socks

1 hour ago, WordWolf said:

Waxit:

"The 7th day Sabbath was universally accepted by all and observed by both Jews,Gentiles and the apostles/leadership
Acts 13:

⁴² And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue, the Gentiles besought these words might be preached to them the next sabbath.

⁴³ Now when the congregation was broken up, many of the Jews and religious proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas: who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.

⁴⁴ And the next sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God."

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[Actually, if this is the only place you're getting it from, you're jumping to a conclusion.

The synagogue was open on "the Sabbath" for prayer and talking about God.  That was expected among the practicing Jews who were not Christians.  When some Jews believed and became Christians,  the "default" for them automatically would have been to meet on the same day unless they were unable to do so.  There's also nothing shocking about a "Christian Jew" going to the synagogue to hear the Torah (Old Testament)  being read.  That was the only place to do it, and there were no printing presses so no Bibles at home to read from.    

So, unless they were prevented from doing so, "Christian Jews" would show up at the synagogue on "the Sabbath", listen to the Torah being read, and speaking to devout Jews about the Messiah and preaching Christ to them.   They'd want devout Jews to know the coming Messiah had arrived, after all.   It's also not terribly shocking that some Gentiles who'd want to hear would follow news of "Christian Jews" (the disciples)  would end up near, around, or otherwise at the synagogue to hear.  That's where they were, that's where they were teaching, and that's WHEN they were teaching.

All of that is simple human nature (force of habit, this is where the Torah is being read so I listen there,  this is where they need to hear, so I speak there), and it's not necessary to even get into "Israel was told to respect the Sabbath" to have a reasonable explanation. ]

I think that states my understanding and thoughts on it, from the "bottom line", WW. 

It would account for the shift of days over history, too. As Christianity moved away from it's "homeland" of the middle east and the roots of Jewish history and religious practice days could certainly shift, Saturday to Sunday, to Wednesday, to any day of the week for that matter. There really doesn't appear to be a clear order for the new church to maintain their past religious practices over time. I don't put a lot of weight on what they DIDN'T tell the Gentiles if the idea is they didn't because it would already be known or an assumed practice, because if they were Gentiles like ME, they wouldn't have known ANYthing about any of it. 

One of the things that strikes me about the way the revelation of Christ and the understanding of it developed is that it .... seems .... like it ended up requiring the passage of time and events in order for it to be fully hmmm...."realized" by the Church. I mean - while under the direct immersion of the Jewish faith, near or in Jerusalem, surrounded by history of the Jews any move into a "new" body of called out believers would naturally be influenced by the Jewish roots as you're pointing out WW. It only makes sense. Then that changed in ways that perhaps they never envisioned - Constantine converting? Roman prominence in the establishment of the new church? There were some unprecedented events that moved it away from being a persecuted cult to being essentially a state religion of Rome. Some baggage came with that and not all the changes over time were good but it DID under score the essential basics of Christ and in ways that it would have been difficult to embrace in the years or Peter and Paul. I think that adds to the incredible insight they DID get and their ability to change according to what they believed God was showing them. 

Many of the things that Paul reproved and instructed the Corinthian church on correcting read very much like the kinds of things that could develop in a social and political caste system that moved away from the fundamentals.of Christ, the servant leader, Messiah and emphasized seniority, heritage, position, etc.  

waxit, I think you make some very good points and we'd probably meet in the middle - if you go with Saturday over Sunday there's a basis for that just as there could be for Sunday over Saturday. Whatever the Jewish history was would certainly have a place of prominence because it's the history up until Christ. The coming of the Messiah formed a new era, one that was not anticipated as it came to be in the form of the "church" of the called out followers of Jesus Christ. 

17 hours ago, Waxit said:

Great point 

 

Socks- You are absolutely right when you say our relationship with God must be 24/7 and we have that priveledge of
communicating with God as christians who are living in the post resurrection of Christ era.
I must point out though the bible versions wwe have got a lot of errors in translation including the KJV which is notorious 
Just because wthe KJV tells you what has been added by way of italics doesnt mean you can trust it
This is the reason for 2 Timothy 2:15 
We normally decide what is true by what we think is the correct interpetation of scriptures based on the material
supplied by a particular version not realising that maybe there are translation errors (in ths case I think you are using
KJV. Am i correct?

In addition I would like to ask you a couple of questions:
(1) Are you saying then that the Law has been abolished?
(2) Are you saying the Jews can have one way of doing things and the Gentiles
     need not follow- the Gentiles can do their own thing






 

Hi - thanks. 

1. Fulfilled, and as it is said, a new covenant required a new priest. 
Matthew 5:17–18 - Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
2 Corinthians 1:20 - For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.
Romans 10:4 - For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
And of course as Hebrews covers - 9:12 - He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.....and....7:23–24, The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever.

2. No.
In Acts 15 they essentially came up with a compromise of sorts for the Church, a determination that freed Gentiles from needing to observe the Law, going forward.  It was their decision as to how to proceed and for them it left the topic of the church as a whole and specifically Jews still under discussion. In the teaching of the epistles however we see that there was - is - neither Jew nor Gentile and all believers in the faith are part of the same body and have the same Lord, Jesus Christ. So today there are not separate rules for each - 's'all one Church. 

My point in bringing that into the discussion is that it makes it easier to see what was really going on and to see the struggle they had in learning and accepting it, in a very human way that I get because by the Old Covenant I AM A GENTILE, and coming into the Christian faith in Jesus Christ I have none of the Jewish religion that I observe, just as Gentiles then didn't either.....so I wouldn't automatically assume any of it because I'd have to be taught it first. They recognized NOT to do that, and in time learned it applied to them also - one God, one Lord, one Body, and one salvation in Christ. 

Again, its just an easy way to understand the doctrine of the NT if I put myself into their shoes and nothing does that better than seeing the two groups of Jew and Gentile - one is God's called nation of people and - the other is "everyone else". I am in fact a Gentile from that viewpoint. But not in the "New covenant" of Jesus Christ through which all become one body, one Church, one group of called out people's. And in that new covenant Jesus Christ does not require me to be circumcised (although I am in heart separated and cleansed in this "new man" of Christ), or to tithe to the temple (although I can give and share freely of all that I am and have, in recognition of God's grace towards me) or to observe the Sabbath as a required day of "rest" and devotion (although I can now devote all my time and life, and everything I do, to God through Jesus Christ, "lord of the Sabbath")

Sunday? Saturday? 

Hell, I was raised Catholic, pick one, I can do one day a week with a bunch of convoluted exceptions and work arounds, standing up, that's easy time. 

In Christ, I'm on the clock 7 days a week, forever. I set aside time everyday for prayer, meditation, devotion. I need it. Charitable giving, on call service ministering - cell's off the hook now.  I've gone from death to life, from condemned to celebrated son. I'm in the family business now and it's personal AND it's business. It's a way of life. 
-----------------------

Based on the revelation of Peter, Paul, the witness of others at the council and the reminding of the O.T. promise of the Gentiles becoming part of God's people, it became very clear to them that Gentiles were receiving salvation through faith in Jesus Christ without any observance of the Law, and certainly circumcision which had brought the issue to a head and led to their meeting to discuss. This clarifies all of the practices of the Law - if I were a Gentile at that time, it would not have meant I would STOP doing some or all of the Law (because I wouldn't have been observing any of it, not being Jewish), it would have meant I wouldn't START doing ANY of it. The few things they did cite in their letter to the Church at that time appears to basically be a call out to the pre-Mosaic law "laws" or standards of Gods', and there's clearly no tie in to the role of such things being a part of the "new" faith, rather the inference that they are a reflection of their new lives, in Christ. I do think that gives a logical foundation for what I read later in Paul's epistles, that the spirit of God was leading them to understand the long arc of history. 

The decision of Acts 15 reflects a thoughtful Church leadership and growing members who were balancing between the old and the new - some had known Jesus face to face, followed Him, heard Him, knew Him. Others had heard the testimony of those people and then others and believed. Others like Paul had their own direct receipt of the message of Christ. All of the original group and the first generations of converts were Jewish - and now they see the message expanding out by God's direction and revelation. From my perspective today, it would seem reasonable in the narrative of Acts that the experience of Pentecost ushers in the "new covenant" of Christ in dramatic fashion and it grows from there. What it meant appears to have been a rolling out of their own knowledge, awareness and understanding. 

Just now, Rocky said:

There you go, Brother Socks, making rational arguments and coming to wise conclusions.     

PEACE man! Thanks. 

2 hours ago, T-Bone said:

Thanks for your reply to my question. Now correct me if I’m way off track here – but when you say you are “referring to the truth in God's word that does not have contradictions and it fits harmoniously with the rest of the scriptures” it seems to me (whether you are aware of it or not) you have introduced an element outside of the scriptures – which is your own cognitive abilities , like attention, memory, judgment, evaluation, language skills, problem solving and reasoning to list a few of them. As the Wikipedia article states “Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and generate new knowledge”.

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. In fact, it is necessary in order for one to make sense of anything…like deliberating over a water bill that indicates you had used 20,000 gallons of water last month, in your apartment – and you know you only use on average about 2,656 gallons a month. Through your cognitive abilities like memory of previous usage, knowledge of how plumbing works, problem solving – noting you have not seen any indications of massive leaks around the apartment, and decision making you proceed to contacting the landlord and/or utility provider. Now that might be an easy issue to tackle with cognitive abilities.

Now let’s take the Scriptures and think about how we understand or try to make sense of the Bible. Again we must draw upon our cognitive abilities – and of them probably knowledge, memory, language skills, judgment, evaluation and especially reasoning are the most crucial. Besides the drawbacks of having to gain a working knowledge of biblical languages and grasping what ancient Near Eastern cultures were like, the context in history, etc. - often we are not aware of how susceptible we are to confirmation bias  . As Wikipedia says “It is a type of cognitive bias. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply-entrenched beliefs.”

So the additional and often invisible element to making sense of the simple direct statements of Scripture is our own cognitive abilities. This additional step of understanding (using our cognitive abilities) carries with it the possibility of an erroneous interpretation due to some flaw in our approach.

I’ll put all my cards on the table. When I was in TWI I used to believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. Since I left, I have refocused my faith to having a relationship with Jesus Christ instead of believing in the pseudo-scholarship of wierwille and TWI - and in general even forsaking the fundamentalist’s interpretation of the Bible – where everything is taken literally and all is deemed inerrant.

Do I believe the Bible is the Word of God? Absolutely! Do I believe it’s the God-breathed Word? Absolutely! And just like man in whom God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life – God breathed life into the Scriptures as holy men of God spoke being moved by the Holy Spirit. “Oh wait, is that a reference to Adam and Eve there? They blew it – we’re fallen creatures now.” Yes and that might explain why there are errors and contradictions in the Bible. Another odd thing to think about – Jesus Christ – the Word made flesh – was human. I believe he is the Son of God who once walked the earth – but doggonit why he didn’t write a book in the Bible?! We have inspired accounts of his life and lots of passages in the Bible that explain the meaning of his life (past, present, and future). I still study the Bible…think, pray, philosophize about it – as a means to an end – deepening my relationship with Jesus Christ.

 

…well if you read this far – I thank you for your patience…and endurance…anyway I thought Twinky, Mark S, Allan, and Socks made some great points discussing the “contradiction” between “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” — Exodus 20:8 and “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” — Romans 14:5

That’s all for now folks

Thanks, and to clarify - 

I don't think there's a contradiction and that may be your point, but to be sure - they're not in conflict. 

Breaking it down - 

- Galatians 3:28 - There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

- Ephesians 2 - (the "new man in Christ" and the body/church of God isn't an expanded Israel, it's a new entity of both "Jew and Gentile")
 11 Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— 12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens,[d] but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by[e] the Spirit.

- if I had been a Gentile in the era of Acts 15, I would not have been asked to dive in and learn and observe the laws and rites of the Jews. I would have been instructed to NOT do that, and given direction to line up with the earliest "laws of Noah" and give or take - live in peace while knowing that anything and everything  I might want to know about Moses and the teachings of the Law was more than available pretty much everywhere there were Jews. 

- If i'd been a Jew OR a Gentile at and following the time the epistles were written I'd have gotten essentially the same message but with a GREAT DEAL of additional detail being taught as it was revealed and understood by the writers, none of which steers me to adopt the practices and traditions of the earlier Jews. 

