I erroneously mis-titled the subject line of the previous version of
this email I sent you. Thus I am sending it again with a correct title.
At first I felt too lazy to email the winter olympics. Why? I
felt like, they make a big deal about someone who is in the top ten in a sport
played seriously by one in a thousand, they ignore someone who is in the top
100 in a sport played seriously by one in ten. Then I saw some guy who
had won a medal for the American team in some winter olympics sport being
interviewed on TV, and I got to thinking, maybe I've been unlucky to have not
gotten to know more winter-olympics type people during my life.
Given the contents of this email, it's hard to ignore the opening
ceremony of Vancouver 2010, which judging from the clips I saw seemed
dominated by gay and pagan culture.
Especially amongst groups such as those in control of the Winter
Olympics, gay pagan culture is on the upswing while Christianity is on the
decline. A main reason for this is the alleged intolerance in Christianity,
with regards to persons such as pagans and gays.
Concise response re this 'intolerance': Why not persecute 'alpine skiing'
coaches who are impertinent enough to favor one style of 'alpine skiing' over
another? Just as there are various styles of 'alpine skiing', there are
various styles of life; one life-style is gay, another life-style is straight,
yet another is an attempt at celibacy.
Some people are always grasping at excuses for being
anti-christian. Example, the sales clerk who sees Christianity as
impairing sales, by for example, inhibiting the willingness of persons to
spend money on that (hypothetical) $200 dollar giant white teddie-bear
mascot doll replete with the official Vancouver 2010 logo, the idea being that
the influence of Christianity will result in people buying a poor person
dinner instead.
Said sales clerk ignores: how Christian influences not only impair sales,
but also promote and make possible sales; a gangster hiring a hit man to
rub out said sales clerk also is a form of sales; conduct uninhibited by
Christianity, could harm the sales clerk's life, said harm outweighing any
advantage to life of said sales clerk due to increased sales due to
diminishment of inhibitions created by Christianity impairing sales of mascot
teddy-bears.
The pagan/gay culture enthusiasts ignore the following facts: careful
scientific observation and analysis shows that in certain ways to a certain
significant extent, persons such as non-christian persons and gay person harm
themselves and others by their conduct; there have been ill-behaved persons
who pretended to be Christian but actually were not; there have been
well-behaved closet Christians pretending to be unChristian; there
have 'Christian' fools who have misinterpreted Christianity and
behaved badly; the fact that persons do a poor job of following an ethical
system does not mean the ethical system is wrong; doctrinal systems that are
capable of a positive impact can be misinterpreted resulting in negative
impacts.
There exists in society, a disdain for Christianity that is caused by the
fact that persons feel that: they would apostasize if tortured; and that
Christianity is too demanding in supposedly declaring that those who
apostasize under torture, and by extension those who would apostasize under
torture if they were to be exposed to torture, are damned.
Concise response: I have never considered myself to be a hero who would
be tough under torture, yet nevertheless, I have experienced high, enjoyable
states of mind during which my mind accepted Christ as the Son of God; these
states of mind occurred subsequent to Christian acts such as prayers;
regardless of what is the true interpretation re those who would apostasize if
tortured, the mind focusing on such states of mind is good for the soul; there
are various ways in which scripture can be interpreted re those who would
apostasize if tortured; humble recognition of the fact that we would
apostasize under torture is good for the soul; scripture has high regard for
children despite the fact that they would apostasize if tortured; regardless
of what is the exact truth re the apostasize under torture question, it is
good for persons to mentally focus on Christian states of mind; mental
focus on such states of mind improves our prospects when it comes to the
afterlife; mental focus on such states of mind makes us tougher; if it really
is true that we can be punished for being the type that apostasizes under
torture, not facing reality does'nt improve matters.
Basically, I have in the past not given much thought to whether I would
apostasize under torture; nevertheless I have while being in a Christian state
of mind, been able to climb up into transcendantal states of mind
resembling positive experiences persons have while under the influence of
psychoactive substances.
In the future I hope to achieve a better understanding of the persons
(such as probably myself) who would apostasize if tortured, and share this
better understanding with the world. In the past, I've found that, perhaps due
to the effect of repeated prayers, my level of understanding of
such things has greatly increased.
I don't claim to have seen the hidden book containing God's hidden
thoughts re how persons at the Vancouver 2010
Olympics should behave with regards to myself or with regards
to religion in general; nor can I say I have seen the hidden literature
re how I, David Virgil, should behave with regards to people
such as Vancouver 2010 Olympics type
people. I do realize that in three different places
the scriptures declare that most of God's thoughts are not in the
scriptures. I think I could honestly say, that to at least a slight
extent, I have some idea regarding what these thoughts are.
