Quote from stu:
I suggest you have your teachers explain how a baseball bat proves otherwise.
If pain is real, there is no God.
If God is real, there is no pain.
Now, are you willing to be hit with a baseball bat to prove the first statement?
That is exactly what you are doing, if and when you are hit with a baseball bat...or with a high fast ball...or anything, any time, anywhere.
The world does not want to hear this because it is intent on crucifying God.
For pain proclaims God is cruel.
The fact is, you can only crucify yourself.
And it is your thoughts alone that cause you pain.
Are thoughts then dangerous? To a body, yes!
But a body is an illusion. And a bat is an illusion. And illusions can clash, producing another illusion: pain.
Illusions cannot clash with the truth. And if you know the truth, you do not feel pain.
The truth is that innocence is universal. And an innocent mind cannot suffer.
What makes this world seem real is the denial of the truth that lies beyond.
And while you deny innocence, images appear to come and punish you.
Yet these are all within a mind that is split, making the attacker seem to come from outside.
Believe it or not, while you fear God, you must cherish the illusion that an attacker can come from outside you. While you fear God, you fear the salvation of your mind.
While you cherish attack, this correlation will remain hidden in the dark.
But the instant you realize that the attacker is in your mind, the fear of God must go and salvation must come.
Until then, you fear salvation more than you fear an attacker with a baseball bat.
Salvation would reveal who you are, and how it is that you crucify yourself.
For only the Son of God has power to conjure up a world in which attack against himself seems possible.
And this can only seem to happen if he does not know himself...and that is a choice.
No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. And no one dies without his own consent.
Nothing occurs but that it represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose.
Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is.
You may believe this position is extreme, and too inclusive to be true.
Yet can truth have exceptions? Truth must be all-inclusive if it is to be true at all.
Accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely.
Jesus