Understanding God: creation & control

The whole idea that God existed before anything else (he is outside of and indeed the creator of space, time, energy and matter) and that he has always existed (there is no "before God") and will always exist is difficult enough for humans to understand. Closely related to this reality about God is the difficulty in understanding how exactly God is the Creator and also how he is always in control. I've thought of a simple typical experience that everyone has seen, which can help to understand by putting one in the right mindset.

Think back to a time when you have opened the window on a warm day, and a breeze blows into the window, stirring and moving the curtains. Well, the first step to understanding God is realizing that God is not standing there waving the curtains back and forth for you.

LOL! I know you are saying, well, I never thought that he was! Yes, but the misdirected human understanding of God is not too far from thinking that. The idea that "everything" has a message (from God or "someone else," like a deceased loved one or a "spirit") is only one step away from thinking that God is standing there and it is his "control" that makes the curtains move back and forth in the breeze.

Why is there this confusion? People get confused with three aspects of God's power: 1) his being the Creator 2) his being "in control" and 3) everything that happens is "God's will." This is why I realized this simple analogy will help you to understand each of these three aspects of God's power.

God created the universe, including everything in it, such as the sun which provides the warm day, the earth and the humans upon it, the weather, and thus the wind that moves the curtains. During God's creation God maintains total control over all that is created, and being All Knowing, God perfects his creation so that it continues to develop and function the way he intended. Thus God is in control because he shaped the material of his creation so that it has natural law and forces that support ongoing existence (such as atomic structures, the movement of light, the existence of mass and gravity, the effects of rotation and so forth). This is why the curtains move and God does not have to stand there and invisibly make them flap back and forth for you, ha. The curtains move because God created the materials and the forces (nature laws) of the structure of the universe and then he let them go. It's not like God has to "try it out," because remember, he is All Knowing. When God declared in the Bible that his creation is "good," that is what he meant, that he created all that the universe (and life within it) needed for it to now run on its own.

So when you heat a pot of water over an open fire, God is not having to rub the water molecules together for you so that the water becomes warm and then hot, any more than God is having to combust each of the molecules of the wood so that it would burn. Water heats over a flame because God created the infrastructure and the natural forces that would be "good," as in effective and self sustaining. Another example, gravity works not because God has to put his hand over each object and person and hold them down onto the earth, ha.

Back to our example, God created and controls the waving of the curtain in the breeze because God created time, matter and energy, and thus the forces that align and motivate them in predictable behavior of physics and science. So God created the "raw materials" for the waving of the curtain (the sun, the earth, fibers and wood, people smart enough to build houses with windows and curtains, weather including the development of wind when the temperature and pressure gradients are right, etc). When we say that God is in control, what we should mean is that everything he put into place is functioning authentically and predictably, just as it should. I've written about this before in the blog but just to remind you, an unforeseen and tragic automobile accident where there is a loss of life is in God's control not because God reaches out and pushes one car into another, but because God created a universe where if two heavy objects collide the materials within react according to physics in a predictable way.

Now that you understand, at least on a gut level, through these simple examples, how God 1) creates and 2) controls (to put it simply, he creates the raw materials and the "rules" by which creation continues onward and interacts within itself) you can better understand the levels at which something is God's will. Let's start with returning to the open window with the warm breeze that waves the curtains.

It was God's will that he decided to create a universe in the first place. It is God's will that he created in the way that he did, that it is stable and consistent, but with growth, change and movement. It is God's will that living beings will find what they need to sustain life (such as light, warmth and air). It is God's will that some beings, humans mostly but some animals too, are smart enough to shape their own dwellings. It is God's will that humans benefit from wise decisions (seeking shelter in their dwellings when weather is harsh), but it is also God's will that the power of bad weather, for example, does not suddenly halt and become benign whenever someone makes a bad decision (such as taking a boat out into the stormy seas, and remember, Jesus had to miraculously intervene when the Apostles were set upon by a storm at sea). So it is God's will that all in all, he very very VERY rarely upends and overturns the laws by which the universe of time, energy and matter operates in order to miraculously sustain someone in a bad situation, of their making or not (such as a natural disaster). It is further God's will that humans (and animals) feel pleasure, including aesthetics, in life. Thus it is God's will that the warm breeze feels good, the sun uplifts one's spirit, and the waving of the curtain in the breeze feels homey and aesthetically pleasing. Likewise, if one misjudges and makes an error (such as putting a fragile vase in front of an open window with a strong breeze, and it is knocked down), it is God's will that oops, natural forces continue to work as expected. God neither knocks down the vase nor "makes you feel bad," but that is the natural outcome of the small actions in life as time, energy, matter and human free choice interact.

So when someone devout says, usually after a sad event or loss, that it is "God's will," that is actually not a simplistic observation. It is, rather, the wise summation of the creative, by God, the controlling, by God, and free choice, by humans or by happenstance, outcome for all of the above to exist at all as a result of God's will. Yes, then, when a person dies, his or her "time had come" and it is "God's will," but the slippery slope is that one must not imagine that God is pushing some baby into a swimming pool, or cramming one car into another, or "giving" a person cancer, etc. God created all those materials, energies and potentialities (according to free choice and situations) and it is his will that with very rare exceptions, the rewards or the consequences naturally result. What do I mean by potentialities? Well, I blogged about one example before, which is being around potentially cancer causing smoke. It's not like God has to, nor is it in his nature, to reach inside someone and "give" them "cancer." Further, God does not make a person crave smoking cigarettes. All those potentialities are a matter of chemistry, physics, human genetics and human free choice. It is God's will that life has limitations and dangers, but it is also God's will that humans can seek ways to maximize the benefits of well being. Water is great, and swimming is great, but lack of a fence and a watchful parent over a baby near water is unwise. Likewise tobacco might be pleasurable to smoke in a cigarette but the problem develops when it is done to excess and becomes a habit that stimulates potential cancer in one's self or second hand in others.

So when a person mourns that the loss of a loved one is "God's will," that person is being pious and correct if they realize, as most have done so before these past few generations, that the life that one is given is unpredictable, that life is robust and forgiving while at the same time fragile and subject to defect, and that it is indeed the person's "time" because God will not intervene (except in those rare miraculous circumstances) when the known factors of a person's potential demise intersect. An example of an intersection is 1) smoking to excess 2) being of weak health or prone to easy damage 3) unable or unwilling to receive treatment. God does not 1) make the person smoke to excess 2) "give" him or her bad genes or 3) deprive them of treatment or give them a negative and bad attitude about available treatment. You see what I mean?

Moderns have become, for reasons I've discussed before 1) paranoid 2) narcissistic 3) excessively "magical" thinking and 4) disbelieving in the ultimate goodness of God and God alone. Thus there has been (and I pray that this is changing) an increasing obsession that somehow long life and wonderfulness has been guaranteed to everyone (and some of that is the "deeds" over grace error of thought) and that when an intersection of natural law and situations/human choices occurs that God (or "alien" or "other" forces) have "singled out" a person or group for hardship. That's not only wrong but it's dangerous because one then discards not only authentic belief in God but one also discards common sense and proper survival instincts and thinking.

