CADRE Comments

No updates this year to my Cadre Thanksgiving Sermon, so I'll just link back to last year's version . For any readers hoping for yet another massive series between now and Easter: there's one on the way, God willing! But not until Monday, probably. For which other Cadre readers may gladly give thanks. {g}

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 55, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 56.] It's only fair--isn't it? God will intentionally set Himself up, to be rejected by all His people: by His special chosen who carried His light, and by His other children who perhaps have been doing the best they can with what they have. Not only those who we might consider desperately evil will reject Him, but those we would be inclined to consider the very best. For even the best of us have sinned, abusing the grace of God Most High. He will have done plenty of things, to show He is good; but He will also give them just enough rope to hang Him, if they want to--on His own timing, if not theirs. And the unjust of this world--very likely even some of the (relatively) just ones who just don't understand!--will want to hang Him. The unjust of any worlds intersecting this one, will certainly want to hang Him, too. Why, you ask, w...

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 53, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 54.] To this lynchpin people, at the heart of a world ready to hear the news, God will act, and send Himself, to be God with us, Immanuel. A great Light will shine in this wilderness, a light for all the chosens: for those whom God had told they were chosen, and for those still searching, and for those who have trudged or have flown past hope into outright despair; for the good men and women and children, such as they are... ...but most especially for the enemies of God--who are all of us, sinners. Within all the work God does, He lets us sinners have our own way, because He loves us too much to let us be something other than real boys and girls. But this produces a hideous disparity. It looks like God doesn't exist. It looks like God doesn't care. It looks like God is a monster. So what, if I say that God suffers, too!? That is a ...

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 50, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 51.] If God is going to maintain all the various balances in His creation, while still working to His utmost to help effect our salvation from our own sins and the sins of our predecessors, then He will have to go about it within our history--not merely within the stories we tell ourselves (although He will do some work along those lines, too), but within the real natural reality we inhabit as synthetic creatures. This means He will act within a historical context, and it will be a context of His choosing: designed and guided, even 'tweaked' by Him to fit His plans; but also incorporating the choices of the people, the families, the nations, who will be a part of this particular story of history. But those people will not be sock-puppets. They will be real people; they will be fallible, even though God works with them to the best of ...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 43, can be found here. ] [This entry begins Chapter 44, "The Fall".] In my previous chapter, I probably sounded as if I was waxing rhapsodic about death, and how great it was, and how much I need it. In a way, I was doing precisely that. But I agree it seems specious for me to sit here in my comfortable chair, sniffling over whatever puny sins I have committed in my life and trying to resolve myself to Face Death Like A Man; when all across our planet tonight vicious rapes and murders and grotesque physical and psychological violations are being performed by human fiends upon people whom I cannot possibly have definite grounds for saying 'the victims deserved that'. No, I refuse to argue that each and every victim of atrocity is receiving the just deserts of their own sins. There is no way I can possibly know that, and I staunchly insist that it certainly doesn't look that wa...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, concluding Chapter 42, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 43, "Death".] I have previously decided that the consequences of my sin must logically, ethically entail that I shall certainly die. And I have been discussing what kinds of death should take place in me as a consequence of my sin. I decided that my utter annihilation was a technical possibility, but that it would be inconsistent with the hope of the fulfillment of God's love to me if He allowed the total fulfillment of the consequences of my wishful, willfully chosen intransigence. So although that type of death is possible for me--and even remains possible for God Himself, although He never has and never shall choose it--I think I can deductively conclude it shall never happen to me. My physical dissolution makes no difference: I, me, myself, shall by God's grace somehow continue. And, perhaps I will continue re...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting Chapter 42, can be found here. ] [This entry concludes Chapter 42, "Death". Incidentally, this would be another good time to read that disclaimer over there to the right, about how not every journal entry necessarily reflects the beliefs of every Cadre member. Some of us may now, or in the future, be annihilationists, and are free to post defenses of that insofar as they can see to do so (or may have done so already). Links to annihilation defenses are also welcome in the comments below. One popular internet-accessible defense of annihilationism can be found here in a chapter from Dr. Samuele Bacchiocchi's Immortality or Resurrection? While I could engage in a exegetical analysis of the topic, too, my series is designed to proceed along a different route.] Part 2 of 2 (Incidentally, this would be another good time to read that disclaimer over there to the right, about how not every...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, concluding Chapter 41, can be found here. ] [This entry starts Chapter 42, "Death".] I ended my previous chapter by noting once more what the logic of my position leads to: I not only deserve to die, I shall die. Perhaps you think I am being rather hard on myself. And perhaps you are right. Then again, perhaps I deserve to be rather hard on myself! But then again (again!), it is worth considering the question of what it means to die. What happens when I sin? I essentially set myself up in opposition to the principles of interpersonal relationships--not merely in this or that form (about which I may be mistaken concerning their accuracy at reflecting the ultimate principles), but I set myself intentively against them in principle. I think it is also possible to sin by willfully resolving to delude myself as to the state of reality--again, whether my perceptions of reality are themselves particu...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting Chapter 41, can be found here. ] [This entry concludes Chapter 41, "The Consequences of Sin".] I am now in a position to explain why I, myself, am not remotely disconcerted by the anti-theistic argument from evil. For many people, this is a powerful argument, if not against a supernaturalistic God altogether (strictly speaking it couldn’t be against that anyway), then at least against any kind of ethical God Who also holds an ontological position traditionally accepted by proponents of various religious theisms (primarily Judaism, Christianity and Islam in modern times). The problem then, is not with God or God’s supernatural character per se, but with the combination of these properties plus ethicality. Eliminating one or more of the properties, eliminates the problem--or so it seems to many people. Thus, eliminating the morality (tacitly or explicitly) could leave the theism and the o...