Dick

Me old mucker, thank you for reminding us - and me in particular - that the flipside of pain is joy. And praise God for that.

I do believe there is no light without dark. I just can’t help being affected, or afflicted, by the ongoing prevalence of the darkness sometimes. Somebody I love has just been admitted to a psychiatric hospital suffering from psychosis. Their pain radiates out through all of us who love that person. And yet even in the darkness there is light, because now proper treatment can start, and maybe one day the pain will be gone.

Me a hippy? Johnny Ramone himself? Never!

Peace man

Johnny

I’m so sorry about your friend Johnny - but it is excellent news that he is getting the right help. There must be people around him who love him enough to have realised that something has been going very badly wrong. I always know when seomthing is up with you - you start quoting John Lennon, William Golding or E.M. Forster (and such likes). So I try and cheer you up Think ‘Kirsty MacCool’ - she always cheers me, up just to think on her

Ah Dick, you read me like a book. Or boook, as Lennon might have said .

But seriously (me, serious? Never!) things have been going wrong with R for years, but none of us were aware quite how bad it had become. Hopefully this is a corner turned.

You’ll know the situation is grave if I start quoting Larkin .

Peace and love

Johnny

Try this -

youtube.com/watch?v=7-QVqcjg3g8

Nice video - song not great

I think maybe that pain is the concept by which we measure God?

Thanks for the link, Dick. Cheers me up, and saddens me not a little, to see dear Kirsty, in the words of Ian Dury, “young, and old, and gone”.

J

Hi Nimblewill

Perhaps you’re right.

What Lennon was getting at in God, of course, is the idea that God is a man-made concept, something we have constructed to, as I mentioned earlier, enable us to cope with our existential pain. If atheism is true, this seems like one plausible explanation for humanity’s belief in God (or gods). As Voltaire rightly observed, “Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer.”

I think Lennon’s problem was that in throwing out God he elevated the self into too exalted a position: “If there is a God,” he said, “then we’re all it.”

It troubles me that Lennon has been adopted by atheists as their poster child. Despite the famously atheistic lyrics of Imagine, I don’t think he would have wanted that mantle.

CS Lewis said something along the lines of indifference to God being far ‘worse’ than militant atheism. Listening to Lennon’s vitriolic parody of his friend Bob Dylan’s Grammy award-winning Christian song Gotta Serve Somebody - it’s called Serve Yourself, and it’s on the Anthology collection - it’s quite obvious Lennon isn’t indifferent to religion; he’s passionately, angrily against it.

One has to ask oneself where did that anger come from? Is Lennon exhorting us to reject the God who failed to prevent his mother’s death, I wonder?

All the best

Johnny

Does that mean ‘If God didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him’ Johnny?

Oui, bien sur mon ami .

Yes, sorry Dick, I was going to add the English translation of the Voltaire quote, but I never got round to it. I’ve noticed a lamentable trend on t’interweb of the attribution of either mangled or downright erroneous quotes - transmitted blindly and unquestioningly from one website to the next. These linguistic memes take root in our cyber consciousness and become as entrenched and hard to dislodge as Japanese knotweed . The quote about Hitler disarming the populace is an egregious example.

All of which is in roundabout apology for being a pretentious twit, which comes very easily to me.

Santé!

Johnny

I think it pretty easy to succumb to Lennon’s anger if we have a bad and uninformed portrait of God. And surely a dominant portrait of God throughout history, or even the portrait of God to many Christians, is that authoritative master — quick to coerce, condemn and cast out; and slow to hold, help and heal.

You have reminded me of my old chum Mikhail Bakunin, that fiery anti-theist, who said of Voltaire’s quote:

, Idealism and Materialism, p.62"][The Idealists] say in one breath: “God and the liberty of man,” or “God and the dignity, justice, equality, fraternity, and welfare of men,” without paying heed to the fatal logic by virtue of which, if God exists, all these things are condemned to non-existence. For if God is, he is necessarily the eternal, supreme, and absolute Master, and if such a Master exists, man is a slave. Now if man is a slave, neither justice, nor equality, nor fraternity, nor prosperity is possible for him.

They (the idealists) may, in defiance of sound sense and all historical experience, represent their God as being animated by the tenderest love for human liberty, but a master, whatever he may do, and no matter how much of a liberal he may want to appear, will nevertheless always remain a master, and his existence will necessarily entail the slavery of all those who are beneath him. Therefore, if God existed, he could render service to human liberty in one way only — by ceasing to exist.

