This article was inspired by a letter wrote by the Newark/NJ church minister John Shelby Spong. But, for you not doing the mistake I did initially, being convinced by the apparent honesty position of Shelby, I advise that his discourse can hidden a mental distortion. I was advised when I read a debate between two persons:
| Person 1: “To me, that is not the type of response (the Shelby´s letter) that a crook or a liar would give.” |
Person 2: “Well, just for a wee surprise , I disagree! This creature, John Shelby, is every bit as evil as Benny Hinn ( which, this person believe is a charlatan)! What he is essentially saying is that he knows that Christianity is a heap of sh*t, but he wants to keep it going under some different guise. Why doesn’t he just come out and say that he now thinks that Christianity is nonsense instead of trying to repackage it? He has came to the conclusion that the religion he preached for so long is actually garbage, why not just admit that and move on instead for trying to mislead more people? I know why. He is preying on those Christians who are having doubts about their faith. He is saying ” hey, I know that at this moment in time you are having doubts about your faith because a lot of it doesn’t make sense right now, but I had these doubts too, and here is how I overcame these doubts”. Buy my books! He’s a crook Phat, every bit as bad as Hinn and all the others. He is a liar too, completely dishonest.”
Ok, I personally also found a problem in Shelby´s letter, when he says that: ” One says that the God in whom I always believed is no more, so I will become an atheist. People make this decision daily. It is an easy way out.“
No, this is not the easy way out, it is the hardest way. Because we know the universal eternal dichotomy between two opposites. Everything comes with this duality, if there is cold, must have hot. One is totally the negation, the annihilation, of the other. Nobody gets going from the most extreme alternative of one side straight on the other extreme alternative. But, our life experience has shown to us that in the extremes is not good for us. So we need move from the extremes, in this case, the extremes are “there is supernatural God, a unique God” and “there are no supernaturals, there is no God”. Deism and atheism, are not rational, intelligent, choice. I know, an atheist will not accept this statement, and I know his arguments, but I think they are not logical arguments. Same thing, a deist will not accept it. I think his arguments are not logical either.
So, what a rational intelligence can do here? Looking around, our life´s experience and real facts: for us, as a body of matter, the best position is at the thermodynamic equilibrium, the point at the middle between two opposites. So, what would be the middle between “there is a supernatural God” and “there is no supernaturals, no God” ?
I would suggest: ” There is something that is half-supernatural and half-natural, which is something that can be called by a different name other than God”
Ok, I am trying to be rational, intelligent, and honest. But,… am I really honest? There are no unconscious machiavellic plan in my suggestion? Yes, unfortunately ( it seems to me now), yes. While writing this scheme of logic I had a previous board in my mind towards witch I was driven the scheme. The previous board was – the Matrix/DNA world view. This theory is suggesting the existence of an ex-machine ( existing since before the Big Bang and beyond this perceived-by-humans Universe) creature, which is a natural system unable to do miracles ( although his knowledge can do natural things that we will believe it are miracles), that has as body, wave of light ( as described by Matrix/DNA, with internal anatomy as a living thing) which is embedded into consciousness, creating things as universes for to reproduce himself by the natural method of genetics.
So, I encountered the exactly middle point. Since I know you have not and is searching it, by my book!
Yes, maybe I am dishonesty also, like it seems to be Shelby. The big difference is that when Shelby wrote that he had lots of books to sell, and I have no book. I think it is my moral obligation with my kind, and principally to my fellows naturalist philosophers that can not live long time isolated in the virgin nature, to inform what is the result of my standing there. It seems that it does not matter if will sell one exemplar or not, my moral obligation is to write it. But I am not getting the force for doing it, it is very hard because there are thousands of topics, I don´t know which to begin with and how to choose the most importants facts and evidences and good reasonings, etc. And my actual financial situation is not good for building the right installations, buying the best devices, isolating by months or years writing this book. This is my justification: “I can´t do it at these conditions, it is not my fault.”
