Category Archives: Questions asked

by Christadelphians | 2023/05/22 · 6:53 pm

A biblical answer to your question: following our belief that Jesus was not God from the beginning, but the Son of God

The words in Isaiah 9 are often cited as “proof” that the promised child is God Himself:

“and he is called: Wonderful Counsellor, Strong God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:5, NBG’51 translated).

“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder. And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” (Isa 9:6 KJ21)

But the words just before that:

“A child is born to us, a son is given to us”

can surely hardly refer to Jehovah the God of gods.

For just as a son must be distinguished from a father, this child must be distinguished from God the Father. Surely it would be unclean of you to ask that you believe that Jehovah or Yahweh, the LORD, the mighty Creator and God of Israel, made the promise that He would appear as Son (of Himself?)?

No, what is meant is the son from the dynasty of David, who by faith and obedience is entitled to the throne (Isa 9:6; Ezek 21:27; Luke 1:32). This son is called elsewhere in Isaiah the servant or servant of Jehovah/Yahweh ()Isa. 53:11).

“He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied. By His knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.” (Isa 53:11 KJ21)

God and His servant are clearly distinguished.

Jesus himself also makes this distinction (John 17:3).

“And this is life eternal: that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.” (Joh 17:3 KJ21)

Isaiah calls him

“Wonderful Counsellor, Godly Hero, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Isa 9:5 NBV).

Jesus represents his God and may be called ‘God’ or ‘Divine Hero’ in that sense. Obviously not in an absolute sense, otherwise Isaiah would have believed in several Gods – which is completely contrary to his message (see also Isa 45:5).

“I am the LORD, and there is none else; there is no God besides Me. I girded thee, though thou hast not known Me,” (Isa 45:5 KJ21)

The servant of God was obedient to the death at the stake (or as many Christians believe: on the cross), proving that he was not God but man (see also the preaching of Peter and Paul, Acts 2:22,23,32; 17:31).

Jesus will be like a ‘father’ to his people. He has been given power of attorney to lead his people. As God is the Shepherd of His people, Jesus has received power to be shepherd of all who believe in him. It was more common for a king to be ‘father’ to God’s people (Isa 22:21).

“And I will clothe him with thy robe and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand; and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.” (Isa 22:21 KJ21)

A son honours his father, a servant his lord (Mal. 1:6).

“”A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master. If then I be a father, where is Mine honor? And if I be a master, where is the fear of Me? saith the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, who despise My name. And ye say, ‘Wherein have we despised Thy name?’” (Mal 1:6 KJ21)

Eventually, there is only one God, one Father (Jehovah/Yahweh).

“Do we not all have the same father, has not one and the same God created us?” (Mal. 2:10).

Jesus is God’s son and that is how all New Testament writers paint him! Not surprisingly, Jesus never called himself ‘God’!

Please come also to read

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Tagged as Creator, Creator God, Divine Hero, Dynasty of David, Father Jesus, God of Israel, God the Father, God the son, Good shepherd, Isaiah 22:21, Isaiah 45:5, Isaiah 53:11, Isaiah 9, Isaiah 9:6, Jehovah, John 17:3, LORD, Malachai 1:6, Man Jesus, One God, Shepherd God, Shepherd Jesus, Son from the dynasty of David, Son of God, Son versus father, Yahweh

by Marcus Ampe | 2023/05/11 · 6:26 pm

Lots to be said about freedom

Daily writing prompt

What does freedom mean to you?

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There is much to be said about freedom. There are also very different opinions of what freedom is or should be. Many people love to aim for the ability to live without anybody telling them what to do. Nobody loves to have chains on or be limited by others. Humans want to have no constraints, no limitations that would bother them,

It is found natural that we as human beings would be allowed to control ourselves and to be ourselves. Though, we do find lots of nations that want to restrict people in what they want to be and in what they want to do with their bodies. Even states that claim that they are for “freedom“, like the United States of America, want to tell women what they have to do with their bodies. The state wants to control them and forbids them to take certain pills, for not having (more) kids.

In this present world, it is not that we would everywhere have the choice and liberty to be ourselves.
We can not go wherever we would like. It is even not possible to dress however we want. People expect us to wear certain clothes at certain occasions, but also in certain countries, even in West Europe, women and men feel that certain dress code is not accepted by lots of people. Strangely enough also France where they insist to be so for “liberty” and “equality” we do find that Muslim women may not wear what they want. Neither may men and women have bare limbs when entering churches or religious places.

Everywhere, be it in Europe, Africa, America, or Oceania, we find certain restrictions on all sorts of levels. This would not be so annoying when those restrictions would be there to secure the freedom of others. But that is not always the case.

In this world, there are expectations to which people want us to live up to. In case we would be totally free we should not worry about that. But society shows us clearly the rules for our society. It would be nice if we all could live without rules imposed by others. Then we can speak about “Freedom”.

When we think of freedom, we have expectations to see how we as humans can be unfettered, and have free choice regarding how and where we want to live, and how to behave and dress, as well as how we may express ourselves. Freedom of thought and speech is something we want to uphold!

But left free, the nicest form of freedom is when everybody can feel united behind a similar drive to build the community of freedom into a world where everyone can also feel that freedom.

Real freedom is when we can live in a world where everyone respects the freedom of one another and does not limit that freedom or does not want to have control over the other.

Preceding

Freedom is unthinkable without responsibility

Freedom. To dispose of what is surplus.

Your Life: Habit or Freedom?

Freedom for whom?

Freedom. To dispose of what is surplus.

Having put lives on the line to protect the freedoms that we enjoy

3 Things Black People Wish White People Understood

Doing vs. liking

Words losing their meaning

Gender, genderless, androgyny, bisexuality, cisgender and transgender

Tolerance Ends When There Is No Tolerance Shown Towards Us

Looking at an Utopism which has not ended

Additional reading

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“Silence clipart, cartoon character illustration“/ CC0 1.0

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Filed under Activism and Peace Work, Being and Feeling, Cultural affairs, Lifestyle, Political affairs, Questions asked, Social affairs, Spiritual affairs, Welfare matters, World affairs

Tagged as Control, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1935, Equality, France, Freedom, Freedom of clothing, Freedom of speech, Freedom of thought, Liberty, Limitations, Opinion, Restrictions, Society, to Feel united, United States of America, West Europe

by Christadelphians | 2023/03/08 · 1:57 pm

Why was Jesus circumcised at eight days old in accordance with Jewish law?

“Why was Jesus circumcised at eight days old in accordance with Jewish law (Luke 2:21)?

Christians don’t need to be circumcised: ‘For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love’ (Galatians 5:6).“

Ed: In the Old Testament, before the birth of Christ, there are strict rules about how God’s people were to come to Him. Men needed to be circumcised (Genesis 17:10), and Israel needed to keep the Law of Moses (which is described in detail in the books of Exodus through to Deuteronomy).

“This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee: every male among you shall be circumcised.” (Ge 17:10 ASV)

Christians don’t need to be circumcised, or to keep the Law of Moses. This is largely what the letter to the Galatians is about. There were some in the Galatian churches who were trying to suggest that Christians need to be circumcised and keep the Law, and Paul is strenuously demonstrating that they don’t.

Chapter 3 is the culmination of the argument. Paul presents the logic in v. 13:

‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”’.

The Law contains a clause that says someone who is hanged on a tree is cursed (Deuteronomy 21:22–23).

“22 And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree; 23 his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt surely bury him the same day; for he that is hanged is accursed of God; that thou defile not thy land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.” (De 21:22-23 ASV)

This was probably one reason why Jesus’ enemies wanted him crucified — so they could say that he was cursed. But Jesus was sinless, and the Law cursed an innocent man. It’s as though this clause had been deliberately written into the Law, so that at the appropriate time the Law could be removed.

During his life Jesus kept the Law of Moses impeccably — although not always in the way that his enemies thought was proper. For example the Gospels record many occasions on which he healed people on the Sabbath. The religious rulers objected on the grounds that he was working, which was forbidden. But he pointed out to them that he was actually fulfilling the principle of the Sabbath law:

‘for the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath’ (Matthew 12:8).

Jesus was a Law-abiding Jew and therefore it was necessary that he was circumcised. But at his death the Law became obsolete, and the call of the Gospel was opened to everyone, Jews and Gentiles. As Paul continues,

‘so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith’ (Galatians 3:14).

Preceding

Do those who want to follow Christ to be Jews

Many looking for the church of the world instead of the Church of God

Additional reading

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Tagged as being Cursed, Christians, Circumcision, Deuteronomy 21:22–23, Galatian church(es), Galatians 3:14, Genesis 17:10, Jesus Christ, Luke 2:21, Matthew 12:8

by Guestspeaker | 2023/01/18 · 9:15 pm

For those who think there are no gender neutral people or that there is no reason to change gender

Probably a 35 old female Dutch writer who follows her own path and seems to forget that other people also want to follow their own path which should not have to run like her path.

She doesn’t care what we or others want to tell her. She hates mainstream media, but also the sheep of this world, as well as the rich of this world, but she hates most of all people.

For her

its time to feel weird about everything we can think of. {There is no gender neutral}

and in one of her blogarticles she writes

We want respect for many things, but we do not get respect for many things. {There is no gender neutral}

She perhaps forgets that for receiving respect one also has to give respect. We can understand that there are things in her life that disturb her. But some of those things could perhaps disturb her because she does not understand them or does not know about other matters. It is clear that she has no idea about gender, and therefore asks

First how can you change your gender? Second how can you born gender neutral?

Biological its not possible to born gender neutral, and Biological it can not change during your life from men to woman or vice versa. {There is no gender neutral}

What we note there is a problem that also arises in conservative Christian circles, where it is assumed that in nature nothing can go wrong and that God created man and woman in His likeness and should therefore be “complete”. She seems to forget that there are human beings who are born without a body full of specific male or female elements. Though she seems to understand, some children may not feel happy with their own bodies, we think she still overlooks those who are born with half a male half a female body. She writes

Children yes some children are uncomfortable in their own body because they are born boy, but are acting like girls. It is even possible to change them! {There is no gender neutral}

But for her, there is no reason for people to change their gender.

i find that heavy shit, and in sort of way i can not accept that. {There is no gender neutral}

For her it seems to be clear that there can be “no in-between”.

You are or boy, or girl, not both or gender neutral. {There is no gender neutral}

If life were that simple, it would also be very easy. But life is not always so black and white. Not every boy feels like a boy or wants to be a boy, the same as every girl in a girl’s body does not always want to be that girl she sees in the mirror. It is very difficult to be both, though it can always also be that one feels a sort of sympathy for both sexes.

If you find yourself happier as a woman, then you have my respect go for it! But you can not change definitions of genders, you are boy or girl, so you dress like a girl but you are still a boy. {There is no gender neutral}

She does not go in into the aspect of changing sex. Because why should a boy who feels he is a girl born in a boy’s body should not be allowed to have this bodily position corrected? And why should a girl who is confronted with her male body not be allowed to have that body reshaped in a female person?

Now these days we have gender neutrality, come on why do we make this word so freaking difficult?

People can not even begin to understand what the definition is of being naked or porno. All lessons by adults to children about sexuality is taboo! We make it for them now days very difficult to understand things. This world is so freaking crazy, that we are far away from being normal. {There is no gender neutral}

It is just making it so difficult for children when neutral nouns are introduced and when people may not be called for what they are and for what they feel. The world would be so much easier if we just could name the things as they are.

In an other blog she writes

In my point of view, children are most important so we have to learn them realistic thoughts, not fairy tails. {8: Children}

Therefore we should not be afraid to speak to children about different feelings human beings can have. And we should not push stereotypes on those children, having girls be in pink and playing with dolls and boys having to be strong and playing with cars.

She agrees we must

Stop over protecting children if you not even can protect your own citizens. {8: Children}

By not showing the world how it is and by telling ‘fairy tales’ about boys and girls in this world, we do not help the child to develop properly. We must have our ears and eyes open to the child and help it in the way how that child wants to develop, even if it is not like we would have preferred it. As such in case a girl talks about her will to become a boy, we should listen to her and talk about that matter. We should give it full serious thought.

She writes

Stop pressure children to perform, stop to steal there youth. Do see lot of over protecting that will not help children in the future, it will be a disaster for the future if you continue lying to your children. Children want to change gender? Then something must be wrong with your kid, you can not change your gender. Its unhappy because this world demands so much off them. The problem is not gender but this world, this capitalistic system. Children can only be happy if you free them form this capitalistic system. Children are not stupid and most of the time smarter then you. {8: Children}

But the inner feeling of a human being has nothing to do with capitalism. We totally would agree that in this world a lot goes wrong because of capitalism, but that is not the cause that boy or girls would want to change gender.