In brief, when a drummer hits the drum, you would not be able to hear the
sound of it, if God intervened to prevent the sound wave from hitting your
ear. Likewise, when a person in his mind thinks benevolent benedictory
thoughts, God can allow such thoughts to have effect. I figured this out
myself, but by now it has been explained to alot of people. More of this
further down.
By the way this email is
@2009
David Virgil Hobbs--could be that I will use some things in this
email in some other context.
"It is easier for a camel to
pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of
God...it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a
rich man to enter the kingdom of God...it's easier for a camel to pass through
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God...there's
something wrong with you...you should be rolling out the red carpet for
me!" The fact that such a statement as this about camels and
red carpets is conceivably a respectable statement in certain situations means
something. I estimate that Christians who are not rich, especially the best of
this group, are an under-rated, under-respected group.
REASONABLE TO DEPEND ON NOT JUST THE SENSES BUT ALSO FAITH DERIVED
FROM STATEMENTS OF OTHERS WHEN EVALUATING RELIGION Many
people apparently believe that in developing opinions re religion, one should
reject information that does not come from the eyes, the ears, the sense of
touch, or one's own inner mind. A simple parable I invented checkmates such
ideas. Imagine being lost but having to get to the hospital because your son
is sick. You encounter someone and he tells you the directions for how to get
to the hospital that you have never seen. You believe what the person tells
you and find your way to the hospital. Then when you get to the hospital you
know that the hospital exists whereas previously you only believed that the
hospital existed.
Likewise in the sphere of religion, it is
reasonable to depend on not just what one's senses tell one but also on what
others tell one. When you believe what others tell you, you have faith; then
later, after you have experienced epiphany via a transcendental state of mind
resulting from your obedience to the dictates of religion, you attain to
knowledge, a step above faith. Just as you have an ethical responsibility to
get your sick son to the hospital, so also you have an ethical responsibility
to get your spiritually sick son (we are all spiritually sick) to the
hypothetical spiritual hospital of the parable.
The
"sign" that led to me becoming serious about christianity
In high school on the South Side of Chicago David Gottlieb and his
brother Alan Gottlieb were friends of mine. They were generally hospitable,
you don't appreciate such hospitality until you spend time in the less
hospitable communities.
Once I was at the Gottlieb residence,
socializing with the Gottliebs one or both of them. I left their place and
walked down to 55th Street,to the intersection of I think Dorchester or
Blackstone at 55th St., in Chicago Il., on the south side near the University
of Chicago. There at the playground where there is now a pool next to the big
twin apartment buildings, I ran into my friend Wayne Braxton and Linda
Skinner. I had taken some pill, I know not for sure what it was.
We played frisbee, I could tell that I had charmed Linda. She was
smiling and clapping her hands together and her body language and facial
expression were that of one who considers themselves to be something less than
me. I was on the slide and she got on the slide in front of me and
leaned backwards into me, but I leaned backwards politely to avoid contact,
she was 14 and I was 17. I felt like a God, like Mercury; I felt on top of the
world. I felt as if the top of my head had come off, thereby unleashing all
the joy and transcendence that is usually suppressed.
Then later
when I tried to talk to Linda Skinner (the playground was the first time I had
met her) she would not be my girlfriend. I became despondent and a few months
later returned to the playground, where I left an offering to God on the
slide, a date, one of those things you eat, and prayed to God for a sign to
reveal to me how I could be the charming person I was when I met her in the
playground, for it seemed I was like two people, one person who was the way I
was when I met her in the playground, and another person who was the way I was
in my usual state of mind. It seemed that I could not get Linda for a
girlfriend because she liked one side of my "split personality" but did not
like the other.
As I sat on the slide praying for a sign, a car
started honking. It sounded as if it was sympathizing with me. I went over to
look inside the car, and inside of it, there was a "Holy Bible" on the front
dashboard. This led to my becoming serious about Christianity. I noticed that
a very small percentage of cars have a Bible visible in them.
Persons such as Linda may think I became serious about
Christianity just to please them, but actually, I became a Christian before I
was five years old, while I was living in the bungalow at the Prince of Wales
Museum in Bombay India, surrounded by Indians from India, Hindus, and my
non-Christian parents. I became a Christian before I ever got to know a
Christian. But I did not become serious about Christianity until
this incident with the honking car.
