Two ends of a spectrum here.

First:

“Statute of limitations” effects, whereby people nominally adult but still in school do things that were culturally acceptable at the time, but in later life their past comes up and hammers them. Not saying much about last summer’s Kavanaugh witches-pot; rather, two of the three top politicians in Virginia AND the top Republican, fourth in the line of succession should the first three all go away, did things as young men that nobody objected to at the time.

But today, after centuries of prejudice so endemic we can’t even see its active remnants today, the boil is bursting and the cumulative mess inside that boil now comes out with such force that old men’s actions thirty-five years ago, as “young adults” who were still in school, are judged by today’s sensitivities and hung around these men’s necks, full weight and wet as fresh paint . When a boil bursts, watch out!

Second:

In a somewhat related manner, people doing what was socially acceptable in their era wind up at the wrong end of a telescope, again being judged as though their acts were committed in today’s social context. A big example is Thomas Jefferson’s offspring via Sally Hemmings. There’s no way to whether one of his sons fathered any of her children – but the timing argues against it – they weren’t there at the right times. So we judge Thomas Jefferson for flagrant delicto’s which were very common at the time, since slaves weren’t considered as other than some wholly deficient subset of human beings. Comparing the rights of a caucasian woman to the rights of a black woman, in that era, was like comparing an apple to a – fly speck? Outrageous today, but a social ‘given’ then.

In other words when we hold public figures from bygone eras up to the harsh light of this day’s moral opprobrium, the real critique should go toward that bygone era and not the figures who were alive then. People to criticize are those which violate their own era’s concept of decent behavior. Violating this era’s metric is notable, but no modern practitioner of blue-nose prudery has any right to carp.

Times change. In today’s higher literary circles, poetry “should not limit itself” by adopting either rhyme or meter since both limit the range of what a poet can utter. The imposition of limits makes the work seem low-brow. Nursery rhymes are a good example; “We’ve passed through that stage, doesn’t one think?”

In a like manner, non-representational art is “art” while representational art, i.e. something easily recognized, where a cat is a cat and a dog is a dog, is “craft” – except in the hands of Andy Warhol, of course.

Tongue in cheek, “Art simply must not confine itself to pedestrian limitations. Thus virtually all rhymed verse is just verse. Exceptions for such as a sonnet by Shakespeare do exist.”

If you want a gorgeous, witty, acrostic sonnet, reply and I’ll trot one out.

While I don’t understand what “karmics” are – presumably a class of people? I can relate karma to Jesus.

We are born as id-driven and sense-driven (but astonishingly cute) creatures whose primary products are pee, poo, and the occasional smile. (Did I mention cute?)

There are definable stages in “improving” who we are – the terrible two’s is a good one. That’s where we first realize, kind of an existential “Oh CRAP!” moment, that other wills exist. The active, complicated world around is NOT wholly manipulable. Our response is to define the edges of the envelope, and push outward on them. Our tool is the word, “No.” Example: “Johnny, do you want this cookie?” – “NO!” followed by a grab at the cookie.

We learn to realize that others feel pain around age 4, and learn that death is permanent around age 6. All the while we learn to navigate the social landscape, armed with all sorts of new formative information, and the end result is that we are capable of (at least momentary) altruism and kindness. But we never get to “perfect.” Closer, and closer, and – – never actually really close.

God created us out of love – and just as God is unguessably (fill in the blank), God is also unguessably loving. He loves us, warts and all. But once we finish this little handful of decades we call a lifetime, there is the matter of alllllll of that accumulated not-perfect behavior. References available on request, but this isn’t a Bible Study.

Instead, for having created souls with no way to live in perfection with a perfect Love, God the Son assumed a life in a human body, as Jesus, and took on himself the entire gazillion gigatons of bad karma from all of the humans of this world, and suffered that cost. In effect, he ATE our bad karma. When we realize what this means, we come to him “with a broken and contrite heart” and ask forgiveness. Those of us who do this reach perfection, about when the heart stops beating and the brain turns to moosh. Love that technical term, moosh.

