistake, and have written concerning it
elsewhere.

Thus my testimony is of the love and grace of God direct to me and not through any
church

The Lord revealed his love to me over the next three weeks or so but I now know I did
not believe it, and the resultant darkness was not what many call a desert experience
sent in order to encourage me to move on (they do not exist, IMO) but proof that I had
already backslidden from god in my heart even though I was soon to become a
devoted son of my church and a religious zealot.

They were all direct unmediated revelations with no connection to any mediator or
church - this I of course ignored at the time.

My doubts have been brought into abeyance by first rational argument and then
repentance, both  lead by the Holy Spirit through one on one dialogue, for it is written
in the Bible “come let us reason together”.

Intellectually I am becoming more and more convinced that Christ is the only way and
that his gospel is in fact logically necessary. But such convictions are more the realm
of apologetic argument than testimony except that I grow increasingly to believe that
the Lord has reasoned with me in debate with his Spirit to lead me to see the logical
necessity of his gospel.

Despite the hard years since, my conversion, such sufferings brought about by my
unbelief, I can only thank god for reaching down to me that dark night. My despair
was such then that I may well be dead now if he had not, or if I had refused him when
he did.

The Logic of the Mass

I disagree with that core doctrine of Roman Catholicism, but I also deplore anti catholicism  and may likely post on that particular matter later


THE LOGIC OF THE MASS




Stephen Meikle

The first and simplest argument against Transubstantiation is that it violates the
biblical pronouncement on the cross that IT IS FINISHED and that the priesthood
required to handle such a holy thing as the body of Christ has been abolished. The
only sacrifice the Christian can make is praise, for the blood sacrifice is once and for
all, not every Sunday at mass. Moreover the biblical fact of priesthood of all believers,
offering praise because of the placatory blood, and offering not the placatory blood
itself repudiates the separate Catholic priesthood and its sacramental underpinnings.
I regard these arguments as unassailable.
Let us however assume Catholic doctrine is true as regards the Real Presence of Christ
in the communion.
And let us assume that the bread and the wine is the body and blood of Christ.
After all the priest hold up a round moon shaped wafer and says "This is the Lamb of
God which takes away the sins of the world". He is speaking literally otherwise the
doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ is  not believed
The mass is not a memorial or a commemoration, it perhaps is not even a
re-enactment. It is the crucifixion of Christ.
This being so every mass is as much the crucifixion of Christ as that on Golgotha.
When was the mass first celebrated? In the Upper Room, the last supper.
Therefore Jesus Christ Lord of the Universe was crucified in an upper room before he
was crucified on a wooden cross.
The question remains, if the mass is the crucifixion then clearly it contains in its own
logical essence every essential element of the crucifixion otherwise it is only
symbolic, something Catholic doctrine itself disallows.
But given this it is entirely logical that Christ could have come to earth, gathered
disciples, instituted Communion and then ascended to heaven, as he had already
suffered.
After all he said at the last supper,  “this is my body” - as Catholics aver passionately.
But he also said,  “which is broken for you.” Note that he did not say , “which will be
broken for you,” as that turns the mass into a prediction and a symbol.  It might be
asserted that  the prophetic present , whereby future events are spoken of as having
already occured would rescue the doctrine from absurdity. But in fact it has the
opposite effect, for if the present tense is spoken of a future event then the event at
which this utterance was made, which was the Last Supper, not the Crucifixion  turns
the prediction of the crucifixion into something subsidiary to the crucifixion itself,
which the doctrine of the Mass denies the Mass is. Moreover since the time of the
resurrection likewise the priest does not say, “which was broken for you” for that
either turns one crucifixion into many, as if one were not enough, or turns it into a
mere memorial and a symbol, as Protestants have held for centuries. . . .
If the Mass is the crucifixion it logically contains all sufficient elements to render this
so, otherwise it is not the crucifixion, merely a symbolic memorial.
I will return to a second aspect of this later.