- Paul never addresses any kind of apparent contradiction in a way that makes me the reader feel like...hey....I should be learning how to be a good Jew....shouldn't I?....so I can be a good follower of Jesus Christ....? ... don't I need to decide which day to observe the Sabbath?....don't I need to decide how I'm going to cleanse myself and my house through my tithes and offerings....?..............Rather he teaches the joining of Jew and Gentile and all mankind from God through Christ into a new body of people. It's not just an emotional change or a strictly academic change, although both are involved - it's a basic, fundamental change in how my relationship with God and Christ is to be conducted. EVERYTHING I do has to reflect the greater "spiritual realities" if they're to be valid - no building or artifice in which God dwells or meets with me, rather a living tabernacle in a living temple...................no offering of the life of an animal through it's blood sacrifice - rather a trust in the sacrifice of the life of Christ and my offering of my own life through that, to God, for my wholeness. 

- It appears obvious but I think a re reading of Acts, Romans, Galatans and Ephesians specifically point to the grave concerns that Paul DID have - that the simple message of Jesus Christ and salvation by faith, not works, and the new Church of and in Christ ,could be easily diluted and changed....so much to the point that when push ever came to shove he didn't want to break the church up over arguments of do-this-or-do-that, he wanted us to remember the "higher ground" of our faith in Christ alone. 

PEACE. 

On 3/31/2020 at 9:29 AM, Waxit said:

VW in disregarding the seventh day sabbath of Exodus 20: 8-11 is using
Romans 14:5 as an excuse- pulling it out of context and iplies that it doesnt matter which day of the week
that God has designated as a sabbath for rest, worship, teaching and fellowship. Every man can decide
which day of the week he wants to come to fellowship. 
If that's the case why does the twigs, branches, limbs always automatically meet on a sunday
Since when can man decide which day he wants to honour God's designated sabbath

Folks, if you go back in history- in the early christian churches of God, there was no such thing as a sunday
service, they always honoured the 7th day Sabbath i.e Saturday
In fact for 400 years from the time of the early christian history, there was no such as a sunday gathering
Read Acts 13:42

So where does the sunday(1st day of the week) exactly the opposite of what God has ordained originate from
Read below attachement "Romes Challenge to the Protestants"

VW is going against what ihe teaches about having the right context in order to rightly divide the word
He goes into such detail about proving something relativelwy insignificant as in 4 crucified but when it comes to the very
important sabbath which is part of the ten commandments given by God to Moses, he just glosses it over with a scripture
taken out of context.

The important 7th day sabbath as commanded by God

Exodus 20:Romes Challenge to the Protestants.pdf

⁸ Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

⁹ Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

¹⁰ But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor
thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

¹¹ For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: w
wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Let's examine the scripture that vw used  in over riding the 7th day sabbath

Romans 14:2-5

Romes Challenge to the Protestants.pdf 327.32 kB · 2 downloads

Hi - here's my thoughts on the topic - going back to Acts 15 and the first Church "Council" of Jerusalem the leaders that met in Jerusalem discussed the expansion of the church to Gentiles, and exactly what their obligations and responsibilities were in the faith. They very deliberately carved out a place for them that did not include the circumcision nor the vast array of Mosaic laws.

As to the circumcision it now makes much clearer sense than it might have to those Jews living at that time - circumcision identifies the circumcised with Israel. Salvation in Christ identifies the saved with Jesus Christ, where circumcision is truly "of the heart".

That council's decision was to minimize the obligations of the Gentiles to the earliest and arguably simplest and broadest commandments of God to mankind, while letting them know that "Moses" was held forth and taught in ample supply for them to learn, should they wish to. So there's clearly - very clearly a difference being set forth between being subject to the law, "under it" and the encouragement to them of simply studying it and learning from it. (and Christ as the fulfillment of the Law for salvation applies to all) 

And we see throughout the New Testament writings this difference being clarified for ALL the members of the church, both Jew and Gentile - that the Law isn't a thing we can pick and choose from to keep some parts of it and not others in relation to our faith in Jesus Christ - if we keep some of it for the sake of righteousness, we are obligated to keep ALL of it and in so doing, we will negate the salvation of Christ, by grace. SO the net result of it all is simple - learning the law of Moses would have value to God's people, as both history and an understanding of God's relationship with His people but as we enter the faith, in the Church, we are no longer Jew OR Gentile, but new people in Christ and as such have this "token" of life today as the sigh of the totality of our new and future lives in eternity.

This all filters down to mean less emphasis on the rites and rituals that symbolize our relationship with God and instead living a new life of total immersion, complete relationship, 24X7, forever. We're no longer limited to one day a week or a few hours in a week of communal time with our Father, we are living it and therefore any observations, rituals and traditions have to reflect that new sense of reality as part of it. 

The Sabbath is therefore less a matter of Sunday or Saturday, regardless of how you want to decide the day. The idea of following that pattern of devotion towards God is the important aspect of it, that in our physical lives in this day and age we set aside a time to God, to honor Him and this life keeping it mind that we are under a far greater obligation to give honor to God in everything we do, at all times, and in all ways. 
 

On 9/4/2019 at 12:07 AM, Twinky said:

Socks, music is a very good way of thinking how something is a "whole," with scope for improvisation and development.  Good post!

Thanks, I've been working on this idea more and it really had a lot of angles and sides to it. 

I wrote a line in my study notes that I'm trying to flesh out more, as it seems to be a very prominent concept in the bible's storyline of people - 

.........."if God did only one thing, one way, all the time, we wouldn't have the universe we do............. "the more God works in each of us, the more we see the diversity of God".......(a questions then)......"if God "is" a thing, like Love, is the act of creating such diversity a reflection of His true nature then...?"........

Was thinking of the 12 tone Western music scale...and how 8 of those give us the majority of material to work from. From the basic material we have -

Handel's "Messiah"
Paganini's 24 Caprices
Eddie Van Halen's "Eruption"
Hank William's "I Saw the Light"
Sarah Hale's "Mary Had a Little Lamb"
Hendix's "Wind Cries Mary"

And so on....

It wouldn't be sufficient to even just say they're all different. They're very different uses of the same material. And that's just music, and just a collection of audible frequencies. 

How much more - everything else.....? as God works in a realm above, beyond, the imagination of mankind, one of His creations..........? 

The idea of a tree being a means of getting the organizational framework of the Way built was decent enough for it's own sake, and at the time VPW was surrounding himself with a bunch of barely-20-somethings but was really kind of claustrophobic to stick to, 

Remember "like a tree that's planted by the wa-ater, Lord, I shall not be moved!"

Psalm 1:3-That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.....

THAT PERSON - it's individual. As a simile, they are LIKE that tree, planted and yielding fruit. 

In the Way it was all about getting, being and staying planted. Deep roots to the root, a real be-leafer. IN THE GROUP. The Treezee-ness was all about these little green leaves growing in these tender little twigs, awwww, so perdy, in these healthy branches of limbs being run by an army of entitled gardners, and all growing from THE MIGHTY ROOT!

Success in the organization was to stay in the organization. That's not really what the Bible teaches at all - it's an additional layer on the Body of Christ of Ephesians and it's certainly not how ALL fruit will yield. 

Now that we've all grown up through and into our lives since then, I have to say in my best "oh you sure did go get yourself all smart didnya!!?" way that there's other organizational models that would work really well to serve the teaching of Ephesians. 

Come to think of it, I do remember VPW talking about AA, and it's history, but again not specifically referencing the Way Tree schemata. Maybe he did, he talked a lot. A lot. I checked with a couple people from my era who were around all those years before I wrote that, because I wanted to add it IF it was correct, knowing it was but I like to plan ahead. In and of itself, it is. I'm sure there are many things, many stor-eez that fill out the years of that time. Lotsa things, kids. 

PEACE homies! Stay fresh!! 

11 hours ago, T-Bone said:

Both may be true accounts of what wierwille actually said. I don’t think it’s a matter of conflation on wierwille’s part – where he had combined the two ideas. Maybe in a deluded mind that’s usually inclined towards plagiarism the source of the idea for The Way Tree simply “evolved”  ...

...and the more I think about it, the imagery of the way tree may very well be the moot point in all this...as far as the structure - how the whole organization was arranged to supposedly function "properly", it does seem to emulate the AA somewhat - although I think TWI's HQ is far more overreaching in authority and control (when compared to the  12 steps of AA    ) ....and as far as describing the function of TWI, it's more along the lines of multi-level marketing   " ...where the revenue of the MLM company is derived from a non-salaried workforce selling the company's products/services."

 

Imagery, function, now a tree "works". It's all part of the same thing. 

"If you pick it, it'll bleed" - an old tip for guitarists who spend half their time twicking away all night trying to get in tune. 

The "truth"? Well, for those able to HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!! it's all part of that great swirling mass of scante that was. 

My point in bringing this up was to at least make it part of the searchable record - what VPW said it was and where it came from. 

VPW did in fact say he was shown it as a revelation, while looking at the big oak tree on the property.  Whether that was true or not is another topic but for me a moot point for me today. It did have a huge impact on how the Way's organization got set up after that though, at that time. 

He may have also talked about it being from AA, I don't remember that specifically but there's a lot I'm sure I don't, as well. 

So - for those who may not know - 

The idea of the Way "tree" was a vision that Dr. Wierwille said God gave him about the Way Ministry, a revelation one day when he was out and about and he was looking at this big oak tree on the property. He said God revealed it to him as a way of understanding both the Way ministry's growth as well as it being a way of understanding how the Body of Christ works, as described in Ephesians. 

My impression from hearing VPW talk about it was that he explained it as a way to - move forward, as in, here's how we're going to set up now. I "think" it was also described as being somewhat how the Way Nash was working already in certain ways. 

Prior to that in 1969 and 1970/71 the fellowships in places like California were individual ministries loosely affiliated with the Way through PFAL and an interest in learning from VPW's materials. 

The Way Tree "revelation" was a core platform for the organization of the Way's capacity, facilities, outreach, growth and the supporting philosophy of it's business model. 

To me by the late 1970's there seemed to have been a progression of events that culminated with PFAL's filming and establishment as the core offering of the Way's teaching ministry operations, through to the outreach to the east and west coasts, and the Way Tree's introduction as the functional and working model for the future of the growth of the way which held the growth of the Way Corps program as the real "core" of the ministry. 

(I'm differentiating functional/organizational and business as - functional was how the way worked, the management and leadership structure, the Way Corps, staff, WOW programs, etc. Business is the teaching of the Bible, the classes, the products and services the functional organization delivered.)

One thing that was completely absent from the Way's imagery and descriptors though was "fruit". The Way's whole thing was green - well, say green and brown, a "tree". But no fruit was used in the logo or other images in the Way's brand. 

I once asked a world-class marketing expert what they though of the Way's logo - the green tree thingie. I showed it to them and turned it around and upside down and they said "whoa!" -

I wanted to see if they'd catch it - try turning the old green Way Tree logo upside down and you'll see it looks like a sad grimacing face, almost freddie kruger-ish. They didn't get stuck on that for long though but did note that something like a book decal or bumper sticker would be seen from different angles and that should have been considered, from a subliminal "vibe" perspective. 

Other than that they thought it looked pretty plain, we word-clouded it and came up with words like work, flat, cold, greenhouse..... Interestingly green is a coolish color and doesn't convey warmth. I might invoke or embed that into it by my own perception but as a color on a blank slate it's not on the warm side. 

No fruit though, no big red apples or oranges or sweet peaches. 

8 hours ago, T-Bone said:

Hey all, I’ve been thinking over the stuff in Annio’s great post and just wanted to chip in my 2 cents to address another item - the unique snobbery often found in the TWI mindset. I believe it was fostered in part by wierwille’s teaching in PFAL as to what is the image of God. In the class, wierwille said the image of God is spirit – and when Adam & Eve sinned, the spirit “died” or went away, or went back to God which leaves one to infer they lost the image of God.

I’ve done some reading up in a few systematic theologies about what was going to “die” – first mentioned in Genesis 2:17 “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” The systematic theologies that I read do speak of it as spiritual death – and going a little deeper into the biblical words used for “death” gets me to thinking that maybe the death spoken of in Genesis 2:17 did NOT mean the image of God would be gone.

