Which church, Which Bible, Which doctrine???

 I was fortunate to have  moved around a lot when I was a young Christian, and because of that, I attended many churches. 

I found each church always had a core group of true believers actually living out the faith in ways that I saw as Biblical. 

They were always loving, caring, active, living simply, and free of extreme dogma. 

In addition I was fortunate to have a fella hand me a Christian Classic to read as a devotional; 

 It created a hunger in me, and from that day forward I read the Bible as well as the Christian Classics and biographies which broadened my spiritual horizons, caused me to question my narrow and pinched beliefs and helped me immensely by grounding me in the faith, 

but also recognizing the height, depth and width of Christian thought. 

 If you had asked Henry Drummond to what school of thought he belonged, he would have told you that 

"He never wore ready-made clothes." 

I like that.

"The classical instance of the contemptuous rejection of ready-made clothing was, of course, David's refusal to wear Saul's armor."

I learned when I felt bound or "cribb'd, cabin'd, and confined"  by a teaching, 

I needed to search it out and find out what the teaching was that robbed me of Christ's liberating words of life. 

I also learned if I find some special phase of truth powerfully attracting me, I must, without shunning it, 

pay increasing attention to all other aspects. 

'The Lord has yet more truth to break from out His Word!' said John Robinson; 

and I must try to find it.'

To illustrate that - 

"Mr. Goodman is a splendid fellow; but he fell in love with one lonely little truth one day, and now he never thinks or reads or preaches of any other."

Reading the classics of faith and biographies also motivated me because the heroes of the faith were men and women of action!

They involved themselves with the marginalized, the downcast, the oppressed, the addicted, and the afflicted. 

I soon realized that a faith consisting only of Christian study and doctrine was but half of our calling. 

The other half—however it is expressed—

is serving the least, the last, and the lost, "cheek to jowl," up close and personal. 

There, in the lives of those we serve, is the true school of Christ. 

 Divisions among the Christian faith

"Our age is far sadder than those before it—

not with a noble, tragic sadness, 

but with the dull exhaustion of boredom, weary minds, 

and deep discomfort of both soul and body.

I believe the root of this darkness is our loss of faith. 

No generation in history—whether savage or civilized—has so completely fulfilled the words, 

"having no hope, and without God in the world," as modern Europeans.

A Native American or Tahitian islander often possesses a stronger sense of a divine presence surrounding and governing life 

than many educated people in London or Paris. 

Even those among us who still believe 

are largely divided into two hostile camps: Catholics and Protestants. 

Were it not for the restraining influence of unbelievers, 

each side would gladly destroy the other. 

Catholics have done so whenever they held power; 

Protestants, in turn, wait with satisfaction for God to destroy Rome with volcanic fire.

This bitter division among people who profess 

the same God 

and the same Scriptures 

has become a great stumbling block—

one that few overcome except through the fortunate influence of their early upbringing."

The quote above is an abridged version of John Ruskin. Here is the original - 

“On the whole, these are much sadder ages than the early ones; not sadder in a noble and deep way, but in a dim, wearied way, - the way of ennui, and jaded intellect, and uncomfortableness of soul and body. 

 The profoundest reason of this darkness of heart is, I believe, our want of faith. There never yet was a generation of men (savage or civilized) who, taken as a body, so woefully fulfilled the words, “having no hope, and without God in the world,” as the present European race.

A Red Indian or Otaheitan savage has more sense of a Divine existence round him, or government under him, than the plurality of refined Londoners and Parisians; and those among us who may in some sense be said to believe, are divided almost without exception into two broad classes, Romanists and Puritan; who, but for the interference of the unbelieving portions of society would, either of them, reduce the other sect as speedily as possible to ashes; the Romanist having always done so whenever he could, from the beginning of their separation, and the Puritan at this time holding himself in complacent expectation of the destruction of Rome by volcanic fire. Such division as this between persons nominally of one religion, that is to say, believing in the same God, and the same Revelation, cannot but become a stumbling-block which they can only surmount under the most favorable circumstances of early education.   

God rarely gives us strength for imaginary troubles;

He gives it for present duties.

The following reflection captures that reality with uncommon clarity and a memorable personal example of how fear strangely disappeared when real crisis demanded action.

“There is one thing which seems to me to have always and invariably hampered and maimed me, whenever I have yielded to it, and I have often yielded to it; and that is Fear.

It can be called by many names, and all of them ugly names—

anxiety, timidity, moral cowardice.

I can never trace the smallest good in having given way to it.

