Psalm 32

From Psalm 32, NIV Bible,
“You are my hiding place;
You will protect me from trouble
And surround me with songs of deliverance.'
++++
“Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous,
sing, all you who are upright in heart."

I love the psalms. When people have been threatening to kill me, kill my dog, or kill my family, I have turned to the psalms for comfort. They were written by David facing all the armies of his enemies and those who were supposedly friends who betrayed him. I am amused that House of Thrones is so popular but it’s really just historic deviance and divide and conquer.
I just read a history of Armenia and that poor kingdom was under attack from either the Greek Christians or Muslems every few years all the while there was internal strife.
 Israel was an attractive e nation along the trade routes.  Armies passed through going each way.  Empires one after another attempted and succeeded in subjugate it.
Canada is a young country that has not known invasions but increasingly our immigrants come from regions where war was a constant.  Of Scottish/Irish  heritage we’d known peace within the British empire for hundreds of years with minor conflicts compared to the later great war.
In Moscow a few years ago I met with a uniform supplier for the Russian army. He said war was big business  and that Europeans had wars every 50 years on average.  All of the nations of the ‘Security Council’ are principal arms dealers and major war concerns. The purpose of the United Nations was to cement the gains and ensure the Allied Empire would remain in charge thereafter.  The “cold war’, was really not so much a war but an ‘arms race’ that culminated in Detente and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The competition between ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism’ was won with the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The American model was a model of decentralization, freedom and meritocracy.  The communist model was central control, totalitarian and fear based. It resulted in the ‘mediocrity’ that haunts all socialist countries.  Stalin said that socialism was communism. Marxist socialism was a dyadic (beugeoisie/proletariat, with the aim of continual warfare till the lowest common denominator , the proletariat ruled.  By contrast there was a Scottish socialist model based on triadic principles of three class society which gave rise to the Union movement.  All economies are a mixture of capitalism and socialism.  Historically the collective agreed to serve in those areas where profit was least likely immediate so less attractive to the capitalist investor.  NAZI was socialism and called itself the National Socialist Party.  Ironically today given the propaganda and disinformation the average person does not recognize ‘central’ control as the hallmark of socialism and dictatorship. Yet Lenin, revered socialist, insisted on ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.
Even in the church there is the central control of the Catholic contrasted with the regional control of presbytery.  The pendulum swings. In Canada we are facing more dictatorship.  Pierre Trudeau threatened the country’s citizens collectively bringing on martial law against all for the action of an few individuals.  The French have historically swung from their love of monarchy or Napoleonic Empire dictatorship to their bloody French Revolution and radicalism.  In almost all the colonies of the French there have been persistent war left for generations while British colonies by comparison have been relatively stable.  As Canada has become ruled by Quebec dictatorship following the increasing reduction in ‘eligible’ political candidacy, first ‘fluent french speakers’ and now pro abortionist only we have become a centralized oligarchy.
The natural appeal of dictatorship is the ‘benign dictator’ is the most appealing efficient government yet ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ with Canada increasingly corrupt as a nation, perhaps more corrupt than ever. The Charbonneau Enquiry essentially showed that the Eastern Mafia and Biker Gangs controlled the building of Quebec and naturally as Quebec dominates Canada    the influence of corruption spreads through the nation. Not that western Canada is still “Canada the good’ , once the ‘bread basket of the world’, it’s agricultural achievement today is it’s production of marijuana.
The legal/political byzantine squabbling at the top which each corporation trying to get special deals and own the law makers who are themselves seeking special retirement havens like the world renown Canadian Senate, the best of all Old Age Pension deals for the ‘good friend’ of the wheeling dealing central socialist government, it all seems to the common man like a brawl going on in the sky between gods and goddesses of ancient greece and rome.  These Gods and Goddessess aren’t called Mars and Venus but rather Walmart, Pfizer, de Havilland, Nike, etc.  Meanwhile the Hillary Clinton debate wages to the south and Brexit has escaped from the centralized authority and cancerous bureaucracy of Brussels.  It remains to be seen if England will survive this encounter with the Germans.  The Communist experiment in Babylon fell as has the Islamic Babylon tumbled before Desert Spring.  The struggle remains in the West and China.  Always the Borg meets Captain Picard.
In the midst of all this apparent deceit, corruption and greed, divisiveness and empire, it’s good to turn to the Lord.  The psalms are a comfort.
“You are my hiding place,
You will protect me from trouble.
And surround me with songs of deliverance."
When I attended Regent College Dr. James Houston taught courses on spirituality which we were truly blessed to attend year after year.  He taught that reading all the psalms day after day till they are finished would help one to feel ‘anointed’.  There’s a recurrent theme being lost and found over and over again.  It’s the story of David.
David’s heir was Jesus.
Hallelujah.