So, the very fact that Shelby earned millions dollars with his letters like this one, and that – I think – he was not intelligently logical at his choice – are advice for me and you before reading the following letter:
John Shelby Spong writes:
Elmo Hoffman, via the Internet, writes:
I have read much of your work and met you once at Stetson University in Deland, Florida, at a pastor’s conference. It was the same venue where I also met Marcus Borg. I am a retired civil trial lawyer and a late-life seminary graduate, now an ordained Disciples of Christ minister, although before seminary I was a lifelong Presbyterian (USA) from the same time frame and section of North Carolina as you. My question, which gives me a great deal of trouble, is: What is your basic understanding of petitionary prayer? I believe you have said, “A God who would save the life of one prayed-for cancer-stricken child and not another would be a monster.” This makes sense but gives me a great deal of trouble in considering petitionary prayer. (I have read your book Honest Prayer — I find no answer to this problem there.)
Spong replies:
Dear Elmo,
Thank you for your comments and for your question. Your question on petitionary prayer is almost always the first question that comes up wherever I go to lecture. People can talk about their understanding of God until the cows come home, but nothing really changes until they translate their understanding of God into their prayers. More than anything else, our prayers define our understanding of God. So to talk about prayer, we have to define who the God is to whom we pray. To say it differently, “Who do we think is listening?”
Most people, quite unconsciously, approach the subject of prayer with a very traditional concept of God quite operative in their minds. This God is a personal being, endowed with supernatural power, who lives somewhere outside this world, usually conceptualized as “above the sky.” While that definition has had a long history among human beings, it is a definition of God that has been rendered meaningless by the advance of human knowledge. This means that for most of us the activity of prayer does not take seriously the fact that we live in a vast universe, and that we have not yet come to grips with the fact that there is no supernatural, parental deity above the sky, keeping the divine record books on human behavior up to date and ready at any moment to intervene in human history to answer prayers. When we do embrace this fact then prayer, as normally understood, becomes an increasingly impossible idea and inevitably a declining practice. To get people to embrace this point clearly, I have suggested that the popular prayers of most people is little more than adult letters written to a Santa Claus God.
There are then two choices. One says that the God in whom I always believed is no more, so I will become an atheist. People make this decision daily. It is an easy way out.
The other says that the way I have always thought of God has become inoperative, so there must be something wrong with my definition. This stance serves to plunge us deeply into a new way of thinking about God, and that is when prayer itself begins to be redefined. Can God, for example, be conceived of not as supernatural person, but as a force present in me and flowing through me? Then perhaps prayer can be transformed into meditation and petitionary prayer becomes a call to action. The spiritual life is then transformed from the activity of a child seeking the approval of a supernatural being to being a simultaneous journey into self-discovery and into the mystery of God. It also feeds my sense of growing into oneness with the source of all life and love and with what my mentor, Paul Tillich, called the Ground of All Being. It would take a book to fill in the blank places in this quick analysis, but these are the things that today feed my ever deepening discovery of the meaning of prayer.
– John Shelby Spong
xxxxx
Well… what I have to say about that? ( added later: I wrote the following before be advised that Shelby could be dishonest)
In the jungle there is chaos, horrors, predators torturing, killing and eating preys. All of them are natural systems in themselves. But, sometimes when walking in the jungle, you see a little flower. It is so careless, so alone, it does nothing bad to nobody, only spreads beautiful and perfume around. It seems to be the flow of order trying to emerge from chaos, trying to build the world of order. The plant flower is also a system in itself.
If all natural systems are made off by the same formula, how could be the bad and the good ones?
Inevitable answer: the formula has two states, two faces, one bad, other good.
Exactly! When we see the anatomy of this formula, we see that a side of its face is in state of order, the other side is in state of chaos.
This formula came from light, from before and beyond the Big Bang. So, the formula works as fractals, the little one inside me and the big one beyond this Universe, as the final world. Standing inside this Universe we never will know the thru about it, then, less we will know what´s going on beyond it, or before it. What did this formula in this way, being bad and being good, being chaos and being order?
It matters for you, just now and here, in the shape of a human being? It matters for me, I am very curious, I need to know the ultimate thru – if there is one, or not, I need know it. But I know it is impossible for now.
