Susan and Eternity?

[Stanley Anderson]

[Dan65802]

One of the things I like about that passage is that Moses (in a way) finally makes it to the Promised Land.

- Dan -

[Stanley Anderson]

[Stanley Anderson]

[carol]

[Stanley Anderson]

[rusmeister]

[andy]

[carol]

It depends on God - drawing that person to Him, through the prompting of the Holy Spirit; it depends on that person, making a new response of repentance and trust; and it depends on those of us who are friends, family or acquaintances of that person, as we pray for them, talk to them, and show practical Christian love (and consistency in our Christian lives).

[hopes this thread will not go into a discussion of preordination]

[rusmeister]

[andy]

[rusmeister]

As to the first, I don't care. I'm not pushing the subject - just not talking about something is a good way to kill it. I've nothing to add to that particular topic.

I think you may not see a connection because of your theology. 'My' (Orthodox) theology makes a very definite connection. From that standpoint, it is not necessarily 'game over' yet and things like prayers for mercy and repose of souls to God and asking saints to pray for us (as something permitted/made possible by God) become possible. Hope that helps explain why this concept was brought up.

As to the latter, it's good to know what people we have been taught to lionize in any field - the arts, politics, or whatever - believed, as that's the prism through which they viewed life, and their works reflect what they believed.

My own experience that led me to realize that - I got my BA and MA in Russian lang. and lit., and was taught all of the 'great' writers. It wasn't until I came (back) to faith and began examining what they believed from a perspective of maturity and faith that I realized that a lot of what I was taught was 'great' was either simply wrong, or just plain drivel. In Shaw's case, he was a genius - a genius who was sincerely wrong.

[Dan65802]

[andy]

[galion]

Not sure about the sincerely - Shaw was above all things a self-promoter. Some things he did get right, mainly in Prefaces and especially in his music criticism, if you ignore his dismissal of Schubert and Brahms, of which he repented in later life. But yes, he did get an awful lot of things wrong. He was one of those who was taken on a tour of Potemkin villages in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, without deigning to notice that the papers were on a day-to-day basis full of denunciations of "enemies of the people" (i.e. sincere party members that the Great Leader, or the local bosses, wanted to get rid of). Also, so much of his writing was paradox-mongering - a fault, I regret to say, that he shared with GKC. But others can probably fill out the picture further.