Faith case study: importance of intentions

Hi and especially to young people (!) I have you in mind most particularly and affectionately as I thought of this idea for a blog this morning. I'm going to concentrate on this case study with you because I think it is more important that you understand than my listening on radio, twitter, news to the verbal and mental diarrhea that spews unabated, it seems. *sigh* So I continue to listen but with only one ear (because listening to the crap helps me to understand how urgently I must explain sanitation over and over again, ha).

Here is the case study I want to present to you today. The purpose is to help you try out through faith and logic (reasoning) why two basic truths exist. One is that God knows the intention of a person's heart and soul in everything that person thinks, feels and does, and that intention makes a difference to God. For example, a person can present themselves as the most lovely and spiritual person on the outside, but if they are full of mean crap on the inside, all the "good deeds" and "popularity" and "spirituality" of the person on the outside is pointless because God knows that the person is insincere and even malevolent on the inside, and that person will be judged accordingly. Thus some really "sweet" and "popular" people on the outside do indeed end up in hell, since God knows the motivations of their heart and soul.

The second truth, then, is related to and indeed derivative from the first truth. As a result the Bible clearly states that having an evil heart is sinful (by evil I mean not only flat out evil but also a begrudging, mean, lying, hypocritical and bullying heart, say nothing of being idolatrous) but the Bible also states that all bad thoughts, including ones that are simply foolish, are sins. I blogged about this a while ago, citing the scripture, and commented on it, check and see if you can find those postings under the label "sins," in case you've not read it before, or need to take another look. I'm sticking to doing a logic case study so I'm not going to cite previously cited scripture in this particular post.

So here I am going to give you the case study: Why if, in theory, two people advocate the same action, does it matter if one person is evil (or has evil intention) while the other person is faithful to God and has good intentions? In other words, let's say these two opposite people each agree on some government policy decision... why does it "matter" in the health of their soul, where one will be favored and blessed by God, while the other will not?

As a corollary to this, remember this is a favorite argument of atheists who are "moral" "ethical" and "peaceful." They figure if they advocate the same good things as the believers that they are "the same" in intention and thus in worthiness. Let me tackle this one first as a prelude to the main case study.

Here's the problem with intentions in the atheist example. Bad intentions can hide the truth from you, which affects things in both a specific decision but also one's whole life. Here is the analogy to understand that. Suppose two people, one atheist and one a believer, each rent an apartment from the same landlord. These two people get together on their job (let's say they are peace activists) and they work together on some good project to promote peace. The atheist would argue that because he or she agrees (without the "need for religion") with the believer on a good sound project to promote peace that he or she is as worthy and ethical and moral as the believer work partner. OK, so after work they go back to their own apartments, and the rent bill is due. The believer goes to pay the rent, handing the landlord the cash. The atheist ignores the bill because he or she does not believe the landlord exists. When the atheist is, after repeated bills from the "imaginary" landlord is finally thrown out into the cold, the atheist says, "Hey, how come you aren't throwing out the believer?" The atheist thinks that "equivalent" ethical actions means they are in the same position as the believer, and that of course is not true because the atheist in our analogy thinks that the landlord does not exist and he or she can just ignore bills for their monthly rent. This is an example of how an alliance of actions (the peace project) does not yield equivalent results, because of the intention of each person differs, not only their conscious inner thoughts but of course the entire context of their life and faith philosophy. Interestingly the analogy implies that the atheist renter would continue to not believe in the reality of any landlord, so where would he or she turn to, in our analogy? I guess he or she would find shelter in houses of those who also do not believe in landlords. This is why a person can continue in their whole life without believing in the reality of God, while still doing "equivalent" "good deeds," and only find out there is a landlord indeed when it is too late and he or she had died and is judged unworthy of heaven, and thus ends up in hell. All the "good deeds" and "good intentions" mean naught because the atheist refuses to acknowledge existence of the landlord and pay what is due.

So that is the first part of the case study. Here is the secular part of the case study. I am thinking of this secular case study (as I write it here) so that everyone, regardless of the condition of your faith (or lack of it) or religion/spirituality can understand the practical "bread and butter" secular life reasons that intentions DO matter even in "equivalent" ethics and deeds. To keep this easy to understand I'm going to choose a commodity that is not controversial, such as alcohol, and instead use an imaginary candy, a sweet, a dessert, as the analogy.

Suppose there is a very successful candy, a wrapped single serving sweet, that is found to contain an incredibly high amount of sugar, fat, and thus a HUGE amount of calories with each bite. Let's say that one of these candies had 3000 calories in it, more than most people should have in all their food in a day. So a whole bunch of people with various intentions get together and advocate that this candy be banned. On the surface it seems that everyone is in agreement with a "good cause" to "protect the public" from an "unhealthy" food. They pass a law banning this candy in whatever country or state that they have this influence. Now, let's think about why differing intentions can lead to vastly different results (and worthiness, both in practical life and in spiritual matters) by making a list of people and their intention frameworks and their implications. I'm just going to do a few here to show you how it is done, and you can think of some of your own! :-)

1. A woman is a nutritionist and really, really, really believes that this candy would destroy the health of many people, so she favors the ban.

Here intention is good, but one sided. If it tasted so wonderful and was such a popular sweet, could she not have used her nutrition expertise to help the manufacturer develop a sweet that tastes the same but has less calories? Or suggest to them a way that a person could once in a while have the sweet, but on high activity (like sports or exercise) days? By having a scolding and forbidding orientation, even though there is "good intention" (to preserve some ideal of diet and nutrition), it would never occur to her to have both, by using her expertise to modify the product and avoid a ban of such an innocent and fun sweet.

2. A man is an "expert" in consumer safety, and feels the sweet is just one of a list of things where the public must be protected from "unintended dangerous consequences."

Ahhh.... interesting. The "professional" "consumer safety" guy. Here is it nothing personal, because he's not against the candy and only the candy. He is against anything that the public is "ignorant" of possible "dangerous consequences." Again, many people would think that is a worthy calling. But is it? It sure is when there is a clear and present danger, such as toys that could choke a young child. His "intention is good," most particularly when he is indeed protecting the public from a built in hazard in a toy or product that could harm a child, for example. But he has two blind spots due to his intentions. One is that he stops thinking about each item and rather view them as a continual conveyor belt of "danger" that a continual conveyor belt of "ignorant" public might be harmed by, and thus he is in the taboo business, of looking continually for things to ban. So he has the error of thinking that all items he considers are dangerous deserve the same banning remedy AND he assumes a continual level of public ignorance (none of them are ever smart enough to pick their "dangerous" product). So his intention while certainly "good" on a certain level (dangerous toys for young children, for example) but is very slippery because it has made a factory of demonizing both products and the intelligence of the public.

3. A woman pretends to be a "concerned mother" and "homemaker." She secretly holds stock in a competing candy and sweet company.

Need I say more? That is obvious where the hidden intention is to hurt the successful competitor of a company whereby she holds a hidden financial stake. But let's examine this because my not so hidden intention is to tell people that they are harming themselves when they do not come clean with their own intentions. This woman would justify, I suspect, her advocacy of banning the sweet under consideration because she would say, if confronted, word for word, the following: "Well, even IF I didn't hold stock in the competitor company, as a mother and a homemaker I'd be against that unhealthy and dangerous candy!" Oh my. "Even if." Really? Only God knows how people would have behaved under alternative future scenarios. She is kidding herself, perhaps even honestly fooling herself, actually thinking that she'd be hoisting the banner and flag of advocacy against that product if she didn't have a dog in the fight. Odds are that if she did not have stock in the competitor product that the whole dangerous sweet controversy would have, in that "alternate future," just been a news story that she sees on TV or in the newspaper and like dozens of other stories, leave it to other people to sort out and act upon, as she'd have other interests and concerns. Having the competitive stock makes her more sensitized for both sinister (hurt the competitor company) and innocent (she's paying attention to products of competitors and news about them) reasons. There is no "even if" because humans are not single line entities where everything in their life goes the "same" "even if" "just one thing" were "different."

4. A wealthy woman really believes the product is dangerous and puts her money into the cause of having it banned.

So she is sincere in believing it is dangerous..... and she has the money (and thus influence) to do something about it. Hmm. Sounds good so far, right? A celebrity or an industrialist or media figure "putting good money to the cause!" Maybe so. But here are the different forks in the road of different intentions. 1) She has lots of money and thus bans it for everyone else, but stockpiles the candy for herself, figuring that it's a "dangerous" treat that "she can handle." 2) She really does believe it is dangerous and doesn't want the candy, but her success in this power play goes to her head. She looks for other "causes" that she can provide the money as "fuel" to muscle through people's agendas, both "good" and maybe "bad" ones. She gets hooked on being a power maker. The problem is that she becomes hooked on the power she has rather than the genuine worthiness of the cause, because of her intention to "make a difference." How many times do we hear those words: "I have the money to 'make a difference.'" Automatically that attracts such a person to causes that are able to be purchased, and in all innocence may not see causes that just need a pair of hands and a willing and open heart. Her "good deeds" become skewed and ultimately blinded and invalid because the motivation, the intention, is to use money and power as a lever.

