understanding Jesus as way to salvation

Many people are both comforted by the declaration that Jesus Christ is the Way to salvation (Christians) and disconcerted, disheartened and even angry with that declaration (non Christians). I have this very quick analogy to explain, comfort and clarify.

A lot of Christians are not going to like what I'm going to say, but that is alright because Jesus Christ came to save the world, to be its true hero, and by that I mean the entire world. So yes, Jesus Christ is the one and only way to be saved. However, one must look at scripture to understand that Jesus, through God, is perfectly capable of saving people who do not know him.

In other words, a person must have a relationship with Jesus to be saved, but no where in the scripture does it say that Jesus is incapable of saving someone that Jesus is in a one way relationship with. What I am saying is that Jesus, having the full authority of God, is perfectly capable of opening the door for someone to God, if that person is righteous and just. So before I explain further, here is my analogy.

Imagine heaven as the home of God, where God resides inside (although of course he sees everything everywhere at all times). Imagine that heaven, the house of God, has only one door. Imagine that Jesus is the gate keeper to that door, and only Jesus, working with the full authority of God the Father, will allow someone into heaven.

Imagine a righteous and just man has died, one who is of the faith that worships God, but that man may or may not have heard about Jesus and the Good News. However, God, and Jesus, are fully aware that this is a just and righteous man who worships God alone. So let us assume that the man arrives at the door and does not recognize Jesus, but he asks to see God.

Jesus looks into the man's heart and soul (and of course, God and Jesus already know all that this man has lived, thought, felt and done) and sees his righteousness and genuine love for God, the Father. If you were a son at the door to your father's house, and a dear friend of your father asked to come in, would you say no?

Do not be jealous and selfish of Jesus being the way to God. As the gatekeeper and the way, Jesus has perfect knowledge, judgment and authority to admit, or turn away, from heaven anyone. As Jesus often stated, he and God the Father are as one in their purpose and their salvatory power.

And those of you who may be of the faith of the one true God, do not be afraid of Jesus Christ being the way. He knows who you are even if you do not fully know who he is. Jesus will not turn away righteous and just men and women, boys and girls, who fear God, who love God, and who worship God.

Luke 12:32, 34
Do not be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom...For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.

Luke 18:26-27, 29
And they who heard it said, "Who then can be saved?" He said to them, "Things that are impossible with men are possible with God." ... And he said to them, "Amen I say to you, there is no one who has left house, or parents, or brothers, or wife, or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who shall not receive much more in the present time, and in the age to come life everlasting."

I used italics for Jesus' words "for the kingdom of God," for that is my point. Jesus is not saying that everyone must give up all they have in order to achieve heaven, for with this list he was referring to his direct followers. What Jesus is saying is that if one puts aside everything in life as secondary, no matter how dear, for the sake of the kingdom of God, he or she shall receive that and more.

Jesus constantly kept his words to be directed toward the kingdom of God, to worship of God, and to God as every man and woman's hope and faith. Notice that whenever Jesus performed a miraculous cure that the recipient praised God, from whom Jesus' power flowed, not Jesus himself and that was the acceptable response. In scripture Jesus orders the leper to the temple to perform the standard sacrifice to God after the leper's cure by Jesus. Jesus continually pointed his followers' attention to God and the goal of worshipping and serving God alone.

This is how you must understand that God and Jesus are perfectly capable, of course, of saving people who worship God and God alone, and who do not realize that they have a relationship with Jesus.

Jesus is like the foreman of God's construction yard, and he observes all the employees of God, even if that employee has never met Jesus nor received his instructions from Jesus directly. Jesus (and God) are perfectly capable of observing the diligent man or woman who serves God faithfully, without even knowing they are being observed by Jesus, nor have received training or instruction from Jesus directly.

Obviously, the more anyone of any faith truly understands and learns about Jesus directly, the more he is drawn to Jesus and thus to God. Jesus is God's ultimate gift to humankind, in order to most easily find their way to God. This is why Jesus is the way, for he illuminates God's truth. It is, however, an error to diminish God's All Knowing and Mercy in any way, however, to take Jesus' role and God's capabilities and limit them to some sort of "accept Jesus or else" litmus test. God is All Knowing and Merciful and he sees, knows, recognizes and rewards his faithful servants. If through circumstance a person does not realize that he has a relationship with and through Jesus Christ, this does not make God unable to see the righteousness, justice and sanctity in that person's heart, for God's seeing is not at all limited in any way.

"Things that are impossible with men are possible with God."

"But seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be given you besides" (Matthew 6:33).

"Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into his harvest" (Matthew 9:38).

Having said all of this, I must strongly caution you against disowning Jesus, against denying or defaming him. What I have written about above is about people who are obedient to God but through circumstances beyond their control do not have a relationship that they are aware of with Jesus. Many Christians do not understand that Muslims DO have a relationship with Jesus, for he is an esteemed Messiah of the Jewish people, born of the Virgin, given authority by God, and ascended into heaven, as documented in the Qur'an.

People who have to worry are those who do not serve God and who directly defame Jesus.

"Therefore, everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I in turn will disown him before my Father in heaven," (Matthew 10:32-33).

However, the work of Jesus in promoting the kingdom of God reaches all:

"The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and buried in three measure of flour, until all of it was leavened" (Matthew 13:33).

Young people (hi!) and those who do not understand cooking and thus this parable. Yeast is added to flour in order to make it rise into what can be baked as a loaf of bread. Jesus is saying that the action of heaven (like yeast) reaches the entire amount of flour, even though there is more flour in quantity than yeast. The woman who buries the yeast (mixes it) spreads the active ingredient, the yeast, sufficiently so that it reacts with the entire flour. Likewise the kingdom of heaven reaches out to the entire world, through specific points, no matter how small, of active agency. The objective is to have rise the entire loaf of bread, hence, all peoples, accept the kingdom of heaven and be saved.

And they went and entered a Samaritan town to make ready for him, and they did not receive him... when his disciples.... saw this, they said, "Lord, wilt thou that we bid fire come down from heaven and consume them?" But he turned and rebuked them, saying, "You do not know of what manner of spirit you are; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." And they went to another village (Luke 9:54-56).

Bible Reading: Mark 10:23-26

And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!

And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answered again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved?

Catholic Church sex abuse scandal

I'm going to repeat what I've said before, and I will continue to say this every time that I am asked.

I believe that anyone who mishandled sexual abuse within the Church, sexual abuse being both a devastating crime and a sin, should resign their office, whether as a cardinal, bishop or parish priest. I don't really care about the circumstances of whether it was a "minor" or "major" involvement in the mishandling because all of that corrodes faith, whether by small bits of rust and tarnish or large egregious lack of good sense and/or integrity. If it was mishandling and not actual participation in the abuse, I believe that upon resigning the office that these cardinals, bishops and priests should dedicate themselves within religious orders that are contemplative and filled with prayer.

There is supposed to be no "ego" in serving the Lord God, and thus any cardinal, bishop or priest should be gratified to relinquish their offices and in turn become one hundred percent dedicated to the life of prayer, particularly addressing prayer for both the victims of the abuse and for renewal of the priesthood.

People, listen to me carefully, whatever your faith (or not) or beliefs. For decades humanity has teetered on the brink of a total meltdown into depravity. These priest sex abuse cases are, in the sense of showing the incurable addiction of lust and depravity, no different from what we are seeing in society as a whole. I know you want to say, "Hold on, how can that be? Priests are supposed to be different!" Yes, in an ideal world they are supposed to be different, but look at the world today. Are not mothers "supposed to be different?" Yet every week we read about mothers who sell and trade the sexual innocence of even their infants for money, car payments, access to drugs, or some other trivial transaction. Are not teachers supposed to be "different?" Yet every week we read about teachers with child pornography and those who seduce and/or molest children they have access to, in that position of "trust." Are not "those who have been abused themselves" supposed to be "making sure what happened to them never happens to other children?" Yet we know that many of the most violent criminals use the excuse of their own, often horrifying, suffering of child abuse, and far from being protective, they enact their rage on other innocent adults and children. Are not police supposed to be "better than that?" Yet pressuring sex trade workers is a long going problem among police, so long that it has even been the stuff of jokes.

EVERYONE is supposed to be "better than that" but NO ONE IS anymore.

Catholic priests are just as subject to falling into the pit of depravity and vice as anyone else. I know that it seems out of proportion, but hear me now and believe me later. If you start looking at how many children have been molested by their own parents, or baby mama's "boyfriend," and by purveyors of porn, soon we will have a population that has more saying "yes" they've been abused than "no." Abuse has become the "new normal."

You'd have to be living under a rock to not realize that this society has fallen further and further into filth and depravity, and no "group" is "should be better at being pure" than anyone. I've seen some think that married priests or "more women" in the "church hierarchy" will "help." I'd laugh if this was not such a dire, world and soul killing problem. Yeah, women, such pillars of virtue, as they teach their kids to pole dance, wear thongs, offer them for sex to get themselves money or drugs, seduce their male students, etc. So please do not trivialize a worldwide soul destroying crisis of monumental proportion by suggesting this is a "celibate male" problem.

I marvel that God has not burned down this filthy depraved world already. Then I guess you would not have to worry about those priests, huh?

