Spiritual envy: A grave & very common sin

If I had to name the top three most common and deadly forms of sin in modern society today, the sin of spiritual envy would be in that top three.

Spiritual envy is when one is jealous of and wishes harm to someone who one perceives has spiritual gifts that they "do not deserve" (but you do, supposedly, yourself). Spiritual envy is an especially grave form of sin because it violates two of the Ten Commandments at once. One is guilty of both coveting what your neighbor has, but also one is guilty of taking the Lord's name in vain, as you are appointing yourself the judge of another person's gift from God, which like grace he alone can give, which is their spirituality. Another dimension of taking the Lord God's name in vain is that you feel that you can "decide" what spiritual gifts are "appropriate," which "should" and "can" be "given."

Frankly, little surprises me, but I have been stunned by the level of spiritual envy and the resulting depth of evil, mortal sin that an astonishingly many people have fallen into today.

One of the evil fruits of spiritual envy is that a secondary tier of people are led astray by the primary sinners, as these secondary people think that, therefore, grace and spiritual gifts from God may be attained, earned, merited and apportioned through "deeds" and "works." This entire second tier of people are thus contaminated by the sins of the first tier of spiritual envy.

You see, blaspheming is not "swearing" or "cussing." The Jews accused Jesus of blasphemy and Jesus was certainly not cussing and sassing. No, blasphemy is the presumption that you, a human, controls any even smallest part of God's divinity, authority, primacy and control. The Jews flipped their lids when Jesus started to reveal who he truly was, which is not only the Messiah (which they could have handled, as they have been awaiting a Messiah), but the Savior in the form of the fully authorized designated Son of God.

Do you notice none of the religious class were ever "happy" when Jesus performed a miracle? Putting aside their doctrinal differences with Jesus, would they not have praised God when a blind man is cured, even if Jesus was the instrument? No, they really did not care if someone's suffering (to say nothing of the thousands who Jesus did cure) was eased. They only cared about 1) "where" Jesus "really" got his power from and 2) envying his power.

Spiritual envy causes an enormous mudslide of consequences and likely damnation because it is like a conveyor belt of sin, an avalanche of blasphemy. You've seen the cascading effect as I illustrate it here, but I am just getting started in laying the truth out for you of the behavior of these people. I am tackling this issue today not simply because I have suffered from persecution by those who spiritually envy me for many, many years (it was first confessed, not sorrowfully but matter of fact accusingly, openly to me in the mid-1990's by some supposed "psychics" and "astrologers" a "friend" had urged me to "meet"), but because while space in hell is vast, accommodating more than needed, I still to this day wish that people would repent and not doom themselves and others to go there. In addition to this spiritual concern, on the secular side spiritual envy has caused much day to day grief, misery, depression and destruction of the goodness of actual flesh and blood physical and emotional life in society today. So I think this is a very apt topic to finally understand, for me to nail it to the door of your bogus "beliefs," and to help all of you who are innocent out there to understand what is being done around you, to you, and to your children.

So let me summarize the "chain reaction" we have discussed already, before adding the further explanation of the next links and consequences:

1. A person or a group envies another person or group for perceived spiritual "gifts." So the first unworthy link is the sin of envy. Scripture does state (as I've blogged about before) that even the thoughts, not even necessarily followed up by deeds, are sins.

2. A person or a group covets another person or group for perceived spiritual "gifts." This is the sin of coveting and it has two branches which may take place together or separately. One is that the person or group tries to "take away" the spiritual gift of the envied party and/or the person or group now tries to create a "mechanism" (like a tech or rites) where they believe they can usurp God and become the dispenser of his gifts.

3. Covet people who target the people they envy now commit a cascade of other sins, such as theft, oppression, assault and battery, and even murder, as they "attempt" to "take control" of the envied's supposed spiritual gifts. ("Let's see how your 'spiritual gifts' protect you now" is the mentality, and then they maim, persecute, isolate and even kill the other person). (By the way, imagine how God feels about all this so far, and we're not even into the worst of it).

4. Covet people then proclaim that they have the "real" "spiritual gifts" and, more importantly, "access to them," and they then commit the grave sin of not only blasphemy but they become formalized false prophets. (They are no longer crazy Uncle Ernie who speaks in tongues but they now incorporate and take people's money and rob their souls and their access to authentic faith).

5. Covet people then scour the holy scriptures of traditional faiths, including those with faith in the one true God, seeking "justification" for their own "spiritual gift" factories. Thus they now highlight certain parts of scripture they feel justified their own sins and cover up and ignore (both willfully and by mistake) parts of scripture that condemns most clearly their false and sinful mindsets. Thus they skew even authentic preaching and ministries by providing materials that emphasize an unbalanced understanding of scripture. MUCH modern material is like that. And friends, what I will explain in my next posting on this subject, of how the Blessed Virgin Mary was one of the first victims of this scriptural skewing, omission, and profane "massaging" of the message of the scriptures. Once you see how Mary has been a victim of the covet people's agenda, you will see (with a falling heart) how your day to day life has likewise been affected by this.

It all starts with feeling envy toward another person's real or presumed "goodness." It is like the atom bomb, which starts with the fission of one atom, or the smashing of two, it starts so small and causes profound irreversible destruction.

So before I blog the next section of these thoughts, please uproot in your mind and your heart any thoughts (and certainly any deeds) of spiritual envy, no matter how small, toward anyone, no matter what you "think," because it is not only destructive but you are presuming upon God's authority and mercy. Want to mediate? Like to chant "Om?" Well, start by chanting that you will not envy anyone for anything, but most especially their "spiritual gifts."

[Hi young people! Quite a mess we have here, don't we? Thinking of you and hoping you are having a good day and weekend.]

Killed for a piece of watermelon

A grandfather who with his wife had custody of their two grandsons shot the six year old dead when the grandfather was angry thinking the little boy had taken a piece of watermelon to eat. Trying to shield the boy the grandmother was gravely wounded. This happened in June. The grandmother died this week.

Anyone else notice the insane perverted violence just keeps escalating? Anyone interested in actually doing something about it instead of making it worse?

And by the way, watermelon jokes in households of the same name qualifies as making it worse. Regular readers know I'm for subversive humor when appropriate, but that kind of "joshing" is just criminal mental voodoo and as I warned YEARS AGO when I was trying to study the insane beliefs of the cultists IT WILL REBOUND ON YOU FOR YEARS AND UNTO THE NEXT GENERATIONS. Clean up your minds and your souls people. You don't fix error and perversion, nor save your souls, with more error and perversion. DUH.

Remember what the Bible says that sinful AND foolish thoughts are SIN. Each time someone either mocks someone else (and when they have the first thought of it), these are individual counts of sins. This is especially true and most certainly not mitigation if one is using the mocking or re-enactment for an occult reason (to "even the balance" or whatever) since that is blasphemy and idolatry. So each idea to do that is a sin, each subsequent thought of planning it is a sin, and each deed that each person does to accomplish the tableau and deeds are sins, and then the actual deed is a sin, and the feeling of the persons who are the object of the tableau and deeds, when they are sad or afraid, is a sin of violence against their spirit. Each time one "techs" or does other voodoo, "evening the balance" of acting out or preparing tableau to "cancel out" supposed "imbalance" seems to have on the average one dozen sins per person newly formed and attached. I have no hope for the vast majority of you as you only make things worse, not better.

For those of you readers who don't know what I'm talking about, be glad. A walk or a talk among the occult of this "New Age" and other "beliefs" is total filth and I don't enjoy a minute of it. Unfortunately true "light workers" seem to have to go to the filth in order to point out the lack of sewers.

DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(4)Understanding hell/sin. also Jesus love, miracles

Here is an interlude to speak about Jesus some more, before returning to the Qur'an discussion regarding hell, demons and sin. It’s not really a departure from the topic because I’m picking up on a related tangent that I had made in a previous post of this series regarding Jesus. I commented that even if one is not genuinely of the faith, I could not understand how anyone could not be overwhelmed with love for Jesus, the Jesus that he truly was and is. My point was that even if one did not embrace religion at all, or Christianity, I do not understand how simply understanding that Jesus performed thousands of cures of people who were the lowest of the low in that society: the crippled, the lame, the blind, those with bleeding or other medical ailments, those with mental illnesses (considered to be possessed by demons and totally shunned), those possessed by rare but genuine demons, and actually raising some from the dead.

I want to talk some more about this topic because in a way, understanding why I am baffled that people resist loving Jesus (even scorning or mocking him or, at best, caricaturing him as a well meaning “social worker” or “community organizer”). And trust me: I don’t want people loving Jesus because they think he was the prototype hippie, though that, of course, is one step better than nothing, LOL. But that would be a totally inaccurate picture and thus not a worthy basis for genuine love. Anyone who has been studying what I have been writing here sees that Jesus was anything but a laid back fellow shooting the breeze about love with fellow travelers. His very dire admonishments and explanations about hell and sin are unmistakably commanding, authoritative and not squishy. No, rather, I do not understand how people do not understand him as he actually was (and is described in black and white print in every language to clearly understand by those who were with him personally). And so the exercise I alluded to regarding his miracles, which is how can people not love him even if that is the only part that they understand and “believe in” is worth further exploration here.

Start by trying to imagine what one day would have been like as one of Jesus’ followers, what it would have been like to be with him. First of all, you would be with someone that you could ask any question of regarding God and receive the immediate and truthful answer about who God is, his plans, and what God is “really like.” Jesus didn’t have to pause, run a few astrology charts, furrow his brow in “meditation” and try to “divine” the answer to those questions. That is for phonies who do not know. Jesus was the only person to walk as a human on earth, who was with God completely, is of God completely, knows God totally, and serves God totally. The non-human examples are the angels, who also know God totally and dwell with him, but angels are in harmony with God’s will and serve him accordingly, they are not of God’s divine personhood as Jesus was and is. Thus angels would not be able to answer some questions, if God did not will that they have that information, the way Jesus could and did. When Jesus did not know something (such as when God will end humanity at the end of time), he said so, explaining that only God knows that fact. However, everything else Jesus knows and thus any disciple could ask him anything about God at any time. Imagine what that would have been like.

Now, the disciples would have all been God fearing believers as pious Jews in the first place, but as human beings, imagine the reassurances they felt at hearing Jesus describe God and answer their questions so matter of factly and with full authority. Jesus disciples would have furrowed their brows only in trying to understand the more difficult things that Jesus was explaining, not in worry or doubt about the existence of God and heaven them selves. So that alone should help you to understand why those who were with him loved him so much, while those who previously had the “answer man” authority hated him. The priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, those who taught that the poor were poor, the sick were sick, the injured were injured, and the dead were dead due to their own failings and sin, were used to generations of thinking they and only they had “all the answers.” How very much it shocked and frightened them when they discovered that no, not only didn’t they have the answers but that they were “outed” by Jesus as being in error and religious hypocrites. But my point is that for those who genuinely love God, as the simple, average people did, who then were open to listening to Jesus, they had an overflowing of love for him, which is why crowds followed him everywhere.

But the exercise I want to focus on is to imagine how one would feel total love for Jesus based on only one aspect of his ministry, which was the miraculous curing of the sick, the injured, the deranged, and even raising some from the dead. Here is what modern people must understand, which is what everyone around Jesus, and subsequent generations, fully understood. While Jesus was given by God the authority and the power to perform miracles, Jesus made his own decisions regarding the use of that power. In other words, Jesus could have “just done a few miracles to prove who he really was” and left it at that. But while the Gospels report in specifics such a number of miracles, the Gospels also report that Jesus would essentially set up shop in a region or a village and cure everyone who was sick or wounded who was brought to him. Jesus would often cure everyone of every ailment who came to him from an entire village. Imagine what that would have been like, for a disciple, to be with Jesus, to be part of his ministry, and to watch Jesus elect to spend many hours and days from his precious life curing each and every person who came to him in need.

Incredibly, over time, can you imagine how the disciples were no longer totally stunned as Jesus would, in an “average work day,” restore sight to the blind, straighten limbs as if they were never crippled, restore sanity to the raving, cast out a demon who would acknowledge the identity and authority of Jesus? I mean, think what it would have been like to be Peter, glancing over once in a while and thinking, “Ah, well, there is Jesus, restoring sight to another blind person!” As if it was just another day at the office. But see, it wasn’t like that, because while the disciples would of course become used to the miracles and no longer be astonished, they didn’t just sit around. Jesus mandated that they go forth and perform miracles themselves, through his authority. The Gospels give details of some of their specific efforts to perform miracles, where they were successful and where they were not. So again, imagine the love that these disciples felt for Jesus as they witnessed him 1) have the full authority and love of God to perform these miracles 2) elect to spend precious days from what was clearly going to be a very short ministry on earth before he is crucified doing such miraculous healings and cures and 3) give them, ordinary men, the power to do the same in his name through the authority of God.

I do not understand how a single person in modern times cannot be swept away with love and admiration for Jesus just based on what I have explained to you, and what is clearly stated in the Bible, regarding the miraculous cures of his ministry alone, say nothing of the rest.

See, that is the problem with the human weakness of pride and sin, which work hand in hand. Pride and sin block understand and love.

Jesus performed his cures right in the open, even in the local synagogues and Temple itself. Anyone and everyone could see it, and the ordinary people saw and loved him, not only in gratitude if they or a family member was cured, but in awe that this was how he was spending his authority, rather than acting the big authority as did the Pharisees and others. Yes, Jesus preached and taught, but he taught with the kindness of his deeds too, at a time when even talking to someone poor, sick or injured was viewed as “agreeing with whatever sinfulness filled that wretch so that he or she had these bad things happen to them.” See, the religious people thought that beggars, the poor, the sickly, the diseased, the injured and even who have early deaths had “deserved” what they got because they or their family were “sinners.” Thus they would view anyone who even talked to such people as consorting with sinners and thus condoning it. How far they had fallen from what God taught about alms and charity! These people were more concerned with what money was left in the Temple than what went to the poor, who they viewed as poor because they or their families were sinners. You need to fully understand that to understand the shock wave that Jesus wading in among the poor, the sick, the injured, and the diseased in order to cure them caused among both the people, who loved him, and the powers that be, who feared and despised him. All of this could have been different if the Pharisees and others rejected their pride. This is why the Bible warns of how pride leads to just about all sin.

Imagine if the Pharisees and other religious authorities, instead of worrying about their erroneous status, were humbly open to correction and thought to themselves, “Wait a minute. He is performing these miracles and refuting what we always believed. Could we be wrong? Let us at least learn more.” In fact, several of them did, coming to Jesus in private to learn more, and they came to believe in him in secret. But it had to remain secret because the vast majority of the religious authorities did not want to see how they had warped and strayed from God’s true doctrine, and how Jesus had come with severe exposure of their error and hypocrisy. We have seen in previous blogging how rather than marvel at his cures they resorted to even arguing that Jesus was “breaking the law” by performing cures, such as restoring a man’s sight, on the Sabbath!

