The angel, shining with the glory of the Lord and fearful to behold, gave glad tidings of great joy. The joy was without limit. Look for the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.
Then the heavenly hosts praised God, saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
In Bethlehem we found the child.
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Denise offers the prompt word “limit” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. For what really happened see Luke 2.
I woke up in the middle of the night with an idea for a great story. I take no credit for the idea. It suddenly manifested, but I was tired. It was like I found a shiny treasure on the ground and all I had to do was pick it up, but I was tired.
Since it was a great story and it kept repeating, I eventually did get out of bed and started typing. I wrote the following sentence.
Then Timothy said something else as if it all depended on his words, but it didn’t all depend on his words.
I knew I should have written more before I went back to bed, but I was tired. Since I knew what I should have done, but didn’t do it, I disobeyed. When I finally woke up and read that sentence, the bare bones of the great story, I realized I lost it. I am left with a reminder that disobedience brings consequences. Sure God loves me and all, but if I don’t want to receive a great story by waking up long enough to write it down how can I receive what I have chosen not to receive?
Here’s the point of this essay: Can I get that story back with my own mental abilities?
I don’t think I can, but that is because I don’t think these things come from my own mental abilities in the first place. I’m not a materialist. That noodle on top of my head can only do so much. All this applies to you as well, of course. Even if we pooled our heads together and used our best efforts we could not come up with that great story again.
Hopefully I finally learnt my lesson because this was not the first time I was too tired to receive a blessing. Knowing my tendency to get tired, I have even kept a notebook by the side of the bed so I have less excuse not to write what comes from dreams or even from thoughts upon awakening, but I still get tired.
I’ve got to stop letting my body tell me what to do.
If you really understand that you can’t get there from here you will not waste any time trying to do so. In the case of my story, I will wait for fresh inspiration and stay awake next time.
Inspiration comes from God. If you don’t believe in God, it doesn’t matter. Inspiration still comes from Him. However, those who deny God lose a Way Maker. He’s still there but they have to delude themselves by inflating their own abilities or the abilities of nature to pretend to get stuff done without Him. There’s nothing like delusion to help one come up with ways to go from there to here or here to there forgetting that without God, most of the time, you can’t get there from here or you’d wish you hadn’t if you did. Without God we get lost.
There are many ways people try to get there from here without God. Here are a few that come to mind.
You can’t get a starry universe from a big bang
Since an orderly universe exists those seeking to explain how it got here without God have a lot of explaining to do. Some think a big bang might work. If you are trying to get order out of chaos an explosion has to be the worst starting point.
To make a star after the big bang makes a mess you need a cloud of gas. Gravity brings the gas together, but only if it can overcome the pressure to expand by somehow staying cool. Assuming you do get enough gas compressed that it becomes a thermonuclear accident waiting to happen, you then need a star to come along and blow itself up to ignite that “protostar” so it can blow itself up as well.
At least that is how I understand the alleged process which suggests to some that the laws of physics can’t explain star formation.
You can’t get reality from simulations
The whole point of artificial “intelligence” is to reduce human intelligence to machine-executable instructions. Then human beings could be thought of as made in the image of a machine, rather than made in the image of God.
A simulation takes this further and reduces reality itself to computer code. For me a simulation nightmare would start with the thought of a teenager in his basement in a galaxy far far away deciding to simulate a universe and suddenly I find myself in it.
That’s when I’d wake up.
You can’t get a diversity of creatures from mutations
It is amazing how often those who want to get where they’re going without God rely on decay processes to do so.
In the case of biological evolution, if you want a new kind of creature without God creating that creature you start with a creature and hope random mutations will turn the creature into something else before the mutations decay the creature to the point that it can no longer reproduce.
Mutations are decay processes. They don’t add information; they destroy it. On the way to extinction one may get a large variety of the same kind of creature, mutated, for sure, but one doesn’t get a new kind of creature with a lot of fresh information for mutations to destroy.
One is always racing against the clock when one relies on decay processes or has to counter them. Having a gazillion years to get it all done doesn’t really help. All it does is give those decay processes more time to decay stuff.
Conclusion
Face it: you can’t get where you want to go without God’s assistance. Without God, you can’t get there from here. With God, you have a Way Maker. Without Him, why bother?