It is a pity that the female blogger looks at people who believe in religion as deeply indoctrinated people. According to her, religious people are living with an unrealistic image that makes their future more difficult than it really is. Though it are religious people who open their mind to those who are different than the mainstream. Real Christians, for example, also do not turn their head away from people who are feeling differently than they or than what society expects from those people. As such they are empathic with those who are confronted with the difficult situation of being born in the wrong body.

The blogwriter says

Generations of people are victims of a story that has circulated on Earth for thousands of years, and it is they who keep the story alive. {Manifest}

But believers in the Elohim Hashem Jehovah are not at all victims, and we even wonder if other religious groups, be they Hindu, Muslim or Jew would be victims. In many religious groups, there are many stories that may have circulated for thousands of years, but that does not make those stories not true nor not valid to build up a secure life. There are enough reasons why to keep stories alive, the same as there are enough reasons why to keep beautiful constructions or monuments preserved for the future.

The lady who hates so much, has a manifest against religion, sexuality, capitalism, communism, the destroying of capitalism, destroying of media, and probably looks forward to the destroying of religion in total, that we only can think she must be very frustrated. She writes

People must understand that religion is the cause of the biggest problems on earth, they must realize that this is serious! Who not accept will be terminated who do accept can learn others to accept. Lets say pure atheism itself will be teaches at schools and everywhere where you can learn. Religion in total forbidden, by all laws international Israel will be disband and prosecuted against crimes to humanity. All former presidents and military of Israel that has killed others will be sent to the death penalty. {Manifest}

She continues her manifesto

In socialism and in communism we share, we share so we can be all the same, we can help always each other with no better human logo then other humans. If we share we have everything we need and everyone can have this. Education, health care, must be free for everyone on this earth no matter the color, no matter the cost, all the same rights. {Manifest}

Totally forgetting that in communism is requested to have respect for each human being, no matter how it looks or feels like. If a person is born without a leg, arm, penis or vagina, in communism that boy or girl should not be excluded and should have the same rights as another person having all those things one expects a boy or girl to have. In communism there is a place for each human being, be it a man, woman or transgender or homo to develop properly and to be a partner in a system to build up together in respect to all other human beings, animals and plants. The female blogwriter seems to forget the important law of equality in communism.

Because her blog does not provide a space to reply to her writings, we thought this matter of equality, gender and religiousness too important to let go of and to have it not responded.

By writing

All people on earth deserve good education and health care no doubts about that! Only non religious people deserve this because religious people they have their God that will heal them. {Manifest}

shows how she misunderstands religion and does not know the God of the Bible at all. She forgets that the God of Israel has given the world in the hands of man, who has now to prove he can tackle it. Clearly, with her writing on the media, she claims to detest, she herself tries to indoctrinate people, like she accused others of indoctrinating through the media.

She then ends her discours:

Children want to change gender? Then something must be wrong with your kid, you can not change your gender. Its unhappy because this world demands so much off them. The problem is not gender but this world, this capitalistic system. Children can only be happy if you free them form this capitalistic system. Children are not stupid and most of the time smarter then you. {Manifest}

The child can effectively be unhappy with ‘its’ body because our society demands too much of it. By not using gender nouns we are not going to solve the problems children may have, because by it we are even going to confuse it more.

Our society must learn to face the fact that not everything can always turn out the way one would like, nor is there a god or God involved when things go wrong. It is people themselves who seek war. It is people themselves who expect patterns from others, in which they are then disgusted when they see those expectations unfulfilled. No form of government is going to bring relief to that anytime soon. It is people who need to change their mindset and be open to the diversity in society, as well as the differences between the sexes of human beings.

It is by not wanting to listen to a child that feels unhappy in its body, one shows the selfishness and the restriction of freedom for a child to go its own way in a world it can feel happy as how she feels and want to go through the world. Denying that right for a child to choose one’s own orientation makes that person who does not grant that child that right an “inhuman” and “callous person”.

Preceding

Gender, genderless, androgyny, bisexuality, cisgender and transgender

Study says highlighting gender leads to stereotypes

Do the concepts of male and female need to have a formal official definition

Trans extremism, trans ideology, genderless a.o. categories and TERFs

The dilemma of gender neutrality

She/Her – They/Them – Person

The Concept of Gender Neutrality and You

The World of ‘Men’?

Gender Neutrality

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Filed under Being and Feeling, Educational affairs, Health affairs, Lifestyle, Questions asked, Re-Blogs and Great Blogs, Social affairs, Welfare matters

Tagged as being a Child, Capitalism, Changing sex, Child, Children, Communism, Diversity, Educatio, Equality, Expectations, Freedom of a child, Freedom of gender, Gender, Gender and Sexuality, Gender bias, Gender neutrality, Homosexuals, Human beings, Indoctrination, Media, Mindset, Naming things, Religion, Religious groups, Respect, Socialism, Transgender, Transgender(s), War

by Marcus Ampe | 2023/01/03 · 8:28 pm

A culture of “democratic cleansing” – Elders and youngsters versus respect

The generation born between 1930 and 1960 had no choice but to listen to father‘s law and do as we were told.

Father’s will is Law!

When we asked

Why?

We got a very short but very well to understand answer.

Therefore!

Now those generations from before the 1960s have become the “oldies”.

We live with the thought that we taught some good and interesting things to our kids, but sometimes seem to wonder what they did with what we taught them and what went wrong with the present generation.

What did we do wrong?

For sure, though we did not always agree with our parents, and dared to go on the streets in 1968 to question our way of living and our society, we always still showed respect for our parents and grandparents. In many cases, there were no great-grandparents. Our grandparents, to us, looked already

so old

at an age that we now already survived a few years.

Unlike our parents, we taught our children to dare to question everything and not just accept or consider everything.

John Humphrys in the Daily Telegraph of 26 December 2022 wonders if he perhaps had a ridiculous dream.

Well yes, and a bit of a nightmare too. I can’t think of anything much worse than my kids sitting in respectful silence while I bang on.

At home and at school we learned courtesy rules. But what is left of it? Some of the things we learned, such as keeping the door open for ladies, are not always anymore appreciated but are viewed as a sexist attitude.

Humphrys writes

If I’ve taught them anything at all – pretty unlikely I know – it’s that healthy scepticism beats the pants off reverence. Always has. Always will.

And yet… maybe just the teeniest smattering of respect might not come amiss? Possibly not boys doffing their caps to ladies in the street as my school ordered us do. After all, who wears caps nowadays? (And is ‘ladies’ sexist? What if they’re trans?)

But perhaps an acknowledgement that we oldies just might have picked up some useful stuff during our decades of experience on this planet that could come in useful? That’s tricky in today’s climate. Just that word “experience” is fraught. It has to be a “lived” experience now and I’m not sure I know what that is.

We have also been brought up to check the past and present and to seek the truth each time.

Our parents taught us that if we did not know something, we should go and look it up in the encyclopaedias provided. Those writers were expected to have undergone sufficient schooling and presented well-founded articles under editorial authority to inform the reader and provide further knowledge. We found it great to find such reference works that contained information on all branches of knowledge or that treated a particular branch of knowledge in a comprehensive manner.

For more than 2,000 years encyclopaedias have existed as summaries of extant scholarship in forms comprehensible to their readers. But in the last two decades, we saw several well-known encyclopaedias disappearing from the market.

At our house, the 1968 Encyclopaedia Britannica, as the oldest English-language general encyclopaedia, was just one of the many other encyclopaedias we could use daily.

The researchers and authors and publishers of encyclopaedias had to face technological changes, beginning in the 1980s with the development and spread of personal computers. It really became a world that opened up, making it possible to look up documents from all over the world. The computer business evolved so fast, quickening in the 1990s and 2000s through the Internet and widespread diffusion of broadband access, it radically altered the publishing world generally and the encyclopaedia business in particular.

The 15th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (1974), was designed in large part to enhance the role of an encyclopaedia in education and understanding without detracting from its role as a reference book. It represented very much the way we were brought up, finding it necessary to educate and to spread knowledge. Its three parts (Propædia, or Outline of Knowledge; Micropædia, or Ready Reference and Index; and Macropædia, or Knowledge in Depth) represented an effort to design an entire set on the understanding that there is a circle of learning and that an encyclopaedia’s short informational articles on the details of matter within that circle as well as its long articles on general topics must all be planned and prepared in such a way as to reflect their relation to one another and to the whole of knowledge.
For those who wanted to learn more or wished to delve deeper into a particular fact or topic, the Propædia became a great help for self-study. The propaedia was a reader’s version of the circle of learning on which the set had been based and was organised in such a way that a reader might reassemble in meaningful ways material that the accident of alphabetisation had dispersed.

In 1981, under an agreement with Mead Data Central, the first digital version of the Encyclopædia Britannica was created for the LexisNexis service. In the early 1990s Britannica was made available for electronic delivery on a number of CD-ROM-based products, including the Britannica Electronic Index and the Britannica CD (providing text and a dictionary, along with proprietary retrieval software, on a single disc). A two-disc CD was released in 1995, featuring illustrations and photos; multimedia, including videos, animations, and audio, was added in 1997.

John Humphrys seems to find it a waste of money that his parents scrimped to pay a weekly shilling to the Encyclopaedia Britannica door-to-door salesman so that they as kids would always have the world’s knowledge at their fingertips.

He gives the impression that those modern machines and the evolution of artificial intelligence is one of the many reasons why respect between the generations matters.

We do admit that many young people do not understand how the elderly can or cannot handle today’s modern gadgets.

Millennials (born 1981-1996) tend to put the boomers (born post-war) into a category. Specifically, men. Usually “old white men”.

How come that usage is tolerated? Substitute “women” for men and it wouldn’t be. It would be sexist. Substitute “black” for white and it would be racist.

He observes

Those who once wore the badge of old age with a certain pride must now carefully guard their tongues less they cause offence, even when it’s patently obvious that none was intended. Was it necessary to humiliate Lady Susan Hussey when she was seemingly too curious about the origins of a black woman who was wearing a vivid tribal dress? Her offence, it turned out, was being old.

Getting old happens to all of us. How we deal with it is very different. But it is also very different from how outsiders deal with elders.
Especially in recent years, there has been an unpleasant skew there, with many viewing elders as a burden.
Similarly, few can empathise with the world of understanding of those elders who have been brought up with certain ways of thinking, some of which are also sometimes difficult to distance themselves from or continue to think stereotypically.

We all pursue dreams and shall one day be confronted with that older body, becoming aware that there is not only a tendency to forget people’s names, but having more than once looking for the right words, having forgotten (for a moment) certain things. And then in confrontation with the youngsters, they not always understand or want to give some time to get the memory back.

For some elderly it is also not evident to have to rely on others. And the children are not so pleased anymore to be a safety net for their parents, as we looked after our parents when they were already starting to reach a reasonable age. Some may be annoyued that those above 65 do not want to retire. It might be those in their 60s whose mind is fooling them in which case they will rely on others around them to let them know that it is time to retire.

How many times do those who passed the 50s have to hear from the youngsters that their ideas are old fashioned or that they are not anymore from these times? Many younger people find it not appropriate that the elderly are still pursuing ideas and aspirations. Is it a form of respect to accepting that they express their feelings as well as their dreams and aspirations?

Most young people don’t sense time as being a high-speed train, because for them it often looks ages, before there is another hour, another day. That makes them also to express their impatience so often. But then again, the fact that some elders become a bit too slow bothers those younger ones, in that it seems that that time is taken up by that elder, who then keeps them from renewing moments. Some younger ones do not mind letting the older ones know that it is time to retreat, or to get silent.

At a certain age, it can be that we feel that there has come a time we need to withdraw from the hurly-burly of the life we once knew. But it does not always feel so nice, when those younger people say it in our face. (We never would have dared to say such a thing to our elderly.)

In his book, The War On The Old, English literature professor John Sutherland wrote about what he called a culture of “democratic cleansing… a state-condoned campaign against the nation’s old”.

He describes an overwhelming sense of blame that younger generations attribute to “the wrinklies” who voted for Brexit, comfortable in the mansions they bought for a pittance. The once-dignified badge of seniority is becoming synonymous with “narrow-minded”, “outdated” and “incipiently senile”.
The elderly are bed-blockers, job-blockers, pension-drainers. {We used to respect our elders – whatever happened to that? by John Humphrys}

Normally, one went from one generation to the next with improvements, but today that no longer holds true. Today’s 30-year-olds have it much harder than their parents did. The age-old argument over which generation has had more advantages has been settled – at least where finances are concerned.

Adult life is harder to afford now than it was 30 years ago and it has forced today’s young to delay big life events, which tend to happen around this milestone age. Today’s generation are buying their first home two years later, having children three years later and getting married six to seven years later than they were in 1992. {Six reasons why boomers have it better than millennials by Jessica Beard}

Due to the pressures of the outside world, those in their twenties and thirties may have become a bit “shorter” in their statements, and it is not always easy for them to be patient with those older people who are, as it were, still watching them or ready with criticism.