This is why I want people to regain their own ability to read the Gospels and understand Jesus and love him as he actually was, rather than marginalize him or caricaturize him. It is only then that one can feel the love for Jesus that not only he deserves but YOU deserve to feel because that is, after all, why he came here at God’s behest and ministered out in the open. Each child should be raised to understand who Jesus was and what he did, and explaining the miracles of curing the sick is something that every young child can well understand. That is how each generation comes to know and fall in love with Jesus again, as God intended. Loving Jesus is a gift that God gave humanity, and it is so sad to see that increasingly in times when people supposedly seek love they reject even the facts which when understood would cause many to receive the gift of love, of knowing that someone loved people so much as Jesus did that he elected to perform these cures.

Look into your hearts and think about, “Why would someone know these facts about Jesus and his miracles and not love him?” What would be the barriers? Here we are speaking just of the miracles, not of the entirety of dogma, so the answer that “Well, I don’t believe in all of the doctrine” would not be a sufficient answer to why one would not be filled with love for Jesus just by contemplating what he chose to do regarding the thousands of miraculous cures. So if one believes the facts of what happened with the miracles, and one understands the context (that this was dangerous and socially outrageous to do in the eyes of the religious authorities, and Jesus took that risk everyday anyway), why would one not feel a rush of understanding and love?

Deadness and hardness of heart toward life in general would be one reason. Part of the problem with the overwhelming artificiality of modern life is that people have lost some of their fundamental sense of genuine feeling. There are many who are so deadened in their heart that they cannot easily experience love, even of Jesus. That is one of the grave crises of modern times, where if you cannot love Jesus, how can you love and not abuse a child? Or abuse one’s self out of self loathing and despair, as so many do? In a way I think contemplating these miracles of Jesus and trying to role play feeling the love that those around him would have felt can break through some of the ice and deadness of heart that people feel toward everyone today, including themselves. This is one reason I offer this meditation on the love of the disciples and the people for Jesus as expressed through understanding his election to perform many miraculous cures.

Another reason that one might still resist feeling love for Jesus even if one understands what he chose to do regarding the miracles is pride. Again, it is a modern crisis that many people, when faced with something very good that someone else has done, are jealous, envious or dismissive. I mean, it’s laughable but I can hear people thinking, “Well, shoot, I could have done those miraculous cures too if I had been the Son of God!” With one sweep of pride they totally dismiss the greatest kindness and love that ever lived, simply by saying, “Well, it could have been me.” Well, duh, no, it could not have been you, but that is what the temptation of pride tells people everyday.

The third reason and the one most pertinent to our previous discussions is that one will not allow one’s self to love something better and good because then one might have to give up sin and bad behavior. That is the heart of the point about teaching you about identifying, resisting and becoming “dead to sin,” as St Paul put it, using this very exercise. What does it tell you if you are having this thought process: “Well, Jesus sure is wonderful and worthy of love. I get that. But if I allow myself to love him for his miracles, then I have to start thinking about if everything else he said and did is true. And then I might have to give up some of my sinful ways and bad behaviors.”

Sin blocks love, and the desire to keep sinning (even the mentality of “leaving one’s options open to make a ‘personal choice’ to sin) blocks truth and understanding. You know what it is like? It is like buying a beautiful sleek performance car, and really enjoying looking at it, but you refuse to open the door because then you have to get in and drive it. How logical is that, to have a great car but never drive it, while others would swoon to have that car? That is the “logic” which is the illogic of sin. The temptation to keep on sinning or, at the very least, to live a hedonistic and selfish life, prevents many people from accepting any part of or all of the love that God offers “no strings attached” just by understanding what Jesus did and who he was. Loving Jesus and accepting his authority does not cause some mechanical arm to fall from the sky and force you to church and prevent you from doing the sinful things you may or may not enjoy doing. Loving Jesus is a genuinely free gift. The worst sinner in the world can touch that gift of loving Jesus, assuming he or she genuinely comprehends the facts of what Jesus did, in this case, the generosity of his many miraculous cures. Of course there comes the time when there is the corundum, the problem, of loving and believing Jesus, and then comparing how one is living one’s life with what Jesus said and what God expects.

This is why people cannot preach the Gospel based on “love, love, love” all by itself. While I offer you this exercise as a way to 1) discover for the first time your love of Jesus, 2) reconnect and refresh again the ardor of love you once felt for Jesus, 3) break through the deadness of heart of modern times and 4) reduce your exposure to pride and prideful thinking, this exercise cannot by and of itself 5) bring those committed to sin to repent and convert. Why? Because only the other half of reality, the recognition of the awful and dreadful unbearable torment of hell as consequence for sin can break through the barrier of a person who has committed his or her life to sin.

When Jesus cured people he would often say, “Go your way and sin no more.” Why would he say that if he understood what people of the times did not, which is that physical and mental infirmities were not caused by sin? Because Jesus knows that everyone is a dreadful sinner, and when he gave someone a miraculous cure, he was giving them a second chance at a better life. So even if a blind man was blinded through, of course, illness or accident, and not sin, Jesus would cure that man of blindness and tell him to sin no more. Jesus did not mean that the blindness was caused by sin. Jesus meant “This cure is your personal wakeup call that all people sin, and I know you do, and God most certainly knows, and so you should use the opportunity of this cure to stop sinning.”

If one of the disciples had asked Jesus (and they never would have because this is a modern mentality, not the mentality of the traditional religious Jew) “Why is it wrong to sin, is it because it is not nice and it hurts people?” Jesus would of course reply, “Sin offends God and the unrepentant sinner goes to eternal torment in hell.” If people are to have an accurate understanding of the divine cosmos and of God, they must understand that unrepentant and continuous sin results in the sinner going to hell. The fact that sin hurts other people is a symptom of sin, not the core “reason not to do sin.” Jesus covered that thinking in the Eleventh Commandment that he gave in the New Covenant, which is to love one’s neighbor as one’s self (and then he explained through the Good Samaritan that neighbor can mean a stranger in need, not one’s literal neighbor). So Jesus gave at God’s behest to people the Commandment that recognizes that sin hurts other people and is wrong, and that not only should one not hurt other people through sin, but one should proactively love and promote love of others, in the good behavior, golden rule, fullness of charity of heart sense. But, see, it’s not like Jesus said, “And if you break the eleventh commandment, and hurt someone due to sin, that is why sin is bad.” No… Jesus is simply articulating that all paths of sin lead to the potential of damnation in hell because sin is living against God’s will, and God’s will includes that people should not harm one another and should instead have charitable and “neighborly” love.

This is why hard core sinners need to understand both the free gift of loving Jesus as he really was, but also that Jesus spent a lot of his time explaining the actual structure of life and the cosmos under God, which includes the certainty of hell.

When I say hard core sinners, unfortunately I do not just mean the mass murderers and the incorrigible criminals. That is the point in my first commentary in this series which is that much behavior that is accepted, engaged in, widespread and promoted today is sinful and that many “ordinary” people incur hundreds of sins a week, unrecognizing and unrepentant. The more this modern society goes on the more I only see hard core sinners, as each child grows up enmeshed in the structures of what has become a sinful economy, a sinful lifestyle, a sinful mentality and a sinful fantasy life. Now I am not speaking as a prudish church lady, far from it. You have to think back to the five types of sins that the Bible identifies that I listed for you in the first post of this series. It is the spitefulness, the foolish thoughts, the manipulation of others, unrighteous thoughts and deeds, and lack of justice that fuels the tremendous volume of sins that occur every day and every hour in this society. I will give you an example so that our understanding is more in harmony.

