I want to thank so much for your timely, and very enlightening, response. You shouldn't be running for local office, Obama needs you in his diplomatic corps.

Your response to my writings on the situation in Gaza has gone a long way towards causing me to re-think my previous position in this matter. While I continue to believe that what took place in the creation of Israel in 1948 was unfair to the Palestinian people, you've cause me to reconsider my position on European Jewry. I've now come to believe--over night, actually--that my previous position was counterproductive, and in itself, contributes to the hostility and the political posturing that has caused the loss of so many lives around the world.

I now take the position that no group of people can "own" any part of this planet--it ALL belongs to God. We can only be custodians, though I do recognize the need to setup governments to manage the parcel of land that we're blessed with inhabiting.

While my new position is consistent with my continued belief that the Palestinian people were treated unfairly, it does suggest a solution--though a highly unlikely one, considering man's current state of barbarism. Israel, Palestine, or whatever one chooses to call it, should be considered God's land, for which no man, or group of men, should be able to claim exclusive ownership.

As for what is said in scripture, that's grist for another debate. After all, does scripture actually constitute the word of God, or is scripture actually the words of the men who wrote it? Personally, I think God was much too efficient in his creation of man to require an owner's manual-especially one that would cause so much dysfunction among those that it was created for. Even if an entity as flawed and unholy as MicroSoft had created such a problematic user's manual, it would have long since been withdrawn from the market.

And yet another indication of what many consider "the word of God" may actually be the word of man, is the fact that I don't need a book to inform me that it is wrong for me to covet my neighbor's wife. The minute I begin to indulge in such activity, and I have, I could hear the personal voice of God whispering into my ear-- "Eric, what you're doing is wrong."

Thus, while man insists that we must have "faith" in these matters, is he asking me to have faith in God, or is he actually asking me to have faith in what he's telling me about God? Because it seems to me that if God created a universe where I can observe the electrons and protons orbiting around the nucleus of the tiniest atom, in the exact same way that the solar system orbits around the Sun, and the Sun orbits around the center of the galaxy, and the galaxy hurls through space and time in search of the center of the universe, he's done enough. That alone should be enough to demonstrate his awesome existence.

But if it's not enough, when you add the fact that I can cut my finger, then watch the stuff of life ooze from the wound to repair it as good as new, or watch two lovers come together to love and comfort one another in the frigid cold of Winter, only to create a third bundle of love in the Fall, how can one not see the face of God? After he, or she, has done all these things, and then went on to create birds that fly, fish that swim, and man with the ability to think, it seems to me that is the epitome of arrogance for man to require him to allow Moses to part the Red Sea to demonstrate his existence.

From my point of view, we can only know God by what he has done. So again, he's demonstrated his will by making birds fly, fish swim, and man to think. We know it's his will because if any of those creatures fail to remain true to their nature, they cannot survive.

Thus, man burst upon this planet as a necked ape-he wasn't as mighty as the elephant, as ferocious as the lion, nor could he soar like the eagle. But it was God's will to provided him with a brain-cognition, logic. It was those qualities alone that allowed man to survive. He was given the ability to assess, evaluate, and manipulate his environment. As direct result, man can now build machines that are mightier than any elephant, more fearsome than the most ferocious lion, and can soar far beyond the eagle's domain.

Therefore, God has demonstrated through what he has done, just as surely as he made whales to dominate the creatures of the sea, and made lions to be king of the beasts, that he created man to be logical, thinking beings. But now, man is REQUIRING, that we give up those very qualities-to suspend our intellect--in lieu of simply having FAITH in what HE tells us is God's will. The intellect that I KNOW God gave me, suggests that I should have a problem with that.

As I write, I can hear God whispering in my ear. Even as I write, he speaks: "When man tells you to set aside the logic that was my exclusive gift to mankind , and to have "faith" in what HE'S telling you about me, he's asking you to ignore my will, and to have "faith" in HIM.

"After all, my child, you don't have to have faith in the fact that you're sitting here writing-you know that to be a fact, therefore, faith is not required. Faith only has relevance where there's doubt. So to simply acknowledge man's prescription that you have "faith" in God, is a slap in my face. It is nothing less than an acknowledgment that you're more prone to worship what man says, than what I have actually done.

"This, is the evil of man-in his arrogance, he tries to speak for me."

Maybe this is simply a delusion, and not God at all. After all, I also suffer from the frailties of mankind--but that's what I hear.

Eric L. Wattree

wattree.blogspot.com

A moderate is one who embraces truth over ideology.