What matters most now? That I wish my people, the preys of the jungle, the flower in the jungle, gets a better world with better life. And these things is only possible in the good world. The force for building the good world and the force for building the bad world are flowing inside me, as the good and the bad face of the Matrix.
So, my prayer was transformed into meditation, remembering the shapes of the Matrix – like as closed or opened systems – and thinking about that, trying to know which is the good face. In the day I will find it, the next step is searching the signal that can connect the good face inside me with its fractal good face in the end.
The majority of evidences that I know till now are suggesting that one characteristic of the good face is to be an opened system. And they are suggesting that the bad face – a closed system – is responsible, for instance, for our selfish gene. By now, then, I am betting towards the face of the Matrix as opened system. And, so, the face of the big fractal. I am imagining now a kind of sinapse as channel linking these two faces. That´s my prayer.
Now I need know, it the good face of the Matrix is just here, in the shape of human beings, what it must do for building the good world? The final suggestion of the Matrix/DNA tells a lot about it: ” You, humanity, are 8 billions self-conscious genes building the embryo of cosmic consciousness. So, look to genes, looking how they works, how they must relates to one another, and do the same.”
But do not do what I am doing, before You must consulting yours world view, making yours imaginations and choices. maybe I am medium wrong, or totally wrong, or a little bit right.
xxxxxxx
E-mail enviado a John Shelby via secção de contacts do site https://progressingspirit.com/ em 01/02/2020
I am the author of ” The Universal Formula Matrix/DNA of All Natural Systems and Life´s Cycles Theory”.
I found my solution about a new vision of God and a new way of praying, inspired under Dr. Spong phrase: ” Can God, for example, be conceived of not as supernatural person, but as a force present in me and flowing through me? Then perhaps prayer can be transformed into meditation and petitionary prayer becomes a call to action. “
So, I wrote an article at my website, with the following text:
In the jungle there is chaos, horrors, predators torturing, killing and eating preys. All of them are natural systems in themselves. But, sometimes when walking in the jungle, you see a little flower. It is so careless, so alone, it does nothing bad to nobody, only spreads beautiful and perfume around. It seems to be the flow of order trying to emerge from chaos, trying to build the world of order. The plant flower is also a system in itself.
If all natural systems are made off by the same formula, how could be the bad and the good ones?
Inevitable answer: the formula has two states, two faces, one bad, other good.
Exactly! When we see the anatomy of this formula, we see that a side of its face is in state of order, the other side is in state of chaos.
This formula came from light, from before and beyond the Big Bang. So, the formula works as fractals, the little one inside me and the big one beyond this Universe, as the final world. Standing inside this Universe we never will know the thru about it, then, less we will know what´s going on beyond it, or before it. What did this formula in this way, being bad and being good, being chaos and being order?
It matters for you, just now and here, in the shape of a human being? It matters for me, I am very curious, I need to know the ultimate thru – if there is one, or not, I need know it. But I know it is impossible for now.
What matters most now? That I wish my people, the preys of the jungle, the flower in the jungle, gets a better world with better life. And these things is only possible in the good world. The force for building the good world and the force for building the bad world are flowing inside me, as the good and the bad face of the Matrix.
So, my prayer was transformed into meditation, remembering the shapes of the Matrix – like as closed or opened systems – and thinking about that, trying to know which is the good face. In the day I will find it, the next step is searching the signal that can connect the good face inside me with its fractal good face in the end.
The majority of evidences that I know till now are suggesting that one characteristic of the good face is to be an opened system. And they are suggesting that the bad face – a closed system – is responsible, for instance, for our selfish gene. By now, then, I am betting towards the face of the Matrix as opened system. And, so, the face of the big fractal. I am imagining now a kind of sinapse as channel linking these two faces. That´s my prayer.
Now I need know, it the good face of the Matrix is just here, in the shape of human beings, what it must do for building the good world? The final suggestion of the Matrix/DNA tells a lot about it: ” You, humanity, are 8 billions self-conscious genes building the embryo of cosmic consciousness. So, look to genes, looking how they works, how they must relates to one another, and do the same.”