Dream
about being a Russian commando that preceded me waking up feeling Christ on
the Cross Within Not so long ago, I (a citizen of the
USA) dreamt that I was a Russian commando, spying on the German Army in
WW II. I was watching them hold a Christian church service. The Germans
troops noticed me up in the rafters of a big building spying on them--they
heard or saw something--but they let me go--it was as if, they were afraid
that their bosses would find out about me. I was admiring the German troops, I
felt more akin to them than to my Russian comrades. Later the Germans came to
get my surrender. I was trying to decide if I should fight to the death as a
matter of honor or surrender. At this point, I woke up, and could feel Christ
crucified on the Cross within me for about an hour. I did not feel the pain of
it but still crucifixion was a boring experience. I could feel the
supernatural quality of Christ on the cross within me, I could feel that
Christ was more than a prophet.
There were some other details to
the dream and how I felt when I woke up but I have given you the basics of it.
I would have to spend a few hours digging through a small mountain of my
spiral notebooks to find the account I wrote of the dream when I first had it
and come up with the details.
The crucifixion was the only time in
Christ's life when he was reduced to the state of a slave, without control
over his body. It was probably the only time he was bored. Yet we humans spend
alot of time being bored even though we are never crucified, our boredom stems
from our sins. Seems God effected some kind of union with us humans, by
becoming bored on the cross the way we often are bored without being on a
cross.
Telekinetic Nature of Prayer or
thoughtsMy idea is to if possible use the--for lack of a
better word--telekinetic action of the minds of people such as yourself (this
is rational continue reading for just a minute and you will understand I will
explain), to help improve spirits of people everywhere (except the ones who
should not be uplifted), especially some group you might wish to specially
focus on.
This is rational I'll explain to you an original insight
I figured out. Just as you could not hear the drumbeats produced by the mind
of the drummer if God blocked the sound waves, so also another type of action
of God, interference as opposed to non-interference, allows the benevolent
thoughts in the mind of a praying person to have effect on others. Another way
of looking at it is, if I had my finger on the remote control trigger of a
nuclear bomb that would destroy the devil, My brain activity that led to me
pushing the button would not be able to detonate the bomb if God intervened to
prevent the signals sent from the remote control device from reaching the
bomb; the signals would be able to travel to the bomb only if God allowed them
to (this does not mean God approves of everything he allows to happen). So if
you do something such as read the two poetic prayers I wrote you can
find below,(keeping in mind a couple of unwritten lines of special focus
on some group of your own choosing), you might actually be able to accomplish
something. One poetic prayer is entitled "Overcoming Sins that Prevent Us from
Catching the Divine Game" and the other is entitled "the Sport of Virtue". In
these poems Christ is referred to as "Yayzoos" the name by which he was
originally referred to in scripture and by the early church.
Scripture Reveals Part of God's Mind Many people
these days are wont to argue with "religious" persons who are similar to
myself. The best way I know to deal with this kind of discord is to point out
that the Old and New Testament scriptures have three times officially declared
that most of God's thoughts words and actions are not recorded in the
scriptures. Perhaps the world would be a better place now if in the past the
religious had been more aware of and expressive regarding the fact that
scripture does make such declarations.
Conscience
Must be Based on a Pure Mind Another new original insight
discovered by myself into theological basics that has somehow escaped the
minds of humanity throughout the ages: The excuse, "but it was not against my
conscience", is invalid if the conscience has been polluted by various
pollutants such as greed, selfishness, arrogance, willful ignorance, and
intellectual laziness. Supposing in the presence of anger or some other mental
sin, a person's conscience dictates action A; but in the absence of anger or
the given mental sin it dictates action B. If, affected by anger or some other
defect in attitude the person follows his conscience and does action A, how
could this be better than if, in the absence of anger or some other defect in
attitude, he were to commit action A even though his conscience dictated
action B? That would imply that the presence of anger or some other defect in
attitude improved the person over what he would have been in the absence of
the defect.
'Religion-produced' Stress Can Be
Healthy Some people may feel "stressed out" by what they
read in this letter. The idea that a person's fate in the afterlife is
affected by their conduct in this world, the idea that the fate in the
afterlife is NOT predestined, both ideas I adhere to, are ideas that have been
denied by some new forms of Christianity, they are ideas that can cause
stress, because of the implication we have to worry about what
we think say and do and the implication that what we think say and do can
effect our fate in the afterlife.
My response to such persons, in
part:
Stress can be good for you. Physical exercise is a form of
stress. Mental exercise is known to ward off certain types of senility. For
hundreds or thousands or more generations, mankind has, generation after
generation, been subjected to mental and physical stresses that exceed the
level of stress much of mankind is exposed to in modern times. Religion,
properly understood, is more than simple tranquilizer or sauna like
relaxation. If you are walking across a street, and a car is about to hit you,
do you condemn the person who warns you that you are about to be hit, on the
grounds that he is a source of stress?