I have spent my life thus far going “Oh, oh” whenever I see a shift that is toward the sinful and away from the good. I can still remember the moment I had that “Oh, oh” regarding a type of commercial advertisements, back in the 1980’s. There was a sudden flurry of advertisements for various food products that are “so good” and “so tasty” that the consumer hides them from the rest of his or her family. The consumer was usually a woman, the wife, girlfriend, or mother. It would show the consumer savoring the product and then upon hearing the arrival of a family member, hide the food and deny having it. I had, and still today as I recall it, a dreadful “Oh, oh” in the pit of my stomach, as that represented a terrible sinful shift in mentality. It is not ironic, edgy or “cute.” It became the commercialization of competition for food among family members and loved ones, something that no human had ever even thought of even in jest previously. Think about that. If you ran that commercial in Biblical times they would have been horrified and stoned you right on the spot. It is unthinkable to make food a competitive, especially in a hedonistic sense, resource in a family, and it certainly made every woman who appeared in those commercials ugly, no matter how thin or beautified she was. In Victorian times, in the times of Charles Dickens, no one hid food from each other in the house. Sometimes hard decisions had to be made. The one egg might go to the head of the household for breakfast instead of the hungry child because the head of the household had to go out and earn some wage in back breaking labor. But never in all of human history, in any culture or any generation would anyone have laughed or found a food hiding family commercial witty. It would have been viewed as horrific. Like I said, in Jerusalem you would have been stoned on the spot for such a display. In Rome too, unless you were in with the depraved Emperors where anything goes, I guess. But I am joking about that because seriously, it is against the very soul of humanity and of God for food hiding and competition to take place in a family and among loved ones.

And so what have we seen? A breakdown of the natural priorities and attitudes toward each other, in this case manifested by food in those commercials, and that watershed landmark commercial example is just one of the many drops in the bucket of the slide into a mindset of sinfulness that has rotted out much of basic humanity. Just in the past months in the United States there have been several cases of horrific child abuse where children are tied up or chained in their homes and deprived of food by their so called caregivers, often unto death. Do an Internet search and you will find horrific examples, including one where a little girl was singled out not to receive any water at all by her mother, and was abused if she was found even licking the moisture off of a window. Now sure, some of you will say, through your guilty consciences, “Well, those are crazy people, and there have always been abusers.” But look at it in the pattern of the breakdown of attitudes toward food in general, including diabetes and obesity, and how parents don’t even know how to give babies and young children milk, but give them soda pop and endless fruit juice, and you start to see the bigger picture. Extreme abuse occurs as eruptions out of what has become a distorted “norm.”

Let me repeat that. If you went back in time to Biblical Jerusalem you would see that yes, there are crazy people who abuse children, but there were different checks and balances than there are today. For one there were lots of strong men who would swiftly avenge an abused child or woman in their family. For two the types of abuse sprung out of what is the societal norm. For example, a father might beat his son for being lazy and not working in the field because the norm was that everyone, even young children, had to labor so that all could survive. Such a beating would be considered child abuse today. However, you would never find an instance of a parent manipulating for insane or power control reasons the food that a family member ate. Again, a woman who did that would be stoned on the spot. Crazy stuff tends to follow the societal pattern of normal behavior, and then erupts as a shocking and hideous distortion.

I know this is a lengthy digression and worthy of much more in separate treatment, but I needed to give you an example of how invisible and acceptable sinful thoughts and behaviors have become and are indeed even admired and marketed. There is absolutely no reason to market a food product in such a way except pride in one’s own cleverness and participating in the destruction of moral balance, fiber and perspective. So when I rant about the high levels of sin, it will help you to use the example I gave you as a yardstick of what I mean, rather than imagine that I’m making a point about the “usual” topics such as sex or abortion. I’m not in this case at all. I am speaking of the terrible crushing weight of sin on the world today that is generated by millions of occurrences of the types of sins that are not the classic Ten Commandment breakers (though obviously the neglect of God as expressed in the first two Commandments fuel the breakdown through sin of everything else).

Every individual is walking around with an incredible weight of unrecognized participatory sin. If you could see it through my eyes, and I sure hope this particular blogging helps, it is terrifying to the maximum. Long ago I had to give up mourning that many people I know have put themselves on the path to hell and, worse, urge others to join them, even forcing them to join them through their power as money lenders, as bosses, as power brokers, as advertisers, as politicians, as celebrities, and as merchandisers. As I gave in this one out of many examples, one is not only forced to sin (by thought and temptation) whenever one views a sinful program, movie or commercial, one is indoctrinated to admire the sinful posture that is used to promote the entertainment or advertisement. The worst examples are, of course, looking at youth in lustful ways.

The Blessed Virgin Mary was sent by God to Fatima to warn about these very things. There are two things one must really understand about what was said and done in Fatima. The first is that Mary gave the children a few second glimpse of the reality of the horror of hell. This is because God saw (being all knowing of course), that modern society was beginning to disbelieve in the reality of the horror of hell. It does not take a genius, especially as we go through the Biblical and Qur’an explanations of hell, to comprehend the message that God is making when he sends Mary (armed with a solar miracle, of course, to prove her given authority), the gentle virgin, to show hell to small gentle children. He didn’t send Michael with a sword to scream at humans, since that is not his way. He sent the mother of Jesus who shows the horror through the concern of a mother to little children, children who are not yet older cynics who try to rationalize away even a miracle.

Second, Mary warned that a great many people will go to hell due to lust. Again, one must understand that lust is not used as code word for extra sex. Lust is the craving and coveting of the things of the flesh, idolizing them and putting them over God, if one even takes notice or heed of God at all. People focus too much on trying to be “prophets” (and “profits”) to try to interpret details of Lucy’s visions of Mary and what was revealed rather than heeding the two crucial points that were made: the reality of hell and that many-think millions-are going to hell due to the societal crisis of lustful sinfulness. Why Mary and why Fatima? Think about it. Have we not been examining how much Gabriel has articulated in the Qur’an the inevitability and the horrors of hell for sinners, the unjust and unbelievers? God does not talk in “code” with secret phonetic meanings and so forth; he talks in terms of family names on those rare occasions. Fatima is a pointer to God and Jesus, of course, but also a nod to the Qur’an of Gabriel, since Fatima was the name of the Prophet’s daughter. Mary reveals a glimpse of hell to the children, and there are over eighty mentions of the reality of hell in the Qur’an. Figure it out. You don’t need secret numbers, codes, astrology, phonetics or “Freudian slips” or “meaningful coincidences.” You only need to read the Bible or the Qur’an, believe and repent.

Understanding God: body of faithful, gay discussion

*warning, some blunt sexual terms and ideas, as usual I regret having to do so and look forward to God's coal on my lips for having to dialogue as such, but someone has to do it*

I am going to write more, here, about understanding God, understanding faith, understanding sin, and I will illustrate what I am going to explain with using the debate about being homosexual (I will use “gay” for brevity) as a case study.

One must first understand that while knowledge of God and obedience is an individual matter, faith must be and is a group matter. In other words, the faith of individuals is not enough; the knowing and the worship of God must take place within the gathering, the community of people. Why is that? Well, first of all, recognize that what I am saying is true, before I explain the “why,” by examining the scripture of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths. All of the scripture is oriented toward the “body of the faithful,” the group working united and in unison in their belief. Just because the word of God is spoken through an individual, this does not mean that God is not addressing the group as a whole, and the scriptures all make that plain. In the Book of Exodus God has Moses gathered the people together, and they “see” God in the great Theophany, even though the words of the Law, which are for ALL the people, are spoken into Moses’ ears. Likewise in the Qur’an God, through the angel Gabriel, gave the Prophet (PBUH) instruction and law for all of the Muslims as a whole, as it emerged as a faith from amidst a time of unbelief. Thus the Prophet had companions to whom he explained what God taught and required and he (the Prophet) expounded on the meanings (preserved in the Hadith) and, further, had them memorize the Qur’an, which was at first oral and then written.

Finally, Jesus taught continually in the community of the faithful. This is obvious if you only note that in his public ministry he went from synagogue congregation to synagogue congregation preaching to the whole body of the faithful: the original body of faithful assembled by Moses. Thus God’s law and his word are continually given to the entire body of the faithful as a whole, not as a matter of personal and individual endeavor.