Victims, I know what you have been through as I've been abused, but not by priests, but by those who mettle with sorcery. But victims, I urge you to not be victimized twice. Do not let the outrageous scandal of the Catholic priest sex abuse problem cause you to also lose faith in the Church and in God. If you do, you will be victimized twice and God will not, I repeat, not understand your abandonment of God and his church.

I am not being harsh but realistic. What do you think was done to the early Christians of the Church? Do you think they were not abused and tormented in every way possible, including children? Yet they hung on to their faith to the end. God and the Church remain, no matter what individuals do, both within and outside of the Church. Running away does not make God go away, nor does it invalidate the Church. You can deny all you want but remember, human beings put to death the only pure and sinless man, Jesus Christ, and he proclaimed God with his last breath on the cross.

I will give you an analogy to help. Suppose you read in the paper that someone drowned while swimming in the ocean. Bad ocean, bad water. We no longer believe in water because it drowned someone. Stop bathing and showering. Stop drinking water. Tell everyone you know that water is "bad" and you "no longer believe in water." What will happen? You die of thirst in a matter of days.

No matter what the pain of life it is simply insane and not at all "understandable" that someone "lose their faith in God or the church." It's an unhealthy coping mechanism to think that because one is a victim of bad human behavior that suddenly the overall truth of the world (God and the Church) "no longer mean anything to you." That, my children, is being victimized twice. God will not nod his head in your meeting with him at personal judgment when you perish and say, "Hey, I know, a really bad thing happened to you, so it's A-OK with me that you 'lost your faith' and 'stopped believing in Me' or 'decided my Church was invalid.' Sure, I know that I, God, and my Church are not worth staying and fighting for, even through the pain."

Children, God is pure Truth. If you get only one thing about God in this particular message, understand that God is pure and total truth. God cannot be anything but the sum total of all that is true, that ever will be true, and ever could be true. When you grasp that you realize that God never changes and that while he cares very much for each person, when a person denies God no matter what the reason, they are in danger of not entering heaven at all, because being God's dwelling place, heaven is also pure truth.

The way to healing and to sanity is by embracing more truth, not less.

I hope that you find this helpful.

To anyone who has had an infant perish

Nothing replaces that loss: I know, absolutely nothing does. However, trust in God and know two things. One is that your infant, no matter the circumstances, did not die alone, for that is what his or her guardian angel does, accompany the baby's soul and providing spiritual comfort in the soul's return to God. Second, again, no matter the circumstances, the infant has no experience of pain or loss in heaven and only boundless joy in God's company. Infants are totally wrapped up in God's presence, and the angels, which is so overpowering that any pain or suffering is simply not in existence in heaven.

All I can say to comfort you-and it is a great comfort, the solace of believers throughout the centuries-is that if you heed God you will follow their path and be united again with your infants, when your own life on earth is complete.

When Jesus explained that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as them (the infants and little children) he did not mean only the obvious point, that heaven is for those who are innocent and pure like children. Jesus is also saying that the only thing one can be assured of is that innocent children have the first claim on heaven. Thus, understand, that Jesus is implying that young children who go to heaven show the way to the adults left behind. It is all the more reason to not despair or to be angry (besides righteous anger at crime or neglect, which of course is reasonable) to such a degree that one, as an adult, is tempted to lose the path that the infant has already flown with no effort to achieving, which is heaven. The tragedy is how many adults are not able, with time and healing, to feel more, not less, motivation to put one's faith and trust in the Lord God, so that they can aspire with hope to heaven and reunification.

I hope that this helps.

The illness of "complicated grief"

Just read a NYT article about it, as it's being considered for inclusion as a defined mental disorder in the DSM. OK, need to get on with some things but quickly, here is a case study to think about, especially young people.

Complicated grief: prolonged grieving after a loss (death in the family) that robs the survivor of their ability to live or their genuine participation in life.

How to cure? First, you need to understand the challenge, about why it is such a real phenomenon, in the human biological, cultural and spiritual (Biblical) context.

Remember what I have explained that romantic love, per se, and the modern parent-child bond is a fraction of what it used to be. Let me explain. When humans lived hand to mouth in subsistance existence, every member of the family had to work for the daily food AND the only way families prospered was to build families with many children. So humans are biologically and spiritually programmed to want to be in stable marriages with lots of kids. Just because much of western society is now prosperous, this does not mean that all those thousands of years of biological and spiritual adaptation now changes.

Bible reference: Reread the short but very powerful passage where Jesus encounters a funeral procession, where a widow has lost her only son. I explained in previous blogs that this could well have meant death for the widow, as only a husband or a son could provide for her. This is one reason Jesus felt such pity for her and promptly raised her son from the dead and restored him to his mother.

Large families and obligations to feed many children are not the "burden" that modern free spirited people seem to think they are: they are a safety need, against too much grief, too much morbidity, too much dead end. Generations of women have emotionally survived the dead of a child, or a spouse, because one had to "keep going" for the rest of the family, and this indeed would bring them out of their deepest grief, even if nothing could of course ultimately heal it. The problem is that a person with complicated grief is not the sick person: the society that no longer has the entended support AND obligations that provide this safety net is the entity who is sick.

So I resist the idea that complicated grief is a person's individual burden; it is the result of society no longer supporting, as it did before, the large stable family AND the necessity of "keeping on or we all suffer" mentality, as both of those heal complicated grief. This is why the modern somewhat manufactured thought of giving the griever "a new purpose in life" (usually through a job or more education) has some merit, but it's a shadow of what actual real life in less prosperous but more populated/per family times offered, not a "new purpose" but continuity in the need to go on. Most families DID suffer the loss of a baby or child in the old days. That's one reason why previous generations did not have "complicated grief," they had reality, which is many families had four or more children, and often one was stillborn, died in infancy or during childbirth, or of illness or poverty at a young age. One suffers less when one is part of what is the normal life experience and with many in the family who are indeed still alive and who need you.

The second thing to think about is that in un-believing, weak faith, or totally God-less times, it is very hard for complicated grief people to move on if they do not at some point embrace with joy, not with sorrow, that their child is with God in heaven and would not come back even if he or she could. Faith is not a sugar pill: it is reality. People with complicated grief have often been robbed by society or in their individual upbringing of not only really believing in heaven, God and their child being their (or their spouse or loved one having hope of being there), but even those who do still believe have a lukewarm perception of the joy and bliss their loved one has in the eternal presence. You must understand that heaven is mind blowing beyond what anyone can imagine. Generations of grieving parents or spouses before were not making lame excuses when they comforted saying "He (or she) is in a better place." The old time believers understood that it is really, really, really, REALLY true. Understanding that reality is the ultimate survivor guilt and other symptom reliever. Again, it is not a sugar pill. It is acknowledgment that heaven, guaranteed for children, hoped for by believing adults, and even those who can only rely on God's mercy as they had rejected him in life, is a place that is so amazing and eternal that no one would want to come back regardless of how much they loved a person who is not there with them at that time.

So complicated grief is another illness of not the individual (though they are suffering the very real pain and symptoms.) It is the illness of society's destruction of large families and of mainstream genuine faith in the reality of God in each person's life and after life in eternity. It's like society has the illness but the complicated grief person is suffering all the symptoms.

I hope you have found this helpful.

understanding Satan, another point re: angels

I hope the previous blog post was helpful. This morning it occurred to me that you might still find it difficult to understand how ex-lead angel, fallen angel Satan can lack comprehension of God's All Knowingness. After all, would not an angel know better than anyone? That is exactly my point: no, they do not. None of the angels comprehend God's All Knowingness since it is totally impossible to comprehend, by either angels or human beings! But here is the difference. The angels in heaven believe. They have total faith in God, which overcomes their inability, as created beings, to totally understand God's All Knowingness. Only God himself understands his All Knowingness.

You see, some "New Age" thinking has crept into the thinking of both believers and non-believers that once one achieves heaven, or nirvana, or "is one with the universe" that suddenly one "understands everything." You most certainly do not. No one has ever believed that until these modern technical times, where humans have started thinking of themselves as having the ability to "be anything you want to become" and to "achieve anything." Older humans were a lot more humble and realistic. They realized that going to heaven meant being constantly at peace in God's presence in paradise, NOT becoming God given "experts." So no, the fallen angels, the multitude that is unimaginable that are in heaven with God, and humans who achieve paradise through salvation do not at all understand God's All Knowingness. The difference is that the multitude of angels who serve God have total faith that he is the All Knowing, and humans who achieve heaven also have as their reward total faith and ability to believe with no question that God is indeed who he is, but the fallen angels recognize God, but lack faith that God is all that he really is. To use a modern term, fallen angels (and living humans) have a "mental block," an inability to comprehend God's All Knowingness.