Imagine if someone actually thought that when he opened the window and the sun shone and the breeze blew and the curtains waved that God was just standing there, waving that big peacock feather fan at him, turning on the tanning lamp and just giving him his own personal spa treatment. You'd think that person was crazy, right? Well, as I said, unfortunately many people have gotten on that slippery slope as they should have known better and worse, raised their children or taught their students that entire warped mindset. Thus many young people are paranoid and narcissistic because they feel so manipulated and at the behest of an arbitrary world filled with "unfairness" and "forces" that must be appeased/controlled! By the way, when I say "unfairness" I mean "not fair" by some human standard; I don't mean unjust because then I'd be in total agreement: the world is filled with human injustice and unrighteousness. But the word "fair" in popular thought (separate from political or legal thought) has come to mean that one's life seems disproportionate to one's expectations, and thus subject to some mysterious dispensation of favor or punishment. That kind of thinking results in attitudes such as, just for an easy example, that the life providing process by which a human body makes and stores fat is somehow bad and must be tamed. Um, no one would be alive if the body could not make and store fat, duh. But this paranoid separation from reality (both faith reality and secular reality) results in some messed up thinking.

I yearn for the time when people understood this, as they all did, prior to the last fifty years or so (with a few lunatic exceptions, of course, none of whom I need to name here).

Anyway, rather than get into that whole mess (again) in discussion, I'd rather leave you with this hopefully helpful simple analogy for understanding how God does indeed create, control and exert his will.

A few gentle thoughts re: heaven/the universe

I've had an image that is somewhat gentle and sweet that I want to share with you as yet another way of understanding the explanations I've given you about what heaven's like. This also ties in with my recent discussion of genuine awe being reserved for God, but legitimate awe can also include marveling at the natural wonders, such as earth, space, the universe, of God's creation.



God created the universe, and it is exactly as it appears. The more that humans develop telescopes and other scientific equipment, the more can be seen about the universe, marveled at and measured, studied and better understood. I have noticed that those who study the universe as a profession tend to have a strong sense of aesthetics too, for they really enjoy and marvel at photos of outer space, or of earth as seen from space, and want to look farther outward and thus backwards in age. So the wonder of space is genuinely felt by the workers in that profession.



There's a slight temptation associated with studying anything, whether it is a small device or a large natural feature. Familiarity breeds contempt as the saying goes, and I'm not saying it is that strong, but the temptation is that the more one thinks one has collected information, the more one is tempted to feel that the topic (and unconsciously, the thing itself) is "understood" by you and hence somewhat "under your control." Let me give an example. The more one is able to photograph a remote and dim region of the universe, the more the person tends to forget that no one will ever go there. Scientists and other space fans can look at a million photographs of a galaxy that is 200 light years away, for a example, and start to feel that the galaxy itself is "at hand" as much as the photographs are in their actual hands. That is something of a flaw or, rather, an affectation (not affection, but affectation, a presumption) of human thinking. They lose their appropriate awe because familiarity has bred contempt. They now start thinking they can imagine "what it would be like" in that galaxy, just because they have collected some data. They confuse scientific speculation with familiarity. They forget that no human will ever visit distant parts of space, and likely not even venture outside of the solar system itself. Why? Because of the inherent limitations of human physical ability combined with the simple physics and lack of time that humanity can expect per generation. See all my previous lifespan discussion. The universe, indeed the solar system, is simply too vast to ever be explored by humans. Imagining otherwise and taking photographs and making plans simply does not "make it so."



So one can and one must have appropriate awe about the universe, and enjoy it, study it, and even explore the parts that one is able to, in safe, logical and proportionate ways. But the bottom line of reality that everyone must always maintain is awareness that 1) no matter how much you collect "data" it's not the same as assuming you have any genuine insight and 2) it is simply too vast to ever be traveled.



Having said that, follow this analogy with me. As wonderful as the universe is, it is still a created thing, a thing that was created by God. Heaven too is a created thing, but there is a huge difference. Heaven was created by God to be inhabited by his companions, the angels, and the souls of humans who are brought there upon their death if they are believers and they are just and righteous, and heaven does not have matter, energy or the passing of time. The universe was created to be the framing, the infrastructure for life, and human life is all that any human has to really think about, and thus it was created in order to support a system made of matter, energy and time. So on the one hand you have the heavenly realm that was created to support matter-less, energy-less and time-less beings (and is God's natural abode, though he is of course everywhere too), while on the other hand you have the universe that was created to support matter-based, energy-based and time-based beings and objects (people and rocks, e.g.)



So here is my analogy and image. Imagine in one hand a really cool and beautiful piece of plastic. Let's say that it's a pretty, super lightweight and durable object, very high tech and fun to look at and to use. Now, picture the same object in your other hand but made out of solid gold. Here is the bottom line:



Even the most awesome sight that one sees in the universe, peering out into space using the Hubble telescope or whatever, is like seeing really impressive plastic. Ultimately even the largest supernova, the biggest galaxy, the oldest stars, the most mystical appearing nebula or clouds of gas, they are all like marvelous and very useful plastic, plastic that was created by God to be useful and to support existence that is based on matter, energy and time.



One can marvel at how well God created something so good that it is perfect for its niche, its niche being the place where objects and life that rely on having matter, energy and time can and do exist.



But heaven, ah heaven, is so far beyond even the most wonderful sights of the universe that it must be compared to being made of gold, but gold that is not even of matter or light. That is what St. John tried to describe seeing in the Book of Revelation, but here I'm just using it as an analogy to help you imagine the distance between appropriate awe of the universe and appropriate awe of heaven. Not only is heaven of, in this analogy, a much finer material, wrought by God of gold while the universe is wrought by God of really cool plastic, but the beings that exist in heaven exist totally on God's presence: they do not have matter, they do not have energy, they do not exist within any structure of time itself.



So heaven is like a sheet of gold yet it's gold that has no atomic structure, and thus no matter or material existence, no energy, and thus it is not "mental" or "light" or "spirit beams" based, and there is no thread or sequence of time (that is the most difficult for humans to understand), so things do not come into being, or arrive in heaven, and then experience elapsed time. Heaven's eternity is not endless time, it is the absence of time in total and at all. Time will only become relevant again when at the Second Coming bodies are raised and a new place that does have something akin to matter, energy and time is created for those who are saved and who live in the Lord's presence. Regular heaven, however, has no matter, energy or experience of time, not because people are so happy that they are oblivious to time, but because time does not exist as a concept or a reality in heaven.



So no matter how marvelous anything is that one observes in the universe, from the subatomic to the intergalactic, remember that it is still a place that was created to be utilitarian, to provide a use, which is to support in a good way (as all of God's creation is good) objects and living creatures (humans, animals and plants) that are composed of matter, energy and time. Thus it is appropriate to be awed at God's creation and the complexity of life and matter and energy that it supports, all of which have limits to their existence. That's why a really cool plastic item explains it well, since it has a purpose, even if it is only visual or supportive.



However, one can't start thinking one can imagine what heaven is like by looking into outer space, or by smashing atomic particles and looking at the bits. That's because heaven simply does not exist in either matter, energy or time format at all. God, the angels and those who are the dearly departed who are saved and find themselves in God's presence after death are not to be found within structures, no matter how large or small, that are material, energy and/or time based. There is no "God particle" and there are no "angels" in stars. There are no "hidden" dimensions or "multiple universes" (sorry scientists and science fiction writers!) God created and natural laws put into place by God rule all that is needed to support matter, energy and time on the one hand, the one universe, and all that is need to support non-matter, non-energy and non-time, subsisting only on God's actual presence, on the other hand.



