If you destroy your sense of hearing, or that of someone else, that does not mean that the world stops making sounds. You, or that other person, simply have become deaf.
Likewise if you destroy your own or someone else's ability to hear God (as he actually speaks), that doesn't mean God has gone away. It simply means that you have committed spiritual suicide or murder. God is still there even if you destroy your own or someone else's organs of hearing.
This is why God insists that children be raised "in the faith." It is not an "adult option." Would you pour lye in your children's ears figuring they shouldn't hear anything until they are adults and can have "hearing aids of their own choosing" installed.
Wise up. Hell's packed already but has infinite capacity, expanding to need.
Showing posts with label reality of hell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reality of hell. Show all posts
Monday, July 19, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Do not be delusional about reality
I'm almost embarrassed to think some people are mislead enough (and/or plain stupid) to believe this delusion that I'm about to refute, but here goes anyways.
News flash:
If someone had died and gone to hell as punishment by God for their disbelief in him and/or their sins, that is a forever situation, period. Here's the part I can't believe my ears about that some of you believe. If you make a movie about that person and "write a different ending," where he or she "doesn't go to hell, or gets out, or there's an 'alternate reality'" that person is still damned and in hell, "incredible DUH." You can write all the movies, games, people play acting "alternate realities," or "Ground Hog Day (the movie)" or whatever all you want and the only thing you are doing is wasting oxygen on the earth and layering sin upon sin for YOURSELF.
The whole point about God is that nothing that human beings can do or will do or can even think of doing changes God and the reality that he has created one iota. Period.
Like I said, I'm embarrassed I have to explain that to certain people, but the truth is the truth. Try reality out sometime, it might actually save your life and your soul.
News flash:
If someone had died and gone to hell as punishment by God for their disbelief in him and/or their sins, that is a forever situation, period. Here's the part I can't believe my ears about that some of you believe. If you make a movie about that person and "write a different ending," where he or she "doesn't go to hell, or gets out, or there's an 'alternate reality'" that person is still damned and in hell, "incredible DUH." You can write all the movies, games, people play acting "alternate realities," or "Ground Hog Day (the movie)" or whatever all you want and the only thing you are doing is wasting oxygen on the earth and layering sin upon sin for YOURSELF.
The whole point about God is that nothing that human beings can do or will do or can even think of doing changes God and the reality that he has created one iota. Period.
Like I said, I'm embarrassed I have to explain that to certain people, but the truth is the truth. Try reality out sometime, it might actually save your life and your soul.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Care about people, however....
...1 Don't let them lead you to hell along with them, and this especially applies to those who claim they have "saved" anyone from hell.
2 Don't get too attached. Love and like, yes, but do not assume that you know how God will dispense another person's soul (including your own). Saying it so in someone's obituary does not make it so.
EVERYONE has plenty to worry about in their own salvation. Everyone has blood on their hands in this society. Beware of being smug and self satisfied.
2 Don't get too attached. Love and like, yes, but do not assume that you know how God will dispense another person's soul (including your own). Saying it so in someone's obituary does not make it so.
EVERYONE has plenty to worry about in their own salvation. Everyone has blood on their hands in this society. Beware of being smug and self satisfied.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Understanding hell
As a follow up to the previous post, about recognizing the consequences of disbelief and sin.
You can lead someone to hell.
You can be followed by someone to hell.
You can walk side by side with others to hell.
Whatever your companionship or "excuse," the result is always the same.
There is not a single person in hell who thinks that he or she "can handle it" and it's "not so bad."
It is the painful unbearable reality forever.
You can lead someone to hell.
You can be followed by someone to hell.
You can walk side by side with others to hell.
Whatever your companionship or "excuse," the result is always the same.
There is not a single person in hell who thinks that he or she "can handle it" and it's "not so bad."
It is the painful unbearable reality forever.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
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...)
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...)
Saturday, November 28, 2009
How is the humility business coming along?
I hope people are making progress in realizing that they are not 1) players or involved in "divine" matters in any way and 2) not reincarnated at all. I'm concerned that still too many people are realizing that upon their death and it is exactly too late.
God has promised that the worst punishment will be for the prideful and the false prophets. It's all there in the Bible (and the Qur'an).
God has promised that the worst punishment will be for the prideful and the false prophets. It's all there in the Bible (and the Qur'an).
