/lit/ - Literature

>>21666229
>So when partake in the rays, this is nevertheless a direct experience of the Sun itself and has the capacity to directly affect us. Likewise, we interact with God's infinite and distinct energies/activities without collapsing them into a singular absolutely simple essence.
Right, okay, but the energies of God, like the rays of the sun, still ultimately derive from their source, and only their source, so unless there is something within the essence of God that is NOT the divine essence, we would logically have to assume that the energies are expressions of the essence, and it wouldn't really make sense to postulate some kind of "pure justice" totally distinct from love, mercy, etc., so even with the essence/energies distinction (which I'm not sure even totally makes sense as a real actual distinction as opposed to a relative one) all of the divine attributes are ultimately the expression of a single, unified essence, which according to the NT and the doctrine of the Trinity is love (Calvinists are the only group I've seen that actually deny that God is love in His essence, they claim that love is only a single facet of His nature expressed solely to the elect while His actual essence is... who knows what)

>>21666415
>It is a mistake anyone can make almost as a knee-jerk reaction out of being caught up in our human perspective.
So the thing is, if we totally dislocate God's idea of morality from ours, we're essentially left with a being that is "beyond good and evil" and not really "just" in any way rational to human minds, which is to say that God isn't "good" at all in any way that would make sense to humans; saying that God is "good" under a framework where human judgements about that statement are useless is really not saying anything aside from "God does what He does" - which is as true of Satan as it is for God

The early Christians who read about the pretty extreme levels of violence didn't just go, "this is morally correct", because as they understood it the revelation of Jesus superseded all previous revelations of God, including the Jewish law and prophets themselves; from the perspective of their hermeneutic, if the God revealed in Christ who has children sit in his lap and says things like "“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." (Luke 18:16) is described as slaughtering infants or causing them to be eaten by their mothers, there has clearly been some kind of mistake on our end, either in our interpretation or our understanding

Understanding God as Love itself, it is far more pious to question apparent actions that fly in the face of that revelation than to accept atrocities without question (remember that Job's friends were rebuked for attempting to rationalize God's seeming injustices)

>>21615812
I'd recommend some of his pre-1974 experience work first, Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, A Scanner Darkly, Flow My Tears, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, etc.

Before diving into his esoteric schizocore phase I would probably read "In Pursuit of Valis" which essentially serves as a quick gestalt summarizing the events in Dick's life that contextualize what he writes about in his "VALIS Trilogy": VALIS, The Divine Invasion, and his final book, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

After you're done with all of that you can attempt to dive into the Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, which is a massive compendium of notes written over the span of around a decade trying to make sense of his bizarre experiences from every angle, from the skeptical to the mystical to everywhere in between; it's not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination and might legitimately drive you to madness but it's pretty fascinating stuff regardless