Comments on: I hate this post modern syncretic civil religion.

By: will

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 08:13:00 +0000

We will do well to heed the warning of the 2nd commandment and that of its implications. Israel was destroyed time and again until they finally learned that lesson.

And so this absence is testimony to that.

Only in the cases of the manifestation of Theophany. Or when David was shown in a vision the designs of the temple should there be images in worship.

Likewise there are no prayers to any patron saints to pray for them. But to God alone for God alone hears millions even billions of prayers at the same time. Due to his omnipresence. That which none of the dead saints are evidenced anywhere in scripture is reputed to hear and to ask God.

None of the people in the old testament or the new testament needed images to pray. Nor did they ask the dead to pray for them.

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By: Lucia Maria

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 03:28:00 +0000

You’re right, they don’t. Is your point that we should follow what they do, even though God to them is still invisible?

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By: will

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 00:46:00 +0000

The hebrews to this day do not have images or statues of saints nor do they have images of Gods.

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By: will

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 00:44:00 +0000

Ben Hur. Did not show the Face of Christ. It was the most powerful film for the gospel I have seen.

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By: chrisgale

Mon, 20 Jan 2014 10:23:00 +0000

Very low chance of another volcano in Auckland in one’s lifetime: last one was 700 years ago. Mt Eden blew some tens of thousands of years ago, and is extinct: most of the cones in the Auckland isthmus are.

The one that should scare you is lake Taupo in the central north Island. That is a caldera: the volcano that was there is still active, and when it last blew (1200 years ago it deposited ash to around half a kilometer deep over a one hundred kilometer radius.

There are only five or six active volcanoes in NZ: we have a ski field on one of them. (Ruapehu).

The geology of NZ is as interesting as the geology of Japan.

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By: pukeko

Mon, 20 Jan 2014 10:18:32 +0000

Mt Eden blew about 40 000 years ago. the geology of the field means it won’t blow again: there will a new volcano where the scoria is less thick.

But the Auckland Isthmus is basically one volcano field. It will happen. But less frequently than 6+ earthquakes.

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By: Butterfly Flower

Mon, 20 Jan 2014 09:40:00 +0000

Um, sacred or not – why would anyone want to step inside a volcano crater? Are they worried a James Bond-style villain will construct a lair inside it?

The sign reminds of those “Caution: Hot” warnings label on foam coffee cups.

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By: The controversy I tried to avoid. | Dark Brightness

Mon, 20 Jan 2014 08:53:20 +0000

[…] I agree with you about the offensiveness of tapu and sacred land, but disagree that the (protestant?) reformers were motivated by the same thing. […]

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By: Butterfly Flower

Mon, 20 Jan 2014 07:11:00 +0000

“We need to not worship the reflection of God we see
in nature, in those works that approach perfection, or even the church
itself. We worship the God that made all these things”

While I don’t know much about the Maori faith, if their form of animism is anything like Shintoism, than you should realize they do not worship the physical land as a God, or merely a reflection of God – God is everywhere. In nature, in the sky, in the air. Its just some invisible, uncontrollable force that is in all of us and in everything. Like the Force from Star Wars.

God is Omnipresent and Omnipotent.

& like in Shintoism, I assume the Volcano is “sacred” because before the days of Volcanology it was misunderstood and feared. Animistic religions are simple, primitive.

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By: Lucia Maria

Mon, 20 Jan 2014 05:39:00 +0000

Some things are just unavoidable!

I don’t know what Buddha preached, thought I do know he believed we’d all get absorbed into great oneness, or something like that. He also preached we were on this almost endless cycle of reincarnation – completely stupid if you really stop to think about it – but so many people like it because it gives many second chances and immortality, of a type.

God wants us to worship Him – not for anything He needs, of course – but for us, so we will understand the right order of us to Him, and more besides. God is more than just empty space as His Son made the Invisible God, visible. Human beings, too, need that visibility, that physicality. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have bodies.

I see the ikonoclastic controversy a symptom of the desire of people to just be spiritual and not material, or to consider the material evil in some way, as the Gnostics did.

I’ll always remember when my youngest son was 5, nearly 6, and I was desperate for him to have faith in Jesus and in the Church (my family are converts), and the thing that worked for him was going into a cathedral (St Mary’s in Sydney), and coming across an almost life size crucifix on the wall as we were walking all around the church, and stopping and touching the feet of Our Lord with the nails in them, and saying, “So this is what they did to Him”. Something happened at that point, and for a small child, it needed to be real for him to get it.

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