My random thoughts about God

 I agree with a few folks upstairs here about this mis-applied verses on temptation. I have been taught that God is alive that he is almighty and all knowing and that he acts in human history. 

I am 47 now, and after serving on Prairie's Board of Directors, and working with children ministry for at least 10 years, served three summers with the Child Evangelism Fellowship, and not counting the numerous hours with church youth groups, and prayer meetings, and praying and reading the holy bible. I have come to a place in my life that our concept of God is human. It is very human, and it is something we made up, perhaps if there is a God out there, it is not like that. God is not Jewish, nor is he merely about material blessing. Jesus was human, but I cannot affirm his miraculous birth, his miracles or his resurrection. All these stories conflict with each other in the gospels, and the more I read, the more conflicts of the details I see. I have come to see Bible as a very human book, and offers a human solution. God is perhaps in our best values, but he is not a being, not a thing, and no a body.Because of this metaphysical way, he cannot and will not intervene. I no longer believe in a Christian triune God. Not like that. What I do affirm, is the goodness of every human beings. There is hope in this green earth, and after we are passed, the world will still be here. It gives me tremendous freedom, and relief to know that my God is dead, that this world comes alive more than ever to me. 
So, in short, my answers differ significantly to yours, and I know so. I was once upon a time, a fundamentalist, after serving Prairie and Ohlhauser, I see that God is not what we think, that God fails to come to our aid, and that God is a figment that we are so afraid to let God. So I would use a usual Prairie phrase, let go and let god. Yea, let us be good. Amen.

My own exegetical work on the Book of Job

May I summarize my own exgetical work on the Book of Job. It seems to me, this book was a product during an exilic period when the pious Jews suffered tremendously at the hands of a foreign culture which could not understand the reasons their Hebrew Lord had given them to suffering. They had obeyed the law and tried to lead a good and religious life, yet terrible things happened. They tried the biblical prophetic message, but this answer is not enough to explain why they suffered, they have, at the end, replaced the answer with material blessings. That at as a good Jew, money can buy everything, so Job was blessed with new women, children. material blessings. The meaning of suffering in Job is meaningless. If it is about righteousness, it is a joke. It was precisely his righteousness that brought on the calamity. If it is about a honour that God deserves in all his action, that God has a free will, it too is absurd. God and his gods act irresponsibly and so people die like flies to them, without a regard at all. Humans are a joke to the divine, they squash them at will. Think of it, God thunders and deafens Job at the end, reduces him to prostrate in the ashes. 

So, what is the meaning of suffering in the book Job? If you isolate the God of Job, he is not at all a loving benign God of Jesus. Job has no need to repent, for he is blameless, upright, fears God and does no evil. He is not a sinner. That is precisely why he was struck. The meaning of suffering of Job mocks us, and holds us spell bound. That bad things happen to good people, that Gods' willing so humans should suffer, that gods refuse to answer why, and when asked, they provoke us and reduce us to nothing, to the lowliest thing on the scale. 

In summary, the Book of Job provides no meaningful answer, that it beckons us to step out of the classical answers to sufferings by Jews or Christians alike

The Firing of Michael Pahl

Recently I read from the Blogger, Bruce Gerencser about the firing of Dr. Michael Pahl from Cedarville University.  It was a shock from the past, as the readers may not be aware of this, I attended Prairie High School, and Pahl was a professor at my former Alma Mater, Prairie Bible Institute.

The dispute was over his doctrinal view on the literal interpretation of Genesis whether he could hold onto a very strict and ultra conservative views on the literal Adam and Eve.  He could he says in his reply to the Board, but 'not on exegetical ground.'  This also was reflected in his recent published book, The Beginning and the End: Rereading Genesis' Stories and Revelation's Visions.

This is not the first time Michael has been asked to resign.  Last time he did, it was very traumatic, since Ohlhauser from PBI forced him and the entire Bible Department to do so at the end of 2008 over the disputes that he put forth a position at the direction of the bible school.  It was truly a traumatic event for him and his family, evident from his blog something about 'Wanderings in the Desert.'

I think for a thinking person, Michael is in the wrong place.  If you read Genesis literally, from the original Hebrew (which I do), it is an outdated cosmology that modern man can no longer affirm.  Those that do, do so, on theological grounds (or virtual grounds).  It cannot be affirmed by modern science in archaeology, biology, or geology.  Yet it is a story closely related to ancient Babylonian myths like the Epic of Gilgamesh.  Any thinking person should steer away from a closed minded fundamentalist position, and by affirming the doctrinal position, this is the very center of the violation to academic inquiry.  Michael is in the wrong place, and if he does not change his cosmology, he will be fired over many times.