Face to face with it, it has a strength, a poignancy, a paralyzing power, which makes it seem like a personal and specific ill-will,

issuing in a sort of dreadful enchantment or spell, which renders it impossible to withstand.

Yet, strange to say, it has not exercised its power in the few occasions in my life when it would seem to have been really justified.

Let me quote an instance which will illustrate what I mean.

I was called upon once in Switzerland to assist with two guides in the rescue of an unfortunate woman who had fallen from a precipice, and had to be brought down, dead or alive.

We hurried up through the pine-forest with a chair, and found the poor creature alive indeed, but with horrible injuries—

an eye knocked out, an arm and a thigh broken, her ulster torn to ribbons, and with more blood about the place in pools than I should have thought a human body could contain.

She was conscious; she had to be lifted into the chair, and we had to discover where she belonged; she fainted away in the middle of it, and I had to go on and break the news to her relations.

If I had been told beforehand what would have had to be done,

I do not think I could have faced it;

but it was there to do,

and I found myself entirely capable of taking part, and even of wondering all the time how it was possible to act.”

 

"Imagine two men walking through the vilest streets of a great city.

One is filled only with selfishness and the love of self-indulgence.

The other burns with compassion,

perhaps searching for a lost child,

or longing to rescue some man or woman

whose blazing sin has made those streets a very hell.

Why is it that one man absorbs the evil through which he walks, steeping himself in its corruption,

while the other comes out with garments all the whiter for having passed through the fire?

Is it not what Jesus meant when He said,

'These signs shall follow those who believe...

if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not harm them'?"

Phillips Brooks.

This reminds me when my son worked with an organization to rescue pre-teen girls captured in the child trafficking trade

where he was required to go into the most vile and depraved parts of Thailand in search of girls.

They were only to be found in brothels, strip clubs and houses of prostitution where danger and sin ran its course without restraint.

The deadly potion and the venomous snake loomed at every door,

and but for the mission of charity and the protection of Christ,

one dare not go there and hope to come away unscathed.

 

HOW DO WE UNDERSTAND GOD?

In the following quote, the author's point is

that God is known most deeply not by mastering ideas about Him,

but by living in fellowship with Him.

Theology has its place, but living communion with God is the source from which true theology should grow.

"We believe this is Mr. Mansel's first, and perhaps deepest, mistake. Seeing that we have no complete theory of God, he concludes that we have no real knowledge of Him.

Yet the simplest facts of life teach otherwise.

Do we possess a complete theory of any human being? Certainly not.

Yet our relationship with others is far more than a collection of ideas about them.

Indeed, rigid, "fixed ideas" about people often reveal a narrow mind.

Mr. Mansel makes the same mistake about God.

He treats our ideas of God as though they reveal Him,

when they often conceal Him.

We have no shortage of notions about God,

but genuine experience tears through these hardened concepts.

When we come to Him with a loving heart and an awakened conscience, many of our fixed ideas dissolve like mist before the morning sun.

To know God is not merely to possess ideas about Him,

but to live in direct communion with Him.

This is precisely where knowledge is deepest,

though complete explanation is impossible.

We know the mystery of personality, and we know love and hatred,

yet no theory can fully explain them.

So it is with God. We know Him better than we know ourselves,

yet cannot construct a complete theory of Him

because we stand beneath Him, not above Him.

We can recognize Him, trust Him, and learn from Him,

but never fully comprehend Him.

It is therefore a mistake to suppose that true knowledge depends on constructing a philosophical or theological system.

Our deepest knowledge comes through shared life and experience; complete theories belong only to

the simplest and most abstract sciences."

 

I've read many pieces on "Baby Boomers." But this is the best one yet --

"We are often called “the elderly,” but that quiet label hides a truth most people rarely pause to consider: we are the last living witnesses of a world that no longer exists.

If you look closely, you might notice gray hair, slower steps, or the quiet patience that time alone can teach. But if you truly listen to our stories, you will discover something far more extraordinary. We are not simply older people moving through the final chapters of life. 

We are the survivors of one of the most breathtaking transformations in human history — a generation that walked from the slow, deliberate rhythm of an analog world into the dazzling speed of a digital one without ever losing our sense of humanity along the way.

Our journey began in a very different place.

Many of us were born in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, when the scars of World War II were still fresh across Europe and Asia and the world was slowly learning how to hope again. Cities rose from rubble. Families rebuilt lives after years of uncertainty. Childhood unfolded in ways that would feel almost unrecognizable to younger generations today. 

Our toys were simple: marbles played in dusty yards, hopscotch drawn on cracked sidewalks, checkers and cards gathered around kitchen tables while the smell of dinner filled the house. When the streetlights flickered on in the evening, it was the universal signal that childhood adventures were over for the day and it was time to go home.

