Tiassa
06-20-01, 05:16 PM
Perhaps the reason for this sudden appeal requires some simple explanation: I'm skipping work today due to a mystery illness that appears to have yesterday's two doctors without an answer and has found a total of six doctors unwilling to give a specific diagnosis. To the one hand, it's kind of intriguing watching this thing: asympotmatic and inconsistent, behaving like a bacterial infection yet not responding to flouroquinolone treatment (I'm beginning a fifth round today, and have the sixth--a high-end gatofloxcin that I have thus far refused to take for lack of consistent symptom sitting on the shelf.) The only downside of it is that I can't see out of one eye very well, and I'm skipping work at the one time of year that I don't want to. For the comfort of those who have offered their concern to my state in the past, let me reassure that the most devastating possibilities have been ruled out by a host of bloodwork.
Nonetheless, it's frustrating. But the alterations of perspective I have undergone burning my brain senseless for two days on this latest round have left me with little desire to fight this morning (okay, this afternoon, but damn did I need sleep ....)
And it is amid this slightly-depressed passivity that I find an absolutely golden perspective that I have not, hitherto, given fair consideration.
To my fellow pagan, atheist, and otherwise non-Christian posters who have suffered the brunt of Lawdog's offenses:
* I have accused Lawdog of being a provocateur. This is most likely inaccurate, but I stand behind my assertion that only someone who hates the Church could possibly set the ducks up to be knocked down so easily. It's uncanny in this sense, and resembles the dark portrait of hatred that I, too, would paint as the essence of Christian church history.
But it may be that Lawdog is not a provocateur, but someone so wholly enthralled by the nature of his faith that he cannot escape. He seems to be pushing its results to theoretic extremity, reflecting the human extremity of the faith's history. Could it be that this hater of persons is not really an aggressive hater of persons but rather a frightened, trapped intellect pressing the seams, hoping that someone will hand him a logical out that he can accept and put to work for him hacking away the visceral bonds of a fear inspired by faith?
There are those times that when you find an answer, you wonder how you ever missed it. When the answer occurs to you, there comes simultaneous relief at having achieved the answer and the puzzlement of how you missed the obvious detail.
In this sense, the question has occurred to Lawdog, whatever form it might take: should this be true, then our responses to such fulsome rhetoric might be inappropriate. By enacting the most desperate results of the faith, Lawdog hopes to discover the method by which those who have escaped did so. As we corral these aspects of the faith, and buttress ourselves against them, though, the purveyor of the faith--e.g. Lawdog--still suffers from the nagging Christian doubt in human character that makes them feel personally persecuted when the dogma fails. Thus he feels legitimately persecuted by what is a world of promise to him, and retreats further inside his shadows to wonder if maybe the shadows weren't right all along.
In this case, we owe Lawdog our love and assistance. He knows that others have escaped, for we the non-Christians of the world are evidence. From such a combative heritage, though, this is the only way he knows how to find that path: quest and combat. It could simply be that the data is wrongly ordered, and sets off certain responses too early, whereas if we can find the key to Lawdog's pattern, we might anticipate those alarms and bypass them, offering him the easiest chance in history to lay down the sword and shield down by the riverside and walk away from the battle.
It could simply be that he wishes to escape the extreme hypocrisy he enacts with his words. Perhaps how we, the non-believers respond, can help him do what he knows the right thing is.
To Lawdog:
I think I get it now. I want you to know that it is okay to walk away from that faith: you achieve a greater portion of God's Will when you do.
My basic assumption of human nature is its inherent devotion to life, and therefore goodness. This is a hard principle, I understand, when you're taught for a lifetime of inherent human depravity and moral poverty. I walked away from Christian faith starting when I was thirteen. It was twelve years later that I officially rejected the assumption of inherent evil. It's three years after that and I'm still merely beginning to see the potential of the inherent human goodness. I have an entire lifetime ahead of me to learn about this Universe around me, and suddenly it's a wonderful, beautiful, dazzling event. Love yourself for your place amid it, and it will love you in return, though that's as cryptic as anything else. Everything in the Universe occurs for a reason, and where you once would write that to God, you can henceforth understand that it's an expected result of a diverse and puzzling Universe.
But that puzzle is its joy. Instead of gods or governments being overlords, they are results of life. And watching them from that perspective makes life itself quite amusing.
But I cannot invite you, for the gates at the edge of our living realm stand ever open, and if we don't put a flashing neon invitation above it, it's merely because that's tacky. But it's a short hike up the hill from the river, and much easier when you've laid down the sword and shield.
And, yes ... we would welcome you to the ranks of the living, for Life celebrates itself, and would rejoice that one chose to come away from the shadows of that valley of death.
But I think I get it now, Lawdog. And I want you to know it's okay. If you need an historical unmounting of the Mother Church, start with Arius and Athanasius, and then read back through Irenaeus and on to the Apostolic Fathers: the transparency of the Church and its resulting faith make its impact so insubstantial you can brush it away like dust. And once you figure out the folly of Nicaea, the history that has occurred since then takes its proper place as well. And when and if that wave of shame strikes, for it often does, know that it's okay: we who walked away felt it once, too, and as those who never suffered from Christian faith (e.g. Atheists, lifetime pagans, Buddhists, &c.) have never claimed to never be wrong, I'm quite sure that they, too, know the feeling of disgusted amazement which possesses a conscience during periods of conflicting principles. It can be overwhelming, and none of us would laugh--many of us have friends who didn't make it through that period, and we miss them terribly.
