Scalia

I'm reading Reading Law by Justice Scalia. In it one finds the man has no ability to restrain himself and utterly must be his most honest self and write thusly, to his detriment. The words flounder and waves crash as the sentiments therein rebound back onto the original preceding statements and clash. He is complex. He made himself into the monster he is who can manipulate law to his will(monstrous due to his method of openly rebounding sentences) willfully though now it be who he is. It is inextricable. He leaves out his original stance and changes it as the sentences flow onward. It undermines the sentences before it. 

However, he is divulging important facts very carefully and masterfully, if one could only see less of the glaring truth of his every thought and motivation in the court bleeding through his text in my hands(Reading Law). 

It is important that a work like this was written, written masterfully, and written plainly. Most anyone can keep up. 

I have trouble keeping up because of the fact that his countenance shows in his varied paragraphs. He shows his hand, time and again, while trying to stay on topic but through dint of much laboring in the court and being who he is he has trouble applying principles of objectivity. 

Correct my NT Belief

I read into Jesus not something new but the acting out of proper behavior and iterations that were correct even before the Old Testament as far as right and wrong go. I don't see his behavior to be against the Sanhedrin or something. He was, to me, trying to help people to see what he innately knew -- And those things were flawless and true. 

In keeping with the theme of my Old Testament post, I want to draw in the fact that highlighting the principles of the ten commandments (as well as the rest of the law of Moses, the actions of the prophets, etc and so on) was to bring back the people to a relationship with God, to reconcile them to nature itself, to right instead of wrong and understanding instead of disbelief/undue self-imposed suffering. 

I wonder if my quarrel(do I present one?) lies in thinking Jesus did not bring anything new to the table other than his sacrifice (a reconciliation that was to happen inevitably) and that I still have yet to disprove to myself that right and wrong adhere cleanly to the laws of nature. ( I wanted to save "cleave to" the laws of nature, but thought that would sound too 'in the weeds.')

Jesus told people what they already should have known or opened the scriptures to them who did not have the ability to know. Every action he ever took was somehow perfect and without sin(his understanding of right and wrong unfathomable and resolute). 

Once more, I think Jesus could not have added something new except the fulfillment of reconciliation of human beings with God. I don't believe there to be a new law to nature or added truth, just elucidation and reconciliation. And for reconciliation to not only refer as we understand it to the word and impact of sin, but to the state of being recognizable as his creation - Corrected, adjusted, reallocated, un-"cloven." (Sorry, I had to say cloven once I thought of it. KJV!)

It would be akin to, not undoing wrath, but assuring it would not happen in both the again sense and in any time period sense, without undoing the linear aspect of time. It becomes eternal because it once was and is now perfect once more, the 'relationship with God' humans partake of. (Or am I wrong?) Laws of nature are eternal, insomuch as they cannot waver while creation exists.

The only "new" Jesus offered was in the sense of the 'new covenant.' But this defined means a restoration of fellowship with humanity, and not essentially an addendum. 

To point it out once more, since when I read this I have a hard time finding any qualms:

- I posit Jesus manifested nothing new (except his perfection while human, which I am not addressing here but need to refer to for clarity)

- I also purport that the laws of nature and creation itself (the tangible world around us) have an inherent aspect indelibly intertwined with 'right' and 'wrong,' divorced from human intervention (though we can impact it)

I think my beliefs are slightly askew as pertains to some biblical teachings. I came to these conclusions after a lot of deep thought and hope I didn't represent my lexical recitation inaptly. (Weird way to wrod it, huh? It made me smile so I'm not changing it.)

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I believe if the Bible is literally true that Jesus existed. 

I'm not saying I don't believe the Bible is true. I'm just pointing out I'm rational. 

Correct my OT Belief

I have found it difficult to overcome the sense that God is himself capricious. In the Old Testament, the writers mention God in a way that describes natural disasters and disastrous miracles in  a manner that makes God seem to have a personality trait associated with emotional outrage. 