Just because I wake up with an idea, a gift from the Holy Spirit, for a great story does not mean I can go back to sleep and come up with that story again later on my own when I am awake. I didn’t get that story in the first place on my own. All I could do on my own is write it down, that is, receive it.
I will have to wait for the Holy Spirit to offer something new, perhaps, something like this essay as a kind of repentance for my disobedience.
Neil recalculated using a different ratio of aligned nuclei in his controversial water-hydrogen model. Fifteen minutes later the results gave him the number he was looking for, 7576.3, with intermediate computations validating the steps, but with an uncertainty of 21.2. He wanted a tighter uncertainty before submitting his paper to the Institute, but the main result, regardless of the uncertainty detail, was well below Hardy’s upper bound of 7670.
Neil’s wife called from downstairs, Earth to Daddy, pizza’s ready!
His daughter also called, Earth to Daddy, pizza, pizza, pizza!
Neil walked down the stairs, picked up his giggling daughter, kissed his smiling wife and led a prayer of thanksgiving over the food knowing that, whatever the uncertainty, his family had much to rejoice over.
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Denise offers the prompt word “detail” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
George listened to Anton say, Those in Hell want to be there. This convinced George that Anton hung onto reality by only a looney link since why would anyone ever want to be in a place like that?
When George died and went to Hell he became a prominent commander in Satan’s army commissioned to nuke the daylights out of Heaven. By contrast when Anton died he went to Heaven.
George exhausted himself throughout his eternity attacking Heaven in every which way he could imagine with extreme prejudice. However, Heaven being what it is, Anton noticed none of it.
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Denise offers the prompt word “link” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
I got the idea that I put in Anton’s mouth that those in Hell wanted to be there from the following passage in The Great Divorce.
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. (C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, page 75)
The Fairy Tale Bible has the same words in it as the Real Bible. What makes it different from the Real Bible is that the words in the Fairy Tale Bible mean something different from what they mean in the Real Bible.
It is easy to get started with a Fairy Tale Bible. Go online and find any popular bible offered. To transform it into a Fairy Tale Bible rather than a Real Bible, don’t read any more of the book than you have to. This is the first rule regarding the Fairy Tale Bible. The second rule is to fake-read this bible by listening to New Age or atheist leaning commentators who will tell us what the text says since we aren’t going to be reading it ourselves anyway.
We can then babble about “evolution” or write poetic nonsense about “the universe” and pretend that we are just as “biblical” as the next guy.
Examples of Fake-Reading
Genesis 1
For example, if we were reading about the six days of creation in the Real Bible, we would understandably think of six 24-hour days because they have an evening and a morning and we know how to read.
To fake-read this in the Authorized Atheist Version of the Fairy Tale Bible we would let some commentator tell us that the word “day” means a gazillion number of years over which an unscientific process called “evolution” turned a random explosion called the “big bang” into stars, galaxies and people through chance events. The commentator may, or may not depending on how supposedly Christian he is, graciously give God permission to “guide” that unscientific process (which doesn’t actually exist) so God has something useless to do.
Admittedly fake-reading is a pathetic alternative to actually reading the Real Bible, but I suspect, indeed from my own personal experience I am convinced, that is how some people read the bible.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts – the whole NT
As another example, if we read about the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus in the Real Bible we would see these as real historical events with significance for ourselves and our families regarding repentance and salvation.
However, if we were fake-reading the Lalaland Edition of the Fairy Tale Bible we would read a commentator who’d compare what happened to Jesus to what happens in near-death experiences. Then we would listen to a commentator claim someone found the very box in which the very bones of Jesus were stored. And then we’d watch a movie based on a novel that showed us how Jesus and Mary Magdalen had children who became royalty in Lalaland.
Genesis 6-9
It doesn’t get any better when reading about Noah’s flood. In the Real Bible we would think of a global catastrophe which ultimately formed the mountains, glaciers, canyons and oceans that we see around us. Our praise and gratitude to God would be immense for His mercy in protecting those eight people along with two of each kind of breathing creature so they could have survived that event and we could be here.
