LET'S ALL GET BEHIND THIS

[cavaliereagle]

I LIKE YOU CATTY, BUT SOME OF YOUR VIEWS ARE A LITTLE TOO RELIGIOUS FOR THIS SINNER, GLAD YOU CAN GO AND FEEL GOOD, I CANT.

Take comfort SLICK.

I would never claim it. But I've heard it said that some atheists are better Christians than most Christians.

Sad but true!

[1 CAT FAN]

As a teenager, I lost my father to cancer. Few years later, I lost my older brother to a boating accident where he drowned.

DeCav knows my Testimony.

I'm still a sinner, Cityslick. I still have to ask for forgiveness.

[CITYSLICKER]

SORRY, CATTY, I APPRECIATE YOUR THOUGHTS, AND HOPE YOU LOSE NO ONE ELSE, I SEE MY SON AND HOPE THE SAME.

[DeCav]

As a teenager, I lost my father to cancer. Few years later, I lost my older brother to a boating accident where he drowned.

DeCav knows my Testimony.

I'm still a sinner, Cityslick. I still have to ask for forgiveness.

I had no idea. Very sorry for your losses. The message I'm finally hearing that has been ringing true for me after 48 years is that it might not be enough to just ask for forgiveness. Not speaking to you CAT FAN but just about a lot people that kept me from faith with their ways all these years. I was having dinner with a good friend a couple years back. He's always been a very strong Christian and he's a smart, intelligent, kind and patient guy.

The subject of faith came up and since my own recent losses, I had come to the conclusion that I'd been playing footsie with the subject my whole life. Not able at all to be a very outwardly Christian person. I've had a strange relationship with the truth my whole life. Maybe it's my lazy nature? Not being content with orienting my mind with a task that didn't interest me or show some reward?

I've always been capable of lying but only against great internal stress and only when it really mattered in some important way to be able to pull off a lie. But when faced with that moment we all have when I can lie or tell the truth, my mind has always quickly assessed the resource to reward ratio, with emphasis on the resource part of it. What I mean is my mind quickly works out how tangled and sticky the web is likely to get and how much brainpower it'll take to maintain a lie. How solid is the foundation that can support that lie and how quickly will that lie start to crumble?

When it came to faith and my concern about the way other people saw me or what I thought they thought of me, I knew that going to church and professing my faith would be an act unless somehow, someday it was not an act. The fake it till you make it strategy that Pascal's Wager proposes was something I put time and effort in for a great deal of time in my life. Many years of going to church. Periodically trying different churches and different faiths on the off chance that something stuck.

I guess it's why I'm willing to go again tomorrow though at this point I pretty much know it's a social call at best and who knows? Just touching base with God? I'll do anything that resonates with me like, say...posting on football boards for a decade now.

But a lifetime of not really professing or acting outwardly to be something I wasn't didn't mean that I was ever really all that honest either. Somehow I've always been able to sidestep the question or maybe use some mental sleight of hand with a philosophical approach to faith that threw off all but the most persistent of inquiries. I never suffered the illusion that anyone of faith was fooled into believing I was also that way inclined. I guess my open-minded approach and willingness to engage anyone in a conversation and even accompany them to a service if offered kept me safe from confrontations with the type of person who might accuse me of being damned to Hell if I didn't change my ways.

But I never was strong enough or prepared enough to just come out and say that I was pretty sure I wasn't saved because I was damn sure that I had too many doubts and as equally sure that there wasn't any kind of a detectable feeling that there really was a God and that believing that Christ died for my sins meant I was going to Heaven. I knew that I couldn't lie to myself about that and wasn't inclined to lie to anyone else about it but with other people I engaged in a lie of omission maybe? I hate confrontation or at least I used to hate it a lot more than I do now and I never opted to be completely honest about it.

But I guess we call it my mid-life crisis brought me some clarity on some issues. All of a sudden I just wasn't as afraid to just tell people where I stood with faith. I found out that there hadn't been anything to fear. No one damned me to Hell though some hid that thought well.

During dinner that night I just came out and told the person matter of factly that I just can't make myself believe. I'd tried lots of different routes and approaches to faith and it seemed to elude me. The dude held his head and said he'd failed me. It seemed a little dramatic at the time. I wanted to tell him that other than him voting for Trump, I couldn't see any way he'd discouraged me from Christ.

I'm laughing now because the thought just crossed my mind that Biden goes to church every Sunday and nobody gets pepper gassed on the way.

But my friend was a really good example of a Christian. Much better than the hate I've seen recently veiled under Christianity. And when I came across that phrase in the book of Matthew it made a lot of sense to me.

“Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter."

That passage seems to me to indicate there's more to salvation than believing you're saved even though other passages say otherwise. Especially since it was Christ who said that. I dunno.

So many people who professed to be saved seemed as if they were more concerned about the souls of the dead than they were the souls of the living, whether it was their own or the soul of a stranger. It's hard to put my finger on it or find a good way to express it but it's as if some people that I've known over the years decided or were convinced or persuaded that as long as they secured their eternal soul after death and as long as they knew they were always forgiven by the blood of Christ that they could just write it all off on this side of Heaven. A lifetime of mulligans. Like thinking that as long as I show up in court after every crime, I'll be told all is forgiven and avoid jail in this life or a word that rhymes with jail in the next.