That, by the way, is why hell is so terrible. Those who are cast into hell still experience the effects of time, matter and energy, even though they are no longer in the universe. Those in heaven do not experience time, matter or energy; they only experience the complete fulfillment of God.



I hope that you have found this helpful.



(hi young people! just a quick shout out...)

More about understanding God

So here are some thoughts as helpful follow up to what you read previously about understanding and explaining God's All Knowingness.

If you really understood the imagery regarding God's All Knowingness that I used in order to describe God, and really work with the comprehension and illumination it provides, you should have two simultaneous reactions. One is to be completely boggled by the awesomeness and completeness of God. When you understand that he simultaneously and at all times knows all that there is to know, including the history through eternity of even the smallest quantity of vacuum, nothingness, in the universe, and all that could ever befall it, you have to be totally boggled by the immensity, perfection and completion of God. However, you should also have a simultaneous feeling of "click," of a light bulb lighting, of dawning understanding, a relief that you finally "get" what God is really all about. At the same time that God is revealed as truly all that ever can be or will be, to a level of detail and completion that no angel or human can understand, you should also feel that at last you DO understand a very important part of God, and thus he is, in an almost paradoxical way, more approachable to you personally.

By chipping off this individual insight about God, really understanding his All Knowingness, you receive cascading benefits of illumination and comprehension about him. For one, you lose that mindless, amorphous, fuzzy wuzzy temptation to believe that he's a name, a personification, given to some "universal force." That, you now understand, is total rubbish, because God is the creator and outside of the universe itself, and so the universe's matter and "energy forces" cannot at all be compared to him, and also you realize that any "energy forces" that do exist, and are not bogus human imaginings, fall under God's creative actions and his control anyway. Secondly, you realize that God is indeed a "person" and not some goopy syrup of "vibes" or "energy." God is not a name given to forces that just kind of churn around in a mosh pit of "energy" and "vibrations"... God is a personage, someone who is totally mindful and in control of all that was and ever will be.

By understanding the extraordinary and indescribable scope of God's All Knowingness, you also understand that God can be described as having three basic "activities," very broadly speaking. Again, I'm trying to help by putting them in human context. One is that God creates and then lets creation (and subsequent maintenance and ongoingness of his creation) proceed according to natural laws he has put into place, such as gravity, biology, geology, etc all reveal. So God creates and when he creates he also creates the natural laws that then are the ongoing mechanisms put into place. An obvious example is reproduction, where after creating life, the natural laws and processes that God has put into place allows plant and animal species to reproduce on their own: God does not have to intervene.

The second "activity" that God "spends time doing" is, thus, intervention. God rarely intervenes in the way that most of you think about, such as miracles, smiting evil doers, and/or temporarily suspending natural laws. However, God is constantly intervening in two ways. God is constantly available to have a relationship with any individual person and will respond to prayers, though not always in a way that one expects or can perceive. God is also constantly working on the heart and soul of every person, even those who hate him, through the presence and invitation of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is always there, moving among even the most arid and hateful of people and communities, and even among the worse sinners, trying to reach them and bring them back to genuine humanity, charity, self respect, and relationship with God. This is why you cannot really claim a faith or religion is either "unfair" or "the only way" because its believers believe that only through their rites etc will they be saved by God or whatever. In many ways it is a moot point because God does seek individual relationship and the Holy Spirit does indeed move even in Communist atheist countries, as we have seen in history. However, one must always, as I've boggled before, seek the truth, not the "right" or "best" "faith." If you seek the truth you find it, because God is the truth. False religions and faith put a checkered flag in front of you too soon, so that you think you have found the "right" or "best" "faith," before you have really completed (or even sincerely started) the search and discernment of the truth about God.

For example, it became an anti-establishment fad in the 1960's and continuing today to rebel against the "irrelevant" and "boring" and "hypocritical" faith of one's parents. Now, I'm speaking of the mainstream monotheistic faiths, primarily Judaism and Christianity. Islam has thus far not suffered from the throwing away of the parents' faith by the children just because the children want to sin and feel all grown up and rebel "against the machine" of religion. But for forty years Jewish kids and Christian kids grew up to be denomination switching, converting, God denying, or pagan faith pursuing rebels who think they are smarter than their boring and sheep like parents. Ooops. Why is that an ooops? This is where God's All Knowingness is so important to understand.

How can any one person decide to rebel or religion "shop" if they really understood God's All Knowingness first? One really has to come to know God within one's own family mainstream and orthodox faith FIRST before becoming any sort of religion critic. This is because all the mainstream, orthodox Monotheistic faiths are founded on truths of communication between the one true God and his people, which is why they are described as the offsprings of Abraham. Here's a modern analogy. Suppose you really want to get to know all about a celebrity who you admire. But you decide to throw away thousands of years of dialogue that your ancestors have had with this celebrity, because you want to find the place where you supposedly can really get to know him. I mean, think about it, that's so absurd. But that is what two to three generations of rebellious religion "shoppers" have done, and are still doing.

So when you understand God's All Knowingness and perfection of totality and completeness, and you understand both his creation/let it be role and his role of personal intervention, you realize that the Bible, the Qur'an, and the writings of many orthodox rabbis throughout history is actual records of that "celebrity" that you want to know: and your parents' mainstream faith records their share of understanding the actual God. You should fully respect and immerse yourself in your mainstream orthodox Jewish, Christian and Muslim faith first before seeking "additional" information and most certainly before diving into the rites of other faiths. I mean, if you don't understand the full purpose and relationship of your own faith first, how do you recognize, supposedly, a "better" faith? Duh. :-)

And finally, by understanding God's All Knowingness, you understand the third activity that God engages in which is to be in fellowship with the angels, the humans, and all creation. I don't mean this in the fuzzy wuzzy "they are all one in the ether" kind of creepy New Age thinking. I mean God, as a personage, "hangs out" with the angels, with humans, and with the living things, and the inorganic things, of the universe. It's one of the first things humans learn about God, what God is "like," in the Book of Genesis in the Bible, that God would walk in the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve, in the coolness of the evening. [God doesn't get too "hot" or "cold" so one is supposed to understand that God is hanging out with Adam and Eve at the time of day they would most enjoy, doing what many humans do, which is to walk around the yard, or the garden, or sit on the porch, at the end of day.] This is how we know, in addition to other scriptural references, that God spends much of his "time" just being in companionship with the beings he created, and the places that he created.

Just to wrap up this segment of posting about understanding God's All Knowingness, here is another insight that such analogies and knowledge about God should be giving you. Now you understand how even non-believers and people who do some pretty bad things can feel "blessed" and have what they think are "good lives," because while they are alive, they are swept along on the tide of goodness that God has set into motion for everyone. In other words, the rats benefit from being on the good ship. But when the ship goes aground, as it must someday do, either on an individual basis, or a culture or a nation, or totally, at the End of Time, or at a person's death and individual judgment, they realize they were riding the coattails of God's overall blessings and providence, but were doing so as rats rather than good stewards and believers. When one understands God's All Knowingness, you better understand why it seems that bad people get away with a lot, and even have "good lives," but they do not, as God knows the actions of every particle or vacuum that ever was or could be. Their judgment will be full and complete, when it is their time.

However, in this blogging I want to keep you focused on the joyful search for understanding the true God as he has already repeatedly revealed himself as he alone chooses to, so I don't want to close with just that warning above. Those of you who believe in God, or who were deprived of faith, or given false examples to follow, will benefit greatly by taking the first step of understanding that God is truly All Knowing and in control, in the ways that I've described above, as explained in Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy scripture. When an auto accident happens, God is in control because he established the laws of physics where energy and matter react, and humans decide if their use is for goodness or for not so good. Also, humans are flawed vessels, through both their physical limitations and their ignorance or vanity, so they cannot expect to live within a universe of natural laws but act like they are superhuman beings. Every child figures that out when he or she first decides he or she is like superman and then jumps off their garage (a childhood friend of mine did that and got the expected broken leg). Adults need to understand that God is in control through the natural laws he established in his creation, but that adults should not be puffed up about their role. Where they should feel pride is as St. Paul described, pride in Jesus Christ, pride in being brought to God within Jesus Christ, not through their own works or their imagined superhuman powers.

Rather, one needs to have comfort and consolation and understanding that even as God Knows All, he still desires and puts forth the Holy Spirit to help in this, fellowship and parenthood of all humans, bringing them, those that are worthy and just, into the companionship where God is all the time, which are the angels in heaven. God wants to walk with each human in what remains of the Garden on earth, but he will only do so if you truly seek him, not a fraud. God knows every particle and every non-particle that ever was and ever could be... if you understand that and come to accept that knowledge joyfully, that becomes a key part of your foundation of faith and trust in God. I've observed that humans find it difficult to trust God and have faith in him in large part because they continue to not understand the full dimensions of his All Knowingness, and the categories of his involvement, as I've described here. Evangelicals often leap too quickly into telling people to trust God without helping their followers to understand the fullness of God's "dimensions" and thus his trustworthiness. That is why the prophets before Jesus, and then culminating in Jesus himself, performed awesome miracles, as through observation of those powers that could only be God given, people mutually trusted the prophets but also grew in their trust of God, knowing intuitively how only the All Knowing can do those miraculous things that they saw.

I hope you have found this helpful and a special hello, as always, to the young people out there.

Understanding God: little look at big picture

How to say a few words about the gigantic subject of why God has chosen to allow humans to know him in the way that he has. In other words, many wonder why things have gone the way they have in getting to know God, rather than perhaps God imposing more of his presence on everyone in the world simultaneously. So here goes, but to keep this reasonably short and sweet, a few points to ponder rather than discourse.

1. God did introduce himself to everyone in the world, since he created Adam as first man, Eve as first woman, and they not only knew who God was but he was physically present in a form with them in Eden. We know this because they heard God's footsteps as he walked in the Garden in the cool of the evening, so God took a human form to interact with them face to face. (No, this does not mean that "all of God" is thus inserted into a human form. God IS everything, both visible and invisible, so he can't take all of himself away from heaven and the universe and stick his entirety into one place and not still be everywhere else. It never occurred to me to have to explain that until I came across people who actually thought that, particularly regarding Jesus. Pagans have a mental block with this, since they imagine their mythical and bogus gods to be able to move their position in a godlike way, appearing here and there, but when they are "there" they are only there. Pagan gods are by definition false since their believers do not acknowledge that the one true God can only be all encompassing and everywhere at the same time, since life and time do not exist outside of him. Thus God manifests in angelic or Theophany form, but that's an image of him, not his totality of spirit by any stretch of the imagination). So God did do the logical thing, which is to create a perfect place on earth where the first man and woman can know him and be companions to him.

2. Thus, even when they disobeyed God and were put out of Eden, they of course retained knowledge of God and a relationship with him. We know this because their sons, Cain and Abel, knew how to make offerings to God and received direct feedback from God on how worthy (or not) their offerings were. So God continues to speak with all the people of earth at the same time through Adam and Eve, their children, and the extended families that these children married into and beget on their own. Thus God continues in dialogue and relationship with each growing generation after Adam and Eve.

3. Now, as I discussed, at the same time as God is the creator of all that exists, both seen (earth and the universe) and unseen (heaven) in a physical way, God is also the creator in a spiritual way. Understanding God's role in the physical realm is like one lens in your pair of glasses, while understanding God's role in the spiritual (faith) realm is like the other lens in your pair of glasses. You need to look through them both at the same time, in a balanced way, to have a full and correct view. So it is alright for some of the faithful to be totally comfortable with Adam and Eve being literally the first humans created directly from dust by God, while others of the faithful believe that God created all that exists, including Adam and Eve, but that they are the beginning of "faith history," the "faith parents," not the only two human beings that exist in the beginning of humanity. Why do we know it is OK to have either view and still be faithful to God's word in scripture? Because if it were not OK to understand that other humans come into existence, God would have explained where the spouses of Adam and Eve's children came from. So it is not unfaithful to God's word in scripture to believe that Adam and Eve are either or both the actual biological parents of all human beings or they are the faith parents of all human beings, since they are the first and only that God chose to make himself known to.

The whole debate about evolution or creation, seven twenty-four hour days or millions-of-years God-days is really a diversion from faith, rather than faith affirming, because it is trying to textbook scripture into a "how did God actually do it, molecule by molecule" attempt that hinders rather than strengthens faith. I know that many in good faith feel the opposite, that they are somehow being disloyal to scripture if they believe that God had other people alive soon after Adam and Eve's creation, or that God may have used his own definition of a "day" during creation, rather than an earth-solar day. But again, if you really have faith in the scripture, which 1) states that the children of Adam and Eve married real people and had real children and 2) which states that God created the animals and the plants, but does not give details about his exact process, but extols Adam's naming and stewardship of them, you have to recognize that God used visible processes that humans can later discover, study, name, ponder and so forth as they collect knowledge (knowledge being one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, by the way).

Adam and Eve got into trouble because they sought the wrong knowledge, knowledge that would be used, they hoped, to be like God. So there is nothing wrong with knowledge (in fact, God teaches them how to create clothes from animal skins once they had their fall and had shame over nakedness in his sight). God expects humans to study nature and ponder how God made things work and ponder their wonder. There is a lengthy discourse by God in the scriptures (I'll let you look it up, LOL) where when he chastises humans and puts them in their place, he recounts the qualities of various animals that he, not humans, created, and the forces of nature that he, not humans, create and command. That is "good" knowledge, to understand (another gift of the Holy Spirit) the world around you, both geological and life forms, and the processes like weather... but the "bad" knowledge is to 1) think humans created it 2) that humans or idols control it, and not God and 3) to use that knowledge to be bad rather than good stewards, or to be unjust rather than just. So people of faith need to have faith that they are not "letting God down" or being "disloyal to his word" if they acknowledge that they do not fully understand how, or even why, God rendered creation as he did, using the time frames and processes that he created, ordained and commanded.

4. So now you start to understand why so much of Genesis is genealogy, with lists of who begot who. It is not just the list of proud parents and sons, but it is also a list of the humans and their families who keep in touch with God, who preserve the knowledge and dialogue initiated with Adam and Eve and their children. This is why it is called "faith history" in addition to "secular history." It is regular human history in that it lists events and places, but it is also faith history because it lists those who continued to know God and pass that knowledge and access to him through worship from generation to generation.

5. As I discussed in a recent blog, the early descendants of Adam and Eve met humans who, being from actual cities and their equivalent of "advanced civilization", seemed wondrous and they intermarried. We can understand that human nature is the same from the beginning to today. Some of the descendants of Adam and Eve would marry and bring their spouses into the faith, and knowledge of God, while others would marry and drift away, settling in distant places (which in those days could have been as short a distance as fifty miles) and not take their faith with them, and instead adapt to the local pagan beliefs and mythologies.

You see that same behavior on a micro scale every day in each family. Children in families that are religious move away, marry, and may change faith, lose faith, or transmit their faith to others. This is what happened, since humans are humans and God has given them free will, to the descendants of Adam and Eve. This is why a core of people retained the knowledge of God as he introduced himself to them, while others melded into the local pagan beliefs and mythologies.

6. This is where one must have faith and admire, rather than be disturbed, that God did not chase after every human being and demand that they know the one and only true him. Why is that reassuring rather than worrisome? Well, for many reasons. But the bottom line is this. Human beings will continue to exist and thrive only if they live in a truth based world, one that is genuine reality and honesty. The core of truthfulness and reality is realization of God's existence and his control of all that is and ever will be. Understanding humanity and understanding God are the most basic survival needs for the human species to continue living, say nothing of salvation after death. When humans start to deny God, it is the first warning sign that they will not thrive, and indeed could self destruct, very soon thereafter. This is not because God will smite them for not believing in him (as you can see, he lets regimes that deny him come and go, such as Communism). It is because when humans start to deny reality in the form of God, they will then start to engage in other self destructive behavior that is counter to reality as it really exists. Humans who live outside of truth and reality rapidly decay and fall apart, both individually and socially. We see much of that happening now. So God allows free choice (as he did when he created the angels and some decided not to serve and obey him, and hence fell from heaven) because free choice IS reality. God always opts for truthfulness and authenticity. If he wanted cool titanium robots he would have made them. He didn't. He made angels and he made human beings and they both have the ability to make a choice to believe and serve or not. The angels that fell believe God, obviously, since they were there in heaven with him and thus knew "how he did it," but they would not serve. Humans have to believe and choose to serve if they are to acknowledge truth and reality. It really is as simple as that.

7. Because God loves his creations, humans, who he considers, as the scriptures say, adopted children (and there is all sorts of cultural nuance in the esteem of those Biblical times for foster or adopted children, but rather than get into detail, scripture presents God's love as such to make clear that God is not false like the pagan gods, who presumably have biological children and so forth... God thus calls humans his adopted or foster children when he wants to be precise about that)....because God loves his children, even if they leave him and no longer believe, God has put in place a fail safe mechanism, LOL, or, a beacon, or a homing device, or a longing... or an emergency cell phone, whatever image you prefer, in their soul... a longing to know him. That is the movement of the Holy Spirit.

8. The Holy Spirit moves constantly among all individual human beings, and gatherings of them, whether near or afar, believers or not, stirring them to the desire to know the truth and to reach for that which is higher and the only genuine goodness that exists, that being God and a relationship with him. It is the Holy Spirit that maintains that yearning in people even through the spiritual aridity of living under God-denying tyrants and despots, of pagan rulership, or of people who drift away from knowledge of God and who have forgotten him and their faith history with him. It is that yearning, from the Holy Spirit, that results in societies and cultures developing respect for natural law and codes of conduct and humanity. It is the Holy Spirit who stirs among people who may develop a faith that is good intentioned but erroneous in theology, because the Holy Spirit is able to get at least a partial response that people want to be good to each other, and want both a more prosperous but also a more spiritual world.

I don't have the book in front of me now (probably in storage) but in one of the books, I think the series of books that interviewed Pope Benedict XVI before he was Pope, and he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, that he explains this in a very kind and insightful way that impressed me as I read it. I think he was being asked about other faiths, such as Buddhism and so forth, and why God would allow them to develop. The Pope explained, and here I am using my own words, that each faith that seeks belief in a higher power and spirituality and an inherent goodness among humans to each other is in a way, even obscurely or dimly, trying to reflect as in a mirror some level of acknowledgement of God through the work of the Holy Spirit.

So this is why as the growing multitudes of descendants of Adam and Eve populated the earth, just the core group, detailed generation by generation in the Bible, in the secular and faith history, maintained knowledge of the true God as he made himself known from the very beginning. However, you read in the Bible examples of where even pagan king, certain ones, had a open mindedness and even a longing for, and thus grew to respect and to worship, the God of the Israelites. Often that was through a demonstration of his power, as when God gifted Joseph with interpreting Pharaoh's dream. But there is no mistaking that there are examples in the Old Testament of where the demonstration of the true one God's power is the door opener, there is a yearning to understand the truth, a higher truth of God, that is like a slow growing seed, even among those who worshipped many idols and false gods.

9. So.... one of the questions, asked in jest sometimes but often in pain or puzzlement, by Jews is "why were we the Chosen People?" What I have detailed is why... because they are the lineage that through the generations of proliferating descendants of Adam and Eve, they have had consistent knowledge of the true one God, even when they were at their most disobedient. This is why I commented that the Jews know, at a gut level, God better than anyone. They have a continuity of God's constancy and eternal oneness and sameness through just about every possible variation of human history and challenge to their faith. This is why they were, Biblically, the Chosen People, because they have the unbroken continuity of knowing God as God first introduced himself to the first human beings.

10. To use a modern music term, Jews heard and hear the same song that is the true God, both plugged and unplugged.

11. However, God has always been consistent in stating that humans need and he will send the Savior, the Messiah. All of scripture points to the coming of Jesus Christ. God alone comprehends all of the perfection of his timing, that he sent Jesus when he did, where he did, to minister as he did, and to fulfill the scriptures and proclaim the New Covenant. This is, obviously, a huge topic of itself, but Jesus must be understood in the context of what I am explaining to you as being the refreshment, the renewal, of God's relationship to humans, beyond the tenuous, extreme minority of human population that were the descendants who have held fast to the continuity of the lineage of knowing God from the time of Adam and Eve to the then present. In the perfect timing that only God understands, since he is All Knowing, and knows all of what humans need, Jesus, who already existed in heaven as part of God himself eternal the beginning and the ever being of All, took human form in order to bring knowledge of God to all the world.