Dependence on two earners can make taking time off to care for children trickier, and to care for older people, even more, trickier or not so wanted. So it should not always be viewed so negatively by the elderly when those young people now show a little less time than their parents who could make more time for their parents and grandparents.

Many today are so engrossed in their work and the expectations of fellow peers that they have little time left outside their work sphere for their own spiritual formation, religious pursuits and many family activities outside their own families.

It can well be that certain actions and reactions of youngsters are sometimes unjustly interpreted as respectless, or not showing enough respect. It must not be disrespectful, but just because of these other times with much more pressure on the youngsters, that the gap between young and old has widened somewhat today compared to previous decades.

Preceding

A more recent discrimination: Old Age

A Cranky Old Man

Readers, likes and comments

Thought on the birthday of an encyclopaedia

Available information for the youngsters and readers of my websites

Redeeming Our World

The Way You Live Your Life

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan back with a bang

Mishmash of a legal code but importance of mitzvah or commandments

Additional reading

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by Guestspeaker | 2023/01/02 · 2:13 pm

Blogging into the New Year

Blogging into the New Year, in a certain way as bloggers we might feel connected with other bloggers from all over the world. Its the magic of the internet that catches us.

How many bloggers are not on the internet willing to shine a light, not wanting to hide, hoping to bring some nice reading and some positive vibes to others, somewhere in the world. Some target a specific public, others do not mind sharing their diary with the world. Whatever reason they blog, is that what they write would be read by ‘some one’.

Janie Leeds writes

I happen to think that there’s a teensy bit of fear in all of us from time to time that squelches our ability to shine our heartlights and I’m choosing to figure out how to allow my heartlight to shine without fear! {This Little Light o’ Mine}

Many therefore just let the words roll over the screen, without fear. Perhaps they too think like J. Leeds that

we have to build our confidence and find someone trustworthy to shine with when we feel that desire to shine and to brilliantly explode our special brand of light into the universe. {This Little Light o’ Mine}

Though many might feel

It’s scary when we choose to be our authentic selves without fear. It’s being vulnerable which sometimes makes people feel uncomfortable. {This Little Light o’ Mine}

We always can wonder why or for whom those bloggers write. For themself? For their community/friends? For the world at large?

Judgy Young Pessimist or Jewish Young(-ish) Professional has the same question as us on her lips:

Maybe we write for different people at different times or maybe we write for all of them. {For Whom Do You Write?}

New Year’s Day finds one reflecting on some of their past resolutions and their outcomes. Bloggers might then perhaps think about what they wrote in the past year or how many blogposts they managed to create.

Lots of bloggers shall express and live by the hope that this fresh year will bring us something better than we had for the last years. So many want to forget Covid (though it is still not finished) and want to see an end to ‘that war‘ going on in Ukraine. Many bloggers leave that war in the fridge, only writing about other and hopefully also better things. Good tidings.

Let’s hope for the best and do our level best to make this year a memorable one for the people around us. Let’s resolve to spread happiness, empathy and goodness in the world. Let’s be humane and humble. {Happy New Year 2023}

writes a freelance writer who finds he is doing fine and has a lot to be thankful for, because “Allah, the Almighty” has been so kind to him. He is also aware we do not know much about the future. He thinks we can not predict the days ahead.

Can we not rid ourselves of unfounded fears? Can we not enjoy this precious MOMENT (present), instead of living in the past or worrying about the future? {Why Do We Worry About The Future? Why Don’t We Enjoy The Present Moment?}

Those who believe in God can find enough advice in the Book of books, the Bible, where the ‘bloggers’ of ancient times wrote down what we should know. In those books is enough said about times still to come, and as such do we know what to expect. Concerning those end times there are several bloggers on the net talking about how we can prepare for those times.

Many other subjects gain much more attention. Many blogging platforms are being used, but also many disappeared and bloggers had to change platforms again last year. The greatest change last year was the leaving Blogger and Blogspot by many bloggers, because those blog systems had become too slow and unworkable. This could be an asset to WordPress, but it was also discussed last year, due to its introduction of the less practical Gutenberg Block editor system.

Several bloggers let themselves be guided by prompts or requested tasks by other bloggers.

sometimes, prompts provide that inspiration for a piece that may have been ruminating,

writes JYP. We also admit some blogposts find their origin in something we notice on the net or some event that reached the news. In any case, the main reason to write such a post is for many to share something they find interesting or has something to do with their community or faith. As such, JYP for example wanted to share about Jewish community prompted by one of Fandango‘s Provocative Questions

– and it’s since become the basis for the whole pond/community/housing search tortured analogy saga. Prompts can provide both the inspiration for something I never expected to write and the necessary nudge to write something that were already ruminating. {For Whom Do You Write?}

Some bloggers like to tell the world about their very private things, whilst others prefer to stay in the anonymity or would not dare to talk about something personal. For some personal self-expression is the primary motivator for writing their blog and wanting to get an audience.

These are the posts that arguably could have been written in a private diary. These are the posts that might have less “polish” because sharing a message with an external audience isn’t the primary goal. These are the blog posts that feel less like public speaking, and more like casual conversation, or even just venting. {Blogging About Judaism: Promotional vs. Personal}

These posts are the casual conversation, maybe even the therapy sessions, of blogging – intimacy, sweats, and all. Photo by Ekaterina Bolovtsova: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-women-talking-to-each-other-4051134/

The problem with some of those blogs is that we feel more like in a café, catching up on some conversations. Others have a message they want to promote like we too have some good new to tell.

According to JYP promotional blog posts are those that:

Have a message that the author wants to share externally. (eg. This is not a post that the author could have written in their private diary)
Because the author wants to share this message, the post tends to have some “polish”. {Blogging About Judaism: Promotional vs. Personal}

she rightly compares this to public speaking

– the most heartfelt, sincere, genuine speaker is going to make a point of revising and editing, practicing, and putting on more professional attire/ hygiene/ grooming/ makeup etc. (vs. brain dump whilst looking disheveled) to look more presentable to an external audience so the message comes across better. {Blogging About Judaism: Promotional vs. Personal}

For her

the promotional vs. personal classification applies to all kinds of blogging {Blogging About Judaism: Promotional vs. Personal}

What we notice, looking at the Blogosphere and social media, is that lots of people want to be part of a community.

JYP thinks

the sense of community is probably the greatest strength of a well-run prompt. {For Whom Do You Write?}

In our globalising industrialist capitalist world, where there are so many people walking around, most people are just lost in the mass. Several people hope to escape their loneliness, but on the internet, they also find such an empty space. By blogging they do hope to have some reactions by which they would not feel so on their own. By writing a blog they want to break the silence and their loneliness.

Look, the internet is a big, lonely place. Blogging helps build community. Prompts can create a sense of community rituals and norms. It’s been fascinating to see the way bloggers will show up for each other, even within the simple forum of a prompt response. And it’s incredible to see how a prompt “ritual” goes beyond that, like when fellow bloggers share sad news with other prompt participants who respond with tributes and memories. {For Whom Do You Write?}

It is by such reactions the blogger may feel his or her work is appreciated and worthwhile doing. Responses on blogs also may trigger curiosity to go and look at that blogger his pages. If answers are given to a blog post, those comments may prompt the blogger to check his or her blog with that responding person. In this way, an exchange of ideas can arise among certain people who eventually become part of a small or larger group of regularly exchanging people.

To be clear, I think blogging without prompts can build community as well. But if you imagine the blog world as a religious community (bear with me), while you absolutely can and should socialize with fellow congregants outside of regularly scheduled services, some members will really appreciate the regular weekly meeting times to connect with their fellow congregants. {For Whom Do You Write?}

writes JYP. As such we can find bloggers who make it a custom to publish every week on a certain day an article. They even go to apologize when they did not. Or certain bloggers want to see for every day another sort of blog, be it a poetry day, haiku day, tanka day, garden day, short story day, thriller day, relaxation or meditation day …. Some even want to have days for an amount of words.

We may not forget

Not all of our followers will care about everything we say. And even in blogging where we create more community through prompts, not all of our fellow prompt participants are going to be interested in our other writings. {For Whom Do You Write?}

Another aspect we may not forget or overlook

The reality is that almost none of us will become famous or make any real money from blogging, so you might as well write for yourself in addition to whomever else you’re writing for.

If, in the course of blogging and responding to prompts, you don’t feel like you’re writing for yourself, it might be a sign to take a step back and figure out how to incorporate prompts in a way that feels more authentic to you. {For Whom Do You Write?}

In our busy world, we have limited time to do certain things for ourselves, like reading. On the net there is so much to read, it is impossible to read everything or to follow every blog full-time. Even when we are following a blog or others are following our blog, we can not expect that they read every blog, and certainly not that they notice or look at every blog on the day it is written.

we’re not necessarily interested in every post that another blogger writes. {For Whom Do You Write?}

It is logical that everyone has their own preferences for certain subjects and will look for interesting literature in this area. In that respect, it is not bad that the internet offers such a variety of subjects so that everyone can find something to their own liking.

We from our site are happy you came to read this post, and honestly do hope you’ll have also got a taste for reading here a bit more than just this article.

Welcome to From Guestwriters in 2023, and hope to see you more.

Preceding

Asking for a Re-Blog

When you think you have nothing to say or to show

Readers, likes and comments

Additional reading

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5 Comments

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Tagged as Anonymity, being Part of a community, Believe in God, Blogger, Bloggers, Blogosphere, Blogspot (Blogger CMS), Community, Diary, Fellow congregant(s), Future, Gutenberg Block editor, Internet, Janie Leeds, JYP = Judgy Young Pessimist or Jewish Young(-ish) Professional, Loneliness, Preparation for endtimes, Prompt(s), Religious community, Sense of community, Sharing a message, Social media, to Blog, to Socialise, Weekly meeting(s), WordPress, WordPress users, Writing, Writing articles

by Guestspeaker | 2022/12/22 · 1:57 pm

Incorporate new things into your daily routine – without feeling like it’s a struggle

“Many people have been conditioned into thinking of January 1 as a day when we deprive ourselves of all the things that we have been encouraged to indulge in during December,”

neurologist Dr Rachel Taylor says.

“But the brain is hardwired to make it difficult for you because it does not deal with deprivation well.”

Dr Taylor advises that if you need extra motivation to make a change,

“start to really reflect on how that food/drink/activity makes you feel.

In these dark days, it is easy to get carried away with dark thoughts. For this, we must be careful not to get discouraged or start feeling miserable. The danger is that if you get carried away by those dark thoughts, you will also start feeling inferior and others will notice your weakness and take advantage of it.

We need to be aware that everyone encounters dark moments from time to time and that not everything can always be rosy. There is really no need to always show ourselves strong. We should not always put away our weaker points. It comes down to finding the right people with whom to share our weaknesses and talk quietly about things that bother us. Sharing our weaknesses shall make us vulnerable, but to make you vulnerable shall show your strength.

Marcus Ampe always advised people to bring the mind in balance with the body. For him, it is clear we need, first and foremost, to sort out our own inner self before we start working on the outer. If we are not happy with our appearance, we must find ways to accept our “self” as it is, be it too fat or too skinny, or not the shape we would like.

“Before taking drastic action on our body, we need to calm our “soul” by going for a walk in the great outdoors, for example.”

he says.

As we walk, we can safely think about many things that bother us. But we should also try to quiet our minds while observing the greenery and animals around us. Therefore, according to Mr. Ampe:

“Even if others may want to take us deeper, we must convince ourselves that we are worth being there and that we can contribute enough to others.”

Thus, during those walks in the morning and afternoon, we need to open up to what we are, but also to change that we can let come to ourselves.

“The brain is much more likely to accept change when you have done a sound job in convincing it that it is worth the extra effort and energy it is going to have to expend on managing the change.”

Even though these are dark days, we must not let our thoughts darken. According to M. Ampe, it is therefore also best to start fully enjoying the sun’s warming rays (albeit little) after sunrise.

Dr Rachel Taylor, like him, finds that an early morning blast is essential.

“The rate of production of serotonin has been shown multiple times in research to have a direct correlation with the amount of sunlight a person gets: it rises quickly when access to sunlight increases.

In Scandinavian countries, therefore, often light therapy is used, to reduce suicides during these winter months.

“The more serotonin you have the more melatonin your brain can make, which is not just good for sleep, although that is its primary role, but is a really powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compound.”

That early dose of sunlight could have added benefits for weight loss: a study from the University of Alberta found that lack of exposure to sunlight could lead to an increase in fat and therefore contribute to weight gain.

