Freedom of Belief and Speech

[bobby1933]

  "...Love comes before ... power in the divine nature...
God cannot prevent evil because God's love is always uncontrolling."

-- Thomas Jay Oord, whose teaching position at Northwest Nazarine University
              will be terminated in 2018. possibly because his employers do not like his
             theology.

Comments

[amaebi]

Ah, this is right by you.

Looking up Oord,Wikipedia says he was to be unemployed after 2014-2015, but then that was rescinded.Was it unrescinded?

[bobby1933]

Not so much rescinded as negotiated back 4 years,
The university is claiming it is about budget problems
But i don't think they would be messing with their religion department unless something else was going.

It seems that i have read stuff by and about Oord that suggest more than a provincial reputation (all good.)

[amaebi]

:/

[bobby1933]

I just realized that i have a book in my library edited by Oord (and contributed to by him, also.) The Altruism Reader, Love, Religion, and Science. I remember it as being pretty good.

[reginaterrae]

My own unorthodox idea limiting the omnipotence of God is that God cannot not love each of us, because God is Love and cannot go against His own nature. This occurred to me very strongly many years ago, at the beginning of my recovery when I had just discovered God, and that God not only could but wanted to restore me to sanity. I did not love myself much back then, and it was an immense idea that there was no way I could lose God's love because love is God's nature, God couldn't not love me if He tried.

What is really lovely about that is that the response changes from desperately scrambling to "be good" so as to win approval or avoid disapproval, to a grateful desire to make some return for so much love. To "be good" to please God not out of cringing fear of losing His love because that's not possible, but out of a positive desire to make my Lover happy, and how do you make a lover happy but by showing your love in return? and to let go of anything on my own end that separates me from that limitless Love.

[bobby1933]

Sounds really good to me, (but what do i know?)!

Hooray for Al Anon. It is good to be back.
Tomorrow i will meet with a friend who i have not seen in over 26 years. He never left Al Anon. I really look forward to it!

[bobby1933]

:)