Spiritual direction: Do not measure God by human

I wrote earlier today about how even excellent analogies are problematic when understanding God because any human analogy uses, intentionally or not, human constraints and conditions that God does not experience at all. Let's start with the obvious. We could talk about God using analogies that use food or beverage, but of course God does not eat or drink at all. So suppose that you were explaining to a little child that God is like all the cotton candy you could ever want to eat, that may be a wonderful example to use for a three year old, but do not fall so in love with your own analogies yourself. This is because even the most innocent of analogies imply a physical, spiritual and temporal reality and set of boundaries and experiences that do not apply to God in his fullness at all.

Now, with this caution in mind, we need to be careful when reading the Bible when it comes to events prophesied by the Old Testament prophets or the saints, for example, St. John in Revelation (the Apocalypse). Wise men and women need to understand that while the Bible authors are giving truthful witness of what they see and hear, the minute that humans interpret what they think it means, they are applying the same restrictions in thinking and distortion of message that I described above with my cotton candy example.

For example we know that God created the heavens and earth in seven days (including God's time to rest *wink*). But these are God "days" not human days. I mean, if a day is the amount of time between sun rises, how did God spend a day creating the space and celestial bodies that existed before an earth "day" existed? And of course we know that the geological record demonstrates an earth that is billions of years old and had life for about a billion years. When Moses saw what God taught him about creation, God puts it in terms that Moses can understand. So do not take what God says and hammer it down into a smaller thing so that it fits what you think is a literal truth, because then you actually do lose the literal truth of what God did and taught. By saying that God created all the universe in 7 spans of 24 hours you are losing the entire value of what God is teaching, which is the sense of a period of cycles (God days) that model for humans how physical reality was created. I've written about this before and it is not my intention to cover the same material again, but it is the easiest example to demonstrate how the Bible is "literally" correct (God does not lie or mislead) but God's correctness uses a scale of measurement of potential experience that is totally beyond human understanding.

So what I want to move on to discussing is that ubiquitous topic of the woman crowned with the stars, about to give birth, and pursued by the dragon in the Book of Revelation. I was just listening to a replay of a Catholic call in talk show and inevitably there is a question about this subject. I've written about this before, about how to most fruitfully read this section, but find I need to revisit it over and over because to be honest, as time goes on I discover more and more ways that people distort and misunderstand what they read in the Bible. LOL, I think. Except it's not funny when I find a new example of, no polite way to put it, disrespectful heresy that creeps into people's minds and find their way into publications and cult like beliefs that contaminate the faith. Since I wrote about the fallacy of reincarnation earlier today, and then listened to this question about whether the woman is "Mary" and the baby is "the Church" or "Jesus" I thought, egads, I bet there are idiots who think that John was "witnessing Mary and Jesus being reincarnated." I wish I could burn the computer screen even as I'm typing these words, since not only is the concept of reincarnation wrong in total and anti-scripture, but the idea that saints or the Holy Family are reincarnated is frankly blasphemous.

Remember that John was transported into a vision of heavenly matters. Even the earthly matters, such as the what is thrown to earth in tribulations are viewed by John from his place on the boundaries of "heaven." John is not witnessing events that are happening on earth. So there is no way that a woman "crowned with stars" is running around on earth. I mean, duh, think about it. Mary and Jesus are not reincarnated and further NO ONE is reincarnated. So how can I help people who persist in misunderstanding? One way is to point out that your misunderstanding stems from a conscious or unconscious need for self gratification. Thinking that Mary or Jesus have to play out some future roles on earth (beside the true Second Coming) is actually a temptation of the devil, because then he invites you to believe that maybe you can "figure out who is reborn as Mary or Jesus" and maybe even claim that role for yourself or your family. Woe to everyone who listens to the temptations of Satan! People who are not content with being good and pious Christians and who try to manipulate Revelation events are going to be burned big time. Not only have you fundamentally strayed from the truth that God has revealed, but you then ally yourself with the devil by succumbing to temptation of inflated self thoughts and leading others astray.

(continued in next posting)