The Muslims, despite the sad split into their sects, retain this understanding that God instructs the body of the faithful, and not individuals. Likewise the orthodox Christianities understand this quite clearly. The Catholic Church, heir to the Apostolic church, and the equally united and ancient Orthodox churches (despite the divisions among the Orthodox and their sad separation from the Catholic Church) understand and preach the unity of the body of the faithful as the recipients of God’s teaching, law and grace, not individuals. Individuals must work to remain in communion with God. This is where many have become confused, particularly among Protestants and their children. The salvation of the individual soul is of course of importance, but it is done through the entire body of the faithful, as God intended and made clear in the first place, and consistently through the orthodoxy of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths.

So why does God insist upon presenting himself to the unity, the community of the faithful, rather than allowing faith to be an “individual” matter of “conscience?” There are two very fundamental reasons, and many supporting purposes to God’s will in this matter. I will explain the two fundamental reasons. The first is that belief in God is egalitarian, as everyone is in truth God’s adopted children, equal in the sanctity of their newly made souls when they are conceived, and equally open to his love in God’s eyes. Thus God will only consistently reveal and rule to the body of the faithful, not to individuals, and further, his expectations weigh upon the entire body of the faithful, not upon individuals. When individuals fall away from the orthodoxy of the true faiths they fall away from God; it is as simple as that. They cannot “good guy” their way to God as individuals who have fallen out of communion. The writings of the Apostles and disciples, and the early Church fathers, often meditate on the difference between those who have never heard the word, compared to those who heard the word and either reject it, drift away from it, or fall from it. St. Paul in particular was a stern taskmaster in this regard and rightfully so. Here is the way to understand it. The soul is the individual “currency” of salvation, for it is the soul that like a penny is put into the salvation bank. BUT THE COMMUNION OF THE FAITHFUL IS THE MINT, the treasury that maintains the value of the penny. Thus one must never think that the entire focus of the faith is the one by one “good guy” model of finding individuals who ‘believe.’ That is how the penny is used, but it is not how the penny is made nor is it how the penny maintains its value. Someone who denounces the orthodoxy of their faith and its community has lost his or her value as the “penny,” since they denounce the mint that made that currency and its continual value. Jesus never ceased to explain that he is addressing “Ye,” the body of the faithful, and their need to stay together, worship and believe in unity.

Thus to maintain one’s place in God’s egalitarian eyes, as an equal loved “child of God,” one must recognize that this gift was given to the “child” through the community of the faithful that God enfranchised, not through individual merit or “inheritance.” God has enfranchised the communion of the faithful and given his expectations to them as a WHOLE. Thus the Law, such as the Ten Commandments, are given to the people as a WHOLE, not individuals. Jesus preached to synagogue congregations and crowds of the thousands, thus the Beatitudes and his other preaching was given to the people as a WHOLE, to be followed and members of, not to individuals. This is why as I have pointed out in previous blog postings that Jesus never did a “tsk tsk” scolding of individual sin, such as sins of passion or greed. For example, when he recruited Matthew from being a sinful tax collector, he did not give him a lecture on how immoral he had been, he simply said, “Follow me.” Jesus continually emphasized that while individuals commit sin, communities are saved. Do you understand the nuance? When a saint talked about the saving of a soul, that saint did not mean salvation is an individual matter. That saint “saved souls” by getting the individual back into communion with the orthodoxies of the communal church! This vital understanding has been totally lost in this “me” generation that has turned that understanding on its head, in total error.

The second reason that God gives faith to communities of faithful and insists upon it is that faith cannot survive individually, for humans are too weak. We only need to look at the past several decades where the more people feel they can individually “save” themselves through either trust in Jesus or through “good deeds,” the more they fall away from orthodoxy and the communion of the faithful, and the more they are likely to be the among the surprised who are not saved. Jesus warned that many will say “Lord, Lord!” calling for recognition and he will not recognize them. While Jesus used social justice and charity as the examples of people who did not recognize him among the needy while they were alive, think about who he was talking to at the time of the Gospels: the faithful who belonged to the body of the communion of the faithful. In other words, the background assumption that Jesus is using is that these are people who are among the communion of the faithful, but fail in their charity. How much more will he not recognize those who not only failed in their charity but deified themselves by taking themselves out of the communion of the faithful that God himself had created?

So you must understand that when a soul is spoken of as being “saved,” that means that soul is given faith and belief and brought back into the communion of the faithful who have authentically received God’s word and enfranchisement, for lack of a better modern word. Jesus warned how difficult it is for the rich to be saved (the eye of the needle) for example. Remember, he was speaking of a rich man who was OF the body of the communion of the faithful! How many, rich or poor, will be saved if they are “giving the finger” to the communion of the faithful, separate from them? Can you say “infinitesimally small odds?”

Therefore, let me now use an example to help you to make this distinction. Let us look at the seeming contradiction between God prohibiting the practice of homosexuality in the Bible, and the assurance that all are equal before God and open to God’s love and salvatory power. Remember that the law is given to the COMMUNITY. Thus God prohibits to the COMMUNITY homosexuality. I will explain why in a bit, but first, let’s focus on this important distinction. Look at the first Commandment, which regards that there is only one God and only he should be worshipped. That is a COMMUNION OF THE FAITHFUL commandment. Thus the Jews, the Muslims, and the Christians AS a WHOLE are to believe in one God. Why is that distinct from individual sin of disbelief? Because, obviously, many humans fall into periods of disbelief, paganism, idolatry, even being raised that way as children. The community of the faithful “keeps” the first Commandment, and thus individuals who are at odds with this can “find their way back.” Likewise the second Commandment, keeping of the Sabbath, the day of God for worship, is a commandment of the COMMUNITY. It’s not like a billion people all conduct their own “service” whenever they feel like it. The communion of the faithful maintains the Mass, to use the Catholic example, even if a handful of people attend (or even if the priest must be alone). Thus is it always there for those who have fallen away to come back. The Commandments, each and every one of them, must be understand as COMMUNITY Commandments, not solely as individual “choices” and “behavior.”

Think about the ninth and tenth Commandments prohibiting coveting. Coveting is a mental stance where one craves what someone else has to the point of wishing ill or loss on the other person. One doesn’t even need to lift a finger in harm to break those Commandments. Again, while individuals perform sin it is a COMMUNITY Commandment, for God’s communion of believers must not create a society where coveting is encouraged, children are raised to covet, and coveting is even forced on others due to their suffering and being deprived of what others have. Both individuals and communities break the ninth and tenth Commandment, and that is a dire problem that, frankly, fills hell with some surprised people.

Thus one must look at homosexuality that way. God is prohibiting to the community homosexuality. God is not damning the individuals. Remember that the first and second Commandments are examples of how the communion of the faithful maintains obedience to God, so that the orthodoxy is always there for those who are not part of it at that time. God does not want humans to structure themselves as a homosexual society; it is as simple as that. This does not mean that God damns gays, or that their individuals acts are necessarily sinful or unforgivable, or that they must be closeted or they must be oppressed. If the Commandments and the Law were viewed that way, you would see, for example, the oppression of individuals while they are out of phase with the first and second Commandments. No one drags the faithful to synagogue, the mosque, or the church, and they are not damned and demonized if they do not go. They are, in the long run, individually accountable to God when they are personally judged. If the Commandments and God’s scriptural admonishments were targeted exclusively to individuals and not to the community, the scriptures would be filled with such examples. None observers would be beaten to a pulp with God nodding in approval, so would coveters, and so would gays. But there is absolutely none of that in the scriptures of the Torah, Bible and Qur’an. As I said, Jesus never so much as gave a “tsk, tsk” to individual sinners, but he brought them back into communion. More important, the purity of the communion was preserved, not succumbing, in what would be a falsehood, to “social pressures.”

