After listening to so many different opinions on so many different subjects over the last few weeks, or even months by now, I lose track, It can become a sort of congested wad of stuff in my head that needs sorting out. I'm talking about the interviews with Dawkins and Musk and Peterson, especially the carnivore diet and of course religion. Tammy Peterson becdame a Catholic during her bout with cancer and her discovery of the diet practices that made the biggest difference for her health. Dawkins grumbles about religion all the time, Musk kind of evades the topic, Peterson likes it but more as a pschological exercise or therapy, the diet the diet the dieit seems to work miraculously and I'm pondering it still. Where do I start with this blob of stuff.
Well, the first thing I thought after writing that was how I can't afford this carnivore diet. It's all well and good to say yes it's expensive but sickness is expensive too when you happen to be literlaly not able to afford it, period, whih is my situation. I wouldnm't want to start out cold turkey anyway, as they say, I'd want to ease into it which would takene the edge off the expense as well as the dietary shock so its affordability may be in the end inconsequential anyway. But it's a fact, and I'm not thinking of trying to eat steaks, or even steak at all ever, just fatty hamburder chicken, hotdogs perhaps and so on, and I still can't figure out how I could manage an entire month of eating nothing but those things . But again , at the moment it's not a crucial element in myh decision as I'm going to start with the simple stuff, the ketogenic basics, uctting out the really bad carbs and going from there.
I just heard an interview of tammy Peterson, Jordan Peterson's wife, about how she arrived at her carnivorous diet and the specific eaways she's adapted it to her own particular needs. She and her huasband and daughter together have quite a collection of immune deficiency problems that the carnivore diet turns out to be the best way of eating for all of them. Very convincing testimony it seems to me, and inspiring. as far as I know the only genetic disease I have is my maculary degeneration and although I think it might be helped in some ways by the right diet I'm not expecting a cure for that. It's other conditions I have I hope would benefit, and I don't think I need the drastic solution of all meat, but I don'tr relaly know. I'll have to give it a serious try, easing into it birt by bit and see what I find out.
Tammy's becoing a Catholic of course bothers me. How did she choose that particular route? She prays the rosary in the mornings, that's what Catholics think prayer its. It's very distressing to a protestant to think Catholics think that. At the intd of the interveiw her friend who is also a Ctholi prayerd ten times the prayer fromj the Orthodox Church that is familiar tro me from the time I was reading up on the mystics of that traitions. Lord jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Ten times. Repetition of these rote prayers is not prayer to me, but it had effects on the mystics, visions and clairvoandce experiences and that sort of thing. Is that from God?
Well, no. Thanks to Watchman Nee's book on Soul Power I can now recognize that phenomena as psychic phenomena , not psirutual phenomena. Ther is a big difference. We are body, soul and spirit, and we are only fully spirit if we are born again, but people who are not born again can have experiences that they regard as spiritual thorugh "soul power" or psychic power. Psyche is the word for soul, as pneuma is the word for spirit. These are spcyhic powers. Visions and claiboyance and the lieke. If the person is not born again they are not coming from God at all, thoughj people who are born again sometimes have such experiences and may mistake them for spiritual also. Spiritual means they are connected to God, through the quickened or regenerated spirutal faculty given to us at salvation.
Catholics don't talk about salvation or if they do it's not the way Protestants do. Jesus is a spiritual guide more than He is a savior, even if He's called the Savior. It's rather disturbing to think that there may be healings that are not coming from God, messages that seem to come from God or Jesus that are really coming from some other source. I want to say hororay for Tammy that she's healed, but then I get the heebiejeebies thinking about her being a Catholic.
Salvtion comes from recognizing thta Jesus died on the cross to pay for your sins in your place, Jesus the Son of God and perfect Man who alone could perform such a feat. We are fiorgiven our sins because He is able to forgive sins. Our sins are all paid for by His death and if we don't reckon ourselves dead and buried with Him we are not saved, we are still "in our sins" as scripture puts it, and not saved from Hell. Which is of course a far more important blessing than any healing of our physical bodies in this life.
BBut so many people of the educated classes particularly consider the true Christianity to be intellectually untenable, and someone who chooses Catholicism is probably in that camp. Jordan Petersonj is prbably influenced by such thinking, considering his Jungian views mor eintellectually defensible than the simpleminded tuff of evangelicalism or something like that. Dawkins can go on and on about how stupid Christianity seems to him although he likes the morality. As a truth claim he thinks it ridiculous. Well, scripture has his nmber of course, decribing the gospel s a tubling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. In that frame of rejference Dawkins in a Greek,k which is the New Testametn equivalent of "Gentiles" in the Old Testament. You are a Jew or a Gentile, a Christian or a "Greek". Dawkins ins a Greek. And so is Peterson. The Greeks were very proud of their intellectual prowelss, their Athenian ponderings of the big questions , their eillusrtrious philosophers. They considered the apostle Paul to be a puny little contender on Mars Hill as he tried to teach them about their "uinkhown God."
It's all such a perfet picture of the mentality that is the exact opposite of what jesus preaches to us, about how we must become as little children in order to inhertie the kingdom of God. You must become as a little child even to believe that Jesus died for our sins of course, that that being born again which is the result of that self humbling to a little child is given onlyh when you give up all that pretense to sophsitication and intellectual highmindedness. Yes, they think you very silly when you choose the true gospel, they think you stupid, intellecutally deficient. Even if you had before that choisdce always enjoyed a respet for your mind, as I had, when you choose the lowely simple gospel you become an idiot in their eyes. I had tht experience. I lost a lot of friendss. But I'd rather be a small child for jesus.
Dawkins goes on and on about a friend of his who can't possibly be a real Christian because she's too intelligent for tht. She doesn't really believe all that foolishenss, that there is a an old man in the sky who hears prayers, that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the death. And she probably doesn't, she just lieks the cultural forms of Christiansity as heeven Dawkins himself does, but to believe it, no, that's just beneath him, and possibly beneath her too, but I haen't heard her side of it, just his. He's quite contemptuous of what CHristians elieve. It's just too too silly to be believed. The earth only six thousand hyearrs old? Pretty silly I agree. It made me laugh when I first heard it
Byt But I was laughing happilty ebecause I believed it and thought it very funny that we've been taught it's really billions of years old and how silly six thousand looks next sto such a n august number as billions.
And by the eway we don't believe in a n old man in the sky, we believe that God is Spirit and pervades all creation, is everywhere at once. Sometimes scripture pictures an "ancient of days" on a throne in the visions of a prophet int he OT, but that's because scripture isn't snobbish, it aims to save everybody from the very bright to the very intellecutally challenged. Thew very bright are the elast amenable unfortunately.
Where was I? Have I unraveled that intlelectual sticky mess I started out with ?
Oh I don't know, but I'm getting tired.