That, in a nutshell, is karmic. Jesus is the ultimate, and the only, karmic.

Man is made in God’s image, i.e. capable of love and capable of thought.

But humans aren’t called to a life of ease, with God as a convenient “EASY Button,” or an ATM. Rather, humans are called to work, and as necessary to suffer. God made us to be born helpless, and gradually grow bigger, stronger, and more capable – then in old age the process kinda reverses.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians spells part of it out for us – look at chapter 2, verses 8, 9 and 10. In particular, verse 10 makes it clear that God has designed us for work, AND has prepared a daily “opportunity list” for each of us – look at verse 10 and see if that isn’t clear.

We are also, because we are imperfect and incapable of avoiding sin, required to confess. It takes “a broken and contrite heart,” and that is what washes us free of our sins. Paul himself said that the good he wanted to do, didn’t get done, and the evil he wanted to avoid, happened anyway. His “most righteous acts” were, compared to the perfection of Jesus, tawdry and disgusting.

Martin Luther picked up on this, and in despair of his own said, “sin bravely” i.e. if our level best is flawed, just go ahead and DO SOMETHING.

As to why we have problems, that’s a long answer for another forum. Everyone has problems – so having difficulties makes us very ordinary, not at all unique. And god loves the ordinary person. He saved us from our sins – after a time on earth that is “smoke and mirrors” compared to what awaits us in the afterlife, the Charlie Wonka Gold Ticket is ours by living with God on our minds, patient hearts, and enduring praise for God at all times and in all places.

Just to be clear, we don’t say “Thanks for the broken arm!” – when we have a broken arm we say “Thanks for Forgiveness, Grace, and the sure expectation of Heaven.”

Partly because he doesn’t make gods. The Triune God of Christianity isn’t an exception because each aspect of the Godhead is, from here, a permanent fixture.

God said “Let there be Light” 13.8 billion years ago and made at least, to the best of astronomers’ ability to estimate, two hundred sextillion stars (2E23) – why so many? Not my pay grade, but I’ll guess that he had all the time in the world (don’t chuckle – that’s a serious statement) and made enough such that on at least one planet circling one of those 2E23 stars, the first cell would form simply by random motion of pre-organic compounds. LOTS of ocean, LOTS of time, and 2E23 stars-worth of planets. The math isn’t precise, but my nickel says God did it this way for reasons that worked for Him.

Now, given all that, (1) the earth isn’t the whole universe, and (2) everyone on earth is a DNA creature. Therefore (3) novelists and dramatists and dreamers (I repeat myself) may imagine god-like powers for DNA creatures, but so far as I know God never said anything about that.

Personal bias – the headscarves in your pictures look lovely – ‘real’ hijab are different and unmistakable. Those set my teeth on edge, which I try never to let show.

Why does a hijab do that, you may ask?

It tells me that a sociologically invasive species has arrived. This is a melting pot, but lurking behind every lovely, polite, peaceful, helpful Muslim face is the hope that, some day and some how, Sharia law will displace the laws of this country. Fat chance, but that hope gives me the willies.

Wikipedia gives a thorough, level discussion of the roots and terms of Sharia law: Sharia – Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The wiki article tends to downplay some of its harsher terms. But as an illustration, Sharia law became a public issue in Dearborn MI ten or a dozen years ago when the then-majority Muslim population wanted it to become the law of the city. In that place, at that time, non-Muslims discovered that their right of free speech did not exist when it came to a comparative discussion of the Muslim and Christian faiths. The police handcuffed the Christians who came to engage in discussion, and led them away.

Gentle is as gentle does; I find it difficult to look at a hijab and believe it represents anything that is inherently gentle in the way America is gentle to faith systems arriving from the far side of the world.

Yes it’s shameful and I’m not proud. It’s always best to take people at face value, and Muslim faces are, in this country, almost universally peaceful.