Should we want to switch over to the Fairy Tale Bible all we’d have to do is pretend that flood catastrophe never happened or at least wasn’t global. We would see it as one of those goofy things primitive people without any brains make up. We’d blindly believe that “scientists” one day would be able to explain, or at least convince each other, how those mountains, glaciers, canyons and oceans got there.
Real Life Example of a Fairy Tale Bible Commentator
Consider what the philosopher and supposed Christian apologist William Lane Craig said about Genesis: There are hints in the text itself that a seven day twenty-four hour day Creation week is not contemplated by the author. (1:44)
In case you didn’t notice, Craig is reading “hints” which aren’t actually there, in spite of him saying “in the text itself”, rather than the actual words which are, indeed, in the text itself. Although I’ve been plenty gullible in the past, today, as soon as I hear words like “hint” about a bible verse I anticipate that I will be led down a rabbit hole the commentator himself can’t find his way out of.
It is also worth noting for those not familiar with fairy tale thought patterns that Craig said contemplated by the author, but not contemplated by Moses whom most people would recognize as the author of Genesis. This omission of the name “Moses” was likely deliberate. The point of the Fairy Tale Bible is to discredit the Real Bible as an historical document. One way to do that is to fictionalize the people mentioned in it. Here Craig is subliminally suggesting that someone other than Moses might have written Genesis to raise our suspicion about the truth of anything else in that book or in any other book in the bible.
If the Real Bible is history we would have to take it seriously. That is why historicity is attacked by those promoting the Fairy Tale Bible. Fairy tale commentators do not want us to take the Real Bible seriously.
Craig excuses his position in advance by saying, I think that the book of Genesis is open to a wide range of legitimate interpretations. (1:19)
That he has to make this excuse at all is a sign that he’s aware that his position is not what his audience is ready to accept. He wants to disarm any hostile reaction from them. Some of them may even see him as a heretic. To avoid such a charge up front he asserts on his own authority that the book of Genesis is “open” to “wide” interpretation.
Since Craig is a philosopher, it’s a fair question to ask him what it means philosophically for him to call his interpretation “legitimate”? Unless he’s an atheistic humanist believing that man is the standard of all things, it doesn’t really matter what he thinks. What matters is: Does God think his interpretation is legitimate? What evidence does he have that God agrees with him?
If Craig is honest, he would not be able to answer that question and so he would likely throw it back at me. He would demand to know: What evidence do I have that God agrees with me? My response would be that I am a reader of the Real Bible. My “interpretation” is neither more nor less than accepting God’s Word as it was written. Given his searching for hints that contradict the actual words in the text that would be a response Craig could no longer honestly give.
Craig also said, There is a very tiny minority of Christians today who believe that the world was created some ten to twenty thousand years ago. (0:45)
And he proudly proclaimed that he’s not one of them. Oddly, this analytic philosopher doesn’t seem to know that truth does not depend on a majority vote. His reference to “a very tiny minority” does sound like an underestimation to make his own position look better than it is.
However, even if his poll numbers were correct (which I doubt), being part of a remnant is not necessarily a bad thing especially if one considers the remnant entering by the narrow way in Matthew 7:13-14. You would have to be reading the Real Bible to even know those verses. So, just in case you aren’t, let me quote them. (The red emphasis, however, is mine.)
Matthew 7:13-14 (KJV) 13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: 14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
Admittedly, anyone who persists in fake-reading the Fairy Tale Bible will start thinking in fairy tale English, but the quantity of people suffering from a delusion does not make that delusion true.
Confession
The reason all of this bothers me is because I used to read, talk and think fairy tale English just as fluently as the next deluded babbler. I even tried to make sense out of atheistic big bang mythology using Craig’s Kalam cosmological argument.
But then I broke the first fake-reading rule. I actually read the Real Bible. Although I still listened to commentators, I didn’t just listen to questionable ones talk about it. I noticed that there was a history in the Real Bible that I do remember people, long ago, having mentioned but which I had forgotten. Then I became very suspicious of those commentators leading me into either an atheistic or New Age direction.
However, I can’t take full credit for this change of heart. If it were up to me alone it would not have happened, because I would not have had an experiential base for trusting what I read in the Real Bible. The Holy Spirit had to smack me around a bit.