While written thusly, and I'm not denying it, I find it difficult to imagine a beautiful and loving creator to have a flaw. We are informed that all of nature screams out that God exists. When I look at nature, which can be terrible, all I see is beauty. 

(In fact, recently, I have begun to see the works of mankind as more natural and beautiful than I once did, but that's for another time.)

To react callously and overmuch so, which God is purported to do, I feel misrepresents his innate qualities. This florid language must be such to relate God to us. (RE: The great flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the ten plagues, etc.)

This (to follow but not immediately after) is what I feel is intimated, after much study and thought, and if incorrect, I wish to be re-educated as to how to reconcile a God in-line with the laws of nature and beauty with one who is childish and wrathful. He cannot be so.

Yes, we have Jesus who made amends for us and yes I understand that meant our sin is essentially forgotten. I understand sin. But these are all complex concepts and metaphors, the knowing and classifying of which does not diminish the weight and import therein. 

I understand there to be laws of nature as pertains to right and wrong. As in, I understand from the Bible that right and wrong denote ways of living that are essentially for or against nature itself and requiring reconciliation in a natural sense. I posit that. 

I suppose or I interject that the personality trait of childish wrath is misunderstood by me and when I read it, I am wrong at the source. it clearly stands to me to be written that God executes wrath in the Old Testament, wrath in relation to sin against him personally. 

Maybe I am being poetic, but I imagine personal insult to God to mean, on at least some level, to be antithetical to the laws of nature. And, it seems, to reconcile anything unnatural/incorrect, one has access only to specific avenues at specific times (ones that might seem irrational or odd, like eating unclean animals or the slaughter of thousands). 

To reiterate, I find that right and wrong are ways of teaching us how nature works. How the world itself, the universe itself functions. How we function. How interaction functions. How behavior influences the environment (and impacts us personally). 

Right and wrong are as natural, possibly, as the laws of physics that govern how nature is held together. I am supposing that they did not originate with man and with the idea of sin once committed, but that they always existed(since creation itself) and not disparately so from all things at all times, inanimate and animate. 

Of course, the Bible only elucidates what happens when man tries to discern right from wrong, and does not tell us when nature itself is violated any more than that which our actions culminate in. 

Right and wrong absolutely have to be aspects of nature once one reads of God's wrath and that it be poetic representation of the throes of mother nature in correct terminology and origin reference.

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If the Bible is literally true, God exists and manifests as fully correct. ('God is righteous.')

I'm not saying I don't believe the Bible, I am showing rationality. Once provided the possibility, it will always be possible (until forgotten). 

Footnote to the footnote: I am not, through lack of saying so, showing I warrant correction as to proper recitation of belief in God in astute church-attuned vernacular. I am being succinct and any 'correction' as to my terminology (for the last two sentences before this footnote to the footnote) would be superfluous rather than remedial. However, it will provoke such in some people invariably. My saying this will do nothing to change that. 

(I am in a very silly mood and cannot speak any less incoherently. Sorry for the turning from plain terms to highly incongruous and cringe-worthy hard to parse sentences.)

Economics

** Note: The subject matter here is mundane, but the opinion I hold is the first of its kind. No one, I have ever seen at least, has ever said this: 

Adam Smith was not all that. He is the oldest author to write anything remotely establishing of the idea of economics, but his book is sort of a Old Farmer's Almanac of prices and hay-pennies. The Wealth of Nations is not profound, despite anything anybody tells you. Having audiobooked it, I can honestly say all I got out of it was the word hay-penny. (I believe it means half-pence.) 

In economics proper, two economists will shake hands before exchanging barbs and witticisms by first denoting their awe of The Wealth of Nations. I find this practice to be frivolous and disingenuous. 

Novels and non-fiction

Has anyone ever realized authors write about themselves when they write a book? In the beginning of every book, the author will open with a personal recollection or a mea culpa, to thin the crowd who will read it or invite the reader in. Any book lacking this set-up I immediately find suspect. I expect lying and truth-stretching from authors who do not intuitively introduce themselves off the bat as the first slice of information they start with in chapter one (the introduction usually does not count).