Looking at “To die” and “death” in “An Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words” (by W.E. Vine, Merrill Unger, & William White, copyright 1984, Thomas Nelson Inc. Publishing, pages 96, 97, & 268) I found some intriguing ideas. While the Hebrew word “muth” essentially means to “lose one’s life”, the authors state that when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit, what happened was an immediate spiritual death and an eventual physical death. Writing about the Greek word for death “thanatos” the authors suggest that death means a separation – physical death is a separation of the life-force from the body (John 11:13, Heb. 2:15; 5:7); spiritual death is the separation of man from God (Gen. 2:17; Romans 5: 12, 14, 17, 21)…even in our current usage “death” can convey different ideas - a permanent cessation of all vital functions (“the cause of death has not been determined”), a cause of ruin (“the slander was death to my character”, or “the drought was death to the farm”).  see "death"

On the flip side of “death” I got to thinking about the different usages of the word “life”. It  can mean the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body, or a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings…But ”life” can also refer to the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual (“children are the joy of our lives”), one or more aspects of the process of living (“the sex life of a frog”), a manner of living (“the life of the colonists”), living beings (as of a particular kind or environment -“forest life”). see "life"

I’m inclined to think the “death” associated with the prohibition in Genesis 2:17 is primarily along the lines of a figurative death. I mean to say, SOMETHING really would happen - it would “kill” their relationship with God. see "kill"

In my opinion, the effect of this spiritual death was profound – and whatever impact it had on the image of God in mankind is the stuff of much debate in theologies – but it seems to me that the scriptures suggest we still have the image of God:

Genesis 1:27: So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Genesis 9:6: Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.

James 3: 8,9:  but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness.

 

Millard Erickson in “Christian Theology” (copyright 1985, 13th printing Nov. 1996, Baker Books) said “Our understanding of the image of God will affect how we treat our fellow humans and how we minister to them.” (page 496). And on page 513 Erickson makes the following inferences from Genesis 9:6 and James 3:8, 9 “The image of God has not been lost as a result of sin or specifically the fall. The prohibitions against murder and cursing apply to the treatment of sinful humans as well as godly believers. The presence of the image and likeness in the non-Christian is assumed. If this is the case, the image of God is not something accidental or external to human nature. It is something inseparably connected with humanity.”

 

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To me, the idea that we all still have the image of God, emphasizes the nondiscriminatory way of how I should relate to anyone and everyone:

Matthew 22: 35-40:  One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”  Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your  mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 7: 12: So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

On the deathiness of that death - 

Look at Gen 1:26 and the surrounding record. Man is made in the "image" of God, after" our likeness". Both Hebrew words have similar meanings, image being something that looks like something, a "likeness", and likeness meaning like in quality, a visible or obvious comparison that the two things are hmmmm...alike. 

All of the "thou shalt surely die" and die language has to match up against that then - 

If man is EXACTLY LIKE God in a way that makes him visibly like him and obviously fashioned like God is, then his death - well, it would be impossible. 

1. God doesn't die, God is eternal. God is "life", pneuma hagion that is called out in many ways in the Bible, the "word of life", in His son WAS life, the light of men, etc. etc. 
2. God's life is pneuma hagion, creates by will and produces physical things. 
3. God's life is compared to many things on earth that signify abundance and uninterrupted activity - "fountain", river, etc. 

Man was formed from materials that already existed and "made" a living breathing thing, by God. 

When Christians or True Believers in any one religion separate themselves out from everyone else I see that as extreme denial of the root meaning of our humanity. That's one of the great strengths of our country's founding formal documents, knowing that all men are "created equal", and exist on a level playing field where their basic rights are self-revealing, where the essentials of our humanity can be ignored or denied but not destroyed as long as we are alive. 

There's a lot of other information we find out about God in the Bible's records and one of the overwhelming constants is that man describes God in very effusive, grand ways, THE grandes of ways. God is All THAT and everything we can imagine plus everything we can't plus everything else PLUS AND THEN God is greater than THAT. Etc. Etc. A lot of that is gratitude and recognition of a reliance on the benevolence of the Creator but a lot of that is also a very human effort to make sure the reader understands that the Creator is the everything of our lives, the beginning end and all in between. 

So it looks like we could use a simple logic method with understanding what that "death" was, a 1 + 1 + 1 kind of approach. 

Man didn't end physically, like "you disobeyed! Peter, you other guys!  get the blueprints and coffee we're starting over! These two go in the archive!"

Man's days became "numbered" though, man's physical resemblance, likeness to God ended in what way - ? .....................1 + 1 = what changed? 

Fast forward to the New Testament - Christ, "eternal life", the "hope", not sorrowing for those who die and knowing that in Christ's next coming will be gathering of His followers that will bring us all together under God's grace for - eternity. 

From a state of what - ? For many it's death, all those who "died" are dead, gone, deteriorated physically to the point there's nothing left "Like" anything else to reconstruct or rebuild. 

This all then goes into another host of topics but for me, the Genesis records are pretty simple to understand. There's a lot not spoken of and the idea of them being metaphorical also applies, as I get the sense that there's a LOT that doesn't get covered in the storyline, lots of detail. 

So yeah. 

PS: The idea that man "without" the spirit of God has absolutely no, zero, no "likeness" to God can't be entirely true, by simple logic. If there is no resemblance left after Adam then I can accept that yes, but it's not understandable, so I would just have to leave it stacked against other contradictory statements of truth, and set them aside as being "that way" and be done with it. I don't think that's the case here though, even though Romans 7 talks about man having "no good thing" for "to will" is present but man doesn't always do what he knows is the right thing to do - and he can't change that inherent capability to have free will choice and still make the wrong decision.....which is in fact the same condition that ADAM AND EVE WERE IN, "in the beginning"......and we generally accept that they God's holy spirit/life was in them at that time........................................................................................................................................................................so....

I would describe the "death" of Genesis as a reduction, a loss of MAN'S CAPACITY TO BE LIKE GOD AND IN HIS IMAGE.....ie, "pneuma hagion", which is eternal life "spirit". Man's capacity went from 100 per cent to 30 per cent, because he was now going to die relying on psuche/life - but it doesn't appear that a lot changed about the "man" - he knew God's will from the outset, he went against God's will at a certain point and outside of having substantially less birthday's to look forward to was very aware of what had just happened afterwards. 

Mankind tries to love, care, forgive, share, provide, work, earn, procreate, build, be. He also fails, errs, goes up and then down and then down again, lives in valleys when mountains are climbed, views eternity but chooses a moment of hate, day after day - 
We're like dented cans. We're never going to be right without the light being born again in us, without the eternal fire re lit in our souls. Even if we deny it later, once it's come and illuminated even for a moment, we remember what we saw, what we felt. The "new birth" is so much more than a certificate of completion or license to live....it's the imprint of a new reality on our souls that redefines everything. It would take a 1,000 x a 1,000 lifetimes to grow up and in and around that - an "eternity". In that way, it all makes such wonderful sense. 

On 2/26/2020 at 1:23 PM, T-Bone said:

Your post reminded me of some stuff I read by the Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli…I have his book “The Order of Time”  (copyright 2017 Riverhead Books)  on my Kindle…what follows are some thought provoking excerpts from that book, as you’ll see the author refers to previous chapters of the book…some of this touched upon what you were talking about – especially when you mentioned Bergson , the flow of time, eternity, existence, and consciousness - this book came to mind…anyway here’s some choice excerpts from pages 96 -204:

 

"…Divested of the trappings with which Newtonian theory had draped it, and to which we had become so accustomed, it now shines out with greater clarity: the world is nothing but change. None of the pieces that time has lost (singularity, direction, independence, the present, continuity) puts into question the fact that the world is a network of events. On the one hand, there was time, with its many determinations; on the other, the simple fact that nothing is: things happen…

 

…We started out with the image of time that is familiar to us: something that flows uniformly and equally throughout the universe, in the course of which all things happen. With the idea that there exists throughout the cosmos a present, a “now” that constitutes reality. The past for everyone is fixed, is gone, having already happened. The future is open, yet to be determined. Reality flows from the past, through the present, toward the future—and the evolution of things between past and future is intrinsically asymmetrical. This, we thought, is the basic structure of the world. This familiar picture has fallen apart, has shown itself to be only an approximation of a much more complex reality. A present that is common throughout the whole universe does not exist (chapter 3). Events are not ordered in pasts, presents, and futures; they are only “partially” ordered. There is a present that is near to us, but nothing that is “present” in a far-off galaxy. The present is a localized rather than a global phenomenon…

 

Perhaps we belong to a particular subset of the world that interacts with the rest of it in such a way that this entropy is lower in one direction of our thermal time. The directionality of time is therefore real but perspectival (chapter 10): the entropy of the world in relation to us increases with our thermal time. We see the occurrence of things ordered in this variable, which we simply call “time,” and the growth of entropy distinguishes the past from the future for us and leads to the unfolding of the cosmos. It determines the existence of traces, residues, and memories of the past (chapter 11). We human beings are an effect of this great history of the increase of entropy, held together by the memory that is enabled by these traces. Each one of us is a unified being because we reflect the world, because we have formed an image of a unified entity by interacting with our kind, and because it is a perspective on the world unified by memory (chapter 12). From this comes what we call the “flowing” of time.

This is what we are listening to when we listen to the passing of time. The variable “time” is one of many variables that describe the world. It is one of the variables of the gravitational field (chapter 4): at our scale, we do not register quantum fluctuations (chapter 5), hence it is possible to think of spacetime as determined, as Einstein’s great mollusk; at our scale, the movements of the mollusk are small and can be overlooked. Hence we can think of spacetime as being as rigid as a table. This table has dimensions: the one that we call space, and the one along which entropy grows, called time. In our everyday life we move at low speeds in relation to the speed of light and so we do not perceive the discrepancies between the different proper times of different clocks, and the differences in speed at which time passes at different distances from a mass are too small for us to distinguish.

In the end, therefore, instead of many possible times, we can speak only of a single time: the time of our experience—uniform, universal, and ordered. This is the approximation of an approximation of an approximation of a description of the world made from our particular perspective as human beings who are dependent on the growth of entropy, anchored to the flowing of time. We for whom, as Ecclesiastes has it, there is a time to be born and a time to die.

This is time for us: a multilayered, complex concept with multiple, distinct properties deriving from various different approximations. Many discussions of the concept of time are confused because they simply do not recognize its complex and multilayered aspect. They make the mistake of not seeing that the different layers are independent. This is the physical structure of time as I understand it, after a lifetime of revolving around it…

 

…What is entirely credible, in any case, is the general fact that the temporal structure of the world is different from the naïve image that we have of it. This naïve image is suitable for our daily life, but it’s not suitable for understanding the world in its minute folds, or in its vastness. In all likelihood, it is not even sufficient for understanding our own nature, because the mystery of time intersects with the mystery of our personal identity, with the mystery of consciousness. The mystery of time has always troubled us, stirring deep emotions. So deep as to have nourished philosophies and religions.

 

I believe, as Hans Reichenbach suggests in one of the most lucid books on the nature of time, The Direction of Time, that it was in order to escape from the anxiety time causes us that Parmenides wanted to deny its existence, that Plato imagined a world of ideas that exist outside of it, and that Hegel speaks of the moment in which the Spirit transcends temporality and knows itself in its plenitude. It is in order to escape this anxiety that we have imagined the existence of “eternity,” a strange world outside of time that we would like to be inhabited by gods, by a God, or by immortal souls.* Our deeply emotional attitude toward time has contributed more to the construction of cathedrals of philosophy than has logic or reason. The opposite emotional attitude, the veneration of time—Heraclitus or Bergson—has given rise to just as many philosophies, without getting us any nearer to understanding what time is.

Physics helps us to penetrate layers of the mystery. It shows how the temporal structure of the world is different from our perception of it. It gives us the hope of being able to study the nature of time free from the fog caused by our emotions. But in our search for time, advancing increasingly away from ourselves, we have ended up by discovering something about ourselves, perhaps—just as Copernicus, by studying the movements of the heavens, ended up understanding how the Earth moved beneath his feet.

Perhaps, ultimately, the emotional dimension of time is not the film of mist that prevents us from apprehending the nature of time objectively. Perhaps the emotion of time is precisely what time is for us. I don’t think there is much more than this to be understood. We may ask further questions, but we should be careful with questions that it is not possible to formulate properly. When we have found all the aspects of time that can be spoken of, then we have found time. We may gesture clumsily toward an immediate sense of time beyond what we can articulate (“Fine, but why does it ‘pass’?”), but I believe that at this point we are merely confusing matters, attempting illegitimately to transform approximate words into things. When we cannot formulate a problem with precision, it is often not because the problem is profound: it’s because the problem is false.

Will we be able to understand things better in the future? I think so. Our understanding of nature has increased vertiginously over the course of centuries, and we are continuing to learn. We are glimpsing something about the mystery of time. We can see the world without time: we can perceive with the mind’s eye the profound structure of the world where time as we know it no longer exists—like the Fool on the Hill who sees the Earth turn when he sees the setting sun. And we begin to see that we are time. We are this space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons. We are memory. We are nostalgia. We are longing for a future that will not come. The clearing that is opened up in this way, by memory and by anticipation, anticipation, is time: a source of anguish sometimes, but in the end a tremendous gift. A precious miracle that the infinite play of combinations has unlocked for us, allowing us to exist. We may smile now. We can go back to serenely immersing ourselves in time—in our finite time—to savoring the clear intensity of every fleeting and cherished moment of the brief circle of our existence."