Humans have that mental block as a condition of their being alive in a finite world within finite bodies that are limited (no matter how intelligent or "spiritual") by the neurons of the brain and the reality of the body. So humans are incapable of truly comprehending God's All Knowingness because they are in bodies and minds that can't grasp it. They can, however, develop marvelous and tremendous faith, in that way emulating the angels in heaven who believe because of course they are there and can see God all the time. It is important to cultivate faith because faith overcomes natural blindness. That is precisely the problem with Satan and those who follow him. Lacking faith that God is totally who he truly is, they have mental blocks and blind spots to understanding God's true nature and All Knowingness, even though Satan can and does, as we see in scripture, continue to be able to speak to God face to face when God allows it. Satan can look at God and obviously believe in his powers and obviously attest that God most certainly exists and is the creator of all (since Satan like the other angels saw it all), but Satan and the fallen angels are flawed not by being "born evil," but because they would not serve.... and service, in heaven, means having perfect faith!

Generations of humans have been saved and reach heaven based on faith, not on their ability to perform "good deeds." Without getting into that whole argument (that is based on misunderstanding plus a weakness of faith in God, ironically), the faith versus works artificial argument among some denominations is a similar lack of faith problem in God's All Knowingness. How is it that the poorest of the poor, those who are unable to do any "good deeds" such as "works," but have unshaken faith go to heaven (see the Beatitudes for the scriptural references) while at the same time, rich people with faith risk going to hell if they do not accomplish the very specific works that God expects them to do, rather than works of their own choosing (see Luke 16)? It all comes down to faith in God's All Knowingness. God knows the true state of each person's heart, soul, thoughts and purity of intentions. This is why a poor person unable to do any works but filled with faith will go to heaven, while a rich person who believes in God but thinks that he or she can pawn off certain works "good deeds" or "social work" with the intention that those are earned tokens toward heaven certainly risks hell instead. God knows before one even has the thought just how dumb a person thinks that God is.

So Satan must be understood in exactly that light-of being unable to understand, as we see in scripture, God's All Knowingness-to serve as the correct negative role model for human beings who wish to be saved. When you read the beginning of the Book of Job, if you understand what I have just pointed out to you in these two posts, now the scales will fall from your eyes and you will really "get" the Book of Job properly. Why did Job suffer so much? Because Satan, like humans, cannot understand God's All Knowingness, and constantly challenge, marginalize and test it, while the faithful, such as Job, do not lack understanding that God is All Knowing.

For more scriptural reassurance on what I am saying, read the sections where the mother of James and John asks Jesus that they sit at his right and left hand when Jesus comes into the Kingdom (which she of course misunderstands the nature of). But think about what the court favorites who sit around the king indicate. These are people who are near to the king, but not the king. These are people who are rewarded by the king, but do not as a result receive or have the power or the knowledge of the king. Everyone in Biblical times understood full well that even the people who achieve heaven do not receive "secrets" or gain God's knowledge, etc... they hoped for being in his constant presence.

And thus you can see that indeed happens for some as you read the Book of Revelation. John sees that a number of (unidentified) elders surround the throne of God, casting their crowns in front of him and worshipping him. If these are the few humans, the prophets and elders, who achieved such proximity to God, and they are still in the form of humans in their spiritual glorified bodies who glorify God all day, you have to understand that there is still that distinction between God and everyone else, both angels and saved humans. No one is "absorbed" into God's All Knowingness. That is a fake technology industrialized and now New Age affectation and false belief that has no bearing on reality since obvious physics of God and his created creatures belie that if you give it any thought, and the scriptures illustrate actual scenes and events that show such thinking is totally false. The difference is that in heaven, both angels and saved humans have perfect faith and know that God is All Knowing: a belief that the faithful have while on earth but have rewarded in the knowing when in heaven.

That lack, by the way, is one way to characterize humans who go to hell. No one who really, really, REALLY believes that God is All Knowing is stupid enough to do the things that they do, and think the things that they think, that ends them up in hell for eternity of suffering and punishment. Every chronic sinner (both of sins of commission and omission), does not, despite what they may say, believe that God is All Knowing. Again, a great way to improve one's chances of salvation is to have faith in God, but the God as God really is... because when you believe all there is to believe about him exactly as he has constantly presented himself to generations of the faithful and the chastised unfaithful, you in turn will have cascading changes in behavior and mindset that improve greatly your chances of becoming worthy.

Here's a mental image for you. Suppose that someone in hell was taken out of hell by God, put back in their body on earth, and "given another chance." What would happen? Your knee jerk reaction is to say, "Well, of course that person learned his or her lesson and that he or she will lead a wonderful life that is corrected from all bad ways." Wrong! The person who goes to hell, and then in theory gets a second chance at life, thinks to his or her self, "Ha! I knew the religions were wrong and that hell is permanent. See? I'm back." A person who goes to hell is permanently flawed, like Satan, in their lack of faith, so that even if God gave them mercy and through a miracle took them out of hell and gave them a second chance at life, the person would view that as another cornerstone to their lack of faith rather than increasing their faith. They figure if God "breaks his own rules," then the rules are bogus in the first place. That is why no one ever leaves hell, not even to give a message of warning to those who are in danger of hell themselves on earth (Luke 16). God in his All Knowingness knows that those who merit hell are incapable of increasing anyone's faith, no matter what mercy God bestows on them, since they have warped their soul into being incapable of having humility of faith, say nothing of conveying it to others still alive. How can you feel comfortable inferring this? Notice how even in hell the rich man expects the poor man, Lazarus, who is being comforted by Abraham himself in heaven, to be the one to bring him some water in hell. The man in hell is too darned arrogant and stupid to do something like pray to God for relief, even as heaven is opened up to him in this one time event! Luke 16 is a constant gold mine of understanding God's reality, faith, and the pernicious problem of lack of faith.

So yes, the angels observe and serve God all the time in heaven, and have perfection of faith, but this does not mean that they are now "extensions" of God, that they share in his All Knowingness, which is not possible. They do, however, have perfection of faith in God, as do all humans who are saved and gain eternity in heaven. This is one reason, by the way, for my Muslim friends, that in the Qur'an you read that God ordered the angels to worship Adam right after God created Adam. The angels are not worshipping Adam per se as the flawed vessel that all humans are by nature (even though Adam had not yet sinned) but the angels are paying obeisance to God's All Knowingness in his wisdom to create goodness. So the angels are not lifting Adam up, but they are acknowledging that they are to continue to have faith in, believe and honor the works of God.

Those who are saved have as their hallmarks either the simple faith in God of the good hearted and naturally humble, or faith in God that they have had to constantly work at, like a garden that is always threatened with weeds, so they look to the saints, and the read the scriptures, and they work, really work, at increasing their faith, not their works. Good works and what God expects of everyone in charity is a natural fruit of faith: it does not have to be artificially planned and managed like on a spreadsheet or a shopping list that has check off marks. If one works only on fear of God and increased faith, one will naturally heed God's expectations for their works as a result.

I hope you have found this helpful!

Candid talk about life expectancy and death

I am especially directing this particular blog posting to you young people, who I always have in mind. Be assured I am not trying to bum you out, because if you think about what I am writing here, you will see its purpose is the opposite, to make you more realistic and thus have more positivity about both life and what to expect after life.

Young people, the first thing you need to understand is that you were raised by a generation, perhaps even two generations, who have taken an "average" or a long lifespan for granted. They have thus passed on to you some legitimate, but also some very bogus, expectations. Those of us who are older, and, more importantly, had very sound scientific and anthropological subject material in school, have a different, more realistic view of not only the biological life and its priorities but also the spiritual life. Your parents, grandparents and your school systems have done you no favors in this regard. It is urgent that you rethink the unconscious assumptions that you have.

First, look at this article, but most especially the chart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

Here is the punch line. Do you realize that until the last century for ALL of human history that the average lifespan of humans was through the twenties, lower thirties, and sometimes the forties? That is what that chart shows you, that as recently as a few hundred years ago most people could not expect to life much past forty.

Let that sink in for a moment. For the hundreds of thousands of years that what is considered to be modern humans existed, until the last one hundred years or so, virtually all humans could only expect to live a MAX of forty years. Most were considered old and "elders" in their thirties.

This should make you realize a few things now about the scriptures. First, it is very significant and indeed a proof of God's existence that at the time when most humans lived only until their thirties, God told them that their maximum years would be one hundred and twenty. Even the wisest prehistoric scholars could not have figured that out and anticipated such an age limit which has been demonstrated to be precisely true.

Second, it means you have to take seriously the immense ages of some of the patriarchs mentioned in the Bible. People simply would not have made up that a FEW specific named people blessed by God in the times between Adam and Eve and Abraham lived for hundreds and hundreds of years. It is exactly the astonishment of such longevity that resulted in those life spans being recorded in the Bible. Think about it..... of all the things that we today think are "important events," during the times recorded in the Book of Genesis, what is the only "facts" that people recorded? Those several key blessed patriarchs and the ages to which they lived. Other than genealogies those are really the only "facts" of those times: not dates of founding of cities, not amount of wealth, not years of battle victories or other "historical" "facts" like we would record today, but the extraordinary statement by God that due to human disobedience and limitations they can only expect natural life to reach one hundred and twenty years AND the recording of very few people in history who, filled with the Spirit of God, lived remarkably extended lives.

Now, my point is not to focus on those few individuals, the likes of which humans will never see again, for they truly lived when God was present among his people in their early rising and faith history. My point is to get you to not take an "average" or a "long" lifespan for granted, and also to explain some cold and hard facts to belie sentimentality that has crept into the modern psyche.

