Hello, all. My name is Jordan -- I'm good friends with Jason and attend LVC, as well. Jay and I talk a lot about stuff-religion and it's been pretty well established that I take radical positions and tease out implications. That's the way I operate-- by going to the extreme to see just how extreme extreme may seem. In any case, this first post of mine will make more sense as an adendum on to the one Jason posted below. So, you should read that first. I fully agree with what he said down there.

That having been said, here's my first post.



I’ve always had a huge problem with the saying, "let go and let God."

I think it's complete BS.

I also have a huge problem with saying that God is in control. God is most definitely not in control. This world is chaotic and senseless, beautiful and serious, ridiculous and terrifying, maddening, passionate, angering, lovingly brutally free. God is present in all things only as much as we allow God to be. It is true -- the divine spark is all around us. But we cover it up. God is not here. We’ve killed "him." We just think that God is here, on our side, making everything we do justified.

Because, since God is in control, everything must be good. Otherwise, why would God allow it to happen? Bullshit.

God is not here. We must live accordingly. We must live awaiting God's return. We must work to uncover the God-stuff we've covered with our cancerous overgrowth. We’ve made ourselves out to be huge -- we become huge when we allow ourselves to think that God is controlling it all and that we've got nothing to worry about.

Tell African mothers in the Congo that they've got nothing to worry about while their 3-year-old daughters are being gang-raped by militant revolutionaries. Tell the 24-year-old Latino janitor suffering from schizophrenia attempting to live on welfare and consequently being unable to afford medication that he has nothing to worry about.

"It’s all in God's hands" is bullshit. Was the Holocaust in God's hands?

We need to make ourselves small. We need to force our cancerous selves into remission. We need to realize that God is not on our side. God is not making all of our lives justified. We are a spreading cancer on this earth destroying everything in our wake. We perpetrate war merely by maintaining our cost of living. Because we enjoy wearing Abercrombie boxers, a Chinese child must suffer.

God does not justify our cancer.

It is up to us. Complacency is what allows injustice. God cannot work in this world without us. This is a twofold operation -- we must work to uncover God. In doing so, God will be allowed back into this world.

We are called to love – and love is anything but complacent.

Below is a quotation from a book by a guy named John L. Kater, Jr.

“The Bible assure us that God is less interested in servile obedience than in the freely given response of love (‘We love because God first loved us’) and that true obedience is directed towards the human family. The insight of the prophets as they probed more deeply into the heart of God was just that: worship means nothing apart from attention to the needs of the human community.

What are your endless sacrifices to me? Says the Lord. I am sick of holocausts of rams and the fat of calves. The blood of bulls and goats revolts me…I cannot endure festival and solemnity. Your New Moons and your pilgrimages I hate with all my soul. They lie heavy on me, I am tired of bearing them. …cease to do evil, learn to do good. Search for justice, help the oppressed, be just to the orphan, plead for the widow. – Isaiah 1:11-17

The prophet Micah summed up God’s demands in this way: ‘This is what God asks of you: only this, to act justly, to love tenderly, to walk humbly with your God.’ Obedience to God is expressed in our behavior towards others.” Kater 53-4.

This being the case, what is worship? What is 'church?'

Worship is being a bass player.