A zealous lover of human freedom, deeming it the necessary condition of all that I admire and respect in humanity, I reverse Voltaire’s aphorism and say: If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.
I have to agree with Bakunin’s summation here. If God were that master, I’d probably feel morally obliged to accompany Bakunin and the anti-theists in that endeavour to dethrone him. But I do not concede that God is necessarily that “…supreme and absolute Master”. For God, “truly animated by the tenderest love for human liberty” does not coerce, he does not decree and he does not lord over others. Has not Yeshua taught us that no one is beneath God? God discards the pagan portraits that we erect for him (the same fallen “glory” that we would have of ourselves), and he lives amongst the Least — to be beneath even the poor, the oppressed, the sick and the marginalised — to serve humanity and its most vunerable, humbly and meekly. Servitude is the true glory of God.

Denying Bakunin’s premise of an authoritative God, Anthony de Jasay so forcefully explains how our servitude is coherent with liberty: “…freedom is most perfect when all are servants (more perfect even than if all were masters)… It is not the condition of servitude which contradicts freedom, but the existence of masters…” (just to clarify, de Jasay is not arguing for an anarchical theism). And if we lock in the portrait that Yeshua taught and modeled (one of universal, unconditional, unlimited, self-sacrificial, humble servant-love) we’ll probably have more of a capacity to recognise the value of universal justice, equality, fraternity and prosperity and less difficulty (not no difficulty) with experiencing suffering. The more we see God like Bakunin’s absolute Master the more we will (justifiably) succumb to Lennon’s evident bitterness.

Regarding the OP, I don’t believe pain is helpful for belief.

I was only pulling your leg Johnny Regarding memes - there are a huge number that do the rounds regarding the history of UR propagated often by other UR websites. The one about Luther being a post mortem Salvationist is a case in point

As for the other stuff you’ve said I read a review by Theo Hobson in the TLS of a Christian apologetic book that looked not at the intellectual integrity of Christianity, but rather at it’s emotional integrity. I must dig it out sometimes because the book sounded impressive and compelling.

If we are talking about the emotional integrity of Christianity against arguments that it is simply false comfort, I always remember Dennis Potter saying that Christianity is about the wound, not about the sticking plaster.

As for those who are young old and dead - well Kirsty left a legacy of love behind her; there’s cause to celebrate when you hear about a singer/songwriter who was also a kind and courageous person.

You take care Johnny - and never forget God loves us full courteously

Dick

Oops Andrew - we posted at the same time. Read Andrew’s post Johnny - and I’ll have a private post chat with you to see how you are sometime soon.

The book I mentioned – but have not read – is:

‘Unapologetic: Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense’ by Francis Spufford.

The blurb says –

It’s an argument that Christianity is recognizable, drawing on the deep and deeply ordinary vocabulary of human feeling, satisfying those who believe in it by offering a ruthlessly realistic account of the bits of our lives advertising agencies prefer to ignore. Lots of good reviews - it’s a fresh angle on apologetics

Johnny Boy, The Prof, Nimblewill, ANUniversalist, and We Are ALL Brothers, oh and Sturmy too!! Sorry Sturmy.

This is the first I’ve been out to the forum in months… this topic, for some very, very obvious reasons, piqued my interest. I believe I have a thing or two to say about this, NOT that any of it would be helpful or inspired, but it WOULD be MY experience. Need to wait just a bit for meds to catch up to my wakefulness and then I’d like to say a thing or two. Probably get my tired backside kicked outta here, but oh well. So I will return because Nimblewill I truly believe is on to something for ME, maybe not the general population. Pain is the great leveler, period. And unless someone has REALLY experienced PAIN whether it be emotional, physical, or spiritual, they cannot with certainty speak about it. But after writing that last statement, who among US has NOT experienced some form of pain that was unbearable or so it seemed? And IF that is true, why do we still tend to inflict pain on others, KNOWING that pain hurts?? More later… thanks for starting this Johnny as I swore I’d NEVER come back to this forum due to pain, but I couldn’t let this one go. Y’all are on to something bigger than even I can imagine!! Only my truth.

Blessings guys!