12. Previous to Jesus being born to humanity, humans knew God one of the two ways I have described. The first was through the lineage of those who recall and renew their relationship and service to God since Adam and Eve. The second was through those who seek God, in often very wrong or imperfect guises, but in honest response to the urgings of the Holy Spirit throughout the world. This is one reason that Jesus is given a title of the New Adam, not only because Jesus, corrects the great wrong of disobedience by Adam, but also because Jesus brings the face of God to all the world, as Adam first knew God in the Garden face to face. Jesus ministered only to the Jews, since Jesus was fulfillment of the Old Covenant with the Israelites and the bringing of the New Covenant to them... but it was obvious that Jesus was, as he said, the sign for all humankind. After his Resurrection and the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, God made it known that now the Gospel was to be preached to all. Jesus was like global email :-)

13. Now you might better understand what I have explained in previous blog postings about Islam. Descendants of Adam and Eve, and of Abraham, the Patriarch of what would become the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the forefathers of the Arabic people who would become Muslims were of that lineage who knew the true God, but who moved and settled at a distance from their brethren. This is all detailed in the Old Testament, but not what happened specifically to them, but we know through the obvious secular history that they settled among pagans in the area that is now Saudi Arabia. Thus they are a group of the many descendants who did not take the faith "along with them." That was not easy to do, since the Israelites were local patriarchs and eventually after the Exodus, a theocracy (religious rulership) on a very local basis, with the Ark and the Temple central. It's not like today where people could pack up their faith and believe in another neighborhood or country. So when people spread out to gain land for their growing families (and to avoid conflict), they could not really take their faith and remembrance with them. The Prophet (PBUH) reconnected those descendants back to the lineage of remembering and knowing the one true God, the God of Abraham, and also faithfully repeating the message and miracles of Jesus. Islam was born in order to plug those descendants of Adam and Eve back into the shared lineage of knowledge of the one true God.

To wrap up this little look at the big picture, one must, in honesty, admire and appreciate that God is no autocrat. God makes himself known as he really is, as he truthfully is, and is consistent and constant through the generations of human beings and indeed through the ages, since he is Eternal and Unchanging. He does not force humans into robotic or other artificial obedience since that is not his nature but more important than that, it is not the truth. Life and love is the truth, not coerced or enforced behavior, and God is the source of all life and love. Thus God provided a constancy of access to knowing him from the very beginning, and sent prophets among believers when they needed to correct the disobedience and straying of his people. Why does God punish, as we know he does, then? Because what he is punishing is denial of truth. Denying truth is, as I explained in the beginning of this commentary, not a useful survival trait for humanity. Disobedience to God is denial of truth, not God being arbitrary. For example, it's disobedient but also more to the point simply wrong, a lie, to worship an idol, a false god that simply does not exist, or the workings of human beings own hands. God punishes humans when they deny the truth because ultimately humans will destroy themselves (as they are most certainly doing now) by living amidst a fake world of lies. Denial of truth, constant lies and falseness are already destroying the livelihood, the sanity, the health, the morality, the ethics, and the decency of humanity... God dumping an asteroid onto the earth would just be the icing on the crumbling cake of what humanity is already doing to itself by denying truth in all arenas of life.

A species, human beings, cannot continue to thrive and/or survive in a world that they perceive in increasingly total falsehood. God already knows "how it will all turn out." More to the point, though, is to recognize that each saved soul is precious to God, just as each and every of the innumerable multitude of angels are known to him individually and loved by him, and as they serve God they share in his beatific vision of all that can and will be. Thus God will continue to be patient with generation after generation of unfaithful disbelievers because he loves and will save those, however few, that DO remain faithful to him and thus cognizant of the truth. I wrote not too long ago about the importance of not seeking the "best" or "right" faith, but seeking the truth, which will if honestly (and sanely) done will only lead you to the one true God who is truth and the source of all that is true. This is why humans can, and should, only marvel at the one true God, not the imaginings of human beings, who can in his perfection balance the giving of human beings the "free will" that they, like the angels in the beginning, craved and demanded, but will also draw a firm line in the sand about reality and the inevitable consequences of denying the truth and, thus, him.

Denying the truth of God is just like denying the truth in a secular life or death situation. If the bridge is out, broken over a raging river, it is not a survival strategy to deny the truth of the bridge being out and driving over it, and thus plunging to one's death, nonetheless. News story commenters often sardonically call that "Darwin at work," when someone does something incredibly stupid. It is the same with believing in the truth of how the world and the universe really works and of God's real presence. Disbelieving the truth means bad and stupid decisions that have their own consequences in the near term (as we see all over the world these days) AND, even if one evades outright denial of survival trait truths in life, when one dies one finds out the reality of God when it is too late to change what one has done in disobedience while alive. Again, it's not just because people "behaved bad" and God's "mad at them," but because disobedience to the God and denial of the truth is viral... disobedient believers and disbelievers don't just harm themselves but they harm others and lead others away from the truth. We see this on a massive scale today, one of the greatest perils facing young people today who have grown up in such hugely false times, knowing nothing different from fraud, fakery, poseurs, pride, denial and falsehood.

How difficult is that to understand? When Satan refused to serve he then got busy egging humans on to likewise not serve God. In a similar way, disbelievers and disobedient believers behave like mini-Satans, since their teachings, deeds and life examples are likewise intended to mislead others, leading them astray from God. That all ends badly, either by making life a lie and thus unbearable in either the short or the long term, or at the very end, when one finds that indeed God exists and he knows all that you have thought and done and has judged you upon your death.

The reassurance of God's constancy and ability to forgive anything (if sincere and immediate) should be of far greater comfort to humans than it is. Why is it not more reassuring? Because people have become somewhat addicted to uncertainty and falsehood, where even miserable lies are "better" than hopeful and good truths, in the minds of many.

In closing that line of thought, let's loop back to Adam. Think about how he dealt, poorly and thus fatally, with certainty and uncertainty. Adam embraced certainty, but only partially. He obviously believed in God, being face to face and taught by God, and thus he believed that the tree of knowledge had fruit that would give him some of God's knowledge. But here is what I mean by false love of uncertainty. God tells him not to eat the fruit of that tree. Eve, at the prompting of Satan, brings the apple to Adam. You must understand that in that moment Adam loved uncertainty, the "maybe" .... because obviously he thought, "Maybe I can get away with this." That is the horror of what modern humans are increasingly falling into. They have become in love with lies and uncertainty, and even denial of truth, since it plays to their weakness, which is pride. I mean, how dumb could Adam be? He believes God about everything, but then when offered the first chance to be uncertain about the truth of one specific thing that God says, he "bites." But far from being dumb, Adam is classic human being, where pride tempts a human to disbelieve the truth since he, or she, then thinks they control other "options." Then, like I gave the analogy above, people will drive over bridges that have fallen down, thinking that they have "options" rather than the humility of truth that the bridge has fallen down.

I hope that you have found this helpful.

How to use logic when understanding God

I demonstrated several blog postings ago that Jesus himself phrased some of his teachings in order for those who listened to him (and later, through the Gospel, read what he said) to understand and follow along with his statements through the use of human logic. Faith is great and the foundation of understanding God, but God also expects humans to use their brains and to be logical and intellectual about what he says and does. While listening to one of my favorite radio talk shows, mention was made of how God created humans in his image, as stated in the Book of Genesis. I realized that this would be a great example for me to demonstrate two uses of logic, in the form of deductive reasoning, that God is utilizing in explaining himself in scripture.

The first example is really obvious and demonstrates how you are using deductive reasoning to understand the scriptures when you read them, without even realizing it. Consider how we all know that angels were created by God before God created humans, even though that is not stated per se in the Bible. There are two kinds of people, those who trust their deductive reasoning, without even knowing they are using it, and those who don't trust their deductive reasoning, and therefore miss the point, think that there's some conspiracy or 'secret' information, or who simply fail to grasp facts when they are offered in that format. This is why the first example is very helpful to look at.

Genesis 1:1-13 describes how God created, in this order: light, darkness, day, night, heaven and then the earth. Heaven is not described at all, while earth is described (it has dry land, it has seas, it has vegetation produced from seeds, trees bear fruit according to their specific type of seed).

So our first fact, our first premise, is that heaven is created before the earth.

We have details about the life forms on earth, but nothing is said about life forms in heaven.

However, after God continues in his great creation, where he now creates the lights in the earth's sky, and the animals that live on earth, God now says:

Genesis 1:26 God said, "Let us make mankind in our image and likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, over all the wild animals and every creature that crawls on the earth."

Notice that God uses the word "us." Those who read the scripture with both faith and logic understand that God is referring to the angels who dwell in heaven with him when he says "us." Just because God does not detail anything about heaven, either its structure or its inhabitants, does not mean heaven is empty or that "us" means multiple gods, aliens, etc. God talks to humans in simple to understand truth. It is important to hear and receive what he says accordingly.

So the faithful are expected to use their brains, which is articulated through this simple logic.

1. Heaven is created before the earth.
2. Angels live with God in heaven, while humans live on earth.
3. Therefore angels were created before humans.

When you have an obviously accurate conclusion based on sound deductive reasoning, as demonstrated in this example, one still feels better when one "tests" the results of one's deduction with further confirming scripture.

Genesis 1:27 God created man in his image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them.

Now you can draw a second conclusion based on deductive reasoning.

1. God created Heaven.
2. Angels live in heaven with God.
3. God is speaking to other beings, known as "us."
4. Since humans have not yet been created, "us" refers to God and the angels.
5. God suggests making humans "in our image and likeness."
6. We can conclude that angels and God share the same or similar "image" and "likeness."
7. God created the angels.
8. We can conclude that God created angels in the sharing of God's image and likeness.

Again, those with simple faith and sound logic draw these conclusions based on deduction without even realizing it. This is because God gives all humans everything they need to know and understand him and what he is saying. People are not supposed to be combinations of Einstein and paranoid/rocket scientist/conspiracy theorists!

So we now know based on scripture and deductive reasoning that angels were created before human beings, and that angels were the first to share with God his image and likeness. God now suggests to the angels that God, when he creates humans, likewise creates them to share in the image and likeness now enjoyed by God and the angels.

By the way, the Qur'an spells out that the audience during God's creation of human beings is, indeed, the angels of heaven, who are already in existence before human beings are created.

Now we can use deductive reasoning to understand something a bit deeper about God, which is what exactly God means by humans sharing his image and likeness? It's not difficult to believe that angels, in their heavenly forms, share the luminous wonder, and often awe inspiring to the point of terror, magnificence and power in form of God, who is all light and glory. But how do mundane flesh based human beings "share" God's image and likeness? Here is how we can use some logic and deductive reasoning to understand this.

Genesis 1:28 Then God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it."

1. God's first orders to humans, therefore, are to be fruitful and multiply.
2. God gave these first orders immediately after his act of creation.
3. Therefore we can conclude that God considers humans to be the most in his likeness when they are being fruitful and multiplying.

Someone might raise, logically, two concerns. One is, "Hey, if angels are in his likeness, does that mean they procreate?" Angels do procreate, but not biologically. Angels procreate the Word of God, the Will of God, and praise of God. In the scripture we see that angels procreate by spreading the word when commissioned by God among humans (such as the Annunciation) AND they continually procreate in service of God when they continually sing and shout His praise in heaven. So humans are expected to procreate biologically to be consistent with the likeness of God, while angels procreate the Will of God to be consistent with the likeness of God.

The second concern might be that God is endorsing that humans be like him in being creators? Nope, that is a very clearly stated prohibition, when Adam and Eve are thrown out of the Garden of Eden and humans are told not to try to seek God's Knowledge. But here in this scripture you can understand the difference. Genesis explains that seeds create trees, and trees create fruit that is natural to them (fruit is their offspring). Thus it is obvious that God is telling humans to yield their own fruit-human children-by being "fruitful" and "multiplying," not being creators themselves, which is strictly forbidden in the telling of the temptation and expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Revelation 4:8 ...And they do not rest day and night, saying Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God almighty, who was, and who is, and who is coming.

Many joke, good heartedly, that heaven must get boring if one is just playing the harp and singing for all eternity! On the serious side, you must understand that the continual praise of God by the angels is their way of procreating His Word and His Will, and the saved humans who join them in heaven are now part of this work and this bliss.

Now, how can we use deductive reasoning in the scriptures to better understand how humans can share the same "image" as God, who is known to be awesome, blinding light that cannot be viewed by humans? Here is one way to understand it from the one who saw God's image close-up, the man who was Moses.

Exodus 33:18-23

Then Moses said, "Do let me see your glory!" He answered, "I will make all my beauty pass before you, and in your presence I will pronounce my name 'Lord'; I who show favors to whom I will, I who grant mercy to whom I will. But my face you cannot see, for no man sees me and still lives. Here," continued the Lord, "is a place near me where you shall station yourself on the rock. When my glory passes I will set you in the hollow of the rock and will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand, so that you may see my back; but my face is not to be seen."

What do we learn about something that God and humans share in their image? Both God and humans have a "front" and a "back." Humans have a biological front (where their sensory organs are concentrated on one side, such as eyes, ears, mouth and ease of touching and reach) while God has a spiritual "front," which represents the full force of his focus, which, as God explains, no human can endure and remain alive. However, Moses is given the grace and strength by God to be able to view the "back" of God, which is not biological, but, rather, the lesssening of God's full force of attention. So God has a "front" and a "back," which are not at all biological in format or in limitations to his ability to be uniformly everywhere and all powerful in all "directions" but, as humans mirror, the fullness of his attention and focus "front" being like the concentration of human sensory organs, and a deflected and less force of focus and attention being like God's "back" as he passes by Moses.

Notice that, however, God gives Moses an extra gift, an extraordinary grace, which no human has ever experienced in addition to the singular allowing to Moses alone of his viewing God in his glory: God pronounces his Name for Moses. Think of this as hearing God's voice pronouncing his Name of all Power as a small amount of what would have been his full front viewing presence of his full glory, which Moses nor no human could survive! Thus God allows Moses to see him the only way he can, which is his back in passing, but also with hearing God speak his name from His "front."

1. God shares his image with angels and humans.
2. Moses is the only human to see God in his full glory on earth.
3. God explains that he has a front and a back.
4. Therefore we understand that a key component of the shared image of God and humans is that there is a "side" that has full sensory focus and the other "side" which has less sensory focus.

Again, remember in God's case this is not a lack in any way regarding either his powers or how he "looks" but, rather, God creates his "front" when he presents himself in full glory, and God presents his "back" when he withholds some of his glory so that Moses can endure being in his presence.

