Religious Thought for the 21st Century

Jordan Feliz Beloved The beautiful and touching song by Jordan Feliz Beloved fills one with the vision of a love of God that is real and beyond any boundary our imagination, including theological presuppositions, may impose. We are essential not accidental. Christian theology, however,sees us humans not as being true children of God, at least not to the same degree that Jesus was. It says that God created us out of pity. Lol, please forgive me for using that old acronym. Others simply affirm that God did not create us because he needed us, so does gotquestions.org, which moves on to add other irrational affirmations as theology.  I just don't know what to say to those believes. I will go into more detail in another post. In this one I just simply state that no parent of love has children out of pity. Far from it.  In this post, I placed Feliz's song above because his song conveys a sense of a profound and real relationship with God. Recently, I had an i...

The Meaning of Trees and Fruits  in Hebrew Scripture I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. -From "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer    The Hebrews and Christian scriptures contain a wealth of literary symbols authors from different ages utilize as they intend to convey a hidden religious message.  Before entering into our discussion it is good to note that the religious and philosophical meaning of trees as a source of life, knowledge, rebirth, immortality and even love have roots throughout the world. Closer to the Jewish culture, ancient Egyptians believed Isis and Osiris to have came out of an acacia tree.   Trees and fruits play an important position on the biblical imagery from Genesis to Revelations. From the first chapter of Genesis throughout all different types of literary and religious genres these two symbols convey messages from prophetic and moral, curses and blessings, and poetry to parables.  Their appearanc...