Responsible Religion

Quakers have recently published a little book called God, Words and Us . This is because someone anticipates difficulty in producing the next version of Quaker Faith and Practice arising out of the fact that some Quakers think a personal God is out of the question, and others think a personal God is de rigueur. Actually Live and Let Live is normally the adequate Quaker watchword; but one thing follows from the lack of unanimity about God-- which is that some other notion has to be in the foundation of our faith. I'd say it's Reverence that is basic: the experience of something Much Much Bigger. Provided the Much Much Bigger thing does not cause one to behave badly in its pursuit, we can uphold one another as regards what it is.

I still have not read all of Paradise Lost, let alone Paradise Regained, but at this point the feature that impresses me is that Satan was jealous, and was jealous because God preferred another creature to him. In PL it's Jesus whom Gd prefers; in the Muslim version it's Adam-- the latter makes slightly better sense of Satan's wish to trash humankind.  But either way we are required to assume in that God is right and Satan is wrong in his self-estimation. --See Will McCormick, who killed the teacher who punished him for not submitting homework.  A story that impresses me is Laura Ingalls Wilder's narrative of her father's response when she got into trouble at school resulting from a feud with a snobbish rival, Nellie Olesen. Laura's Dad asks Laura what she had said and what her rival had said. What Laura's rival had said was not true, but it was not baseless. Laura's Dad asked Laura what basis Nellie had for believing what she said. This Middle Way...