If transubstantiation is true therefore the last supper is sufficient for the Redemption of
Man,  as the first time the body was broken was in the upper room.
There is no logical need for the nailing on the cross on Golgotha - as this all happened
the night before.
It cannot be argued that the bread and wine becomes the crucified Christ on the basis
of the act on Golgotha’s mount, as this in some way renders the Mass subsidiary to the
historical act on Golgotha’s mount; and besides if the bread and wine is the crucified
Christ the historical act is logically unnecessary.
However it can be argued that it does not follow that the Mass is subsidiary, thus
invalidating my argument here.
To deal with this I will digress.
The Doctrine of the Mass arose not only from the Bible, but from an attempt to fuse
biblical thought with Platonic doctrine. Catholic expression of  Trinitarian doctrine
(distinct from the Trinitarian doctrine itself) arises from Platonism. Platonism asserts
that every individual book (for example) is a reflection of some real archetypical thing
which expresses the pure essence of "bookness". This is the platonic meaning of
"essence" - “hypostasis”  in Greek, or "substantia" in Latin  - hence the English
“substance” . In Platonic doctrine the real archetypal thing which is the pure essence
of the qualities of every object of that kind on earth is called a "form". This Platonic
meaning of "substance" is what is proclaimed in the Credo sung or recited in Masses
every Sunday.
Transubstantiation is built on Platonic doctrine. But so is Arianism, to which I will
return later.
The Greek Platonists who sought to explain the Trinity said words to the effect that
there are three beings but only one essence of godness. Therefore there is still only one
god even though there are three personae, or "masks". For the Latin word "persona"
does not mean "person" as in modern English, it literally means "mask
Likewise, to the Catholic, it can be maintained that the bread and wine in the mass
contain the essence of godness and therefore the Mass is in no way subsidiary.
But though I would not consider denying that Jesus is God, the Father is God and the
Spirit is God; and though I stoutly affirm that the Bible is soundly and solidly
Trinitarian, yet I assert that no one believes Platonic doctrine any more unless held out
of a pre existing Catholic commitment. That God created the universe does not require
that the universe is itself somehow unreal and that it is a reflection of some real and
ultimate "universeness" existing somewhere up in or beyond the ether.
I take Platonic doctrine to be essentially quasi Gnostic in its mode of thought, and to
be rejected. Therefore though I affirm the trinity I reject the “Credo” of the Mass as an
attempt to formulate this divine mystery by trying to fuse the gospel with an ungodly
thought form of the time, one that is in fact no longer believed. Therefore the entire
apparatus of platonic forms is obsolete, and completely unnecessary. The doctrine of
trinity is true but the church’s attempt to formulate and understand it is false.
Therefore the entire nominalist realist debate (were the forms real or merely names),
which debate animated theologians at the time of Thomas Aquinas is moot. And
Aquinas’ formulation of Transubstantian, being essentially platonic, is irrelevant
Appeals to Platonism do not justify transubstantiation any more than they justify or
explain the fact that God created the universe. For Platonism is not a true doctrine,
despite C S Lewis’ fondness for it. No one holds the second of these, that Platonism
accurately describes the created universe therefore no one need hold the first, namely
that Platonism justifies transubstantiation.
Before continuing I must add that there are some things that God cannot do. This is
not because God lacks the power, but that some things, though can be imagined by
man’s mind are in fact logically meaningless. In short, they do not exist as
possibilities such that they can be done. C S Lewis brilliantly dealt with this in his
work.
In claiming that the bread is the lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world
Rome asserts that the bread of communion is God. I submit that such a notion is
fraught with logical absurdities.
It can be said that from the rationalist viewpoint of the natural mind the Trinity is also
fraught with absurdities, and indeed it can. But the Scripture clearly and explicitly
expounds the Trinity, whereas the Roman Church only infers transubstantiation from
Scripture . The Trinity is a required mystery, but the meanings of the words in
scripture do not offer sufficient warrant to justify the doctrine of the Mass. An
inference from a statement that can be interpreted ambiguously is totally different
from a bald statement of literal fact. If our reason cannot fathom the Trinity, so be it.
But the insufficient warrant in scripture for transubstantiation makes the issue fair
game as regards intellectual discourse.
First of all I must ask if this is so is not the bread and wine the fourth person of the
trinity? Should we not be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit and
Host?
"No", it might be countered, "for the Host is not a fourth person, but it is the Son."
Very well, but this assumes an understanding of the Trinity that I hold suspect , for to
separate the persons of the Trinity too far is tri-theism. Jesus is God, therefore the
Host must be the fourth person of the Trinity, if indeed the Host is God
What is the nature of the divinity of the bread?
How did the bread become the Son?
Is the divinity of the bread contingent or absolute? First let me explain these two
terms. Contingent means resulting from, being derivative, stemming either causally or
logically from some other thing, a result not a first cause. Absolute means that which
is uncaused - the first cause and itself standing alone and independant in every aspect.
In classical Christian thought God alone is abolute and all other things are contingent.