I remember asking the pastor of my church during a Bible camp meeting about forgiveness. Asked him how it was that a man could rape and murder his whole life and then say a prayer before the electric chair and go to Heaven. I told him that just doesn't seem fair. Never will forget what his response was...

"The Bible doesn't say anywhere that life is fair."

I always admired the way he put a positive spin on the notion that life isn't fair. That guy was about as good of a person as I've ever met. That answer he gave resonates with me today. That seems like the least you have to do to go to Heaven. Just accept Christ as your savior and know that he died for your sins. But it begs the question: What's the most a person can do? Can anyone even conceive of the upper limit of that? What would Christ have done with all the riches in the world? You'd have thought he would try and acquire as much wealth as possible back in the day so that he might've done as much good as possible but there's something nefarious about that notion.

It's funny. The guy I contacted about Sean's fundraiser and who's sermon I'm going to see tomorrow is the same guy who's father's use of the N-word really sent my faith into a death spiral when I was young. I never told him that. I really doubt there'd ever be a reason to bring it up either.

Watched a video tonight. Never seen it before but there's a message about the things we do that we know we shouldn't do. The person we are and that we cling to and the person we can become in this life. We are the person we are. We are also the person who can change the person we are. And we'll become whatever we choose to become in this life and given the choice between choosing to become the person we already are or the person we could become who might be a better version tomorrow, we should probably not sacrifice who we can be in the future in order to hold onto the person that we are today.

I also like the idea of the dragon of chaos. The dragon that exists outside your walled in city where each one of us is safe. It's dangerous outside that wall where the dragon lurks. But imagine the treasure of gold and riches that he hoards and protects. If you can defeat him you can have that reward. The reward of becoming something more tomorrow than you are today. Confronting the chaos of the things about us that make us anxious and unfulfilled. There's so many things I know I must do. But I keep putting off doing them because I feel safer just pacing around the same old ground.

Another quote I love..."You tell yourself you're definitely going to do something and then you don't do it. What the Hell is that?? Who exactly is in control of you anyway? Is it you? Apparently not."

I don't think there's a single one of us who ever lived who couldn't have done it just a little bit better. I imagine I'm about exactly halfway through given that my two grandmothers lived to be 95. There's still time. 100% as much time as I've already had. It's so strange. I told a friend I'd taken an axe to the tree of my life and chopped it down. And then chopped it into pieces. And then had a big bonfire. And after all that I was asked why I did it and I didn't know. And then I discovered this notion of having to burn off the parts of you that just have to go if you're going to transform and that's it's incredibly painful.

Also I'm reminded of that apology B1 wrote back in the day. The one I begged him to make instead of starting WW3. And this video talks about that. Someone does a little something good, and then they retreat back into themselves and they wait to be punished for it and if they are then the Hell with that. They'll never do that again. But someone might notice and say, "Hey, you know that was pretty good." and then maybe they do more of that.

B1 thought making a full-throated apology for one of his classic fights would humiliate him and cause people to deride and jeer at him and it had the opposite effect but damn that kind of thing is scary and not someone, not anyone wants to ever do. The right things are always often the scariest and most difficult.

I hope I'm not a coward tomorrow. I have a list of things I need to get done that I've been putting off. Things that I know will greatly improve things for me. I just hope tomorrow doesn't arrive and I decide to let future me pay for the sins of tomorrow's me.

SLICK. All I can say now dude is that you've got one Hell of a task ahead of you. Hope or the best. Prepare for the worst but I do believe there is tragedy and then there is Hell. Death is a tragedy. It never is not that. But it doesn't have to be sheer Hell. Hopefully you won't have to be the man your whole family needs and a father should never bury his son. I've seen my grandmother bury her daughter. And my dad bury his son.

But like someone else said, we're all living on borrowed time and each day is a gift. How miserable can each day be? How good can each of those days be? We know what the limit of how much Hell there can be in life. A history book will teach anyone that. There are less examples of how wonderful each day can be. Hell all I can do is think about you and your family and share thoughts.

Peace and Love,

[DeCav]

[1 CAT FAN]

A lot of the old TV programming seems now like it was just too deep for kids. Anything on TV these days with the same kind of message? And why didn't my parents hold more reverence for some of the messages from my childhood?

"If we don't teach kids to live in society today, what's going to happen to them when they grow up."



I was a "naughty cat" at times growing up too.
Temptation was especially strong during those teenage years.

[CITYSLICKER]

I APPRECIATE ALL THE COMMENTS, BUT LETS GET BACK ON SUBJECT A BIT.

[cavaliereagle]

I APPRECIATE ALL THE COMMENTS, BUT LETS GET BACK ON SUBJECT A BIT.

[EHSMeanGreen]

https://gofund.me/8c121c87

Best wishes to SLICK and family.

[DeCav]

I APPRECIATE ALL THE COMMENTS, BUT LETS GET BACK ON SUBJECT A BIT.

Well, SLICK doesn't usually hide the fact that he wants to be the center of attention.

In this thread though we can forgive him for wanting his son to be the focus, yes?