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At first I gave her a thumbs up in reply to her suggestion that I can still ask God to reveal Himself but it bothered me afterwards that I did so. I wanted to make my thoughts about the idea of God clearer and more decisive so I sent her the following in a number of messages: ~~~~~ Please don’t mistake my “letting go of trying to figure God out” as something that was wrong or bad to do. I’m thankful I did it. The idea of “God says it, I believe it, that settles it and I will obey” is Biblical conditioning that demonizes critical thinking. Yet this is what is taught as you will see below. Repetition of such ideas as this one and others like it, such as “leaning not on your own understanding,” is an indoctrination process where they become a believer’s absolute world view, one’s core beliefs, one’s neural programing in the mind. Job is an example of this. Whether you believe the book of Job is a historical event that really happened or an allegory, God allowed Satan to do terrible things to Job and his family on some kind of a bet and in the end, God reproves Job for questioning His ways to the point that finally Job submits in 42:6, “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Only after that does God reward him, not by raising his previous children from the dead (so he and his wife could stop mourning them), but giving him new ones, and we’re supposed to praise God for this? This is simply a horrendous story that no one would critically agree is loving or just if an earthly father did such things to his children. But because of Biblical indoctrination, you have “God Questions” saying the following (the italic comments are mine): “The Book of Job reminds us that there is a "cosmic conflict" going on behind the scenes that we usually know nothing about. (What evidence is there that this is true?) Often we wonder why God allows something, and we question or doubt God’s goodness, without seeing the full picture. The Book of Job teaches us to trust God under all circumstances. We must trust God, not only WHEN we do not understand, but BECAUSE we do not understand. The psalmist tells us, “As for God, His way is perfect” (Psalm 18:30). If God’s ways are “perfect,” then we can trust that whatever He does—and whatever He allows—is also perfect. This may not seem possible to us, but our minds are not God’s mind. It is true that we can’t expect to understand His mind perfectly, as He reminds us, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9). (This is another Biblical doctrine that demonizes our ability to think logically and rationally.) Nevertheless, OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO GOD IS TO OBEY HIM, TO TRUST HIM, AND TO SUBMIT TO HIS WILL, WHETHER WE UNDERSTAND IT OR NOT.” (Capitalization of this sentence is mine.) I abhor this kind of thinking now so I will not ask God to reveal himself because He does not exist outside of the words of men written in the Bible and even if He did, I would not worship him and his ways. ~~~~~ It shows how irrational my beleefs were when I used to accept such an evil God as being all righteous and good and therefore worthy of complete obedience to him.

Good to hear. This was a tropical storm all the way to Atlanta, though. I hope all our Greasespotters are OK. George