Literally reading of Genesis produces an ecology and ethology that is harmful for the earth.  Man is not the centre piece of all gods creation.  No, I do not think so.  Nor do I hold on the the fairy tale that blames man for eating a piece of fruit that was placed there to caused humanity to fail.  No, that is exegetically sadistic.  Any deity that fails to answer that, is a moral evil.  Gods that are able to sexual violate human daughters and resulted in the death of supposedly entire living creation is also a moral evil.  Gods who failed to control their sexual impulses and supposedly they also have sex amongst themselves, are absurd.  Why not be brave enough to admit that periodic floods could come from the end of an ice age, and that we have created these gods to explain natural phenomenon, just as much as we can assume the firing of Michael Pahl is purely political and hatred from a pea brain evangelical-fundamentalist board?

I would say to an honest Michael, "Run, Forest, run!"   Abandon the ridiculous rigid theological ground.  There is no inerrancy, and this position is untenable.  Abandon this illogical position, it is a new invention of the modern hard core new theological atheists.  These atheists do not believe in a god that could move and influence the world, so they do the job themselves, and fire the old professor, and so fulfill the love of christ.   In my former Alma Mater, PBI, they actually had sex with little kids and covered it up, just like the sons of gods in the ancient Genesis.  So far, there is no help from the biblical fictitious god, other than a bunch of people whose life has been onhold  and a President, Mark Maxwell in the foxhole.  Is that the literal reading and exegetical work of the Lord Ben Chung.  I am afraid it is.

Humanly Possible

Ruth, this is beautiful.  It takes me a whole 30 some years to come to the same conclusion.  At the age of 16, I had a conversion experience.  I thought I wanted to serve him in ministry, so I went with CEF.  I met truly fabulous people that yer, and ended at PHS for my final year of high school.  I applied to PBI and was accepted, but my practical and Jewish like parents told me to go on to college.  So I did, spent two years at the UCalgary, and then misfortune occurred as I worked for my family in a sweat shop condition for 1 year at Toronto, and then finished my degree at UToronto before I studied dentistry.  I applied to seminary two more times, never was allow to go.  What it was, was my parents are interested in the mundane matter like a good job and secure income, and a good life.  Having Christ in your life is like an insurance, in case you have to use it, God will help you.  The last time I had god in my life was during my formative year and getting married.  Then I realize that god is their stomach, and whatever that they will get out of it.  I through the help of Soren Kierkegaard, escaped this.  My wife is normal and very joyful, and we have a beautiful family together.

What is god and where is God in all of this?  I propose that the immaterial and even a sense of goodness in all of us, is God.  In Germay, Got is good, and we pray to the goodness that is suppose to be above us and around us and sustains us.  We are afraid to say that there is no such a concretized object as God, and there is nothing like that out there.  He is not there nor to be found.  But we are even more afraid to put our fate into the community we are in.  We do not trust the human goodness.  I have seen evil but I have seen human goodness in helping each other out.  I then firmly place myself in the community here, and learn to see goodness and draw goodness out of people, and no longer fear that we step out of the will of God.  We are, and as far as I know, we are.  As for an evangelical god that is not there, those who trust it are delusional, and they rely on human goodness to get things done, human courts to get justice and human jails to put bad ones away, but they are afraid not to attribute all these beautiful human qualities to god, lest he is angry with them.  That fear is now gone in my system, and I would like to point out that "Christianese" is delusional and gets one no where.  So I no longer attend church or pray in a meaningful way.  I talk to people, spend time in the garden, and learn when I am uncomfortable, to trust my heart and stay on the straight path.  That is being human and learn to laugh at the face of the absurdities of life and to have courage to do what I am to do.  This is why I left the WE KIDS group.  They have trusted in a delusion and they will not lift a finger about them, so nothing gets done.  They keep up praying and stay up and get upset at every turn, there is no courage.  I prefer to pop the molesters, picket and make sure that justice is heard.  They prefer to sit and pray and do nothing.  This is a waste of time, it is absurd.  How can one keep up this praying and hoping that god shows up when he is not there, so that is why they were horribly abused?  But it has come, that we have to have courage to do the right thing, leave god behind, trust in the human goodness and the sense of justice, and when in doubt, definitely take matters into our own hands.  When we are in truth, and if there is God, we are it.  Or we are in it.  or closest to it.  Amen.

My Testimony

My Name is the Lord Ben Chung, and I am an ex-Prairie, ex-evangelical. I have never been happier in my life. I went through a period of time when I could have died for god, and given up every possible earthly comfort, and I would devote my life to the spread of this ‘gospel.’ I studied the bible and held it on the pedestal. I trust it completely with my life. It is the complete trustworthy manual god has written for human beings.

