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

You know that you and Geoffrey just gave the fusspots, busybodies, tattletales and scolds an aneurism with these posts, right? lol
 

Kinda like blowin' out a carburetor. It just needs done from time to time. I felt obliged to tromp on their gas pedals.
 

On the contrarian side, I don't think this is the best way to make the point.

Our interests, our ethics, our desires, our sexual selves do all engage in the entirety of the spirit of love -- which is, I think, one way we would agree to understand God.

So, in short, it seems to me much more true to say that God IS my bitch... my loving, hovering, maternal and demanding bitch who calls me to live with as much good intention, thoughtful resolve, brave and gonzo boldness as I can muster... even in my sex life.

I don't think the point trying to be made is made very well in way it is.
 

My point, an obvious one, is that the hovering, loving, demanding bitch does not have a conniption should I give less than my best or even give up and refuse from time to time.

The demanding characteristic is never separated from the loving characteristic.

It is the hypocritical judgement of conservative Christianity that is one target, but Mark Morford confuses that target with his other one: his disbelief in the omnipresent, omniscient, omni-benevolent God that "organized religion" believes in.

I can't go with him there.
 

"God is my loving, hovering, demanding Bitch."

Now that is Gospel scandal-worthy.
 

LOL

Ya know, I guess yer right, that one can infer that he disses the idea of a personal God. The thing is, I struggle with that, myself. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me from not dissing the idea is the fact that Jesus his own self prayed to such. But even then, I scoot in on Jesus's coattails.

As for the B-word, I can't see it as anything but derogatory. I mean, I've heard it used two ways in my 45 years: as a put-down, and to refer to a dog. But then, this is how language evolves ... LOL, but I don't really see "God is my loving, hovering, demanding Bitch"
takin' off. :-)
 

I don't have much if any of a pervading sense of a personal God, either, except from a socially-learned habit from childhood. But I do have a sense that everything is connected, which is a Buddhist notion that Mr. Morford would spill ink on in gushing agreement, never realizing his contradiction. And that Love is all of life.

What I do in the bedroom is a part of life and, thereby, Love. It has ethics, morality, sacrificial claims, releasing self and honoring self claims.

Just like taxes.
______________

"Bitch" up here carries many, many different connotations depending on situation. Sexually aggressive (not necessarily in a bad way); interpersonally aggressive (not necessarily in a bad way); strong female leadership (in a good way); too strong aggressivity (not too good in whatever domain); too strong leadership (not good for a female leader).

It can be used for men or women, except that in strictly straight male or female contexts, it is never or rarely (respectively) used in a positive light of "strength."

To the extent that God can be metaphorized as "passionately desiring union with creation," or "the kingdom is taken by force," or that God is "jealous" God, infused in all that you do in your day, that motivation can come from a sense of the nearness of the Spirit, then the poetic metaphor of God is my Bitch can be a colloquial shorthand where that word has the appropriate working connotations.

He is Frances Thompson's "hound of heaven," as it were, hunting down your soul in the best sense.

Donne and Herbert write about the same bitchy qualities.
 

B prolly has the same connotations in SF. ... I'm gonna ask a couple of guys I know blogwise in SF area who might have some insight on this to weigh in. They haven't been around in a long time -- at least pre-Feodor days anyway, so they mighta done forgot who I am. Both have Okie blood in their veins, too.
 

Re, "But I do have a sense that everything is connected .."

Ya know, I do have that sense, too, and fits the references to God as brooding hen. To me. We had chickens when I was growing up. Baby chicks were all in it together, but seeemd to be attracted only to the warmth and the ... sheer gravity of the hen.
 

"that he disses the idea of a personal God."

and what god isn't? ;)

"I do have a sense that everything is connected"

"godhead is my bitch"?

KEvron

ps, "bitch" be universal, bitches.
 

Hidy, Kev. Kev meet Feodor, Feodor, meet Kev.
 

Or would that be "godhead are my bitches"? ...

(Hey, we actually sang whatever hymn it is that mentions "Three-in-One" yesterday and, as usual, I had to bite my lip to keep from LOL. ... I'm talkin' about the oil reference, son, the oil reference, not, ah say, not the doctrine ...)
 

KEvron (from the Bay?)

I think it is the force of either "my personally Owned god" or "your own personal Judge" that I object to.