There were no smartphones, no streaming videos, no endless scroll of digital distractions. Instead, we built our memories in the real world — with scraped knees, laughter echoing down neighborhood streets, and friendships that formed face to face, without the mediation of screens.

Music became one of the defining soundtracks of our youth. The 1960s and 1970s arrived like a wave of color and rebellion. We watched culture shift around us, carried by electric guitars and voices that dared to question the world. 

For many of us, gatherings like the legendary Woodstock Festival of 1969 symbolized something powerful: the belief that peace, music, and community could reshape the future. Hundreds of thousands of young people stood together in muddy fields, listening to artists who poured raw emotion into towering speakers known as the Wall of Sound. Those concerts were not merely entertainment; they were moments when strangers felt like a single generation singing the same hope under an open sky.

Education looked different then, too. Our notebooks were filled with handwritten notes carefully copied from chalkboards. Research required patience, long hours in libraries, and stacks of heavy books rather than a quick internet search. We learned to slow down and think through ideas because information did not arrive instantly. Mistakes were corrected with erasers and ink, not with the click of a delete button.

Love carried a different rhythm as well. We fell in love while vinyl records spun on turntables and cassette tapes clicked softly inside plastic players. Music became the background to first dances, long conversations, and dreams about the future. Those relationships grew into marriages, families, and lives built step by step through the 1980s and 1990s — decades that saw technology begin to reshape the world around us.

Yet nothing compares to the bridge our generation has crossed. We are the only generation to have experienced an entirely analog childhood and a fully digital adulthood. 

We remember waiting days — or sometimes weeks — for handwritten letters to arrive in the mail. We remember rotary telephones and party lines where neighbors could accidentally overhear conversations. Communication required patience and anticipation. Today, we can see the face of a loved one across the ocean instantly on a screen small enough to fit in a pocket.

The world changed in ways few could have imagined. We watched humanity land on the Moon in 1969, a moment when millions of people sat in living rooms staring at black-and-white televisions as Neil Armstrong took humanity’s first steps on another world. 

We saw the rise of personal computers, the birth of the internet, and eventually the arrival of smartphones that placed entire libraries of knowledge in our hands. Machines that once filled entire rooms now exist on devices lighter than a paperback book. We moved from punch cards and mechanical tools to artificial intelligence and global networks connecting billions of people instantly. And through every shift, we adapted.

Our bodies carry the marks of the times we lived through as well. We grew up during fears of polio and tuberculosis, illnesses that once terrified entire communities before vaccines helped bring them under control. We witnessed the global challenges of pandemics and health crises across decades, including the recent silence and uncertainty of COVID-19, which reminded the world that resilience is still required in every generation.

Science itself transformed before our eyes. We saw the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, the decoding of the human genome at the turn of the century, and the early steps into gene therapy and advanced medicine. Transportation evolved from simple bicycles and steam engines to hybrid vehicles and electric cars gliding almost silently through city streets.

Few generations have witnessed such sweeping change. And yet, despite everything that evolved around us, certain things remain unchanged. We still understand the joy of a cold glass bottle of lemonade on a hot afternoon. We still remember the taste of vegetables picked straight from a garden. We still know the value of a long conversation that unfolds slowly without a keyboard or screen interrupting it.

Our memories stretch across decades. We have celebrated births, mourned losses, watched friends depart, and carried their stories forward. Those of us who remain share something rare: the experience of standing at the crossroads of history, holding memories from a world that younger generations know only through photographs and stories.

But we are not relics. We are living bridges. Our perspective reminds the modern world that progress does not have to erase wisdom. The speed of technology does not have to replace patience, kindness, or reflection. We remember what life felt like before everything moved so fast — and that memory carries quiet lessons worth sharing.

So when someone calls us “elderly,” we can smile. Because behind that word lies something extraordinary. We are the generation that crossed two centuries, witnessed eight decades of transformation, and walked from the age of handwritten letters to the era of artificial intelligence.

What a life we have lived. What a remarkable story we continue to carry. And if you belong to this generation, take a moment today to look in the mirror and recognize something powerful. 

You are not simply growing older. You are living history. You are part of a generation that will always remain one of a kind. And perhaps, in the quietest and most meaningful way, you are becoming legendary." 

 

I've always wondered why it is, or what it is, that causes the almost overwhelming feelings I have when working with those in crisis? Are the emotions purely spiritual or are they a mix of natural feelings? I'm not sure what the final word is on the subject, but when I studied the human hormones and neurotransmitters I see what the feelings are. Now they are clearly evident in the descriptions below -- 

Dopamine - Dopamine is often called the "feel-good" neurotransmitter or hormone. It plays a central role in the brain's reward system, contributing to various positive feelings and driving behaviors that lead to rewards.