I am very concerned, as I have for decades, about an assumption that has crept into modern thought, which is that somehow if one suffers a "tragic" or "early" loss of life, that somehow God "makes it alright." To be blunt, many young people have been raised to think that if someone dies young, or if someone of any age dies tragically, that somehow, even if they are the most godless person in their life, that a young or "sad" death gives them some sort of bonus brownie points to achieve heaven. Seriously, so many people think that someone who ignored God while they were alive and even worked against his will, living godless and totally selfish lives filled with pointless activities, that if he or she dies sadly, tragically, at a young age, or was "so nice" and "much loved" or "much admired," that he or she gets a free pass card to the heaven that they didn't even believe in or witness to, and that they are "now at peace."

Think about how illogical that is. For most of human existence virtually every human barely made it out of their twenties alive. Duh. God would certainly not have set up a "bonus point" system for sad and early deaths when obviously ALL FREAKING PEOPLE DIED YOUNG FOR MOST OF HUMAN EXISTENCE.

In Biblical times, boys and girls who reached puberty were eagerly looking forward to being adult enough to marry, have responsibility for some sort of household, and start to raise a family. This is why the age of thirteen is such a "coming of age" in many cultures, and of course very much in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions. Get real, people. At the age of thirteen people were already approaching their life expectancy halfway point.

Thus the Bible, and the Qur'an, were written when people who turned thirty were viewed as "old" or "elders." This is why Jesus Christ started his public ministry around that age, by the way. And at his age, around thirty-three, when he died, it was the greatest tragedy and injustice in human history, but to that reality one cannot say that "he died young." The life expectancy of everyone, in general, around the world was their thirties, perhaps to forty.

So you must drop the notion that because human prosperity, health, hygiene and technology have helped many humans reach the average age of seventy (more in developed countries, of course), doubling what humans had expected until then, that God has some particular special treatment for those who "die young" or "die tragically." Um, that actually has been the entire story and lot of all of human history to date, that life was a struggle to survive day to day, to raise a family, to thrive, and to make it to one's "elder" status years, which was one's thirties.

With that in mind, you must realize that God does not "allow" or "bake into the plan" decades of youthful denial and occult or other "experimentation." Again, modern people, being raised by parents who are spoiled by their recent longevity and prosperity, somehow assume that God "understands" if children are raised godless, if teenagers and young adults "experiment with exotic beliefs" and if people are "too busy" or "too artistic" in their twenties and thirties to care about believing in God. That is a total error and one that is dangerous to the extreme. It not only puts decent living and good choices in peril (the old "I've got lots of time to straighten out" myth) but it also is, frankly, delusional to think that God is going to allow into heaven generations that are more unbelieving and disrespectful of him than ever in human history.

God is one hundred percent truth and one hundred percent consistency. He is constant in his availability to love and forgive even the most egregious sinner. But he is also constant in allowing the consequences of the same behaviors throughout all of human history to determine if an individual is saved (achieves heaven) or not (is assigned to hell for all eternity).

I know that when someone dies young and/or tragically, no one wants (or should) look at the grieving family and say, "Wow, it's too late for him or her to be saved," even if that is most likely factually true. That's cold hearted and cruel, and it is also not recommended that one speaks for God. However, it is equally a disservice for these past two generations to think that someone young who has lived very un-Christian lives, disbelieving and flaunting God, but who was "bubbly" or "artistic" or "sad" and "tragic" gets some sort of bonus points to cancel out their having done NOTHING to merit salvation!

To put it in systems terms: heaven is NOT the default location.

There is advice that I would give to anyone who asks who has suffered a loss in their family of such a person, and maybe I would give it if asked, it's not something that can be easily blogged about, as my advice must tap and utilize the specific level and type of the faith of the persons who are asking. But I CAN tell all of you reading this to understand the facts and be more sane and realistic than your parents' generation (and even some grandparents'). God gave the Bible and the Qur'an to humans for specific reasons: so humans understand the truth, and what God expects from them. As I've blogged before, you must understand the cultural context of the times when the scriptures were articulated, in order to fully comprehend all the fullness and richness of meaning. Here, then, is another example where you cannot read the Bible with modern filters. You cannot be reading the Bible and thinking that an elder is someone in their sixties, seventies and eighties. You cannot read the Bible and think that God is cutting slack for youth. He is not. When God refers to children he means children, as in very young children... God is not even meaning teenagers when he refers to children. As I said, at thirteen most were getting ready to establish their own households. At thirty they were elders. There is no "slack" built in for "young people" to "experiment" and to "choose" "their spirituality" and "whether to 'believe or not.'"

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Understanding God: speaks literally or symbolically

If one thinks about it, the heart of much of the confusion and divisiveness among many Christians, particularly along sect lines, involves confusion about when the Word of God in the Holy Bible is absolutely literal as stated, and when a certain about of symbolism is appropriate.

I was going to write a commentary about Revelation 22:15 for an entirely different blogging topic when I realized that this is a great passage to help people to understand how to correctly balance understanding of "literal" versus "symbolic." That, by the way, is an artificial debate, which results from trying to be lazy in one's discernment about the true meaning of anyone's spoken word, including God's. Excessive literalists are lazy in one direction (they don't want to think about it, just "tell me what to do" is their hope), while excessive symbolists are lazy in the other direction (they don't want to obey some of God's more difficult instructions and thus they hope to be wishy washy and say that it's not literal and thus need not be strictly followed). The truth is that the Word of God must of course be strictly followed, but God speaks in the lingua franca of the people (the common tongue of the time) and thus there will be moments of symbolic speech which takes nothing from the total truth and requirement of those meanings.

Revelation 22:15
Outside are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and everyone who lives and practices falsehood.

In the Book of Revelation John the Apostle has been taken in vision to heaven where he sees all that will take place at the End of Time, the Second Coming of Christ, the Final Judgment. In conclusion of this vision Jesus Christ is speaking to John through Christ's angel. Jesus has given John instructions about revealing all that he has seen and heard, and is giving a summation, which are the final words by him in the Christian Bible. Jesus has just finished praising those who "have the right to the tree of life" (in heaven and in the New Jerusalem), and he now, in Revelation 22:15, lists those who will be excluded from heaven (those who are "outside.")

You can now see why I chose this excellently clear passage to help you to work on your literal/symbolic discernment. What is the first group that Jesus lists will be outside of heaven, excluded from the heavenly city to come? "Outside are the dogs."

I am only half joking when I say that Bible literacy and common sense historical and cultural knowledge have become so low that someday soon young readers of these modern generations will worry that members of the canine species are excluded from heaven. After all, Jesus said that "dogs" will be excluded. This is the perfect example to start a personal effort for you to discern that the Bible is both literal and truthful throughout in meaning, but that one has a responsibility for understanding the plain, historic and cultural context of the language that God uses throughout. Obviously God is not speaking of excluding beagles, mutts, spaniels, retrievers, Pomeranians, etc from heaven. God is using a derogatory term for certain human beings, one that has been used for many centuries in many languages and cultures: dog.

I want to keep this commentary short and sweet so I'm not going to itemize what type of human behavior is so sinful that it renders a person being called "a dog." It was not that long ago that Americans would call someone who was deceitful a "dirty dog." So the term "dog" has an enduring longevity over the centuries to denote certain types of unworthy persons and if one reads about the cultural meaning of being "a dog" from Biblical times, you will realize that it's easier to recognize than to itemize.

The heart of what I am trying to convey is that here is a very obvious example of where everyone can agree that God is being exact in his meaning but using a symbolic term for a quantity that is not so precise. Compare that to another type of person on the list, which are the "murderers." A "murderer" is a much more precise term than a person who is "a dog." In fact, you can see that those are probably the opposite ends of the spectrum of precision in language, where murderer is a very precise term while "dog" is less precise to modern ears. However, in Biblical times and indeed to the present time in many cultures the meaning of "dog" is very well understood. Someone being called a dog by someone else knows exactly the derogatory tone of the term. Thus it is the Bible reader's responsibility to not gloss over the term "dog," but to understand that one must embrace the symbolic meaning to obtain precision of understanding. Thus one must be somewhat well educated in the vernacular of Biblical times, and that is not so much school smarts as common sense. As a hint much of what is behind the accusation of being a "dog" is a lack of honor. As modern society has lost and continues to lose much of its sense and understanding of honor, likewise it is in danger of missing a very specific admonition given with great clarity by Jesus Christ.

Both the person who thinks that Jesus meant beagles (literal) AND the person who thinks it's just a general symbolic word that doesn't merit much thought (symbolic) are in error. The term dog DOES denote a specific category of sinful and unworthy behavior that is being warned about.

Another very specific term, like murderers, that is easy to understand is "everyone who loves and practices falsehood." That is a literal lover's delight. Jesus Christ is warning that those who lie AND those who love lies will be excluded from heaven. There is no symbolism to obscure the meaning there.

Idolaters is also a specific term, and reading the Bible indicates that anything that is fashioned by human hands and then loved and worshipped by those hands is idolatry. Again, one must understand that a literal term can have a broad list of qualifying behaviors. Everyone should realize that there are many modern idolaters today even if they are not worshipping Baal or another Biblically cited false god, since they worship modern creations of the hands. Likewise the group "sorcerers" have a very specific meaning, though some might try to argue regarding what is a sorcery out of the list of many activities that are forbidden, such as magic, divining and so forth. In other words, idolaters and sorcerers are easy to understand and precise terms, but there is a temptation by humans to quibble about whether specific activities are included in those terms.