In the sense of feeling connected personally, that is a rare and cautiously useful spiritual experience for me. I resist a temptation to take my personal experiences as normative until I've done a great deal of reflection on it.

That they are good for me goes without question, but I find that I'm such a know-it-all that I'd be prone to see my life and the lives of those around me as the picture for everyone.

In this sense, I choose to image and relate to God as manifold and cosmic, rather than personal.
 

But then, as folks here know, I do universalize my approach, if not my experiences, and ask that it be adopted immediately and perfectly.
 

LOL
 

This guy is actually one of our better local columnists. Though I don't read him that often, and it's fitting that someone from Oklahoma had to point him out to me.

Didn't Sanford claim God was a guiding force in his life BEFORE this scandal? Why are we to believe him now? Hasn't he already proven that he's better at lying and cheating than at being in step with God.
 

Weimar Culture and D.H. Lawrence (and Virginia Woof).

Antidote to the poison of America.

Gallic as in French or Spanish?

(al-Andalus is also an antidote.)
 

Thanks for comin' over Junk!

Re, "Didn't Sanford claim God was a guiding force in his life BEFORE this scandal? Why are we to believe him now? Hasn't he already proven that he's better at lying and cheating ..."

Well, we're all effed up in our ways. ... If I have a complaint, it's the columnist's: the lack of sensibility and dubious repentance involved when someone whipsaws from me-and-God-are-buds, to selfish crisis, to me-and-God-are-buds again, in a matter of what really amounts only to a few hours in the public light.

God as rescuer I can get behind. God as one who can, as "Bitch" suggests, be ordered up like a delivery pizza, not so much.

On the other hand, God is relentless in God's pursuit of human beans.

I just think people, whey they get caught with their Jesus Jams down, should just slink off and deal with it OUT of the public light for a long, appropriate time, if not for good.
 

"Bitch" suggests that you can order one up like a pizza?

I guess, if one is reading Craigslist.
 

"Bitch, get me a beer" is as easy, I'd think, as dialing the phone, is what I meant.
 

No, no, I'm totally with you.

I think this is rather more on point, though, than the columnist, who gets his targets confused.
 

I think so, too.

He wrote: "This is the greatest wonder of all: In the impossible vastness of time and space, God cares most desperately, most fanatically about this particular swirling blue dot of inconsequential dust we call home."

Well, yeah. That is the utterly preposterous backdrop to any faith tradition that posits a personal God.
 

Exactly. Who could ever love Jupiter?
 

"Who could ever love Jupiter?"

Juno and a whole bunch of them bitch goddesses and mortal women.

The original rant kind reeks of Unitarianism don't it.

What ever happened to the bound on earth bound in heaven church power stuff?

Maybe the Lord just delegates the low level sins and misdeeds to his women folk.
 

The point of the column is not a deep theological exploration of who God really is. Rather, it is the trivializing of God as some kind of servant for particular trivial ends. Thus, the subtitle, and some of the text, that God doesn't really care one way or another who you sleep with, etc., etc. This is not to argue, as the columnist does (I think), that God is more an impersonal force than a personal, caring Deity; rather, it is to argue that religious language in our public discourse has reduced God to some kind of moral deus ex machina who shows up, or can be called upon, to fix the mundane broken parts of our lives. To quote someone wiser than myself, "Give me some forgiveness, Bitch," is kind of where this line of thinking leads.

Before we get to figuring out who this God is, this column is, maybe not a first step but at least a lifting of the foot and a pointing in the right direction of a first step, toward making sure we are clear who this God is not. Gov. Sanford seems to think the politically ritualistic incantation of "God" will be enough to rescue him politically; with some of his constituents, it may just. The author of this column is suggesting, I think, that for many, the empty rhetoric is more than just humorous; even for a non-traditional believer in "something more", this kind of divine name-dropping is less about God, and more about making sure that God keeps the person going as he or she is.

or maybe I'm reading too much in to this. I still like the whole bit about God really not liking your girlfriend. Too funny.
 

Of course the problem is...."what a friend we have in Jesus"... "our Father who art in heaven"..."brothers in Christ"..."our Mother Church"...

We expect our friends, brothers, father and mother to give a damn about us and our sex life and girl friends and just about everything else in our lives. God is not your bitch, but he has been sold as dang near everything else that is personal to us.