The initial question refers to the police fairly protecting the law-abiding from harassment; of course they do. Asking the reverse question regarding police in Muslim countries protecting Christians from being harassed could be more interesting; for instance an American who crosses from Israel into Gaza is a rarity and draws deep suspicion. No Jew dares to try that.

I’ve yet to find a “philosophical law” that has substance in any physical experiment.

Did I miss something?

Scientific “proof” goes so far as to upgrade a “hypothesis” into a “theory” e.g. the theory of gravity. Knowledge of truth, when discussed by philosophers, seldom dives below the floorboards, e.g. deep enough to debate the physical structure the floor sits on, such as gravity (thing of it as holding the floor to the foundation).

Science deals with notions that have materially measurable properties. These can be falsified with material tests and are called hypotheses. When falsification fails after all the tests scientists can dream up, they eventually say the hypothesis may now be referred to as a theory.

For instance Plato, a Greek contemporary (I think a student) of Socrates held that a conceptual object such as “a chair”, e.g. the perfect and ideal form of a chair, existed on the perfect plane of thought. How’s that for a working definition of knowledge and truth? Think of Plato’s ideal chair the same way you could think of a theory such as the theory of gravity.

“Knowledge” and “truth,” however, are important to word-lovers, which is what philo-sophers are, in the original Greek. They exist on a different plane than theory, which one can connote as “Plato’s ideal.”

My own impression is that the Bible exists in Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek. In English, it says what a translator earnestly believes it says.

Moreover, when a person reads the Bible, he/she earnestly believes he/she understands what it says, correctly in every nuance and detail.

In other words, disagreements are part of the fallen world we live in. God reveals Himself in many ways and at many times, and his foremost single ambassador, the Apostle Paul, warns the members of the early church in his letters that Christ crucified, dead, and resurrected – so that we may have his Grace and enter eternal life by being washed in his blood – that much is key. But the farther one gets from that center, i.e. exploring diet or who’s on first etc., the greatest command is to love and accept one another, build each other up in charity, and let the less-consequential details fall to the side.

So, when a believer “owns” some specific set of beliefs regarding diet or social custom, that believer and any other believer in the nearby vicinity are required to pat each other on the head, embrace, hug, and agree that Christ’s death is the only key to salvation.

Let’s try to define ‘religion’ – I find that many who address the question distinguish “religion” as a human codification of any relationship to the divine. The ‘Christian religion’ consists of hundreds of finely divided such codifications spanning so wide a reach that it’s actually difficult to believe that N extremes diminish the importance of a useful ‘middle.’

In my opinion FAITH is a person’s relationship to what he or she finds in Scripture, and RELIGION is a club with rules.

Nobody gets to institute such a set of rules into the realm of law as whole cloth. Sharia law for example insists that it IS law, full stop, everyone else kindly step to the rear and if you disagree, get off the bus.

FAITH on the other hand does stand at the center of the United States Constitution in the defenses written by each of the founding fathers.

Faith doesn’t require any other citizen to sign agreement on any dotted line, but it does provide that central ground of respect for others as collateral to reverence toward God.

I hope this is a useful distinction.

It is hubris to think this question has any real answer. We react imperfectly, preach imperfectly, and in the huge majority of cases have NO IDEA what eventually becomes of any soul we interact with.

Apostle Paul said this: “My most righteous acts are like used menstrual bandages,” when compared to the perfect righteousness of God. Martin Luther seemed to be responding to that when he wrote, in Latin, pecca fortiter. The English for that is “sin bravely.” So these deeply seminal Christian thinkers lead me to the understanding that, while God prepares works for us to do (Ephesians 2:8–10) and encourages us therefore to get off the sofa and go out bravely, we neither know we have done exactly what God has appointed us to do, or even whether we have managed to do what God has appointed us to do. Ephesians doesn’t reveal that part.

As to “save” God does that – all we do is sow seed, water it, cultivate, etc. The plant bearing fruit happens on God’s watch.