AnOrangeCat

Relatable post. TheBlade is right in that we're in a constant war against our feelings. It's nice when they align with our walk with God but a lot of the time they run counter to it. On the boredom front I recommend reading just what you can manage. Forget devotion plans that tell you to read X amount of pages/chapters/etc. a day and go at your own pace. You'll retain what you read better when you aren't stretching the limits of your attention span, and in a way it ends up comparing yourself with others. The comparing is usually a recipe for feeling lousy about yourself. I felt pretty lukewarm for a big chunk of my life, then I went through a long term trial by fire and some other unpleasant things that involved years of abuse and my own mental illnesses working against me. It helped a lot after God brought me out of the abuse and I got some recovery time. It did a lot for my walk with God but even still I relate to the part about not being okay with giving God some things but not others. We're works in progress so I think it's quite often just a matter of hanging in there and doing our best. If you look at Psalms the writers of some of them were definitely in dark places at times, just going "How much longer is this going to go on, God?". Something I realized in my own insecurities about my walk with God is that no amount of reasoning or encouragement from others or hearing about what God had done with others ever really helped. Sometimes it can even be counterproductive because it's another thing that invites comparison with others. The problem is also an emotional one, and emotions tend to not listen to sound logic for very long. I realize this potentially invites comparison, but I think that's why God had me go down a path that enticed me to take baby steps toward going out of my way to do stuff for Him and try to help others in His name. Just doing those little things gradually made me feel better about my relationship with God and my standing with Him. When I felt more secure in my relationship with God it took a lot of the bite out of the emotional issues that were holding me back and causing me a lot of anxiety and depression.

I've been learning the ropes of forex trading for the past couple of years, and this is one that scares me a bit. Since I keep an eye on both the value of the dollar and financial news I've been able to note some concerning things. Back in 2013 it was noted that several big banks were colluding to manipulate currency values for their own gain, and that they'd been doing it for at least a decade prior. The banks got a slap on the wrist, of course. It's just one of many things that point to an alarming lack of accountability within the financial sector.

I agree with JohnD. I've also suffered from intrusive thoughts that are similarly awful, to the point of panic and tears. There's a form of religiously themed OCD called scrupulosity that can manifest this way. I'd treat these intrusive thoughts as OCD and look into methods that deal with them. In my own case I've found that not engaging with them is the most efficient way to deal with them, but what worked for me may or may not be as efficient for you. I'll add this, though. The intrusive thoughts I had didn't respond to logic. They preyed on emotion. That maybe I'd done the unpardonable sin, or some stray thought I had would have dire consequences. Objectively I knew how ridiculous it was but my heart wouldn't let go. I had a really bad episode at some point in my 30s, one of the worst. Weirdly it prompted me to step up in my walk with God. Of course we know that salvation isn't based on works, but I personally felt more secure in my salvation after a while of that. That feeling addressed my emotionally based problem with emotion, and it did a lot to kill the frequency and the intensity of those thoughts.

Thanks for sharing. I subscribe to the view of it being a warning against usurpation as well, but also against disruption. I Corinthians 14 as a chapter largely deals with church services, and a thing that stands out to me is the instruction for a woman to ask her husband at home. Between that and the era I have the impression that there's an element of women in that era (and most of human history) not having the relevant knowledge and experience to immediately understand certain things that would have been more obvious to men, hence asking at home late rather than interrupting an ongoing service.

Thanks for the recommendation. I've found myself considering it lately so we'll see. I like the idea of being multilingual from a programming perspective.

My main experience is with C++ so far. I'm still very much a beginner though. I'm also learning a little javascript on the side. Where I am now C++ makes sense to me, javascript makes me cringe in terror.

Same. I think the devil and demons get more credit than they deserve for things that are just the failings of the flesh. I will point out that breaks can be productive, too. Sometimes when I'm doing computer programming I'll bash my head against something that isn't quite working right and have no idea why it isn't working. One good sleep later and it all makes perfect sense and the problem is resolved in minutes. This kind of thing happens with me a lot.

I'm with Sower. Same thing. But to cite some practical examples, something that I've seen come up with people is asking God for a "sign" about something. Then their own desires interpret things in a way that's favorable to what they wanted when it wasn't really a sign at all. Our "hardware" can certainly malfunction as well. Having lived with someone with "moderate" dementia I'm well aware of how that can interfere with our minds and how we perceive and process things.

Excellent post. This part in particular stood out to me as someone who's been in the ditch and saw people from the church pass on by until one of them didn't. I do get that you're pointing out he spiritual element of this and completely agree, but having been hit hard by this in a physical/material sense it's difficult for me to not reflect on that experience when this kind of topic comes up. It does feel like loving your neighbor as yourself has become a lot more rare and difficult these days. I think so. There's bound to be exceptions and degrees, of course. I've lived all over the country over the course of my life and dealt with people of all ages, and see my own generation (I was born in the early 80s) as a transitional one between the time when face to face interaction was a day to day reality and today's one where so much is done over distance via the internet and a lot of people don't even know their literal neighbor's name. Here in the rural Texas I think the detachment from community is less severe but still present. Probably. I've noticed a rise in social anxiety amongst the younger people, along with some other traits that seem to feed into it and point to some underlying dysfunction(s). I mostly feel resigned about it. I want to believe in a better world even though I don't. It's something I long for, I just don't expect to see it on earth anymore. I'm coming from a place of being housebound with a history of being abused and amongst other things having the idea that my opinions, actions, and feelings don't really matter. God instilled some traits that made me rather resilient against that sort of abuse but still it's left me rather jaded, so short of advising and occasionally reaching out to people it seems I can help out I don't feel like there's a whole lot I can do. So far as no point goes I see a certain duality there. Maybe it's just setting realistic expectations. So far as the big picture goes I don't think we can really affect it. Jesus said the love of many would wax cold so I think it's inevitable. But I think there's more to it than the big picture. In the situation I alluded to above when replying to Sower that one guy from the church who took the time to pray with me and drive me home made such an impression on me that I still smile a little. Just having someone offer me a ride home and taking the time to listen to me and pray for me was so encouraging. As long as my earthly brain holds out I'm going to remember that guy. We can definitely change things for the better on a person to person scale. And at the end of the day it's also important to remember that loving our neighbors as ourselves isn't something we need to do to change things. It's an explicitly stated commandment.

I wouldn't say ignore exactly, but remember the two great commandments? Jesus told us that the law revolved around them. It makes perfect sense, too. If you love God and your neighbor you won't be doing wrong against them and if there are accidents it's okay. The thing is no malice alone falls short of the mark. A neighbor who doesn't have any ill will toward you is nice, but that doesn't mean they'd go out of their way to be good to you in or out of a time of need. Looking to the standards of other cultures for a moment, the so called silver rule of Confucius is "Don't do to others what you wouldn't want them doing to you." but the golden rule of Jesus is "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The former is passive and operates on no malice, or at least keeping it in check, whereas the rule Jesus gave us points toward being active and proactive. That meshes well with loving your neighbor as yourself.

A little off topic but this is really a stand out verse to me. Going to Genesis 6:6 before the flood it says people were so wicked that God regretted making them and even grieved over it. That feels so meaningful. Despite our many mistakes as individuals and a collective and reaching the point of inspiring regret and grief over our very creation God is still not only mindful of us but wants to reconcile. I see it as indicating reconciliation and a closer relationship, personally. Part of James 4:8 feels in line with this: "Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you." This wording indicates to me that it's a joint effort. Obviously this doesn't mean God is coming closer to us in becoming more like us, but rather that when we make a sincere effort He helps us along the way.

My experience has been that within the context of public education it's a buzzword without much substance to it. The idea sounds nice and scientific, carefully analyzing information to discern the truth of something. But in practice you're only displaying "critical thinking" when your conclusions are in line with the agenda and/or the professor's sacred cows. Back when I was more into debating I liked to demonstrate the silliness of things like subjective truth with illustrations that were ridiculous but relevant. A man comes to believe that eating manure is harmless and will give him the power to fly and shoot lasers out of his eyes. Does his subjective "truth" really have any impact on reality? Obviously not. People would rightly think such a person was insane. The more compassionate and concerned people would even try to stop him and get him help. Slightly off topic, but I do feel like this is a multifaceted thing. The education system definitely feels like it's become increasingly hostile to Christianity just over the course of my lifetime. But there's other factors as well, such as attacks on Christian values in general and things like the internet and cell phones contributing to a larger than normal generation gap.

I know the thread has more or less run its course by this point, but earlier today I came across some relevant news. They now have a thing called Brainoware. It's made out of lab grown human brain cells hooked up to a computer chip. Feels more and more like we're living in science fiction.

This is something I learned about a few years back looking into cryptocurrency. You can make money off of it but it's also going to drive up your electric bill. Another important thing is that both mining cryptocurrency and running AI are dependent on a computer's video card, or GPU. The market for these has gone up considerably over the past 10 years or so over the past 8 years or so and consequently driven up the prices. Places like China have set up some pretty huge operations with many computers devoted to the sole purpose of acquiring bitcoin and similar. It wouldn't surprise me at all if AI ends up responsible for a similar boom in both demand and development in the near future.

I'm skeptical of it. I think these are things God wants for us. Loving our neighbor as ourselves moves us closer to liberty, equality, and happiness for sure. James mentions a "law of liberty" and "the law that gives freedom" (exact wording may vary according to translation). OT law improved upon Hammurabi's law in ways that raised the standard more toward equality. But a "right"? Especially an "unalienable" right as declared in the preamble? Just looking at life for starters seems to rule it out. Unalienable means it's something that can't be taken away. We know God keeps His promises. He brought down the great flood because people had become so wicked. He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. He hit Egypt with plagues. There are plenty more examples, and He's just in all of them. Jesus told us to fear God, who could destroy us in Hell. Liberty? The Israelites found themselves in slavery on multiple occasions as a disciplinary action. Hebrews 12:6-7 tells us that when God disciplines us it's a sign of His love. Paul also reminds us that while we have liberty, not all things are profitable to us. Pursuit of happiness? Jonah would have been happier if God hadn't spared Nineveh. Jeremiah? He seemed called to sorrow. Jesus gave up the pursuit of happiness in Gethsemane when He prayed for the cup to pass from Him but concluded His prayer with submission to God's will over His own. Overall I think the preamble expresses fine ideas and is something to strive for, but calling those things unalienable rights is a stretch. There's a lot in the Bible that expresses God desires these things for us within specific contexts. Pursuit of happiness for some could include freedom to do whatever they want sexually with whoever they want, which is flat out contrary to Biblical commands and thus outside of that context.

Another thing I'll point out is that the meanings of things changes over time. There was a time when if you said someone was gay everyone would think you meant the person was joyful, not homosexual. Anything pagan about Christmas has long since been stripped away. There's not any real battle going on to repaganize Christmas, but there is one going on as the world tries to strip the day of Christian meaning by forcing people to take down nativity scenes and other explicitly Christian elements.

This is an interesting take, and I can kind of see it. It's impossible for us to know what was in their hearts as the Bible gives us only a little about what was going on in their heads but we do see that early on she went against her father to help David and then much later he reacted very strongly to her rebuke over his public dancing. On its own it seems like an over reaction on David's part so I feel like something clearly went sour between them at some point. We just don't have all the details. Whatever the case I do see it as one of several reminders that even someone described as being after God's own heart wasn't perfect.

I agree, especially when we get a whole chapter telling us not to fight over things like people observing some days and not others.