Especially with these dark days and upcoming holidays, we do dare to go beyond our means and eat more than we actually need to, while also reaching for sweets a lot quicker, to feel better.

It is no use that we let ourselves become stressed by what we would go to eat at Christmas and New Year, or what presents we are going to buy. Stress is to be avoided. Though this period is one in which many people get unnecessarily stressed out. Many are very busy, dealing with endless to-do lists and struggling to balance it all. This search for trying to do the best for others results often in a day-to-day life that feels too hectic. Our running back and forth in search of the right gifts and food gets us so excited that we throw ourselves off balance.
By putting their body these days into overdrive, lots of people do not see it is taking them down. Fatigue becomes the master of them.

A good way to get back to folds should start as early as breakfast.

Many think their daily serving of breakfast cereal is a healthy dose of calories and vitamins. But the majority of people use breakfast cereals with added sugars. And these are bound to be avoided. So no granola or caramelised cereals, even those with hoing processed breakfast cereals should be taboo. The concept of cereal food that originated in the vegetarian beliefs of the American Seventh-day Adventists, who in the 1860s formed the Western Health Reform Institute, later renamed the Battle Creek Sanitarium, in Battle Creek, Michigan, was very healthy, but the food industry made something sweet after it to tempt more people to come to enjoy their products. Therefore forget those ‘modernised’ grainproducts and go back to the source, ditching the sugary, high-carb cereal for a more balanced start to the day.

“If you start your day with a good quality source of protein, some fat and some vegetables, you will balance your blood sugar levels,”

says nutritionist Grace Kingswell, who advocates eggs and vegetables to start the day.

But, Mr Ampe warns, in doing so we must be careful not to be tempted in the supermarket to buy fruit and vegetables that do not belong in our own region during the particular season.

“Only seasonal fruit and vegetables should be put on our plates.”

he says.

In doing so, choosing the right food at the right season will bring us into balance with nature and provide the necessary nutrients and vitamins for that time of year.

“It will have positive benefits for your hormone balance, PMS, energy levels, mood, stress response, cravings, satiety, weight management, and so much more.”

remarks Kingswell.

Researchers at the University of Missouri found that a higher protein breakfast produced lower spikes in glucose and insulin after meals, which led to increased feelings of fullness throughout the day (if you struggle to eat first thing, try adding a protein shake, such as one from strongnutrients.com). Increased vegetables also have added benefits for your gut health.

After having started the day with a good meal, one can go for the first walk of the day. Before that walk, like at other moments during the day, it is, according to Mr. Ampe, also not bad to take the Bible at hand and to read, every day, some verses out of that inspiration book. The part read that day should bring something to think or meditate about.

For good reason, private devotion or mental exercise encompassing various techniques of concentration, contemplation, and abstraction, is regarded as conducive to heightened self-awareness, spiritual enlightenment, and physical and mental health. Meditation has never been more popular: there are currently more than 51 million posts on Instagram.

Neuroscientists at UC San Diego recently reported that mindful meditation can be as effective in reducing pain relief as medication. While in another recent study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, researchers found that a guided mindfulness-based program was as effective as the use of medication for patients with anxiety disorders.

Even for a beginner with no serious health issues, a 13-minute daily meditation improves mood, sleep and memory, according to researchers at John Hopkins University.

“There is no need at all to repeat all the time some words or phrases,”

says Mr. Ampe.

“It is much more important to get toward mental, emotional, and physical well-being, by concentrating on the Words given by our Creator, Who has provide the most complete words or thoughts to instruct and form or mould us in the best human being we should become.”

Some prefer through the repetition of a mantra, to still the activity of thought and to experience a deep state of relaxation, which is said to lead to enhanced contentment, vitality, and creativity, but by repeating such mantra, the source of the problem is not taken away. By using the Bible as a source and backbone of life, a person shall be able to attack the real problem and origin of the troubles. Feeding yourself every day with such spiritual food shall enrich and strengthen yourself more, so that you and others shall be able to notice changes in yourself. At the same time you should not be afraid to use that active, voluntary, and systematic thinking about a biblical or theological topic, to be part of your conversation with others, by which you shall come to feel that a certain confidence shall also give you more strength.

“The meditations are designed to be incorporated into your everyday life and can be done sitting, standing or while doing light exercise such as walking, hiking or stretching. We want to make it as easy as possible to meditate any time, anywhere,”

says Julz Arney, director of fitness for health technologies at Apple.

By knowing the Divine Creator, Jehovah God, and giving time to yourself to think about His Words and worship Him, you shall find out that you will gain the first step to coming at ease with yourself and making you strong enough to tackle this world.

The tips from the experts here are small changes that you can start to incorporate into your daily routine – without feeling like it’s a struggle.

Preceding

Facing our existence every day

O, little voice within…

Echo

Soul Pampering Time

Share Your Smile

Blossoming and healing the planet

Thinking about thinking

Thoughts and reflections taking only a few minutes

Deeper Call

‘I try to keep my hate in check. If you can’t hate, you can’t love.’

Crying is good for inner self!!

A little ray of sunshine.

Mini-MAX-malism: A Bigger Approach to Less is More

New form of body exercises gaining popularity

Additional reading

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Tagged as 1 January, Anti-inflammatory, Antioxidant(s), Being discouraged, being Vulnerable, Brain, Breakfast, Breakfast cereal, Cereal, Dark days, Dark moment(s), Dark thought(s), Everyday life, Feeling inferior, Feeling miserable, Grace Kingswell, High-carb cereal, Inner self, Julz Arney, Lack of exposure to sunlight, Low-carb cereal, Man's weaknesses, Marcus Ampe, Meditation, Melatonin, Mindful meditation, Mindfulness, Outward appearance, Production of serotonin, Rachel Taylor, Scandinavia, Seasonal affective disorder, Serotonin, Showing weakness, Stress, Suicide, Sunlight, to Accept the outward appearance, to Deprive ourselves, to Indulge ourselves, Walking, Weakness, Weight gain, Winter, Winter depression, Winter season, Winterdip, Word of God

by Guestspeaker | 2022/12/03 · 12:17 pm

What to do when your child comments on someone’s appearance in public

So you’re out with your toddler, who loudly points out that someone in earshot is “really fat.” What do you do?

Rather than scolding the child, the best course of action is to simply and matter-of-factly acknowledge the observation while emphasizing that humans come in a variety of shapes and sizes and that that’s “totally fine,” writes Megan Margulies in Parents. That said, it’s probably best to teach kids to avoid commenting on other people’s appearances, as even positive comments can be harmful or unwelcome.

“You’re not trying to shame your child for noticing differences,”

child and adolescent psychologist Lori Fishman,

“but you can also let the child know [their comments] can hurt other people’s feelings.” [Parents]

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Tagged as Commenting on other people's appearances, Lori Fishman, Megan Margulies, Parenting

by Vragensteller - Inquirer | 2022/11/09 · 6:07 pm

Our existence, the world showing up for us and holding up a mirror

The world doesn’t just exist, it shows up for us. It appears as the pure experience of the present moment. And one of the most amazing things about the world is that it changes – from age to age, generation to generation, over the course of a human lifetime.

We can not ignore the world. We live in it, and we have to face those things that happen in that world. Today it would even be very difficult to live on a desert island just to live on our own without any interruption or interference from other human beings.

We are here and though others can ignore us, we can not ignore them nor deny our own existence. We have our fleshy bodies within it our brains which enable us to think and reason. From the moment we are born we are confronted with the world and shall have to learn to live in that world. From that first step on earth, time does not let us on our own but however we want, time binds us to itself. It makes hours, days, months and years go by while we have to hold in it and come to the realisation that we are getting older. However, we turn it or turn it and look for the ‘why’ we are here and the ‘how’ we can make it true here, we are pulled in all directions to do this or that or to be here and there.

Sometimes we even wonder not only why we exist, but also why this world and this universe exist. Lots of people also wonder what there would be in outer space. In the darkness behind the horizon, stars and planets get us dreaming of other planets and perhaps also about other living beings. Why should we be the only intellectual beings?

When we see time passing, we often feel as if we are running out of time. Looking at how glaciers melt and how waters rise, but so many in the world do not want to believe climate change is a serious business and that we are heading for an unseen natural disaster if we do not act quickly to combat global warming.

If nothing existed there would be nothing to contemplate existence and no existence to contemplate. Now we have to think about a lot of things. In fact, it happens that our brains don’t let us rest easy and get our heads spinning with all sorts of (sometimes foolish) thoughts.

Why did anything happen?

Why didn’t nothing happen?

Why did all those planets came into existence?

Why does anything at all exist?

What does it mean to exist?

Why did man came into existence and why does he thinks he is superior to all other beings?

Why are we here?

What is life all about? or What is the purpose of existence?

Is that what we think to see realy there? Or is it just an illusion?

Philosophers through all ages have tackled this most fundamental question of existence. Many persons came to practice or investigate the systematised study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. There was and is the searching, the rational, abstract, and methodical consideration of reality as a whole or of fundamental dimensions of human existence and experience. We know of major Eastern philosophers, like Buddha; Confucius; Dai Zhen; Han Feizi; Laozi; Mencius; Mozi; Nichiren; Nishida Kitarō; Wang Yangming; Xunzi; Zhu Xi.

But in the West, they did not have to undercut and could in turn make others think and philosophise with a variety of thoughts. There were many Ancient Greek philosophers, like Aristotle and his followers, who brought a whole movement into being, Aristotelianism. Epicurus and Epicureanism.
The Western world provided lots of major Western philosophers, like Peter Abelard; St. Anselm; St. Thomas Aquinas; St. Augustine; Noam Chomsky; Jacques Derrida; Duns Scotus; Michel Foucault; Jürgen Habermas; Martin Heidegger; David Hume; William James; Saul Kripke; Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; John Locke; John Stuart Mill; Friedrich Nietzsche; Hilary Putnam; Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Bertrand Russell; Jean-Paul Sartre; Socrates; Benedict de Spinoza; Bernard Williams; Ludwig Wittgenstein, and so many more who request our attention.

Some of those philosophers from the east and west will tell you that everything that we experience as real is an illusion. Especially in Eastern philosophies, we find ‘masters’ or ‘teachers’ who will say this is all a dream.

Could it be that we are part of a dream or living in some surreal universe?

And is there some Being managing it all?

Is there a Creator or Manipulator? And are we just His toys?

We may see all this physical stuff around us, but in which way is it real, or do we get to know how it really is?

Over the years, mankind had to change its views about so many things. More than once, man had it wrong. More often there were groups of people or organisations, who wanted to have control over people and made it a rule or doctrine that people had to believe. The Roman Catholic Church was (and is still) a master in that.

Many people have high ideas about themselves. Sometimes it happens that they suddenly become confronted with themselves and have to come to see that their thoughts and emotions are ‘nothing’. It is all, they will say, the play of pure consciousness. John Locke considered “the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind” man’s consciousness.

Pure being is all that really is. Everything else is an illusion created in an ungraspable field of consciousness, awareness and sentience. Some philosophers regarded it as a kind of substance, or “mental stuff,” quite different from the material substance of the physical world. From such philosophers’ ideas many started to believe we exist out of more than one element. They managed to have several people believe that when they die that there is a spiritual element (the soul) that will go to other places (like purgatory, hell or heaven) and another physical element that will transform into another body (incarnation and reincarnation). That reincarnation, also called transmigration or metempsychosis, in religion and philosophy, would be a rebirth of the aspect of an individual that persists after bodily death — whether it be consciousness, mind, the soul, or some other entity — in one or more successive existences. Depending upon the tradition, these existences may be human, animal, spiritual, or, in some instances, vegetable, depending on the way one lived before.

The French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher René Descartes for instance as one of the first to abandon Scholastic Aristotelianism, formulated the first modern version of mind-body dualism, from which stems the mind-body problem. Because he promoted the development of a new science grounded in observation and experiment, he is generally regarded as the founder of modern philosophy. We all know his expression

“I think, therefore I am” (best known in its Latin formulation, “Cogito, ergo sum,” though originally written in French, “Je pense, donc je suis”).

The medieval English logician St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033/34–1109), is at the heart of Descartes’s rationalism, the view that regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge, knowledge about an existing thing solely on the basis of reasoning from innate ideas, with no help from sensory experience. Descartes has an innate idea of Allah Al-Aliyy or Most High God, being The Sublime God as a perfect being. For him, it is clear that God necessarily exists, because, if He did not, He would not be perfect. It is That God Who presides in the great assembly (Psalm 82:1) of human beings, who often think they are greater than others.