There is the remaining group, fornicators, that exactly straddles the literal and symbolic. Again, this demonstrates one must read and study the entire Bible to have genuine understanding of any of the parts. If one reads the Bible thoroughly, one understands that sometimes God is referring to literal sins of fornication (sexual activities) while other times God is using the same term to refer to those who are unfaithful to him, to their faith. It is impossible to study the Bible and not notice that sometimes God uses the terms fornicator, harlot and whore to refer to those who engage in illicit sexual behavior while other times God uses those exact same terms to refer to those who have faith in him and who then fall away from faith, or those who spread false faiths and their followers, to those who perform works on behalf of Satan, and those who, to use a modern term, cheapen God and his people.


So we have seen that in this one sentence we see the range from most symbolic to most literal:

(Symbolic) Dogs...fornicators... idolaters...sorcerers....everyone who loves and practices falsehood...murderers (Literal).

Whether Jesus Christ uses a term that is easy to understand in its literalness or more difficult to understand in its symbolic verbiage of the vernacular language, it makes no difference about how crucial they are to understand and to obey God in these matters. One cannot stand in front of God in Judgment and whine, "Well, I didn't know what you meant by 'dogs.'"

I hope that this has been an easy to understand and helpful place to start in recognizing that there really is NO "literal" versus "symbolic" difficulty in the Bible. One must simply recognize that God means to be understood, and hence he used the speech of the day in very clear terms. Moderns must continue to respect and understand the speech of the day of the Bible in order to obtain full and completely correct personal understanding of what God is saying.

A collection of thoughts/reflections today

Here is a collection of thoughts for today and the past few days.

1. In Revelation (the Book of the Apocalypse) it reads (when describing the heavenly Jerusalem) “And the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass” (Revelation 21:21).

Imagine how beautiful heavenly gold is, where it flows purely under spiritual feet. Now think about how the people who most loved gold will never see it again after death, for they, unrepentant and unsanctified by God’s forgiveness and grace, are in hell.

This is an example of where one reads a fact in the Bible (that St John observed that in heaven Jerusalem has a street of gold, and how there is no temple or sun “for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof” (Revelation 21:23) and can then, on further meditation regarding that passage, can extract wisdom. By thinking about the irony and futility of sin, where those who loved gold the most on earth will not see the street of gold in heaven, one better understand the truth of all that scriptures contains and how the truth of salvation history has continuing urgent applicability throughout all time.


2. My opinion about the election unrest in Iran is that the problem in Iran, which I am surely concerned about and disappointed about, is, nonetheless, a temptation to the arrogant and self righteous in the western world.

Consider Iran a mini-case study in not only diplomacy but also in faith and reasoning and also morality (and sin). Ironically I am not referring to the sin of oppression, which is apparently occurring during the protests (always be careful to have the complete facts before jumping to conclusion. Facts involve collecting both the truth of what is happening and also putting it in reasonable proportion and context). I am referring to the sin of hubris, egoism and arrogant self righteousness. Who is the United States, France or any other country to criticize a country that is a theocracy, just because those countries “don’t believe” in either state religion or that specific religion?

A theocracy does not function the same way as a republic or a theoretical democracy, I mean, duh, think about it. The entire structure of not only the government but all decision making is based on entirely different criterion in a theocracy than in a republic or a theoretical democracy. It’s hilarious that in the television series “Star Trek” a generation of liberal mush heads grew up admiring its godless but “moral” “non interference in alien cultures” stance, yet these liberals (and self described conservatives) can’t wait to criticize and interfere in an earth based reality based genuine different culture. If aliens were presented on “Star Trek” wearing the hijab, burqua or other conservative female garb the popcorn eating viewers would be applauding the noble Enterprise crew’s “non interference.”

Turn off the TV fantasy and get real about respecting other people’s culture and religion. Also, as another example of thinking out of the box (but being reality based), I have heard that Neda, the woman who appears to have been tragically killed in a protest in Iran, was at the protest with her father. That may or may not be true as facts are, as I warned above, sketchy. Parents, I have to ask you, do you think that taking a child who still is young and has life ahead of him or her, even if they are “mature” and in their twenties, to a protest where there is life threatening danger is a good idea? That is not a decision that I would have made. I would not go to a protest or other danger if a younger member of my family insisted on going with me.

Part of being a parent (or a mature adult of any form) is to look at the long view, the big picture, and help younger people make mature decisions accordingly. Also, are things going so well in the United States? Are things going so well in France? Are western countries in possession of such perfection that they can devote an unprecedented amount of ink and TV time about Iran’s election and theocracy?


3. I find I have to remind people yet again of the following:

In heaven: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new. ‘ And he said unto me, ‘Write: for these words are true and faithful’” (Revelation 21:4-5).

Think about this: if God erases all death, sorrow, crying and pain, what do you think happens to the people who cause death, sorrow, crying and pain in others? Read onward just a few passages further.

In hell: “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8).

Notice the categories of people that God himself lists as being cast into hell for all eternity, the “second death” that occurs after their body dies and each person is judged by God. Do you notice that it is not only the unbelievers in God, but also the “fearful” who are sent to hell? Those who “fear” to serve God in their lives have to be genuinely concerned about meriting hell for their lackluster and tainted faith. Also notice that it not “whores” but “whoremongers” who need to fear hell. A whoremonger is someone who promotes whorish behavior. As Jesus demonstrated repeatedly, whores are forgiven, but whoremongers are not. Think about the filth of modern society and understand how many millions of whoremongers exist in society today. How about the abominable? I was in a church service this Sunday and someone flashed an obscene gesture in my direction. Um, have people gotten so stupid that they do not realize that personal beefs, playacting, and obscenity and disrespect is not only sinful and bad to do, but when it is in a house of God (no matter the denomination, for all exist in theory ‘in his name’) that this is an abomination? Call me an ass or whatever on the street and it is a sin and boorish behavior (and probably based on idolatrous beliefs) but if you do the same thing in a house of God, it is an abomination, and risks being unforgiven and being cast into hell upon death.

And, finally, notice that “all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” I’ve written extensively how “liars,” being those who disobey the Commandment against false witness, includes not only flat out lies but also all forms of misrepresenting of information, whether about a person or a business. Withholding information is not a way “around” lying but is part of false witness. Friends, this modern society is entirely comprised of liars. You need to shudder in fear at how generations are being taught falsehood and to live entirely within falsehood, raising their children to be unable to tell the difference and who, in fact, raise “acting out a part” and being “poseurs” to a high art of lying. All, unrepentant and unforgiven, will be cast into hell after being judged by God, and in the scripture you have been warned by St. John’s witness of God’s own words in heaven.



4. I have one continuing ongoing regret and sorrow, which will delight those who enjoy knowing about my pain. I regret that I ever had the level of affection for humans that I have been among. Whether love, friendship or adoptive parenthood, I regret the depth of my love and affection because they did not want nor deserve it-not because I am so great, but because they have all believed so little in God. It is one thing to love someone who needs help with their faith, or who have not received the word of God into their lives and hearts. It is another thing to have affection toward those who manipulate both my affection but also their faith (such as it is) or who are idolaters who secretly worship pagan non-existent gods and who decay genuine glorification of the real God. I am actually ashamed at how much I have loved certain people, only to find how filthy they have been toward God, in their minds and in their theoretical hearts. I can’t even think of family, friends, ex-loves without being ashamed that I loved people who care so little for God, and who cover up such dark and disgusting beliefs.


5. Wow, I am glad that even though it was for bad reasons (going broke and the sadness of my family and so called friends decay) that I gave up golf and sold my golf clubs. Enough said.


6. Isaiah 30:1 Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my Spirit, that they may add sin to sin.

Understanding God: all knowing not predestination

Every once in a while I don't mind a dash of Calvinism because they are healthy reminders that there is a real, genuine terrible hell, and that people really do go to an actual hell. Too many moderns do not preach fear of going to hell enough, to be honest. So sometimes I joke that we need some fire and brimstone preaching about hell from Calvinists.

However, there is a very fundamental error in Calvinism (beside the whole Protestant split from Catholicism quarrel) that needs clearing up. Calvin and his followers believe in "predestination," which is the cause of much of the historic antagonism between Calvinism and Catholicism. Catholics assert that there is free will, where people choose whether or not to sin, and thus must bear the consequences of sin. Calvinists believe that all of this is "predetermined" before one is born, and thus one is born to either be saved to heaven or doomed to hell, no matter what that person does.

Predestination is an error and is incorrect. It results from a misunderstanding of God's "all knowing-ness." For those of you new to my blog or new to reading my "understanding God" series, if you follow the label you will be able to read what I have previously written about God's attributes (for lack of a better word), including his knowledge of all that was, all that is, all that will be, and all that could ever be (the answer to every "what if" question), to the minutest level. I discuss how God knows the action, past present and future, of every subatomic particle, no matter how small, every void of space, and all the matter, energy, time and nothingness that ever was, could be (if God had willed it to be), or will be (what he does will). For example, God knows each subatomic particle in one cell of your skin, for example, knowing where each particle came from and where it is going, to the end of time.