***End of excerpts***

from:   "The Order of Time" at Amazon

== == == ==

I know - - kind of a long post of just quoting from a book – but I thought some folks might enjoy sifting through the ideas – I know I do – sometimes authors express an idea I already am somewhat familiar with – but they say it with such fluency and coherency! And sometimes I just like hearing someone make a point that is coming from a totally different perspective from mine.

The last few years I have gotten more into reading up on philosophy – to be honest, a lot of stuff goes way over my head…but who knows, maybe I’ll learn to swim at the deep end of the pool …but I guess we’re all philosophers to some degree – even if you don’t have a degree 

 

== == == 

 Philosophy: "The original meaning of the word philosophy comes from the Greek roots philo- meaning "love" and -sophos, or "wisdom." When someone studies philosophy they want to understand how and why people do certain things and how to live a good life. In other words, they want to know the meaning of life. Add the suffix -er to philosophy, and you get a word for someone whose job it is to think these big thoughts… the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics… any personal belief about how to live or how to deal with a situation"

 philosophy definition from the internet

 

Nice stuff, T-Bone. Thanks for what you posted, I'll be checking it all out. I read TOOT (I like the acronym) , and moderately familiar with the track he's on. He reminds me that Bergson and Einstein were somewhat at odds - well, they were at odds by their own choice, but from my little cat perch seat I found a strong middle ground to kind of nest in. I think Rovelli's statement "we can see the world without time".....sums it all up. Its less important to me now whether or not it exists as a tangible component or artifact of life.  Existence, consciousness, my self awareness is the only fork I have at the table, it's the starting point but more importantly is arguably the end point. So sure, I think therefore I am - but that's a little like asking the nail if it needs a hammer...to what and how do I pin my existence on so as to view it from another angle so that I can judge it or value it? 

So the measurement of life is like using a mirror - how does it look today? but the mirror isn't me, it's a reflection. 

Etc etc blah blah. 

That there "is" God and a larger reality of the pneuma is an absolute truth for me. So I never work from the position of "what if there's no god" or "maybe in this scenario I am god and I create the myths".....I get that llne of thinking and maintain several paths of inquiry that work from that kind of premise but I do that to better understand what I'm missing, what I don't see, what is still "really there" when I take everything I assume or believe away. Under it all - maybe more in it all - how to put this....? - I'm not trying to figure out what "it all is" or isn't or if there's "a God" or not anymore - my own sense of reality is of the relationship I have with God, which is very real, it's not a mental construct, or set of rules or just beliefs. Things happen in my timeline that interrupt, intersect, my perception in ways I now know aren't of my origin, aren't reflections or products of my own but are real confluences from within what I might call the 'greater reality' in which I, we all live. I could describe it easier by just saying "I am never alone", or "I am not forsaken" or even "God is always with me"....the same sentiments expressed by others in the Bible. It's not wishful thinking or a self-fulfilling declaration. 

So for me it's not all moot or a mental exercise or like in the past, well, I'll just study the Bible and that'll tell me everything. It doesn't - but it tells me everything it's intended to as a history of God's dealing with His creation and there are clear signposts, pointers, guidance and instruction. It is NOT everything that God has ever done or will do or can do anything else like that but it's a start in that it is mostly a statement of what HAS been and a view into what WILL be. What it really does for us is give us place from which to live and learn in our own "fleshly tables of the heart" this life we have with God and each other. 

My 2 cents, plus a quarter for the meter. : )

15 hours ago, T-Bone said:

I agree - saying we are not a mix of all that stuff from before but we now have something special worked out with what Jesus Christ accomplished is a big spiritually defining deal! Besides all that he achieved for us spiritually, I think there might be a practical interpretive tool that the Gospels/his earthly life provided. I’ll get to that further down  – but first I want to mention something that got me thinking along that line.

I just finished reading an interesting book “Making Sense of the Bible” by Adam Hamilton and will probably reread it a few more times down the road since I found a few of the author’s ideas very intriguing. One of the ideas is about how God inspires people today may not be all that different than it was in biblical times… That alone is a lot to think about... And spoiler alert -  in case you haven't noticed - a while back I started leaning to a more liberal theology ( which I shared on another thread  concerning the Bible       ).

Our current knowledge of the world often presents challenges when studying the Bible because of the much larger frame of reference that we have.  I feel  - to be honest - within that larger frame of reference -  I must differentiate between the human and divine elements of scripture.  Viewing the Bible through an historical lens might recognize certain changes as religious developments. But that’s not to say God is developing…evolving… or has been brainstorming all along the way as if flying by the seat of his long flowing robes, making sure “the changes to policy and procedure” memos get out on time, informing folks of the current way God behaves or superintends his creation…I’m thinking more along the lines of how people mature in their understanding of God.

 

What if the “fabric” of the God-inspired scriptures isn’t so seamless? One of the things that Hamilton’s book got me to think more deeply about is the idea of a dual authorship of scripture. I believe scripture is inspired of God - but there’s the human element of each author. What exactly does that mean to us when trying to understand it? How much of a nuance do we allow for when taking into account the author’s humanness, individual style, historical outlook and cultural context? One of the problems I have with the fundamentalist’s viewpoint of scripture as being inerrant even when speaking of the things of science, history, geography, etc. - is that this viewpoint ignores the human component of authorship and might give the impression that the God who created the cosmos is an ignorant old coot who forgets details and glosses over errors.

 

What does all this have to do with an “administrations” viewpoint? maybe a lot...I dunno – maybe it's important when it comes to practical application. Some scholars suggest one of the things we should do in trying to understand the scriptures is try to understand what a passage meant to the original recipients. But if we look back at when a certain passage occurred and just say that’s how God ran things at that time – we might miss its relevancy for today. For instance, in “The NIV Cultural Background Study Bible” (editors John Walton & Craig Keener) when handling the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3   say that one can imagine a variety of ways that people might strive to “be like God”; some commendable, others inappropriately ambitious or subversive… and that in the ancient near east the aspirations of wisdom and godlikeness were defensibly laudable pursuits… and that back then it was common for folks to meditate on ways in which people succeeded or failed in achieving wisdom and godlike noble qualities.

TWI / Fundamentalists take a lot of stuff as very literal – so they focus on the forbidden fruit. What was it exactly? And if not speculating at what the fruit was they usually have a very rigid interpretation of the fall of mankind saying in an act of disobedience they questioned God’s word. While I do agree it was insubordination, I don’t think it was a specific fruit or item in the Garden of Eden – even though it says  “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”  

since Genesis 1     Informs us that mankind was made in God’s image and was given a very comprehensive mandate to “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” – and besides the fact that we are given very little details of the drama unfolding in Genesis 3 – leads me to believe there’s more here than just someone refusing to simply follow God’s Word without question.

 

I mean that pretty much puts the kibosh on critical thinking. And in my opinion critical thinking is pretty much the cornerstone or foundation of how mankind still continues to fill the earth and subdue it. In my opinion asking questions...challenging ideas are all part of the critical thinking process for any discipline - theology, philosophy, the sciences. Even in matters of faith the intellect has its place.II Corinthians 5:7 says we walk by faith and not by sight. It does NOT say we walk by faith and not by reason...I go back and forth -  sometimes it's faith in pursuit of reason and sometimes it's reason in the pursuit of faith.   oy vey !

 

…For me among other things what the story of Adam and Eve shows is the danger of pursuing a shortcut to success. They were already godlike – made in the image of God….this is overly simplistic speculation here – but what if they were freaking out over God’s comprehensive mandate – wondering how they were going to accomplish all that and perhaps the tree of the knowledge of good & evil represented a way to circumvent a lot of long hard work. I dunno…just thinking out loud. ..anyway it seems to have a lot more relevancy for me today if I see the fall of mankind as a life lesson – there’s no such thing as a free lunch.    Well, I know there’s a lot more to it than that –  just gotta lighten up sometimes. 

 

When I get into my critical thinking mode and look at the grand scheme of things in the Bible - why is it I sometimes get bugged by the inconsistencies between one book and another and sometimes find it very difficult to nail down “ the biblical view” on certain topics? Also the character of God seems to change within dispensational or covenant theology...but maybe that's just the way I see things...this point is not a deal breaker.

If Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh then why does it seem the loving and forgiving God he reveals is quite different from the law giving , sometimes violence advocating , sometimes outright vengeful God of the Old Testament? It’s also interesting to note that Jesus Christ himself never wrote a book of the Bible... I don’t mean to trash these theologies – but maybe I’m looking for a viewpoint that looks for common ground. Again this is not a deal breaker for me. At the end of this post I will offer some redeeming qualities of these theologies.

So anyway, with Jesus Christ being the Word made flesh  I find myself trying to work out a Christ-centric theology as an “interpretive filter” when I study the Bible – maybe that’s the common ground...maybe similar to that what-would-Jesus-do thing. May not be the most scholarly way of practical application but it might help me see what’s relevant to living the Christian lifestyle today. In other words, how would Jesus address a certain issue?  Take for example how Jesus reinterpreted some Old Testament stuff in Matthew 5: 38 to 48   - what the law said about an eye for an eye.

== == ==

Going over the draft of my post several times – and not wanting to give anyone  the idea that  I am totally opposed to dispensational or covenant theology - I kept thinking about  Galatians 4   Where it says “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.” I have sometimes wondered why Jesus Christ was born in the first century. Recalling all the prophecies in the Old Testament, all the laws that were laid down, all the accounts that exposed the human condition – I see all that as God’s way of preparing people…helping to guide them in their spiritual growth...in that regard dispensational or covenant theology goes a long way in showing how people grow practically, intellectually, emotionally, socially, spiritually as well as gaining a deeper understanding of God.

 that's all I have for now...I've tried to edit out the duplicate paragraphs the best I can...sorry for the mess of copying and pasting from my laptop to Grease Spot - - I think next time I will copy the entire draft to Grease Spot, minus the links to outside references - then I will go back and edit in the links...anyway thanks all for listening to my ramblings...time to go to bed...sweet dreams everyone

 

"<I mean that pretty much puts the kibosh on critical thinking. And in my opinion critical thinking is pretty much the cornerstone or foundation of how mankind still continues to fill the earth and subdue it. In my opinion asking questions...challenging ideas are all part of the critical thinking process for any discipline - theology, philosophy, the sciences. Even in matters of faith the intellect has its place.II Corinthians 5:7 says we walk by faith and not by sight. It does NOT say we walk by faith and not by reason...I go back and forth -  sometimes it's faith in pursuit of reason and sometimes it's reason in the pursuit of faith.   oy vey !>"

That seems to be the most likely way to understand our current state and status - 

I was struck by the ideas of a relatively modern philosopher Henri Bergson who did a great deal of work presenting an understanding of time. He described it as duration...although human comprehension may tend to look at time as a way to measure our existence as we experience it and as a long connected stream of events, duration would be more like water. Water in a river running into another river and into an ocean that feeds the river, etc. forever, has been used as a metaphor for "time" and that's one way of understanding it - that we live and exist "in" a state of consciousness that has movement and change but primarily ENDURES and exists as it's most natural state. 

Things go on that can be measured but our primary means of understanding time as something that "passes" or moves in a direction is through our own physical experience....and without the faculties to remember and anticipate we would simply be in a "now" state - which by human standards wouldn't be a great existence....in fact it can then be postulated that to live in the "now" of a moment is to 1. increase our store of memories and 2. collectively build our understanding of the future. "Learning" by another word. 

So again, back to basics - Bergson disagreed with Einsteins definition of time as only a physical piece of existence and considered it more perceptual. Their positions most clearly clashed in the consideration of two things happening at the same time -"simultaneity".....and on a practical level I would back out of it all and just say that time is existence, measured by consciousness. If there were no self awareness there would be no concern for the idea anyway, of course. 

So to me, covenant and dispensational theories are somewhat similar in what they're trying to  do - but without a self aware human being living and learning in it's own lifecycle they're meaningless.

If I read the Bible the changes in time became self-revealing, it puts them forth in it's own story BECAUSE it's a story and not a set of measured, expected events. 