Helps you want and pursue;

Gives the feeling of anticipation, motivation, accomplishment, 

and “yes, that felt good — let’s do it again.”

Euphoria or Reward "Rush": 

Intense dopamine surges can produce feelings of elation, excitement, 

or a powerful sense of reward. 

This includes the anticipation and pursuit of something desirable. 

Happiness, Positivity, and Alertness: that contribute to

emotional responses that contribute to overall well-being. 

Dopamine boosts interest in ideas, learning, exploration, making you feel engaged.  

In short, dopamine helps turn positive experiences into motivation for more of them, supporting feelings of pleasure, drive, excitement, and focus that make life feel rewarding.

Serotonin

Often associated with contentment, emotional balance, and calm, as well as impulse control.

Serotonin supports longer-term well-being and behavioral flexibility. 

Serotonin can modulate dopamine release.

Endorphins - Sometimes called the "helper's high," 

serving others can elevate mood and increase feelings of well-being. 

Endorphins primarily help the body cope with stress and discomfort.

They produce feelings of well-being, bliss, or a “natural high.”

Endorphins stimulate feelings of gratitude, emotional tears, experiences of triumph.

They lower stress, reduce anxiety, and promote a positive state of mind, helping you feel calmer and more resilient.

Oxytocin - Oxytocin produces bonding, trust and emotional warmth, genuine emotional connection.

It plays crucial roles in social bonding, and emotional regulation. 

Oxytocin is particularly tied to interpersonal connection and trust. 

It fosters feelings of closeness, trust, and emotional connection.

It enhances feelings of safety with others, promotes empathy, compassion, and prosocial behaviors like cooperation and kindness. It can make you feel warmer and more open. 

Norepinephrine - Closely related to dopamine, it supports goal-directed behavior, decision-making, and the ability to handle challenges. 

It can produce feelings of confidence and determination. 

It helps you wake up, focus, and engage with the task in front of you. 

Alertness & Energy

it enhances performance under pressure, contributing to feelings of exhilaration or accomplishment after demanding tasks.

The “good feelings” from norepinephrine are more activating and energizing than purely pleasurable — think focused excitement, clarity, and readiness rather than calm contentment or euphoric bliss.

Gaba – Gaba acts like the brain’s “brake pedal,” reducing excitability. 

Gaba produces relaxation and calm, emotional stability and a sense of safety, 

and handle stress without becoming overwhelmed. 

It quiets racing thoughts, reduces mental chatter, and produces a soothing, centered feeling.

My conclusion is: all these hormones are released when ministering in whatever our calling is; for me, it's to the poor, downtrodden, oppressed and those in crisis. It is deeply emotional and now I understand how they all work together to equip us for the work. 

I chose this painting because the teacher is dressed in armor, the Lord is pouring out His anointing, without which, nothing on the spiritual level is accomplished. 

 

 The following quote isn't exactly orthodox Christianity because it focuses on self-reliance, and Christianity teaches radical dependence on God, not self. But I like a lot of the practical elements of the quote, especially - "we cannot foresee dangers no matter how vividly they are described to us," I preach at the jail weekly and every person there can relate to that. 

“We all have to learn that no one can help us except ourselves. 

Other people can sympathize and console, try to soothe our injured vanity, 

And try to persuade us that the dangers and disasters ahead 

are not so dreadful as they appear to be, 

and that the mistakes we have made are not irreparable. 

But no one can remove danger or regret from us, 

or relieve us of the necessity of facing our own troubles; 

the most that they can do, indeed, 

is to encourage us to try again.

But we cannot hope to change the conditions of life; 

and one of its conditions is, 

as I have said, that we cannot foresee dangers. 

No matter how vividly they are described to us, 

no matter how eagerly those who love us try to warn us of peril, 

we cannot escape. 

For that is the essence of life—experience; 

and though we cannot rejoice when we are in the grip of it, 

and when we cannot see what the end will be, 

we can at least say to ourselves again and again, 

"This is at all events reality—this is the business of life and faith!" 

For it is the moments of faith, endurance, energy and action 

which after all justify us in living, 

and not the pleasant spaces where we saunter among flowers and sunlit woods. 

Those are conceded to us, 

to tempt us to live, to make us desire to remain in the world; 

and we need not be afraid to take them, to use them, to enjoy them; 

because all things alike help to make us what we are.” A. C. Benson