Jim Holt, the American journalist, author in popular science and essayist, who often contributed to The New York Times, wrote the nonfiction work and NYTimes bestseller for 2013, Why Does the World Exist?, presented the central question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’, which lies in the domain between philosophy and scientific cosmology. Also the English cosmologist and astrophysicist Martin Rees looked at the big-bang theory of the origins of the universe. By examining the nature of existence itself Holt was following in the path of the philosophy called ‘Existentialism’, which stresses human existence in the world concreteness and its problematic character. for those writers ‘Existence’ is primarily the problem of existence (i.e., of its mode of being); it is, therefore, also the investigation of the meaning of Being. Going back to the intitial thought of previous philosophers

What is Being?

What does it mean to be?

To be is the question!

What does it mean to exist?

What is the nature of being?

For the German philosopher, counted among the main exponents of existentialism, Martin Heidegger, the human subject had to be reconceived in an altogether new way, as “being-in-the-world.” Because this notion represented the very opposite of the Cartesian “thing that thinks,” the idea of consciousness as representing the mind’s internal awareness of its own states had to be dropped. With it went the assumption that specific mental states were needed to mediate the relation of the mind to everything outside it.

Man philosophers had the above questions, bringing them to think about their own being and the being of others around them. Those people thinking and writing about those life questions bring the deep contemplation of what it means to be human. We think no other living being is concerned with such questions. Even pets don’t wonder what their role in the family might be (we think). Even though plants and animals have sentience, we suspect that they have no thinking capacity whereby they would ascertain their essence in this world.

On the other hand, it can well be that one of the reasons that other creatures don’t worry about the meaning of life could be that they don’t seem to have any choice about how to live it. Dogs and cats just live the way dogs and cats live. They respond to circumstances the way dogs or cats generally do. Sure they may differ one to the other, but generally speaking they act more or less predictably like dogs or cats.

But human beings can also be very predictable. We also could say human beings act in a similar way. Many people around us are also very predictable. Though we can notice that even when the majority lives a standard way of living, we can find people who follow a totally different course. There are human beings who stand out and surprise us. We also find several people who do not want to follow the tract the majority follows. They don’t live an ordinary life. They live an extraordinary life, that is remarkably new and different from the norm. And sometimes these rare human beings discover a way of being that eventually becomes the new norm.

Martin Heidegger was convinced that the history of Western thought has failed to heed the ontological difference, and so has articulated Being precisely as a kind of ultimate being, as evidenced by a series of namings of Being, for example as idea, energeia, substance, monad or will to power. He recognised that most of us live as ‘the one’, or that we do generally what ‘one’ does or what would be the general norm to do. Though we are often concerned with what ‘one’ tends to be concerned with.

He spoke about “Dasein” or “being there”, the most fundamental a priori transcendental condition or mode of being not so much to be seen from the point of being there but from the perspective of how the being essentially unfolds. As Heidegger puts it:

“A being is: Be-ing holds sway [unfolds]”.

The hyphenated term ‘be-ing’ is adopted by Emad and Maly, in order to respect the fact that, in the Contributions, Heidegger substitutes the archaic spelling ‘Seyn’ for the contemporary ‘Sein’ as a way of distancing himself further from the traditional language of metaphysics.

We all should be aware that somehow we come on this planet and have to make the best of it. We receive an overdose of information during our lifetime and are fed an untold number of knowledges and rules, with which and by which we try or must try to live. Through all these influences we have to go through, we have to try to build our lives and live a generic human life.

Unlike the rest of the animal kingdom, a human being could, if they were heroic enough, choose to live a different kind of human life and could come to live a profoundly authentic and original human life. The American lecturer, poet, and essayist, the leading exponent of New England Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson called such human beings ‘representative’ because their lives represented new possibilities for being human.

I do not think “Life is But a Dream” even when we may dream that we live or imagine our life to be a certain way. When we are dreaming it can well be that we are not aware that we are asleep. But also when we are awake it can happen that we wonder if we are dreaming, because what we encounter seems to be so unreal. How often does it not happen that we must come to the conclusion that we were in a dream-world. And that dream world was not always to our liking. More than once the dream world that comes into our mind, is one that can cause fear, but luckilly there is also that dream world that causes joy, surprise, and myriad other emotions. Dreams take us, seemingly, to worlds we’ve been to and worlds that we have never experienced. In them we re-live what we lived before in that world we should recognise as the real world. But we should be aware that very often we are deceived by the real world around us. Often we do not want to know that this world has played tricks on us.

Every day we have doubts about certain things, often which we should recognise as facts. There and then we once more are confronted with those questions that come up into our mind so often. Oh, so often we are troubled, and question our own self and all the things we see happening around us. Then we might ask

What is our role in this all?

What happens when we become older?

As time passes we start getting in contact with other peoples and other cultures. Mostly how we grow up is decided by our parents and our surroundings. The culture of our homeland, the religion of our parents, and the friends we hang out with, all influence us and mould us in a form we do not mind or which bothers us. In case we do not like the form in which we are moulded we get frustrated and come into a stressful position. sometimes people would love to have been born in an other place or have lived in other circumstances. But the choice is not up to us. We are dropped in a time and place and have to find our way in it.

We have no memory of a previous life, because there is just not such another life.

Could we prove that we have ever lived if we did not have our memories?

No, there would be no way to prove it. There is not one person who ever could recollect and prove some previous existence. Even for those who are born, when young, their memory is too short and after some time they shall not be able to tell what happened in those first years of life. When you would ask a toddler to prove he lives, he would not be able to do so, because he has not enough memory and not enough knowledge. The very young cannot prove they live because they do not have memories. Memory starts to develop a bit later than the first few years of life. Memory is an essential component to the human mind, so important that we cannot say that we exist without memory. Knowledge and memory are two requirements to realise that one is alive and can be. In other words, our very existence is hinged on our capacity to remember. Without our capacity to think, or to have thoughts, we can not remember nor can we analyse. And to be able to know we live we need to be able to think, consider and to review.

Memory, as the encoding, storage, and retrieval in the human mind of past experiences, is unconditionally linked to thought and being. Without awareness, there is no knowledge of being. We can notice this when people have reached an age when they start to suffer from dementia. It is then as if their thinking but also their “being” falls away.

Memory is both a result of and an influence on perception, attention, and learning. It is those thoughts of past events and influences that help shape us, making us who we are. With that awareness and understanding of that event and of that personality we are confronted with, we ourselves are presented with a mirror, in which whether or not we will accept, love or hate that reflection. But dar we will recognise that this is that “I” that we wish, desire or curse.

Preceding

With Positive Attitude

There can only be hope when there is a will to be and say “I am”

I and Thou

Our existence..

Leap

To come to live in the peace of fulfilment of our own Divine Identity

What is Existential Ergonomics?

On the Anxiety of Non-Being

Running out of time

Why does the world exist

Our real self ever perfect and free

Life’s Purpose

Modern Living

Quandary of Reflections

Existence in the non-existent and non-existence in the existence

Human experience maintained in a fragile existence

Soul-searching

Vivamos Videre, the more we live, the more we are a witness to life

Additional reading

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Tagged as Ancient Greek philosophers, Awareness, Being, Being in the world, Big Bang, Big-bang theory, Brain, Cogito ergo sum = Je pense donc je suis = I think therefore I am, Consciousness, Dasein = being there, Dead, Death, Doctrine, Dreams, Eastern philosophers, Eastern philosophies, Existence, Existentialism, Experience, Generation Z, Generations, Human lifetime, Illusion, Incarnation, Internal awareness, Jim Holt, Lifetime, Martin Heidegger, Martin Rees, Memory, Mental states, Mind, Mind-body dualism, Modern philosophy, Outer space, Past experiences, Perception, Philosophers, Physical world, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rationalism, Reality, Rebirth, Reincarnation, René Descartes, Roman Catholic Church, Scientific cosmology, Searching, Sentience, Seyn = be-ing, Soul, St. Anselm of Canterbury, the I, to Contemplate, Transcendentalism, Transmigration or metempsychosis, Universe, Western philosophers, World

by Vragensteller - Inquirer | 2022/10/24 · 4:53 pm

Gender, genderless, androgyny, bisexuality, cisgender and transgender

How many children between 10 and 14 are not going through a phase where they wonder who or what they are?

Photo by SLAYTINA on Pexels.com

In some countries, such as Belgium among others, there is a view that there are not two genders but that genderless people should be taken into account, i.e. people who feel neither male nor female and often have no need for a person ‘of the opposite sex’. In Belgium, they are given the designation X under their gender. The genderless, a grammatical category, often designated as male, female, or neuter, used in the classification of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and, in some languages, verbs that may be arbitrary or based on characteristics such as sex or animacy and that determines agreement with or selection of modifiers, referents, or grammatical forms.

Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

In other countries, such as the United States of America, then, people who feel genderless or feel that they are in a body of another gender are more likely to be regarded as “devilish” and are taunted and humiliated, as well as dismissed as perverts. For many citizens over there it is normal that the man should have the highest position and that the woman should be considered the lower one, and coloured people the lowest. Equality is out of the question, whilst in other countries, it is not the priority at the moment. Worse is it when there are people who admit they feel attracted to both sexes, male and female. From searching by whom they feel most at ease, some enjoy their being with both genders and enjoying sex with as well as male as female persons. such persons are often between two camps; for one group they are cowards, not gay enough, unfaithful, untrustworthy, indecisive, and confused, for others, they are doing it for attention, or just for sex and their own selfish physical satisfaction. In some cases it is also part of the experimenting, looking for their own particular favourite, on the way to gay or on the way to find out that they are sitting in a wrong appearance male or female body. For lots of people, their wondering and feelings, being afraid of what others would say, make them suppress their sexuality and their true inner feelings. For most Americans, it seems that only the “normal” (heterosexual) kind is valid, making it very difficult for those who feel differently, to express their feeling or to accept what they really are.

In the USA, there is a very dangerous development going on at the moment, with a certain grassroots group wishing to have all kinds of books removed from libraries and schools. Books for children and young adults containing themes of race, gender and sexual identity received an “unprecedented” number of challenges last year, the American Library Association (ALA) has said, reflecting a growing national trend of attempted censorship. The challenges came from conservative parent groups and others. In some cases, the group says, librarians and elected officials were threatened with violence by members of the Proud Boys and armed activists at school board and library board meetings. In April, Pen America, a non-profit organisation that works to protect freedom of expression in the US, reported that 1,586 bans were implemented in 86 school districts across 26 states in the nine months to the end of March. The challenges reported to ALA in 2021, it said, represented the highest number of attempted book bans since the list began more than 20 years ago.

Already two years ago Republican state Rep. Tony Randolph introduced a bill that would outlaw marriage equality, permanently legalise conversion therapy, ban changes to legal gender markers, and block the passage of LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections.

In February 2020 House Bill 1215 (prohibit the state from endorsing or enforcing certain policies regarding domestic relations) was the third in a trio of anti-LGBTQ bills brought to the state’s legislature, the House passed a bill that criminalised trans-affirming medical care for minors. The other, Senate Bill 88, would require mental health providers to out kids expressing gender dysphoria to their parents. Anti-LGBTQ lawmakers and organisers use the state as a test case for the nation, experts say.

Kara Ingelhart, a staff attorney at Lambda Legal, characterises HB 1215 in particular as one of the most comprehensive bills to date targeting LGBTQ people.

Such laws and attacks from thought-limiting groups are also happening also more in some countries of Eastern Europe, where one can see that people’s freedoms and rights are gradually becoming more and more restricted.

“We don’t allow children’s parents to decide whether or not they can drink underage, whether they can smoke underage, whether they marry underage, and we certainly should not allow a child to be disfigured in a horrible way, in an irreversible procedure before they’re 18 years of age,”

Rep. Williams Lamberth, R-Portland, said.

The Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) said they require parental consent to treat minors who are being seen for issues to those receiving gender-affirming care and never refuse parental involvement for those under 18. VUMC officials said they began their Transgender Health Clinic because

“transgender individuals are a high-risk population for mental and physical health issues and have been consistently underserved by the U.S. health system.”

“We have been and will continue to be committed to providing family-centered care to all adolescents in compliance with state law and in line with professional practice standards and guidance established by medical specialty societies,”

officials said in the statement.

In some countries, people go so far as to consider it plausible that those who dress or behave differently from their physical appearance may be freely harassed, humiliated in words but also in deeds, even raped.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Pexels.com

Countries already immersed in a civil — rather, uncivil —war between two distinct political ideologies, the last five years seem to have come into a #MeToo rage and starting another uncivil war between the two genders.

During childhood, it often happens that parents want to steer their children into certain role patterns that are traditionally constructed. The search for “being” and dealing with attraction towards others, be they persons of the opposite or same sex, is part of growing up and belongs to peculiarities of puberty and adolescence that most young people have to go through.

During the search for one’s own personality and sexual identity, it does happen more than once that a conflict situation arises between parents and child because the parent cannot enter the child’s own emotional world and feels hurt or feels a sense of failure because the child chooses a different sex than the parent has in mind.