Can you think of others? I could but I'm bummed out enough at always having to point out the faulty spiritual and secular reasoning that so very many people follow, without thinking of even more for you here, ha.

So think of other ones. Here's a hint (think about people who are killjoys because they were deprived in some way in their childhood or whatever....they can and do kid themselves that they are protecting others, while just begrudging what they did not have themselves).

After you've added one or two other examples to my list, now imagine the wrap-up. All these people agreed to a single "good deed" of "consumer protection from a dangerous product."

A. All people engaged in the same activity and got the law passed, banning the sweet.
B. Each person had a totally different motivation and hidden intention.
C. If they were honest about their intentions, many of them would have changed their minds about the law in the first place.
D. Better alternatives than the flat out ban are never even considered.
E. Alternative better actions are totally missed, so there is a high "missed opportunity" cost.
F. When one is not honest about one's inner motivations and intentions, one becomes the willing or unwilling slave to those intentions, continuing to act in that intentions mindless "service."
G. Serving those intentions results in missing other sets of priorities as one seeks out repeated gratification of those intentions in all things.
H. Hypocritical and coveting temptations have a greater and greater hold.

So now by expanding this analogy into faith, it is not at all difficult to see how God at the time of their personal judgment will place in front of each of these people, who agreed on one action (the banning of the sweet), how worthy or not their lives actually were, and how widely divergent all of these people will be. Same action but different intentions yield not just later but in the immediate wildly different results.

Ha ha, I can't resist, so here's another example, if you've not thought of it already.

5. A lawmaker is the author of the law banning the candy. He thinks it is unhealthy and dangerous.

OK, sounds like a responsible consumer advocate legislator, right? Yeah, but what if he knows that it will get voted down? He is trying to look good for the voters by banning the "unhealthy candy" but he knows it is "win-win" because if it passes, sure, that "bad candy" got banned, but if he is voted down, "well, he tried to do the right thing" and that ends up in his campaign ads. So at heart he cares neither if the candy really is dangerous (or he'd try hard to get all the votes lined up in favor of his banning law) or if the dangerous candy ban loses, and people keep legally eating it.... he's "won" either way as he looks like either the victorious, or losing, "hero."

Now, think of those intentions in the faith context. Some of the people above are flat out lying, sinful, coveting hypocrites. How will God judge them? It will be quite obvious that they will be harshly judged.

So this case study shows you how 1) even if you omit God from the situation under discussion that the same action can and does result in wildly different outcomes depending on the totally individual conscious or unconscious intentions and 2) since God IS in this and every situation, God knows not only the worthiness of the intentions (their genuine or not benevolence) but God also knows all the subsequent life directions and implications of letting those intentions rule.

I hope that you have found this helpful!

understanding God: where's he & hearing him

I think one of the most frequent faith experiences and challenge that most humans have is wondering where God is? Not in the sense of where he "resides" or "spends his time," but, rather, is he in touch with what is going on with the humans alive on earth? Basically people wonder if God exists, then how much is he involved, if at all, with the day to day details of life. People of great faith wonder this, and people of no faith wonder it too (though they won't admit it because to wonder means to admit God's possible existence, ha, would it not?) So do not feel bad if you have felt this way, whether fleetingly, such as in times of great unhappiness and stress ("Where IS God? Doesn't he care?") or if you have often felt this way (for example, you only "feel God" when you view a landscape of grandeur, such as mountains) or if you have always felt that way (in other words, you are in total spiritual aridity, where you believe but do not feel God and thus you are somewhat like being in a desert, believing that water does exist, but not seeing any or feeling its comfort. No, do not feel bad because this is one of the basic challenges of faith and the human condition.

I must chide you some, though, because to use an analogy such as having an untreated illness, one is not meant to just suffer and let it worsen without an attempt to seek medical help. Faithful and rational believers have also gone through this in the centuries of faith history, and like with an illness, there is no reason to not seek out the advice of those who have had this before you. This is one reason I regret very much that reading the lives of the saints has fallen not only out of our schools (where they were taught along with the Bible), but also out of simple common sense. Centuries of believers have dealt with temporary or life challenging spiritual aridity and its accompanying wondering if God really is at all active in the universe by following the advice, example, and studying the remedies in the lives of the saints before. So while this is a common and frequent human challenge, the fact it's common and well known means that many have met the challenge and dealt with it (isn't logic wonderful?)

First, let me explain why this is not only a common occurrence but also one that worsens during certain phases in human societal development (such as it is). The most fundamental thing to understand is that these doubts and disconnects between the faithful and God are a natural adverse reaction to the problem of limited life span and humanity's obsession with death. In other words, being limited to a life span and having been created to cope with a certain set of circumstances (matter, energy and limited time), the human brain just is not cut out to grasp even the concept of God. Sometimes the more one thinks he or she understands God, the more he or she needs to question how that actually would be possible. The human brain is made up of energy, matter and time (in other words, it processes information and grows, or diminishes, through sequential changes over time). Just the process of thinking is time based, since your brain receives information one moment, processes it, compares it to other information, and then decides on an appropriate response. However, God is not at all comprised of matter, energy OR time, and in fact, he created all of the above, yet resides outside of it.

At some gut level all humans understand that they cannot possibly understand God at all! And so, unconsciously, humans tend to stop trying. Notice I say "unconsciously." Consciously they do the opposite: they cut God down to a size that they can "understand him." They then lose nearly all the opportunity to actually comprehend God's essence, as they trade in difficulty in understanding for understanding something easily, but false, or cartoonish. So the first problem may be summarized as being that humans at a gut level understand that God and human nature are so opposite in substance that unconsciously humans give up too soon in trying to understand God, and thus do not feel him as he does indeed day to day exist in their life and in the world. The second problem is that what people will do is decide to "believe" or "not" a version of God that they feel is not challenging or difficult.

Some decide if they can't "understand" or "hear" him and that if he's so difficult to understand, then he must not exist. Think about how arrogant that is, ha. "If I can't understand God then God must not exist." Hmm. Not Einstein of the Obvious. Good thing I don't feel that way about complex machinery, because if I only used what I understood down to the nuts and bolts, I'd be living outdoors in a sleeping bag I guess. But the first obvious reaction to the instinctive awareness of God and his awesome and immense difference from humans is to refuse, then, to even believe in him. It's like some people feel it is a lost cause to try to understand something that ultimately cannot be understood, and so they abandon all effort and thus belief.

Those who feel the same way but do not abandon in total belief in God thus, then relegate God to a storage place. "God exists but he is not involved in the world" is the usual cop out reasoning. I'm not trying to be mean here, but there is an irony that God cares enough to have dictated a lot of history and printing press ink to faith history and yet, to some people, is deemed to be "a God that is not involved".... ha ha, has anyone given that the logic test? The leap of faith would be as simple as believing that the scriptures (Torah, Bible, Qur'an) are divinely inspired. If they are divinely inspired (meaning guided by God to express his truth), ummmmm, does that not kind of indicate a God who is involved indeed with humanity at some real day to day detail? If an detached and unknowable uninvolved God dictated the events and text of the Torah, Bible and Qur'an, imagine what a busy body God he would be if he was REALLY involved, using that line of thought. That would be the God I described in analogy recently who does not just create the fibers that curtains are made from, and the wind that blows them, but stands outside your house and using his divine hand waves the curtain back and forth.

The middle ground are those people who sincerely believe and who have experienced the transformative power of God in their life, and yet, they often reduce God too, this time to somewhat cartoonish dimensions. The God who is just the one who one asks favors from is an example of God as Santa Claus. The God who is like a big generous hippie who is groovy and does not care what antics people are up to so long as they are "nice" is another cartoon that many supposedly serious believers have. The God who keeps a computer spreadsheet of whether you say the right words about Jesus and good deeds, and then decides you earned enough points for heaven is another cartoon of God, held by some surprisingly serious people. The God who is "on your side" but "against the other guy on your behalf" is another cartoon God. And then there is the spoil sport God who just exists to send trouble your way and pick on you, since you find things difficult and figure that God is maker of a "cold, cruel world" where it is "dog eat dog." That is the cartoon of the cold God who "makes life a vale of tears."

The middle ground is also occupied by people of genuine faith, and a balanced understanding of God who yet, still, have genuine crises and aridity of faith. They are the ones who need faith, pure faith, to partner with reason because they are the ones who feel that tug between believing in God, truly knowing he exists, but that gut level feeling that they can never really know and feel him. Faith is what makes the bridge between what is humanly understandable and accessing some genuine understanding of God and living in communion with him possible. Faith is an active ingredient, a real trait and energy (for lack of a better word), not an inert "giving up that one can't really understand God but 'ought' to."

See, many people feel that "faith" means "ought to." That is why atheists are often wrongly dismissive of the power of faith. Atheists think that "faith" means a person forces themselves to believe and feel something they think "ought to" or "should" be done. But faith is not a vacuum that is bridged through dull duty and enforced belief. Faith is an actual accomplishment based on reality, not a suspension of reality.

Here's an analogy. Think of faith as the bridge over a gap between one's self and God. Those who don't understand faith think of it as ignoring the chasm that exists and just taking "the leap of faith," to use that common expression. But that is wrong because the bridge does exist, but it is built as you walk upon it, one invisible glass brick at a time. So to use the analogy, both faith and reasoning build a brick bridge between you and God. When one uses facts and reasoning, one is able to see the pre-existing red brick bridge and walk on it with confidence. When one uses facts and faith, one is on one's knees, with the gap in front of you, but you feel with your hands and put in place one glass brick at a time, step on it, then place the next glass brick, step on it, further and further, with confidence of faith, as the bricks really are there, but without the confidence of having the pre-built visible red brick bridge in front of you. With faith you are using facts and spiritual insight to create each customized invisible glass brick for yourself, putting it in place, and stepping onto it before putting the next one in place.

How to better understand this with some sympathy for the human condition? Think of the Israelites, freed by God through Moses from Egypt, and into the desert on the Exodus. God actually traveled with them, and was visible to them, most dramatically of course in the Great Theophany when the might of God descended upon the mountain, Mount Sinai. Every man, woman and child saw God's physical presence. Yet, when Moses went up the mountain to meet with God, receiving the Ten Commandments, how long did it take people who actually saw God descend to run off and worship an idol? Days, my friends, days. When Moses did not return right away, these people made the idol bull calf and started their dancing and worshipping of a pagan graven image. Um, where do we begin to explain that? Yes, many scholars point out that the people were genuinely celebrating God's presence and thought they were honoring him with the extra "compliment" of being strong, as symbolized by the bull calf. Right. God had just about shook down and consumed a mountain, and the natural reaction is to think, wow, God's like a really strong calf? Let's dance and worship it?

These were not stupid people, nor were they rudderless and shallow in faith. Human beings have a screw loose in their brains and there is just no polite way to put it. It is, as I said, a natural condition of survival instinct, which is not to cope with or believe in what is not in front of you and hitting you on the head with a hammer all the time. This the problem that God has with humans, to put it succinctly, which is that beings that are created from matter, energy and time cannot understand and have great difficulty motivating themselves, under any circumstance, to understand God, who is unknowable, not being of time, matter or energy.

You then get to the really dippy extreme reaction, which is related to the cartoonish reaction somewhat. Some equate "unknowable God" with "bizarre God." Here's how this, erm, "thinking process" goes:

1. We can't understand God.
2. God's "really out there."
3. Let's imagine really crazy and bizarre stuff that might be "out there."
4. Wow. That crazy and bizarre stuff we imagined must "be God."

That is where you see manufactured sci-fi and fantasy approaches to "faith," plus the obsession with both theoretical aliens and with quantum mechanics and physics (the so called "God particle," but oops, God is not comprised of matter, so no particle is a "God particle," duh.) You also see the distortion of genuine faith traditions, such as Buddhism, into directions that confuse traditional spiritual detachment with a new "what the heck" and thus giving up on a genuine relationship with God. None of these are really pleasing to God, who has gone through a lot with extreme patience and mercy to make himself know to humans, not to be ignored or manufactured with Halloween masks on him.

All of this is a long way to walk you through a few concepts I wanted to introduce you to, starting with the human nature reason that God seems so remote to some people, and why even believers have real crisis or aridity of faith. People need to be kind with themselves and each other and understand that human nature is not tolerant of understanding something that is not matter, energy, time based and, indeed, controllable in ANY way: God. When one is a matter, energy and time based being, one has a serious inability to understand God, and that is a fact. Fortunately, God, the Creator of all, obviously understands everything there is to know or ever know or could be known, and thus God provides ways to make himself known TO humans. God provides the materials for the bridge, God gives humans the map, and God crosses over the bridge to the human side all the time, day by day, second by second, person by person. God is on the same side as humans, since God is of course everywhere. It is one's understanding of God that is on the other side of the bridge. God walks alongside of each human as they cross that bridge to arrive at the other side, which is greater and greater understanding of God.

Think of it this way. When you are wondering if God really exists, and if he cares about the world, and if he is "out there," and whether or not he "cares" about you, he is standing next to you at that moment, where he always has been present! So you are both standing there looking over the gap, while you are thinking you are trying to see if God's there on the other side, and he's standing right next to you already, all along. It is kind of funny in a way and I'm saying that kindly. You think you are gazing into the distance trying to perceive God across the gap, and he's standing right there next to you, and humoring you by looking across the gap with you. But on the serious note, what God is looking at, in the place where you think you are trying to see God, God is looking at where you hope to be, and will be, in your understanding of God. It is your own understanding of God that stands across the gap, not God himself, for he's there already with you.

If there were actually some sort of gap, how, then, can anyone call upon God just by doing so, by speaking or thinking his holy name? "God" is all one has to call, in one's head and heart, and you are in communion with him; he is standing there next to you. Christians who have trouble praying, all they need to do is call upon "Jesus," just his holy name, and they are in communion with him through the authority of God in Jesus Christ.

So, let us think of that analogy of the facts and faith forming one glass brick at a time. You might ask me, what is the first faith brick I can make? That answer is simple. It is the Second Commandment.

"You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain. For the Lord will not leave unpunished him who takes his name in vain" Exodus 20:7.

Here's what you need to understand. This Commandment is a statement of what not to do, but it of course presumes that something exists that could be abused, and that something is the power of just the name of the Lord, God. By power I do not mean magic power. Speaking the holy name of God is the most basic and fundamental first prayer. When one says "God," it is like one is a small child again, saying "daddy" or before one can even speak, tugging on your father's sleeve for his attention. When you say the name "God," you have used the power and holiness of God's name to speak a prayer, seeking his attention, asking him to regard and notice you.

The Israelites, of course, had centuries of knowing that. Thus the Israelites knew the power of the name of God as their first word, the only word, they needed to speak, as it is their call to God's attention. There is nothing magical about God's name as God is holy, not occult. So one is "summoning God" or performing magic with God's name. Likewise there is no magical or symbolic significance to whatever language one is using, and how linguistically God's name is spelled. How do you know that? Because a deaf person who never heard how his language spoke the name God can and does still call upon God by thinking of "God" as his address, just as a baby does not know daddy's full name and how it is spelled or pronounced!

What you need to remember, then, that to call upon God by addressing him by what you understand to be his name is HOLY. It's not the combination of sounds, letters, pronunciations, that make God's name holy; it is the fact that you are calling upon God, addressing him, and the ability to call God, to address the Most High and the Most Holy is a holy act, the most fundamental prayer.

This is why God warns his people, who have known for a long time how to call upon him by his name (the version that they used), not to take his name in vain.

Thus the first transparent, pure clear glass brick based upon fact and faith is that you can call upon God by his name. If you believe or understand nothing else, if you really are on the one side of the gap and see nothing available to you to believe in or understand God, then believe and understand this and therefore make your first glass brick: If you think or speak the name God, you are addressing yourself to him and you have his attention. That is a fact.

See, this is how faith is built based on factual and actionable foundations. It takes very little effort to know and believe, and to understand the logic of this, that when you invoke in your thoughts "God!" you are calling to him and obtaining his attention.

Two more things to explain before I wrap this particular blog post up for now. Regular readers know that I did a series on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. I have added that series under that label on this post so you can easily reference them again, or see them for the first time. What I have just shown you is an example of the gift of Knowledge. I have taught you that through the scriptures (courtesy of the Holy Spirit) that you can call upon the name of God and you have his attention for a fact. That is an example of a piece of the gift of the Holy Spirit, Knowledge, that you now possess, truly. If you start to prayerfully and regularly call upon the name of God, just as comfort, as a statement, as an outreach to him, just to touch him, to reach out to him, by thinking "God" in that mindset, you will also be adding to the gift of Piety.

So you have received 1) the Knowledge of the Holy Spirit that God hears and gives his attention to you whenever you call his name and 2) that you receive the gift of Piety if you cultivate the calling upon God with humility.

My second point is then to think back to the Second Commandment. That is so misunderstood because many people today think that means "don't cuss or swear." That is a misunderstanding that is due to the passage of time where it is part of what is lost in context. People today think it is "sinful" and "disrespectful" to "cuss" or "swear" using God's name, and they think that is what the Second Commandment is about, but they think that because they have lost the context that I just explained, which is that stating the name of God is the first and most fundamental prayer. When you state "God," you are tugging on his sleeve, like a child tugging daddy's sleeve, seeking his attention, and God guarantees that if you state his name you got His attention. Get it now?

God is telling his people through Moses to not call upon him lightly and in vain.

That is what the Second Commandment means, my friends. It presumes that the believer already gets the fact that stating God's name all by itself, in speech or thought, is making the presumption of making one's attention known to God by using his Holy Name to say, "Hey God, connect with me." God has already shown this to all throughout faith history, from Adam to Moses, that he can be called upon just by his Holy Name. And this is why in the time of the giving of the Commandments, God is saying not to mess with his name lightly, calling attention upon one's self in vain. So sure, cussing's not a good idea, but those who think the Second Commandment is about cussing have totally and completely missed the point of what the Second Commandment is talking about, which is the most fundamental and first prayer, which is to state or think His holy name: "God."

When you realize that messing with God by calling upon him in anything but reverence is a bad idea, then you have obtained a piece of the first gift of the Holy Spirit: Fear of the Lord. When you understand that the mention of God's name is the first form of prayer, the most fundamental form, and it is by Covenant (both Old and New) one way that one is guaranteed to have God's attentiveness, you realize that you should be somewhat fearful of doing so lightly. The loss of understanding the holiness (because of its status of God's attentiveness) of simply the name "God" is one of the greatest omissions of strength in modern faith. It's not the cussing or not, it's the forgetfulness that God has given humans his Holy Name the statement of which by itself is a most serious calling upon God for his attentiveness. It is one of the greatest gifts from God, the comfort and assured consolation and attentiveness from him of calling on his name, God, God, God..... yet it's not only forgotten but cartoonishly made into being about cussing. Cussing is a symptom, not the point. The Commandments are the lists of "not to do's," but they come centuries after what God told people TO DO, which is to call upon his name in FAITH.

Think of it this way. God is the person you really want to receive the job of a lifetime from. You have his phone number. Would you call him on the phone and then do a series of crank hang up calls? When you know he has the ultimate caller ID? God's Holy Name is like having his phone number. You use his Holy Name when you want his attention. "God" you say. That is all you need to say or think, and you have God's attention. How dumb do you want to be once you have his attention? This is what the Second Commandment was warning against. I hope that the inevitable telephone modern analogy helps :-)

God's Holy Name is often the only thing that a person paralyzed by fear, by doubt, by affliction, by persecution, by death's door, by unsolvable human problems can state in appeal. Faith history in the scriptures shows the bond of the simple stating of names, God's and his servant's. If you have aridity in faith, or moments you don't feel God, or long periods where you doubt he is even involved with humans, then you have simply forgotten this, or never were taught it, that all appeals and all communion with God begin with his Holy Name, just stating "God."

Every path and every road to knowing "where" God is and "hearing" God in reply starts with understanding anew or remembering and regaining from old the initial brick of fact and faith which is to call upon God for his attention and comfort, just for the communion of togetherness, simply by stating his name.

Another way to understand why God's name is Holy is to understand that one's name is not magical, but it is a statement of purpose. You see this in Isaiah 49:1-3:

Hear me, O coastlands, listen, O distant peoples. The Lord called me from birth, from my mother's womb he gave me my name. He made of me a sharp-edged sword and concealed me in the shadow of his arm. He made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me. You are my servant, he said to me, Israel, through whom I show my glory.

Notice three names referenced. First of all, Isaiah reports that "The Lord" called him from birth. Do you notice that the scriptures never go for extended times just referring to God as "He?" Those who wrote the Books of the Bible carefully use God's name, God, or The Lord, over and over. This is because they are referring to God by his Holy Name, which is also his office. God is The Divinity, that is what God "does." God's "occupation" is to be Holy and Perfect. God is a Holy Name because it is the Office indicator of the one who is All Holy. God is thus the one word statement of perfection and holy authority. Scripture writers therefore did not save ink by saying "He said this and then he said that to me, and he created the world and he did these deeds." Rather, they repeat over and over the name of "God" or the "Lord" because each use of God's name is like a sealing of that statement's Holy Authority. Thus Isaiah says "The Lord" called him from birth even though he just referred to God as "the Lord" in the sentence before. We'd know he meant God if he said "He," but that would be an incredible thought to the people of God who understood the frequent use of God's name as Holy and as sealing the statement with his Holy Authority.

The second example is that Isaiah states that The Lord gave Isaiah his own name from Isaiah's mother's womb. What does that mean? It does not mean that God instructed Isaiah's mother to call her child Isaiah. What Isaiah meant is that God gave to Isaiah his particular calling, his service and office to God as prophet, from the womb. This is a way for you today to understand why names were important: not for magical reasons, or numerology, or good luck, or symbolic "meanings," but because they are in imitation of God, whose Holy Name is his Holy Office. It is not that Isaiah was named I-S-A-I-A-H, but that he would be "that" Isaiah, that one called by God to that office of prophet. That is why the name Joseph has great meaning, for example, even when it was the most popular name for boys and millions upon millions had that name. It is not the spelling and the lettering and the language and the prounciation, it is the linkage of name-to-person, and then the service to God, from whom all names must be subordinate.

Then Isaiah mentions a third name, taking it upon himself, the people of Israel. Isaiah is through name now almost the agent or broker for Israel as a whole with God. God is addressing the entire nation of Israel by name through Isaiah. God said to Isaiah, "You are my servant," but instead of saying ", Isaiah," God said, "Israel, through whom I show my glory." Isaiah thus has his office of linking God to Israel, and Israel has its office of being the vessel through which God shows his glory.

I'm trying to simplify for you the whole understanding of why names are reverential and indeed holy. It is not the spelling because Isaiah would be just as holy a prophet as if he were called Fred or Abdul. But giving a human a name (or giving animals names, as Adam did in Genesis) is an imitation of God's Holy Authority and Office that is expressed in his name alone. God is the only one who has always existed and always will, and he of course knows himself by the name of his own choosing. Understand, then, that the practice of giving people names is an imitation of that which cannot be duplicated. Only God can be God. Many people can be named Isaiah. But only one Isaiah was the one chosen by God for that office. That is why a person's name is considered holy and of power, but not because of any magic or secular empowerment inherent in the lettering, language or sounds. Rather, all names are in imitation of God's first and only example, of him being not only named God but The One God. God taught naming to Adam and that is why naming should be equally reverential among humans, understanding where the meaning of naming derived, directly from God's hands.

I went into some detail here but that has been on my mind to get rid of that superstitious and often ridiculous modern view of naming (the nuttier the better), which is not, now that you understand this, as harmless as many think. When humans become idiotic with their own naming it only distances themselves more from understanding faith and the role of God's name and the dignity of humanity's imitation of God's role modeling. Further, naming has not just become silly but it also has promoted erroneous occult beliefs as people forget what scriptures mean when they emphasize the power of names. Scripture does not mean that names are manufactured and manipulated sources of power at all. Scripture means what it has always mean but people no longer understand, which is that humans name in imitation of God, whose Holy Name is also his Holy Office. When you speak God's name you call upon him as God. You do that no matter what the theoretical spelling of God's name in a human language might be. Only Moses ever heard God's name spoken by him anyway (except Jesus of course). No, when the scripture comments about the importance of human names the authors are doing so in the context of a time when millions shared the same names and simple traditional ones they were: the power is not in the name but in the understanding of what a person's name represents as a small fragment of the example of dignity that God himself has made available to humanity in imitation of Him.

I hope that you have found this helpful!

(Hi young people!...)

Simple logic about God & human scandal/sin

I'm not sure why everyone misses the point so much these days. I guess it is the increasingly egocentric (and even ego maniacal) focus of even the average person these days. So here is a simple observation to keep in mind.

The more that crime, scandal, sin and bad behavior are exposed in each and every religious organization:

the more it simply proves that humans are broken and imperfect individuals who need awareness and belief in God more than ever.

Have you noticed the lack of logic so many have? Whenever there is a scandal in a church, mosque, synagogue or any other place of faith, the more people say "Ah ha, this is why I question that there is a God."

Yet when the same scandals appear in secular settings (home, places of business) they are called "crimes" or "unethical behavior." Hmm.

So a parent who uses their child in porn, for example, is "sick," "unethical" and "a criminal," while if a religious community member does it, it's somehow "justification" to ''doubt God."

Um, news flash. People have been weak, broken and corrupt since the Garden of Eden. Duh. All humans are unworthy by nature. However, being created in the image of God they have the opportunity to find God and become, again, his child. Whether a person sins/commits crime/is unethical within a religious community or outside a religious community, all it demonstrates is how very far humans remain from God. People need to recognize God and allow him to guide and lead one's life, not jump on falls by religious people or institutions (which will always occur and I promise you, even if you replaced flawed humans with perfect robots, robots will break down and run amok too).

So yes, investigate scandals and hold the faithful accountable for their hypocrisy, but beware, because as you do so, you are excusing the same behavior in those with little or no faith. And you are missing the entire point, which is made clear in the Gospel, which is that humans need to be CONSTANTLY REPENTING AND SEEKING FORGIVENESS OF THEIR ONGOING AND CONTINUAL SINS UNTIL THE MOMENT OF EACH PERSON'S DEATH.

The only perfect person lived two thousand years ago. Everyone else needs continual grace and forgiveness every moment of their life, believer or not, in secular setting or religious.

Faith coaching for priests (pastors, rabbis, imams...)

This is the first in hopefully a series of quick coaching that I am directing toward priests of my faith, the Roman Catholics, but I also of course hope that not only any Christian pastor but also Jewish and Muslim spiritual leaders will find this helpful. The focus will be how priests need to understand and strengthen their own faith while thus at the same time strengthening the faith in the truth for not only their flock but the greater community. The concern being addressed is the way that modern society (both values and supposed "intellect") erode believers' faith, seeming to have "strong arguments," when they are simply wisps in the wind and totally fallacious.

How do I hope you use this material by the way?
1. Understand it yourself and read the scriptures that illuminate the points. I am structuring this series to be a "we believe in the Bible and the word of God" versus the "the Bible's not true and just made up stuff anyway" problem.
2. Discuss it with your friends, family and colleagues and watch for examples of what I speak of in the press.
3. Be more open to, in addition to your pastoral duties, seeking ways to communicate your faith and how you refute (gently but firmly) such arguments, not only in sermons but wherever you find an opportunity (get to know media people, ha).
4. But do not become a media hound. Allow your better understanding to simply permeate outwardly from you. As your faith is strengthened through better understanding of the truth, like osmosis other people will better understand the truth and thus their faith increases.

Here is the coaching point I am covering in this particular blog posting.

1. Recognize modern intellectual hypocrisy and point it out. Do not be intimidated by it because hypocrisy is, of course, the weakest of all foundations for either intellect or spirit. It is not by coincidence that Jesus focused on pointing out the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of his time.

I have selected a very pertinent and popular topic for the hypocrisy example. There is a fascination in modern society, one that is increasingly perverse and warped, with "living forever" or at least extended life to be centuries or more in length. You may not think this is a "hot topic," but priests, you must recognize the undertow of what seems like disconnected interests of moderns. The undertow, this belief that humans can in and of themselves find a way to greatly extend life and even eliminate death, is exhibited in seemingly separate events such as these, which have been going on for decades by the way.

1. Paid for legitimate research into "special techniques" for extending life. Probably the most well known is by scientists who have linked a kind of starvation diet (very low calories) to long life spans of I think some sort of worm.

Now, I am not being critical of proper science that tries to correlate life style and genetics with those who tend to live longer, and then postulate some sort of potential beneficial advice for humans. I am simply pointing out that this is a hot topic for legitimate research.

2. Marginal "popular" research for extending life. This is more dodgy type of research, often fulfilling the researcher's (usually a book selling author with products) life philosophy that long life, even indefinitely long life, is possible.

The most common examples are those who advocate certain diets or food supplements.

3. The dark fascination in the media's science fiction and fantasy genre with life that is very long, both good life but more often a life of "superior oppressive beings" that live forever and oppress the dummies under them.

The Matrix series is an obvious example. While presented as drama and entertainment, two generations of young people have grown up with the thoughts that "maybe" some "eternal or long living evil alien force" is "manipulating humans." A normal person kind of wants to shoot themselves in the head with depression after watching some of this "entertainment." I'm bummed out to the max even thinking about it. But many kids have a constant diet of this type of paranoia and disconnect from reality, that eternity is "possible" but that right now "bad aliens" have it (or maybe "good aliens" can 'offer it.')

4. The vampire genre that is like a cancer among young people today.

Do not mistake that under the sex and drama and teenage angst of these films is the temptation to believe that by drinking blood one lives forever.

See, these are four modern secular examples of the same underlying temptation, which is to 1) seek to extend human life to eternity by totally human means and 2) disbelieve the Bible. Where does the Bible disbelief come into play here? I'm glad that you asked :-) because that is where the hypocrisy lies.

If one wants to truly and truthfully study how human life is extended, and how eternal life is obtained, one must believe the truth that is already documented, which is the Bible.

Point number one:

Genesis 6:3
Then the Lord said: "My spirit shall not remain in man forever, since he is but flesh. His days shall comprise one hundred and twenty years."

Now, modern disbelievers (plus believers weak in faith) need to understand, as you need to understand, one simple point about this passage. The author of the Book of Genesis, Moses, knew what 'scientifically' no one knew yet at the time, which is indeed that the length of human life is capped at one hundred and twenty years (Wikipedia has a great tracking of the "oldest" human beings in various articles, such as the woman who lived to 122 years). This is a really simple example that you must remember yourself and share with others that thousands of years ago God told Moses something that neither Moses or anyone else could have known through scientific means or the power of observation, since people barely made it out of their thirties for most of their existence until the last one hundred years or so. (See my previous blogging about this topic).

So this is where a hypocrite who is fascinated with extending life must agree with a true believer that even if the hypocrite still denies the Bible and God "being real," that the Bible is accurate in this fact. Keep it simple: recognize that God in the Bible tells Moses that humans shall "comprise" (for the most part) be able to expect from within one hundred twenty years for their lifespan, and modern statistics demonstrate that that has been and continues to be true. Agree to agree there that the "Bible got that one right."

Ah, but now the hypocrite will say, "But who is to say that science and human 'genius' and 'development' cannot extend life? We will do it in the laboratory!" That's great, because you do not, as a true believer, disagree that very long life is indeed possible!

Point number two.

Genesis 5
5. The whole lifetime of Adam was nine hundred and thirty years; then he died.
8. The whole lifetime of Seth was nine hundred and twelve years; then he died.
11. The whole lifetime of Enosh was nine hundred and five years; then he died.
14. The whole lifetime of Kenan was nine hundred and ten years; then he died.
17. The whole lifetime of Mahalalel was eight hundred and ninety-five years; then he died.
20. The whole lifetime of Jared was nine hundred and sixty-two years; then he died.
23. The whole lifetime of Enoch was three hundred and sixty-five years.
27. The whole lifetime of Methuselah was nine hundred and sixty-nine years; then he died.
31. The whole lifetime of Lamech was seven hundred and seventy-seven years; then he died.
32. When Noah was five hundred years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.

This whole section of the Bible, Genesis, including Chapter 6 which comes after it is so misunderstood yet it is so simple to understand when one has faith AND logical reasoning. If the Bible were "fiction," then it would be filled with wondrous stories of what those long lived guys were up to during their nine hundred plus years of lifespan! Instead, Moses dutifully recorded what is basically the faith genealogy, such as... they were named this, they had these sons, and they lived this many years. That is hardly the stuff of riveting fictional adventure. If dry elderly Jewish men recorded that someone lived to be 777 years old, then that guy lived to be 777 years old!

So here is the hypocrite's problem. He or she believes that "someday" humans can "overcome death" and live very long lifespans, yet he or she does not want to believe the evidence that you present, in the Bible, that this has indeed already been done! Most scientists are happy when they have valuable data from a time in the past that supports their hypothesis. Hypocrites do not like data that supports even their own ideas, if that data comes from anything associated with God. They fear that if they believe that part of the Bible, then they have to believe the whole "package."

So you can attempt to get such a hypocrite to, like in point one, to agree with you that the very thing they argue is possible is documented in the Bible as having already happened. You'd think they'd be happy to know that some humans did indeed live to be almost one thousand years old, no? ;-)

The reason most hypocrites will resist agreeing that even having Biblical evidence that extremely long life is possible is that 1) they don't want to accept the whole God package, since they'd rather be free to sin, thank you very much and 2) they are looking ahead to disagreeing with you about the reasons for possible long life, so that will be point three.

Point three starts with repeating point one's passage, since that is why I quoted all the ages from Genesis 5, because God now says, basically, that the gift of some having these incredibly long lives is 1) provided by me, God, personally and 2) is going to be taken from you.

Point three:

Genesis 6:3
Then the Lord said: "My spirit shall not remain in man forever, since he is but flesh. His days shall comprise one hundred and twenty years."

Thus God is explaining to human beings two things. One is that the reason that these select people have lived so long is that God's spirit was in them. Read carefully "since he is but flesh." What that means is that God has, like with all the other animals, a limit to how long humans can live because flesh can and will deteriorate and die. God's spirit within certain humans overcomes the falling apart of flesh and keeps the person vital and alive for those many centuries. Remember, the Bible does not say that everyone (such as the wives or all the relatives, or the rest of the community, or other human beings) lived those long lives! It does not say that all human beings lived long lives at all. Rather, specific people are listed, those who have the spirit of God in them and are essential links in the chain of faith history. In other words, God extended the lives of those who handed on the truth of faith and its authoritative knowledge of the one true God from generation to generation. These old guys had the spirit of God in them to provide oral continuity from generation to generation about God, his ways and his will. Remember there was no writing or cave painting or whatever in the generations after Adam and Eve. So God kept each link in the faith chain alive enormous lengths of time due to his Spirit within them so that they can keep the faith alive and well formed in each generation. Thus around the time of Noah is when God starts to warn that he will no longer do this routinely.

Now, I have to go off topic for a moment because anyone who is a hypocrite will force you off topic in Genesis 6 because of the "sons of heaven" who "appeared on earth" and were "heroes of old, the men of renown," sounding all like alien angels and super beings arriving on earth. Not exactly.

We are all adults here so let's try to wear long pants and think like adults. We all know that Adam and Eve were the first parents, but we also know that their kids went and married humans who were around. Every five year old asks in Bible school "If Adam and Eve were the first people, who did their children marry?" Generations of nuns have squirmed about that question, LOL. Adam and Eve were the first faith parents, the first to whom were raised up from the dust because God spoke to them. I know, I know, those of you who don't believe that one of God's tools for creation is evolution are unhappy with me, but you have to read the Bible and believe. Adam and Eve's kids did not marry lions, deer, giraffes or turtles. Adam and Eve's kids married other humans who were around.

Likewise, as the faith grew and generations had fruitful future generations being born, they started bumping into other humans, nonbelievers (since they did not yet know God), those who built early human empires and who had made up mythologies.

Genesis 6:1-3
When men began to multiply on earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of heaven saw how beautiful the daughters of the men were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose. Then the Lord said: "My spirit shall not remain in man forever, since he is but flesh. His days shall comprise on hundred and twenty days."

What is happening here is clear if you just slow down and stay rooted in reality. People began to do pretty good, having many healthy children, and so they expanded, looking for husbands and wives for their growing brood (plus remember, not being in Eden they had to migrate and toil for their daily food). They bumped into marvelous people, calling them, as we do today, "heavenly." I mean, duh! The Bible does not say that flying saucers landed. If they had the Bible would say so, since God has nothing to hide. Notice that God immediately speaks in the now three times I've quoted line about the lifespan of mankind. Why does God explain to Moses (since this was all way before Moses' time, so he got all the information about Genesis directly from God) that the people started intermarrying "heavenly" people and that God was now going to withdraw his life extending spirit? Because now the people had to encounter and intermarry pagans and bring them into the faith. I mean, duh! It is what it is in the context of the times, not what fervid overactive modern imaginations make it to be. You'd understand it quite well if it read like this:

People began to have so many children, plus they had to migrate to find land and food, that they started bumping into some really tough and awesome people. They had some great treasures and incredible inventions! They thought our women were hot and so they eagerly intermarried. God then said, "Well, there you go, be fruitful and multiply. It's up to YOU to now educate the pagans about me, because I'm not going to make these old guys live to be nine hundred years old just to keep the faith alive from generation to generation." As soon as people started intermarrying these awesome heavenly people, other groups of new folks also came along ["the Nephilim appeared on earth" Genesis 4:6] and they explained that they came from the gods Bozo and Fifi who were filled with awesome sword swaggering deeds."

Um, duh, as the believers, the descendants of Adam and Eve, intermarried pagans, their kids eagerly picked up on all the local mythology and hero excitement of the new folks' histories (both real and imagined). So that's why when skeptics snicker that the Bible "includes mythology," well, duh, the people intermarried with people with mythology. Sometimes it just is what it is. And when "sons of heaven" "appeared on earth," that means some presumably God sent awesome dudes and chicks were bumped into that they had never met before around the next mountain range. When people say "appear on earth" they don't mean what moderns mean, which is to drop out of the sky, I mean, duh. People who had never traveled more than ten miles in their whole life consider anyone they met while migrating fifty miles or a few hundred miles away as "appearing" "on earth."

So point number three to make to hypocrites, which is usually a point of genuine confusion for many of the faithful, but also a great red herring for those who have an "alien believing" and "non all powerful God" agenda, is that there is an easily understandable progression of events that follows both what the Bible says and also human nature as we know it. God gave certain faith bearing humans really long lives, but as the human species got fruitful and on their way, God said, "You're on your own now, and you have to encounter nonbelievers and intermarry."

But see, how well did that turn out?

Genesis 6:5, 11-2
When the Lord saw how great was man's wickedness on earth, and how no desire that his heart conceived was ever anything but evil, he regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved...In the eyes of God the earth was corrupt and full of lawlessness...all mortals led depraved lives on earth...

The Bible agrees with human history since it is human history. Believers fell astray all on their own (think of Cain, for example) plus they obviously fell down at bringing the faith to the pagans, and instead, adopted lives of depravity and lawlessness.

I'll leave this important, but a tangent, to our basic purpose of discussing the hypocrisy of the long life interest but denying Biblical evidence, and hope that you better understand that you have to read the Bible in context, how people were in those times and how God spoke to them accordingly. A modern thinks that "heavenly" means from the sky, while an ancient believes "heavenly" means sent by God (and that could be just some hairy pagan sent by God from across the street). "Appeared on earth" means to a modern that it wasn't on the entire globe terra before, and thus came from the sky, while "appeared on earth" to an ancient means "Wow, I just encountered something entirely new."

Point four:

Genesis 9:29
The whole lifetime of Noah was nine hundred fifty years; then he died.

God made clear that he was weaning the faithful away from having very long lived humans who acted as faith links across many generations, and so Noah becomes the last one mentioned in this way. If you read all of Genesis 10 and 11, notice two things. No longer is anyone mentioned as having long lives. Second, the geneologies start to mention the faith fathers having children at ages of twenties and thirties, not the very ancient ages of before.

Genesis 11:25-6
Nahor lived one hundred and nineteen years after the birth of Terah, and he had other sons and daughters. When Terah was seventy years old, he became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran.

So now a life of 119 years is extraordinary, rather than the nine hundred plus years of life. Right on target of the expected maximum age, based on flesh, not God's spirit, for humans. Nahor is the grandfather of the man who became the Patriarch of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths, Abram (renamed Abraham by God).

Point four, then, to show to your hypocrite friend, is that just as humans are prospering, and presumably eating better and having better hygiene and medicine, the incredibly long lived examples disappear. This is the heart of where your disagreement with hypocrites will be exposed because they will resist knowing that what they want is "possible" but it has already been done, since it is not works of humans that result in incredibly long existences of individual lives, but only the firsthand occupation of that flesh by the Spirit of God, which overcomes while the Spirit is there the inevitability of the limits of human life. Remind them we are not discussing "spirituality" or "holiness," but the actual raw, full Spirit of God keeping them alive, something God has not only said but demonstrated that after Noah he will no longer do.

God promises Abram that his descendants shall be as numerous as stars (Genesis 15:4), not the years of his lifespan, or of anyone else's. But this man obviously was filled with so much grace from the Lord that his body could not help but respond accordingly:

Genesis 25:7-8
The whole span of Abraham's life was one hundred and seventy-five years. Then he breathed his last, dying at a ripe old age, grown old after a full life; and he was taken to his kinsmen. [That means both buried in the family place and also with those who had died before in heaven with God. Jesus confirmed that Abraham is in heaven with God in Luke 16.]

So you have to point out that if the Bible was just self glorifying made up stuff, why would not the longest "made up" life be assigned to the man who was the Patriarch of the three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam? I mean, why would the fictional authors of the fictional Bible assign really long made up ages to men whose names are mentioned only that one or two times and had no great deeds, while Abraham is expected to be characterized as the role model of the God given full life in his service and actual physical presence of "only" 175 years? Because it really is just as it is. Abraham is the example of how the Spirit of God filled this one man, after the others, when God would no longer do this to keep faith guardian continuity, and yet achieves indeed eternal life by being with God after a full life on earth.

As an aside, many Christians totally miss that Jesus in Luke 16 is mentioning by name how the Patriarch Abraham is alive in God in heaven, not asleep: "When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried, and from the netherworld where he was in torment, he raised his eyse and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side...Abraham replied, 'My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received only what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented..."

Here is the point, the crux of what you must testify to non-believers, but also understand for your own faith. What is the reward for the man who singularly was the great Patriarch, who walked with, served without question, dined with, and advocated on behalf of sinners to God? A full (but not extraordinary) life but eternal life in God, where is he is seen, active, speaking and very real in life in heaven's eternity. So yes, we agree that long life is biologically possible, but not through human deeds in the laboratory.

Point five:
We agree that it is possible to live forever, but not in the laboratory and not because of aliens, but because when the flesh passes believers who have served God will have eternal life with him in the Spirit in heaven.

Hypocrites imagine "storing one's memories and identity" in a computer and then "loading it into another body," and THEY view THAT as a real "possibility," but they think the Bible, which affirms the immortal soul that is "transfered" upon death out of body to either heaven or hell, the spiritual realm, as "fantasy." That is the heart of the hypocrisy. Which is the sound of truth, the believer who has evidence in the Bible of the eternal soul, or someone who wants to become a parts junk yard for people who want to cling to some sort of "life," yet thinks only of earthly memories, personalities and nutty theories of recycled souls to load into some manmade flesh, and what, then, of the real soul, the one and only one given to each person by God for their one and only life? It's just not going to happen, friends. Not only because God has promised that it will not happen, but because life just does not work that way. Eternal life in fake bodies and you can't deal with AIDs? Swine flu? Feeding the starving? Keep a vaccination record for your kids so they don't get diseases that were defeated decades ago? And how about a world of robot ADHD people, with their bipolar and whatever? They don't seem to handle three decades of life well, say nothing of be "ready" for theoretical manmade "eternal life." A society that does not consistently wash their hands for hygiene sure does not have to worry about having eternal life in a body on earth, LOL.

Do you see the fulness of validation and logic for all that is in the Bible? Just as those few patriarchs had actual Spirit of God in them to prolong their life and their witness to their children and the other generations, upon death the faithful enter into the Spirit of God in heaven. On earth God infused each of the long lived patriarchs with his Spirit. In heaven they are alive eternally because they are put into the Spirit. It is only the Spirit that is the source of either eternal life after death, or of extraordinary genuine life on earth, but God has said he will no longer do that and of course that is true. It is up to humans to do the best they can do with having full lives, and allowing their neighbors to have full lives too, and to witness to the faith while they await eternal life that is promised to them in heaven, or eternal punishment if they profane God's gift of human life and thus lose eternal life in bliss.

Kids need to understand that the reality is much more beautiful than the fiction. Why does blood drinking "eternal" vampires seem so romantic? Because they have lost access to the true joys of life, of the type of joy that a man like Abraham had, in true family and kinship and service to God, and yes, decent adventure too.

Dear priests and other friends reading this blog, I hope and pray that you have found this to be helpful in your faith and to support the true faith of those who need it in these modern times.

Remember, even atheists have guardian angels

Can you imagine the crap that they have to listen to? It must seem like an eternity in purgatory to them, LOL. They don't mind the genuinely clueless, but the "professional" atheists and comedians etc, who make money and notoriety off of their ungrateful disbelief, well, let's just say the guardian angels ought to get battle pay for putting up with all that.

Since God doesn't go around smiting people just for being atheists, some of them force their guardian angel to listen to many decades of their crap. It's something to think about, no? Let's just say that I can relate...

Why humans in God's image; attention atheists

Here I will explain why it is important to believe what the Bible and the Qur’an both teach, which is that humans are created by God in the image of God. The Bible explains this in Genesis, and that belief is fulfilled in Christianity through Jesus Christ, as Son of Man. The Qur’an supports this belief through a vivid image, of God instructing the angels to bow in obeisance to the first man, Adam.

A December 7 article on zenit.org regarding the release of a book by an atheist who is a cordial intellectual colleague of Pope Benedict’s contains this quote where the atheist points out that this belief is important for all to embrace, in order to maintain identity. Here is the quote (and, by the way, the word “prescind” means to separate from what has gone before):

Pera noted that Christianity's concept of the human person as created in the image of God is not something found in other cultures, and said that this exists "prior to the state's intervention.

"If we prescind from these Christian principles, he warned, we will have destroyed our constitutional heritage.

So Pera argues the importance of maintaining this lofty principle of Christianity, even if one is not a believer. That is an excellent point. It is reading this that I got the idea to explain why exactly, from the theological perspective, and the important societal implication, that God created humans in his image. I especially want atheists and agnostics to understand this, as it might help them to overcome an intellectual blockage that they have toward faith in God.

God created humans in his image because even though God knows that every human cannot help but fall short of being divine in reality of spirit, behavior or mind, God gives as a gift to every human a goal to reach that protects them from fellow humans who would pull them down into despair.

For example, imagine being a child who grows up in a totally dysfunctional family filled with violence, abuse and addiction. Suppose that the child is raised to believe that he or she can “Never do any better than be exactly like his or her parents or ‘caregivers.’” You might argue that a child could look to neighbors, or school teachers, as role models, and thus “overcome” the inculcation that he or she must be exactly as the parents and is no better. But here is the problem with that argument. One is that the child might be in a culture that is rife with negative role models everywhere, drowning out the one or two role models that seem to rise above. The second problem is that children cannot separate themselves from what they are told at a young and formative age, and so they cannot discern disbelieving that they are only as good as the parents and community cohorts, and that they can strive to be “as good as” the best available role model. And that is the third problem, which is that the child, even if he or she relates to the best role model, cannot imagine being even better, striving for more, than the best role model that they are exposed to in their milieu.

Extend that analogy, then, to a child who is born into an avowed anti-religion and anti-God society as was the Soviet Union. Now the child can no longer imagine being better than the best role model within their society of enforced “equality” of the lowest common denominator. If you are old enough to remember the old Soviet Union, you know what I mean. China, too, went through that phase. It is for that reason that certain citizens in both the Soviet Union and China clung, often in secret and in peril, to belief in God. Knowledge that one is created in the image of God is one of God’s greatest gifts to humans, and it is a God-given impulse, a spiritual and not biological "DNA" within humans who thirst to know this and to believe. It is not a biological gift, or one that has come into being through “natural law” or “natural selection,” as atheists might incorrectly posit. It is not “instinctive” to strive for the highest moral and spiritual goodness. Actually, one would be more accurate to say that striving to the highest moral and spiritual goodness is counter to evolutionary survival instinct. After all, omnivores, from whom humans descend, did not have an evolutionary reward for pausing from their quest for food to love their neighbor, and to believe that they are in the image of God. That is why this belief did not, as Pera points out, spring up in any culture as a belief before that of Christianity.

God created humans in his image and told them of that truth so that every human who believes has access to the gift of reaching for the highest goodness possible, regardless of the political, societal and familial situation in which he or she was born. This belief cannot be explained as a natural law or an evolutionary or survival trait because, in fact, all arguments demonstrate the opposite, that this belief is counterintuitive to all of life forms.

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Case study: falling away from the faith

While visiting a Catholic site I've not read for a while, I noticed a comment by someone who wonders why some of the most angry and atheist apologists and attackers of Christianity and the Church are "former evangelicals." The answer to this is somewhat straightforward, so I'll make it a quick case study.

Even when one is a Christian, the farther away that you are in your faith from making God the center of it all, the more you are at risk of losing your perspective, and then your faith. So if you think of faith as being a series of concentric circles, the innermost circle being God himself, if you are in a faith that is in a close circle to God, where your focus is always kept on him, it tends to be a good indicator of future stability of mind. This is true, obviously, if one is Christian, Muslim or Jewish. The more that you view your faith as "being all about God" and not yourself, the better you yourself will actually grow in spirit and in love of human life.

Now, say what you will about the problems of the "hierarchy" of those big bad institutional churches, but there is an advantage to enforced humility. Humans tend to puff themselves up pretty big and fast when they are on their own. This is one reason it is not such a bad thing to belong to a large institutional faith, such as being Catholic, and I also include the highly humble and egalitarian faith of Islam (witness three million people on Haj even as we speak, side by side, rich and poor, all men wearing two white cloths as their clothing). Many hajis (people who have gone on haj) say that remembering that it is all about God and his mercy, and all being equal in his eyes, is the highlight personal illumination of haj. The Catholic Mass is, likewise, a liturgy that is focused entirely on God, as revealed through Jesus Christ, and in the prophets and forefathers and mothers.

Likewise, the institutional churches of the children of the Reformation, such as the various sects, called denominations, of Protestantism, Methodists, Baptists and so forth, also retain this focus on God. Their communal worship within an institutional church helps remind them that it is not all about themselves, but it's all about God, and Jesus Christ, the Savior.

However, when a number of Protestants began to self identify as "Evangelicals," a subtle form of temptation crept in. So long as they remained in the mainstream of the institutionalized denominations, that temptation to increase one's own individual importance, and diminish one's focus on God, is usually kept in check. This is one reason I am a great admirer of Baptists.

But the problem is that many take a worthy objective, to "evangelize" and have done two things. One is that they give themselves a title, merited or not. Suddenly they think of themselves as being "evangelicals," with all due honors and privileges, if you know what I mean. Second, many break away from their denominations and "create their own churches." What exactly is one's "own church?" Whenever a few in the congregation get angry, off they go and "create their own church." Where's God in all this, and God's equal expectations from everyone?