To end my digression: even if Platonism is true how did the "godness" of the platonic
form, the essence, come to inhere the bread?
Surely it, the divinity of the bread, is contingent, being the result of some other factor.
But divinity cannot be contingent, for divinity is increate and absolute. Or, in other
words, divinity is not the result of any thing, rather it  is the cause of all things.  If the
divinity of the bread is contingent on the priest performing his rite at the altar, or on
God making the bread divine then surely the bread is not divine, for divinity is not
contingent, and not even Platonism can change this.
No created thing can become divine, (that is to say to become God) for divinity in its
truest sense is an attribute of God and God alone. Therefore the divinity of such a
created thing  is contingent upon (or dependent on) the operation which made it
divine.
Catholic doctrine asserts that the bread is changed, not that the divinity was always in
the bread but is released by the priestly rite. But only if the bread was increate and
eternal, and eternally divine can the bread be divine.
This means the bread somehow changed from man made bread to the body of Christ
at a certain point in space and time when the priest performed the consecrating rite.
However this implies that the divinity of the bread is contingent on the operation
whereby it was changed.
But contingent divinity is no divinity at all.
Yet as Christ is divine then clearly the bread is not, and cannot be, therefore the bread
is not the body and blood of Christ. For if Christ is not divine he is not God, therefore
the bread, if Christ, must be divine for the idea of Christ as a being not divine is the
Arian heresy.
But the divinity of the bread is contingent on other factors, where the divinity of
Christ is not so contingent, therefore the bread cannot be divine for contingency is not
a feature of divinity, and is indeed proof of creaturely status.
Did God somehow bestow divinity of the bread? I assert that this is meaningless,
something God cannot do. The bread exists as simply bread before it is consecrated.
Before it is consecrated it is no more than a created object. But if  God bestowed
divinity on Christ then Christ is not himself  God, which is the Arian heresy.
The notion of apotheosis, of the bestowal of divinity, is pagan. God bestows
righteousness and life, not divinity, for divinity as an incommunicable attribute of
God, as is infinity.
We humans have some attributes of God as we are made in his image, but some
attributes of God, like infinity, are his alone by virtue of his being God, and the
bestowal of them is a logical absurdity. God can no more make another God than he
can create an object he cannot move, for the meaningless does not even exist as a
possibility, as C S Lewis, so I said earlier, demonstrated.
A brief word about the Arian heresy. It was first propounded by Arius the presbyter, in
the second or third century.
In its simplest form, as believed by the Germanic tribes beyond the Roman Empire, it
clained that Christ was merely a man, a hero of some sort.
But Arius’ doctrine was far subtler. He insisted that as Platonic or Neo Platonic
doctrine said the godhead was undifferentiated and impassive, incapable of reacting
with or being reacted upon by the creation, and which he took to be true, then Jesus
cannot have been God, but was a lesser created albeit supernatural being.
But any student of scripture knows that God is not impassive, for He passionately
feels and does react with his creation. Indeed that is what love does. And the creation
interacting with God is what worship is. What the Platonists insist God cannot do or
receive from his creation is in fact what He commands of his creation.
Ergo the God of the Platonists is not the God of the Bible. Therefore applying platonic
doctrine to christian truth is risky at best and absolutely anathema at worst.
Platonism could only be true if Deism were true. But it is not.
The fact and nature of creation refutes the Platonic doctrine of forms, and God’s own
revealed character, revealed in Creation, in Scripture and ultimately in Christ refutes
platonic claims about God’s character also.
Platonic doctrine cannot defend transubstantiation without first being defended by the
Bible - something which I believe cannot be done.
Did Christ somehow enter the bread?
Even so this establishes nothing, and is in itself a retreat from the position that the
bread IS Christ.
Christ enters the believer on regeneration, but by no means do I become Christ or even
divine. The most a Christian can ever expect is to become righteous, and fully human,
never divine. Incidentally I regard St Athanasius’ dictum “God became Man that Man
might become God” to be anathema,  indeed seeking to be God was Satan’s original
sin. So, if Christ only enters the bread still Christ is not the bread.
Did Christ incarnate the bread?
Now this notion looks promising to believers in transubstantiation but if the notion
that the communion wafer was born of a virgin is not absurd in itself nevertheless I
submit that the notion is logically incoherent. (As incoherent, I might add, as the
notion of some extremist fundamentalists, implied by their bibliolatry, that it was the
book that was crucified for the sins of the world)
Christ as God pre-exists the creation. God can become a man precisely because God
did become a man, namely Jesus Christ.
But a man cannot become a God. I cannot become anyone other than who I am. I can
become manifestly righteous, cleansed of sin, but nothing more is necessary.
The bread existed as bread before it was consecrated. Though Christ became a man
yet if the bread that started its existence as flour and water can become Christ then a
man can become Christ.
Such a notion is of course anathema, as Christ is eternal and pre existent.
God took on human flesh but human flesh did not become God. Catholic doctrine
