Elevators...1, 2,3, 4, 5, 6 -- ding

Have you ever notice if you get into an elevator with other people, you don’t make eye contact but stare at the floor numbers above the elevator doors like you don’t know that after 2 comes 3 or 7 into 6…

I had just come from my counseling session. As I got into the elevator, there was someone already in there…a woman fumbling around with files and the floor 2 button lit. There are a lot of different types of business that use that building…I always wonder when I get off or on at the 5th floor, that they are thinking – oh, she’s from the psyche floor! But I guess I’m thinking I’m the center of the world from my persective...which is more the reality?

Elevators are very simple, it’s either up or down. From floors 1 to 7….is that how life can play? I am continuously told how I think is very “black or white”. Since I get off on the 5th floor – to what degree am I stepping out of?

Today is that of a mundane, morbid experience. A funeral. My husband’s grandmother pasted away on Christmas evening. This week has been all about death. Death. I’ve imagined a lot about death the last 8 months. It sometimes is all I can think about and googled. Grandma died at a nursing home (a dismal place to live the last days of ones life), the entire family went to the home to see a dead body. Rigamortus had already set in…(they called to say she was dead around 6:30 pm, but I think it was very much earlier. She was cold and in an awful position. We got there within 15 minutes of the call.) Grandma’s face was waxy and had her mouth open in that scary way. It didn’t help the picture that the staff had stuck her teeth in – I thought that was a little weird.

It reminded me of the movie “scream” with that mask or the painting by Edward Munch of a face with it’s mouth open.

As this week transpired into a 7 hours ordeal of a “viewing” (my mother-in-law wouldn’t go home because she was afraid she was going to miss someone or wanted to see who sent flowers and if she thought they were good or bad taste - Weird #2) The viewing of course was an open casket in a very small room that was like a hot house and stinky flowers – why do people send stinky flowers? My only thought has to be that they are cheap because they know they are going to a grave. I got to the funeral home after my appointment, and I was ready to leave within an hour…how can people stare at a body and say “oh, doesn’t she look like she is sleeping.” or “she looks so much like her younger self – what miracles make-up can do…” Don’t get me wrong – she looked ten times better then at the nursing home - dead.

Which leads to the funeral this afternoon. Started out a semi-cloudy day and the temperature wasn’t that cold. Brent & I arrived at the church for the family lunch – he goes with his brothers, I see my ex-sister-in-law and hung out with her…I missed our outsider’s comments about the Cooper Clan. For a funeral…it was nothing out of the ordinary…grandma was well loved by her family and friends. She lived almost to her 92nd birthday (12/31) shy of 6 days…91 years seems like forever….3 children, 7 grandchildren, 9 ½ great-grandchildren. At the burial site, it was Oklahoma cold wind with the feeling of rain in the air -- how appropreate.

Family. Death. How is it not better for grandma to die so old? I look and I will never have children, no grandchildren, no great-grandchildren. Who will be there when I am 91 years old?

Why would anyone want to live that long with no one? I know it is selfish...but I feel like everything, everyone would be better off without me....

Double Trouble (Predestination)

God created sin so that we would know mercy…(TV show “Friday Night Lights)

Double predestination is the belief that God creates some people who's purpose in existence is to be sent to hell. Is this concept Biblical?

Romans has two predominate themes throughout it. The first theme is the righteousness of God.

The other theme is that of wrath. God's wrath has been revealed against all sinful actions. Mankind knows about God, but rejects God in their thinking and in their actions. The wrath of God, therefore, is the giving of man to live his life as he pleases, which apart from God leads to destruction. Man rejects the God of the universe and God, in turn, forsakes man. Only a personal intervention from God can alter the destructive path that man finds himself while he hardens himself in sin

It is not unfeasible for someone to be whole-heartedly devoted to God for a majority of their lifetime and when suddenly snap and turn totally against God in his heart. For example, suppose Billy Graham were to all of a sudden denounce God and start worshiping Satan. Calvinists would suggest that Billy Graham must not have ever have been saved whereas any other rational person would say that he once was a great man of faith whose heart was totally devoted to God but then suddenly snapped.

Yes, God is omnipotent and omniscient. He knows what will happen before it will happen. But foreknowledge does not imply predestination. Our problem is that we cannot fathom time the way God knows it. We see time as a constant stream from point A to point B. This is why we cannot fathom that there is no beginning to God and no end to God. God is infinity. God is 1/X as X approaches 0 (hopefully from the positive direction!). God understands time; he is all things at all times. God simply is.

Many events throughout the Bible have been predestined. Jesus' birth was predestined. Jesus' death was predestined. Jesus' resurrection was predestined. Many things in our own lives could very well be predestined. But God certainly does not predestine people to go to heaven or go to hell. It is man's choice to either accept God's path or reject it (Ben Perry)

Brief Definitions
determinism
The view that every event has a cause and that everything in the universe is absolutely dependent on and governed by causal laws. Since determinists believe that all events, including human actions, are predetermined, determinism is typically thought to be incompatible with free will.

fatalism
The belief that "what will be will be," since all past, present, and future events have already been predetermined by God or another all-powerful force. In religion, this view may be called predestination; it holds that whether our souls go to Heaven or Hell is determined before we are born and is independent of our good deeds.

free will
The theory that human beings have freedom of choice or self-determination; that is, that given a situation, a person could have done other than what he did. Philosophers have argued that free will is incompatible with determinism. See also indeterminism.

indeterminism
The view that there are events that do not have any cause; many proponents of free will believe that acts of choice are capable of not being determined by any physiological or psychological cause.

So in googling on the quote from a very racey show about fictional high school football player's lives...the double blind is if a guy sleeps around he's a stud, but if a girl gives in to the guy, she then is labeled a slutt....

The question I wanted answers to -- Was she predestined to sin? Is the judgement of peers their sin? How do we know that we aren't predestined to our future? The comment on if Billy Graham....hits true to my life....I hope I was sincere when I accepted Christ as a child...I believed in serving through most of my life -- was that my "free will"? I was taught that ALL ACTIONS have a consequence...good(rewards) & bad (condemnation), it IS our choice which consequence happens. So can you blame God? Because you think that you might not have a choice, that the God I was raised to believe condemned the world... sin...Adam & Eve.

An analogy that I shared with a friend the other day....just came into my memory and I remember the day I heard it as a teenager...for some reason something was triggered to that memory.

Lets say you & God are in a brand new car with many "gadgets, navigation buttons" -- you have your learners permit for only the last 24hrs...ROAD TRIP! God hands you the keys and tells you to drive...you need experiences...as you drive, you hit curbs and make wrong turns and the choices of which streets to go one day makes you decided that you don't know how to control this vehicle. You tell God, that you would rather he drive because he knows the right way to get to our destination and things are better, smother with very good shocks so you don't feel the pot hole and speed bump not to mention CONSTRUTION/DETURES on the road as what happened when you were in control -- and there are bumps but not curbs, and unfinished roads. After all, God knows the way...but later on you during the trip you decide that God makes it look easy...your confidences builds and that you can drive just as well if not better then God only forgetting the past. So you back the control of the steering wheel and direction -- my question now is, did you kick God out of the car (car jacking) or put him in the trunk (mob style)?