Monday, June 06, 2005
Daily Office, Year One, Proper 5, Sunday
Today's Readings:
We read that the punishment for lack of fidelity to God is pretty harsh: Wiped out from history, lands destroyed, your existence an anonymous reminder for the next generations about what fidelity should mean. The reading from Revelation is just too weird, but the story of Michael slaying the dragon is the source story for my parish, St. Michael and All Angels. Jesus cures many people, and the witnesses praise God (not Jesus, but God). He also feeds 4,000 (plus women and children) in the second great miraculous feast of the Gospel according to Matthew.
There is one interesting verse: Deut. 29:26: "They turned and served other gods, worshipped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted them." (Emphasis added) Dabbling in henotheism is an interest of mine. Henotheism is the belief in one supreme being, but not the exclusiveness of that extreme being. It's a bridge between monotheism and polytheism. I think most people, even Christians, are practicing henotheists. No, I haven't heard anyone pray to a god of fire, but I've heard of sacrifices to the gods of barbeque, thanks to the parking gods, and curses heaped upon the computing gods when our machines just don't work.
I think henotheism exists because we want to be pure monotheists, but don't want to accept random chance explanations for things. We want God to be in charge of the Big Things in life, protect us from death, comfort us, etc. The ump makes a series of really bad calls against your team and that's a god of baseball mucking around (or simply showing a bias towards someone else's team). ¶ 8:29 AM
- Psalm 24,29
- Deut. 29:16-29
- Rev 12:1-12
- Matt 15:29-39
We read that the punishment for lack of fidelity to God is pretty harsh: Wiped out from history, lands destroyed, your existence an anonymous reminder for the next generations about what fidelity should mean. The reading from Revelation is just too weird, but the story of Michael slaying the dragon is the source story for my parish, St. Michael and All Angels. Jesus cures many people, and the witnesses praise God (not Jesus, but God). He also feeds 4,000 (plus women and children) in the second great miraculous feast of the Gospel according to Matthew.
There is one interesting verse: Deut. 29:26: "They turned and served other gods, worshipped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted them." (Emphasis added) Dabbling in henotheism is an interest of mine. Henotheism is the belief in one supreme being, but not the exclusiveness of that extreme being. It's a bridge between monotheism and polytheism. I think most people, even Christians, are practicing henotheists. No, I haven't heard anyone pray to a god of fire, but I've heard of sacrifices to the gods of barbeque, thanks to the parking gods, and curses heaped upon the computing gods when our machines just don't work.
I think henotheism exists because we want to be pure monotheists, but don't want to accept random chance explanations for things. We want God to be in charge of the Big Things in life, protect us from death, comfort us, etc. The ump makes a series of really bad calls against your team and that's a god of baseball mucking around (or simply showing a bias towards someone else's team). ¶ 8:29 AM
