"Turning Back to God"

Yay for Glenn Beck giving me a great reason to rant.

Basically, the whole country's ranting/complaining/praising whatever version of God they believe in that Beck is holding a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial...supposedly to ring in America's return to "christian" morals and values in the political realm.

...when in reality (something Beck refuses to believe in) Christian morals and values (however you define that) don't EXIST in the political realm.


We should probably stop the contradictory notion that we are a "christian nation" AND YET are so sinful that Sodom and Gomorrah demand a note of apology.

...in addition to completely throwing out the idea of a "Christian nation" anyway. Read... the Treaty of Tripoli for a lesson in what our government (and, in reality, the constitution) thinks we should be.

Nations aren't Christian. Individuals are Christians. We can't throw spiritual bombs and assume everyone caught in the blast radius is going to instantly toss their old selves and start believing in/following Christ.
Our responsibility as individual Christians is to those in our circle, whom we influence and interact with on a daily basis, NOT any of the groups we try to box others into in order to feel superior to them.

Glenn Beck and his ilk, in addition to being power-hungry warmongers, maintain a good-old-days delusion, that at some point American WASN'T dealing with the spiritual issues which it faces today.
The only difference now is that we are more free as a nation to BRING THOSE ISSUES TO LIGHT, not sweep them under the rug by order of the Church's traditions.

Those who maintain that delusion don't want to have to remain intellectually present in the spiritual and political realms. They are addicted to a black-and-white world of "absolutes" (read: catchphraes/soundbites) which has NEVER existed except in name, and NOW is fading away even in name.

If anything, it is time for America to step up as a nation and throw off the shackles of black-and-white blanket thinking, and admit that the spiritual and political issues with which we each struggle daily do NOT have easy solutions or clear-cut answers, and finding some sort of resolution to them requires contributions from EACH OF US, each bringing his or her own experiences and reasoning ability to the table.

Random God thoughts...

TRADITION.

Simply "we've always done it this way, so this is the way it should be."

'Tis the source of many Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox doctrines and practices which may or may not have any scriptural basis.

Does that make them essentially satanic? By no means.

However, we should all recognize that many of the things we profess to believe do not come from a single source, and thus we should not use a single source for discernment regarding which we should continue professing.

Tradition -> we stand on the shoulders of spiritual giants and learned men who oftentimes have already delved into the areas we seek to understand. We should seek to add to the accumulated wisdom, even as we acknowledge and rely on our forbears' contributions.

Reason -> God-given ability to think. Drawing lines of logical progression between church practices, doctrines, even terminology, OR seeing that no such logical progression exists.

Experience -> Our testimony. What God has already done in our lives. Does it match what we claim to believe about God, the church, or ourselves?

Scripture -> Multiple translations, multiple interpretations, multiple collections. Many times a bundle of paradoxes, but still a tool for ours and God's use. Does our personal interpretation of the Bible match our circumstances, our beliefs, our relationships?

These four are our primary sources for discernment, and each must be used carefully, even as we find connections among them.

An individual's belief should be the current conclusion of the combined filtering through tradition, reason, experience, and scripture.
I say current, because it is an ongoing process.
God is not dead, and always has more to show us.

God has not changed in the two millennia since the end of events described in the Bible.

Our understanding and perception of Him, however, which influenced the creation of Levitican and Mosaic law and how humanity reacted to the person of Christ, has changed DRASTICALLY, to the point that we must be constantly vigilant in discerning what Biblical principles came from God, and which came from man.

For anyone to say "I HAVE FOUND THE ONLY WAY" until that MOMENT, demonstrates extreme arrogance, the likes of which have not been seen Satan offered Christ the whole world if He would only bow down.

Our discernment will not end until we see God's face and the complete truth, unknowable to us in this life, will be revealed.