How God Can Bless

If there is a way to tell you all about how God can bless

If you could share with me in God's presence in my mess

Oh what a wonderful grace would crash down

And break us to pieces, simply at the sound

Once we're broken and we've lost all our pride

God can start to make us anew from the inside

He'll show you everyday, just like He showed me

That He has truly loved us from the start of eternity

How real and true are His great acts of grace

That it's alomst as if we are seeing His face

- Castor

In God's Hands

I was talking with a friend recently, and I mentioned to him that I am in God's hands. Obviously this doesn't mean a huge giant I call God is phyically grasping me as we speak. So what really do I mean?

The way i understand it i have surrendered to God's will in my life. I am not only letting Him direct me, but rather i've climbed up into his arms and He's carrying me to where He wants me to go.

The tricky thing about this is it means i have no control. But the beauty of it is that it means God is in complete control. The same God who created our solar system and every intricacy therein is also carrying me. He knows better than I.

But often times i'll get bogged down with guilt from my sin. What's happening there? I believe an analogy i learned this summer describes it perfectly. Satan is called the accuser. One of his main gimmicks is telling us Christians we aren't good enough for God, and that we need to work harder. He injects guilt when we don't do this. This is like Satan putting a treadmill next to me as God is carrying me. Believing Satan's lie is like getting on the treadmill and try and run to where God is taking me. Imagine how ridulous that would look like. Not only am i not going anywhere by my own effort, but it should be clear that i am going somewhere because is holding me. Before i know it i'm exhausted and discouraged because i can't see past the stupid treadmill.

Here is where God's grace comes back into the picture. Inevitably my hard work, running as fast as i can on the treadmill, is going to give out and i'm going to fall hard. It'll hurt for sure (if you've ever fallen off a treadmill you know what i mean), but i'll just fall right back into God's hands. All i need to do is see it and believe it, and go back to relying on God's strength to get me through this life.

As soon as i start relying on my ability to please God, i'm getting right back on the treadmill.

My only problem now is God's hands are so big and powerful that i can't see over them. I'm doing all i can to peer in between his fingers to see where He's taking me. That's the real adventure.

Comtemplative Learning - (Smile)

This was a homework assignment i posted this evening in my Phil, Rel, and Environment class. I love the freedom i have in my given assignments.

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I walked into a field next to my house. The ground was wet from the recent rain. I walked barefoot in circles for a while. I looked down and noticed something small jump across my foot. I thought about all the millions of creatures that live in that field. Some probably even die in that field. Some probably don't live much longer than a few days. How short compared to my life. Then i thought about how short my life is compared to God's, who created me and the earth, and created time. How small my life is compared to His. Yet He tells me that He formed me in my mother's womb and knows me by name. And He loves me so much that He died for me. That truth is still somewhat incomprehensible.

Then lighting flashed. I immediately thought about how cool it is. And how it gives light to the whole world (as far as I can see) for just a second. Yet the light makes known all the secrets of the dark. Truth is in the light. In the darkness is held fears, mainly of the unknown. I think the spiritual world is like this too. Often times I know the truth. But when i'm surrounded by spiritual darkness, it's easy to forget what the truth looks like. But then I see flashes of God that remind of the truth all around me. It's scary but comforting at the same time.

Journal Article Review for Research Methods

Christopher Randazzo – Philosophy Journal Article Review

“Free Will and the Problem of Evil”

Author: James Cain

Source: Religious Studies, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec., 2004), pp. 437-456

Published by: Cambridge University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20008555

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The central problem of this article is to defend the incompatibilism that is required by the free will defense that allows for the problem of evil to arrive out of a misuse of our free will in a world created by an all perfect God. This article is in response to the objection that determinism can be compatible with free will in such a way that God might have predetermined our free will to be exercised sinlessly.

The way Cain goes about this is first to distinguish between three different types of compatibilism—metaphysical, conceptual, and epistemic—and the logical relationship between them. He explains that to say two statements are “compatible” means they can both be true at the same time, thus he breaks down the three types of compatibilism into representative truth statements. At first glance it looks like a complicated proof you might see in a logic and proof class, but all in all he is plainly using symbols to simplify long statements.

First he defines a statement (S) as metaphysically necessary if it is true with respect to every metaphysically possible world, and (S) as conceptually necessary if it is analytically true in each possible world. Likewise a statement (S) is metaphysically possible if the statement is true in at least one possible metaphysical world, and (S) is conceptually possible if the statement can by proved analytically in at least one possible world. Thus “metaphysical compatibility” is when two statements are metaphysically true at the same time. Likewise “conceptual compatibility” is when two statements are conceptually true at the same time. Cain makes the point that if two statements are conceptually compatible, they must be metaphysically compatible. On the other hand, two statements can be metaphysically compatible but not conceptually compatible. Cain practically skips over “epistemic compatibility” as he refers to it as the least plausible type of compatibilism because it is the most complex and includes the most variables.

Based on this point, Cain spends the majority of time talking about his “difficulties” with metaphysical compatibility because if he can persuade the reader that there are simply too many problems with this kind of compatibility, he has no need is expounding upon the other kinds of compatibility. Cain admits that metaphysical compatibilism is the most plausible for the opposing argument, but he is far from convinced. He does this by using typical arguments for compatibilism—namely paradigm-case arguments, conceptual analysis, and Frankfurt-style examples—and shows that they are poor proofs for compatibilism.

I think Cain’s article is true under the assumptions and definitions he uses, most of which I would agree with. But there are so many terms to define and base assumptions made that one can hardly fully agree. Another sense of this article’s “trueness” is that Cain does not boldly say that one side of the argument is true or false. He does not refute the opposing argument as false, but only shows “difficulties,” and he only spends about a page arguing for his own side, which is no “proof” by any stretch of the word.

However, this article is still profitable to reader because Cain is not trying to convince the reader that his thoughts are irrefutable truths, but rather to think through the issue of free will and determinism in a new, hopefully clearer, way.

I could not find any style guidelines or instructions for authors.

The journal Religious Studies is peer-reviewed by a renowned international board of scholars to ensure that the articles are of the highest quality.