Thus God knows the thought of every human being, their intentions, their actions, and also all that they have done and all that they will do. However, there is a great difference between God knowing what one will do throughout life (and thus where one will go after life, when one dies) and predestination. God knows what choices you will make in life, but God still allows you to make those choices, one after the other. If one was genuinely "predestined" to heaven or hell, God would not allow humans to make individual choices about behavior day to day. You would find that you are marching through a script, and that most certainly is not true. So Calvinists believe that a person is going to go to hell, for example, no matter what they do in life, and likewise someone else is destined to heaven. That most assuredly is not true and both God in the Old Testament and Jesus Christ in the New Testament emphasize that one must make continual choices throughout life, to be righteous or to sin. God knows what choices each person will make, but that does not mean that God has made those choices for you.

Each person still has to make individual choices that in sum total are 1) acceptance of the grace of God and 2) are righteous and 3) are genuinely repenting of sin in order to achieve heaven. In other words one has to live life, step by step, decision by decision, and God is not going to make those decisions for you. God knows what you will decide and that is God's "all knowing." However, you still have to live your life and work to make good life affirming decisions, and to shun and regret sin when it does occur.

Think about it with this theoretical. Suppose one felt that he or she was "predestined" for heaven, no matter what he or she did. Would that incline a person to be very mindful of the consequences of their behavior? No, it would not. Likewise a person who thinks they are predestined to hell will not make much of an effort to do what is right. Predestination is such a pernicious and filled with despair attitude that it gave qualms to even some of the most holy of the saints, when they encountered this idea in their youth. What people must remind themselves of is what is in the Bible. From cover to cover, and with plain and loving but stern speech by Jesus Christ himself, the Bible teaches the avoidance of temptation and evil and the choosing of the good. The Bible would not continually teach good choices in life if the fact was that the choices were already made for someone due to "predestination."

So the Calvinists misunderstand the fact that God knows in advance the heart and the deeds of all humans with thus assuming that God has predetermined as in established as a fact where they are going before they are even born. This is simply not true and remember, God created humans in the first place so that they can make choices and be individuals who elect God and love their neighbor. If God wanted robots he would have created really good ones and not have bothered with either humans or angels (who also made their choice whether to serve or to not). God knowing in advance what choices one will make does not mean God requires, forces, or guides one's steps inexorably down that "path" to either heaven or hell. Each human does that all on his or her own, with each step of their life.

Remember too that God would not have given each person guardian angels if the purpose of the angels was just to watch one group march to hell, and the other group to heaven. Angels interact with humans with a continual bias and spirit toward doing the good, doing the best, and resisting temptation. Likewise the Holy Spirit moves constantly among all people, those who are making good choices but especially among those making bad choices, trying to guide them back to the healthy, the good, the loving and the righteous. I hope that you have found this helpful.

Joshua 24:15
And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Human longevity and the end of times

I was reading on the web about the passing of Maria de Jesus in Portugal who was the oldest living person for the past several months http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_de_Jesus. I do not particularly research out and follow these supercentenarians, but I enjoy reading about them and honoring them when I do come across them in the news. I like reading about them, and recommend likewise, for three reasons: it is often the only time that the media and the public at large particularly honors the elderly, they are living witnesses to what life was like over the past hundred plus years, and they often provide straightforward and powerful witness to a simple yet full life. Maria de Jesus, for example, was married, widowed, with six children and worked the fields for seventy years. She could neither read nor write, yet no one can say she didn’t have a remarkable life that was full, and with peace of mind. The oldest supercentenarian is now a lady in California, an Afro-American, the daughter of slaves. How can we not all marvel at the lives of this wonderful group of supercentenarians?

While surfing the net to find a really nice photograph of de Jesus to keep in her memory, I came across what I think is the creepy part of interest in supercentenarians, and that promoted me to have to write a blog posting today, even though I was kind of at my leisure and taking a break! But when I see something that is a grave error, and especially if it is heretical, I am highly motivated to stop what I am doing and correct it. This is because people watch where I browse with interest, and I am concerned that just rolling my eyes or throwing up a little in my mouth when I read such stuff and just moving on will result in some assuming I do not object to what I have just seen. I can’t do that with every topic because the whole world is filled with lies and garbage, but I focus on those that provide, as you know, good case studies, or are of great urgency toward healthy human thinking and behavior.

Sure, everyone asks the supercentenarians what is the secret to their long lives, and that is great. Also, it is great that people study them (with dignity I hope) to have more insight regarding the medicine of geriatrics and how to prolong healthy human life. The creepy people are those who study them in the admitted belief that there is a way to never die. The creepy site I came across quoted a creepy doctor who actually has the nerve to quote one passage from God’s expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and claim two incredibly wrong and stupid things: 1) that use of the word “Us” means God is “admitting” there is “more than one of him” (um, read the Qur’an, moron… “Us” is used throughout as kings use it as the “imperial we” and also in reference to the immortal life of angels who abide in God) and 2) that somehow God is encouraging humans to learn how to never die and become “immortal” on earth. There’s just so much I can do about willful stupidity. However, I have had in mind a topic regarding the resurrection of the dead at the end of time so I decided to combine these two intentions here and now in this blogging.

The entire Bible and every book of faith or belief system is about two things: 1) the temporary nature of life and how to live with what one has with graciousness and goodness of heart and 2) preparation for reunion after death with the Divine. Even those traditional mainstream faiths who believe in reincarnation don’t think that it is a wonderful thing to keep “recycling” in a living body, and they teach how to break the cycle through detachment of the material and achieve nirvana in the spirit after a final death. There is absolutely no where in sacred writings, particularly not the Bible, the Torah nor the Qur’an, any notion that there exists a way to live forever. God is laughing at certain humans’ desire find such a nonexistent way, though he does so with loving sympathy, except for those who push an inflated and hubristic view on fellow humans that only accentuates their downfall of spirit and of body, eventually. God wants people to be physicians and healers, providers of food, water and shelter, educators, and protectors, so that all people can strive to live as healthy and as long a life as is possible. The author of one of the Gospels, St. Luke, was a physician. Jesus taught constantly to tend to the sick and the needy and the objective is obviously to remove their sorrow, and allow them to live as healthy and as long a life as possible. But the entire point of the Bible and the Qur’an is that humans are expected to do the best with what they have in the understanding that it will not last forever and that they should hope for mercy and bliss in union after death and within eternal life in God, just as the angels already have from their beginning of creation.

People who want to “live forever” generally have a few problems that obscures their sense of reasoning with this matter. One is that they tend not to be elderly themselves, so they do not have the internal perspective of one who has actually lived a long life. Thus these young or middle age men or women have a vision of a vibrant and healthy person full of keen interests and vitality living on and on and on. This theoretical and unrealistic image becomes overpowering in their mind of what reality is like and of how one changes one’s view of grasping onto life as one grows old. In many ways it seems that those people who are not highly motivated “Type A’s” and who have lived a long time, seeing births and deaths in their own family, and having a simple love and acceptance of that are actually the ones who live the longest and the most contented. The Bible teaches that one will lose what one holds the tightest grasp upon and life and death are like that too. Those who grow old often do so because they are not hiding from death, but instead are intimate to the cycle of life and death, often as peasant poor and farmers themselves. So people who envision living forever often have a movie running in their mind where they picture healthy and buff “Type A” personalities running around for all time “doing good.” That’s actually the opposite of what medical research and anecdotal observation reveals. Those who are the most intense about living a long time often die even before they retire, hmm?

This then leads us to the second problem with those who claim that there is a way to live “forever” and that this would be a good thing. That problem is that these people just do not understand love. Again, they have this script in their minds of buff eternal people with lots of friends, interests and good causes. But generation after generation of humans did not live only for themselves and what they want, but to make room in the world for their children and their great grandchildren. The love of the generations that come after you, including those that you don’t live to see, is part of healthy human outlook regarding the reality of life and death. No tree lives forever, nor does a polar bear or an eagle. Biology and the reality of life and death dictate that no living thing is eternal and thus plants and animals make way for the next generation even without having a sense of love and destiny. But it is the consolation of humans with the limited lifespan of all things that they are self aware enough to understand that all things pass with time, even the sun and the stars, and that out of them new life is born, life that they love here and now (their children and their children) and “in advance” for the future generations.

Related to this problem of these “researchers” not understanding love is that they do not understand the love of God and of a place that is much better than even the finest lifestyle can build among a theoretically eternal life span on earth. God has promised that one’s natural home, with him in heaven, is a far better place where one is reunited with loved ones and the saints, and where nothing ever is sad or tarnishes, or loses its beauty, glory and savor. There is nobody in heaven who would EVER come back to earthly life, nor could they even envision doing so. People in hell would come back if they could, ha, but you would not want them back, nor would you want them to live eternally either, but that’s another story. However, that is a useful aside to think about. What would you do with genuinely evil people, such as a Hitler, who like you could live forever? Do you become God and imprison him for eternity on earth, or kill him, justifying that he “lost” the right to the eternal death defying body that you yourself had provided through your research? Believe me, people have enough trouble determining fair sentencing guidelines for child abuses and armed robbers. Who would be “in charge” of sentencing to prison or executing people who like you could “live forever” and “not die?” Do you want non-God fearing people to be able to keep a person alive in a prison cell for a thousand years? Humans wish for very foolish things without thinking it through and viewing it through the lens of genuine human nature at all.