Hello, welcome to the forum. You made sense to me and some of this is very relatable to me. If you feel distant from God hen by all means self examine, but quite often it's just our imaginations, doubts, and worries creeping in and part of a natural ebb and flow of our emotions. Our feelings for the people in our lives wax and wane. We can be all lovey dovey about someone one day and then a lot less so the next. It's a normal human thing, so trust in God's promises over what you feel at any given time. It's nice when they line up but that's not a constant. So far as your past actions go the devil will come into play at times. Like the Bible says he aims to steal, kill, and destroy. He won't play fair and bringing up your past can be a tactic he uses. But like I said, trust in God's promises over what you feel. We see some powerful examples of forgiveness. Paul persecuted Christians and in doing so had a hand in the awful things that were done to Christians in his day and age. Peter walked with Jesus in person yet doubted Him even as they walked on water together and denied Him to save his own skin. God forgave them and greatly used both regardless of that. You'd be hard pressed to have done worse than them.

Prayer and encouragement obviously, but environment matters as well. If they're being influenced left and right by worldly things and don't have adequate Christian influences to counter that it's likely to feel more and more like an exercise in frustration. This is one of those things we typically have little ability to control, though. At most it's usually only exerting influence. But where we can we probably should.

This is one that I've noticed too, though I don't know about a date. Some areas are going to be more resistant to the idea than others. Canada at least was considering government issued cryptocurrency with an expiration date. Smells like a setup for a daily allotment of currency. I've heard similar. We're about 96% similar to chimps and 60% similar to bananas IIRC. I enjoyed the rambling though, interesting stuff and at least to me it's a point of Christian fellowship. Coincidentally I'm also going to sleep in about half an hour!

I've thought about this too. My main thoughts are in agreement with you that it's demonic influences and control, but more specifically I think how things are presented matters a whole lot. For example, the notions of a soul and consciousness/personality describe very similar if not identical concepts, but a key difference is that the word soul implies the existence of an afterlife and some kind of Creator behind it. Consciousness doesn't. It wouldn't surprise me if the pitch ends up being something like... "This thing raining down disasters and plagues on us is a hostile alien. But the AI is hard at work figuring out how we can win." A bit more fancifully I've wondered if because of things like CRISPR and xenobots (described as self replicating "living robots" engineered from frog cells) a sizable percentage of humans are changed in such a way that repentance is something that just doesn't really occur anymore. Something gets changed on some fundamental level that changes people from being in the image of God to something else.

I worry about it, and it makes me a little sad too. I'm housebound and pretty eccentric as a person. The internet has really helped ease my life physically and socially. AI writing has been a blast and made me laugh more than anything else in a long time. But there is a pretty clear dark side to it all. Some of it isn't even intentional or overtly wicked. One that point out a lot is that the internet promotes instant gratification a lot. When it's used as a babysitter and a constant companion from an early age as it is now that's setting people's brains toward seeking the immediate. Probably qualifies as a low end form of addiction. Seems pretty reasonable to me to be upset over something with such tremendous potential to do good being abused and used to hook people into sin. Can't really see God being happy or even indifferent toward this kind of thing going on with something made in His image.

An interesting perspective. I see it as multifaceted but I think you're right. I see all the talk of judgment as a warning. The thing is the warning comes with a promise of a way out and eternal life. If the judgment was just God being angry and spiteful we wouldn't get a way out. We might not have gotten a warning if that were the case. So it points to the warning being given from a sense of love rather than maliciousness.

Pretty much where I stand too, and I'll note that the Bible itself contains many analogies. The parables are a type of analogy, for example. The parable of the different soils is a particularly noteworthy example. It was easy to understand back then because it was so firmly tied to survival and a very common occupation. Even now the language used makes it easy to understand. Not all of them have aged as well for various reasons, though, like the camel passing through the eye of a needle. If someone's analogy is the tool God uses to reach a particular person I'm certainly not going to take issue with it.