.
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A proportionate response and an eye for an eye are not so far apart. All good godly correctness.
You assassinate one of ours – we send a small number of targeted missiles at you. You deny you are war-mongering – we deny we are war-mongering. You call it self-defence – we call it self-defence.
You have seen it written but I say …
More and more I see the bible less an ally of Christianity – and more a “timeless-universal non-aligned-to-any-institution” … an “all-ARE-welcome” piece of stuff. More and more I see the bible as above all the “stuff” we love so much – all the “what do you believe” … “who do you believe” … all the “are you one of us or one of them” “stuff”.
Pray for Australia.
When the Amazon was suffering similar ravages it was politicians fault. Their inactivity where they should have been active – their activity where they shouldn’t have active. No “Pray for the Amazon” then. Just global pressure to change the politicians politics. And Australia is not too big for politics as their prime minister discovered recently. But these fires need more than man-made-political solutions – they need God-made solutions. Like loads of rain and much less wind.
And – because we are taught to believe what we believe – we also need BIG NUMBERS praying to God or else God might not hear and might not act. So Pray for Australia. Which fits nicely in Facebook
Do I sound sceptical?
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We use and abuse the bible every day of every week of every month of every year in every country it is preached …
We listen to the teaching of the vested institutions of qualified theologians …
We accept the politics of religion as we accept the imperfections of politics …
We wring our hands and accept we cannot do anything other than express displeasure in our divisive tweets and status updates …
We hear the phrase “biblically correct … scripturally correct” taught as fact – and abused to “faith-shame” those who must be outed …
We each allow Love to become conditional AND base AND man-made AND man-defined – and not Love at all …
We accuse the secular-and-other-faiths-world of disbelief …
We attack their chant that “Christians“ are no more than another comfortable self-serving-social-club …
We attack them as unsaved and unchurched and lost …
And – oddly – we never admit-acknowledge that it is OUR world … OUR choices that mean this globe is on course for annihilation …. by OUR our own hand and OUR own decisions and NOT by a bibically correct “God” at all.
You have seen it written but I say …
Does not require a degree-in-God …
Does not require finessing the bible-bits that don’t fit …
The Greatest of These is global and universal and timeless …
The Greatest of These is not of institution or correctness …
The Greatest of These is Love …
Love stripped of condition and qualified theology …
Stripped of colour or creed or I believe …
Stripped of anything but equality of choice for all …
That is inclusive of dignity, respect and kindness by all for all …
Love that is stronger than steel, concrete or any man-made compound (that we congratulate ourselves on inventing as we strip the world of more stuff without a thought for the future).
Love challenges …
Those who believe national pride and “making us great” is the way to go …
Who think an eye for an eye as a “proportionate response” is acceptable …
Love challenges …
Our world to make politics the caretaker of this planet that politics was invented to be …
A caretaker not just of The Club that is “us and ours” – but of all …
And Love challenges …
Those who believe a degree-in-God is necessary to teach those unqualified-in-God just what God REALLY meant by “The Greatest of These is” …
Our dog is … our young grandchildren are … animals and children born into faiths, religions and cultures anywhere and everywhere since time began are …
The secular world knows – institutions of ALL faiths know – ALL politicians know – we ALL know without need for being “correct” or “qualified” in anything theological at all …
Yet we keep saying “but” …
We keep saying “commandments” …
We keep saying “them” …
We keep needing what we have in case “they” take it from us …
We keep needing to be “great again” at the expense of those who must be “weak always” …
And that ain’t Love at all.
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Just me being curious 
“(RSV) and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
“(RSV) God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.”
The world was given to us to care for, what happens here is of our making. We decry what has happened in the Amazon and blame them for the changing climate. Meanwhile we (U.S., but I’m sure it’s elsewhere as well) tear down thousands of acres of forests to build homes, shopping centers, business complexes, as if it had no effect. We pave millions (billions?) of miles of earth with black asphalt so we don’t dirty our feet in the mud, believing it has no effect. Then, when it seems we have pass the point of no return (at least the point where change might be uncomfortable) we ask the Almighty to save the world?
Carlin said it best, “somehow we are gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little green ball that’s just floating around the sun. The planet has been through a lot worse than us. The planet isn’t going anywhere — we are.”
Perhaps this is Armageddon, and it is of our own creation. How apropos.
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Wow! You have a wonderful way with words – thank you.
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When I was little I would walk around the neighborhood with bare feet (until my mother yelled at me about it) with no problems. Then they started paving roads with asphalt, the blacktop absorbed so much heat that I could not long go around without shoes. Every time I see a new road paved with the black stuff it takes me back, then I start thinking about how that heat is stored and reflected back into the atmosphere.
We look at the world and find things we don’t like (fossil fuels) and put all the blame on them. Since the time that everyone points to as the start of warming lots of changes have been made to our environment that affect the planet just as much, if not more – but we ignore them because to change them would infringe on parts of our lives we don’t want to change. Trees are what remove CO2 from the atmosphere, we blame S. America because making them change does not affect us. But we are fine with replacing forests with lawns, even though grass is one of the worst CO2 exchangers in the plant world. But, we like grass, hate trees (raking all those leaves) so we are good with our deforestation efforts, but hate their deforestation efforts. As my grandmother would say, the world is caca.
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