In "eternity" our timeline story is actually an impossibly small slice of everything that can't even be seen without getting closer to it....a year in eternity isn't even as big or as "long" as a drop of water in the ocean, .....again, back to basics - that gives a way to understand how God would view it all, much much much much much different than I would or can I have to assume because God is both eternal and now, as seen in God's interactions with humans in our history - assuming that God doesn't move in and out, further and nearer, earlier and later....then He is just "here", "now" and "forever"....and that's pretty much what the Bible tries to say about Him. 

3 hours ago, waysider said:

There are still people out there who will go to their graves (some have already gone.) insisting we were part of some noble cause.

Well, my life's cause was and is as "noble" as I thought it to be. I will go to my grave saying exactly what I did and was trying to do my whole life with the message of God and Jesus Christ. I've done a lot of things, partnered with a lot of people - hell, today I pretty much did zip other than pray for some people which in and of itself is no small thing, to me, but I don't spend every day with the best efforts expended or doing them with the best or right people for that matter. My life is what it is - but I am a HELLA lot better for what I've done and learned than if I hadn't. In the big circle of life that sucks some ways and rocks in others - mostly it rocks. 

If I face my Creator at some point and He says I've been weighed and found wanting, I'll accept that - what else is there to do? In the meantime, I'm full speed ahead until you hear otherwise.  

4 hours ago, penworks said:

Yup, the millet is long gone, but the gut reaction lingers. Ugh. In case you don't know, that's an analogy for the "Word" that VPW fed us, amounting to a con of Himalayan proportions. And I should know. I've actually been to the Himalayan mountains … in May 2009.

Socks, eye-witnesses willing to give their two cents are few and far between. I get "fan mail" through the Contact page on my website from former Wayfers either defending VPW and "shame on me," or from some too afraid to speak up or out due to relatives still in TWI or due to their own weariness … which I totally understand. Who wants to put themselves out there for criticism and hate mail, which I get now and then. But I knew that going into what I did ... publishing my story in a book.

Wake up people, Wierwille set this whole thing in motion from day one. It was never "pure" but got corrupted later on. He was out to set himself up as "the answer man."

PLEEEAASE.

Sigh.

 

 

Yeh, millet is one of those things I look at and think "now what can I do with this?"....it does have a huge positive affect on my gut, which I loved when I discovered it. I was born with a stomach ulcer condition, at least it's one of my earliest memories as a toddler - my stomach hurting terribly suddenly for no apparent reason - course I was all of about 3 at the time, so what did I know? Diagnosed as "gastritis" then as a peptic ulcer I had to be careful in the 50's and 60's what I ate and I learned calming and meditation techniques before I was 10, anything to deal with the ups and downs of the condition which could curl me up into a ball for hours when it acted up. I turned to drugs in my youth for the usual social reasons but found pot and methamphetamines took the edge off and a blend of the two could normalize me under almost any conditions. My friends from that era that are still around all have a story or two about how I stayed "high" all the time, and it wasn't until I was prayed for and healed following an auto accident, that I came around. Self-medication of the worst kind - and years later when my kids were getting into music I cried on the floor with them when Kurt Cobaine ("Nirvana") killed himself with a shotgun to the head...they really liked his music and I'd come to appreciate his unusual chords and lyrics and we'd connected on his music, but he suffered from stomach ulcers and god knows what other conditions and it was known the pain he was in sometimes and his use of heroin. I completely understood where it had taken him and and how he'd chosen to end it, anyone who's been down that path knows what it's like to just want the pain to stop and to know how to do it but you just don't want to do it anymore..... It made me so incredibly thankful for the deliverance God and Jesus Christ brought into my life and I told my kids about my own experience with it..........and millet? Millet still has a very settling affect on my stomach, of "well being"....I feel great when I eat it, and of course it's bio-nutrition is good for acting against stomach peptic ulcers.............I get why most people don't like it, but it's one of those foods that does so much good for me I had to figure out how to cook the dammed stuff so it would eat better.  Funny how stuff can be so different between different people.

I appreciate your candor and effort ms penworks. I told someone recently to check out your book first hand, and that you are entitled to your story and your insight - it's YOURS and provides a view from your vantage point that no one else has and that's important. There are things we may not agree on and I often find myself the odd man out with a lot of people because I am a fully feathered and nested Christian and my faith is for and with no one but God and myself, and those close to me. I value honesty. I find over and over through the years that whether others believe the same as I or I with them is less important than if we love life and live our lives to the best truth we know. I'm really glad we still share a friendship - the wife and I send our best. 
 

6 hours ago, penworks said:

I agree with Socks regarding this, as I was an eye-witness, like Socks, to the manner in which VPW conducted himself and ran the organization:

" … I don't subscribe to the theory that "the Way was fine until Martindale/Geer/Finnegan/Whoever screwed everything up".......His main guys all learned from him and acted in complete alignment with his wishes."  

Hey kiddo! What's for lunch - millet and carrot - raisin salad?  (I say that but I learned how to cook organically grown millet so it's not the consistency of drywall mud and given it's a gluten free "grain" I've played around with it, even working on trying some of it in my whole grain sourdough recipe's.) 

Your book fills in some blanks for me of the timeline in those early years when the Southeastern Way Home outreach was coming up and online into the Way Corps and the introduction of Martindale from Oklahoma into the mix. There's a couple things in there that open up the "inertia" of The Way. 

Given that we got involved with the Way within a year or two of the final version of PFAL going into the can in 1967 and he died in 1985, he taught, trained and transitioned his "team" of close followers in a short window of about 17-18 years during which a lot of the work was to memorialize his legacy and heritage into the brand of "The Way".  Allowing for a couple years transitioning in (California and New York) and a couple years of ill health at the end restricting his ability to move and travel freely - there's a sweet spot of productivity of about 13-14 years. In that time frame we can see the main players and how they were positioned - and positioned themselves - to be part of VPW's core/Corps leadership. 

While VPW ran the show, he called the shots and we did it as he directed. He allowed for others to contribute yes but it was always within his aims and goals, his view of the future. He created the system of controls that allowed for a Martindale to take over and do as he willed, without recourse or oversight. Somehow he assumed that he would always keep a guiding hand on the rudder of influence - but when push came to shove everyone after him ran it exactly as he had, with complete autocratic authority within a theocracy and one man at the top who wore the title "God's Man for Our Day and Time". 

Peace n love! 

8 hours ago, skyrider said:

In terms of 1) inertia, 2) automatic pilot and 3) unconsciousness..........imo, those apply to the underlings, NOT the leadership.

As socks stated above.... "The Way's culture was hierarchical, structured and controlled by a central authority. We would say "its the Word" but in practice the central authority of the organization as the Way Corps took prominence in the hierarchy, was Dr. Wierwille.  There are many ways to do the same things, but in the Way we got stuck doing things one way - his way. His preferences and ideas drove the direction most of the major programs went in." 

Wierwille was the CENTRAL AUTHORITY OF TWI and he was not on autopilot!

The doctrines of wierwille were instilled thru the subtle , gentle arm of the "re-education camps" [pfal classes]..........1) We have NO friends when it comes to "the word," 2) Your family, friends, co-workers and church leaders may forsake you....but this "word of God" will never forsake you, 3) If there are places in the Bible where this "word" is wrong, I will tell you, 4) The law of believing is the greatest law in the whole universe,  5) All the women in the kingdom belong to the king, 6) This "word" [that I teach] takes the place of the absent Christ, ......etc. etc.

But the pfal-doctrine was not enough to sustain wierwille's authoritarian structure.

Wierwille needed trained "instructors"........younger men and women, peers leading peers.

Wierwille was the author, abuser and enforcer of The Way Corps program......the next generation "Gestapo police force" that followed orders from central command [Wierwille].  The corps would be sent forth as disciplinarians of wierwille's doctrines, not as disciples of Christ.  Rigorous, manipulative exercises were deployed within the corps training to eliminate self-identity and reformat us to the collective will of our "masters."  When dissidents arose, wierwille and his top lieutenants quickly spotted the threat(s) and major confrontation erupted.....much of it, for public consumption.  Isolation.  Immersion.  Intimidation.  Indoctrination.

Corps were induced with the poison of wierwille's psycho-babble and pathologies:

• wierwille's claim of snow-covered pumps on a sunny day to sanction his God-given calling
• lock box secrecy, sexual favors to the man of god was a woman's gift of servitude
• hot-blooded, vein-popping confrontations to corps.......yet, no devil spirit cast out
• years of youth......talent, labor, money......stolen to prop up wierwille's bankrupt soul
• in the end......wierwille "wished" he would have been the man he knew to be  ---- ppfffttt

Rather than go down this road of "inertia"...........might I suggest the words of DWBH

on page 1 of this thread.

~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~

 

"I left the TWIt gulag in December, 1986 after 16 years in the cesspool. I "graduated" from the Way corpse in August, 1976. I was in that thing Johnny the drunk Townsend called the Yak Twig after Chairman Geer the bus driver destroyed TWIt with his putsch paper about some legendary, supposedly benevolent "patriarch"  who was put one step above Saul of Tarsus as this man-o-gawd (MOG) for this our day and time and hour and minute and nanosecond.

I bought that purulent horse manure too, UNTIL I returned to your little mud hole in new Knoxville. I was on staff there from 1979-1986, when I left. That's where the truth and FACTS regarding dictor paul wierwille and his cult of perverted personality disorders began staring me in the face. Slowly but relentlessly those FACTS were oozing from the belly of that beast daily. The cognitive dissonance and abject immorality of what dictor and his boyz in da hoods were doing was horrifying. Truly and wildly against everything our Lord Christ stands for today. Psychopatholigical, alcohol-driven madness which literally killed innocents and drove a significant number of others to suicide! ALL in the name of "God's rightly divided Word" lived "in the renewed mind in manifestation" with complete and total allegiance to the MOG, "The Teacher", wayfers' "Father in the Word".

Unlike you de Liar, I did not bury my head or heart in that TWIt toilet. It did not take me 28 years of blatant foot-kissing and personal compromise to realize that something IS very rotten in TWItville, Ohio! So wrong that, no authentic Christian could ever in good conscience before the Lord stay there and continue to poison the waters of life for the genuine Christians who wanted just to love God and serve the bread of life to those in need.

And yet, here you are in 2016 agreeing to preside over that fraud of a minus-tray as if nothing bad enough ever happened that you must repent of before God and His Church, and ask for forgiveness from BOTH! That should be your number one task. But, I'm sure YOU don't "see the need" to do that, because you'd never agree to be  pwesident if you even hinted at doing this right thing.

This after 28 years at the vortex of sin and spiritual illness that your precious headquarters continues to live and promote. That means you were there during dem fawg years. That means you signed da forehead's loyalty oath. That means you went through and SUPPORTED, the homo purges, the ending of the ROA and the WOW program due to "homo infiltration". The screaming, spit-filled propaganda and hate speech against all us possessed cop-outs, non-stop every day for years. The public humiliation and destruction of ANY & ALL opposition or perceived "rebellion"  against his MOGship. The incredible fascist, neo-Nazi malignant  paranoid narcissism which eventually threw out any bible and replaced it with "genuine spiritual suspicion" as the main rule of "faith and practice". The "no debt" lunacy. The fun enforcement of "mark and avoid". Taking the "prevailing word" and locking it up behind the newly constructed walls of Zion that you morons consented to. The remake of dictor's PFAL into an even more incoherently insane WAP class. The pathetic Way Disciples program to replace WOWs. The overt and persistent pathological serial rape and sexual assault that Da Forehead's perverted "father in the word" taught the boy to do so well, and with rabid enthusiasm. And, your pal Ros-a-lie also participated in enthusiastically as well with dictor paul himself, and Howard and Don, and literally scores of other MOGs including members of my corpse which she was in-rez with when she began in the Family Corpse II in August, 1975! Male and female Monsieur de Liar! Ask Ms. Lombardi-Martindale about that! Denial. Obfuscation. Outright pathological lying. Blame shifting and finger pointing is what you've been taught to accept and demand. That's what you accept with your revisionist history of Da Forehead's two "settled" serial rape and sexual assault charges, along with Rosie's whitewashed version of her own admissions to the criminal sexual behavior of the Da forehead and others that are in the sealed settlement documents. If you know all this after 28 years and you're still there, my de Liar moniker fits you quite well Monsieur! And, you'll wear it with PRIDE I'm sure.