Then the day would come when I discover the hate, the bloody god in the bible. I saw things no one told me about for the first time. When I used to read them with blinders on, it was OK that Jewish slaughter of the Canaanites by the command of god, it was OK to dash their babies on the rocks, to cut their throat for god, stone them and to make sure everyone obeys god. There are many things about the bible I am ashamed that I actually supported, slavery, hate, genocides, repression of races, and most of all, I see contradictions in every page.

I see the denial in Prairians, and their colleagues. I see their desperate attempt to save their religion and their sanity and try to live in the world that no longer believe in this backward and out dated cosmology. Why their god failed to come and save them. Here is the challenge, perhaps Mark Maxwell, Bruce Miller, or Dew, or these sexual abused victims. If your god is so true and this is the only way you can come clean and be saved, why is he all absent? I cannot give an honest intellectual answer. This is why I no longer believe in your god, and if you still do, cry louder, lash your back and make efforts to connect with your god, who is not there. My challenge is to come out of this web of deception, and live as a true human, for this is the only higher calling you have, and leave god behind in the dust. If he is so real, let him come find you, apologize for all the atrocities you have to endured, and stop brainwashing others that he is there. He is not. I said it, he is not there, and it is silent. Live your own life free from fear and repression, take the first journey to be away from a god of hate, and be happy. Most of all, be a human being and proud of it~!

不要對教徒心存偏激

主題： 不要對教徒心存偏激	日期： 2012-05-03
作者： emile01	來源： 本網見證
我是在2007年離開基督教的，早幾天才經朋友知道這個網站的存在…… 比較孤陋寡聞吧。 拜讀過在這裡很多很多篇的出教分享帖，雖發覺有部分帖存在著很重怨氣，但我仍感受良多，不期然再反思自己出教的往事和心路歷程。 就離教之前，因為生活上繼續過得不愉快，和見到某些所謂教徒，只會接納對自己有利的聖經教化，重新思考了很久。 或者有教徒又會覺得，我又是因為人的因素，而放棄了他們的神。但，我卻不認為如此。 當我開始有懷疑，當我明白、發覺自己開始失去信心時，我真的用了很長時間去讀經，請教導師和牧師，曾多番祈禱，多次跪地禱告，多次求和神去聯繫，多次為自己的軟弱而流淚……很久很久…… 最後甚麼回應也沒有！ 那時，幾經掙扎後，結論想法：可能甚麼也沒有，或，如果有神，而這個神是這麼對待世人，那麼我寧願成為魔，然後用我作為魔的方法，去幫助其他人。 當時還以一流行曲的其中幾句為座右銘：神，你不喜歡我，逼我入了魔…… 是很偏激吧……那時天主教和基督教對我來說，的確是負面的。 到再之後半年左右，看了一部電影，男主角於片中結尾部分講了一句，類似：就算耶穌不是聖人，但世人需要他存在…… 再反思…… 真的，世上有人需要耶穌的存在，天父／天主的存在，或者應該說，世人需要宗教的存在。 就算我知道其實甚麼都沒有，又何苦道破，又何必攻擊那些有需要的人…… 慢慢，我對天主／基督教、教徒們的負面情緒沒有了…… 我想那些在這裡分享過的師兄、姐們，試著反思多點，到底自己是否只係因為人的因素而唔再信，定或發覺真的甚麼也沒有才不再信，免得給教徒們解畫的話柄吧。 我亦希望大家不要對他們心存偏激，當然行為不檢者除外，不竟人總有軟弱時，宗教確是一種好好的舒解方法。 http://networkedblogs.com/xbvmM

Gospel of Hammers

The gospel according to Warpington:

Bene D asks the Master Warpington, “How is it that some have a hammer, and others are nails. How do nails enter into the Kingdom of Heavens?”

The Master Warpington answers, “My son, some are nails because of the kingdom, and others became hammers because they chose to. If they do not all turn into hammers at once, then those who were nailed 40 years ago were nailed in vain.”

Bene D looked visibly puzzled, and became agitated, so he asks once more, “But Master, the hammers are all full of love, why would they nailed others to the cross?”

Looking serene, the Master Warpington answers, “My son, it is all for the glory of God, it is all for the gory of God! Some will enter the kingdom by submission as if nailed, and others will do so by force. If a man does not get nailed, and a woman not clubbed, then the sun will turn into the moon and the child within you shall die. For the Kingdom is a mystery to those who seek justice.”

Bene D looked visibly sad, and he drooped his shoulders and walked away. For he too, has been nailed for the answers that Master Warpington has given him. For it is with those who seek the Kingdom. It is now within the nails, Amen.