A Quote by Adolph Guggenbuhl-Craig
An encounter with god or with the transcendent, per se, can only occur when we experience the violent side of god.
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In the Old Testament, the God of the Prophets never was completely on Israel's side. There was a primitive national religion, but it was always a transcendent God who had judgment first in the House of God. This is the true religion. It has a sense of a transcendent majesty and a transcendent meaning so that that puts myself and the foe under the same judgment.
When God spoke to Moses and others in the Old Testament, those events were encounters with God. An encounter with Jesus was an encounter with God for the disciples. In the same way an encounter with the Holy Spirit is an encounter with God for you.
One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime. Nor is surrender to the will of God (per se) adequate to fullness of power in Christ. Maturity is the accomplishment of years, and I can only surrender to the will of God as I know what that will is.
No one really wants to follow you per se. They really don’t. They want to know that, by following you, they are really following a higher principle, a transcendent truth. In spiritual followership, people want to know whether they are being led and influenced by God.
Many who are convinced that God is non-violent simply dismiss the Old Testament accounts of God commanding or engaging in violence. I don't consider this to be a viable option, for Jesus treats the whole Old Testament as the inspired Word of God. My cross-centered interpretation of these violent portraits allows believers to affirm that God is non-violent while also affirming that all Scripture is "God-breathed.".
The blog is meant to be a bit of a side chapel - a place to slip into and still and encounter the glory of God - and come away again with a fresh sense that your life, right where you are, is a holy experience - that God dwells with you and in you, and where you are is holy ground, worthy of reverence and celebration and wonder.
We continually encounter hardships. People disappoint us. We disappoint ourselves. But God is constant and compassionate. We are not alone. He cares. Against all reason, the transcendent God loves us so much that He has committed Himself to us.
We proclaim human intelligence to be morally valuable per se because we are human. If we were birds, we would proclaim the ability to fly as morally valuable per se. If we were fish, we would proclaim the ability to live underwater as morally valuable per se. But apart from our obviously self-interested proclamations, there is nothing morally valuable per se about human intelligence.
God is not a person; God is manifestation itself. We think that God is a superhuman person, but God is not a person. He is not a subject. We can never experience God in a subject/object experience. God is what makes a subject/object experience possible. We can never see God or experience God as separate from ourselves. God is a being but there is no division.
We consider Christmas as the encounter, the great encounter, the historical encounter, the decisive encounter, between God and mankind. He who has faith knows this truly; let him rejoice.
Age, per se, may claim tenderness and pity, but not respect; that only comes when the years have brought humanity and wisdom and the experience that worketh hope.
Anytime you have anyone who thinks he or she has God in their pocket, you have the potential for disaster, ... Throughout history, the claim that God is on your side has been used to justify any action, no matter how violent or destructive.
In the dominant Western religious system, the love of God is essentially the same as the belief in God, in God’s existence, God’s justice, God’s love. The love of God is essentially a thought experience. In the Eastern religions and in mysticism, the love of God is an intense feeling experience of oneness, inseparably linked with the expression of this love in every act of living.
Beware of manufacturing a God of your own: a God who is all mercy, but not just; a God who is all love, but not holy; a God who as a heaven for every body, but a hell for none; a God who can allow good and bad to be side by side in time, but will make no distinction between good and broad in eternity. Such a God is an idol of your own, as truly an idol as any snake or crocodile in an Egyptian temple. The hands of your own fancy and sentimentality have made him. He is not the God of the Bible, and beside the God of the Bible there is no God at all.
I had to show that the Bible dealt with an encounter between God and Man. I thought only of the apartness of God. What I had to learn after that was the togetherness of Man and God - a union of two totally different kinds of beings.
Whosoever assumes a religious garb pleases not God even a bit. O ye men, understand this clearly in your minds, that God is attained not through showmanship. They who practice deceit, attain not Deliverance in the Hereafter. They do so only to accomplish the affairs of the world and even the kings worship them for their appearance! But through showmanship, God is attained not, howsoever one searches. He who subdues his mind alone recognizes the Transcendent God.