People fail to understand,
and I also partly fail to understand, why some should face unfortunate
afterlives; in their inability to understand such things, they proceed to
reject the idea of a deity who would condemn some to unfortunate afterlives.
But despite my lack of understanding, I know for a fact that Christ is the Son
of God, and I know for a fact that certain portions of the scriptures are
inspired by God. My understanding of the matter at this time, is, that, some
are condemned to unfortunate afterlives, because such acts as a kind of brain
surgery for those who enter into fortunate after-lives. A lifetime on earth,
twists the brain of the person who experiences it into something that is a
shadow of a divine brain; and something has to be done to bring such brains
back to a divine condition.
St. Paul never said that the christian
was freed from the burden of obeying his conscience, though he did admit that
due to the physical pressures of his body he St. Paul in certain ways violated
his own conscience without being separated from God or damned as punishment
for such certain types of violations of conscience.
'Good Works' Can be Necessary; all is not
PredestinedIn general regarding religion, I feel that there
has unfortunately been amongst almost all protestant denominations, a
misinterpration of St. Paul's words regarding works and predestination. This
misinterpretation was spoken of by St. Peter, when he said that there are
certain things in Paul's letters that are hard to understand, that the
"unlearned and unstable" misinterpret with the end result that they destroy
themselves. The fact is that Paul did not mean that for all persons it does
not matter what they do so long as they have faith; and the fact is that Paul
did not mean that for all persons it is predestined from the time of their
birth whether they go to heaven or hell. You can find my explanation of what
Paul actually meant when he was talking about faith and works in my
newsgroup
post. And if you scroll down to look at the scriptural quotation taken
from a letter of Paul's that appears on all of my resumes, you can find
further proof that yes what a person does can matter it is not just faith.
Another
newsgroup post of mine explains what Paul really meant when he talked
about predestination.
In a nutshell, regarding works, I believe
that when Paul talked about faith without works, when he was talking
about works he was talking about the works of the Jewish law in the case of
the Jews, and that no Jew successfully keeps all the works of the Jewish law;
and he was talking about the conscience of the Gentiles with regards to
Gentiles, the idea being no Gentile succeeds in following his conscience
perfectly. Thus in and of themselves such things cannot justify men. What Paul
meant was that good men are justified by faith not perfect adherence to
conscience or law, in combination with their general goodness. He takes it for
granted that he is talking about good men being justified through faith not
the works of the Jewish law or perfect adherence to conscience.
Things must be taken in context. The whole tone of the gospels is
about a preacher, Christ, urgently advising the people that if they do this
they will make it if they do not they will not. There is no implication in the
narratives describing Christ's life, that it was all a silly exercise because
it does not matter what men do and all is predestined. In context, there
are plenty of scriptures emphasizing the importance of good deeds.
However, I think that youths, and the conscientous, can be
justified without doing anything, get the Holy Spirit, when they first repent
and turn to Christ, but thereafter they have to be careful to behave
themselves.
If God is love, why do 'christian'
leaders increase the importance of factors other than love when it comes to
social life? Religion is supposed to be about love; yet
still there are outwardly religious persons who are obsessed with turning "how
much money does he or she have" into a prime consideration in marital and
other social decisions. What sense does that make? If money becomes so
important in such decisions, then love becomes unimportant in such decisions.
I do not believe that this constant ratcheting up of financial pressures re
marital and other social decisions, is eugenic or truly religious.
perhaps the selective persecution of certain
drugs/herbs has reduced the spiritual intelligence of
mankindOne reason people have become so ignorant about such
matters, is that governments have been banning some herbs and plants and drugs
while they have been promoting other herbs plants and drugs; they have been
banning the substances that produce religious experiences while promoting the
substances that produce a kind of sacrilegious dopiness. As a result an
imbalance has developed in society, an imbalance that produces a profane state
of mind in society.
I personally have had "religious experiences"
without using any kind of herb or plant or drug; but, if persons find
themselves unable to escape their ignorance without consuming a substance,
maybe they should go ahead and consume some kind of substance in a disciplined
fashion. Maybe they should for a few days abstain from cigarettes and sexual
passion for those they are not married to, exercise, read the scriptures, and
pray, and then proceed to consume some kind of substance that will help them
transcend their ignorance. But it should be kept in mind, that this kind of
approach varies with the individual and should be put into effect in ways that
do not violate the law.
Personal Motto:
My
resume
has the following quote in the upper right hand corner:
