This set of thoughts, which I hope everyone finds helpful, is more about human nature and God's relationship with humans, than a classic Bible study or commentary type of blogging.
Here's the problem. The Bible states that money is the root of all evil. First you need to understand there are two types of over fondness of money, and hence it's misuse. The first problem is to love money more than anything else, including believing in, fearing and obeying God. Thus many people love money for itself above all other relationships, both their human relationships and their relationship with God. The second problem is to love money for the power that it gives you over other people, or over elements of God's creation. For example, some people do not crave money and its luxuries, as do the first category of people, but they crave money because it buys power and control over others. So this is why St Paul and others trace just about every human evil back to its roots of money.
There is a third problem, whereby decent ordinary people do not love money, or crave its power, but will do evil things because they feel boxed into doing so in order to survive. This is a third category which is involuntary slavery to money or, rather, the people who control and dispense the money. People who dole out money to those who need it in return for making the people do unethical things are the second category of people (the money as power lovers) while those who accept the money out of either genuine or perceived need are this third category, those who are enslaved to money and its power.
Understanding that, you must recognize that there are three inevitabilities that each person with this unhealthy relationship (whether category 1, 2 or e) with money participate in. One is crime. Two is sin. Three is both crime and sin.
By the way, it is tempting to believe that all crime is also a sin. While that is usually true, I need to teach you all thoughtfulness, in order to see the shades of nuances correctly. It is not a sin, for example, to disobey a law or authority (and thus be branded a criminal) if that law or authority is not righteous toward God or fellow human beings. So one can be, like the early Christians, a "criminal" who breaks a "law" or "authority" when one refuses to worship idols. That, then, is a crime that is not a sin and, actually, in this example, a virtue.
The problem is that many people rationalize love of money as being kind of a "Robin Hood," and thus not criminal or sinful. They are wrong because the premise (love of money or its power) is not in service of God because one cannot use a human tool (money) to serve God, who is above and beyond all those things. God wants your attention and obedience; not your money, either to him or in his supposed "service." There is no way that a person can love money and then make rational decisions about "how God would 'want' the money spent." One has to be a good Christian, Jew or Muslim first, with a solid untarnished relationship with God, before one can even make baby steps in deciding "how Jesus" or "how God" would "want" money spent in his service. Remember, the Apostles observed first hand how Jesus taught them these things, yet one still fell, in part due to money, Judas Iscariot. If Judas Iscariot was troubled in deciding "how God would want the money spent," what makes any human alive think he or she is well equipped to know better? Especially a human who is far from being perfected in their relationship with God and God alone? Love of money and power (including the very seductive power to be a "do gooder") is by definition a BARRIER to understand God.
Now, here is something you need to understand about me personally. I have no interest in being a "crime buster," I never have and I never will. Part of my calling and my ministry is to tell everyone the same thing, which is the reality of God's word as it is in the Torah, in the Bible, and in the Qur'an. In other words, there is only one God, and His word is constant, the only truth, and irrefutable. So if I met the worst criminals in the world, I have no concern about their crimes or their sins. I have concern that they do not understand the consequences of those crimes and sins, the consequences that will be rendered by God, and not by human beings. I would sit down face to face with even the worst criminals and say, "Friend, you need more information before you continue, and that information is that God is real, judgment is real, and that hell is real and that, further, unlike jokes and cartoons, hell is un-endurable, and no one there is 'handling' it." I would not be interested in attempting to persuade them away from their crime or sin. I simply deliver God's truth and leave it up to them.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
Showing posts with label Witness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Witness. Show all posts
Monday, May 3, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
The three simple steps to God and faith
This is the plainest and simplest way to understand the direct path toward faith in God.
1. Truth: knowledge that he exists
This is supposed to be presented to children at the youngest age, at the same time that they understand who they are, who their parents and other relatives are, and identity of people in general. Children need to be told that God exists, but cannot be seen. When children ask how do we know God exists, explain that many people have seen and spoken with him a long time ago and they left the book (the Bible) that states that he is there and what happened. Children of Islam, the same understanding is given to children about God's existence and the book of the Qur'an. As Christian children grow older they start to understand that God proved his existence in latter years by sending his Son Jesus Christ.
You see, you cannot have faith or reach God if you don't accept that people a lot closer to God than you have testified to his existence and left records of that in the Bible and the Qur'an. If you try to "have faith" or "understand if God exists" you are unlikely to succeed because you are starting with the unspoken assumption that you are smarter or closer to the truth than the authors of the Bible and the Qur'an, and you most certainly are not. This is why you cannot "logic" or "faith" your way to God. You have to first understand that impeccable witness has been given through thousands of years by people who know and saw with their own eyes. No one can duplicate or surpass that; you simply have to accept the facts of the written Word.
2. Love and goodness: You understand that all love and goodness comes ultimately from God, not humans, plants, animals or imaginary beings.
Thus immediately upon accepting the facts, the truth, that God exists, one understands, accepts and embraces that God IS love, that God is all the goodness that ever existed and could ever exist. This is where the child (and those late to finding God) accept the gift of love and give all glory and credit to God for the goodness of creation, the goodness of life, and any blessings. In other words, one understands God's true being, his identity. One can therefore start to develop one's own personal relationship with God. Children start by accompanying their parents in prayer and worship.
3. Consequences of disbelief and sin: You understand that achieving heaven and being with God in eternity is by no means guaranteed, and that sin displeases God mightily and he will react accordingly.
This is something that teenagers, young adults and often extended to middle age adults grapple with but absolutely must not deny or dodge. Children start to learn this from parents and also their worship community, as they recognize right from wrong in general, and what sin is and how it aggrieves God specifically. Sin is understood to be not only an offense against God but also working in opposition and contradiction to what God alone understands is good for each person and for humanity in general. That understanding often comes with age, but no one is guaranteed the time to "find that out in one's own time" so again, children when they reach appropriate ages of understanding must be taught the balance between a loving and forgiving God, but the grave error in taking that for granted and indeed jeopardizing one's relationship with God.
That third stage is the first of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, "Fear of the Lord."
Notice that this foundational gift, which is needed before other gifts can truly be received from the Holy Spirit, is thus the first step in the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, but the third step in having faith in God. Faith in God requires: acceptance of his truth of existence, acceptance of his love and goodness, and knowledge of the consequences of sin and disbelief. When you have that "package" of those three steps, you have faith in God, and you are ready to start receiving the unmerited grace of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the first of which is "Fear of the Lord."
I hope this has been helpful to parents, children, young people, caregivers, preachers, those responsible for faith formation, and those who are patching and repairing their faith journey, which they may have been deprived of in total, or had missteps along the way.
1. Truth: knowledge that he exists
This is supposed to be presented to children at the youngest age, at the same time that they understand who they are, who their parents and other relatives are, and identity of people in general. Children need to be told that God exists, but cannot be seen. When children ask how do we know God exists, explain that many people have seen and spoken with him a long time ago and they left the book (the Bible) that states that he is there and what happened. Children of Islam, the same understanding is given to children about God's existence and the book of the Qur'an. As Christian children grow older they start to understand that God proved his existence in latter years by sending his Son Jesus Christ.
You see, you cannot have faith or reach God if you don't accept that people a lot closer to God than you have testified to his existence and left records of that in the Bible and the Qur'an. If you try to "have faith" or "understand if God exists" you are unlikely to succeed because you are starting with the unspoken assumption that you are smarter or closer to the truth than the authors of the Bible and the Qur'an, and you most certainly are not. This is why you cannot "logic" or "faith" your way to God. You have to first understand that impeccable witness has been given through thousands of years by people who know and saw with their own eyes. No one can duplicate or surpass that; you simply have to accept the facts of the written Word.
2. Love and goodness: You understand that all love and goodness comes ultimately from God, not humans, plants, animals or imaginary beings.
Thus immediately upon accepting the facts, the truth, that God exists, one understands, accepts and embraces that God IS love, that God is all the goodness that ever existed and could ever exist. This is where the child (and those late to finding God) accept the gift of love and give all glory and credit to God for the goodness of creation, the goodness of life, and any blessings. In other words, one understands God's true being, his identity. One can therefore start to develop one's own personal relationship with God. Children start by accompanying their parents in prayer and worship.
3. Consequences of disbelief and sin: You understand that achieving heaven and being with God in eternity is by no means guaranteed, and that sin displeases God mightily and he will react accordingly.
This is something that teenagers, young adults and often extended to middle age adults grapple with but absolutely must not deny or dodge. Children start to learn this from parents and also their worship community, as they recognize right from wrong in general, and what sin is and how it aggrieves God specifically. Sin is understood to be not only an offense against God but also working in opposition and contradiction to what God alone understands is good for each person and for humanity in general. That understanding often comes with age, but no one is guaranteed the time to "find that out in one's own time" so again, children when they reach appropriate ages of understanding must be taught the balance between a loving and forgiving God, but the grave error in taking that for granted and indeed jeopardizing one's relationship with God.
That third stage is the first of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, "Fear of the Lord."
Notice that this foundational gift, which is needed before other gifts can truly be received from the Holy Spirit, is thus the first step in the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, but the third step in having faith in God. Faith in God requires: acceptance of his truth of existence, acceptance of his love and goodness, and knowledge of the consequences of sin and disbelief. When you have that "package" of those three steps, you have faith in God, and you are ready to start receiving the unmerited grace of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the first of which is "Fear of the Lord."
I hope this has been helpful to parents, children, young people, caregivers, preachers, those responsible for faith formation, and those who are patching and repairing their faith journey, which they may have been deprived of in total, or had missteps along the way.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
understanding Jesus: numbers not important
I've been meaning to blog about this since Sunday when the scripture I will reference was discussed in Sunday school. Here are the scriptures describing the two separate occasions when Jesus fed thousands of people by miraculously multiplying a tiny amount of food.
Mark 6:39-44
And he ordered them to make all the people recline in groups on the green grass. And they reclined in groups of hundreds and of fifties. And he took the five loaves and the two fishes and, looking up to heaven, blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and the two fishes he divided among them all. And all ate and were satisfied; and they gathered up what was left over, twelve baskets full of fragments, besides what was left over of the fishes. Now those who had eaten were five thousand men.
Mark 8:1-9
In those days when again there was a great crowd, and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples together and said to them, "I have compassion on the crowd, for behold, they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat; and if I send them away to their homes fasting, they will faint on the way for some of them have come from a distance." And his disciples answered him, "How will anyone be able to satisfy these with bread, here in the desert? He asked them, "How many loaves have you?" And they said, "Seven."
And he bade the crowd recline on the ground. Then taking the seven loaves, he gave thanks, broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute; and they set them before the crowd. And they had a few little fishes; and he blessed them, and ordered them to be distributed. And they ate and were satisfied; and they took up what was left of the fragments, seven baskets. Now those who had eaten were about four thousand. And he dismissed them.
---
Alright, there are so many things that one should discuss and understand about these two miracles, but I have found that a very common error in approach to understanding these miracles derails most of the modern discussion of these events away from their core spiritual and literal meanings. Sure enough, right after reading one of these passages our Sunday school teacher (who I really like, so this is no criticism) almost immediately fell into the derailment by reading what all these highly educated commentators have said about these miracles: *I'm rolling my eyes* .... "the symbolism of the number of loaves and fishes".....*I'm rolling my eyes again, as I can't even repeat this without being frustrated, argh*
He then starts to repeat what "they" (the wonderful commentators) have "analyzed" about the "meaning" of how many loaves and fishes they were, and what holy numbers they symbolized, blah blah blah. I interrupted him right there and said something like, "I know all the commentators discuss it but they are wrong: there is absolutely no symbolism in either of these miracles by Jesus." I briefly stated why and here I will explain it to you.
First of all, let's discuss why people get so easily misled into missing the events and then worthy analysis of the miracles' greater meanings (not "symbolisms" as a greater meaning is different than "symbolism.") One cannot discuss a greater meaning of these events without first agreeing on the facts. So that is what Mark and the other gospel writers set forth when they wrote about Jesus: first the facts, then what Jesus actually did, and then any greater meaning (John's Gospel tends to include more of that kind of thought), including any explanation of how/why that Jesus provided. There are two reasons modern people are so easily mislead into discussing ridiculous things like the "meaning" and "symbolism" of "how many" loaves and fishes were used by Jesus. First of all, people today do not understand why such trivial data is supplied, unless it has a "deep" and "heavy" "symbolic" "meaning." That is because they no longer understand that detailing such small items (which happens throughout the Bible) is what people were taught to do, back when only oral history and verbal contracts existed, which is to "bear witness." I include the label here "witness" where I have previously explained this.
So what modern people think is either a trivial point (who cares if it was five loaves) or a big heavy "symbolism" (ooooh, it must have been "five" for "a reason," yeah, a "mystical reason..." followed by profound and eerie music and nods of agreement by the scholars who are paid and make names for being so smart) the reason it was recorded down to the number of loaves and fishes is that.... that is what actually happened, and the people of those times were all taught by their families and teachers to be scrupulously accurate in bearing witness to great events. It's part of the accuracy record, to them, and that is the automatic mindset.
One reason it is important to be accurate is so that readers (or those who hear the Gospel verbally) understand exactly how big or small an event just took place. Look at the two extremes in an analogy. If Jesus fed 5000 people with let's say 1000 loaves, that would not be such a huge miracle, would it? On the other hand, if Jesus fed people with no loaves, making the loaves out of thin air, it would be a huge miracle (but not more huge than what actually happened.) What, you say... why is that? Why would in theory no loaves be equally as miraculous as feeding from five loaves? Remember the Exodus, when Moses asked God to feed the people and manna fell from the skies. The Jewish people would all have been VERY mindful of that seminal miracle in their faith history, when God provided the bread of manna out of nothing, as it rained down from the sky. They thus would have viewed Jesus as having done the same thing, mediating between the hungry people and God, who provides for them out of nothing. So anyone alive during that time who carried witness either verbally or in writing would have routinely recorded how many loaves and fishes because it allowed the listener or the reader to put what happened in the proper context with the facts.
The second reason modern people, including supposedly smart scholars, fall into the trap of putting numinous and irrelevant meaning on the number of loaves and fishes is, well, there is no subtle way to put it, they are a bit weak in their faith. Either consciously but (to give them the benefit of the doubt) unconsciously, they tend to think that the number is important because it is contrived. I'm not saying they full out think this is a made up story, but there is always the temptation to disbelieve something so incredible, always nibbling and gnawing in the back of the mind. So these commentators figure, "Well, just in case this actually did not happen, we can still derive a 'greater spiritual lesson' by 'analyzing the meaning' of what the 'authors' (not God) did 'present.'" You see what I mean? When there is even a five percent of doubt of the literal accuracy of the Gospel in one's mind, no matter what a believer and a "scholar" you are, your understanding of the plain words will be mislead and warped. Previous generations could discuss "meaning" and "symbolism," sure, but they did so on the firm basis of 100 percent believing the facts of the miracles: that is the sad difference between then and these smarty pants modern times.
So how did I bring an abrupt halt to that line of thought? I will explain it to you now and offer it to you as a faith and reasoning case study. I said something like this. Well, if the numbers are so "symbolic" and "mean something else," does that mean that if only four loaves were there instead of five, Jesus would have hit his forehead and said, "Darn! Now I can't do the miracle! It's the wrong symbolic number of loaves!" Or if they had loaves but no fishes, would Jesus have said, "Wish I could help, but it's just not the right holy symbolic numbers of ingredients." Ha ha ha, yes, my readers, I did see a few fellow Sunday school members narrow their eyes at me ha ha when I said that ha. But they have to see in parody, sometimes, how silly they are being (or how easily misled). I mean, this is deadly serious: Jesus Christ, born of God by the Holy Spirit overshadowing the Blessed Virgin Mary, healed, performed miracles, and conquered death, resurrecting after being crucified and ascending into heaven. The facts are mighty just as they are, I mean, duh. The facts don't have to also be "symbolic" of like lucky numbers or something. The way to detox from such thinking (that there is some "formula" or "bigger meaning" to the small facts, the insignificant number of the loaves and fishes) is to test the theory that the number of each item is instrumental to the miracle taking place. That is what I did, by making the people answer, "Well, if those numbers are so symbolic, does that mean Jesus could or would do the miracle only if a certain number of the items were there?"
Would Jesus "not be able" to do the miraculous feeding if there wasn't the "holy symbolic" number of items? Of course not. Jesus could do it with zero loaves or 1000 loaves.
Would Jesus refuse to feed the hungry people because there isn't the "right number of 'holy symbolic' items there?" Imagine that, Jesus saying: "Oh oh, there is supposed to be five loaves because that's a really holy important number, and you have only four loaves, so sorry, I'm not going to do the miracles and you have to walk home hungry, hope you don't hit your head on a rock while you are faint with having followed me for days." Obviously not, and I included the passage where Jesus states his concern for the health of people who had been fasting for so long already (and that is the motivation for the miracle, not to demonstrate his power and authority).
You see, that is what people ought to be gleaning from their personal reading of the Bible, the facts, the context, Jesus' words and explanations, and the Gospel writers words and explanations. Young people who use computers, you know WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). The Bible must be read and understood that way, that what you see is what you get, and also "it is what it is." Jesus was followed by many people, on two different occasions, to remote areas for several days where there was no fresh food to gain after what people had brought with them had run out. Out of concern for them Jesus takes whatever is found and turns that through his miraculous God given ability into much food for the multitude. All that is documented so that the listeners and readers of these events comprehend how big and precise a miracle this was, so that they get it even though they were not there.
The key to the miracles is that Jesus demonstrated he can make do with what people provided. If it was no loaves or many loaves or, as in the reality, just a very few loaves, Jesus can and did work with whatever people had.
That, then, is the larger meanings of these miraculous events because yes, sure, there are the events and then there is the larger meaning to glean from it, but it's not "magic" or "holy" "numbers" kind of meanings. I can write more about them some other time as I really want to keep this confined to the case study of understanding how to avoid the pitfall of missing the really important facts and points of a Biblical event by derailing on something unimportant and thus not seeing the outline of what one should indeed contemplate. So here is in closing just a list of how to mindfully approach the "bigger and greater meaning" of the miraculous events.
1. Notice the circumstances and think about them. People obviously were so committed to hearing what Jesus said that thousands followed him into barren areas with no thought of their food or water.
2. Notice Jesus' motivation for the miracles, which is simple plain love and humanity for their plight, after showing such commitment and attention to him. This is far away from the nagging scribes and Pharisees, so Jesus is not performing these miracles in order to demonstrate his God given authority. It is plain and simple loving need.
3. Notice that Jesus uses whatever is available, for he has the might of God with him, and lots of bread and fishes or no bread and fishes, God can do anything.
4. Notice that Jesus gives thanks and don't slide over that thinking that is like saying grace before food, for it is not a pre-meal prayer of thanksgiving to God. Jesus is thanking God for the ability to perform what, only through God, he is about to do, which is feed the people. Jesus is thus both on his own thanking God for what is about to occur, but also giving the people a role modeling of how always to be so whenever one uses one's God given abilities, to be thankful first and foremost to God.
5. Notice that Jesus gives the food to the disciples to distribute. Of course some of that is logistics, as many hands can distribute the food faster. But the greater meaning is that Jesus is a) preparing the disciples and the people for the time when they can do some of this themselves, for remember all the Apostles and original disciples became able to perform miracles and b) that the word of God needs to be carried and spread by everyone, not just, as we would say today, the "guru." Jesus is always modest and that was a sincere modesty because he never for a second of his life forgot that everything he was able to do was directly from God the Father. Thus Jesus did not have to "showboat" and hand out the food himself so people would be grateful to him and impressed by him.... Jesus always demonstrated that a) all power and glory go to God alone and b) his disciples were extensions of him and Jesus did not always need to be "the one." Remember that Jesus himself did not baptize, but his disciples baptized their followers. Jesus was always showing how the faith community was to come together and function, as it would have to when he was no longer there.
6. Notice that they record what fragments remain. This is part of what I explained about the witnessing to the facts of what happened. It is also OK and valid to ponder the greater meaning that even after Jesus through God provides all that is needed, there is even more leftover. God's grace is always more than expectations and there is always more than the bare minimum of human needs.
I hope you have found this helpful! Do not be afraid to discover that even wise experts, in these modern times in particular, miss the forest through the trees. (That's an old saying, for those of you who are English second language or may not have heard it, meaning that some people are so obsessed with details that they notice one or two trees without ever realizing those one or two trees are accompanied by many trees in a forest all around them.) Glomming onto an imaginary importance of how many loaves is like missing the entire event because your mind is hijacked into thinking it's all about those loaves "conveying" a "numeric" "message" "from God," and thus you don't get points 1-6 at all as you look just at that diversion.
*Sigh* Like I said, much of this comes from lack of understanding the simpler times when people really did just write down the facts without an agenda.
Oh, that makes me realize something I can add quickly here, which is "spotting agenda." Here is a quick example that merits a huge amount of writing elsewhere.
OK, you've seen Jesus, and his Apostles, and all the events that took place. Maybe you are a distant relative of one of the disciples. The focus would be entirely on documenting exactly what happened. No one would have an agenda (except, as we saw, the Jews and Romans who put Jesus to death, for they covered up that he resurrected by bribing the guards and spreading the story that his body was removed and "hidden.") So the Gospels and the Epistles (the letters) of the New Testament are all agenda free because people in a really verbal and oral culture were attempting to get precisely in writing exactly what happened. What happened was so detailed and astonishing that for brevity much is left out that is repetitive. By that I mean that for example Jesus performed thousands of individual miracles, but the means to write down details of every one of them would have been impossible then. People memorized and shared the data of the essentials, writing down what people needed to know for the faith that had factually occurred.
But now let's imagine that some hundred years or more has gone by. Someone in your family may have been that relative of a disciple I mentioned (imagine if you belonged to Judas Iscariot's family descendants!) Now you have to watch for agenda. This is the problem with so called Books that people wave around once in a while and claim that they are "true" and "give the real story" of "what happened." These are well known, and a few years ago media manipulators tried to get everyone all excited about the Book of Judas with claims that he and Jesus had an agreement, blah blah blah. The same has popped up about Mary Magdalene and others. There is of course more pious versions such as the stories of the Blessed Virgin Mary and how Joseph selected her (or she him) with like a flowering wand or something like that. These are all written many years, often centuries, after Jesus, of course, was actually alive, by people who were not there.
How do I know they weren't there? Use logic my friends. If they were there it would have been in the Gospels, Acts and Epistles, duh. People were doing agenda-free documenting of all that needed to be known about Jesus (we don't know what side he slept on or what cereal he liked best) but we know absolutely everything about his ministry and the nature of the New Covenant with God. So anyone who actually had been on the scene and had a significant role would have been documented accordingly.
So through dating but also pure logic we know that all these extra books are ancient but not comtemporary with Jesus. Anything that pops up centuries later and claims to contain secret or "real" information is bogus because no one had any need to "hide" anything when Jesus was alive (except the Jewish religious authorities after he resurrected, ha). Jesus lived an entirely open life surrounded by hundreds of people constantly, and Jesus was doing a continual stream of teaching and role modeling, preaching and ministry at all time: there were no secret deals or any such imaginings. That would have lost the entire point anyway. Jesus did not have to arrange with Judas to be betrayed (it would be funny if it was not so faith warping) because, duh, the Gospels document how often Jesus had to flee or dodge people who wanted to kill him right then and there (even in his hometown).
So this is why you have to use a little common sense to discern agenda. The Gospels and rest of the New Testament had no agenda except to document and communicate the marvelous events that had happened, plus the teachings of Jesus. Anything from a later date that is not part of the Christian community communications via letter, sermons and so forth is going to be a combination of two very modern phenomena: 1) Spin doctoring by people who wanted to get their piece of celebrity action, so like I said, I bet Judas' descendant family members would have wanted to write a 'he didn't do it' saga and 2) Genuine remnants of memories of things like the life of the Virgin Mary, but now glossed with all sorts of sentimental fiction to romanticize her genuine purity and virtue (in other words, the "cute meet" story between her and Joseph that is supposedly preserved).
Thus remember, which is why I brought this up, the disciples had no agenda as they authored the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles, and Revelation, rather than to record precisely what had occurred as this was a nearly total verbal culture and society in the world. The model for such precision in writing was of course the Torah and all the books of the Old Testament. People used witnessing to get the facts in writing to reach those areas they could not achieve through travel, and also to preserve and hand down the information to the next generations of what had actually happened. Likewise God had no "agenda" other than send his Son, the Savior and Messiah, to do what he did. God did not have to plant "significant numbers" or "hidden meanings" or any such thing because that is self defeating and remember that God is all perfection. God is what he is. So don't get diverted thinking there is hidden or arcane meaning to be "gained" in the scripture, since, well, think about it, God seems to have to hit humans over the head again and again and again with the simple truth. Subtlety is lost on humans and God would have no reason not to make things very, very, VERY plain over and over and over. Points 1-6 rather than "oooooh, the number of loaves 'means something!'" Finally spot agenda before it spots you. Use common sense to discern the difference between people who were part of the fact checking witnessing of the group of disciples who were actually there versus writings by some sort of imaginary hanger oners years and centuries after the fact who have obvious "My grand pappy's neighbor's shepherd knew them too!" types of motivations (or like Judas Iscariot's poor family descendants, ugh, who would want to have been them?)
I hope this helps.
Mark 6:39-44
And he ordered them to make all the people recline in groups on the green grass. And they reclined in groups of hundreds and of fifties. And he took the five loaves and the two fishes and, looking up to heaven, blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and the two fishes he divided among them all. And all ate and were satisfied; and they gathered up what was left over, twelve baskets full of fragments, besides what was left over of the fishes. Now those who had eaten were five thousand men.
Mark 8:1-9
In those days when again there was a great crowd, and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples together and said to them, "I have compassion on the crowd, for behold, they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat; and if I send them away to their homes fasting, they will faint on the way for some of them have come from a distance." And his disciples answered him, "How will anyone be able to satisfy these with bread, here in the desert? He asked them, "How many loaves have you?" And they said, "Seven."
And he bade the crowd recline on the ground. Then taking the seven loaves, he gave thanks, broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute; and they set them before the crowd. And they had a few little fishes; and he blessed them, and ordered them to be distributed. And they ate and were satisfied; and they took up what was left of the fragments, seven baskets. Now those who had eaten were about four thousand. And he dismissed them.
---
Alright, there are so many things that one should discuss and understand about these two miracles, but I have found that a very common error in approach to understanding these miracles derails most of the modern discussion of these events away from their core spiritual and literal meanings. Sure enough, right after reading one of these passages our Sunday school teacher (who I really like, so this is no criticism) almost immediately fell into the derailment by reading what all these highly educated commentators have said about these miracles: *I'm rolling my eyes* .... "the symbolism of the number of loaves and fishes".....*I'm rolling my eyes again, as I can't even repeat this without being frustrated, argh*
He then starts to repeat what "they" (the wonderful commentators) have "analyzed" about the "meaning" of how many loaves and fishes they were, and what holy numbers they symbolized, blah blah blah. I interrupted him right there and said something like, "I know all the commentators discuss it but they are wrong: there is absolutely no symbolism in either of these miracles by Jesus." I briefly stated why and here I will explain it to you.
First of all, let's discuss why people get so easily misled into missing the events and then worthy analysis of the miracles' greater meanings (not "symbolisms" as a greater meaning is different than "symbolism.") One cannot discuss a greater meaning of these events without first agreeing on the facts. So that is what Mark and the other gospel writers set forth when they wrote about Jesus: first the facts, then what Jesus actually did, and then any greater meaning (John's Gospel tends to include more of that kind of thought), including any explanation of how/why that Jesus provided. There are two reasons modern people are so easily mislead into discussing ridiculous things like the "meaning" and "symbolism" of "how many" loaves and fishes were used by Jesus. First of all, people today do not understand why such trivial data is supplied, unless it has a "deep" and "heavy" "symbolic" "meaning." That is because they no longer understand that detailing such small items (which happens throughout the Bible) is what people were taught to do, back when only oral history and verbal contracts existed, which is to "bear witness." I include the label here "witness" where I have previously explained this.
So what modern people think is either a trivial point (who cares if it was five loaves) or a big heavy "symbolism" (ooooh, it must have been "five" for "a reason," yeah, a "mystical reason..." followed by profound and eerie music and nods of agreement by the scholars who are paid and make names for being so smart) the reason it was recorded down to the number of loaves and fishes is that.... that is what actually happened, and the people of those times were all taught by their families and teachers to be scrupulously accurate in bearing witness to great events. It's part of the accuracy record, to them, and that is the automatic mindset.
One reason it is important to be accurate is so that readers (or those who hear the Gospel verbally) understand exactly how big or small an event just took place. Look at the two extremes in an analogy. If Jesus fed 5000 people with let's say 1000 loaves, that would not be such a huge miracle, would it? On the other hand, if Jesus fed people with no loaves, making the loaves out of thin air, it would be a huge miracle (but not more huge than what actually happened.) What, you say... why is that? Why would in theory no loaves be equally as miraculous as feeding from five loaves? Remember the Exodus, when Moses asked God to feed the people and manna fell from the skies. The Jewish people would all have been VERY mindful of that seminal miracle in their faith history, when God provided the bread of manna out of nothing, as it rained down from the sky. They thus would have viewed Jesus as having done the same thing, mediating between the hungry people and God, who provides for them out of nothing. So anyone alive during that time who carried witness either verbally or in writing would have routinely recorded how many loaves and fishes because it allowed the listener or the reader to put what happened in the proper context with the facts.
The second reason modern people, including supposedly smart scholars, fall into the trap of putting numinous and irrelevant meaning on the number of loaves and fishes is, well, there is no subtle way to put it, they are a bit weak in their faith. Either consciously but (to give them the benefit of the doubt) unconsciously, they tend to think that the number is important because it is contrived. I'm not saying they full out think this is a made up story, but there is always the temptation to disbelieve something so incredible, always nibbling and gnawing in the back of the mind. So these commentators figure, "Well, just in case this actually did not happen, we can still derive a 'greater spiritual lesson' by 'analyzing the meaning' of what the 'authors' (not God) did 'present.'" You see what I mean? When there is even a five percent of doubt of the literal accuracy of the Gospel in one's mind, no matter what a believer and a "scholar" you are, your understanding of the plain words will be mislead and warped. Previous generations could discuss "meaning" and "symbolism," sure, but they did so on the firm basis of 100 percent believing the facts of the miracles: that is the sad difference between then and these smarty pants modern times.
So how did I bring an abrupt halt to that line of thought? I will explain it to you now and offer it to you as a faith and reasoning case study. I said something like this. Well, if the numbers are so "symbolic" and "mean something else," does that mean that if only four loaves were there instead of five, Jesus would have hit his forehead and said, "Darn! Now I can't do the miracle! It's the wrong symbolic number of loaves!" Or if they had loaves but no fishes, would Jesus have said, "Wish I could help, but it's just not the right holy symbolic numbers of ingredients." Ha ha ha, yes, my readers, I did see a few fellow Sunday school members narrow their eyes at me ha ha when I said that ha. But they have to see in parody, sometimes, how silly they are being (or how easily misled). I mean, this is deadly serious: Jesus Christ, born of God by the Holy Spirit overshadowing the Blessed Virgin Mary, healed, performed miracles, and conquered death, resurrecting after being crucified and ascending into heaven. The facts are mighty just as they are, I mean, duh. The facts don't have to also be "symbolic" of like lucky numbers or something. The way to detox from such thinking (that there is some "formula" or "bigger meaning" to the small facts, the insignificant number of the loaves and fishes) is to test the theory that the number of each item is instrumental to the miracle taking place. That is what I did, by making the people answer, "Well, if those numbers are so symbolic, does that mean Jesus could or would do the miracle only if a certain number of the items were there?"
Would Jesus "not be able" to do the miraculous feeding if there wasn't the "holy symbolic" number of items? Of course not. Jesus could do it with zero loaves or 1000 loaves.
Would Jesus refuse to feed the hungry people because there isn't the "right number of 'holy symbolic' items there?" Imagine that, Jesus saying: "Oh oh, there is supposed to be five loaves because that's a really holy important number, and you have only four loaves, so sorry, I'm not going to do the miracles and you have to walk home hungry, hope you don't hit your head on a rock while you are faint with having followed me for days." Obviously not, and I included the passage where Jesus states his concern for the health of people who had been fasting for so long already (and that is the motivation for the miracle, not to demonstrate his power and authority).
You see, that is what people ought to be gleaning from their personal reading of the Bible, the facts, the context, Jesus' words and explanations, and the Gospel writers words and explanations. Young people who use computers, you know WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). The Bible must be read and understood that way, that what you see is what you get, and also "it is what it is." Jesus was followed by many people, on two different occasions, to remote areas for several days where there was no fresh food to gain after what people had brought with them had run out. Out of concern for them Jesus takes whatever is found and turns that through his miraculous God given ability into much food for the multitude. All that is documented so that the listeners and readers of these events comprehend how big and precise a miracle this was, so that they get it even though they were not there.
The key to the miracles is that Jesus demonstrated he can make do with what people provided. If it was no loaves or many loaves or, as in the reality, just a very few loaves, Jesus can and did work with whatever people had.
That, then, is the larger meanings of these miraculous events because yes, sure, there are the events and then there is the larger meaning to glean from it, but it's not "magic" or "holy" "numbers" kind of meanings. I can write more about them some other time as I really want to keep this confined to the case study of understanding how to avoid the pitfall of missing the really important facts and points of a Biblical event by derailing on something unimportant and thus not seeing the outline of what one should indeed contemplate. So here is in closing just a list of how to mindfully approach the "bigger and greater meaning" of the miraculous events.
1. Notice the circumstances and think about them. People obviously were so committed to hearing what Jesus said that thousands followed him into barren areas with no thought of their food or water.
2. Notice Jesus' motivation for the miracles, which is simple plain love and humanity for their plight, after showing such commitment and attention to him. This is far away from the nagging scribes and Pharisees, so Jesus is not performing these miracles in order to demonstrate his God given authority. It is plain and simple loving need.
3. Notice that Jesus uses whatever is available, for he has the might of God with him, and lots of bread and fishes or no bread and fishes, God can do anything.
4. Notice that Jesus gives thanks and don't slide over that thinking that is like saying grace before food, for it is not a pre-meal prayer of thanksgiving to God. Jesus is thanking God for the ability to perform what, only through God, he is about to do, which is feed the people. Jesus is thus both on his own thanking God for what is about to occur, but also giving the people a role modeling of how always to be so whenever one uses one's God given abilities, to be thankful first and foremost to God.
5. Notice that Jesus gives the food to the disciples to distribute. Of course some of that is logistics, as many hands can distribute the food faster. But the greater meaning is that Jesus is a) preparing the disciples and the people for the time when they can do some of this themselves, for remember all the Apostles and original disciples became able to perform miracles and b) that the word of God needs to be carried and spread by everyone, not just, as we would say today, the "guru." Jesus is always modest and that was a sincere modesty because he never for a second of his life forgot that everything he was able to do was directly from God the Father. Thus Jesus did not have to "showboat" and hand out the food himself so people would be grateful to him and impressed by him.... Jesus always demonstrated that a) all power and glory go to God alone and b) his disciples were extensions of him and Jesus did not always need to be "the one." Remember that Jesus himself did not baptize, but his disciples baptized their followers. Jesus was always showing how the faith community was to come together and function, as it would have to when he was no longer there.
6. Notice that they record what fragments remain. This is part of what I explained about the witnessing to the facts of what happened. It is also OK and valid to ponder the greater meaning that even after Jesus through God provides all that is needed, there is even more leftover. God's grace is always more than expectations and there is always more than the bare minimum of human needs.
I hope you have found this helpful! Do not be afraid to discover that even wise experts, in these modern times in particular, miss the forest through the trees. (That's an old saying, for those of you who are English second language or may not have heard it, meaning that some people are so obsessed with details that they notice one or two trees without ever realizing those one or two trees are accompanied by many trees in a forest all around them.) Glomming onto an imaginary importance of how many loaves is like missing the entire event because your mind is hijacked into thinking it's all about those loaves "conveying" a "numeric" "message" "from God," and thus you don't get points 1-6 at all as you look just at that diversion.
*Sigh* Like I said, much of this comes from lack of understanding the simpler times when people really did just write down the facts without an agenda.
Oh, that makes me realize something I can add quickly here, which is "spotting agenda." Here is a quick example that merits a huge amount of writing elsewhere.
OK, you've seen Jesus, and his Apostles, and all the events that took place. Maybe you are a distant relative of one of the disciples. The focus would be entirely on documenting exactly what happened. No one would have an agenda (except, as we saw, the Jews and Romans who put Jesus to death, for they covered up that he resurrected by bribing the guards and spreading the story that his body was removed and "hidden.") So the Gospels and the Epistles (the letters) of the New Testament are all agenda free because people in a really verbal and oral culture were attempting to get precisely in writing exactly what happened. What happened was so detailed and astonishing that for brevity much is left out that is repetitive. By that I mean that for example Jesus performed thousands of individual miracles, but the means to write down details of every one of them would have been impossible then. People memorized and shared the data of the essentials, writing down what people needed to know for the faith that had factually occurred.
But now let's imagine that some hundred years or more has gone by. Someone in your family may have been that relative of a disciple I mentioned (imagine if you belonged to Judas Iscariot's family descendants!) Now you have to watch for agenda. This is the problem with so called Books that people wave around once in a while and claim that they are "true" and "give the real story" of "what happened." These are well known, and a few years ago media manipulators tried to get everyone all excited about the Book of Judas with claims that he and Jesus had an agreement, blah blah blah. The same has popped up about Mary Magdalene and others. There is of course more pious versions such as the stories of the Blessed Virgin Mary and how Joseph selected her (or she him) with like a flowering wand or something like that. These are all written many years, often centuries, after Jesus, of course, was actually alive, by people who were not there.
How do I know they weren't there? Use logic my friends. If they were there it would have been in the Gospels, Acts and Epistles, duh. People were doing agenda-free documenting of all that needed to be known about Jesus (we don't know what side he slept on or what cereal he liked best) but we know absolutely everything about his ministry and the nature of the New Covenant with God. So anyone who actually had been on the scene and had a significant role would have been documented accordingly.
So through dating but also pure logic we know that all these extra books are ancient but not comtemporary with Jesus. Anything that pops up centuries later and claims to contain secret or "real" information is bogus because no one had any need to "hide" anything when Jesus was alive (except the Jewish religious authorities after he resurrected, ha). Jesus lived an entirely open life surrounded by hundreds of people constantly, and Jesus was doing a continual stream of teaching and role modeling, preaching and ministry at all time: there were no secret deals or any such imaginings. That would have lost the entire point anyway. Jesus did not have to arrange with Judas to be betrayed (it would be funny if it was not so faith warping) because, duh, the Gospels document how often Jesus had to flee or dodge people who wanted to kill him right then and there (even in his hometown).
So this is why you have to use a little common sense to discern agenda. The Gospels and rest of the New Testament had no agenda except to document and communicate the marvelous events that had happened, plus the teachings of Jesus. Anything from a later date that is not part of the Christian community communications via letter, sermons and so forth is going to be a combination of two very modern phenomena: 1) Spin doctoring by people who wanted to get their piece of celebrity action, so like I said, I bet Judas' descendant family members would have wanted to write a 'he didn't do it' saga and 2) Genuine remnants of memories of things like the life of the Virgin Mary, but now glossed with all sorts of sentimental fiction to romanticize her genuine purity and virtue (in other words, the "cute meet" story between her and Joseph that is supposedly preserved).
Thus remember, which is why I brought this up, the disciples had no agenda as they authored the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles, and Revelation, rather than to record precisely what had occurred as this was a nearly total verbal culture and society in the world. The model for such precision in writing was of course the Torah and all the books of the Old Testament. People used witnessing to get the facts in writing to reach those areas they could not achieve through travel, and also to preserve and hand down the information to the next generations of what had actually happened. Likewise God had no "agenda" other than send his Son, the Savior and Messiah, to do what he did. God did not have to plant "significant numbers" or "hidden meanings" or any such thing because that is self defeating and remember that God is all perfection. God is what he is. So don't get diverted thinking there is hidden or arcane meaning to be "gained" in the scripture, since, well, think about it, God seems to have to hit humans over the head again and again and again with the simple truth. Subtlety is lost on humans and God would have no reason not to make things very, very, VERY plain over and over and over. Points 1-6 rather than "oooooh, the number of loaves 'means something!'" Finally spot agenda before it spots you. Use common sense to discern the difference between people who were part of the fact checking witnessing of the group of disciples who were actually there versus writings by some sort of imaginary hanger oners years and centuries after the fact who have obvious "My grand pappy's neighbor's shepherd knew them too!" types of motivations (or like Judas Iscariot's poor family descendants, ugh, who would want to have been them?)
I hope this helps.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Understanding God: Who gets into heaven (3)
Part Three
To this point we’ve been discussing how through God’s mercy God elected to reveal himself to a community of people, the Patriarchs and their descendants the Israelites so that side by side with humans God will become known and understood in the way that God has chosen to reveal himself. Therefore you have come to see that the Bible is a collection of books that document the secular and faith events of this relationship and that there is no equivalent experience of God or document among any other alternative “beliefs.” This, then, brings us to the next question which is “Must one be a Christian to be saved?”
The reason people ask this question is, as I said, many people today attempt to “select” the belief that is the most “accurate” or that guarantees that they will be “saved” or in an advantageous position in their after life world view. But asking the question that way, “Must one be a Christian to be saved?” is misleading because it places emphasis on two assumptions that are contradicted by what Jesus has said.
The motivation for the question itself is accurate and comes from two passages in the Gospel:
John 8:12
Again, therefore, Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows me does not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.”
John 14:5-6
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where thou art going, and how can we known the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. If you had known me, you would also have known my Father. And henceforth you do know him, and you have seen him.”
Christians therefore assert that it is necessary to follow Jesus in order to have the light of eternal life and to be given eternal life in heaven with God. There is a problem with unspoken assumptions and phrasing that adds a compulsory tone to what Jesus said that is not reflected in the sum total of what he is saying. I am trying to help you see the nuance between compulsion and following light.
When one is walking up a steep mountain path in the pitch dark of night you know several things. One is that the correct and safe path is there even if you do not see it or anything else. Just because the light is not there does not mean that the path no longer exists. However, the second thing that you know is that without light it is very likely that one will quickly leave the path and fall to one’s death.
This is the best analogy to understand what Jesus means when he says that he is “the light of the world” and that “he who follows me does not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.” God is still God, let’s say sitting on the mountain top in our analogy, and the path to the top is still there, whether one has the light of a lamp or the light of Jesus along side him or her as they climb. But this quote by Jesus must be understood two ways. One is the context of the times when there was no electricity and that night travel was risky. Light is not just a beautiful analogy when people listened to Jesus. His listeners understood much better than moderns about the greatness of gift that a reliable light would be. Thus, they did not listen to Jesus and feel compulsion that they must “believe” and “obey” him “or else.” They felt overwhelming joy because they could relate to the idea that a dangerous life, one that is lived half in the dark because they had no electricity or lighting but small expensive oil lamps, could be transformed into a safe life that is constantly lightened. This is what Jesus was saying to them, imagine how you don’t have to walk in the dark either in life itself or after to find God, because I will give you a constant light, one that never fails and shines all the time.
People who read that passage with the tone of compulsion rather than the stupendous gift that Jesus is offering totally miss what he was saying and thus the conversation that through the Gospel we are listening in on. People who lived half their lives in the dark, working and recreating only between the sun’s rising and the sun setting understood immediately what Jesus was saying. Jesus was not saying that a righteous life does not exist unless one is following him, and Jesus is not saying that God is not available unless one is following him. Jesus is saying imagine if you never have to worry about being in the dark again. There is absolutely no compulsion or exclusion in that statement by Jesus. Rather than being compulsion or exclusion, Jesus is offering himself as an eternal and safe lamp to the entire world. If one believes Jesus and follows him one knows one is on the constantly lighted path rather than risking the dark. Those who do not know Jesus obviously still can be righteous and God is still available to them (remember, Jesus was only preaching to the Jews, so it’s not like he was saying that only Jews would have this light, or only “new believers” would have this light). That is why Jesus said that he is the light “of the world,” even though he specifically was only preaching to Jews during his ministry. Jesus was saying that anyone in the world can live in the light that his light, his lamp “works” for everyone. Far from being compulsory or exclusionary, Jesus was preaching to the Jews, but explaining that he brings a light that anyone can see and use.
By the way, I mentioned in the previous post that Jesus was challenged regarding the authenticity of his witnessing. I wrapped up the previous post with a scripture citation about what Jesus said regarding his authority. Here is the part that follows his statement of being the light.
John 8:13-20
The Pharisees therefore said to him, “Thou bearest witness to thyself. Thy witness is not true".
[The rule of witness is that at least one other man must attest to the correctness of what one says, and that one cannot be the only attestation of one’s correctness and authority. See previous posts about witnessing and the scriptural references.]
Jesus answered and said to them, “Even if I bear witness to myself, my witness is true, because I know where I came from and where I go. But you do not know where I came from or where I go. You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. And even if I do judge, my judgment is true, because I am not alone, but with me is he who sent me, the Father. And in your Law it is written that the witness of two persons is true. It is I who bear witness to myself, and he who sent me, the Father, bears witness to me.”
They therefore said to him, “Where is thy father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would then know my Father also.” Jesus spoke these words in the treasury, while teaching in the temple. And no one seized him, because his hour had not yet come.
[The treasury was a room off the Court of the Women in the temple].
So let us quickly tangent on this subject of witnessing because it is pertinent to our topic and also to understanding John 14:6-7. God gave humans the law of witnessing so that people who did not possess writing could have a procedure by which the truth can be verbally attested and contracts made and kept. So the Pharisees are saying that unless someone of authority steps forward and confirms all that Jesus says that he cannot be deemed as telling the truth. Jesus takes them on full bore and refutes them in two ways and also lays out vital theology.
The first way that Jesus refutes them they totally do not understand and thus cannot answer. Jesus tells them that even if he was alone in stating the truth that he is still true without supporting witness because Jesus knows the origin of himself and all things, a God given knowledge. Thus Jesus is not just a person of the flesh, like them, who judge according to facts and multiple witnesses. Jesus is stating that because he has God given knowledge of himself and of all else that he IS truth, walking talking truth! Jesus is not just a man of flesh who requires others to confirm his truth because he is truth from God embodied in human flesh. So they totally do not understand that refutation, but Jesus states it so that this understanding of him be heard and preserved.
Then Jesus refutes them by stating that in fact, he does have a witness constantly present with him, “my Father.” The Pharisees thus think that Jesus means his human father, Joseph. They ask him where his Father is, thinking that Jesus will produce another human, like Joseph (who would not have been alive at this time any longer) who is his Father and who the Pharisees can then question and make him witness to Jesus. (Not that they would have believed Joseph either!) But Jesus makes clear that he does not mean a fleshly bodily father. Jesus means that God in the form of the Holy Spirit is constantly present with him, witnessing to him. They clearly did not fully understand at this incident that Jesus was saying that God is his Father and that his Father is in constant witness to him in the form of the Holy Spirit being continually within him. It is at a different time that they have the full understanding of Jesus’ claim to divinity and have the resulting confrontation. But they get that he is claiming some sort of God given authority and that is enough for them to want to “seize him.”
Here is another important point. Remember that Moses when he met with God obviously did not have a “human witness” present. God is his own witness and extends that to his prophets. So Jesus was also alluding to the scriptural plenitude of occurrences of God speaking individually to the prophets. And obviously that prophet is believed by the people without the prophet having to produce someone else who was hanging around and “heard everything too.” Jesus could have invoked this, telling the Pharisees that just like Moses, God is “appearing” to him except for one thing: that would not be true and Jesus only speaks the truth. Jesus MUST confess that God is constantly with him. God is not coming and going in revelation to Jesus as a prophet who gets direction and utterances from God. The Holy Spirit is constantly with Jesus. So Jesus who always speaks the truth gives a tremendous amount of insight into the nature of his being. Jesus speaks the truth because he IS the truth, and Jesus speaks the truth because the Holy Spirit is constantly within him as God’s witness.
So this brings us back to understanding that Jesus is not preaching compulsion of “his faith” or exclusion. Jesus states that he is the light that guarantees that no one ever need walk in the darkness, and that this light is available to the whole world. When challenged by the Pharisees Jesus then states that he is the truth in the human body’s form and that God the Father is in constant witnessing of his truthful teaching and utterances because the Holy Spirit is in constant presence in Jesus’ body. This, by the way, is something that cultists should better understand. Jesus is neither “possessed” nor “channeling” as he makes very clear here. God’s presence in Jesus is as a separate presence, the witnessing of Jesus, not as a controller or filler of a shell. Too many moderns interpret pieces of scripture with occult leanings and looking for occult mechanisms, and thus miss the very plain and clear words that are actually be spoken in explanation. Jesus is not at all mysterious as you can see here. If Jesus were trying to conceal or disguise he would have simply told the Pharisees that God speaks to him just like God spoke to the prophets, but that simply is not the truth because God is doing more than “speaking” to Jesus, God is accompanying Jesus as witness.
You start to see why Jesus has been sometimes called the living Bible. The Old Testament records all of the centuries of God being “side by side” in the guidance, companionship and the ruling of his elect, the Chosen People. Thus the Old Testament records the interactions of God and his people event by event. With Jesus, God is actually walking among his people because God the Father in the form of the Holy Spirit constantly walks with Jesus witnessing to him. It sounds complicated but it is easy to understand if you just really focus on what Jesus actually says and interpret it in the body of all the faith history where God has put forth centuries of specific forms of interaction with humans. This is why witnessing is crucial to understanding faith. Witnessing is not just a means by which two humans achieve pacts and the truth, it is the way that God taught for humans to ascertain and maintain truthfulness. Thus Jesus is able to describe very precisely (even though no one really got it at the time) how God works within him. It also sheds light on the boldness of Jesus calling God his Father, which I know is a stumbling block for many. Humans are limited to thinking biologically, as Jesus says, “You judge according to the flesh.” But one cannot understand Jesus when one only thinks of human concepts of “Father.” One must use the spiritual terminology that God himself taught the elect. This is why it is easier to understand the Father-Son relationship of God and Jesus AND the constant presence of the Holy Spirit within Jesus if one understands witnessing. Jesus thus explains that God the Father, through the Holy Spirit, is within Jesus as continual witness to his truth.
This then makes John 14:6-7 much easier to understand in turn. Just to repeat what Jesus replies to Thomas:
John 14:6-7
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. If you had known me, you would also have known my Father. And henceforth you do know him, and you have seen him.”
When Jesus says that one comes to the Father “through” him, Jesus is again explaining that the Father is right there with him, right in front of Thomas and the others, in the form of the continual presence of the Holy Spirit constantly providing witness to Jesus. If Jesus’ human father Joseph were standing behind him, no one would have any problem understanding either John 8:13-20 or John 14:6-7, because it would be like a son saying, “Ask my father; I am just repeating what he taught me” and the listeners could thus ask Joseph. What was slow to dawn on the listeners of Jesus is that God the Father in the form of the Holy Spirit is there as witness to his Son, constantly present in Jesus as witness. God is not there as God! God is there as witness to his Son. Jesus is still living his human life, but he is the walking embodiment of truth because of God’s constant presence in his as witness. That is why Jesus is able to say that he is the light, the way, the truth and the life. It is not compulsion to join his faith or else. Jesus is patiently and repeatedly explaining that God is there with him in witness.
Jesus is not saying that he is the fullness of God standing there. Jesus is saying that if you look at him you have seen God, since God is constantly there with Jesus bearing witness to him.
Now if you read the rest of what Jesus explains in John 14:8-31, which I won’t type here, you can understand what Thomas, Phillip and the others are struggling to comprehend, which is how can God be in Jesus, and Jesus in God? Now that you notice that Jesus is describing the Holy Spirit being with him just as a father provides constant witness to the truthfulness of his son, you can better understand not only what Jesus is saying and how he performed miracles, but also understand the faith itself. It is not a faith of exclusion or compulsion where one must “be a Christian or else.” It is the statement of fact that when one believes Jesus, one has access to the light that never shuts off, and one sees the person who has God within him as constant witness to his truth.
So the key is not that one must sign on the dotted line to the “correct” religion “or else.” The key is that if you believe Jesus, then you have the constant light and you see God in witness. Being Christian as your faith is not the way to think of it or phrase it. Believing Jesus is the way to understand God’s gift. If you BELIEVE JESUS you have accepted God’s gift.
One finally point before wrapping up this segment. Notice that Jesus made his declaration in John 8 in the temple, St. John having duly noted the location in John 8:20. The point is not that Jesus was speaking in the treasury room of the temple, at an attempt at swiping at money-changer tendencies. Why did John carefully document where Jesus made this important assertion about being the light? That is one of the disciplines of witnessing. You write down at least one other person who was present and where the witnessing takes place. John wrote for posterity a role model of witnessing that this conversation actually took place with these words said and specifically at this location. Understanding witnessing is crucial to understanding even the simplest passages in the Bible, especially the Gospels. Further, there is a certain pious drollness in what John wrote. Jesus declared that he is “the light of the world” while standing in the temple and no lightning flew or walls fell down. John dutifully records, probably with a little smile when he thought back on that time (the Gospel being written many years after the event) how far from smiting what the Pharisees thought was blasphemy, God stood in witness with Jesus in the temple itself as he declared himself the light of the world.
[Conclusion to Part Three].
To this point we’ve been discussing how through God’s mercy God elected to reveal himself to a community of people, the Patriarchs and their descendants the Israelites so that side by side with humans God will become known and understood in the way that God has chosen to reveal himself. Therefore you have come to see that the Bible is a collection of books that document the secular and faith events of this relationship and that there is no equivalent experience of God or document among any other alternative “beliefs.” This, then, brings us to the next question which is “Must one be a Christian to be saved?”
The reason people ask this question is, as I said, many people today attempt to “select” the belief that is the most “accurate” or that guarantees that they will be “saved” or in an advantageous position in their after life world view. But asking the question that way, “Must one be a Christian to be saved?” is misleading because it places emphasis on two assumptions that are contradicted by what Jesus has said.
The motivation for the question itself is accurate and comes from two passages in the Gospel:
John 8:12
Again, therefore, Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows me does not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.”
John 14:5-6
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where thou art going, and how can we known the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. If you had known me, you would also have known my Father. And henceforth you do know him, and you have seen him.”
Christians therefore assert that it is necessary to follow Jesus in order to have the light of eternal life and to be given eternal life in heaven with God. There is a problem with unspoken assumptions and phrasing that adds a compulsory tone to what Jesus said that is not reflected in the sum total of what he is saying. I am trying to help you see the nuance between compulsion and following light.
When one is walking up a steep mountain path in the pitch dark of night you know several things. One is that the correct and safe path is there even if you do not see it or anything else. Just because the light is not there does not mean that the path no longer exists. However, the second thing that you know is that without light it is very likely that one will quickly leave the path and fall to one’s death.
This is the best analogy to understand what Jesus means when he says that he is “the light of the world” and that “he who follows me does not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.” God is still God, let’s say sitting on the mountain top in our analogy, and the path to the top is still there, whether one has the light of a lamp or the light of Jesus along side him or her as they climb. But this quote by Jesus must be understood two ways. One is the context of the times when there was no electricity and that night travel was risky. Light is not just a beautiful analogy when people listened to Jesus. His listeners understood much better than moderns about the greatness of gift that a reliable light would be. Thus, they did not listen to Jesus and feel compulsion that they must “believe” and “obey” him “or else.” They felt overwhelming joy because they could relate to the idea that a dangerous life, one that is lived half in the dark because they had no electricity or lighting but small expensive oil lamps, could be transformed into a safe life that is constantly lightened. This is what Jesus was saying to them, imagine how you don’t have to walk in the dark either in life itself or after to find God, because I will give you a constant light, one that never fails and shines all the time.
People who read that passage with the tone of compulsion rather than the stupendous gift that Jesus is offering totally miss what he was saying and thus the conversation that through the Gospel we are listening in on. People who lived half their lives in the dark, working and recreating only between the sun’s rising and the sun setting understood immediately what Jesus was saying. Jesus was not saying that a righteous life does not exist unless one is following him, and Jesus is not saying that God is not available unless one is following him. Jesus is saying imagine if you never have to worry about being in the dark again. There is absolutely no compulsion or exclusion in that statement by Jesus. Rather than being compulsion or exclusion, Jesus is offering himself as an eternal and safe lamp to the entire world. If one believes Jesus and follows him one knows one is on the constantly lighted path rather than risking the dark. Those who do not know Jesus obviously still can be righteous and God is still available to them (remember, Jesus was only preaching to the Jews, so it’s not like he was saying that only Jews would have this light, or only “new believers” would have this light). That is why Jesus said that he is the light “of the world,” even though he specifically was only preaching to Jews during his ministry. Jesus was saying that anyone in the world can live in the light that his light, his lamp “works” for everyone. Far from being compulsory or exclusionary, Jesus was preaching to the Jews, but explaining that he brings a light that anyone can see and use.
By the way, I mentioned in the previous post that Jesus was challenged regarding the authenticity of his witnessing. I wrapped up the previous post with a scripture citation about what Jesus said regarding his authority. Here is the part that follows his statement of being the light.
John 8:13-20
The Pharisees therefore said to him, “Thou bearest witness to thyself. Thy witness is not true".
[The rule of witness is that at least one other man must attest to the correctness of what one says, and that one cannot be the only attestation of one’s correctness and authority. See previous posts about witnessing and the scriptural references.]
Jesus answered and said to them, “Even if I bear witness to myself, my witness is true, because I know where I came from and where I go. But you do not know where I came from or where I go. You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. And even if I do judge, my judgment is true, because I am not alone, but with me is he who sent me, the Father. And in your Law it is written that the witness of two persons is true. It is I who bear witness to myself, and he who sent me, the Father, bears witness to me.”
They therefore said to him, “Where is thy father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would then know my Father also.” Jesus spoke these words in the treasury, while teaching in the temple. And no one seized him, because his hour had not yet come.
[The treasury was a room off the Court of the Women in the temple].
So let us quickly tangent on this subject of witnessing because it is pertinent to our topic and also to understanding John 14:6-7. God gave humans the law of witnessing so that people who did not possess writing could have a procedure by which the truth can be verbally attested and contracts made and kept. So the Pharisees are saying that unless someone of authority steps forward and confirms all that Jesus says that he cannot be deemed as telling the truth. Jesus takes them on full bore and refutes them in two ways and also lays out vital theology.
The first way that Jesus refutes them they totally do not understand and thus cannot answer. Jesus tells them that even if he was alone in stating the truth that he is still true without supporting witness because Jesus knows the origin of himself and all things, a God given knowledge. Thus Jesus is not just a person of the flesh, like them, who judge according to facts and multiple witnesses. Jesus is stating that because he has God given knowledge of himself and of all else that he IS truth, walking talking truth! Jesus is not just a man of flesh who requires others to confirm his truth because he is truth from God embodied in human flesh. So they totally do not understand that refutation, but Jesus states it so that this understanding of him be heard and preserved.
Then Jesus refutes them by stating that in fact, he does have a witness constantly present with him, “my Father.” The Pharisees thus think that Jesus means his human father, Joseph. They ask him where his Father is, thinking that Jesus will produce another human, like Joseph (who would not have been alive at this time any longer) who is his Father and who the Pharisees can then question and make him witness to Jesus. (Not that they would have believed Joseph either!) But Jesus makes clear that he does not mean a fleshly bodily father. Jesus means that God in the form of the Holy Spirit is constantly present with him, witnessing to him. They clearly did not fully understand at this incident that Jesus was saying that God is his Father and that his Father is in constant witness to him in the form of the Holy Spirit being continually within him. It is at a different time that they have the full understanding of Jesus’ claim to divinity and have the resulting confrontation. But they get that he is claiming some sort of God given authority and that is enough for them to want to “seize him.”
Here is another important point. Remember that Moses when he met with God obviously did not have a “human witness” present. God is his own witness and extends that to his prophets. So Jesus was also alluding to the scriptural plenitude of occurrences of God speaking individually to the prophets. And obviously that prophet is believed by the people without the prophet having to produce someone else who was hanging around and “heard everything too.” Jesus could have invoked this, telling the Pharisees that just like Moses, God is “appearing” to him except for one thing: that would not be true and Jesus only speaks the truth. Jesus MUST confess that God is constantly with him. God is not coming and going in revelation to Jesus as a prophet who gets direction and utterances from God. The Holy Spirit is constantly with Jesus. So Jesus who always speaks the truth gives a tremendous amount of insight into the nature of his being. Jesus speaks the truth because he IS the truth, and Jesus speaks the truth because the Holy Spirit is constantly within him as God’s witness.
So this brings us back to understanding that Jesus is not preaching compulsion of “his faith” or exclusion. Jesus states that he is the light that guarantees that no one ever need walk in the darkness, and that this light is available to the whole world. When challenged by the Pharisees Jesus then states that he is the truth in the human body’s form and that God the Father is in constant witnessing of his truthful teaching and utterances because the Holy Spirit is in constant presence in Jesus’ body. This, by the way, is something that cultists should better understand. Jesus is neither “possessed” nor “channeling” as he makes very clear here. God’s presence in Jesus is as a separate presence, the witnessing of Jesus, not as a controller or filler of a shell. Too many moderns interpret pieces of scripture with occult leanings and looking for occult mechanisms, and thus miss the very plain and clear words that are actually be spoken in explanation. Jesus is not at all mysterious as you can see here. If Jesus were trying to conceal or disguise he would have simply told the Pharisees that God speaks to him just like God spoke to the prophets, but that simply is not the truth because God is doing more than “speaking” to Jesus, God is accompanying Jesus as witness.
You start to see why Jesus has been sometimes called the living Bible. The Old Testament records all of the centuries of God being “side by side” in the guidance, companionship and the ruling of his elect, the Chosen People. Thus the Old Testament records the interactions of God and his people event by event. With Jesus, God is actually walking among his people because God the Father in the form of the Holy Spirit constantly walks with Jesus witnessing to him. It sounds complicated but it is easy to understand if you just really focus on what Jesus actually says and interpret it in the body of all the faith history where God has put forth centuries of specific forms of interaction with humans. This is why witnessing is crucial to understanding faith. Witnessing is not just a means by which two humans achieve pacts and the truth, it is the way that God taught for humans to ascertain and maintain truthfulness. Thus Jesus is able to describe very precisely (even though no one really got it at the time) how God works within him. It also sheds light on the boldness of Jesus calling God his Father, which I know is a stumbling block for many. Humans are limited to thinking biologically, as Jesus says, “You judge according to the flesh.” But one cannot understand Jesus when one only thinks of human concepts of “Father.” One must use the spiritual terminology that God himself taught the elect. This is why it is easier to understand the Father-Son relationship of God and Jesus AND the constant presence of the Holy Spirit within Jesus if one understands witnessing. Jesus thus explains that God the Father, through the Holy Spirit, is within Jesus as continual witness to his truth.
This then makes John 14:6-7 much easier to understand in turn. Just to repeat what Jesus replies to Thomas:
John 14:6-7
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. If you had known me, you would also have known my Father. And henceforth you do know him, and you have seen him.”
When Jesus says that one comes to the Father “through” him, Jesus is again explaining that the Father is right there with him, right in front of Thomas and the others, in the form of the continual presence of the Holy Spirit constantly providing witness to Jesus. If Jesus’ human father Joseph were standing behind him, no one would have any problem understanding either John 8:13-20 or John 14:6-7, because it would be like a son saying, “Ask my father; I am just repeating what he taught me” and the listeners could thus ask Joseph. What was slow to dawn on the listeners of Jesus is that God the Father in the form of the Holy Spirit is there as witness to his Son, constantly present in Jesus as witness. God is not there as God! God is there as witness to his Son. Jesus is still living his human life, but he is the walking embodiment of truth because of God’s constant presence in his as witness. That is why Jesus is able to say that he is the light, the way, the truth and the life. It is not compulsion to join his faith or else. Jesus is patiently and repeatedly explaining that God is there with him in witness.
Jesus is not saying that he is the fullness of God standing there. Jesus is saying that if you look at him you have seen God, since God is constantly there with Jesus bearing witness to him.
Now if you read the rest of what Jesus explains in John 14:8-31, which I won’t type here, you can understand what Thomas, Phillip and the others are struggling to comprehend, which is how can God be in Jesus, and Jesus in God? Now that you notice that Jesus is describing the Holy Spirit being with him just as a father provides constant witness to the truthfulness of his son, you can better understand not only what Jesus is saying and how he performed miracles, but also understand the faith itself. It is not a faith of exclusion or compulsion where one must “be a Christian or else.” It is the statement of fact that when one believes Jesus, one has access to the light that never shuts off, and one sees the person who has God within him as constant witness to his truth.
So the key is not that one must sign on the dotted line to the “correct” religion “or else.” The key is that if you believe Jesus, then you have the constant light and you see God in witness. Being Christian as your faith is not the way to think of it or phrase it. Believing Jesus is the way to understand God’s gift. If you BELIEVE JESUS you have accepted God’s gift.
One finally point before wrapping up this segment. Notice that Jesus made his declaration in John 8 in the temple, St. John having duly noted the location in John 8:20. The point is not that Jesus was speaking in the treasury room of the temple, at an attempt at swiping at money-changer tendencies. Why did John carefully document where Jesus made this important assertion about being the light? That is one of the disciplines of witnessing. You write down at least one other person who was present and where the witnessing takes place. John wrote for posterity a role model of witnessing that this conversation actually took place with these words said and specifically at this location. Understanding witnessing is crucial to understanding even the simplest passages in the Bible, especially the Gospels. Further, there is a certain pious drollness in what John wrote. Jesus declared that he is “the light of the world” while standing in the temple and no lightning flew or walls fell down. John dutifully records, probably with a little smile when he thought back on that time (the Gospel being written many years after the event) how far from smiting what the Pharisees thought was blasphemy, God stood in witness with Jesus in the temple itself as he declared himself the light of the world.
[Conclusion to Part Three].
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Why I don't post my email or allow comments
I've heard that some people wonder why. The reason that I don't allow comments is that when I do, alien believing "rapture" freaks promptly post their garbage. That doesn't fly with me for long!
Obviously my not posting an email address so that readers or potential new friends could ask me questions is related to the first problem. But more fundamentally, here is why. Virtually every email I've received from strangers to acquaintances and even to my "friends" and family are "tests" of me. They are usually a combination of genuine curiosity about the subject, but ruined by a hidden agenda of trying to "catch me out" in some way. Now, I love teaching and I love good conversation, but years of that abuse has ruined it for me too.
They think that it is "OK" to do (not recognizing that it is bearing false witness, as I've explained in previous postings, to conceal or manipulate your identity, or to have undisclosed information about me held "up one's sleeve.") They think it's OK to dissemble and lie because they usually include a "typo" in the email. Among cultists a "typo" is a deliberate "error" placed in the communication, so they think that lets them off the hook of lying or prevaricating within that email, since one "typo" "covers all" and is "fair warning." It doesn't let them off the hook, with neither me or God, and it totally bores me, their lack of grace and sincerity. This, by the way, is one reason I despise $cientology and $cientologists, and only pray that more will realize that everyone who follows them follows Hubbard straight into hell and I'm not joking or exaggerating.
In fact, entire decades of my life (and yours) have been wasted by people who approach me to "ask me" for "guidance," but they are "asking me" about a topic that they already have "secret information about me" regarding, and thus hope to catch me in hypocrisy, sin or lying. I mean, these people will steal millions of dollars from the poor, but hunt down a child who stole popcorn or a candy bar from a store when she or he was poor. (I hung out with a few kids when I was young, who helped themselves and showed me the ropes. I was caught with a handful of "liberated popcorn" by the store owner. To this day the cultists run around gushing I loooooooove popcorn!) They think they are getting a morally superior laugh over me, but I just pity them and their sin. Except they are not such great sources for mercy giving, since they just looooooooooooooooove abortions, lying, blaspheming, and "making a killing" in the stock market by scamming the chumps and charging usury. Well, I hope they just looooooooooooove hell! LOL LOL LOL.
Having said that, if anyone is really interested in emailing me, my email is not too hard to discover, just ask one of about million cultists who know who I am, my social security number, my blood type, the location of all of my birthmarks and scars (they ought to know the scars, as they with their own hands placed them there and photographed me in the hospital), who I've loved and "how far did we go," and, of course, all my addresses, phone numbers, emails and "how to get a message to me."
Obviously my not posting an email address so that readers or potential new friends could ask me questions is related to the first problem. But more fundamentally, here is why. Virtually every email I've received from strangers to acquaintances and even to my "friends" and family are "tests" of me. They are usually a combination of genuine curiosity about the subject, but ruined by a hidden agenda of trying to "catch me out" in some way. Now, I love teaching and I love good conversation, but years of that abuse has ruined it for me too.
They think that it is "OK" to do (not recognizing that it is bearing false witness, as I've explained in previous postings, to conceal or manipulate your identity, or to have undisclosed information about me held "up one's sleeve.") They think it's OK to dissemble and lie because they usually include a "typo" in the email. Among cultists a "typo" is a deliberate "error" placed in the communication, so they think that lets them off the hook of lying or prevaricating within that email, since one "typo" "covers all" and is "fair warning." It doesn't let them off the hook, with neither me or God, and it totally bores me, their lack of grace and sincerity. This, by the way, is one reason I despise $cientology and $cientologists, and only pray that more will realize that everyone who follows them follows Hubbard straight into hell and I'm not joking or exaggerating.
In fact, entire decades of my life (and yours) have been wasted by people who approach me to "ask me" for "guidance," but they are "asking me" about a topic that they already have "secret information about me" regarding, and thus hope to catch me in hypocrisy, sin or lying. I mean, these people will steal millions of dollars from the poor, but hunt down a child who stole popcorn or a candy bar from a store when she or he was poor. (I hung out with a few kids when I was young, who helped themselves and showed me the ropes. I was caught with a handful of "liberated popcorn" by the store owner. To this day the cultists run around gushing I loooooooove popcorn!) They think they are getting a morally superior laugh over me, but I just pity them and their sin. Except they are not such great sources for mercy giving, since they just looooooooooooooooove abortions, lying, blaspheming, and "making a killing" in the stock market by scamming the chumps and charging usury. Well, I hope they just looooooooooooove hell! LOL LOL LOL.
Having said that, if anyone is really interested in emailing me, my email is not too hard to discover, just ask one of about million cultists who know who I am, my social security number, my blood type, the location of all of my birthmarks and scars (they ought to know the scars, as they with their own hands placed them there and photographed me in the hospital), who I've loved and "how far did we go," and, of course, all my addresses, phone numbers, emails and "how to get a message to me."
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Great essay about dangers of gossip and lies
There's mystery and controversy surrounding the probable suicide of a young Persian Jewish girl in CA at her friend's apartment. A lot of accusations are flying on message boards and so forth while the investigation continues, I guess. I'm not up on all the issues but one message board had a link to this great opinion essay by a Jewish scholar to attempt to stop the incredibly hateful and destructive "discourse." I highly recommend reading it because it touches on all of the things I have warned about regarding false accusations, lying, malicious gossip, slander, stalking and so forth, all from the ancient and unique Jewish perspective, which of course Christianity has its roots in also (as does Islam by sharing the same patriarchal fathers and prophets).
http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/a_persian_tragedy_20080611/
snip from a comment to this article by "The Web Guy":
Judaism is intensely aware of the power of speech and of the harm that can be done through speech. The rabbis note that the universe itself was created through speech. Of the 43 sins enumerated in the Al Chet confession recited on Yom Kippur, 11 are sins committed through speech. The Talmud tells that the tongue is an instrument so dangerous that it must be kept hidden from view, behind two protective walls (the mouth and teeth) to prevent its misuse. The harm done by speech is even worse than the harm done by stealing or by cheating someone financially, because amends can be made for monetary harms, but the harm done by speech can never be repaired. For this reason, some sources indicate that there is no forgiveness for lashon ha-ra (disparaging speech).
http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/a_persian_tragedy_20080611/
snip from a comment to this article by "The Web Guy":
Judaism is intensely aware of the power of speech and of the harm that can be done through speech. The rabbis note that the universe itself was created through speech. Of the 43 sins enumerated in the Al Chet confession recited on Yom Kippur, 11 are sins committed through speech. The Talmud tells that the tongue is an instrument so dangerous that it must be kept hidden from view, behind two protective walls (the mouth and teeth) to prevent its misuse. The harm done by speech is even worse than the harm done by stealing or by cheating someone financially, because amends can be made for monetary harms, but the harm done by speech can never be repaired. For this reason, some sources indicate that there is no forgiveness for lashon ha-ra (disparaging speech).
Saturday, June 28, 2008
While you are reading Exodus
Exodus 23: 1-3
"You shall not repeat a false report. Do not join the wicked in putting your hand, as an unjust witness, upon anyone."
[The Lord God is explicitly stating that not only is it a sin to lie for the first person to tell the lie, but it is an explicit sin to repeat the lie. God states this twice in order to be perfectly clear: people are not to repeat the hearing of a lie, and they are not to join groups of people telling lies against someone. How much clearer can that be?]
"Neither shall you allege the example of the many as an excuse for doing wrong..."
[God explicitly warns against the "but everyone else is doing it" excuse for doing wrong. Everyone else sinning is not a reason for a given person to justify doing the same sin.]
"...nor shall you, when testifying in a lawsuit, side with the many in perverting justice."
[God anticipates and spells out the many places of temptation to join in with a group doing wrong, such as in a lawsuit and court setting, and warns not to join in with those who have agreed among themselves to pervert justice.]
"You shall not favor a poor man in his lawsuit."
[God in his all knowing of human nature anticipates the "Robin Hood" mindset of some people to "rob from the rich to give to the poor." God explicitly states that a poor man should not be favored in a lawsuit just to take from the wealthier party. Oh my God, how many times is that broken in this society? Read the Bible people. Integrity and truth must not be meddled without, despite rationales such as "joining the crowd" or "sticking it to the rich man."]
"You shall not repeat a false report. Do not join the wicked in putting your hand, as an unjust witness, upon anyone."
[The Lord God is explicitly stating that not only is it a sin to lie for the first person to tell the lie, but it is an explicit sin to repeat the lie. God states this twice in order to be perfectly clear: people are not to repeat the hearing of a lie, and they are not to join groups of people telling lies against someone. How much clearer can that be?]
"Neither shall you allege the example of the many as an excuse for doing wrong..."
[God explicitly warns against the "but everyone else is doing it" excuse for doing wrong. Everyone else sinning is not a reason for a given person to justify doing the same sin.]
"...nor shall you, when testifying in a lawsuit, side with the many in perverting justice."
[God anticipates and spells out the many places of temptation to join in with a group doing wrong, such as in a lawsuit and court setting, and warns not to join in with those who have agreed among themselves to pervert justice.]
"You shall not favor a poor man in his lawsuit."
[God in his all knowing of human nature anticipates the "Robin Hood" mindset of some people to "rob from the rich to give to the poor." God explicitly states that a poor man should not be favored in a lawsuit just to take from the wealthier party. Oh my God, how many times is that broken in this society? Read the Bible people. Integrity and truth must not be meddled without, despite rationales such as "joining the crowd" or "sticking it to the rich man."]
Monday, July 2, 2007
Awesome Jesuit video on YouTube
Check out this video, Jesuits: Holy Boldness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqw4UHHf-Ys
It's great witness and reminds everyone what it's really all about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqw4UHHf-Ys
It's great witness and reminds everyone what it's really all about.
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