Unlike the far more kind Skyrider, I'm not wasting one nanosecond of my Christian prayer life on you, or any of the rest of you hypocritical, whited sepulchers. You are anti(against)-Christ in words and works. You are vain babblers, ever learning yet never coming to the knowledge of the truth. You are an insult to the Lord who bought you. You are a false teacher. You and your rosie suffer from the root of all evil.....the love of money. You preach for filthy lucre's sake. You plagiarize the plagiarizers. You bow  your knee to Baal. You are anathema to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Heavenly Father. You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Your "ministry" is a sham and a fraud. You serve the god of this world. REPENT! Ask God for forgiveness and apologize to those whom you have despitefully used. You have raped and plundered The Good Shepherd's precious flock. Their blood is on your hands. You cannot fool God! You cannot hide from the Righteous Judge either. You return to your own vomit, day after day, year after year. The blood of the righteous which you have shed screams through the ground against you. My only prayer for you is, "May the Lord have mercy upon your souls."

 

 

 

 

I see my role as "consultant", with personal experience.   

The facts speak for themselves...anyone can interpret or align them as they wish but in order to get to the "truth"....the facts must be established without bias or prejudice. 

To the degree we can do that, and I allow for a certain amount of bias as part of keepin' it real. 

In the Way there was brain freeze on understanding the relationship between fact and truth - truth was "The Word" and there was no truth beyond the immutable spiritual truths of God and His Word. Facts were treated like the children of a lesser god, the terminal bits of reality that come and go with the winds of doubt and fear, never to be trusted. 

In the Advanced class the teaching went that the revelation manifestations revealed (God willing) the "truths or facts concerning any situation about which it is humanly impossible to know anything about".......if memory serves and it seems to be, today. So there was a value to knowing "THE" facts of something, but typically that could go be devalued quickly if those facts were inconvenient or well, didn't serve someone's interests.....cause if you think about it God was either a NOT REVEALING ANY FACTS by those revelation manifestations in A LOT OF situations over the years or those facts being revealed were being ignore - or missed. Or both. 

- And a brief aside into inertia and auto pilots - it's worth considering "that expectation (is understood) to influence perception"....if you ever learned about Heisenberg and the Uncertainty Principle it helps, or has helped me to understand a little better how that works in the day-to-day realities of life and how to deal with "truths and facts" and the cross-life of the spiritual and physical. I picked it up in learning programming and dealing with random logic and how predictive modeling assembles scenarios, stuff that says "what might happen", which all makes my li'l geek brain twitch with excitement. I'm just a low level logic junkie but had the opportunity to work with some bonafide Brainiacs so it helped. I think. Anyway, I would agree with skyrider's hierarchy there and how it relates to the authority structure of The Way Inc. 

As to inertia - the Way really shows how long something can coast on past energy and go on seemingly forever while not really doing anything to produce new outcomes....but organizations very often do that - they just keep going with or without new energy, in the direction they are pointed until something shifts them into a different direction.....since the earlier generations are so protective of the status quo....it's likely to continue as long as some of them remain. Time does go on however. 

So - when I was in the way I understood there to be a valid path for facts having a necessary and legitimate place in hmm..."The Word"....if only because the Bible is a book that must be translated and interpreted (ie "rightly divided" in PFAL) and Jesus Christ was a physically living savior who perfectly lived God's will and intents in what He did, said and taught....and I'm a physical human being whose life/pneuma is now holy/hagion and living a life fueled now by and with eternal realities and "truth" that is in fact, "LIVING FACT"....and the redemption and salvation of man has happened is being lives in a physical plane - so if facts are to be avoided we end up with a lot of halo's and no angels under them.  

So, long winded way to say that ..... in the Way years we kinda never knew what was going on AS A GROUP without validation from Dr. Wierwille or the nearest extension of that authority. Individually we might do like what I did - I participated, learned and deferred to his authority and decision making in many situations and attempted to execute on the greater vision and plan of the Way Nash as it was brought down from VPW or his designees. 

To me, them's the facts. Everyone may interpret them differently but there's no debate that what VPW said was what was done. That's why I don't subscribe to the theory that "the Way was fine until Martindale/Geer/Finnegan/Whoever screwed everything up".......His main guys all learned from him and acted in complete alignment with his wishes. 

**** Compared to how I later learned and worked in professional organizations, I'd rate his mentorship about a D plus - he mostly trained others to continue what he was doing and when he felt they'd moved or deviated EVEN THE SLIGHTEST bit from his individual wishes he'd - well, sometimes he'd literally break down into tears and end up yelling at all of us because apparently we didn't care and wanted to destroy him and his life's work or something. I write that and I don't mean it in metaphor or exaggerate - he acted that way many times. And there's no way a growing young man of 20 something can't experience that and wonder if it's how we're all supposed to end up - and realize that no, that's his weaknesses, not mine or ours. 

Anyway, I do value the time and work that Dr. VP Wierwille put into the Way, the PFAL courses and my overall exposure to his life. I did learn a lot and I grew up myself through that exposure but in hindsight I was never nearly as close to him as I might have wanted to be or even thought I was, for lots of reasons - some mine and some his, as El Presidente' Deluxe of the Way. 

On 2/14/2020 at 8:37 PM, T-Bone said:

 

Great posts! Here’s a few thoughts I had after reading them.

I think I learned more about honesty and empathy from my Mom & Dad than I ever did from wierwille. And my parents taught me that stuff – not by lectures or sermons on how to be a good Christian – but by how they lived their lives in raising me and my siblings. As a parent myself – now looking back on my folks – I believe I draw some inspiration of self-sacrifice for my kids by recalling how they would be supportive of our interests and dreams – not only financially – but even in just talking with us about all that stuff. That is a crazy interesting thing about parenthood – there’s someone who is a part of me – yet separate from me – who may have some totally different hopes and dreams than me…fascinating!

I didn’t always feel that way about my parents. I’ve shared this before  on another thread cults: the art of deception  ...While growing up I was influenced by the counterculture of the 60s – there formed a gap between me and my parents. When the glue of family ties is weakened we may be attracted to a group that seems to satisfy our sense of belonging. But after being in TWI for some 12 years – I became disillusioned with them – and it took me some time to figure out why. Basically it amounts to there being nothing like the real thing when it comes to family ties - even as imperfect as they may be and as hurtful as they may be at times - there is a real connection there. Blood is thicker than water as the expression goes.

In general, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with groups (churches, organizations, friends, etc.) that help you see the value in life or even just help you cope with life. I think my weak family ties made me vulnerable – set me up as a target – for the leader of a pseudo-family. Yes, wierwille in all his narcissistic glory  was the “patriarch” of this pseudo-family. His pet saying of “I have no friends when it comes to the word” speaks volumes about his exaggerated feeling of self-importance and his lack of empathy to how others felt. wierwille’s pet dictum really covers it all – "I have no friends - or ties to an earthly family for that matter - when it comes to the word"…really ? where does it say that in the Bible? Chapter and verse please.

The twisted version of self-sacrifice I learned during my 12 year involvement with TWI was that I was expected to put the priorities of The Way International ahead of everything else in my life. Actual family ties you may have  are subjugated by the “reality of your spiritual family”   (contrary to the bogus claim on the back of the PFAL sign up card “develops more harmony in the home”). . it's a variation of the previously mentioned dictum:  don’t let anyone – not even your earthly family come between you and your spiritual family of The Way International....    how many marriages, families and friends were split up because a TWI follower was "taking a stand on the word"? and you know there were a lot of situations where upper leadership put the pressure on folks to make a choice between staying with The Way International or staying with their spouse who didn't see eye to eye with upper leadership.

Sure glad I left that mess. In my ever evolving opinion, when it comes to family stuff - I see in the Bible a lot of stuff  about reconciliation (  the prodigal son    for example...or better yet, how about seeing reconciliation as having a higher priority than even worship in   Matthew 5:23, 24      )  . I believe having patience, being supportive...having forgiveness, and empathy towards others...especially family members is a big deal.

It's good to see the different backgrounds and experiences we all brought to "The Word" of God. 

I had and have little tolerance for what I call "imperial entanglements". Raised Roman Catholic and well educated in the religion I dropped all but the ideas and some of the beliefs by the age of 18. Straight forward teaching and reading in and from the Bible brought me back to Christ and a consideration of the Biblical history of mankind as more than a myth. So I went from a faith defined by ritual and tradition to a faith defined by relationship and the immediacy of that relationship's experience.

For the time I was in the Way I deliberately accepted what we were doing as something that I was willing to try so I could see where it would go. I already knew from my first couple years of rebirth into the Christian faith I didn't need another church or another Pope or another set of rules and regs. I bought into the work so that I could see if we could succeed with teaching and music, and the overall vision of "WOW", and reaching people with Christ and the teaching of the Bible. 

So I never gave up my family relationships, we were always in touch and I considered them about the same as I always had and I was fortunate that they loved me and cared about what I wanted to do. 

I never felt that VPW's "Way Family" culture he built worked. I got what we were trying to do and I was part of it for several years but it suffered from a form of stasis, caused by how it chose to grow. Ironic, yes but not uncommon in how organizations grow. If an organization tries to dig itself in and establish a rigid culture it can implode while exploding. Messy. 

The Way's culture was hierarchical, structured and controlled by a central authority. We would say "its the Word" but in practice the central authority of the organization as the Way Corps took prominence in the hierarchy, was Dr. Wierwille. 

There are many ways to do the same things, but in the Way we got stuck doing things one way - his way. His preferences and ideas drove the direction most of the major programs went in. That approach continued with Craig and proceeded to fail in lesser hands as it became possible for us to look over several years and see how it all worked out. 

It could change, even today with De Lisle or whoever's in charge - but inertia's preeeeeeetty well got them going in a set direction and way of doing things so I wouldn't hold my breath. Then again, anything can happen. It's up to them. 

I'm sure if they made some cosmetic changes, moved the furniture around a little and said some nice things, show PFAL a few times again, there'd be some people flocking back. 

8 hours ago, Twinky said:

I thought my parents were important too.  Wonderful examples, both, of Christian love and support and selfless service to others, including respect and care for their own elders, taught to me and still carried on by me.

I never understood why the "Wierwille family" was so important - and why TWI attempted to teach me that my own family was less to be respected and honoured.  It didn't seem right at the time, and it never became "right" in my eyes.  I'm jolly sure it wasn't right in God's eyes.  If nothing else, they should have been honoured as brothers and sisters in the faith.  Instead, my mother was significantly dishonoured by my then "twig leader" (who I think has now repented of his thuggishness under TWI).

Praise the Lord, I'm now a part of the wider Christian community, where others, especially older folk, are embraced, honoured, respected, and treated with courtesy.

Amen to that. 

It all makes me think that he  did go very out of bounds with his pre occupation with his own family and trying to build a "family" of Way Corps and followers close to himself. 

VPW had a very specific belief that it was necessary for his family to all be together behind him and actively supporting what he was doing for it to succeed. He had gotten son Don to come back and work with him and everyone was required to "stand" with his ministry for it to succeed and live on. He spoke about this more in the last 70's, around 79, 80, 81 and at Camp Gunnison around 1980 with the Way Corps gathered there.

He talked a lot to the 4th Corps about his German heritage and history and began the process of memorializing the Weirwille history to illustrate the underpinnings of his own life and ministry's birth. 

I hesitate to label people narcissists as so much of narcissism is found in normal behaviors but when it becomes as complex and pervasive as his it's probably warranted, especially his view of failure. Anything that failed was nearly ALWAYS someone else's fault and in the end of his life the myth was built that his very death was caused by others he claimed deserted him.

Going back into years of exposure to him I saw him repeatedly struggle to work in difficult circumstances - contrary to the tough-guy-rebel personae he put out he would crumble into a teary mess if some small detail was out of order, complain that "no one believed him" while surrounded by 100's of people anxiously hanging on his every word. Any number of minor physical impedances would throw him into a screaming tirade blaming devil spirits, unbelief, even accusing those who worked endless hours to support his teaching ministry of outright colluding to destroy him. Then an hour later, he'd be all smiles - "oh, you're not still made at me are you??" he'd coo....and like the abusive parent cuddling the child they'd slapped around he'd say "Aww, I love you, I only get mad at you cause I want the best for you! hahawhaw!"......

That's not a healthy family environment, trying desparetly to please him, never knowing when Daddy's going to blow a fuse and throw something. Now - VPW never got physical at any time of his life, I want to make that clear, he never hit anyone or anything like that, that I ever saw and I don't want to give that impression or imply that - but the dynamics of the power-authority-role he used was classic manipulation.

