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In Reply to: Re: purifying gas.. posted by Rocky on August 04, 2003 at 09:34:16:
yo, rocky! (sorry, couldn't resist...love those movies!) tx 4 getting back w/ your thoughts. a few thoughts in reply..
- we definitely have more to deal w/ than your average midlifer! (i used to joke, most people hit midlife, wanna quit their job,dump their mortgage, get a cute blond girlfriend, and travel the world. i, on the other hand, got a job, broke up w/ the blond, got a mortgage...) but, SOME of what we go thru IS "common to men" as paul put it. even w/o the trip thru molandia, we would be facing the realities of life on the way back down. setbacks, broken dreams, betrayals, disillusionment, sickness and death of loved ones,troubled children, crises of faith, etc. personally, i find it helpful to realize all of my issues are not cult related. (baldness and obesity , for example. ah, so long to my boyish good looks!) we are all the children of adam...
-"keepers and dogs"? don't know the expression i guess. o well..
-"spirit of Job" and the psalms refers to the honest, heartfelt, let-it-all-hang-out-cause-God can-take-it dialogue one finds there. a big relief from the pressure to skim over the real stuff while 'in' ..these are personal issues, to be sure. but i didn't think up this approach, it was recommended to me, and has proven helpful to many struggling thru tough issues w/ God.
-the ref. to "bleak theology" was not regarding family theology,(a bit of an oxymoron..) but rather the picture we are left w/ in the aftermath if we see our fam. experience as totally demonic, and that God did nothing to deliver us. rather, i see it as a mix of forces, and experiences, all w/in the presence of God, and his spirit was accessible to us, despite our delusions and deceptions, w/in the parameters of our personal relationship w/ him, and the spiritual warfare being waged all about us. not even db's dt's can seperate us from the love of God. (see ro.8:35-39)
- clearly some behavior is black and white. but i do not believe anyone experienced an undiluted, unremitting stream of black, all day everyday during their hitch. it is right to call black black. but to call white or grey black is to dilute the meaning of black. allowing one's entire experience to be portrayed as uniformly evil gives too much power to the enemy,imo.and pictures God as having been asleep at the wheel.
as you say, we all work thru our own salvation w/ this stuff. i have not walked in your mocassins. but perhaps a different point of veiw occassionally may be useful. i know if i ever feel like i'm starting to get to pollyannish about things, i can always count on you to redirect me. ha! God bless, bro. hope and healing to you.