It is precisely because the faithful understand the incomprehensible bliss and reward of eternal life with God after death that these people understand that there are two types of love: love for fellow humans while alive, and the love that comes from residing within God for all eternity. Far from being “liberating,” the notion of eternal earthly life is enslaving in ways that the worst and bleakest science fiction novels could not fully portray. All earthly love dies at some point; who thinks that you can love another human being, even one’s own child, for two hundred, three hundred, a thousand years? Earthly love is a gift that like fruit has to be plucked and enjoyed at its prime, not as it’s been artificially preserved for one thousand years. To keep people alive indefinitely is to deprive them of eternal life that is within the unimaginable immensity that is God’s eternal embrace. Jesus told the disciples about a poor man who suffered much on earth, but now lies in the bosom of the Patriarch of all the monotheistic faiths, Abraham. A poor man who was a “nobody” on earth is now resting in the love of Abraham himself, in God’s presence. Why would someone imagine some thousand year old man web surfing and rocket flying until he just falls apart from lack of love as being some sort of worthy research objective? People are nuts, there is just no other way to put it. Can anyone sane imagine being kept alive indefinitely so that one cannot reach heaven by dying and achieving eternal bliss with God?

Thus God promises and delivers three things. God promises an earthly life that while filled with limitations and uncertainty, if filled with goodwill, love and charity by humans they can have much love, kindness, peace and prosperity. God promises judgment of the individual for his or her belief and his or her faithfulness to God, and his or her works, whereby upon death one is rewarded and achieves heaven or is condemned to hell. God promises at some point in the future that the world will pass away and that the dead shall resurrect for a final judgment. This means that God promises that there will be a new heaven and earth that is populated and brought to life by those who have earned it. Think of it as becoming shareholders in a new company that one cannot imagine now, but will be like the Garden of Eden without the flaw and the sin. No one can second guess how or when God will do this for after all Jesus stated that even he does not know when God intends to do this. If one does not know “when” one also cannot know “how.” For example, what will humans who died as babies be like? Will there be millions of living human souls in precocious and wise infant bodies? That is not likely. So people must trust God that it will be wonderful and one should certainly realize that if you can’t imagine what it will be like, you certainly can’t create your mini-eternal life on earth, forestalling both heaven and the passing of all and coming of the new world.

I mean, for crying out loud, you humans cannot even find a cure for people who suffer from distressing skin disorders such as psoriasis. Families cannot live in peace and goodness without abuse. Communities cannot rebuild after disasters, take care of their own poor, give hope to their young and fight crime. Wars cannot be fought without destroying more than they preserve. And yet some of you fantasize about “living forever” and even worse state that you think that this is “OK” with God?

The only people who lived for hundreds of years were some of the Patriarchs in Biblical times and that was for one simple reason. These individuals were filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, not because it’s “theoretically possible to live forever.” God for his own reasons allowed a few to live an extraordinary number of years, including many centuries. If you insist on knowing a “reason” for God’s intention in this matter, you would be on safe ground to think in terms of a combination of their providing faith legacy through many generations (staying alive in order to maintain their future generations’ first hand knowledge of God when there was no writing and when oral history communication was still weak) and also that this was a backwash of residue of Spirit from when God was present in the Garden of Eden on earth. There was a superabundance of grace and the Spirit never just vanishes, no matter how much humans sin and err.

Here is something that I don’t think many people realize. The Apostles were very interested in the time the world would pass away and Jesus would have his Return in the Second Coming. It is almost as though they skip over in their minds their personal deaths and reward in heaven, so eager are they for life on earth with Jesus present. Modern readers misunderstand that keen interest of theirs, even reading into it a minimalization of their hopes and anticipation of heaven. First of all, that is not true, because if you read all that they have said and written they are very fixed on the hope of heaven when they individually die. But they are very curious and eager about the Second Coming and the end of time. Why is that? It is because as Jesus has often been called the new Adam, the one who fixed what was first broken by Adam and Eve, the Apostles were eager to see a world that was “fixed,” with Jesus in rulership. Remember that this was the hope of all Jews at the time, that the Messiah would bring honor and bliss of an earthly realm. The Apostles and disciples maintained their fervor to be part of correcting the wrongs that had been done by humans, starting in the Garden of Eden, and they realize that the Second Coming is when that will actually be achieved. Until then, no matter how great the faith and goodness of humans (and they know there’s a lot of area for improvement, as we see today), human life will always be flawed. They, knowing this, had a “wipe the slate clean” mindset, and had in their minds the image of the new, global Jerusalem as their belief, and eagerly awaited their own role in its creation. As true servants of Jesus Christ and of God, these men thought “past” their own heavenly reward at the end of life, eager to bring the new Garden of Eden, the New Jerusalem, into being with Jesus Christ and his Return. That is why there is so much about them asking Jesus about the end of times and even what seems like their hoping for its soon arrival. They were eager to be new “shareholders” in the new world of the bodily resurrected where humanity has a second chance and there is no sin.

But heaven is not gained by staying alive forever, and the New Jerusalem is not to be without first all humans passing away at the end of time, when God foresees and wills that it happens. If everyone ran around and killed each other off, it’s not like that makes God go, “Oh, OK, they’ve killed each other off so now it’s time to send Jesus back!” The end of time is when all things naturally pass away as they have now outlived their time. Sure, the weakness and the sin of humans have a part in being the “cause” of when it occurs, but humans are only a part of the larger plan. Humans certainly are not the button pushers and the promoters of how or when. Likewise, humans can try to “stay alive” individually forever, cutting off their own noses to spite their own faces, not believing in or desiring heaven, or fearing hell, and thinking that humans are emotionally and mentally fit to just go on and on and on. But they will never achieve that goal because life is life, it is a limited span and something will always arise to curtail it. I mean, look around you; young children and adults are killing themselves rather than even reaching the maturity of their years due to mental illness, drug use, disbelief, despair, ennui, and ego centric poor lifestyle choices and opportunities. Humans are limited; no living creature has the spirit to live a long time, certainly not “forever.” Biology also dictates that viruses and other agents will arise to attack human bodies who think they are “eternal.” Natural disasters do not cease, nor does the temptation to “control population” through abortion and other means. Humans are no more capable and able or emotionally fit to live forever than spider monkeys (and I like spider monkeys).

Even though this was not a Bible or Qur’an quoting blogging I hope that you have found this helpful. The biggest challenge that humans have today is to regain their perspective and balance, which they have lost in the most frightful ways in the past forty or so years. This is what I hoped to assist in with the writing of this particular blog posting. Have a good day and I hope that everyone has a New Years resolution that also includes promoting balance and sanity for themselves and others!

Understanding God: Who gets into heaven (5)

Without commentary from me, read this and try to imagine not what you assume, but what it sounded like as the disciples and those in the crowd who followed him heard his words.


Luke 13:22-30
And he passed on through towns and villages, teaching and making his way towards Jerusalem. But someone said to him, "Lord, are only a few to be saved?"

But he said to them, "Strive to enter by the narrow gate; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.

"But when the master of the house has entered and shut the door, you will begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, open for us!' And he shall say to you in answer, 'I do not know where you are from.' Then you begin to say, 'We ate and drank in thy presence, and thou didst teach in our streets.' And he shall say to you, 'I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity.'

"There will be the weeping, and the gnashing of teeth, when you shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves cast forth outside.

"And they will come from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and will feast in the kingdom of God. And behold, there are those last who will be first, and there are those first who will be last."

Understanding God: Who gets into heaven (4)

Part Four

One of the most important things that you must understand is that Jesus never taught an individual salvation. In other words, the community of the faithful is just as important as the idea of a particular person “going to heaven.” This is one of the greatest misunderstandings among some modern Christians, particularly those in non-denominational churches or with fundamentalist or Evangelical outlooks. So this is another reason that it is problematic to have an attitude of “who” individually is going to go to heaven and be “saved” and who individually is “not.”

An individual view of salvation has never been part of the Old Covenant and Jesus did not endorse such a change in stance, and neither did the Apostles or disciples. The entire Catholic Church is built in continuation of the emphasis on the “body of the faithful” for this reason, not because everyone loves “control” and a “bureaucracy.” So in this post I am going to demonstrate the Biblical basis for the community of the faithful rather than focus on individual salvation. I am not saying that souls will be judged by God as a collective, however, a strictly “individual” view of “salvation” is not what God expects. Further, an individual basis of salvation is a temptation to some sins of omission.

Exodus 19: 2-6
While Israel was encamped here in front of the mountain, Moses went up the mountain to God. Then the Lord called to him and said, “Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob; tell the Israelites: You have seen for yourselves how I treated the Egyptians and how I bore you up on eagle wings and brought you here to myself. Therefore, if you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my special possession, though all the earth is mine. You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. That is what you must tell the Israelites.”