It is helpful to realize that fairy tale English has two overlapping dialects: atheist and New Age. These dialects seem contradictory, but they actually complement each other. Each dialect contains its own blend of pseudoscientific speculation and magical witchcraft. That is, each dialect contains a different blend of Star Wars and Harry Potter, but otherwise they are pretty much the same delusion. What I have come to realize is that the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with either of them.
With results coming from the James Webb Space Telescope even atheists today are smartening up. Some of them now think that the big bang either didn’t happen (which leaves them with what?) or the mythical bang has to be pushed back another gazillion years to place it outside the falsifying reach of modern technology. Although they don’t appreciate it, they are at a fortunate crossroads where they have to start thinking and make better choices.
Craig thought he saw a crack in atheism because they hypothesized a beginning to the universe. He bought into their fairy tale of deep time and imaginary chance processes just to keep this hypothetical beginning afloat. Unfortunately he had to throw Genesis under the bus to do that.
When the big bang reaches the status of a falsified hypothesis (because it really makes no sense in any self-respecting atheistic, closed universe constrained by increasing entropy) I wonder how these compromising Christians will respond? May they repent as well as I did and may they start using their academic training to do real apologetics work in support of the Real Bible.
Genesis 3:1-5 (KJV) Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? 2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
What would be the benefits as promised by the deceiving serpent of eating that fruit?
Your eyes shall be opened. You would become woke.
You shall be as gods. You, not God, would become the standard.
You will know good and evil.You, not God, would become the judge of others.
Ryan paced the floor complaining about Timothy whom he paraded for judgement through his mind. His indignation was so rationally air-tight that he built a dam of condemnation out of it.
Then a miracle happened. Ryan had a vision of how much the Lord loved Timothy in spite of every accusation Ryan could concoct against him.
When Ryan’s own repentance breached the dam, he didn’t know what overcame him. His heart was flooded with joy.
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Denise offers the prompt word “vision” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Being lukewarm is a serious condition. It means running out of oil when one needs it most. It means missing the bridegroom. It means being locked out of the wedding feast because one’s lamp has gone out. (Matthew 25:1-13, Revelation 3:14-22)
The Spirit’s presence within us leads to a life that bears fruit. Those who submit to the Spirit will bear the fruit of the Spirit throughout the remainder of their lives or they will need to repent and receive once again the joy of revival that they could have had all along.
Galatians 5:22-23 (AMP) 22 But the fruit of the Spirit [the result of His presence within us] is love [unselfish concern for others], joy, [inner] peace, patience [not the ability to wait, but how we act while waiting], kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Hoping to balance his wobbling view of reality Timothy read the message inside his fortune cookie. Given his expectations for something prophetic he felt cheated when all he read was
Have a nice day.
Self-diagnosed with the rare condition of being intellectually superior to everyone else, he vowed, as punishment to cookie makers everywhere, to never again eat, let alone read the messages within, their cookies.
However, like all of his previous resolutions, this one collapsed a week or so later when he got a taste for Chinese food and found a plastic wrapped cookie in his takeout bag. Figuring “the universe”, as he liked to depersonalize reality, was too dumb, or nonexistent, to care whether he kept his vows, he broke open the cookie to extract the hidden message. Regardless what was actually written on the slip of paper, all he remembered of the message he read was
If you aren’t grateful for a nice day, Timothy, how can you expect to receive a blessed one?
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Denise offers the prompt word “balance” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
In sorrow Naomi felt the need to turn away from Moab to find what was left for her in Bethlehem after the death of her husband and her two sons. Ruth, the widow of one of her sons, refused to let her go alone, telling her, Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay, and your people will be my people, and your God will be my God, and where you die, I will die.
In Bethlehem Ruth gleaned from the fields of an older man, Boaz, not knowing he was a near kinsman of Naomi’s deceased husband. After negotiations with another kinsman Boaz redeemed the land belonging to Naomi and married Ruth so she could bear children to raise up the name of her deceased husband upon his inheritance.
As a result of this union, Ruth, a Moabite woman, bore a son and called him Obed. From Obed would come Jesse and from Jesse would come David, the singer of psalms, mighty in battle and a future king, and from David would come, generations later, Jesus, the promised Messiah.
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Denise offers the prompt word “turn” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. For what really happened see the short book of Ruth.
Romans 10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 