charity wrote:malkie wrote:I'm just about to go out to the home of my TBM BiL for New Year (note the singular - not 'New Years' - I hope that Dr Shades and his grammar rules will approve of the Scottish way of saying it).
I had hoped for a reply from Charity to my posts of 3:34pm and 4:23pm, but perhaps a mewling nursery baby doesn't rate a reply from a god.
Hey, you shouldn't be quick to assume you are being ignored. I was celebrating New Years. We start early.
You're right - I often assume that, being in EST, I do things earlier than most folks on the board. My apologies.
charity wrote: malkie wrote:Can someone else tell me, am I missing something, or is the whole "confirmation by the HG" thing busted. Replies from TBMs preferred - I don't need an external source of confirmation bias (;=> - my internal one works quite well, thank you.
Busted? How?
By being unreliable. It appears that a substantial number of people cannot distinguish the influence of the HG from the effects of other, more mundane, bodily and mental processes.
charity wrote:malkie wrote:When I need to communicate something important to my children, I try to make it so that they cannot easily misunderstand. The importance of the message determines the extent to which I will go to make it foolproof. It appears that god does not do the same. Either that or that the mechanism that should make communication and validation of important messages reliable has become broken - not what I would call a sign of intelligent design. I cannot distinguish between the feelings that the HG is supposed to give me, and the feelings I get when I listen to a particularly good guitar riff - think Jimi Hendrix in 'All Along the Watchtower'.
That's because you have to do your part. As a parent, you know that sometimes you just can't get through to your kid. I am sure God is every bit as frustrated when that happens when He tries to communicate with His children and they won't listen.
But, once again, is "my part" continuing to do the same thing (pray, pay, obey) until I agree with what the church says? And, as long as I don't get the desired result, the problem lies with
me.
And what if I cannot hear - it's not that I'm not listening. The message is not getting through in a form such that I can be sure that it is from god, and is not just my own wishful thinking.
If god really means me to "get the message", why could he not make an unmistakable sign or communication channel? Why leave it to something that is so easily confused with something else? It seems almost guaranteed to fail to work for lots of his children - and he knows it. I know, I know, it is a wicked (and adulterous?) generation that seeks for a sign. Again,
I'm the problem.
charity wrote:malkie wrote:At the judgment, will I be allowed to plead that it felt like indigestion to me (metaphorically speaking, now), when god intended it to be a sign of a heart attack, but I genuinely cannot tell the difference?
You are going to be held accountable for you knew. Not what you didn't. But you should be aware that when you get a quick thought, idea, feeling, prompting that something is really true and correct you should act on it.
Hmmm, that's a dangerous idea. Even if I discount the (biased) "prompting". From time to time I get thoughts, ideas & feelings that seem good at the time, but, on sober second thought I realize that I really ought not to act on them.
I'd still like to know how you can be certain that the feelings you ascribe to the influence of the HG are just that. How can you be certain that it is not satan? Do you really think that it is completely impossible that you are wrong?