Psychiatry and Spirituality - In the beginning

"In the beginning there was God. And God created the heavens and the earth and everything and everyone in them," said the student.
"Was there God and building blocks?" asked the master?
"No, just God in the beginning."
"So then everything is made of God, isn't it?" said the master.
 "Yes!"

Thereoretically there is no need for God as creator. Everything could just be unfolding as it is. However computer programs that measure the time it would take for a monkey to play the violin suggest very simply there isn't enough 'time' since the Big Bang,  That's the moment of creation.  Then it's possible that humans 'evolved' elsewhere.  That posits the 'seeding' of the earth by space travellers.

But then the question begets the question of where this other 'creator' came from.

Evolution tries poorly to suggest 'random' events would lead to 'creation' as we understand and know it. The trouble with this 'random' 'mutation' idea is that an infinitisemally small 'mutations' are 'beneficial'.  The vast majority of 'mutations' which we know of and see are negative and counter creation.  So evolution is a poor 'model' for the BIG PICTURE.  It might well explain little stuff but at the big level it just doesn't compare with the idea of a MYSTERY.

There 'arrogance' in believing "I know".  There's "humility' in saying 'I don't really know."  There's the mystery.

Science is humble.  Religion has a tendency to insist they know but personally as a scientist and a theist I BELIEVE.  I don't know how man 'evolved' from the Big Bang.  I've got an idea that maybe some monkey marriage lead to a proto human by some kind of 'intelligent design'.  Maybe even man was created whole as the Bible says.  Maybe there really was a Charleton Heston kind of guy who was back there in time.  That was yesterday. I don't know.  It's a mystery.  As a scientist, I have 'hypothesis'.  An hypothesis, is an 'educated mystery'.  We may have evolved from monkeys or monkeys may have devolved from us or we may have evolved in parallell.

This discussion doesn't help with my fundamental belief in a Mystery God creator that I can communicate today.

I BELIEVE.

The Orubunga is an image of a snake eating it's tale.

I have a hypothesis of an original creator.  I anthropormised this 'OTHER".  I imagine t hem bored.  The oldest game is "Hide and Seek".  The Creator is one or zero.  The next step is 2.  Black and White. Yin and Yang. Or "Hide and Seek".  Or "You're the biter and I'm the ass that's bit".

Martin Buber,the great Jewish theologian/philosopher wrote a book  "I and Thou".  The real issue of getting beyond the 'Paranoid Position" of "I and IT"  is to accept that sense of anxiety which is a natural experience of humanity to the position of "I and Thou".  Bob Dylan's song "I and I" is a religious folk tradition referring to the Caribean "I and I" god tradition struggling in the same vein.

Kierkegaard referred to the essential state of existence as emitionally "existential angst".  He described existence as "Suffering unto death'.  This sense of 'separation' has been described as "alienation'.

Indeed religious thinkers have defined "Anxiety as a measure of our distance from God".

In the Hindu tradition the Overself is seen as the reality but our present existence is an 'underself'" or 'little self' that cannot appreciate the 'limitless' or 'infinite' because of our arbitrary 'limited' or 'finite' experience in this realm.