But you've brought yourself to an interesting crossroad, Lawdog. We're here to offer what advice we can, and we'll tell you its okay every step of the way because we believe that it truly is. But it is up to you to cast aside the heavy armor of this warring God. And the living will truly rejoice and welcome you to the new place you find yourself.
The pagans will not pray, petition, or cast on your behalf because propriety forbids it unless your permission is obtained. But know that we'll be rooting for you as you climb the hillside: we'll be doing the Wave.
in the peace of Life,
Tiassa :cool:
Nonetheless, it's frustrating. But the alterations of perspective I have undergone burning my brain senseless for two days on this latest round have left me with little desire to fight this morning (okay, this afternoon, but damn did I need sleep ....)
And it is amid this slightly-depressed passivity that I find an absolutely golden perspective that I have not, hitherto, given fair consideration.
To my fellow pagan, atheist, and otherwise non-Christian posters who have suffered the brunt of Lawdog's offenses:
* I have accused Lawdog of being a provocateur. This is most likely inaccurate, but I stand behind my assertion that only someone who hates the Church could possibly set the ducks up to be knocked down so easily. It's uncanny in this sense, and resembles the dark portrait of hatred that I, too, would paint as the essence of Christian church history.
But it may be that Lawdog is not a provocateur, but someone so wholly enthralled by the nature of his faith that he cannot escape. He seems to be pushing its results to theoretic extremity, reflecting the human extremity of the faith's history. Could it be that this hater of persons is not really an aggressive hater of persons but rather a frightened, trapped intellect pressing the seams, hoping that someone will hand him a logical out that he can accept and put to work for him hacking away the visceral bonds of a fear inspired by faith?
There are those times that when you find an answer, you wonder how you ever missed it. When the answer occurs to you, there comes simultaneous relief at having achieved the answer and the puzzlement of how you missed the obvious detail.
In this sense, the question has occurred to Lawdog, whatever form it might take: should this be true, then our responses to such fulsome rhetoric might be inappropriate. By enacting the most desperate results of the faith, Lawdog hopes to discover the method by which those who have escaped did so. As we corral these aspects of the faith, and buttress ourselves against them, though, the purveyor of the faith--e.g. Lawdog--still suffers from the nagging Christian doubt in human character that makes them feel personally persecuted when the dogma fails. Thus he feels legitimately persecuted by what is a world of promise to him, and retreats further inside his shadows to wonder if maybe the shadows weren't right all along.
In this case, we owe Lawdog our love and assistance. He knows that others have escaped, for we the non-Christians of the world are evidence. From such a combative heritage, though, this is the only way he knows how to find that path: quest and combat. It could simply be that the data is wrongly ordered, and sets off certain responses too early, whereas if we can find the key to Lawdog's pattern, we might anticipate those alarms and bypass them, offering him the easiest chance in history to lay down the sword and shield down by the riverside and walk away from the battle.
It could simply be that he wishes to escape the extreme hypocrisy he enacts with his words. Perhaps how we, the non-believers respond, can help him do what he knows the right thing is.
To Lawdog:
I think I get it now. I want you to know that it is okay to walk away from that faith: you achieve a greater portion of God's Will when you do.
My basic assumption of human nature is its inherent devotion to life, and therefore goodness. This is a hard principle, I understand, when you're taught for a lifetime of inherent human depravity and moral poverty. I walked away from Christian faith starting when I was thirteen. It was twelve years later that I officially rejected the assumption of inherent evil. It's three years after that and I'm still merely beginning to see the potential of the inherent human goodness. I have an entire lifetime ahead of me to learn about this Universe around me, and suddenly it's a wonderful, beautiful, dazzling event. Love yourself for your place amid it, and it will love you in return, though that's as cryptic as anything else. Everything in the Universe occurs for a reason, and where you once would write that to God, you can henceforth understand that it's an expected result of a diverse and puzzling Universe.
But that puzzle is its joy. Instead of gods or governments being overlords, they are results of life. And watching them from that perspective makes life itself quite amusing.
But I cannot invite you, for the gates at the edge of our living realm stand ever open, and if we don't put a flashing neon invitation above it, it's merely because that's tacky. But it's a short hike up the hill from the river, and much easier when you've laid down the sword and shield.
And, yes ... we would welcome you to the ranks of the living, for Life celebrates itself, and would rejoice that one chose to come away from the shadows of that valley of death.
But I think I get it now, Lawdog. And I want you to know it's okay. If you need an historical unmounting of the Mother Church, start with Arius and Athanasius, and then read back through Irenaeus and on to the Apostolic Fathers: the transparency of the Church and its resulting faith make its impact so insubstantial you can brush it away like dust. And once you figure out the folly of Nicaea, the history that has occurred since then takes its proper place as well. And when and if that wave of shame strikes, for it often does, know that it's okay: we who walked away felt it once, too, and as those who never suffered from Christian faith (e.g. Atheists, lifetime pagans, Buddhists, &c.) have never claimed to never be wrong, I'm quite sure that they, too, know the feeling of disgusted amazement which possesses a conscience during periods of conflicting principles. It can be overwhelming, and none of us would laugh--many of us have friends who didn't make it through that period, and we miss them terribly.
But you've brought yourself to an interesting crossroad, Lawdog. We're here to offer what advice we can, and we'll tell you its okay every step of the way because we believe that it truly is. But it is up to you to cast aside the heavy armor of this warring God. And the living will truly rejoice and welcome you to the new place you find yourself.
The pagans will not pray, petition, or cast on your behalf because propriety forbids it unless your permission is obtained. But know that we'll be rooting for you as you climb the hillside: we'll be doing the Wave.
in the peace of Life,
Tiassa :cool: