Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

I think it is possible theological controversy has been exhausted, ER. I can't believe a statement such as yours has not invited at least some disdainful comment. Ah, well. Back to the dog picutres, I suppose. . . Or perhaps the spider story?
 

It IS the Lord's Day. :-)
 

C.S. Lewis thought that the above-described relationship/covenant consisted of us, as beings with very limited knowledge of this Greater Being, coming before Him with the humble knowledge that He will always know far more about us than we can ever know of Him.

This is the essence of the whole association and sets the mood for any interaction between the two.

The personal intimacy stems from Him knowing us inside out, and us being in dire need of Someone who knows us better than we know ourselves.
 

I like.

I think the "impersonal" sense we sometimes have of God has to do with that very thing: difference of scale, for lack of a better word. For example: I can't hear the sounds ants make. Rather than them "hearing" me very loudly, I imagine that they may not be able to detect my sounds because they are so relatively loud it become white noise.

Well, something like that. It's early yet. :-)
 

perfect imagery
 

I got 8 inches of rain in my back yard last night. I'm beginning to think it is personal.
 

I guess it depends on perspective: 8 inches of rain for me would make me feel targetedand perhaps cursed as well, but hubby (dairy farmer who has to move irrigation pipes) would feel especially blessed!
 

Irrigation pipe, yuck. Did that for four years, irrigating cotton. Moved the pipes every two hours, 24 hours a day for weeks at a time.

Well the is the second tropical downpour in OKC in a single month.
Not to mention that we hit our annual average percipitation in less than 6 months, in the middle of May.

Now for the theology:
"...with your powerful arm
you protect me from every side."

Oh, really?

Doesn't it rain on the just and unjust? Christian have a longer life-span? Less prone to accidents? Disease?

And why are we trying to horn in on a covenant between Jehovah and his tribe? Never quite got it why a tribal god became the God of all people. Are you saying that Christianity evolved from a God that was only concerned with a few tenths of a percent of all people of earth 3500 years ago? But now he is willing to "save" everybody?

Tribal?
I mean, He says you are either in awe of me or I'll kill you like I going to do to those guys who are currently proprietors of the land that I am going to give you after you take it.

Ever wonder why the Israelis think that after 1900 years they had a right to expell the Palestinian from the Holy Land. Well they did it twice before, once after they got back from Egypt where they were probably the unwelcome Rulers (see Hykos). Then once again when they got back from Iraq after having been let go. Check out Deuteronomy 30: 1-14 the front part of the bible reading from the church. maybe the third time is charmed as they say.
 

Well,

Uno. I kind of read that as thanksgiving for the ultimate eternal protection God, ewe believe, provides, although David, if David wrote it, if there was a David, probably wrote it after a successful battle and could have penned the song in glee the same way football players point to the sky when they score touchdowns.

Two-o. The first Christians were Jews. They kept their notion of a covenant. Hence, the Second Covenant. It's part of our religious heritage. That's why.

Three-o. I think the Deuteronomy passage is a great example of something to take seriously, because it's in the Bible and, as such, is part of our inheritance from the early Christians, but not to literally, since a broder world view is part of our intellectual herotage, from the Renaissance, itself a gift from God bequeathed through all those Christians who gave birth to the Englightenment.

Indeed, the persistent belief that God is in the real estate business is the underlying cause of the strife in the Middle East, and the rest of the world for that matter.

Four-o. Christian churches have readings from the Old Testament. Liberal ones like mine do so to spark discussions like this.
 

It's true, the Renaissance was a gift from God, but so were the Middle Ages - especially in philosophy (Peter Abelard). Not to mention Existentialism and Modernism- and then Post-Modernism, which helped everyone kind of accept that you can live with a fragmented reality of contradictions and still accept that there is meaning and context in it (Post-post-modernism will be intriguing too!).
 

Po-po-mo? Whoa. :-)
 

Yep, that's where we are as we speak and live.
 

ER said "Two-o. The first Christians were Jews. They kept their notion of a covenant. Hence, the Second Covenant. It's part of our religious heritage. That's why."

Yep, but Paul broke up that party early on. Not to mention that the Romans sacked and destroyed that version in 70A.D.. Still some in India, but in the 1500s the Orthodox Portuguese screwed them over. So the line of succession was broken, and the Jerusalem Christian viewpoint destroyed under orthodoxy and the Roman Churche's ascention. Can you even begin to imagine, Saints, and Mother Mary, etc. under the Jewish version of Christianity?

There is no continuity between the old and new testaments except what the Paulian's needed to justify Christ as the Messiah and a human son of God.

Now maybe the Coptics have claim to the old testament, and to some degree the Syrianic Church and Nestorians, but not the Roman Orthodoxy.