Celtic Odyssey

I was thinking today about the idea of eternal 'punishment' or 'judgment'.  A lot of people have a hard time thinking of a loving God who would 'punish' people 'eternally' for not believing in him or some other qualifier.  This got me thinking of the judgment that was forced upon creation because of treason from Adam and Eve.  We know that Adam and Eve were removed from the presence of God (Genesis 3).  What if that removal was not just limited to Adam and Eve?  It seems that the presence of God was also removed from creation.  Before the rebellion, Life permeated all of creation, not just Adam and Eve and not just the garden.  But when they committed treason, that life-giving, life-sustaining presence was removed.  God removed himself from our realm of existence and all of creation spun out of control in a 'cursed' state. Paul wrote in Romans 8, '...all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his childr...

Is it just me or do our funeral services reek of dualism?  Lately I have attended a number of Christian funeral services.  A few were really good.  Others, sadly, were not.  For example, at one service I kept hearing things like, ‘This isn’t N. here.  N., the real N., is heaven, in the arms of God’, etc.  And then there would be some type of ‘altar call’ message.  You know the type.  The ‘minister’ finds this a grand opportunity to tell people to ‘accept Christ’ or they're ‘going to hell’. Nice. People are coming to ‘pay their respect’, remember someone dear to them, or grieve and other people feel obligated to shove religion down the throats of those who mourn. Now, I understand that funerals are a good place to talk about what happens after physical death.  I mean, some people are naturally thinking about their own mortality at that time.  But there should be some decency in this, some tact, some respect; don’t you think?  Is it just me or is it really bad form to talk about ‘ge...