asserts that the bread becomes Christ when consecrated, but though God can create,
the created cannot become God. For this is, I repeat, a form of the Arian heresy, or
another heresy rightly rejected by the early church, whereby some claim that the man
Jesus became God when the Holy Spirit came on him after his baptism. If bread can
become God then this demonstrates by its logical form that Jesus became God rather
than is pre existently and eternally Ggod
To summarize, Platonism is false and cannot be appealed to the justify
transubstantiation, and without it the Mass is in every way subsidiary to Golgotha,
therefore it not to be identified with it, moreover the trinity certainly does not require
Platonism to be true; the bread cannot become God for firstly such divinity is
contingent which is reductio ad absurdam, as divinity by its own nature is not
contingent; bestowed divinity is unbiblical; God entering a created thing never means
that the created thing becomes God; and the notion that Christ incarnated the bread if
not seen to be prima facie absurd then itself devolves back to either of the two notions
just mentioned.
Could God become bread? Perhaps, but this is not what Catholic doctrine claims.
They claim the bread becomes God. To defend the Real Presence by rewriting the
doctrine to say that God becomes bread rather than the converse is to render
erroneously expressed a doctrine that is the very core of that tradition which catholics
call Sacred. This likewise is something they cannot do.
The Bread and wine are therefore not the body and blood of Christ. "This is my body"
is therefore a metaphor, as is eating his flesh a metaphor for intimate relationship with
the Living God..
None of this does violence to the Biblical text, being as it is an expression of the
Hebraic fondness for colourful metaphor. No data in Scripture is given requiring that
the passages in question here be taken literally, and the logical implications of taking
them literally here set up internal contradictions with the rest of Scripture.
Failing to discern the body, the sin mentioned by St Paul, is not failing to discern that
the bread is Christ, but failing to discern, through flippancy or ignorance, what the
bread symbolizes and commemorates.
What are the essential elements of the Passion?
For clearly if the Mass is the crucifixion then all the aspects of the crucifixion must be
present for this catholic identification of the two to be valid.
What are they?
The bleeding and broken body, they will say, as the body and blood are hidden under
the empirical accidents (that is to say the visible and observable sensory data)  of the
sight, weight,  texture and taste of the wafer and the wine.
But is this sufficient?
Shed blood alone is insufficient, as has been mordantly pointed out by atheist skeptics,
for given this a mere paper cut on his hand would have sufficed.
I suggest that shed blood leading even to death is insufficient, as an accident, a fall or
a grievous wound from a tool would have been sufficient.
Further required is the element of suffering, the sense of despair, and the whole sense
of punishment contained in the crucifixion not only the physical pain but the
emotional pain, for the instrument of the purchasing of our redemption was not a
painless bleeding of an unconscious man or even the rejoicing, though in physical
pain, as typified the deaths of many martyrs.
The cry "My God My God why have you forsaken me" is a crucial aspect of the
passion, indeed I submit that without it his death was a mere martyrdom, the death of
a good man, and not a redemption. For without the despair which revealed christ’s
separation from God there may be no separation from God, but the punishment for sin
is separation from God.
Therefore, if Catholic doctrine is here true, not only is the body and blood contained
in the bread and the wine, but the mind which cried out in despair before yielding up
his spirit likewise must be contained in the bread and wine if the bread and wine
contain sufficient elements of the passion to be identical to it.
And as the crucifixion was the dying of a broken and bleeding body, not merely the
broken and bleeding of a body already dead, if the Mass *IS* the crucifixion of Christ
then the bread is a suffering living person who cried out in agony, "My God why have
you forsaken me?" even if the cry is masked by the accidents of the bread and wine.
And the priest’s breaking of the wafer is a punitive act. For Golgotha was not only
death and suffering, but punishment.
Therefore the bread and wine is a sentient being with a mind who despairs at
approximately 11:30 every Sunday morning in thousands of Catholic churches all over
the world, being punished by the priest who broke his body.
This being the case the crucifixion was not merely the mechanical breaking of a body
and the shedding of blood. It was not only the suffering of a person, it was the death of
a person. Jesus cried out (which cry of anguish is necessary if the crucifixion contains
all the essential elements of the passion, which it must if it is more than a mere
memorial). And he died.
The living body became a dead one, otherwise there was no redemption. Therefore if
the bread is the sacrifice of Christ the living bread became dead bread which yielded
up a spirit which necessarily was also hidden under the accidents of the bread and
wine, but, having now gone, being yielded to the Father, is no longer present in the
bread.
The communicants eat not living bread but dead bread, for if Christ did not die He
redeemed no one, and if the Mass is the sacrifice then the bread is dead, having
suffered and despaired as well as bleeding and being torn.
.
I submit this is reductio ad absurdam, which means a disproof of an idea by showing
the logical contradictions contained within it. The lord’s supper is not the crucifixion
of Christ, logic will not allow it to contain sufficient elements for this to be so.
Therefore it is a memorial, to the fact that he died once and for all and
IT IS FINISHED