Thus, ironically, when an "evangelical" loses faith for some reason or another, it is not at all surprising that they tumble far and hard, with great anger, often going to the extreme of virulent denial of God himself The reason it is not surprising is that with each step one takes in faith, no matter which faith or denomination you are in, away from God and toward self focus and meeting "your own needs" for "your own church," you are already having one foot in a sticky pit of temptation without even knowing it.

Many people, as an aside, are baffled by the grandeur of the interior of Catholic churches. But one important reason for that is to continue to keep people looking upward toward God, and not mistake that the worship is all about themselves and their "message" "on behalf of God, Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit." Catholic churches are deliberately designed to appear as two things 1) the sacrificial altar and 2) a glimpse into the sanctuary, which is the gateway to heaven. That sure keeps it focused on God.

When an "evangelical" (or anyone else) starts to subconsciously and then consciously focus on whether or not "his or her church" is "meeting" "his or her needs," you've got a big potential problem of temptation of hubris and the falling away of faith. One has, at that point, already taken a big step away from God, by lowering God in one's own mind and raising one's self up as being the "one who really understands what it is all about." When that evangelical has inch by inch step by step moved farther from God being the center of it all, one day they wake up and feel there is nothing there, and then they lose their faith, they deny, they get angry, and they attack the very people, the remaining faithful, who the evangelical him or herself had "left behind" as being "indoctrinated" or "stupid." It's like running away from home and then denying that a home ever existed. It's exactly like that.

Sometimes you can better understand this drift if you compare it with groups where the drift does not happen, for the most part. Look at Orthodox Jews, for example. You just don't tend to see an Orthodox Jew shake his head and say, "You know, this worship thing really doesn't meet my needs or work for me. I know what God really wants, so I'm going to 'plant' my own synagogue, and we will do in it whatever 'meets our needs.'" Um, you just don't see that. Likewise, look at Muslims. The Sunni and the Shi'a have sometimes bitter disagreement about the spiritual successors to the Prophet (PBUH). But I do not know a single Muslim who would go up the the Grand Mufti and say, "You know, this haj schedule really doesn't work for me and my friends. We are going to start our own haj, but it's going to take place in some month that is not haj." LOL, imagine that. You just would not see it, because all Muslims are proud of the five pillars of their faith, not trying to "edit" them and become "non denominational" in order to "better meet their needs." I also don't know Muslims who run around saying, "You know, parts of the Qur'an really don't work for me, so let's remove those chapters." Sometimes individuals err in the direction of deeply believing but not understanding their own faith, and that is something mainstream Islam is trying to address. But none of them take their eyes off of God above all to "create their own mosque" that "meets their own worship needs."

With every step that one takes from keeping God himself at the very center of one's spiritual and secular life, one is taking one's self farther into an area where one is tempted to think that faith exists in order to "meet your needs" because it is "all about you." That is the shadow, to use a psychological term, of "evangelicals." They feel a great love and vigor of faith, but their unnoticed shadow is that they feel they are interior and individual custodians of the "truth" of their faith, and that is a dangerous slope of inflation and ultimately disappointment, anger, disenfranchising and disbelief.

This, again, is the reason that some are baffled that the Methodist church has an empty cross, with a red cloth draped to signify that Christ has risen, while Catholics have the crucifixion cross, with the corpus of Christ. The people who are baffled think that Catholics are "stuck" on the gory figure of Christ, and not focused on his having resurrected and "left the cross." But to quote St. Paul it is about him, Christ and him crucified. Catholics, even the weak ones, never forget that it is about God through Jesus Christ, and that one must always keep one's gaze on God and on the Savior he sent, that the Savior was crucified and that all must carry one's cross.

Sometimes I worry that my friends the Methodists have a psychology that the Cross is a "completed project." That is one step away from being totally God centric. I'm not bashing, I'm analyzing. Trust me, I grew up among many Methodists and they think they have it figured out, while the Catholic Church has the wrong orientation. Nope. One is never wrong if one is totally focused on God, and Jesus Christ crucified. When one is not "comfortable" with that focus on God and Jesus Christ, crucified, one has to ask, why is it about your "comfort" level, your faith? Again, I'm not criticizing, but I am critiquing, since, after all, I've endured silently decades of being critiqued unjustly, and now I reply.

Again, if one need to understand faith, look at Orthodox Jews. Have they edited their faith in order to be "more comfortable," to eliminate the suffering and anguish in faith history and replace it only with "spreading the good word," and have they people who break away when they quarrel and set up their own "non denominational" "place of worship?" No, because as I've said before, no one comprehends God better than Orthodox scholarly Jews, and it is on God that they keep their focus, where they keep their eyes and ears, and their hearts. People often wonder why God did not charter the Israelites to be "evangelicals," to convert and spread the word. This is exactly why. God understands humans more than you can ever imagine, and he knows that it is hard enough to keep humans faithful and focused on him through the centuries, even, as the Bible demonstrates, a small group of people such were the Israelites. That is part of the miracle, and proof, of the Savior, of Jesus Christ, that humans had reached a point where they can evangelize and still stay focused on God, and not inflate their own personal attributes as "representatives" of God. But see, over time, there is that temptation, and it started in the Reformation.

So that, my anonymous friends and readers, is why we see some who seemed so in love with Jesus Christ that they called themselves "evangelicals," fall so far that they become bitter atheists who are not only against God and denying him, but hating upon the faithful who stay in the fold. Any evangelical or any faithful for that matter who starts to think that spreading God's message as they understand it personally, rather than staying in the institutional church and providing personal witness, is the course that "meets their needs" is already putting their feet on a path that, God forbid, could bring them to crashing into total lack of faith. The Bible explains that if you put your trust in yourself or your fellow human, you will fail. If you put your trust in God, and remain focused on only God, you will not fail. It's as simple as that, really.

No, "moral atheists" are not "just as virtuous"

I'm tired and a little headachy, so I don't really want to blog much more, but I don't want this one to go by. I just heard someone reference the argument that some atheists make that if they are moral, then their results are "just as good" if not better than people who "behave" "just because they 'fear hell.'" No, that is not correct; "moral atheists" are not "as good" as people who believe in hell for one simple reason. First of all, people who fear hell also, if they believe in hell, obviously believe in God and heaven. People who believe in God have access, whether they use it or not, to what I call an "inspired morality." In other words, they believe that there is a goodness that cannot be easily understood by humans, but which can be accessed and strived toward. If one does not believe in God, one can only envision the factual day to day goodness that one observes by being a secular moralist as being "as good as it gets." People who believe in God believe there is a greater goodness possible to humans than they might be able to picture in the moment of their day to day, and thus have the potential to stretch to a greater goodness during life than do moral atheists, who are confined by mundane examples of morality and goodness.

Here is an art analogy.

Many people admire Vermeer because of his inspired use of lighting in his paintings. I've seen some of his paintings in person and they are extraordinary. The more one looks at his paintings, the more one wonders how he could get the lighting just so right and so inspiring. So let us use the talent of Vermeer in painting his lighting and illumination as being an analogy of a painter who believes in God.

So a painter comes along and does not believe in God, so he paints with equal talent of color and brushstroke as Vermeer, and he copies each painting, but does not include the technique approach to lighting that Vermeer uses. In other words, the painter paints the same scenes, but uses the standard approach to illumination that every other painter uses. He then says that his painting is as good as Vermeer's.

The painting may be just as good, and it may sell for the same amount of money, or be displayed in the same art galleries with distinction. However, without the inspiration, the non God believing painter does not create a legend that inspires and wonders, uplifting the observer, through the ages, as Vermeer has done. That is the difference between a "moral atheist" and a moral believer in God. The moral believer in God is open to the mystery and optimism that something even better exists, both after life and, in extraordinary circumstances, within daily mundane life itself. The classic example is that it was believers who ultimately denounced and overthrew slavery, something that could not even be imagined by a "moral atheist," since entire empire and country economies relied on slavery. No one could envision life without slavery, except through God's inspiration to imagine the unimaginably good.

That's why atheists annoy me but mostly I view them as people who are like color blind people, to use an analogy, that they just can't see some wavelengths of color, but in this case are wavelengths of inspiration potential. Sure, many religious people don't either, but if a religious person believes in God, they would be shocked if, for example, God spoke to them, but they would not be blind to its happening, since belief in God broadens the "wavelengths" of inspiration that one could potentially receive. When believers pray, that is what they are doing, they are believing that they are connecting with something that is good beyond their imagining.

So fine, I say, be happy that you, the "moral atheist" can paint a Vermeer but without his lighting. That's cool. But it is not intellectually correct to say that you are "as good" a painter as Vermeer, if you do not recognize or be able to perform his hallmark legendary technique of lighting.

(Do a Google image search for "Milkmaid" and "Vermeer" and feast your eyes on a truly luminous example of great art.)