Bret

Hi Bret -

Good to hear from you again

Hi Andrew

I couldn’t agree more. I haven’t come across Bakunin before, but he sums up very forcefully (part of) the thinking behind a lot of thinking people’s rejection of God, in the West at least.

If folk have grown up with the authoritarian, judgemental portrait of God which the mainstream western churches have been selling for the past 1,500 years, it’s easy to see why they might be led to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were, and reject Christianity completely. If they’ve grown up hearing church leaders heaping coals of condemnation onto the heads of LGBT people, oppressing women and telling them that they’re going to burn in hell forever if they don’t turn and worship the God who sanctions, indeed commands, this hateful prejudice, it’s little wonder they’re not prepared to dig beneath the rhetoric to find out who Jesus really was, and what his true message is.

“Servitude is the true glory of God,” you say. I love that. Far too many alleged followers of Christ are so obsessed with ‘giving God the glory’, in a way I doubt very much he cares for much, if at all, they almost completely overlook the obvious reality of how he chose to manifest himself to humanity. They forget that God became incarnate not as a king, but as a humble, suffering servant.

It is these black-hearted Pharisees who create the Lennons and the Bakunins, all the Richard Dawkinses, Phillip Pullmans, Christopher Hitchenses and their professional God-hating ilk. Shame on them, I say.

Oh, and just to be clear, I never meant to imply that pain was “helpful for belief”. It isn’t. Yes, it is one of the most fearsome weapons in God’s armoury, but I don’t believe he ever deploys it wilfully. It is something he permits to be, for his own inscrutable - for now, for this life - reasons. No, what I was trying to delve into was whether the atheist’s contention that pain drives us to belief, as voiced by Lennon in the song, is valid.

I reckon it may well be. But that, in and of itself doesn’t, I don’t think, reveal much about the underlying truth of our beliefs. If God exists and some of us go to him to be cured of our pain, so be it. Why, after all, do we do anything that we do? CS Lewis talks about this in the The Problem of Pain, arguing that if God only accepted those who came to him with ‘high’ motives, as Kant, I believe, thought we should, we’d all be in serious trouble.

All the best

Johnny

Thanks Professor… After MUCH thought and consideration I’m going to keep my mouth shut. In reality , I don’t have anything of substance to offer up, ONLY in my pea-picking brain. So my apologies, I’ll just continue to read along and learn for a change instead of adding my opinion, and that’s all it would be, my opinion. My dad used to say , “take the cotton out of your ears and shove it in your mouth, you just might learn something!!” Great advise Dad, so thanks for that.

Blessings,
Bret

Bret, my man!

If this thread achieves nothing other than drawing you out of your mountain lair, even for a short spell, it will have been worthwhile. It’s very important that when we speak about these things we do so honestly - and that’s something you show me the way on.

I get cheesed off with Christians who make out their lives are one endless round of campfire singalongs. Pain is part of all our lives, and the more honest we all are about that, the less traumatic it will be for us all.

I for one would love to hear more of your thoughts on this subject. So have a ponder, take your time, smoke a cigar, listen to some Sex Pistols or whatever it is you guys listen to these days . Rest assured, whatever you decide to do is okay with me my friend. It’s always okay with me .

Cheers

Johnny

But y’ have to strike the right balance here

I always remember a spoof hymn by John Betjeman that goes -

I thank the good Lord for my boils
For my mental and bodily pains
For without them my faith all congeals
And I’m damned to hell’s ne’er ending flames

Professor and Johnny Boy…

Prof, I don’t know the meaning of the word “balance” and I had to look it up in the dictionary to spell it correctly!! So IF you were looking to me for balance, not a chance Prof!! And Johnny, you are always so kind. I still think it best IF I keep my opinions to myself here. As YOU know, this IS a very hot topic for me. My dad used to say I had “hoof in mouth disease…” meaning I don’t have a governor on my fingers and say whatever it is that pops in my brain, and that has gotten me into a lot of trouble on this forum and elsewhere in my life. My dad also used to tell me that discretion is the better part of valour… I’m doing my very best to use discretion IF and when I write on this forum so I don’t inadvertently offend ANYONE. Maybe we will just email back and forth since you GET my crazies!!! Thank you though for the sentiment, I appreciate it and you, my friend.

Many blessings,
Bret

Good stuff here guys

I might join in at some point if I think of something