In September of this year Tennessee lawmakers made their way into the discourse about providing gender-affirming care. Matt Walsh — a Daily Wire conservative commentator, who questions LGBTQ rights — said he considered the care to be that of castration and mutilation to minors and adults.

According NHS England most children who believe that they are transgender are just going through a “phase”, and therefore it has announced plans for tightening controls on the treatment of under 18s questioning their gender, including a ban on prescribing puberty blockers, outside of strict clinical trials. The last few years in the states as well as in England we could see more clinics where such puberty inhibitors or hormone blockers, medicines used to postpone puberty in children.

Several campaign groups in Britain, receiving taxpayers’ money have told teachers to drop all gendered toilets and language – and not to tell parents if they change their child’s identity.

The Cass Review, commissioned by NHS England, has found

“there is a disproportionate number of children on the spectrum, in care, same-sex attracted or with trauma in their background who identify as trans.”

Victoria Atkins, who has responsibility for the Government’s gender equality policy, expressed concern that a rising number of teenagers were seeking “life-changing” medical interventions. Young people were undergoing treatment to change their gender because they regard it as

“an answer to questions they are not asking themselves”,

the minister said.

“It may simply be a case of greater awareness, it may be that for some they see it as an answer to questions they are perhaps not asking themselves. We need to be particularly alert to this with regard to young people. The treatments are so serious and life-changing, I’m a little cautious of the use of those treatments because of the potential for the rest of their lives.

“Lots of questions are rightly being asked about how we treat young people, people whose bodies perhaps haven’t developed yet.”

The NHS services note that there is a need to change the services because there is currently

“scarce and inconclusive evidence to support clinical decision-making”.

NHS England says that the interim Cass Report has advised that even social transition, such as changing a young person’s name and pronouns or the way that they dress, is not a “neutral act” that could have “significant effects” in terms of “psychological functioning”.

Parent groups and professionals have long raised concerns that NHS medics have taken an “affirmative” approach to treating children, including using their preferred names and pronouns.

The proposals say that the new clinical approach will for younger children

“reflect evidence that in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence” and doctors should be mindful this might be a “transient phase”.

Instead of encouraging transition, medics should take “a watchful approach” to see how a young person’s conditions develop, the plans state.

When a prepubescent child has already socially transitioned,

“the clinical approach has to be mindful of the risks of an inappropriate gender transition and the difficulties that the child may experience in returning to the original gender role upon entering puberty if the gender incongruence does not persist”.

In March 2022 there were 5,500 children on an NHS waiting list for gender swap treatment at the Tavistock and Portman Trust’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in London, after a “surge in demand”.

In 2010/11 this were only 138 children and in 2020/21 a 17-fold increase could be noted, that number had grown to 2,383 children.

Could the surge in demand for help and treatment possibly be linked to a global pandemic and the three lockdowns that left vulnerable youngsters imprisoned, isolated and glued to their screens?

By January 2021, a report compiled by the Care Quality Commission showed that the waiting list had already reached 4,600. In March, Stephanie Davies-Arai, founder of campaign group Transgender Trend, explained that during those lockdowns,

“life stopped, really – so adolescents at that stage in their lives, where they’re really searching for their identity, turn online”.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Pexels.com

The public consultation documents say that change is necessary against a backdrop of a sharp rise in referrals to the gender identity service, from just under 250 in 2011-12 to over 5,000 last year.

In recent years there has also been a spike, with

“the number of referrals currently at 8.7 per 100,000 population per year in 2021-22 compared to four per 100,000 in 2020-21 and 4.5 per 100,000 in 2019-20”.

On the day that Tom Daley marched into the Commonwealth Games with a pride flag bearing trans colours, the health service announced in July that it would be closing the Tavistock and replacing it with two regional centres based in specialist children’s hospitals.

Trans-ideology according to some is the inevitable culmination of left-wingers deconstructing gender and sexuality in the 1960s cultural revolution. Several conservatives are asking for a serious look at the consequences of the previous era of free expression of opinion and free sex.

Gay activists discredited the notion of aberrant sexual activity. Feminists said gender was a construct and a prison. This coincided with a new take on children, insisting they weren’t miniature versions of their parents but autonomous human beings who should control their own destiny, even their education.

The move is aimed at taking a more “holistic” approach to treating children and looking at the reasons why they are questioning their gender.

It is expected that the regional centres will be operating by the spring, whilst long-term plans for the gender identity services for under 18s, based on the final recommendation of the Cass review, will come into effect in 2023-24.

Rather than being delivered by therapists and hormone specialists, the new clinical teams will include experts “in paediatric medicine, autism, neurodisability and mental health”.

The proposals note that a “significant proportion of children” who are referred for treatment have neuro-development issues or family of social problems.

The new treatment teams will be led by a medical doctor and the service will only take referrals from GPs and other NHS professionals.

NHS England will also “strongly discourage” young people from buying hormones from private clinicians and will not accept clinical responsibility for the treatment of those who have done so.

Is one prepared to bear the consequences that children with yet serious questions regarding their identities and gender have to resolve, and how?

How exactly does the NHS plan to clear up the mess and plan for the fallout of mental health issues that will emerge?

The consultation on the plans closes in December.

It is the task of the adults to help children to accept themselves as they are and to get them to feel happy in their own bodies, even when it is not fitting in the general traditional idea of the mainstream. Parents and health workers should not teach them that mutilating their genitals and living inside a skin costume of the opposite sex is the way to peace and contentment, because studies have shown this is not the case. A life lived in medicalised pretence is not a happy or healthy one.

But we should be open to helping those who have come into adult age, and even when for some that may look late, when they are in their twenties and then changing, there are still many years to come to live in a ‘renewed body’.

Let’s hope the tide is turning, for the sake of our children.

Preceding

A Progressive Call to Arms

Added commentary to the posting A Progressive Call to Arms

Times of overcorrections

Who Am I That I Could Hinder God?

Do the concepts of male and female need to have a formal official definition

The Catholic synod on the family and abortion

Looking at an American nightmare

Additional reading

+++

13 Comments

Filed under Being and Feeling, Health affairs, Lifestyle, Questions asked, Welfare matters

Tagged as #MeToo, Adolescence, American Library Association (ALA), Androgyny, Anti-LGBTQ bills, Belgium, Bisexual, Care Quality Commission, Cass Review, Censorship, Conservative American(s), Conservative parent groups, Eastern Europe, Expressing gender dysphoria, Feminists, Freedom, Freedom of citizens, Freedom of expression, Freedom of thought, Gay activist(s), Gender, Gender identity, Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), Gender transition, Gender-affirming care, Gender-neutral pronouns, Gendered toilets, Genderless people, Genderqueer(s), LGBTQ people, LGBTQ rights, LGBTQI people, Life-changing treatment(s), Matt Walsh, Neuter, NHS England, Pen America, Personality, Prepubescent child, Proud Boys, Puberty, Puberty blocker(s), Rape, Sexual activity, Sexual identity, Stephanie Davies-Arai, Teenagers, Teens, Tennessee, Tom Daley, Tony Randolph, Transexualism, Transgender, Transgender Trend, Transgender(s), United States of America, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), Victoria Atkins, Williams Lamberth

by Guestspeaker | 2022/10/24 · 6:28 am

Invitation to the news platform that brings a view of the world

Dear Reader,

There is so much news — and too many voices — competing for your attention today.

Do you know that we provide a site where we present news from all over the world and do not mind going deeper into certain facets of facts everyone should know or should receive attention (according to us) .

“Some view on the World” does just that what the title of the website is called. It wishes to bring a view of world affairs. It wants to be a Journal for you and provides unbiased news and perspective to keep you well-informed and entertained.

In addition to general press reviews, you will be able to find articles that deal with environmental issues and take a closer look at how we, as human beings, must take responsibility, not only ethically and politically, but how we must behave towards other living beings and respect nature. Towards respecting other beings, racial discrimination comes to the fore, but also how we in the West sometimes look strangely at other cultures. We believe that getting to know other cultures and religions better can help to better understand and accept “that otherness of those people”. In today’s society, people do not like to talk about religion, but on “Some View on the World” we certainly do not shy away from that subject, and we even think it is important to talk about God and commandments.

As on this overview site, we believe it is important to let diverse voices have their say. Therefore, at that view of the world, you can find reports from several newspapers and writers from all kinds of directions or different political movements.

Today, we would like to invite you to feast your eyes on that website too, pay it a visit and (who knows) also subscribe to it to receive free daily news in your mailbox.

A warm welcome!

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Filed under Announcement, Cultural affairs, Ecological affairs, Economical affairs, Educational affairs, Headlines - News, History, Lifestyle, Nature, Political affairs, Questions asked, Religious affairs, Social affairs, Welfare matters, World affairs

Tagged as Cultures, Discrimination, Environment, Ethics, Invitation, Multiculturalism, News, News platform, Newspapers, Press reviews, Religion, Responsibility, Society, Some view on the World (website), to Understand, View on the world, Voices, Writers

by Vragensteller - Inquirer | 2022/09/20 · 10:57 pm

Discouraged from asking questions

How often do we not hear from people that when they had certain questions about faith matters, that the priest or minister told them they should not ask such questions but should put their faith in God. What those ministers or priests would mean by that?

Does the church discourage you from asking questions?

is one of those questions that Dan Foster brings forwards in one of his blogs. In “Is It Time To Leave Your Church?” it is the 4th question of the eight questions to ask yourself that might help you come to a place of peace about what you need to do, either staying with the denomination you are in or leaving the church.

He writes:

If your pastor bristles when you ask him a difficult question, that ought to set off alarm bells. {Is It Time To Leave Your Church?}

You should know it is not at all wrong to have more than one question about certain matters. As in some other blogs articles Foster mentions the relationship between people of the same sex.

Mention that you support gay marriage and observe the reaction. Suggest that the earth might not be only 6000 years old and see what kind of reception you get. {Is It Time To Leave Your Church?}

When growing up a person more than once is confronted with matters that trouble him or her. It can be very personal matters but also matters of the mind as well as of spiritual evolution. Also, when a person starts relationships and wonders how those can be continued or strengthened. Strangely enough, we often hear from dissatisfied church members that they could not receive satisfactory answers to questions they had about that what they could read in the bible and on that what their church wants them to believe that there is written in the Bible.

For several churches, matters on the way we sexually behave are not to be discussed. Homosexual friends or gay marriages.

Some churches have convinced themselves that discussing difficult questions like these is unhealthy. It is almost as if they worry that their faith will fade away when exposed to the light. If it’s tested, it may just shatter.

The reality is that if our faith is that fragile, it probably was never true. If our God is so easily defeated, he is probably not really the true God. {Is It Time To Leave Your Church?}

Problem with a lot of churches is that they have build their ‘teachings and rules’ on a series of dogma’s which you shall not be able to find in the Bible.

Whether we have built castles of doctrine on flimsy foundations or have metaphorically curled ourselves up into a ball around the fundamentals of the gospel, avoiding the tough questions will never lead to any real answers. {Is It Time To Leave Your Church?}

The real answers, you should realize, are all there in the Great Book of books, that is provided by the Divine Master of all Himself.

So, if you find that your church shuts down, shames or freezes out people who ask tough questions and openly verbalize their reasonably held doubts, then you are not in a place that fosters and promotes the thinking that is needed for growth.

Then it is time to really consider not better going to search for a place where you shall be able to ask questions, and where you shall be able to discuss matters of faith but also about matters of the way of life.

When the pastor or minister tells you that when you have such questions that it means you are weak and that you are not a believing enough in God, you should not be afraid to say how you feel that your faith is. Every person should also be allowed to doubt certain matters, without being told that he or she is a bad person that would come to burn in hell when continuing such way.

First of all there is no such place where God the father would torture His children. Secondly

If you are constantly reminded — either explicitly or implicitly — of your own wretchedness and the need to eliminate sin from your life before you would even be remotely acceptable to God, then perhaps it’s time to move on.

If your church uses the threat of eternal damnation or judgment to win converts and manage the behavior of its members, and if your church has reduced Christian discipleship down to a sin-management program or self-improvement course, then I suggest you walk away. {Is It Time To Leave Your Church?}

And Mr. Foster has good reason for that.

Because using the doctrine of sin and fallenness to accuse, berate, critique, attack, belittle, condemn or produce guilt is actually a form of spiritual abuse — not about freedom and grace, but control. {Is It Time To Leave Your Church?}

God is a god of love and understanding. He understands you might have lots of questions; He wants you to grow in your own way at your own time. He does not put any limit of time. He also allows you to grow and chose your own way, like you want to develop. He provides different ways and has provided several answers in His Own Word, notated by several of His own people. The Book of books, the Bible is there to give the answers, but there are also men of God who can come to your help. Try to find those churches where people are open to receiving you without questioning you, but allowing you to ask them questions.