But do not do what I am doing, before You must consulting yours world view, making yours imaginations and choices. maybe I am medium wrong, or totally wrong, or a little bit right.”
My discoveries in the jungle lead to a new world view, and about Jesus Christ, it is suggesting the same idea of Dr. Shelby. Since I also living in Newark, NJ, and saw Mr. John in the church, I would appreciate an answer about if it is possible we meet for a talk, I think that it will be good for both… Thanks
xxxxxxx
Post em português publicado no Facebook (01/02/20):
Um Deus que salvasse uma criança morrendo de cancer para quem foram feitas algumas orações, e não salvasse outra criança na mesma situação, para a qual ninguém orou, seria um monstro. Da mesma forma, salvar aquele que falou com Ele em oração e não salvar o outro que não falou com Ele, seria outro monstro.
Se você visse um horrível leão sendo circundado pelo fogo, sabendo que ele iria morrer queimado e você tivesse poder, você o salvaria ou assisti-lo-ia morrer sob tortura?
Eu o salvaria, mesmo considerando-o meu pior inimigo, e mesmo que teria de mante-lo na jaula depois para não matar mais ninguém. E penso que seria um monstro assistindo-o morrer sob tortura.
O jeito que os humanos estão orando para o tipo de Deus que construíram em imagem, não tem funcionado. Conheci pessoas que sempre se acreditaram cidadãos do bem, que quando começaram a envelhecer viveram mais nas igrejas orando que em outro lugar, e tiveram mortes torturadas por dezenas de anos sob terríveis doenças. Não adianta fechar os olhos para isso, acho que a maioria conheceu pessoas assim.
Então o que fazer?
Neste artigo cito uma carta de um pastor Americano, no qual penso existir imensa sabedoria. Ele percebeu este problema de Deus e nossas orações. E então ficou um tempo perdido, pois ele precisava acreditar em algo, ele queria ter motivos para rezar nas suas noites solitárias. A resposta que ele encontrou, acho que foi brilhante, não apenas porque, foi a mesma que encontrei antes. Porque não trocar um deus supernatural existindo fora do nosso mundo por uma força benéfica existindo dentro de você? E criar uma meditação em que esta força se expande e guie suas decisões?
Eu fiz uma investigação que ninguém mais fez, cheguei a conclusão que dentro de mim existe uma força a qual denominei de Matrix/DNA. Até desenhei sua anatomia baseando nos fatos conhecidos. Vi que essa força carrega o dualismo em si, ela tem a face boa e a face má ao mesmo tempo. Mas ela não existe apenas em mim. As duas faces estão como grandes fractais no futuro, no fim, como o mundo bom e o mundo ruim. Ora claro que escolhi expandir a face boa, oprimir a face ruim, e buscar o canal de comunicação entre o pequeno fractal da face boa em mim e a face boa no final.
Mas então surgiu a questão: ok, já sei como orar, como transformar a oração em meditação interna mexendo com minhas energias internas, mas o grande problema continua: o que deve fazer neste mundo um representante da face boa com a meta de construir o mundo bom?
A mesma formula da Matrix/DNA deu uma resposta: ” Você, Humanidade. composta de 8 bilhões de genes semi-conscientes estão aqui para construir um embrião da auto-consciência cósmica. Então observe os genes trabalhando, como eles se unem para construir um novo ser, como eles se relacionam, e simplesmente, faça igual.”
Grande! Por mim estou satisfeito, preenchido até o ultimo dos meus dias. Sinto não poder me comunicar com o pastor americano para lhe contar a solução que encontrei. Não que esteja sugerindo que mais alguém me imite, pois não sei se acertei ou se errei feio, apenas sei que isto satisfaz as exigências da minha racionalidade e para mim serviu. Cada qual deve escolher o que fazer, inclusive é livre para continuar a imaginado o mesmo Deus e fazendo as mesmas orações, pois também sabemos de caos em que elas ajudaram, mesmo que tenham funcionado como o efeito placebo. No link abaixo mostro a carta do pastor, porem esta em inglês: https://theuniversalmatrix.com
