All posts by Dr. Robin Starbuck

About Dr. Robin Starbuck

Professor of English 1973 M.A., New York University 1989 Ph.D., New York University Linguistics

Scary places in your mind

Are there certain places in your mind
(Hey, it’s just me again, don’t worry.)
Certain private places where
things just simply are accepted as
“The way things are”?
You see God everywhere …
In everything …
Well, … almost!
I want to tell you, if I may …
That’s Not Good Enough!!!

It’s those little places, little spaces,
That you wanna clear out
‘Coz they loom large
At the wrong-est time
Here’s what you can do:

‘See’ God right there
In that scary place
INSTEAD OF
What your frightened mind believes
Because in fact
The Spiritual truth is
The Way Things Really Are!!!

Christianity is not religion

CONVERSATION AMONG FRIENDS ABOUT CHRISYIANITY VS RELIGION

POSTED: “Christianity is NOT religion. Religion is humanistic. It promotes self-potential of good or evil. It is performance-based.”

AAA I think you’re just playing with words…”religion” can be humanistic, empty, even evil: “If any man among you seem to be religious and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain. (James1:26)

BBB I do not do religon.

CCC Green Not all “religion” is wrong or empty or self-serving — it’s just a word that indicates a set of beliefs. PURE RELIGION (see — there is such a thing) and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.(James 1:27) The trick is to know the difference and to be able- by God’s grace- to have the RIGHT kind of religion. It’s really just a word — and not a “dirty” one, at that!

DDD Please see the post below for a complete explanation.

EEE Sorry to vent, but I just don’t understand how you can say Christianity “Is not a religion”. Of course it is! People will know whether our personal Christianity is vain or if it is pure and undefiled – we won’t have to pretend that it is not a religion.

FFF definition that denotes bondage (Hebrew meaning)I love words, they are important and God’s word says to choose our words carefully. The Latin term religiō, origin of the modern lexeme religion (via Old French/Middle Latin[2]) is of ultimately obscure etymology. It is recorded beginning in the 1st century BC, i.e. in Classical Latin at the beginning of the Roman Empire, notably by Cicero, in the sense of “scrupulous or strict observance of the traditional cultus”. Wikipedia

GGG Christianity Is Hanging On The Cross 🌴

HHH He is risen!

III Yup

JJJ Ah the Bait of Satan, to take up our time debating or sharing our views while all in all we are to help the lost be found! most folks that get offended by statements then showing their Best fruit of the Day…… Be careful not to waste our time “taking the Bait ” remember Jesus cast with a net” No Hooks Needed………………………

KKK Rest, sweet rest, not work at all!

LLL Surely James 1:27 is part of Christianity though. Right?

MMM James explains that, “If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless” (James 1:26,27). The Greek word that he uses is threskeia, meaning “worship or religion.” Misrepresentation of the character of God in our behavior often indicates that we are engaging in “worthless religion.” James continues, though, to use threskeia in a positive way when he refers to “pure and undefiled religion” (James 1:27), wherein the worth-ship of God’s character is genuinely expressed in practical ministry to orphans and widows, and in the expression of the purity of God’s character. In that case genuine Christian worship transpires as we are receptive to the activity of God and express the worth-ship of His character in our behavior.

In light of the predominantly negative inferences of the word “religion” in the New Testament, we should avoid applying this word to Christianity. -(excerpt from Christianity is not religion, see post below).

NNN The intent of this post is to bring clarity to Christians and with that spirit in mind, I offer the following article to help those struggling with understanding the difference between Christianity and religion. The Latin word from which the English word “religion” is derived means “to bind up.” Jesus did not come to bind us up in rules and regulations or rituals of devotion, but to set us free to be man as God intended. http://www.christinyou.net/pages/Xnotrel.html

OOO Amen 💙

PPP Love this post….
I care more about a person and their personal relationship with the Lord, than a title we choose to give ourselves.

QQQ All religion is a failure. Church is even a trap if we’re not careful. Jesus is the only answer. The older I get the more I understand this.

RRR I completely understand what was posted. And sixth months ago I would of misinterpreted his intent. What I have experienced in my life, is often I became so imbedded in a title, that I lost the point behind what I believed in. And I have come to realize is that for me, I acknowledge I am a creation of a deep and loving God. And our sweet God has imbedded in me, as well as most humans, the emotion that desires to belong. As we examine the life of Jesus Christ he was the soul that has allowed us to forwever belong in his eternal kingdom. That was Jesus’s mission; he wants us to be with him in heaven. And as creations of Christ, knowing that we desire to belong, owning or expressing a title of belief for many, makes them feel wanted and part of something. We have many individuals who are lonely. To understanding the point and the why behind it l, has helps me to feel that is nothing wrong with that, except that it can lead into a false belief system, which than can lead into legalism within our church walls. And that false belief and legalism can happen in any church regardless of denomination. The title, the words like Judaism, Catholism, or Christianity, are all just titles we have choose to give ourselves. Why are we at many levels as a society l, so fixated on the title people chose to use, and less on loving and accepting the diversity in which a person may offer to celebrate their relationship with the Lord? A title doesn’t indicate religion, its people who have indicated religion.