The presence and image of God is so powerful that even when Moses stands in front of the Lord as he appears as the cloud, and not his full glory, Moses's "skin of his face had become radiant while he conversed with the Lord" Exodus 34:29. The face is on the "front" and so powerful is the presence of God that when Moses faces even the cloud of God, each time his face is made radiant by God's image. So we can further deduce from scripture that the ability to be radiant is another shared image between God and humans, except that again, as with the front and back, God is always radiant, while humans can become radiant only in God's presence.

I guess, thinking back about how God, has a "front" and a "back" (again, please keep in mind that these are not biologically but, rather, how God radiates the fullness of his glory and focus, or veils it) that, just to have a little whimsy and humor here, the fish the most like God must be the flounder!

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Another fine Islam commentary re creation

I always enjoy these commentaries in the Islam section of the Arab News. This one is about a passage in the Qur'an that is similar to the parts of the Bible that are Genesis, plus the Biblical admonition that God knows everyone before they are born. The focus of this commentary, though, is on the very interesting allegory about the two types of water.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=5&section=0&article=111480&d=7&m=7&y=2008&pix=islam.jpg&category=Islam

***
After reading this commentary I had just one additional thought. Not only does God reconcile the difference between fresh and salt water in its usage in the world, but also in humans' own body. The blood of humans has salt, yet the water that humans drink must be fresh.

Qur'an reading and commentary

Here is a reading from the Qur’an and a brief explanation.

Surah 14:32-33

Allah is He Who created the heavens and the earth and send down water from the clouds, then brought forth with it fruits as a sustenance for you, and He has made the ships subservient to you, that they might run their course in the sea by His command, and He has made the rivers subservient to you.

And He has made subservient to you the sun and the moon pursuing their courses, and He has made subservient to you the night and the day.

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The first verse is very straightforward and easy to understand. It is a beautiful imagery of how Allah created the goodness that humans benefit from. He created the heavens and the earth, and the waters that not only rain but also nourish the agriculture of the land, and provide a means for transportation. So this section reminds the reader that Allah created heaven and earth and describes the benefits of the water that falls from the sky and how Allah gives humans the intelligence and physical dexterity to use the rains and waters to drink, use in agriculture, and for transport that humans can control.

But one might be puzzled by the second verse where it is stated that Allah makes subservient to humans the sun and the moon, and the night and the day. How can that be? Humans do not physically control the skies or the length of the day, or the movement of the sun and moon. So what does this mean? The explanation is clear when you pay close attention to the linkage between the first verse and the second. Allah sends the rain (which man does not control) but it goes into predictable placements, that is, the sea and the rivers. Humans are given the means by Allah to control the waters by virtue that humans can build irrigation canals, built and sail ships, and manage the rivers through walls and other systems to create lakes and to change their course. So the end result of the God given water is that humans can control the output, the results of the God given rain. This is a deliberate lead-in for the second verse. Obviously humans do not decree that the sun moves here, the moon there, and the day and the night are of these lengths. God did that in the beginning. But God gave humans the gift of the light and heat of the sun, and the rest and coolness of the moon at night so that humans have the energy of the sun and the timing of the moon (the ability to tell time). So humans have control over the sun in that they understand when it appears and when crops can be planted and outdoor life (in this time before electricity) can be lived. The subservience means that sunlight, warmth and timing are understandable by humans and can be used at their will. Why would Allah use the word “subservience” though to mean “usable?” Would it not be clearer if Allah said, “Don’t forget I control the sun, the moon, the night and the day, but I let you benefit from the results?” Not really because that misses the point. Allah is pointing out the nature of his gift to humans so that they do not take it for granted. Suppose that Allah did not create the sun and moon to be “subservient” to humans. The sun might pop out for only three hours of sunlight and heat one day, disappear for two days so that people are in darkness for forty-eight hours, then the moon would suddenly appear and zoom across the sky, but not return when it was expected, and so forth. Humans would not be able to have clocks, grow crops that rely on sunshine, nor have regular routines of work and rest. So God makes the sun and moon “subservient to human’s needs.” Can anyone think of a better system than these three hundreds plus of days in the year, each divided into day (work) and night (rest), where by day the sun warms and plants grow while animals thrive, and in the night it cools and there is rest, except for the animals who thrive in the night? God did not establish the sun and the moon and the day and night cycles for the benefit of algae, or frogs, or camels, or birds, or tigers. They live within the cycle that was created and optimized by God for the benefit of humans, since God in his infinite wisdom knew that this system is the greatest health and spiritual benefit of humans to thrive. People like to read science fiction where other planets are near a big red sun or having different color moons zooming around, but trust me, people would not thrive there as they do in this “system” of days and night guided by the reliable and punctual movements of regularity of the sun and the moon. We know this much better in modern times as we see people with "SAD" (seasonal affective disorder) and depression when there is too much unnatural office lighting, not enough sleep and so forth. God "tuned" the sun and moon, day and night perfectly for human health and goodness and deviating from natural cycles causes many problems with illness and spiritual disorders.

This is the meaning of the passage. It is not “permission” to attempt to control other people through astrology and fortunetelling. When you read scriptures in the full context you do not make errors of thinking that God is giving some sort of hint as to extraordinary occult power that humans should seize and abuse. Far from it; his entire passage is a reminder of reasons to be grateful to God. This is obvious to the reader who reads the entire passage in context that this is instruction from Allah, not a series of hints about more power to seize.

Let me be even plainer, not for my Muslim brothers and sisters, but for profane “new agers” who are always trolling for justification for their power seeking over others. If Allah was using this passage as “permission” for “astrology” he would have phrased it consistently as he does in the Torah, Gospel and here throughout the Qur’an. God would not have said that the sun and moon are subservient, because that is obviously a statement of gift. God would have said, “And people will be subservient to other people who understand the movements of the planets and use them wisely to manage and manipulate their lives, so that there will be a class of people who are the astrologers and a class of people who are the subjects. And just as in the Torah I outlined the duties of master and slave here are the duties of astrologer and subject.” Can you imagine God ever making such a statement when he is very clear about the forbidden activity of fortunetelling and prophesy that is not directly from God’s servants the prophets? Obviously not; God would never make this statement, he never has and he never will. Islam in particular is distinguished as the faith among the three brotherly faiths that is most distancing itself from a caste system or codification of slave and servant. For example the Haj is where all are equal before Allah. Astrologers do not march around one tier and the lower people they control around another tier. Astrologers do not get to Haj during the choice times in chariots while the ordinary ignorant must Haj when it is hottest, most crowded and on the unpaved dirt roads. So it would be an unbelievable mistake to misinterpret this beautiful passage as anything but that it is a reminder of the reliability of the life giving physical gifts (water, light, heat, coolness, and dark) that the Lord gives to humans. It is very obvious in closing to read the next passage.

And He gives you of all that you ask Him; and if you count Allah’s favors, you will not be able to number them, must surely man is very unjust, very ungrateful. (Surah 14:34).

Notice that Allah “gives you” “of” “all that you ask Him.” Allah does not give humans everything; he does not give “all.” He gives them the portion they need, the “of all.” So this passage is a reminder of the many gifts that humans have openly received from Allah, and a reminder to be grateful, not a hint that like greedy children you should dig for more gifts when you already have received such abundance that you are too unmindful to make even a complete list!

I hope these comments are useful to all readers of my blog posting here.