Introduction

Well, I have really wanted to get this “godpuddle” blogsite off the ground for a while now. My hesitation, my reticence, has been a combination of simple lack of time, coupled with the fact that the subject matter is not something that I want to be hasty and/or flippant about.
The truth of the matter is that nothing could be more serious to me, than matters of a theological nature. And that is what I want to cover here, in godpuddle.
Theology.
The word means, quite literally, “study of God”.
But how can we really STUDY “God”?
Good question.
At godpuddle, I want there to be no such thing as an illegal question. But I DO want there to be such a thing as an illegal answer.
And by “illegal” I really mean “invalid”.
I guess that I, as the controller [to a certain extent] of this site, will be the Grand Arbiter of what is valid, and what is invalid.
But I am easy to get along with.
All I want is for every approach to things “theological” to be disinterested.
What do I mean by disinterested?
I mean that no one, not you, or not I, are trying to convince anyone of anything, and/or sell something to somebody. Your thoughts, your opinions, are as important as mine are [provided you stay disinterested in any agenda].
Our business is to talk and make sense to each other. Can we agree to do that?
Godpuddle is not going to necessarily be a place where you go to find answers to questions you’ve always pondered. But my hope is that it can be a place where you and I can ponder questions we’ve never had answered.

Lately, I have come to believe [and I want to talk about this word “believe” and what it means, and how it differs from “knowing”], I have come to believe that some questions are better left in their interrogative state, than forcing them to contort and conform to an answer that bristles with prejudice or biased untruth.
I have no axe to grind, nor am I angry with anybody or any institution, nor with “God” him or herself.
The truth is, I LOVE God. I “believe” in a Creator-god. I merely want to discuss questions of real relevance, all rhetoric thrown to the four winds.
My background is Christian. However, I dislike “Christianeze”…. terms that mean nothing except to those who are real initiates of the jargon.

This may be as good a place as any to tell you a wee bit about myself.
My name is not important, nor is my address or pin numbers.
So I will avoid posting anything about all of those things.
What I feel is important is the following stuff:
I am 42 years old, a single, male human.
I am Canadian.
I studied “Christian” theology, exclusively, full-time, in a fullly-accredited college, for four years, between 1987 and 1991.
I graduated with an “honours” Bachelor of Theology Degree, and was subsequently involved in church ministry, as a licensed minister of the Pentecostal Church.
Currently, I am in secular employment.
My interest in theology has never waned. Rather, it has only really grown more and more intense and focused, over the years.
“Focused,” while “broadening.”
I have read the Christian Bible through several times, and have intensely studied it for over two decades, as of this current writing.
There is never a time when I am not pondering some aspect of theological mystery. Hence, this site…. godpuddle.

I consider the Christian Bible [Old and New Testaments] to be the most personally relevant religious text, in existence.
[But the word “personally” in the above sentence is quite relevant, in and of itself, and that relevance is not lost on me, and the subjectivity of such a preference is something I always want to keep in mind.]
In the past several years, I have undergone what I would consider to be a radical change involving my perception of what “faith” is, and in what “faith” means to me now.
To some who know me well, I have become a heretic.
To myself, I have become more real than I have ever been.
These changes, these things that I am tempted to call “The Three Pillars” are what I am most interested in telling you about next, in future blogs.

For now, I will just end off by saying that I think it is very important to LISTEN to what is being said…. being said by a fallible human-being, here in Isaiah chapter 55, verses 8 and 9:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

How I wish that we could leave these verses, leave them to their own glorious self-proclaimed mystery, rather than lean so very heavily upon our own stupidity… and with the next breath that we expel, try to explain everything that these very verses declare, unexplainable.

Stay tuned.

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