Dale offers the freestyle or festival prompt for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge. I picked freestyle which is anything goes.
These two photos were taken by the pond across the street. In the first I was surprised to the see red blossoms which I think are part of a vine using the tree as support.
The intricate leaves on the tree fascinate me with their details in the second photo. They are only a few feet away from the vine with red blossoms.
I put together this six-question multiple choice test to help people see if they have a biblical worldview, or not. There’s an answer key at the end as well as a consolation prize for those who do not pass the test.
The Test
Is abortion wrong? (Hint: Exodus 20:13)
A) Abortion is wrong.
B) People can decide for themselves whether abortion is wrong.
C) What does abortion have to do with a biblical worldview?How many genders are there? (Hint: Genesis 1:27)
A) There are two and only two genders.
B) People can decide for themselves how many genders there are and which gender they want to be whenever they want to be it.
C) My gender is none of your business unless I make it your business by insisting you remember my pronouns.If you are on the beach looking at the ocean, where do you think all of that water came from? (Hint: Genesis 6-9)
A) The water came from Noah's global flood.
B) The water got there somehow billions of years ago.
C) Who cares where the water came from? Given that people speak many languages today where did this linguistic diversity come from? (Hint: Genesis 11:1-9 and Douglas Petrovich’s explanation)
A) The diversity originated from God confusing the language of the people at Babel. Then the Babel dispersion began. From that dispersion language families arose.
B) The diversity happened somehow as the result of a long evolutionary process taking perhaps a million years.
C) However it happened, no god had anything to do with it.What’s going to happen to us? (Hint: Revelation 4-22)
A) Jesus will return for His bride. Our spirits will never cease to be. Our bodies and souls will be renewed. The only concern will be whether we are part of His bride, or not.
B) Humanity will go on for millions, if not billions, of years searching the stars for other intelligent lifeforms and then it will go extinct.
C) Whatever happens there will be no heaven, no hell, no nothing—--Get used to it!Who is Jesus? (Hint: See this list of Bible verses.)
A) Jesus is God, the second Person of the Trinity.
B) Jesus, like Buddha and Socrates, was a great guy with sound moral teaching whom we should use as a model if we want to be good like he was.
C) Jesus never existed. The Answer Key
How did you do on the test?
If you answered A for each of the above, then your worldview is biblical. If you answered B or C, even once, you need to ask yourself: What made you think those answers had any chance of being correct?
The Consolation Prize
For those who flunked the test there’s still Buddha, Sarasvati, Gaia, Thor, Moloch, Lucifer and Cosmic Consciousness to name a few of the many options that remain. Pick one or more of them. Then think and think and think going down, down, down the rabbit hole until…
Until when?
…until you get tired of the futility and long for the real thing.
Robert walked up to the pastor while he was delivering the sermon, lay flat on the platform in front of the congregation and screamed at the top of his voice, “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” Then he rose and walked with indifference to the back of the church expecting a lecture of some sort from Jeremy because of the disturbance he caused. In his own defense he would argue that all he was trying to do was call on the name of the Lord to prove that such magic tricks don’t work especially for the likes of him.
Jeremy, who let Robert enter wondering what delightful mischief was on his mind today, waited for him unsure whether to reprimand or console. Without understanding what good it would do but with Robert’s permission Jeremy followed the request of a soft inward voice to put his hands on each side of Robert’s head and say, “Jesus!”
It surprised Jeremy to see Robert crumble to the floor weeping with an uncontrolled joy knowing finally that even someone like himself could never be the same again.
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Denise offers the prompt word “console” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
This tale is fictional. However, if you have a born-again relationship with the Holy Spirit, what happened between Jeremy and Robert is not the result of magic tricks nor hypnosis. Hearing His soft inward voice should not be confused with talking to oneself (nor with some demon’s temptation to do something inappropriate). His voice will tell you what to do. You will not likely feel comfortable doing it, but He responds to your obedience out of love for you and those around you for His own glory.
The Father’s God and Jesus, too.
The Holy Spirit filling you
who overflows and makes you new—
He’s also the same God.
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Ronovan Hester’s Ovi Poetry Challenge offers the word “equal” as inspiration. Posted also on Poet’s Corner.
The bottom line about the Trinity is that there’s a difference between absolute identity used in mathematics to allow for substituting terms (such as 1+1 which can be substituted with 2 only because 1+1 = 2 under all circumstances) and relative identity that works best in the real world (such as identifying the morning star with the evening star which are both equal or identical to Venus even though it doesn’t make sense to call Venus the evening star when you see it in the morning). Think of relative identity should you ever look at the Trinity as a logical puzzle. The Trinity also makes sense out of the philosophical problem of the One and the Many. If you don’t think the Trinity is in the Bible, read Matthew 3:16-17. All three Persons of the Trinity are at the baptism of Jesus by John. The fathers of the church taught the Trinity long before the Council of Nicaea.
Dale offers the prompt “around the garden” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.
Our garden is on the back patio. There are also flowers by the front door.
I lost myself with some disgrace.
The mirror cringed to see my face.
I didn’t think it was a race
until I knew it was.
But that was then and now is now.
With soil turned beneath the plow
the seed was planted—God knows how—
and everything was changed.
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Ronovan Hester’s Ovi Poetry Challenge this week offers the word “race” as inspiration. Posted also at Poet’s Corner.
For Stan the idea that anything might exist put a strain on what he could philosophically tolerate. Asserting himself he told his students that there wasn’t a single good reason why any of them were here.
But all of that was before the accident, the emergency room, the coma and the visitations. Things started to click when one visitor with attractive horns offered him a full twenty years in exchange for his spirit.
Stan wished he could have told his students what he discovered before his life support was removed. He consoled himself with the thought that they would find it more credible if they heard it from someone else.
______
Denise offers the prompt word “strain” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Dale offers the prompt “shadows and silhouettes” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.
These were taken in Miami Beach, Florida, near 74th Street years ago on two different mornings.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 