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Age of youth responsibility/explain & warning
I had it in mind to blog about this already before looking at the news, and what I saw only reinforced what I want to say. This is directed toward young people, for whom as a whole I retain great affection, but also toward adults who have guardianship, character building and safety responsibilities toward the young.
Society has crept into a mindset that the young bear no responsibility for sin or evil, especially if they had a "bad upbringing." Also the idea of what constitutes a "child" in terms of age has undergone creeping upward that is now double in delusion what it is in reality. Here are the facts. Again, I am not speaking legally but spiritually, and I am not talking about jail, but I am talking about hell.
A child is mentally, emotionally and spiritually wired to know the difference between right and wrong at the age of seven. Period. However, a child at that age is still intensely vulnerable to the control of adults around him and her and thus while they are expected by God to know the difference between right and wrong (even if the parents teach otherwise) God understands at that age they have no choice, but a little voice of protest should begin to form silently in their minds. This is why Jesus warned in the most DIRE terms what will happen to adults (including adolescents, remember that adulthood comes quickly spiritually and I will refer to that next) who lead children to sin. Read his words and there is no mistaking that adults who lead children to sin are in for the worst of all punishment.
So my first point is that those of you out there, caregivers, teachers, security people and siblings, cousins and so forth need to understand that spiritually a child knows in their heart right from wrong, and that misleading them is the gravest of sins, warned explicitly against by Jesus. If you know some small child being led the wrong way but you cannot actually act against those who do, in your interaction with the child, cultivate their confidence in questioning the justice of things in areas where you can do so safely.
My second point is even more serious. At the age of thirteen all children are ready to be, and viewed as, adults in spiritual matters. They are not ready to be leaders, of course, and should not be portrayed as such. There are no "child gurus." Because God has wired a child at the age of thirteen to be spiritually an adult the faiths acknowledge that and have rituals accordingly. This is because as I have explained before, it is not to celebrate their "puberty" per se, but because in the days before society infantiles young adults and with birth control, extended schooling, etc., a thirteen year old boy or girl was getting ready to establish his or her own household, marry, and raise their own family. This is how it has been for centuries and was certainly the mindset during Biblical and Qur'anic times, which is when God chose to speak to his people in that context. I mean, duh, how hard is that to understand? When a child is in theory a young adult, at the age of thirteen, and biologically and mentally ready to raise a family (even if society has moved past that early a point) their spiritual development and expectations that are given by God remain the same.
Thus a thirteen year old has embarked onto the rest of his or her life where God expects-and will judge them on-their spiritual responsibilities as an adult, albeit a young adult. Again, this has nothing to do with the circumstances of their family or environment or societal expectations. This is why they are rebellious at that stage in general. It is at that point they are expected to question bull crap anti-God false doctrine that may have been given to them when they were young and helpless. Unless they are locked up in an actual cult compound and/or they are mentally diminished due to illness or mishap, a thirteen year old child is expected to embark upon faithful adult-like responsibilities to God. In the old days, many started years earlier by their own maturity.
So here is the problem. Do not delude yourselves that thirteen year olds and upward cannot go to hell. They can and they do.
Do not delude yourselves that bad upbringing postpones spiritual responsibility. It does not postpone it one iota, except in the circumstances I already mentioned. It makes it most urgent upon surrounding adults, including peer young adults, to speak up and take action as spiritual adults, starting at the age of thirteen, when one encounters the many who are almost feral animals in their lack of spiritual raising by their parents. Again, I am not speaking criminally, though of course one flows from the other. Crime is a matter for the local community and the state.
But here is what you must understand. Because God made all children ready for spiritual adulthood at thirteen, those in these almost feral conditions of either home life or depraved society will proclaim themselves spiritual acolytes of evil, or nihilism, if there is no proper faith formation. In other words, the readiness to be spiritual adults "busts out" one way or the other at that age. They are either ready to embark on genuine faith, learning to be and do as adults in service to God, or they pledge allegiance to chaos, false gods, gangs, worldly idols, and nihilism.
