final days forum

The Seven Gates of the Kingdom

I've finally posted the first chapters of a book project that fascinates me. Genesis is one of my favorite books in the Bible. I'm especially intrigued by Chapter Six. Who were the sons of God? Who were their offspring? How did the people of antiquity deal with them?

My curiosity has become a Web-based novel called The Seven Gates of the Kingdom. It is based on several ancient cultures and references biblical information regarding giants, or the nephilim. Seven Gates is about righteous people who follow God in a world riddled with superhuman beings who want to rule without God... and without men and women.

This project is written as a fantasy fiction book that will be updated regularly for you to read, argue about, critique and, hopefully, enjoy.

Judy Howard Ellis

Jesus, the perfect supplement?

Jesus Christ is the must-have supplement for today's made-to-order religious practices. He is used like a healing herb or a trace mineral. Mix a tablespoon of Jesus into your daily religious smoothie and you're good to go. Jesus flavors any religion, belief system, principle or spiritual practice on earth. He is the binding agent, the innocuous role model for perfectly executed belief.

He's a very cool additive only when you peel away the messy crucifixion, that blood-as-sacrifice-for-sin stuff, His statements about being the only way to God, and that wild notion about resurrecting bodily. But for those who prefer their Jesus tame, the Jesus who taught about blood and sin is passive aggressive and His Daddy is a cosmic control freak.

For example, the crucified and risen Jesus doesn't flow with Oprah and Eckhart Tolle, author of the "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose," and other self-made faith practices today. Faith is self-actualization, consciousness and an untethered spirituality that says: We have seen god and god is us.

(Courtesy of : lsim13 from YouTube.com.)

I'm a huge fan of Oprah and the way she embraces mass media to supply forums for a variety of people, interests, and ideas. Hosting a global webcast featuring Tolle is a brilliant use of today's technology and further proof that she is a master storyteller and entrepreneur. She has her fingertips on what matters so much to so many.

But "A New Earth" and other books that turn away from the crucified and risen Christ reveal not the greatest story ever told, but the greatest lie ever believed.

Long before Oprah became a beloved media personality, she was a person with a question. Oprah herself has said that when she heard a minister talk about a "jealous" God, she was disturbed by that description. The God she knew was loving, so how could God be jealous? Her question was real. Her curiousity was normal. Did anyone in her former Baptist church share with her about what a "jealous God" meant? Did one of the "mothers of the church" put her arms around her and explain the full story about the God of All Love?

Whether they did or not, Oprah's question was left to take unruly root.

More tomorrow about this.

The bleak side of creativity

What is artist Daniel Edwards actually trying to say? Should I take offense at how he portrayed a black woman in his statue, The Oprah Sarcophagus? If nothing else, the work apparently is another example of how the inspiration for artistic expression in contemporary culture often is drawn from the dregs and darkness of the heart, not its best intentions.

What was said during Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC:

Oprah immortalized in bronze

Edwards' other works portraying Britney Spears and Paris Hilton also speak to an artistic form that is upheld by seeming cruelty, not keen observation.

It's also interesting that the Oprah piece draws from a supernatural perspective that does not recognize the supremacy of one God, as revealed as Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Instead, Edwards' perspective gives credence to the idea of gods and goddesses. The New York Observer quotes the artist as saying that the work "pays homage to the closest thing America has to a living deity."

Really?

It is true that the media and fans everywhere often attribute to celebrities -- whether dead or alive -- a form of worship.  News of them fills our everyday lives. This does not mean that every celebrity figure seeks this attention or that their work or success are misplaced. For instance, I happen to admire Oprah for her ability to speak and empower a cross-section of women.

However, to attribute an inordinate amount of affection, hope or trust to anyone who is flesh and blood means treading not on sacred ground, but on shaky ground, for the mortal does not give life.

Ironically, Edwards calls the work The Oprah Sarcophagus. Well, a sacrophogus is a casket. For the dead. And the powerless. Maybe that's the sly message we can take away from Edwards' piece: dislodge the celebrity idols from their pedestals and treat them as human beings -- loved, though flawed.

At least I would like to hope so.

Let’s be civil, shall we?

Love of the game is cool.  But why did fans at last Sunday's New York Jets/Pittsburgh Steelers game abandon gridiron joys for halftime cheapness?

According to The New York Times, several hundred men lined up near the pedestrian ramps at Gate D in Giants' Stadium, chanting obscenities and demanding the few women there to expose their breasts. One woman acted like she would comply, but when she did not, the fans were livid and spat and threw plastic beer bottles. What was that? A page from the etiquette playbook from the heyday of the gladiators at the Roman Coliseum?

This is scary: The Times' story says this kind of behavior is standard at Gate D in Giants' Stadium.

This is so scary it makes my heart hurt:  One woman did what the fans demanded. Who told her she had to play to the crowd?

Unholy eve

My husband, Oscar, asked me this evening: When do adults get too old for Halloween?

Never, I said.

We had just left Cherry Creek mall in Denver, where a number of adults were sprinkled among costumed kids who carried trick-or-treat baskets, with parents in tow.  And before we even arrived at the mall,  we had met a neighbor in our apartment building, who was dressed as a box of popcorn.

Some adults cling to witches and ghouls and skeletons and web-crossed graves the way some of us take pleasure in Santa, elves, presents, candy canes and the The Nutcracker. Popular TV shows devotedly reference Halloween in their episodes.

I was incredulous, for instance, when a character on Grey's Anatomy last week was saddened because she missed her child's first Halloween. It was just another example of the rising status of All Hallows Eve, which nabbed a segment tonight on ABC's World News with Charles Gibson. The segment pointed out how much Americans spend on what isn't even a designated national holiday.

Satan certainly is cunning as he douses celebrity status on his hell-bent festival. Halloween is mainstream, a pillar of childhood fun, a fixture on the fall calendar, the predecessor of the Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings. And when I think of the powerful morphing of Halloween, in my mind's eye I see a teenager working at one of the mall restaurants this evening. The teenager wore a horned, grinning and red-faced demon mask.

He waved as my husband and I passed him by.