Sunday, December 14, 2008

Debunk cults and answer "Who am I?"

So if there is no reincarnation “Who am I?” LOL, trust me; I understand human nature, so that when all the false beliefs one has been taught and has held fall away, there is a puzzling gap that remains.

If you are asking yourself that question, you have to do two things.

One is that you have to discover for the first time, or rediscover, your own identity, as you would have as a child, where you learn what you like doing, what you dislike, what moves your heart, and what leaves you cold, your biological and cultural roots, and those of your neighbors, and who you love, and who you respect. You learn to find teachers who are not “gurus” but are the type that every human has looked up to throughout history: the man who taught you how to fix a car, the woman who finally made algebra comprehensible to you, the author who has a gift for selecting a topic, such as a period in history, and makes it both interesting and relevant (without pushing an agenda).

The second thing you need to do is to believe in the one God and rediscover your relationship with him. Why is that important? Because the very need to feel “special” and “enlightened” that first drove you to cultist belief is a result of not knowing that all elevation and all loftiness of human spirit comes from God and God alone. Only by realizing that God has unique and loving knowledge of each and every person, regardless of their station in life, can one be elevated and can one feel “enlightened” and “special,” not by making up elitist false history. This is a key understanding of both Christianity and Islam, and that is why they both swept the world with millions of converts and believers, not because of the “sword” or the “Inquisition.” Christianity and Islam shed the light on the truth that God is one, all knowing, and has egalitarian love and concern for each and every human being. Humans realized in both their heads and their hearts the truth of this, and thus threw away their “magical thinking” and their demeaning belief in idols. No babbling self proclaiming “high priestess” of “arcane knowledge” and “past lives” can elevate a single human being one iota in their spirituality and, instead, she demeans her followers by denying them the lofty heritage that is truly theirs: adopted child and beloved of God, able to have a personal relationship with God of worship, service, faith and salvation.

Ha, so I am definitely not unsympathetic, and I never have been. I’m on the side of the angels, who, as Jesus explained, rejoice more at the return of one sinner than in the routine goodness of the faithful. What has distressed me is the stampede toward sin, rather than back toward God, of the past forty years of human history and society. To this day I still wish that even the most vile sinners and disgracefully evil humans find the light and have sincere and total conversion. I have faith and comfort that those who have wronged God and their neighbors so dastardly will be judged by God and thrust into hell, but it’s not like I’m spending my time wishing for their “comeuppance.” Even those who have done personally terrible things to me, I hope that before they are either smited by God and thus are punished in life, or who glide through life on their evil, and then upon death find themselves in eternal hell, hear and understand the truth, repent and make amends with full sincerity (even if being honest and sincere is like a rusty piston in an engine that has trouble working properly at first). It does not make what they did go away, or “OK,” but it would save them from hell and that would satisfy what I consider to be part of my ministry.

So who am I and why do I speak with such authority? If you are sane and well balanced you can relate to me as a human who has a very good understanding of God, but I understand that it’s hard for others to make the flip from thinking we are “reincarnated” players and actors to who we really are. I have both extremes to deal with. One extreme is the New Agers who have had to detox from thinking that I am “reincarnated” whoever they have labeled me with at different times over the past sad and wasted years. They have a gap, where they wonder, “If she is not reincarnated, then how does she know all of these things?” I am sympathetic and will give you an analogy (of course), kind of a literary device to plug the gap while you detox from that way of thinking. The other extreme are those who think they are Bible thumping literalists, but who have actually strayed far from the word of God by assuming that they have individual “insight” into what God “really means and plans to do,” such as having the nerve to interpret Dan and Revelations to assign timing and characters to “the Rapture,” “Antichrist identity,” and “the tribulations.” They ignore that Jesus Christ himself stated very clearly that he himself does not know the timing of the End of Days and that only God knows that. But this does not stop these extremists, who cherry pick the Bible and profane it with their own interpretations and declarations, and also make it into forms of money making entertainment. That extreme actually has the nerve to question me, wanting me to self identify according to the Bible (since that is all they do, assign actors and writing scripts to Biblical prophecy). Well, the analogy and the literary device I will share with the New Agers will also suit the Biblical false prophets just as well.

Before I give the analogy let me point out several things. First of all, as I’ve repeatedly explained, I am not reincarnated and neither is anyone else. Second, people have guardian angels; they are NOT angels. I mean, duh, how hard is that to understand? Humans are humans and angels are angels and they abide in different realms and are totally different from each other. Humans are of matter, energy and time; angels are not of matter, energy or time. So I’m not an angel and neither is anyone else. Third, I am not “revelating.” In other words, I am not adding one iota onto scripture. Instead, I am constantly pointing people back to scripture, to believe it as it is, the final and complete word of God. I am a witness, not a “revealer,” and so, obviously, understand that none of you are revealers of God’s will either. Fourth, I am not a prophet, and neither are any of you. I am not prophesying, either in the sense of conveying God’s words to humans, or in forecasting the future, and neither are any of you. Fifth, I’m not an alien, ha ha ha, that is so stupid I’m embarrassed I have to type this, but hey, I know it needs to be said for that branch of the morons so here it is: I am not an alien and neither are any of you.