SSS It’s not about religion–it’s about relationship. All Christ followers should understand this. 🙂

Ferion or boson

FERION OR BOSON
At a fundamental level, everything we know of in this Universe is made of the same few fundamental particles: quarks, gluons, electrons and photons, which combine to give us atoms, which in turn make up all the molecules, cells, organs and living creatures inhabiting our world today. But how do we go from these tiny scales where everything looks so similar to the huge diversity of what exists at a larger, more macroscopic scale?
The secret is encoded in a single quantum rule that governs how it all works: the Pauli exclusion principle.

Baby steps

WHAT IF THAT BATHROOM WERE YOUR MIND? jes’ sayin’ [rjs]
○●□■♤◇♧♧♡♤□●○○■♧♧♡♡■□●○♤

Dont clean the house. Thats too hard. Clean a bathroom.
Put some music on. Clean it like an old friend is gonna sit in there.
Then go sit down. After awhile, go look at that clean bathroom.
The pride of seeing what you’ve accomplished will motivate you. Maybe the bedroom will be doable.

Baby steps.
Do a little, do it right!
Maybe it will shed some light!
Moving you to do some more
That’s what baby-steps are for!
Overwhelmed? That’s OK!
Listen to these words I say!
Push yourself to make a start
And watch what happens in your heart!

~Robert Rutherford

‘Cooling my heels’

GOD DOES NOT CAUSE SUFFERING nor does he revel in seeing his beloved in pain. Having said that, I’ve been at this spirituality thing a long, long time and I know it develops with practice. I also know unfortunately (!) that a very large percent of my spiritual growth has been owing to my often being forced to ‘cool my heels’ by facing one seemingly insurmountable issue or another.

Blond men jokes

LIKE BLOND JOKES?

A blond man is in the bathroom and his wife
shouts: “Did you find the shampoo?”

He answers, “Yes, but I’m not sure what
to do; it’s for dry hair, and I’ve just wet mine.”
——————————————————————————————————————————

A blond man goes to the vet with his goldfish.

“I think it’s got epilepsy,” he tells the vet.

The vet takes a look and says, “It seems calm enough to me.”

The blond man says, “Wait, I haven’t taken it out of the bowl yet.”
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

A blond man spies a letter lying on his doormat.

It says on the envelope “DO NOT BEND “.

He spends the next 2 hours trying to figure out how to pick it up.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

A blond man shouts frantically into the phone, “My wife is pregnant and her contractions are only two minutes apart!”

“Is this her first child?” asks the Doctor.

“No!” he shouts, “this is her husband!”
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

A blond man was driving home, drunk as a skunk. Suddenly he has to swerve to avoid a tree, then another, then another.

A cop car pulls him over, so he tells the cop about all the trees in the road.

The cop says, “That’s your air freshener swinging about!”
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

A blond man’s dog goes missing and he is frantic. His wife says “Why don’t you put an ad in the paper?”

He does, but two weeks later the dog is still missing.

“What did you put in the paper?” his wife asks.

“Here boy!” he replies.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

A blond man is in jail. The guard looks in his cell and sees him hanging by his feet.

“Just WHAT are you doing?” he asks.

“Hanging myself,” the blond replies.

“The rope should be around your neck” says the guard.

“I tried that,” he replies, “but then I couldn’t breathe.”
=================================================================================================================

An Italian tourist asks a blond man: “Why do scuba divers always fall backwards off their boats?”

To which the blonde man replies: “If they fell forward, they’d still be in the boat.”
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

A friend told the blond man: “Christmas is on a Friday this year.”

The blond man then said, “Let’s hope it’s not the 13th.”
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Two blond men find three grenades, and they decide to take them to a police station.

One asks: “What if one explodes before we get there?”

The other says: “We’ll lie and say we only found two.”
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

A woman phoned her blond neighbor man and said: “Close your curtains the next time
you & your wife are having sex. The whole street was watching and laughing at you yesterday.”

To which the blond man replied: “Well the joke’s on all of you because I wasn’t even at home yesterday.