Do know that it is impossible that one man would have all the answers to your questions. Do not believe that the guy behind the pulpit, who gets up every week and lectures you about how you’re doing a terrible job of living a life that honours God, is the one you should follow. Nor would that be the place to go to every Sunday. Look more for a place where you can feel like being part of a family, having a meeting of brothers and sisters in Christ.

Preceding

Leaving (the) Church

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Filed under Lifestyle, Questions asked, Religious affairs, Social affairs

Tagged as Asking questions, Christian discipleship, Christian meetings, Dan Foster, Doctrine of fallenness, Doctrine of sin, Gay marriage, Meeting, Questioning, Threat of eternal damnation, to be Acceptable to God, to Produce guilt, Way of life

by Vragensteller - Inquirer | 2022/07/29 · 7:16 pm

When does your day begin and when begins God His day

All over the world, we can find several calendars which have the week beginning on another day. But when wants one to start a day?

In a certain way, we need some agreement on an arrangement for choosing a system for dividing time over extended periods, such as days, months, or years, and arranging such divisions in a definite order.
Here in West Europe for practical reasons, the standard week begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, and for the Catholics and most Protestant denominations, Sunday is considered the day of rest and ‘Day of the Lord’.

For the majority, the day also commences when they wake up and go to do their daily busyness. Getting up in time is for most of us the most important event of the day. When we hear our alarm clock, that means we are still alive, and we can face again another day.

Frank Hubeny is a Christian who moved to Miami Beach, Florida. He voted for Donald Trump in 2020 and is a pro-life and pro-Israel, and loves Catholics. By hearing those things, we may assume he is one of those conservative and perhaps fundamentalist American Christians. He suspects most people are aware that the biblical day begins at sunset

or early evening sometime if one can’t see the sun actually set. {Exploration 103 – The Day Begins At Sunset}

Though, I think most people do not relate the day setting to something which is indicated in the Bible or any other ‘holy Scriptures‘. But he agrees that

Skyline of Kaohsiung harbour, Taiwan at sunrise.

there are people who would disagree with this biblical interpretation promoting sunrise rather than sunset as the starting point. {Exploration 103 – The Day Begins At Sunset}

There are those who refer to Jeshua, the Messiah who would have brought some new ‘Covenant Calendar’ or would have done away with the Torah, which is not so at all.

Jeshua, or Jesus as a Jew held himself to the Torah and was very well aware of God’s Law given to mankind for good reason. He went to the synagogue on Friday night, which is at the beginning of the Sabbath. From sunset on Friday to nightfall of the following day Jeshua or Jesus also kept himself to the regulations for that day of the week, which was the closing day of the week. The day after was the first day of the week and would be our Sunday. By most Christians, that day is considered to be “the Lord’s Day”, or the weekly memorial of Jesus Christ’s Resurrection from the dead. The title of that day can be very misleading because it can insinuate that it is God His day, though all days belong to God and those Christians holding on to that Day of the Lord mean with it that it is the day of Christ, or even worse, as their day of their god, namely having Jesus as their god.

In our present time or modern culture, most people have been raised to believe that a new day begins at midnight. The majority of people are not interested in the Bible and as such never looked for being in agreement with such a book, which is taken by others as their guide for life. Not following an Al-Haadi or such Guide for life, they just go by their feeling and custom to stand up after a night’s rest.

For them, there is no reason to think about a Scriptural reason and as such, there is no scriptural precedent for their belief, and the way that midnight is reckoned today would be impossible without mechanical clocks.

Others, such as myself, are more than willing to set them straight since fixing the other guy is more entertaining than fixing oneself. {Exploration 103 – The Day Begins At Sunset}

EliYah Ministries claims to be a place for people to read more about the Hebrew Roots of their faith, and has its name chosen because YLiYah means it means “My Mighty One is Yahweh” and this is the message that they seem to want to proclaim. Strangely enough they give the impression that they are Jewish but seem to take Jeshua or Jesus also as their god Yahweh. Though Jesus or Jeshua is not Jehovah, the God of Israel, but is the son of God and son of man, a human being.

“40 ولكنكم الآن تطلبون ان تقتلوني وانا انسان قد كلمكم بالحق الذي سمعه من الله.هذا لم يعمله ابراهيم. 41 انتم تعملون اعمال ابيكم.فقالوا له اننا لم نولد من زنا.لنا اب واحد وهو الله.” (يو 8:40-41 Arabic)

“40 But now you seek to kill me, a man that has told you the truth, which I have heard from God: this did not Abraham. 41 You do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We are not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.” (Joh 8:40-41 KJBPNV)

Funny also that those writers of that site also recognise that

the translators admit they substituted Yahweh’s name for a title. All for the sake of an tradition. Yahweh’s name is in scripture nearly 7000 times. And nearly 7000 times they replaced it (not translated it) with “the LORD”, or “GOD”. Imagine that? They took His name out of His own book! {Yahushua is the True Name of the Messiah}

Also, they agree with Matthew Henry’s Commentary (on Matthew 1:21)

“Jesus is the same name with Joshua, the termination only being changed, for the sake of conforming it to the greek.” {Yahushua is the True Name of the Messiah}

Though somehow they begin to use those two different names Jehovah/Yahweh and Yahushua/Yahusha/Jeshua/Jesus interchangeably and say that Jeshua – for them: god – changed the ‘day’. Even when they say themselves

I wouldn’t want someone to change my name unless it was Yahweh, and it is clear that according to the third commandment Yahweh doesn’t want anyone to change or falsify His name either.

Think about this for a moment. What makes man think he has the authority to change the name of the one who created him, and who created all things? We don’t have that right! For instance, in the scriptures we see that one who changes the name of another is always in authority over them. The Messiah renamed Simon. Yahweh renamed Abram to Abraham. He renamed Jacob to Israel. Adam named the animals. Even we name our children, not the other way around. Yahweh, our Heavenly Father, named His Son ‘Yahushua’ in Matt 1:22. {Why people of all languages must call upon the name of Yahweh}

So, why do they change the name of Jehovah in Yahwe and in Yahushua? Clearly, they themselves say God named His son Yahushua or (in short or as a call sign) Jeshua. Furthermore, that site indicates:

Also, notice that Matthew 28:1 says it is “after the Sabbath” which indicates the first day of the week has begun. The sun had not yet risen though because it says that it was “toward dawn.”

Matthew 28:1(ISR) Now after the Sabbath, toward dawn on the first day of the week, Miryam from Magdala and the other Miryam came to see the tomb. {When Does the Sabbath Start?}

Toward dawn, means close to dawn, which is after the darkest point of night; and that moment they considered already to be the first day of the week. They also notice

the word used in Matthew 28:1 “toward dawn” describes same period of time as John 20:1– the time when they started heading toward the tomb. It was still technically dark outside, but the light of dawn was on the horizon. {When Does the Sabbath Start?}

We should remember:

So based on the … accounts, it is evident that the chronology was that the women started heading to the tomb before the sun rose on the first day of the week, they bought spices “after the Sabbath” yet before sunrise, and they arrived at the tomb at sunrise.

Here is a summary of how these accounts actually contradict “sunrise to sunrise” Sabbath keeping:

John 20:1 says that it was “on the first day of the week”, yet it was “still dark.” Therefore the first day of the week had already begun prior to sunrise.

Mark 16:1 says that they bought spices “when the Sabbath was passed,” yet it was before the sun had risen, proving the Sabbath ended at sundown.

Matthew 28:1 says that it was “after the Sabbath” during the period of time that it began to “grow light,” a word that describes the period of time just before sunrise.

Therefore, these verses clearly support the fact that the Sabbath ends at sundown and the first day of the week was already in motion prior to sunrise.

EVENING TO EVENING

Scripture plainly commands “from evening to evening you shall celebrate your Sabbath.”

Leviticus 23:27-Also the tenth day of this seventh month shall be the Day of Atonement. It shall be a holy convocation for you; you shall afflict your souls, and offer an offering made by fire to Yahweh. 28 – And you shall do no work on that same day, for it is the Day of Atonement, to make atonement for you before Yahweh your Elohim. 29 – For any person who is not afflicted in soul on that same day shall be cut off from his people. 30 – And any person who does any work on that same day, that person I will destroy from among his people. 31 – You shall do no manner of work; it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. 32 – It shall be to you a sabbath of solemn rest, and you shall afflict your souls; on the ninth day of the month at evening, from evening to evening, you shall celebrate your sabbath.”

Numbers 29:7- On the tenth day of this seventh month you shall have a holy convocation. You shall afflict your souls; you shall not do any work.

Since Yahweh doesn’t contradict Himself, it is no contradiction that the 10th day of the month is “Yom Kippur/Day of Atonement” while also commanding that we begin and end this day at evening. Since the 10th day began and ended at evening, the days surrounding it would need to begin and end at evening as well. Thus, all days begin and end at evening.

Another example:

Exodus 12:15-Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. 16 – On the first day there shall be a holy convocation, and on the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation for you. No manner of work shall be done on them; but that which everyone must eat — that only may be prepared by you. 17 – So you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance. 18 – In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. 19 – For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native of the land.

Notice that the same language which described the timing of the tenth day of the seventh month (Day of Atonement) is also used to describe when the fifteenth day of the first month (the Feast of Unleavened Bread).

EliYah Ministries agrees with the fact that we should best look at a day from evening to evening.

The scriptures seem pretty clear to me that Yahweh reckons days from evening to evening. While modern reckoning is from midnight to midnight, we need to submit ourselves to the daily heavenly clock that Yahweh Himself established at creation. It makes perfect sense that a day ends when a day ends…at evening. {When Does the Sabbath Start?}

That seems very clear, though several Messianic groups have their Sabbath service on Saturday afternoon. But in Wintertime than the sun has already gone down (like in West of Europe or in the Northern Hemisphere from October to March). For us, it is then no Sabbath anymore but the first day of the week, the Sunday.

There are also groups which say Jeshua/Jesus with his blood made a new covenant so that the old covenant is of no value anymore.

The studies of Covenant Calendar must take time to reflect how this full and complete understanding was born – basically through the most important study of the Melchizedek Priesthood. The Priesthood study provided the platform that declares this Covenant Calendar is indeed blood-ratified and eternally sealed by Yahusha in His witness through the gospel – especially in His death, burial, resurrection and two ascensions. Therefore, our most sincere thanks go out to the Supreme Provider Yahusha Ha Mashiach for His guidance and direction through this incredible study. {What in the world is a Biblical the Torah Yahuwah’s Covenant Calendar}

Seemingly in the United States, there are many groups who find people have to keep the Sabbath, but their interpretation of what has to be the Sabbath seems so different from what we can find in the bible and by standard Jewish people.

Frank Hubeny writes

However, the fourth commandment expects us to keep the Sabbath (aka Sunday) holy. How are we going to do that if we don’t know when He wants the Sabbath to start and end? It is after all His commandment, not ours, to get some rest. Others think their acceptance of Yeshua (Jesus) allows them do what they want. They might be right. It might not be a salvation issue, but we may still be making a mess of our lives by not doing what He wants while we have the opportunity. {Exploration 103 – The Day Begins At Sunset}

That are the big questions:

How can we keep a holy day before God?

What is a holy day in God’s Eyes?

Next to the question:

When is the holy day for God?

Or

When is the Sabbath?

Another question may arise as well. According to many Jehudim or Jews and Jeshuaists the Day of God must start with prayer, and as such has to start with prayers at home, followed by prayers at the synagogue or temple. For them, it is not that

Every day begins with the first LIGHT in the “dawn” sky called twilight. While the sunrise may be very close behind, the day does NOT begin with sunrise, but with light. Everything on Day 1 of Creation began with LIGHT … and do remember there was no sunrise “or” sunset until the 4^th day of creation. {What in the world is a Biblical the Torah Yahuwah’s Covenant Calendar}

That looks like twisting the words of the bible. It was out of the void that the world was created. And when there was chaos there was also darkness.

“و“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Ge 1:2 KJBPNV)

So first, the formless earth had darkness around it. A few verses later we come to read that there came to be evening, and as such came to pass a first day by the rising of the morning.

“And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Ge 1:5 KJBPNV)

You see:

the Evening and the morning formded the first day

and not

the morning and the evening formde the day.

It is Jehovah God Who starts with everything; He starts His moment of creation by bringing order in the chaos. It was God Who said to have luminaries come to be in the expanse of the heavens, to make a division between the day and the night.

“14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.” (Ge 1:14-19 KJBPNV)

For God it came to completion after He had giving vegetation to man. By the sun going down, heavens and the earth and all their army had come to completion. So God proceeded to rest on the seventh day, from all His work that He had made.