God does not want, therefore, humans to organize themselves as a homosexual society. God does not want humans to organize themselves in a coveting society. God does not want humans to believe in gods, which are false, other than him, nor does God want people to work throughout the week without having a day to be in communion with him, and at rest with one’s family. God does not want an adulterous society, nor a thieving society. God does not want a society that dishonors parenthood. But that is the communion of believers, when one refers to society. It does not mean that individuals do not do the best they can with the cards they are dealt. Thus the non church goer is not damned, nor is the adulterer, the thief, the parent abuser, the coveter, nor, using our example, those who are gay or those who have conducted gay acts. God’s heaven would be empty except for the angels and the saints. No one is saved if they either 1) pull apart the communion of the faithful by appointing themselves arbiters of their own salvation or 2) “modify” the community of the faithful to suit the sin that they are engaged in. Again, by sin I mean the societal structure that God prohibits.

Gays who expect the communion of the faithful to endorse a homosexual society are out of their minds, since that is clearly not what God wants. But God wants homosexuals to come to church, to believe, to live individual lives the best that they can.

Let me be a little blunt, as I dislike doing, but I have to be, obviously. Some gays think that unless the church endorses their sexual positions that they are being slighted. Um, who else brags about their sexual positions in church, heterosexual or homosexual? I mean, do we show up to church in order to let people know how hot our partners are and where they put their genitals at what time?

If that were the case, then think about Abraham and Sarah, who conceived Isaac in their extreme old age. I’ve commented on this topic before as this was the time that God himself appeared as one of three angels to Abraham, as simple travelers. Abraham realized after a while who they were, including that God was with them and even argued and bargained with God to try to save Sodom and Gomorrah from destruction. It was during that visit that God announced that Sarah would conceive in her great old age, and bear a child, and Sarah laughed. Well, if church is the place to brag about sexual positions for equality, would we not have gotten some details about how Abraham “turned on” the elderly Sarah? I know, and I’m sorry, that the decent of you are horrified at what I just typed, as am I at my need to be so blunt and crude with moderns; you have no idea how sick at heart it has made me over the years. But unfortunately the depravity and error of this generation is so bad that, like Jesus, I have to be blunt in the vernacular of the times. If going to church, or speaking to God, or receiving grace, or witnessing a miracle related to genital body parts, believe you me, the Bible would have recorded, well, how Isaac came into being.

So it is disgusting and absurd that some gay people think that they go to church so that the church can say that where they put their genitals and with who is “great” and “wonderful,” any more than I want to know if the couple next to be do “muff dives” in their straight relationships. Shut the hell up and make it about God.

In fact, you all ought to be ashamed of bringing such thinking into the church, mosque or synagogue at all. Just show up as a believer and shut the hell up about what you do or what anyone else does.

So that is why there is no inconsistency with what God teaches, admonishes and expects. God instructs the communion of the faithful (representative of hopefully all of humanity, God willing) how humans as a whole, as a society, should function. Just as we should not have a society of coveters, we should not have a society of homosexuality. That does not mean that God exiles or damns anyone, coveters or gays, nor is the love of God, or Jesus, diminished at all. It simply means that society should not become comprised of those values in total.

If God wanted human society to be “gay” in total he would have had parthenogenesis or other biological techniques for reproduction via cloning or splitting to be the norm. God does not want society to be gay, to seek artificial human controlled means of reproduction. That does not mean that he did not “create” “gays,” as in, gays are like everyone else, born of God’s heritage and those called to be saved and join him in heaven after leading worthy lives. How can you not see the vast difference between being an open and serene person who happens to be gay and creating gay agenda gay nation? Gays bridle when some pastors try to use such comparisons as loving someone with a disability and so forth and I understand that. I don’t view being gay as a disability. It can be a cross to bear, just as, actually, being anyone in search of decent love is, straight or gay, a growing cross to bear in this insane and cruel society. I have to compare it to the sin of coveting for my analogy, though, only because we are discussing the scriptures. Just as God does not want a society of coveters (but apparently, that is what we have today) God does not want a society of gay agenda, what one could say being purposefully proselytizing of gayness for its own sake. People covet; it is human nature, and that is why God prohibits it, to curb its power. Likewise people have the desire for love, which is good, and some are straight and some are gay, which is normal, but society should not be structured to be “gay” anymore than it should be structured to be coveting. I don’t want to know what Abraham and Sarah did in bed. Why should you, and why should you force me, and our children, to know about it?

Thanks to former President Clinton many children learned what oral sex was years before they should have, especially since the media lost all self control and pushed oral sex discussion at all hours for our children to hear about. Likewise, children are not “naturally curious” to “know” what Fred and Ted are doing in bed. Shut up for the love of God.

I hope that you have found this helpful. The water’s over the dam and the horses have left the barn, and the barn has burned down, but all I can do is keep repeating myself in hope that you all will allow me to help pick up the pieces that remain.

Not a rant but I am seething: understanding sin

Like Archbishop Chaput I despair and wonder what can be done about the poor faith formation of many American (western society) Catholics, including the politicians. But since society is all bread and circuses (not the sacred bread, by the way) it is the fault of everyone, including Christians who are not Catholics. The primary reason is the total breakdown in understanding God and proper perspective and context regarding sin.

First of all, the sins that people are most titillated about are the ones that are actually the most easily forgiven by God. Thus people have been hammering each other in "gotcha" sin underpants sniffing about sins of morality rather than recognizing the sins that will really "get you hell," which is the profaning of God.

I am not saying that the Catholic Church is incorrect in any of its moral teachings, for it is not. But anyone with a brain who reads the Bible, both Old and the New, can find few stories of God or his prophets hunting down and condemning sins of the crotch. People have affairs, they have unmarried sex, and they have "gay" sex. I mean, duh. Those are the individual sins that are the easiest to forgive and believe you me, God forgives millions of people for those sins each year when they die and "meet their maker" in judgment. God understands that due to both biology (who knows better than the one who created humans) and temptation that humans are horny, easily tempted, and often confused, to put it politely, about their sexuality. This also includes the use of birth control. People are confused about that subject and while I am not saying that birth control doctrine needs to be changed (the Church advocates only natural forms) please use a little common sense about pointing fingers at each other. I mean, "Jesus Holy Christ," does anyone have any sort of understanding about either human nature or God's mercy anymore?

That is why the Church has the sacrament of Confession (Penance and Reconciliation). It is there that people, sincerely, confess and ask for forgiveness for sins of birth control, extra pussy on the side, gay sex or WHATEVER is their individual moral predilection and difficulties. Yet everyone is in the "catch the other person in the sex act" game as some sort of way to catch "hypocrites." Where in the Bible can you show me either Jesus doing that or any of the prophets? We have story after story of profaning God (including a guy who is struck dead by God because he improperly touched the ark) but nothing about people touching each other and themselves. That is because while sinful those acts are HUMAN NATURE. The Church must preach and teach correct behavior but not be crazy basket cases over every time a genital does a naughty thing. For the love of God, how stupid and disgusting has this society become?

So the Church wonders why people are so blase about the horror of abortion. Well, abortion has become "birth control" for a hedonistic society. THAT is where you have the problem, when society as a whole opts for Sodom and Gommorah "role modeling." One reason the Israelities hated the pagans was they sacrified infants. Ditto for the Spanish who found New World societies that sacrified right and left as if the crops would not grow unless someone was gutted on top of a pyramid. They, correctly, understood that God abhors those who profane his name and by implication the gift of life that he has given: the children and the innocent.

I am SO SICK of people caring about gay sex (individual decision), affairs, pre-marital sex and so forth and "outing" each other in order to be "holier than thou" while at the same time allowing the freak show society to destroy humanity's dignity and also profane, by implication, the honor of God. I don't care what sex or not my neighbor is having and neither should YOU.

I do care that this society, however, pushes pornography, depravity, child sexualization, sex while impaired and other GROUP trends, not individual sinful acts that are between the person and God.

This is why people have lost all perspective. How can people understand the horror of abortion if it is given equal footing, if not much lower, than discussion of where someone is putting their dick in an individual decision? I see more ink about caring if a man gives a blow job to another man than I do about 10,000 abortions being performed in a short timeframe.

I blame Evangelical Christians for this more than I blame Catholics themselves. They have been noble (though too rigid) in the abortion culture struggle, but at the same time they can't wait to "expose" (pardon the pun) if their neighbor is putting her pussy or some dude's dick in the "wrong place." I AM SO SICK OF THE STUPIDITY. As a result of this "gotcha" about individual moral decisions and sins it is no wonder that Catholics, who are very low key about getting all heated up about anything, have been programmed from the outside to lose their own perspective on these matters.

When one is complicit in either the building of a hedonistic society, OR, just as bad, being an "equal opportunity peanut gallery who takes pot shots at 'sins' in others," one is part of the problem, not the solution. When you act as if an individual decision to have gay sex is as "hell fire invoking" as being an unbeliever who dishonors God, you render the entire understanding of God, both his mercy and his judgment, an incomprehensible mishmosh.

Mature adults (and one has to go back to the World War II generation to remember any) could be and were God fearing people who genuinely honored God and kept his name holy, while still having pussy problems or other human temptations in their life. For the love of God, what is so difficult to understand about this?

When you moral zealots make God appear to not understand the dilemma of the "free sex" generation, and issues such as birth control, you do him a tremendous disservice that is NOT Biblically justified. Like I said, you cannot show me in the Bible an event, a dialogue with God, an intervention by God, or a teaching by Jesus that focuses on individual sin of morals. Even David could have had his Bathsheba if he had not sent her husband to his certain death. It was not the sex, it was the manslaughter. Even that God understood and forgave.

But God does not forgive the enslaving of an entire generation to hedonism, leading to the abomination of abortion, and the profanity of his holiness by the exile of God from public discourse and honor AND failure to take him seriously. THAT is what everyone ought to be VERY worried about, not if someone rubbed someone's crotch that he or she should not have rubbed.

I sometimes give a few minutes thought, such as now, as to how Jesus could possibly have made that any clearer during his public ministry. I honestly cannot think of how he could have been, in either word or deed, any clearer about the vast difference between the typical sins of morality that all humans are tempted by and the hypocrisy of the "pious" who disrespect God and allow those in need to suffer. Over and over Jesus demonstrated that sins of morality are to be forgiven and not to be publicly acted out. Jesus then demonstrated that the people who should be 'called out' in public should be the hypocrites, those who neglect the poor, the sick, the widowed, the orphaned, the lonely, who abuse children or who block children from him and by implication from God. Absolutely every minute of Jesus' life and what was recorded in the Gospels demonstrates what I am telling you here. Where did you see Jesus sniffing around to see who was with whom, gay or straight? Did he ask the Apostles if they ever masturbated?Absolutely no where have you seen Jesus on the morality witch hunt.

Instead Jesus combined demonstration of mercy toward the humanity and human weaknesses of the sinner with a unrelenting focus on obeying and honoring God in all things and making God the center of each person's life. Today we have the opposite. We have people running around sniffing thongs and worrying about how gay is gay while going through an entire day without giving public glory to GOD, without making one's life about God.

I really can't say anything else at this point, as I'm just at that point in a rant where I throw my hands up in the air in despair and think about all the very surprised people who end up in hell, and not because they were on a pussy hunt.

Correction about frozen embryo confusion

I have read that some very loving and well meaning Catholics have trouble with Catholic doctrine opposing the creation and use of human embryos. For example, these Catholics question why they should not "rescue" frozen embryos that were created for someone else's in vitro fertilization and is no longer needed, and thus are kept frozen indefinitely or discarded.

I think people need to be very clear about one thing before the dialogue (and disagreement) continues.

The Church is correct to state that frozen embryos have "dignity." This is a very precise word that does not imply they have a soul. As I've blogged about this before, but to re-summarize, a soul is created by God and given to an embryo at the moment that it is created and "quickens." This means that the embryo must be attached to the mother's womb and making its first cell division of life. God does not put souls in inanimate objects, such as a frozen embryo. The Church is very wise to use the term "dignity" because even though the frozen embryo is not yet living it is full of the potential for a human real life and thus it has the full dignity of its potential. As such it must be guarded as diligently as a living embryo. This is why the Church correctly opposes the existence of frozen embryos, regardless of the good intentions of the would-be parents. When one has a frozen embryo one has in uncommitted hands the full potential of a life with dignity. Fortunately God, in his wisdom, does not allow humans to play God and have souls placed in frozen inanimate potential humans.

Thus someone who "rescues" a frozen embryo cannot do so by justifying that the embryo has a frozen soul in there. Good grief, humans have already made a horror show of life, can you imagine if souls were actually "freezable" in embryos? Only humans can think of such a scenario, not God.

Having said that, even "without a soul" the embryo is entitled to full dignity because it, like all embryos, are a "promise" from God, a promise that a human life with soul comes into being if the embryo is unfrozen, implanted in a woman and quickens into life. If the embryo does not naturally take to the placenta and quicken then it never received the soul.

Thus I fully understand why the Church is discouraging the enabling of what they consider to be an initial wrong, the creation of a "just in case we ever want to use it" embryo that is frozen and thus robbed of its dignity, with a questionable but well intentioned intervention of adopting a frozen embryo and implanting it.

The Church is correctly concerned of two problems with frozen embryo adoption. One is that humans assume that they can invoke an embryo and a soul and freeze it, thus making people who are horrified at this scenario feel pressured to act to "rescue the frozen soul." That is science fiction, not reality. No souls are frozen in human embryos. So the Church is worried that frozen embryo rescuers have an erroneous and very painful and alarming view of the frozen embryo as not just having dignity, which it has, but a trapped frozen soul, which it does not.

The second problem the Church is concerned with is providing a moral escape hatch for an immoral practice. Thus instead of those who produce frozen embryos having the onus on them of doing something wrong, the faithful are felt that if they don't intervene with adoption that they are allowing a horror to continue (the embryo being frozen indefinitely or discarded). To use an example, the comedy magazine "National Lampoon" once had on the cover the photograph of a cute dog with a gun being held to its head, the caption reading "Buy this magazine or we will shoot this dog!" That was, obviously, an example of subversive humor, satire and irony rolled into one. This was a long time ago but I think I remember that in the inside of the magazine they had a photograph of the dog lying down with the caption, "We shot it anyway."

This is a trivial but wise in human understanding, this ironic humor from years ago, of how to "transfer guilt and complicity." It is one of Satan's favorite tools. It allows someone to initiate the sin and then force through guilt and good intentions someone else to take "moral" responsibility for "fixing" the original wrong and sin. The Church is correctly very alert and wise to this tool of Satan's, to transfer guilt from the guilty to the innocent.

Trust the judgment of the Church for they know well this device. Refuse to be the one who is "handed the guilt" of someone else's wrong doing, bad judgment or sin.

This is not to say that someone who adopts a frozen embryo and brings a child to term has now committed the sin of the people who created the frozen embryo in the first place. However, they have inadvertently provided moral "cover" to the people who did so, not in God's eyes, but in the secular world's eyes, thus removing impetus to re-evaluate and correct a moral problem such as frozen embryos. This is nothing new except in the subtlety of the temptation to take responsibility for "fixing" someone else's ongoing wrong.

