It doesn’t mean I always practice what I preach. Fear gets in the way sometimes. Having no “flow” can make you vulnerable to predators. Having an abundance of flow attracts a succubus…or nine. Giving and receiving both have their innate rewards and responsibilities. I guess it’s about balance and attitude.

Your economist sister is glad to note your interest in the philosophy of money ! This is always interesting. History of money shows that grain and commodities were used once. They had problems with rodents though …

A book you might enjoy is William Greider’s Secrets of the Temple about the founding of the Federal Reserve Bank. Now that is an interesting subject !

If you want to know people living off the grid, growing their own food, heating their own homes, and generally living a self-sufficient life come on out to farm country, it is a whole different world.

I lost your number — give me a call sometime

Soma

This post was mentioned on Twitter by nationalgadfly: New blog post: the myth of “my money” http://thenationalgadfly.com/2010/02/28/the-myth-of-my-money-2/...

I hear what you are saying. My experience of God is pretty close to what you are talking about here, though no 100% and there is still allot of stuff that I am working through, for me this is a life long process.

A couple things to keep in mind:

1) I am not selling anything. I have my story of experiencing God and others have theirs. I always gain from engaging with others in that are willing to wrestle with these issues.

2) I am a Christian who is married to a Buddhist. We have a great marriage and our differences combined with our mutual humility and sense of mystery are a source of an on going conversation that has lasted over 5 years.

Here is how I see it.

The first concept that your concerns seem to be addressing is that of sin. My view of that all behavior has consequences and those consequences either are constructive or not. If someone swears, I am not sure there is any skin off His back, but it may impact the way you occur to other people, even create distance. I remember when I got out of the Navy I would drop an F-bomb every other word with our even realizing it. My car broke down and I was talking to a wrecker driver who was ex- military he mentioned the impression that it left so I curtailed it because it wasn’t constructive. (This was during a period when I was agnostic.) So I don’t view God as so much punishing for sin but granting us free will being there when we need him. In a semi-parental role using these experiences to help us grow. I also feel that while we make more of one “sin” or another it is all the same to him.

As far as the whole organized religion thing the Church is not God. In my view the Church falls short of what God intended it to do. I studied to be a minister and left the Church for 17 years. The issue was never God but the some of my own stuff and some of stuff that you point to in the post.

As far as what you do with you life goes, I don’t think that He is like a domineering parent that wants you to be a doctor or lawyer. Again I believe He creates us with certain passions and abilities and passions. He expects to use those in things that are constructive. (Caring for the poor and pressed is mentioned over 2000 times in The Bible.)

I believe God does what us to be happy. I also believe that He is not a cosmic vending machine. If we want to be happy we need to be, and do the things that will have us be happy. He gave us free will and in that we are responsible for being happy. I believe He is there to support us in certain ways if we ask.

The suffering in the world is really the results of the way human being behave. If human beings wanted to stop killing, raping, torturing and other wise oppressing each they don’t need God to step in like a parent breaking up a fight between two siblings. Human beings need to stop doing those things or stand up and stop those who are. As long as there are greedy, intolerant, violent or mentally ill people these things will happen; they will continue as long as there are those who don’t but say and do nothing.

I do believe in a God that created the universe, is in all things and at the same time separate from them. A God powerful, mighty, infallible, totally just. A God that would be 100% justified in leaving this world to destroy its self and letting us all perish.

I believe that my God did the unthinkable, he cared enough to take on human existence, spent his life showing us what would have us be truly happy and what got in the way of that, let us know that any time we wanted to reach out to him was there and that if we wanted to, we could spend eternity with Him.

For that we did what we do so well, we criticized Him, tortured Him, and we killed Him. Three days later he came back, even after all that, he still returned to express His love. He did this not because He had to, or needed to, but because that is who He is. That is that God I have faith in, that is the love that I experience and am able to share with this world.

He desires only 2 things of me that I love Him as He has loved me and that I love the rest of the human beings on this planet regardless of what they believe.

This is not that God I would have created, but I am glad for that.

Project much?

Atheists, by default, accept responsibility for their own actions, circumstances, and decisions since they do not have various demons, gods, devils, or angels to blame them on.

man, I’ll bet you fell of your Barca lounger when you thought of that killer comment. it’s scary to think of how much smarter than the rest of us all, you truly are.