“31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.” (Ge 1:31-2:1 KJBPNV)

“And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.” (Ge 2:2 KJBPNV)

It was that seventh day that God blessed and made sacred, not the first day.

“And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” (Ge 2:3 KJBPNV)

The Bible present us by God doing its first Work, when there is darkness. Light came only afterwards. We have a set of periods which always end by darkness coming in again. And as such to me that looks clearly like a new period to come into the picture. A new day.

The sunset-start day puts what God does first. It makes sure what we do later during daylight hours is subordinate to what He wants, not what we want, not even what we think is possible for us to do. {Exploration 103 – The Day Begins At Sunset}

writes Hubeny. And for him, that’s the main reason why he favours having the day begin at sunset,

the time we stop working and acknowledge He is in control to begin the new day as the old one ends. {Exploration 103 – The Day Begins At Sunset}

This also seems logical, when you consider that at the moment of creation, one is busy. During the day, we have to do our daily job. Often we do not find enough time to honour God (except with our work). But when we have done our daily duties, then comes the moment we can take more time for God. As such, there is also the Friday night, when most of us can put work down and forget it for one or two days.

At sunset, we can come to rest, like God also came to rest. Then arrives the moment we can give all our time to Allah Al-Aliyy, in recognition and respect for all the things He has done and still does for us.

+++

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by Vragensteller - Inquirer | 2022/07/09 · 4:34 pm

Existence in the non-existent and non-existence in the existence

When wondering about the existence, the why and how, there is the darkness around us in which we look for the light. There we find ourselves in a world that has shifted from the here and now. We, looking at the age that has shifted all emphasis to the here, there, yesterday, today and tomorrow, and thus brought about a demonisation of man and his world.

The many things that bind us to each other and to this world we want to curse, but they keep us under their spell. Who plays the game? Who has the strings of our body and soul?

Who is the player of this puppet cabinet, where we are the puppets of who in what world? It was not that we ourselves presented ourselves to be a glove puppet. And who is that One Who plays with the hand puppets of this world?

In this world, we see many who want to seize power and even manage to make money out of their dictatorial traits. Then they take pleasure in having flocks of dictators around them, until the people wake up, when it is too late and the phenomenon of dictators has already caused great misery. Then people will have to admit with shame that they have allowed such foolishness to take place and to cause so much damage. Then they will have the nerve to admit that mankind has been robbed of his transcendence by the short-sightedness of the super-intellectuals, but also of the foolish followers who turned a blind eye while the others warned.

Many have fallen a victim to unconsciousness.

But then, at last, they come to see, man’s task is the exact opposite: to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.

Neither should he persist in his unconsciousness, nor remain identical with the unconscious elements of his being, thus evading his destiny, which is to create more and more consciousness.

What is the sole purpose of human existence? Is it to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being?

What affects us? What affects him or her who is standing next to us?

For sure

the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious. {Carl Jung}

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by Guestspeaker | 2022/07/08 · 1:30 pm

Why does the world exist

Blijf niet alleen afgezonderd op jouw eiland met je vragen zitten – do not stay isolated on your desert island with all your questions

We are here. That much seems clear. We can’t deny our own existence.

Well actually great philosophers have denied our existence. What we can’t deny we suppose is that something exists. There is an experience of existence, of being, that is undeniably the foundation of everything. If nothing existed there would be nothing to contemplate …

Some may even question what it entails to be in or to have “existence”. In what way we experience existence? We can feel ourselves and we can see and touch other things, but that does not yet mean we feel their existence. Though most often as soon as we see and feel something we want to believe we feel and see the proof of its existence.

To what extent do we want to accept that which we can perceive to exist?

But one of the most important questions that most people have is why they exist. The “Why” of being us and the “Why” of being the things around us.

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by Guestspeaker | 2022/06/16 · 7:52 pm

Is the Russian military superior to any other European nation?

on Diplomacy & Warfare Quora

Wes Frank answers this question

Individually, and by the numbers, yes.

Russia will always need to maintain a good-sized army and air force regardless of whether it is peaceful or belligerent towards its neighbors. Russia is twice as populous as the next-largest European nation and sustains a large army through conscription, using it to maintain the security of a vast stretch of northern Eurasia. The road and rail link between Saint Petersburg and Vladivostok is six thousand miles long and follows a strategic population corridor that borders on Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China for most of that distance. While the bulk of Russian military forces are based in European Russia, its rail transport system is as vital to the Russian Federation’s security as it was to tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union.

Beyond Russia’s security needs, Europe other then Russia or the former Yugoslavia has been peaceful for the last seventy-seven years. Most of the nations of Europe are part of the defensive alliance called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Because the NATO nations have almost no military rivalries with each other—there are a couple of minor ones in Southeastern Europe—none of the European members of the Alliance need to invest in large military forces.

Using the crudest statistical measure, Russia invests 4% of its GDP in military spending and most of the rest of Europe between 1% and 3%. Beyond that, NATO countries share the latest technological advances among themselves while Russia has to make do with its own research spending and what its extensive espionage networks can gather overseas. Russian per capita income ranks 33rd in Europe, its government is crippled by corruption, and the logistical infrastructure for its army, navy, and air forces are considered inadequate. Its core regular forces are as dangerous as any in the world, but the resources supporting them are questionable.

If Russia had the option of confronting or engaging only one European nation at a time, it would be a very intimidating opponent. However, the combined NATO forces in Europe are roughly three times as powerful as the Russia military. That advantage would be doubled if the two NATO members in North America, the United States and Canada, mobilized to support their European allies. This is why most of Europe is part of NATO.

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by Marcus Ampe | 2022/06/16 · 1:49 pm

For those who say Jesus words do not make sense

More than once we get questions from people wondering what Jesus meant by saying such a strange thing. We also get several remarks that Jesus said so many strange things, that we should not take them seriously.

All Gospel readers want to understand Jesus’ teachings, but it’s not always so easy! Luckily, a little ancient Jewish context can go a long way to aiding our understanding.

Dr. Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenber in his article “When Jesus Does Not Make Sense” looks at such strange remarks of Jesus, like

“Allow the dead to bury their own dead” (Luke 9:60)

which for many do not

seem to make no sense at all.

He also looks at the weird saying

“The eye is the lamp of the body….”

Then, as if this were not confusing enough, Jesus adds,

“So, if your eye is healthy (ἁπλοῦς; aplous) your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad (πονηρὸς; poneros), your whole body will be full of darkness” (Matthew 6:22-23a.)

The most popular way of dealing with texts such as these is to ignore them!

Though, we can not agree with that. We have the opinion that one should look at those sayings in the manner of speaking at the time of Jesus Christ. I am convinced that when we want to read the Old or the New Testament, we should look at those texts as Jewish texts from previous times, when certain idioms and ways of speaking were used. Therefore, one must be familiar with the techniques of Jewish literary traditions.

One should consider the thought-language of the gospels in light of Hebraisms and Aramaisms.

We must be aware that in the Hebrew and Aramaic scriptures there was (is) a lot of use of descriptions. Hebrew has many idiomatic terms that can not easily be translated to other languages; for example בארבע עיניים be’arba enayim, literally ‘with four eyes,’ means face to face without the presence of a third person, as in, ‘The two men met with four eyes.’ The expression לא דובים ולא יער lo dubim ve lo ya’ar is literally “neither bears nor forest” but means that something is completely false. The saying טמן את ידו בצלחת taman et yado batsalahat “buried his hand in the dish” means that someone idles away his time.” ^{[ Bivin, David. “Hebrew Idioms in the Gospels,” Jerusalem Perspective Online. Archived 2007-05-26 at the Wayback Machine]}

Furthermore, we should take into account that often those writers use a description instead of going for just one word or term. When reading the Holy Scriptures we should try to come into that way of thinking. We should almost make Judaic thinking our own.

Regular Bible scholars have tried to convey the view of the saying. To this end, they took the liberty of expressing that thought with simple words in the language of translation. In this respect, those who have made paraphrased translations have gone furthest, but have also sometimes taken a little too much liberty by writing things out on the basis of their doctrine.

Furthermore, we should not underestimate metaphorical language or figure of speech, and we should take it fully into account. It is true that by using such language one can have a system of thought antedating or bypassing logic. At the time of use, they might have been very originally vivid images and clear for those who listened to the texts.

Jesus for example uses the terms of the “healthy eye” versus “evil eye” metaphorically.

A man with a “single-minded eye” looks at a God-given path alone! God’s word becomes the guiding light (Psalm 119:105). But the one with “the lustful eye” gets distracted and greedy by coveting the possessions of others. As envy takes root, generosity dies. Then darkness settles in.

This is why we must remember that “the eye is the lamp of God,” so that our eye stays healthy and we always walk in God’s paths. {When Jesus Does Not Make Sense}

If one takes the time to read and reread the text carefully, while trying to put oneself in that ancient language, one will find that the words of Jesus and other prophets do have meaning and significance. In comparison with sentences spoken in the past, everything will become clearer, but then one has to be prepared to do verse and text comparison. Also, reading more than one translation can often bring more clarity.

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by Guestspeaker | 2022/06/15 · 12:13 pm

Who Am I That I Could Hinder God?

“For as much then as God gave them a like gift,
as he did unto us, when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ,
who was I, that I could let God?” (Ac 11:17 GenevaBible)

All of those who call themselves “Christian” need to ask themselves not only who they are, what they want to do, and what they want to reach, but also if they are following God’s path or even if they do not hinder God.

Often we find Christians praying for things which go against the Plan of God. So you could wonder how they look at God and really want His Plan to come into fulfilment.

We have Jews and Gentiles, or goyim having become under Christ, having become children of God.

God may have tried to tell Peter to not keep people out of the church that God has already welcomed. Though gentiles should not forget who are the first chosen People, and which rules or commandments are still to be followed by them if they want to enter that Body of Christ, the Church.

Too many people think they may “bypass all the rules” the church set up to determine who is in and who is out by providing the Spirit to the gentiles.

All important is that those who want to be part of the Body of Christ, should follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and should try to become like him, loving all people around them, whatever they might be.
We hear from John what is important to be truly a follower of Jesus, by how (and who) we love. And too many Christians do forget that we hear from James that belief is not enough, actions are what follows, by the faith belongs the works. One of those works or specific actions is the treatment of the underprivileged people around us with great care and generosity.

Too often Christians take an attitude to others, Christ unworthy. Certainly in the U.S.A. we can find lots of fundamentalist Christians who do damaging things to other human beings. Several Christians act improperly to people who are different than them. In several countries, homos and transgenders have difficulties walking around and being accepted in the community.

Many Christians would do well to look into their hearts to see how they really want, like Jesus, to be open to people who are different from themselves!

Abnormal Anabaptist

The title of this post is a question that I think all of us Christians need to ask ourselves when we gather in our communities for regular worship and practice. And it’s not a question that I just came up with off the top of my head. This is a Biblical question asked rhetorically to prove a point. And what is that point? I’ll tell you.

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by Guestspeaker | 2022/06/07 · 8:53 pm

What’s a historical fact that would shock most people to find out?: Rape of Nanking

The horrific events are known as the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking, as estimated that 20,000 women including some children and the elder were raped during the occupation.

A large number of rapes were done systematically by the Japanese soldiers as they went from door to door searching for girls and many women being captured and gang raped.The women were often killed immediately after being raped.

The Japanese were infuriated by the strength of Chinese resistance and when China’s Nationalist capital Nanking fell in December 1937, Japanese troops immediately slaughtered thousands of Chinese soldiers who had surrendered to them. The Japanese then rounded up about twenty thousand young Chinese men and transported them in trucks outside the city walls where they were killed in a massive slaughter. Japanese troops were then encouraged by their officers to loot Nanking and slaughter and rape the Chinese population of the city.

For six weeks, life for the Chinese in Nanking became a nightmare. Bands of drunken Japanese soldiers roamed the city, murdering, raping, looting, and burning at whim. Chinese civilians who were stopped on the street and found to possess nothing of value were immediately killed.During this period, soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army murdered Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants who numbered an estimated 40,000 to over 300,000.

The bodies of thousands of victims of the slaughter were dumped into the Yangtze River until the river was red with their blood. After looting Nanking of anything of value the Japanese started fires that gutted one third of the city.

Subal Das

In March of 1945 the Japanese Army did the same thing at Manila in the Philippines. It is estimated that at least 100,000 civilians were murdered.

Japanese General Yamishita was tried and executed for these war crimes. Gang rapes were also wide spread.

These victims were murdered in the Manila Hospital.

Darrell Stanley

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Filed under Crimes & Atrocities, History, Political affairs, Questions asked, Welfare matters, World affairs

Tagged as Chinese resistance, Darrell Stanley, gang rape, Imperial Japanese Army, Japanese soldiers, Manila, Nanking, Nanking Massacre, Rape of Nanking, Subal Das, Yangtze River

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