1) The Lord has Moses address every single Israelite gathered together in total.
2) The Lord calls them “the house of Jacob,” which is a terminology of a single family unit.
3) The Lord says that if they obey they shall all together be his “special possession” even though God has all the earth and its people to his own.
4) The Lord says that all the Israelites will be “a” as in one “kingdom of priests,” indicating that it is a communal and collective priesthood of people, whether or not an individual is of the priestly tribe or not, and whether one performs a priestly function or not.
5) The Lord says that they will be a “holy nation,” again a collective communal covenant, not individual.

Throughout the Old Testament you can read for yourself that even though Laws address individual behavior, the Laws are given to all the people, and God always refers to the faithful collectively. One other important event that I’ve blogged about often is also underscoring the importance of the community over the individual’s “goodness” or “salvation:”

Isaiah 6:1-7
In the year king Ozia died [742 BC], I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the temple. Seraphim were stationed above; each of them had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two they veiled their feet, and with two they hovered aloft. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!” they cried one to the other. “All the earth is filled with his glory!” At the sound of that cry the frame of the door shook and the house was filled with smoke.

Then I said, “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Then one of the seraphim flew to me, holding an ember which he had taken with tongs from the altar. He touched my mouth with it. “See,” he said, “now that this has touched your lips, your wickedness is removed, your sin is purged.”

1) Isaiah was a high priest serving in the temple, so he was far from being having “unclean lips.”
2) Yet in his astonishment at seeing God in his glory Isaiah forestalls God from even speaking to him!
3) Why? Because Isaiah by virtue of living within a community, a people of “unclean lips” he has guilt of association, even though he is a holy priest about to be called to be God’s greatest prophet since Moses.
4) Did God or the angel reply, “Oh, tut, tut, do not worry Isaiah, for you are individually saved and justified and you do not need to be modest in front of us?” No, they did not. Immediately the angel brought an ember from God’s altar to purify the lips of Isaiah.
5) Further, the angel agrees that to be a righteous PRIEST living among unclean lipped people gives him a “wickedness” and “sin” that had to be “purged.”

Nowhere is it more clear that even being righteous but living within an unclean community/society filled with sin taints if for no other reason sins of omission in addressing the sin even the faithful.

Jesus himself makes this abundantly clear when he relates this story of the poor man Lazarus:

Luke 16:19-31
“There was a certain rich man who used to clothe himself in purple and fine linen, and who feasted every day in splendid fashion. And there was a certain poor man, named Lazarus, who lay at his gate, covered with sores, and longing to be filled with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. And it came to pass that the poor man died and was borne away by the angels into Abraham’s bosom; but the rich man also died and was buried in hell.
“And lifting his eyes, being in torments, he saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom. And he creid out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.’

“But Abraham said to him, ‘Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime hast received good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now here he is comforted whereas thou art tormented. And besides all that, between us and you a great gulf is fixed, so that they who wish to pass over from this side to you cannot, and they cannot cross from your side to us.’

“And he said, ‘Then, father, I beseech thee to send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they too come into this place of torments.’ And Abraham said to him, “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hearken to them.’ But he answered, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ But he said to him, ‘If they do not hearken to Moses and the Prophets, they will not believe even is someone rises from the dead.’”

1) Notice that the rich man is in hell because he neglected one specific anonymous man, Lazarus, who was a beggar lying dying in front of the rich man’s gate.
2) So the rich man is not in hell because he didn’t believe in God and he probably was even a prominent man among the faith, giving alms to charity of the prescribed times and amounts.
3) The rich man finds himself in hell because rather than being fully in the communal faith of tending to one’s neighbor in the fullest sense of the term, he had a correct and “by the book” faith.
4) Astonished by this he begs Abraham for the chance to warn his five brothers, who are undoubtedly living their prominent and privileged lives as pious and observant men, for he realizes now that being pious and observant and believing but ignoring communal need, especially at one’s front door, results in a trip to hell.
5) Notice that his attitude did not change even in hell because what does he ask? That the poor man Lazarus be the errand boy to either bring him water or to warn his brothers. The rich man does not use his chance to beg for mercy from Abraham, asking for his intervention.
Jesus is making several points when telling the disciples this story and I’ve provided commentary on the various points in previous posts. What you must realize here is that again, the rich man is not in hell because he was a “sinner” who “did not accept God as his personal savior” and even more to the point since his brothers have no clue they risk hell, just like the rich man, they all were undoubtedly believers and observant believers at that. It is not enough to be a believer and it never was enough to be a believer; one must be in the body of the faithful and ready to serve God’s will in all parts of the community in which one lives.

Here are other clues that show you how Jesus maintains the view of the faithful as a “nation of priests” and “the house of Jacob,” as God did during the Old Covenant. You do this by reading two instances where Jesus and the disciples discuss entire cities.

Matthew 11:20-24
Then he began to reproach the towns in which most of his miracles were worked, because they had not repented. “Woe to thee, Corozain! Woe to thee, Bethsaida! For if in Tyre and Sidon had been worked the miracles that have been worked in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And thou, Capharnaum, shall thou be exalted to heaven? Thou shalt be thrust down to hell! For if the miracles had been worked in Sodom that have been worked in thee, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for thee.”

1) Jesus worked many miracles in these towns and he is wrathful not because they didn’t thank him but because they did not use the miracles as a sign to repent.
2) Jesus expects, just as God did in the Old Testament, entire towns to repent and convert, not individuals.
3) Jesus explains and expounds that towns that are sinful but had no advantage of a visit by him and miracles (though he preached to people from Tyre and Sidon, Mark 3:8, so he knew them well and was not discussing them theoretically) will be treated better in their day of judgment than the towns who had received miracles by Jesus.
4) Jesus goes as far as to explain that heaven is an exaltation (a lifting up in position), not something to be “expected”… it is an honor, not the default route for “adequate” observant behavior. Thus Jesus says sinner towns that had no advantage of a visit by Jesus over sinner towns that received miracles from Jesus and perhaps are nominally observant but did not view the miracles as a sign for total repentance and conversion.
5) Jesus compares this situation to when God destroyed the city of Sodom for its sin. Jesus is saying that if he or one of the prophets or angels had performed in Sodom the same miracles that Jesus performed this day in the towns he lists, that the entire city of Sodom would have repented. Sodom was FAR more sinful than these small observant Jewish burgs so you now can see how dismally these towns failed to understand that the gift of the miracles was a call to total conversion, even if they were not raging centers of sin like Sodom was.

Luke 9:51-56
Now it came to pass, when the days had come for him to be taken up, that he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before him. And they went and entered a Samaritan town to make ready for him, and they did not receive him, because his face was set for Jerusalem. But when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, wilt thou that we bid fire come down from heaven and consume them?’

But he turned and rebuked them, saying, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” And they went to another village.

[Note: they refused Jesus entry to their town because the Samaritans believed that their temple on Mount Garizim was the only legitimate place and they were hostile toward anyone going to the temple of Jerusalem to worship].

1) Notice that entire towns and villages received guests, or they did not. The communities act as a whole, so it’s not like Jesus could have entered anyways because one or two good hosts would welcome him while the rest do not. This shows that community mores can sometimes “trump” the presence of individual good people, another reason why God and Jesus both emphasis the body of the faithful rather than the individual. Unfaithful communities can prevent faithful individuals from performing God’s will, and that is a problem if the faithful are in acceptance of this situation.
2) Consistent with the emphasis on community that I am explaining to you, the disciples James and John offer to call upon God to bring fire upon the entire town.
3) Consistent with the emphasis on community, Jesus replies that he is there to save, not destroy. He is still referring to the entire town; otherwise he would have said, we should not destroy the good with the bad. There is no separation of faithful individuals from the community in which they live and, most importantly, prosper (as the rich man who did not even notice Lazarus to help him). Faithful who prosper in unfaithful communities are in a problematic position when they must account to God.
4) Jesus gives the opportunity to host him to another unnamed village. Again, an entire village gains from the loss of the other town in the opportunity to host Jesus.

This continuity of viewpoint of the importance of the entire community is why in the Epistles the Apostles may address letters to individuals but they are always mindful of speaking to the entire body of the faithful. This is also why even heaven where there is no flaw is nonetheless referenced and actually viewed in Revelation as a city, the New Jerusalem. There is a continual emphasis at every level that salvation is not an individual matter, but one inexorably intertwined in the entire community.

So this is another thing you must keep in mind when thinking about “who goes to heaven?” God during the Old Covenant and Jesus in bringing the New Covenant never emphasized individual salvation: individual behavior, yes, individual judgment, yes…. But salvation and being God’s people is also linked to one’s role in the community of the faithful, and that does not mean only one’s fellow church attendees. God and Jesus Christ both demonstrate continuity throughout scripture of the importance of collective repentance, works and salvation within one’s local geographic, not ideologue, community. I cannot too strongly emphasize that the observant rich man went to hell even though he believed and also performed his perfunctory obligations, but missed in saving the poor man Lazarus, who was his community right outside his gate. Being a believer and perfunctory in one’s observance of God is not a guarantee of salvation as defined as being “exalted” to heaven if one has gotten to where one is by benefiting from or ignoring the prevailing sinfulness and inadequacy of one’s geographic community.

[Conclusion of Part Four].