Those he mentored the closest all picked that up too - Like LCM and others, grown men, some former athletes, fine specimens, absolutely going ballistic if someone sneezed during a teaching they did, or god forbid got there 5 minutes late. They'd find crooked chairs, coffee too cold or too hot, posters they didn't like, lighting too bright, too dim, a tie out of place, a WOW pin on the wrong side, a Holy Spirit dove missing, no glass of water at the podium, too many mints in the bowl, not enough, flowers not right, etc. etc. etc. and any number of reasons that their strength was sapped, concentration ruined and their spiritual armor under violent attack - if the AC went on during their teaching. ( the hum!!! the hum!!!!! )

Self-absorbed "ministers" of their own egos....Far from being tough, single minded and ready for anything and equal to anything as "More than Conquerors", like him they were frail and weak, beaten by their own egos - and for the biggest and loudest of his mentors, pride did come before their falls. 

It's so telling that VPW rejected his own family and those closest to him at the end of his life...."No friends when it comes to the WORD!!!".....hell, he didn't let anyone be his friend for long. I do think in his mind he was acting out a great drama of his own manufacture. 

On 2/8/2020 at 9:31 AM, Raymo said:

As I recall, people were asked to commit to following LCM and if they did not, they were outed, being put on a black list, and from there anything anyone might have said about someone, might have been assumed to be true. If you have something against a brother, you are to go talk to him yourself first, then take one or two others. That sort of thing didn't happen as far as I could tell. I just can't see that we are supposed to promise that we will follow one leader or another. I don't see that in scripture anywhere. That in itself was the reason so many left. It's not the right thing to do. What ever happened to "Teach them the Word and let 'em go free."? Let's all learn from these things and do better.

Hi - Craig learned that from Dr. Weirwille. VPW fully expected everyone to follow his plans and decision, as the Way was "his" ministry and he was president and founder. If you didnt' want to support him as such he'd kick you out, fire you, terminate you. Monstrous lies circulated about those people in the following months and years. It wasn't that Craig invented being an asz hole - he had lots of mentoring. 

On 2/8/2020 at 8:59 AM, Raymo said:

How important is it to "honor the fathers"? Those fathers in the faith who have affected our lives in some positive way, should be honored, shouldn't they? Not everything everyone does is good, and not everything they do is bad. We do not want to bless evil, and neither do we want to curse those things that are good, right?

I was just thinking about how much time we spent in the scripture at the cross of Jesus, in the PFAL class. Thinking back on my 60 + years of life, I can not recall anyone ever, taking me through so much time on the events of the life of Jesus, at the cross. Nobody ever did that with me that I can recall, other than VPW in that PFAL class. Did all that time at the cross have a positive benefit on our lives or not? Well how many people stood up when we were told to set our things aside, stand up, and speak in tongues? It was not at all uncommon for every new student to do exactly that.

I'm not saying that everything we were taught about those crucified with Christ was accurate. Today I don't believe as I was told back then, and did go along with. However, just thinking about how much time we spent on the events at the cross, is amazing. We really did hear about Christ and him crucified, right? Who has ever done that with us? Maybe some people have had that happen to them, before or since PFAL. I don't know, but I don't think it would be the majority.

I received the Holy Spirit with the manifestation of speaking in tongues, when I was reading a chapter out of one of his books that were a part of the class. which as I recall we had to purchase separately...long time ago to recall for me, but one of those small books had a very short chapter called "How To Speak In Tongues."

It was in PFAL, that I learned about where we got the scriptures. It was in PFAL that I received a respect and reverence for God. He really was with us in our meetings. Christ really was evident though us. through our lives, and the Holy Spirit actually was manifest among us. though the manifestations of the Spirit we functioned in. There was so much good in PFAL. Not everything in it was necessarily right on, but there was so, so, so much good and correct in it, right? Sure you know that's right. (VPW must have known the value of acknowledgement of the truth is. It's important. He knew how to draw that out of us, at times when we needed it.)

So I leave with this question to think about: How important is it to honor the fathers and mothers of the faith? (those who have taught us, and led us into the truth, and mentored us) Remember that it is those who honor the truth that can benefit from it, right? Now none of our teachers are the truth itself. Jesus is the truth, as well as the life, but every life has something to be honored, doesn't it? How have we been doing at that?

Hi - couple thoughts...

i Timothy 5 gives some good broad strokes as to how we should treat each other in the church - it starts out with this guidance...
"Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.

When you say honor the "fathers" you seem to be talking about elders in the church - <quote> "Those fathers in the faith who have affected our lives in some positive way, should be honored..."

I'd point you to Timothy 5 for that as a good starting point. And the answer is yes but more importantly and this is very important - to not think of ourselves (or anyone else) more highly than we should - Romans 12:3: For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.

If your point is to ask the question, "How are you at honoring Dr. Weirwille who taught the Bible in PFAL", I can only answer for myself but I would also advise others accordingly in regards to anyone who teaches them anything ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO TEACH THE BIBLE thusly:

When it comes to God, the Bible and the things of God which includes first and foremost His people, show great respect and honor to God first, His son Jesus Christ His "logos" as well as the Bible and to everyone, especially my brethren in Christ and those who dedicate themselves to God and the care of His people. 

Remember too that the commandment of promise, to honor our mothers and fathers, places parents who raise their children in the faith of God as second in the chain of authority - first God, then parents then others. Parental authority can include others too but let's not muddy the waters to say it isn't first intended as a familial parent-child relationship which defines any aspect of a similar relationship of authority. 

The exercise for many people is to NOT OVER - HONOR those who teach and care for the church. Just as a child can become over dependent on a parent and never become an individual even when they are taught and raised to become such, a member of the church can become reliant on someone else to lead them and decide for them and in so doing subvert God's desire to have a living growing relationship with them. 

In the same way a "father or mother" can deliberately create conditions that keep their children dependent on them, and unable to live and contribute as an individual. 

One of Dr. Weirwille's weaknesses was his own need to be accepted and affirmed. I would content that while many of his programs and ideas were good, many of them had components to keep the participants close to home, tied to his chain of command and needing to continually validate his authority and actions. I say that having been a participant in most if not all of The Way's classes, courses, programs and roles. He needed everyone to come in once a year or more so that he could keep the hub of everyone's lives in and at the Way Nash in Ohio. Rather than train, develop and release leaders to the work of God and Christ, he built a network of paid and volunteer members and participants who answered through a chain of command to himself. 

Of course it grew out of that and to a great degree the failure of the organization of the Way as a functional business and means of outreach for the original teaching ministry it was based on and grew from was due to it being built to work with one man, one authority at the center. When that one man/central authority broke down as it always will, it failed. 

So I have good memories of the Farm, the pond, the woods, many of the people and he various campuses and places where we worked and spent time, and I do revere God's Word. I would not teach what's in PFAL the same way, and I'd change some of the material based on how I understand the texts and theory it's based on. So I can honor Dr. Weirwille's teaching of the Bible but because he built so much of the Way around himself, his family, his heritage and his history I saw him really hold the whole thing back. People celebrate it today and say "look at what he did" and I'll credit that to an extent but knowing what I do today I'm not going to lead my own efforts with "Dr. Weirwille, The Teacher", because it adds unnecessary baggage to the message of Christ which I personally saw act as an anchor to the long term effort. Some say his unique blend of rebellious and angry personality served a greater purpose. I think it kept him inward faced, in Ohio where he built his ministry in his own likeness. 

In the same way, people then might say "WELL! You sure did get real smart didn't you? Boy, you sure did get smart!" sarcastically. And my answer to that is - I was 18, 20, 25 then - did I get smarter in the last 50 years?.....YOU BET YOUR ASS I DID. 

PEACE!  

To add - where the dividing lines of administrational thinking helps is understanding that today, we aren't a mix of all the stuff from before but rather have a unique arrangement with and through Christ.

Take tithing - the concept of recognizing God's provision with a portion of what I have is consistent since Abraham and Melchizidech, hundred of years before Moses and the old covenant law  and while it can recognize a human agency in it's execution it is not meant as a recognition of what a person does for us - it's an act of gratitude and recognition of what God does for us. And we always have reason and cause to do that.

Abraham believed God and it was credited to him for righteousness, he was made right to God by doing it. Today, I can tithe but it's not "counted to (me) for righteousness" - that's in the sacrifice of Christ, redemption and salvation.

So - the roots of tithing are ingrained in a faithful life throughs out all administrations since it was first recorded being done - faith in God, God's provision, our recognition of that by taking a part and devoting it to God. But today, it's not credited to make us righteous, if we don't tithe our identification with Christ remains.

Does God continue to bless us? Well, again I could go back to Church history, Acts 15 - there's no such "imperial entanglements" placed upon Gentiles entering the new Church of Christ, but clearly they were taught and encouraged to give "of their abundance" and shared back to the Church. I'd find it hard to think they didn't learn about the Jewish laws of tithes and offerings but I have to assume they learned "giving" in the context of Christ - freely you receive, now freely give - that's conceptual but is also very practical.

Anyway - I'll add Romans 5 to the discussion on sin - Romans 5 repeats three elements - that sin entered by one man, grace and justification abounded by another man, and that those following were "made sinners" by that sin of the one man as well as being justified by another man. 

- Adam sinned (one man, sin enters)
- those following were made sinners by that transgression *even if they didn't commit the same transgression of Adam - v 14.
- Christ justified (one man reputes sin)
- all made righteous through Christ and "grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." for all who believe. * even if we're not part of the old covenant promises, we are saved by the new covenant. 

Romans states that when there was no law, there was no sin imputed. This is a very fundamental point of God's justice - man wasn't judged because he broke a law he didn't know about or understand, he was judged by what he knew. 

Vv 12 - 14 add a very interesting perspective to the idea of sin and what it is and how it relates to "death"........it's worth pondering what the relationship of those two things are and the records of Adam and Eve. 

12 Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned:— 13 for until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come.

Several things happened as a result of the transgression - Adam would have to labor the earth to produce bread, Eve with the pain of pregnancy, birth, and childrearing, coupled with subservience to her husband. Human life would end in death. They were both banished from the "Garden". 

All of those things aren't immediately reversed when we accept Christ and identify with His righteousness but there is a new beginning into a new future - Man must work still but Christ taught that God provides for the birds who have no barns and don't sow or reap - how much more are we to our Father?.....In Christ, men and women have roles where the woman submits to the man but the man gives his life for the woman, and their role is collaborative in the body of Christ as "one".......women still bear a burden in childbirth and we still die - but these things will change in our future. 

The consistent theme is trust in God and His son, Jesus Christ and the "law of love" in Christ Jesus - grace, mercy and forgiveness. 

When we are "born again" we no longer have a "sin consciousness" to weigh us down because we are technically "citizens" of the heavenly kingdom now - so sin no longer governs our life. 

I am renewed in the "life of my mind" says the Bible, transformed by it's renewal - none of that effort replaces what Christ has done, it only transforms me in this life - spiritual renewal has it's privileges and one of those is that we can now pattern our lives after Christ's example and live as the righteous of God. 

Etc.have to pause....

12 hours ago, T-Bone said:

Socks, thanks for sharing some of your process. As always great stuff in your post. I probably should knuckle down and write out some of the things I read and think about. I used to do that some on Grease Spot a few years ago…but I dunno…some of it was half-baked…not fully developed…whatever…anyway…

I like what you (and Annio) said about observing the flow of events between God and his creation - making for an easier way to read the Bible – letting it speak for itself (as the expression goes) would mean we may not have to get into a whole lot of elaborate explanations…as you said:

“As annio stated there's a flow of events between God and His creation, and the changes that occur within that. It's a much easier way to read the Bible and if it does indeed speak for itself it will as we read it and learn it. So while I might use the idea of labelling the more obvious segments of the history and learning what changes and what stays the same I haven't found any great value to nailing that down till it hurts.”

The flow of events in the past is history. What is history? It’s the study of past events, particularly in human affairs; the whole series of past events connected with someone or something. And usually historians have some keen sense that observes developments, trends, progress, changes, etc. Along with observations an historian might offer explanations to connect certain events in an effort to make sense out of things – that all being the historian’s own “lens” or perspective.

 I tend to think of dispensationalism or covenant theology (and for that matter even systematic theology in general) as a lens also – through which the reader views and tries to make sense of the Bible. But along the lines that you said, the Bible isn’t like a modern textbook – with everything organized by topics with charts, diagrams, index, and ALL the verses on a given subject are gathered together in one chapter so there’s no guesswork as to how this verse relates to that verse. That would be a book on systematic theology or something like an encyclopedia on the Bible. Don’t get me wrong – I do think being somewhat organized (theologically speaking) in how we look at the stuff of the Bible is necessary. But I think it’s detrimental to growth and expanding our horizons if we exclusively cling to one perspective as if it were set in stone. I probably use more of an amateur historian’s lens when I read through the Bible – sometimes noting the developments and changes in people – maybe as a way of understanding my own personal journey. Maybe that has something to do with what Annio said:

“Covenant theology, the little that I know of it, seems much more revealing of a God of continual Presence, grace, relationship, mercy, support, and love.”