The Birds

This is a favourite of mine, written in 1987 after seeing birds eating bread I had thrown out. I called it a parable but suspect that fable is a better term for this piece has elements that are, in the original sense of the word, that is as pertaining to fables, fabulous, that is to say magical or pertaining to fantasy.


 THE BIRDS

Stephen Meikle

    Once upon a time there was a man who loved birds, and who delighted in
nothing better than to feed them crumbs and then to sit back, watching them
eat and be satisfied.
    He also wanted to have the birds hop into his hand. How he longed to
play with them and delight in their close presence, caressing them and
feeding them from his own hand! But the man was mighty, of stern and
fearsome visage, or so it seemed to the birds. He was also very big in
height and girth and on seeing this the birds thought he was as fierce as
his looks. His presence so terrified them that they would not approach the
bread until he had departed. But whenever he did leave, the bread, which he
always dropped, suddenly became rotten. It grew mold and began to smell
terribly. Because of this some of the birds despised the man and his gifts
and so went off and starved because there was a famine in the land in which
the birds could only be fed by the charity of man.
    Some other birds, however, persuaded themselves that they needed and
indeed loved moldy bread, such was the fierceness of their hunger pangs
that it warped their little minds. These poor little birds would gorge on
it, telling themselves that it was their own fault if they failed to love
moldy bread and that, besides, moldy bread was an acquired taste. But
then, becoming drugged by the poisons in the mold, they tried to force
other birds to eat this bread even if these others flew away.
    Of those who acquired the taste for moldy bread some would fly far
afield to tell others of this miraculous moldy loaf but they and the
flocks that joined them perished in the fierce winds of distant lands.
Others, including some of the far fliers, would take a crumb in their beaks
and through its narcotic properties gained magical powers. Behold! They
could feed more than five thousand birds from just one bread crumb! Yet the
bread they made to feed all of them, even the leftovers, basketsful, was
still all moldy.
    But the worst and saddest cases of all were those comparatively few
most highly dedicated to the bread who only ate the mold in order to get
the unique properties of this wondrous bread undiluted. These died
instantly, but the mold animated their corpses. They knew this and
rejoiced that they were 'dead in the loaf' and 'risen to a new song' for
indeed their voices were changed. Only the other birds, however, recognized
this song for what is was - the keening of a bird of prey, and most of them
fled the mold eaters, but the mold eaters only laughed, or rather
screeched, saying that theirs was a radical renewal of the state of
birdness, like being re-hatched once more, and that the others weren't true
birds at all, but were still in the shell of ignorance, dependent on the
yolk of compromise. But the mold could only animate their dead bodies,
enabling them to eat and chirp and fly, if for only a short time.

    For the fact remained, alas, that all who ate this moldy bread died
sooner or later, unless they returned to find the man in the hope that he
could cure them. For he can be seen daily feeding the birds in the city
park even to this present time, and any bird who returns there looking for
him and is willing to wait for him is sure to find him. In his love for
birds the man has researched every aspect of the health and wellbeing of
birds, and knows fully how to cure them of the mold poisoning.
    All the bird seeking a cure for the poisoning needs to do is to hop
into his hand

     Herein is wisdom. The man who loved feeding birds is God. The birds
are humanity. Those who confused moldy bread with wholesome and rejected
both are unbelievers. Those who ate it are religious hypocrites. The far
fliers are missionaries of legalism, the miracle workers evangelists of
supernatural presumption, and the mold eaters are those mislead by carnal
zeal without knowledge, fanatic and super spiritually minded. The mold is
any aspect of the gospel, especially God's wrath which is invariably
distorted and exaggerated when the Holy Spirit has departed. But the mold
is not the bread, which is eternal life and the Word of God, the love and
presence of the Father which can only be had direct from his hand; failing
this it becomes the dead letter which kills.

For verily, verily, thus saith the Lord, thus is the giver greater than the
gift. He who has ears let him hear.

Word and Spirit

I saw a brief video on youtube which argued for a balance between Word (that is, the Bible) with Spirit.

Some, namely the non charismatics, favour word over Spirit, whereas  Charismatics, articularly in their extreme incarnations, favour Spirit over word.

My rejoinder to both is this:

Those who reject the Spirit for the Word also reject the  Word; and those who reject the Word for the Spirit also reject the Spirit.


I shall elaborate below

Those who reject Spirit also reject the Word for the Word speaks time and time again of the Spirit without Whom we cannot grow as christians. For it is still true that the letter kills. It is the Spirit, namely the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, who gives us life in personal relationship one on one. Without the Spirit the Bible consists of things we as carnal minds find ridiculous if we were honest enough to admit this; and even such honesty can only come by the conviction of sin that is the speciality of the Holy
Spirit. Moreover without  the Spirit the Bible consists of commandments that are impossible to obey for Paul the apostle speaks of the impossible things of the Law. Without the Spirit we are backsliders even if we were ever born again in the first place for scripture says that if you do not have the Spirit you are none of his. though we might passionately hold the doctrines and work very hard at our lives the core of the faith is the personal relationship with the Spirit of Christ, and not the scriptures which describe Him, the terms He offers for relationship with Him and the nature of our need for Him forsaking Him is to fall into the error of the Galatians

To summarize: To reject the Spirit in favour of the word is to disobey and disbelieve the Word for the Word is not a merely  law code.

More later

Welcome

I have always suspected that blogging was an exercise in personal vanity, so I have refrained from such for quite a few years. But of course I have my own personal vanity and may very well  here have  been temped by it.

We shall see if all blogging is indeed an exercise therein, or only if mine is