This is an important distinction. You can fix a wrong or a sin that has happened and is completed. You cannot fix a wrong or a sin that is ongoing. The ongoing sin, wrong or error must be re-evaluated and corrected, not enabled by the just taking responsibility for perpetuation of the actions of the unjust.

For example, you would rescue a starving person and feed them. But you would not agree to allow a family to starve their child, and you visit once a week to give the child just enough food to keep on clinging to life. That is the difference between correcting a wrong and enabling a wrong. In such a scenario the abusers could argue that you agree that starvation of a child is acceptable, and that if the child dies it is your fault because you did not show up on time for the once a week giving of just enough sustenance for the child to continue to survive.

Listen to the Church, for she is wise in these ways of Satan and of weak and sinful humans. Do not accept responsibility for a wrong that is ongoing and if anything increasing.

I hope that you have found this helpful; this transfer of guilt from the unjust to the just is one of the fundamental moral crises of modern humanity and one must be wise and vigilant to not co-depend and enable error, bad judgment (even if "well intended") and ultimately sinfulness and lack of dignity throughout the whole process of life.

AND, no, I would not "feel different" about it if it were "my own embryos." If anything I would be more determined that they should be discarded since I have never given permission for my eggs to be kept and frozen, nor would I have ever given permission, nor would I have ever given permission for being part of a frozen embryo. Thus if anyone did that "behind my back" as the result of the surgeries I had, I would be the first to insist that they be respectfully discarded because the only reason someone does this type of thing behind someone's back is for occult reasons. I would never consider for one second having a "different" view of this matter and if anything, I would point to the grave moral peril that all who engage in these activities are in.

I am annoyed at billions spent on CERN work

I cannot believe that billions has been spent on a physicists' underground romper room while millions are suffering in poverty and hardship. I cannot believe that people in Haiti are going without food or clean water for five days in a row and with no help in sight, yet billions have been spent on this idiotic project. I cannot believe that humans barely understand the implications of the vast science they have already "discovered," yet they "need" to invest billions more, rather than using what they already know to help others and end suffering from lack of basic needs. Gosh, am I annoyed by this.

A very secular analogy about sin

The Bible cautions and admonishes against both sinning and "leading others into sin." How to make it easy to understand why "leading others into sin" is extra bad and will incur severe chastisement? I thought of this analogy.

Suppose you are a person who drinks alcohol. So think of the ability to consume a glass of wine or other alcohol beverage as a normal dietary activity, part of your meal, or to be social, even as a healthy thing to do if we believe the "Mediterranean diet." So if your religion does not prohibit alcohol and if you have a moderate amount, let's use that as the baseline in this analogy of being "no sin."

Suppose you have a little too much on one occasion and you drive yourself home, taking a risk that you are "buzz driving," but you make it OK. You can see that this gets into a gray shading area, where it's not the "no sin" of the first example, but you "got away with it." So it's dicey but it was only the one time, so it's "no sin but not exactly smart or noble."

Now let's suppose that you make a habit of drinking and driving. That gray just got a lot darker because you are putting yourself and others regularly at risk. So you've entered into the sin zone.

Now let's suppose that you regularly drink, drive and carry passengers. Whether you actually ever have a wreck or not that is very much in the sin zone. Why? Not just because of the risk but because you are now setting an example to others that this is OK to do AND giving your loved ones reason to worry and be unhappy and scared. So this is very much a strongly sinful stage.

(Remember, I'm using this as an analogy, as you'll see clearly with the next few examples. I'm not making up or assigning new classes of sin for the Vatican to publish!)

Now let's suppose that you drink, drive, carry passengers and also purchase alcohol for minors using your ID and allow minors to drink in your house. You've now made that sin contagious. That is called "leading others into sin." When you "just" had the passengers, that was setting a bad example AND leading them into danger, but not leading them into sin. But when you enable minors, in this example, you are leading them into danger of addiction or harm associated with consumption, plus breaking the law, plus depriving them of good parental authority. It's harmful in a lot of ways but most of all because you put them on a path to be able to sin on their own. That is why "leading others into sin" is huge, and very outrageous in God's eyes. God knows everything through all time and God will continue to "track" all the people who you led into sin. So if the minors develop habits or sin on their own, all of this will be known to God and attributed to you.

Now suppose that you drink, drive, carry passengers, purchase alcohol for minors AND call out to everyone in a bar or restaurant "open bar on me!" Now I'm not using an example of a function such as a party or wedding where you pick up the bill for the event and that includes open bar. I'm using an analogy. Here, though, you create a "free for all" of "leading others into sin." In other words, without knowing the age, disabilities, possible addictions, or whether they will drive themselves home or not, you let the alcohol flow without any limitation. This is like "leading others into sin" by having an open bar tab. And what is this most like? Creating a false religion.

Someone who creates a false religion is like shouting "open bar" at an AA meeting, at children's schools, and among the lonely, and running a tab that goes on for hundreds of years. Why do I say this? Because in this analogy you are offering unrestricted alcohol consumption to those who are the most vulnerable to abuse. People who create their "own churches" basically open a never ending bar tab that will draw customers from the weak and vulnerable who have fallen away from institutional religions, or are too young to have the choice, because their parents bring them to "your bar." Now remember, I'm not talking about mainstream religions, even those that are very local and non-denominational, yet still in mainstream Christian beliefs, for example. I'm talking about "personal revelation" churches, cult of personality churches, financially or sexually exploitative churches, cults, paganism, witchcraft and so forth. When, in this type of analogy, a person founds a cult type or extreme non-denominational church, one is basically creating a bar tab for a substance that goes on as long as there are believers. This is not only "leading others into sin" but putting "a false god before God." And so, in God's eyes, even after you would be dead and judged, the actions of this "open bar tab" live on after you, and God will account them to YOUR tab, and not in a nice way.

I hope that you all find this analogy helpful. Again, don't get all word smithing with me because like I said, it's only an analogy folks, but it's a very important one. It is simple to understand the degrees of personal sin and then, using this analogy, where it steps into "leading others into sin" and finally to idolatry and false gods territory of mortal sin.

Just a theological thought to share. Now that you understand this analogy, you can understand why Martin Luther is such a controversial figure. When people get combative about him, it is the slippery slope of sinning/leading others into sin that each side is really talking about without saying so. The people who side with the Reformation obviously feel that he "saved" people from sin because he "challenged the abuses" and broke away with the Church that was "sinning" and "misleading." However, thoughtful people on the other side correctly wonder about his accountability for "leading others into sin" because of, using this analogy, the "open bar tab" that was created after him and resulted in, let's not lie about it, the breaking of the unity of the Church that is contrary to what God and Jesus wanted. So I'm not taking sides and I'm not dropping hints as to Martin Luther's judgment by God. But I am using him as an example of how every soul must make a wise decision about both personal sin AND leading others into sin. It is not inconceivable that, as the saying goes, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Popes have commented, including our current Pope Benedict, that Martin Luther would have been very grieved by much that has been done in his name, for example, the diminishment and hostility toward Mary by some Protestants, for Martin Luther himself loved and revered Mary. (Don't ever discount Mary; she might even have bailed him out of that sticky situation! :-)

Thus, one who thinks they have extraordinary "spiritual insight" must also recognize that if they act outside of the institutional churches, that he or she is opening an "open ended bar tab." Even the best of intentions in doing so may result in the unforeseen tragedy of leading many after you into sin. This is why the Bible and the Qur'an are very filled with warning about those who prophesy falsely or worship false gods. It's more than personal sin, because it becomes that "open bar tab" that goes on and on for centuries, potentially, and results in intentional or unintentional "leading others into sin."