Reality is considered a 'Construct' by Owen Barfield.

It is a hypothesis of the 'String Theory' that this experience of a 'UNI-VERSE'  is really a "MULTI VERSE."

I just don't think there's reason to be  'adament' about one thing or another. I certainly wouldn't fight about these distinctions, yet there's a wholeness in the understanding and 'acceptance' of these understandings.  So often people don't realize they are living their lives according to some BIG PICTURE idea of life and the world and everything which is itself causing them their difficulties.

In psychiatry we see this in examples like, "GOD hates homos".  The people who make such crude and primitive statements may not really be aware of GOD or homos but they certainly are likely authorities on hate.  As hate authorities we might wish to take their comments seriously.

If we posit a GOD then we consider next that GOD

1) Neutral
2)  Active
3) Passive
4) Limitted
 5) Unlimitted
6) Inside
7) Outside
8) Participating
9) Communicating

After we've considered those we might get into whether he hates homos or whether he hates asparagus more.

The idea of Neutrality is to some extent what scientists think in the evolutionary sense. Whether there was a God Creator or not, there is this GAME called LIFE and the universe and everything and it's here and we're (humans) are in it.  It's quite possible that God made it for us to play and left or is merely watching. Thou might well be a sleep.

Some might say that God is limitted and not unlimitted.

Some think of God as outside the universe and us while others believe God is inside.

The question of whether Thou is participating in us, the universe/multiverse and everything is another question.

I personally believe that God is Omipresent, Omniscient, Immanent and Loving.

In the 12 step programs like AA and NA individuals are told to "make their own God'. It is recognised that the person who goes into Recovery is already religious but their God is a material substance immanent in the world, active in their life and soemthing they literally worship.  "The God of Your Understanding" is something that you can imagine as bigger than Whiskey or Heroin.  That's the notion of a Higher Power, something higher than the thing that is enslaving you, keeping you in bondage.

In the Schizophrenic or paranoid there may be an 'idea' that is central to the disability.  Questioning this central idea, that of say, a hateful God or a shameful act or a heaven or hell or a position in and out may be necessary to help a person come to terms with what is causing their particularly anxiety.
The therapy of R. D. Laing was one of unravelling the "Knots' that tied up these people in their own bondage preventing them freedom and joy.

The idea of a God that is active in your life is difficult for people.  Your God is Too Small is one of the great little books of all time in which an Anglican priest challenges people to look at their prayer life and their "idea" of  God.

It's sad that aetheists like Nitzhe and Hichens hadn't read that book. Their "idea" of God which they rail against is a very historic notion of God.  The idea that God evolves is taken up in the book, The Evolution of God.  The author there points to the changing ideas about the nature of God implicit and explicit in the Bible. Aetheists rarely engage our "MODERN GOD"  but rather talk about ancient history.

Communism is the present day social expression of aetheism. Indeed communism can be considered the largest religion to date of the aetheism.  In aetheist criticism of theism they commonly talk about historic 'ideas' of God whereas they get all emotional if one points to actual communists today killing people.

The Theists killing people today are for example ISIS. They whack people all the time. However their God isn't a MODERN GOD or a POST MODERN GOD but rather a 15th century version of God.  ISIS want to time travel to a simpler time when men had sex slaves and swords decided who was ruler.  ISIS God isn't even ALLAH but more like a WAR GOD.

Polytheism has these 'limitted' GOD constructs. The God of Agriculture for Greek Romans was Ceres/Demeter.  Zeus, the God of God was a limitted God too.

But the Modern Postmodern God is a limitless loving God which was glympsed in Hinduism and Buddhism and specifically what Jesus talked to especially naming the God of His Understanding as "ABBA" which means 'Daddy".

Loving God.

Indeed spiritual people today would simply answer the question

What was in the beginning?

"In the Beginning was Love?"

Accepting that, how did we get here from there?