I had already had this in mind because I was thinking of something very sad that happened with a young adult in the family of people who could have been friends of mine, but held back, when I signed onto the computer and read the following. Young friends of the California rape victim (a crime that has received worldwide coverage) have spoken out condemning the lack of proactive security at the dance where this occurred. I applaud the girls who have spoken out because they are exactly at that age I am speaking of. The perpetrators are well beyond that age, being of 15 years and up. I must urge all of you, young people and adults, to understand the facts, not the speculation, of God's spiritual adulthood timeline. At seven one is ready to fully understand right from wrong. At thirteen one is a spiritual adult and one will be judged by God accordingly, regardless of the circumstances, except as I stated above, the most extreme genuine brainwashing, virtual or actual incarceration, and disability due to illness or mishap. Yes, thirteen years olds and upward can and do go to hell. And yes, thirteen year olds and upward are to be uplifted as young spiritual adults and when they speak the truth they are to be praised and heeded.
Society has crept into a mindset that the young bear no responsibility for sin or evil, especially if they had a "bad upbringing." Also the idea of what constitutes a "child" in terms of age has undergone creeping upward that is now double in delusion what it is in reality. Here are the facts. Again, I am not speaking legally but spiritually, and I am not talking about jail, but I am talking about hell.
A child is mentally, emotionally and spiritually wired to know the difference between right and wrong at the age of seven. Period. However, a child at that age is still intensely vulnerable to the control of adults around him and her and thus while they are expected by God to know the difference between right and wrong (even if the parents teach otherwise) God understands at that age they have no choice, but a little voice of protest should begin to form silently in their minds. This is why Jesus warned in the most DIRE terms what will happen to adults (including adolescents, remember that adulthood comes quickly spiritually and I will refer to that next) who lead children to sin. Read his words and there is no mistaking that adults who lead children to sin are in for the worst of all punishment.
So my first point is that those of you out there, caregivers, teachers, security people and siblings, cousins and so forth need to understand that spiritually a child knows in their heart right from wrong, and that misleading them is the gravest of sins, warned explicitly against by Jesus. If you know some small child being led the wrong way but you cannot actually act against those who do, in your interaction with the child, cultivate their confidence in questioning the justice of things in areas where you can do so safely.
My second point is even more serious. At the age of thirteen all children are ready to be, and viewed as, adults in spiritual matters. They are not ready to be leaders, of course, and should not be portrayed as such. There are no "child gurus." Because God has wired a child at the age of thirteen to be spiritually an adult the faiths acknowledge that and have rituals accordingly. This is because as I have explained before, it is not to celebrate their "puberty" per se, but because in the days before society infantiles young adults and with birth control, extended schooling, etc., a thirteen year old boy or girl was getting ready to establish his or her own household, marry, and raise their own family. This is how it has been for centuries and was certainly the mindset during Biblical and Qur'anic times, which is when God chose to speak to his people in that context. I mean, duh, how hard is that to understand? When a child is in theory a young adult, at the age of thirteen, and biologically and mentally ready to raise a family (even if society has moved past that early a point) their spiritual development and expectations that are given by God remain the same.
Thus a thirteen year old has embarked onto the rest of his or her life where God expects-and will judge them on-their spiritual responsibilities as an adult, albeit a young adult. Again, this has nothing to do with the circumstances of their family or environment or societal expectations. This is why they are rebellious at that stage in general. It is at that point they are expected to question bull crap anti-God false doctrine that may have been given to them when they were young and helpless. Unless they are locked up in an actual cult compound and/or they are mentally diminished due to illness or mishap, a thirteen year old child is expected to embark upon faithful adult-like responsibilities to God. In the old days, many started years earlier by their own maturity.
So here is the problem. Do not delude yourselves that thirteen year olds and upward cannot go to hell. They can and they do.
Do not delude yourselves that bad upbringing postpones spiritual responsibility. It does not postpone it one iota, except in the circumstances I already mentioned. It makes it most urgent upon surrounding adults, including peer young adults, to speak up and take action as spiritual adults, starting at the age of thirteen, when one encounters the many who are almost feral animals in their lack of spiritual raising by their parents. Again, I am not speaking criminally, though of course one flows from the other. Crime is a matter for the local community and the state.
But here is what you must understand. Because God made all children ready for spiritual adulthood at thirteen, those in these almost feral conditions of either home life or depraved society will proclaim themselves spiritual acolytes of evil, or nihilism, if there is no proper faith formation. In other words, the readiness to be spiritual adults "busts out" one way or the other at that age. They are either ready to embark on genuine faith, learning to be and do as adults in service to God, or they pledge allegiance to chaos, false gods, gangs, worldly idols, and nihilism.