So who am I? First you must read and understand what I wrote about the baptismal priesthood, the common priesthood, of the Catholic faith. I am a member of the baptismal priesthood and thus can proclaim with full confidence my faith in Catholic doctrine. Rather than wonder “who I am” to speak with such authority, I wish more Catholics would understand and embrace their faith and exercise their baptismal priesthood. By the way, in January it will be fifty five years since I was baptized, my fifty fifth anniversary of my baptismal priesthood and I certainly wish that I was received by others as fifty five years of baptismal priesthood rather than what it has felt like, which is fifty five years of martyrdom. It would be funny if it wasn’t so awful, and the abuse of me used to enable demeaning and flight from God, rather than true living in the Spirit of those who stalked me and my family. But back to my main point; understand that the baptized faithful ALL are expected and able to speak with authority to witness to their faith.

Second, you must understand that what seems like “revealing” teaching that I offer on this blog was well known by centuries of humans prior to this poorly formed and ignorant past several generations of humans. With modern mores and technology people have become, honestly, stupider. So I am not revealing new information; I am teaching people how to slow down and READ what is in black and white in front of you, ALL of the Bible (including the books the children of the Reformation discarded) and to understand the Spirit in which it was written, including in the cultural and faith context of the time. Back when people were agricultural and humble, they “got” the scriptures far more than they do today. All I am doing is explaining what even the average educated person knew even fifty years ago. You don’t better understand God by throwing out books of the Bible, cherry picking only certain sections to read as validating your own imagined self righteousness and further, not understanding the basics of the customs of the times that you are reading (worse, sneering that parts of the Bible are “old fashioned” and “oppressive.”) So the second thing to understand about me is that I am explaining what many of the average wise people in any time in Christian history, both educated and unlettered, could have explained to you in my place.

So how can I speak with total confidence and clarity regardless of the question or topic? It is because I speak only with total Fear of the Lord and within the Spirit. I have absolutely no other motivation but one hundred percent purity of Fear of the Lord. My entire motivation and the endless well of my spiritual being is Fear of the Lord. Spiritually I am comprised of one hundred percent Fear of the Lord. I was born with and am filled totally with the first gift of the Holy Spirit, Fear of the Lord. I cannot have either less Fear of the Lord or more Fear of the Lord than I have had with perfect constancy throughout my life. When one has total Fear of the Lord, one has total comprehension of the Lord’s ways.

So what is the Biblical reference and analogy, the literary device that I have promised to help those who cannot grasp the simplicity of what I have explained above? Read this passage from Ezekiel, where Ezekiel is first called by God to be his prophet. In this very well known calling God and the Cherubim appear to Ezekiel. Ezekiel has described the Cherubim, the firmament above them, and is about to describe how he viewed God. The first line of that description is
Ezekiel 1:26:

Above the firmament over their heads something like a throne could be seen, looking like sapphire. Upon it was seated, up above, one who had the appearance of a man.

Think of me not as God, or one of the Cherubim, but as the big blue chair that God is sitting in during this one and only appearance as such. In other words, I am not the throne of God, but I can be thought of as the “big blue chair” that he sits in when he calls Ezekiel. God does not derive his authority or his greatness from the throne he sits in, nor does the throne hold any power or authority of its own; only God has that. But you can use the literary device of thinking of me as being of service in the most humble way to the Lord God, by being the blue chair that he “sat” in during one Biblical “event.”

Just as altar servers kneel to hold up the open Bible so the celebrating priest can read from it during Mass, making their own bodies a book stand in service of God, I am perfectly pleased and honored to think of myself, to help you to better understand, those of you who struggle, as a big blue chair used one time in order to provide “seating” while God “sits” and calls one of his greatest prophets. The chair is not talking and the chair is not creating doctrine. The chair is the witness and the lowest servant of God. This is why my gift of the Holy Spirit, Fear of the Lord, allows me to speak with authority, because it gives me humble and perfect witness to God, where I am “the observer” and not “the author.” No analogy is perfect, and this one really isn’t, but it occurred to me as a way that I can explain the fundamentals of my identity to help those who have been deprived of faith and logic to plug the gap in how they view me, a human, while they remediate themselves.

I hope that you have found this helpful.