I really like that!

Maybe this is a bit of exaggeration or overly simplistic but to me covenant theology has a subjective feel to it and seems to focus more on folks developing a working relationship WITH God…written by ordinary folks like you or me – inspired by God, yes – but conveying God’s message through their own experiences…so it’s ya know, touchy feely kind of stuff  ; whereas dispensationalism is more objective-ish and seems to be more about man versus God, Old Testament versus New Testament, law versus grace, what’s God’s rules and regs for a particular time…not saying either viewpoint has it all right or all wrong – but my ever-evolving “theology” tends to aim toward a synthesis of various ideas. Perhaps Galatians 5:14 is like a synthesis of sorts – “For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: Love your neighbor as yourself."

Some of what I believe about the Bible and certain topics are still in a state of flux – and I’m comfortable with that – although it’s been a long time for me to get to the point where I’m okay with not feeling like I have to be a Bible-know-it-all or thinking “The Word takes the place of the absent Christ”. Any of my studies in the Bible are usually geared more to helping me think about my relationship with God and the people in my life, understanding more about Jesus Christ, and sometimes even reevaluating my priorities.

Theologies and philosophies can be helpful. On a journey through the Bible or in life - we need to have a feel for the lay of the land. When I was young, I felt fully equipped for the journey with the knowledge, hopes, and plans that were wrapped up in my TWI life…now I’ve come to realize there’s lots of stuff in the Bible (and in life!) I may never figure out or truly understand…I’ve got a lot more of open-ended questions that simple pat answers can’t satisfy. ..I’m okay with that - it makes for a much more interesting journey... So I’ll leave you with this quote:

"If it were all truly known and planned and determined, life wouldn’t be worth living, just a giant to-do list waiting to be crossed off"…Helen Mirren

Sure, my pleasure. : )

There are certainly "dispensations" in the Bible. Administrations, "oikonomia" deal with "house-law". How things are done, engaged with, managed, carried out, between God and man. That's changed over time, since Genesis. Those periods of time and what went on in them are important to understand if we want to get a real handle on our own relationship with God and gain an understanding of our Creator and Father. It's much more than just dates on a calendar of course. There are covenants agreements, between God and man during these times and those provide the structure to how things are done between us. 

There's consistencies too of course. God's mercy and grace are consistent themes, God's justice. 

I'm now a bona fide part of God's family, a fully vested child of the Creator. I WAS a Gentile before that, as far as the Old Covenant pre-Christ arrangement and in those administrations God dealt with the other nations of the world differently than with Israel and the bloodline of believers. 

I can see the transitional phase out - phase in, in Acts during their first Council at which they determined that the new Gentile converts would not be required to become fully invested in Jewish observance of their traditions and laws. They were given a broad encouragement to steer clear of pagan practices and sexual promiscuity and basically live the faith of Christ. Etc. It's easy to see that some of the disciples viewed their faith through their heritage and wanted to maintain that. It was being revealed however that the new identity of God's people would no longer by Israel or the 12 Tribes, but rather this new "church" of all those who followed Christ and accepted salvation by grace. 

So, first the exegetical work and then the hermeneutics, right? And it's at the hermeneutical stage that this becomes very important because teaching the doctrine of salvation in Christ doesn't have any additional requirements or attachments, it's by grace - and a very simple way to understand that is from the Gentile's perspective, since we, I, wasn't part of the Abrahamic bloodline and would not come into the faith with any of the expectations of a Jew. Everything past and everything coming is clearly understood for me today through Christ, all things are of and will be in Christ. Which is pretty much what the N.T. teaches - when I share salvation therefore I never take the approach that PFAL or Dr. Wierwille did, as if I need to square up some previously misunderstood division of the "administrations". The important part right now is a relatively simple message that spans history in a snapshot of events. 

The topic of "sin" though - have to get back to that, I guess. Romans 5 covers most of it, for me. A lot of it anyway. 

20 hours ago, T-Bone said:

Great post Socks !!! That's some deep stuff...I always enjoy reading your posts - they give me a lot to think about.

Thank you! It's a learning exercise to write my thoughts out this way. Over the years I have notes, we all probably do on different things and it's fun to to write it out. For me it writes different than it speaks, and speaks different than it thinks, and it gets clarified in the process, if that makes sense. 

annio really said it all regarding the study of administrations in this original statement - " I think there is a lot more accurate continuity with the perspective that God is always interacting w/ His ppl (and often others) as the same covenanting Father, rather than thinking of Him primarily as a "boxer upper" of administrations..."

"Administrations" aren't outlined in the Bible the way we try to outline them as a hierarchy with hard stops and starts and break points noted in the texts by the author. Rocky's noted that the Bible is a collection of stories, of books, and that's true. We can understand them as an entire story and narrative then with a beginning and end (page 1, page 200, last page, etc) but that's not the actual story - is it? That's the book. It came to us in the format of the writers and their times. I would always see it first as history, a historical view of mankind's story from the earliest creation to the future completion of God's purposes for it all, and it's all told from the human angle, our voice. Today everything has rolled up into Christ the Savior. 

As annio stated there's a flow of events between God and His creation, and the changes that occur within that. It's a much easier way to read the Bible and if it does indeed speak for itself it will as we read it and learn it. So while I might use the idea of labelling the more obvious segments of the history and learning what changes and what stays the same I haven't found any great value to nailing that down till it hurts. Like say, the debate over the ending of the era of the apostles and there being an end to the gifts of holy spirit life manifesting in tongues, prophecy, healing, etc. Clarifying it as a change or no-change in "administrations" doesn't really do anything to move the needle on the real question which is - what does it say happened and does it say anywhere or read in the story we see that anyone written about declared an end to it, or for that matter even a start? And the answer I think is "no". So again, if I clear the table of the arguments over how many administrations can balance on the head of a goldfish, is there anything left and if so, what? And I figure, yes there is and it's.....etc. etc. 

We know the Bible didn't come to us as a textbook or manual. It does contain some things like that, Proverbs, Psalms, but they're not organized and cross referenced with footnotes as directed by God, they stand on their own word and order, as - is. So, it's not a textbook with an index, it doesn't start out "I the Lord God of all creation will now explain myself, my purposes and how this is all going to work. Let's start at the beginning. Remember there's maps and a glossary at the back of your set of manuals so make sure you have the current versions...." Nor does it lay out as a set of instructions - "Chapter 1 - What To Do Immediately After You're Born", or anything like that. 

As I grew up in the Way years, when I used to integrate these things into teachings people would usually get it and sometimes I could almost see light bulbs going off in our heads, first the bulb then the soft glow of awareness. Kind of like being in a well lit bookstore, in the back around a table in a room with windows, on a sunny day. That's how if feels to me anyway. : ) It goes to a place where there's no fight or debate or struggle. Instead there's study, discussion, listening, learning and hopefully understanding. God gave me peace with Him through Christ, I enjoy it. 

Cheers! 

On 2/2/2020 at 10:24 PM, Rocky said:

Socks,

Did you ever take any philosophy classes in college?

"Philosophy courses are different from other college courses you may have taken. Tests in philosophy require you to explain concepts in a clear and concise manner rather than to simply regurgitate information. Philosophers do not write research papers but instead write argument papers and this too can be a daunting task for those students that are unfamiliar with it."

Your ability to ponder Christian/biblical concepts/notions, think them through and explain what you think about them is probably most why I enjoy reading your posts and comments. The one I quoted above included. I don't know that I would have ever come up with anything like you did but I find it quite intriguing.

I see you as a philosopher of Christianity. Hopefully, that doesn't offend you.

As for me, I'm inclined to look at the Bible as (you mentioned the other day) a story or rather (in my case) a collection of stories. Stories are intrinsically crucial to humanity. But not necessarily because they may or may not be factual.

Greek and Roman mythology is all about communicating important stories/concepts to people even though we understand them to not be factual.

That said (about how I now view the Bible), I see great value in how you explained Mickey Mouse as analog to Adam. And how you described a new(er) understanding of sin than I had thought of maybe ever.

So, again, thanks for sharing your insights.

You're welcome! 

Yes, I have. A little early in my youth but moreso in later adulthood. I've read quite a bit about it and have some favorites in the field, although not many. 

Philosophy wasn't a popular term in the Way anytime I was involved (68 - 89). Philosophy is often considered antithetical to Christianity which is thought to be anti-intellectual by many. 

That line of thought contrasts Christianity the religion as being a set of revealed truths, a faith in a revelation that defines life with Philosophy as an inquiry into the fundamentals of life that tries to consider it as a whole and reason through what we know by our senses, not "super senses" so to speak, if there were to be such a thing. 

My thought on that is that if I take it all off the table and go back to zero - what have I got?

Christianity itself is a bit of a hybrid, but not for obvious reasons. Christ is "the Logos", the Word, the intent and meaning, the purposes, of God. God who can not be seen by my human eyes can be seen through the human being Jesus Christ, "He that has seen me has seen the Father". 

A logos is very much attached to it's source, if I can put it that way - it's essentially an expression of the reasoning of the one reasoning. And it's why Jesus Christ can't "Be God" literally, if he's the Logos of God anymore than say, a child I might have and raise whose sole purpose would be to carry on my work and legacy can literally "Be Me". It's a matter of consciousness, Jesus had a conscious life that was not "the same" as God's, they both didn't think through the same conscious facility, seen in how Jesus prayed TO God, and described Him as "Father". So in a way, even considering all the permutations and conjecture throughout history on Jesus Christ "the Word" and what that means, it could never really mean that he's God. He is by intention a necessary part of the means I am given BY God to understand and relate to Himself. That's not a small thing in an of itself by any means. 

So - that being the case (either way but easier to see through reasoning the "Logos" of God) Christianity is a revealed belief that doesn't rely on human reasoning to exist but the revelation itself is now a part of the physical world and I can now reason with and through it and learn both from it and about it. 

Now - Paul wrote that the "full" revelation of Christ wasn't a product of man's effort and was unknown, a mystery, secret. He wrote about the physical not being able to understand the spiritual and since I accept that to be true I also have to accept that when and if the spiritual is expressed in the physical, it's expression must then be able to be reasoned to it's source - without that "domain" context I can't really know it in a meaningful way and that's eXACTly what Christianity does, it gives domain context to everything it covers. And I'd argue that while it's outside of the reasoning we see in history it's not outside the range of human reasoning to have considered this time we are in - something that gets missed in theology I think. Granted the Jews and the other nations weren't thinking that way and they were being generally led as Israel to their separate and chosen status - but it wouldn't have been impossible for anyone sitting down and considering what the Messiah might really be like and do in His coming to consider "...hey! What if God draws all mankind to Himself through our Messiah??!!  I know, I know, that's not supposed to happen but doesn't it kinda make sense in a weird way...? What if - hey, that's a crazy idea but think about it....."... and then say "nawwwww! that's too crazy".....

Point being that everything about Christianity as it's been revealed and passed down including it's heritage history, is a physical reality, a moment in history, a tangible event, something that happened or was said and that had meaning and understanding in it's day and time. It's been written down, given the stamp of authenticity and can be now clearly understood to be "in" "The Word of God". 

In the same way we believe in Jesus Christ, not as an idea of an intention - but as person who lived, died, rose again, ascended. A real person. 

Point to the point being that in order to learn that, know it, understand it and get to the point I'm living it, everything I am doing in believing in Christ is essentially believing in the meaning of past events that have meaning now. So in it's own world it's not just a fuzzy idea or a revealed truth - it's a real man, a real God, and a real meaning for things I now really consider to be - well, real. 

So the effort I engage in is one of observation and consideration. In this same way the essentials of my own Christianity are tangible, with real events and real things that also have lead me to believe what I believe in - including what I've learned in the Bible. It's not only a belief in a set of values I've been taught or a fact someone told me is true - my own facts follow suit with the ones I've learned from others and in fact are probably at least as important to my beliefs now as what's in the Bible. 

I guess I choose to not get stuck in arguing objectivity and subjectivity and never get to the real meat of it all which is - is there really anything going on here with all this and if there is, how can I learn and understand it. 

And since the spirit of God is now in me and I have the "mind of Christ", my new capacity to live in this life would logically include the ability to reason within my new universe. 

- Glad you liked the Mickey Mouse stuff - an idea once fell on me like a cinder block once - that "the truth" can always be seen from any angle. God is with us always, even to the depths of hell or the furthest reaches of life - God is with us. Some people see God as being someone who does good things.  I kinda see good wherever I find it, and see God. Or try to anyway. 

PEACE!