I had already had this in mind because I was thinking of something very sad that happened with a young adult in the family of people who could have been friends of mine, but held back, when I signed onto the computer and read the following. Young friends of the California rape victim (a crime that has received worldwide coverage) have spoken out condemning the lack of proactive security at the dance where this occurred. I applaud the girls who have spoken out because they are exactly at that age I am speaking of. The perpetrators are well beyond that age, being of 15 years and up. I must urge all of you, young people and adults, to understand the facts, not the speculation, of God's spiritual adulthood timeline. At seven one is ready to fully understand right from wrong. At thirteen one is a spiritual adult and one will be judged by God accordingly, regardless of the circumstances, except as I stated above, the most extreme genuine brainwashing, virtual or actual incarceration, and disability due to illness or mishap. Yes, thirteen years olds and upward can and do go to hell. And yes, thirteen year olds and upward are to be uplifted as young spiritual adults and when they speak the truth they are to be praised and heeded.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Why immediate obedience to God necessary
This is especially directed toward young people, those under thirties and most especially young teens (hi there!) because, frankly, I've about given up on your parents' and teachers' generations of understanding these things. They are so infested with "magical" thinking instead of 1) faith and 2) logic and reasoning based on facts. You've been raised that way too, but I have a great hope that you recognize something is very wrong: totally wrong. So this is part of the "faith and reasoning" series where I teach you how to have logical faith based on the truth, accomplished through reasoning and the facts, and also develop your skills in using classic logic to solve problems and form opinions.
Here I am going to first give you an analogy that you can all relate to, and then we will use logic to analyze the analogy.
Suppose that a society, such as the United States, recognizes all at once that cigarette smoking is dangerous for one's health and causes cancer. (I'm not doing a smoking bash here or making an extreme medical statement; I just want to use a genuine topic based on facts for the analogy). So let's suppose that everyone realizes all at once that smoking causes specifically lung cancer and that it is certain to happen for each person eventually. You will have, based on human nature, reactions that divide the population into roughly thirds. One third will quit immediately. One third will want to quit but being pretty heavy smokers or with a big addiction, they have to use various methods to quit, but they have perfect intention to do so as SOON as they can. But then we come to the other third. That third will plan to quit "someday" and use "magical thinking" to manipulate the situation, thinking that they "know better" than the doctors. So that third group will "plan" to quit someday but will continue to smoke and, actually, will work on the members of the first two groups to get them to continue to smoke along with them.
This third group gives this reaction, this very bad reaction, for a combination of reasons, but they all come down to 1) lack of faith and 2) arrogance and self pride overcoming logic. The lack of faith is simple in that they just do not believe either the dire warnings of the doctors or the evidence of their own eyes, which is lots of people getting lung cancer and dropping dead of it, including in their own families. They just refuse to believe and have lack of faith in either the policy or the facts because of reason number two, their arrogance and self pride. That arrogance and pride gets its strength from "magical" thinking. Here are examples of magical thinking:
1. I can keep on smoking longer than anyone else without getting the lung cancer because I'm physically and spiritually better than anyone else.
2. Because I know better than everyone else I can tempt people to also keep smoking, which they enjoy after all, longer, and not have to give up something they enjoy too! So I'm putting to rest their "false fears."
3. Besides, it's not fun being part of a rapidly dwindling group of smokers. I want company and to heck with the consequences, so long as I am partying out and smoking with lots of friends. Hey they know the risk so if they listen to me keep smoking and get cancer, it's their fault ("destiny") anyway.
4. I want to keep doing this wrong and dangerous thing and to rationalize it and keep having a good time with lots of smoking friends, I will tell them they were "born to die of cancer" or that it is "their destiny" if something happens and they get sick. I will make it sound like "the force is with them" or they have "karma" or they will have a better "future life" to make up for their current life being cut short by doing this dangerous smoking.
5. I'm an addict and a weakling and can't quit. But I'm too proud to ask for help, especially because I mocked the very people who did this health study and made the discovery of the danger. So instead of doing what I know I should do and ask for help, I'm too proud and self superior so I'll not ask for help, keep on doing so, and, in fact, sabotage any smoker quitting service I can, since that way I can tell myself that even if I was not proud, none of the smoker quitting services exist or really work anyway.
6. I'm neurotic, obsessive compulsive, depressed, anxious and/or paranoid. I think everyone is pretending that smoking is dangerous and pretending to get sick and die. I also think they are pretending that dead is really dead.
7. I'm all or some of the above in 6 and I think, since I can't think properly, that if people stop smoking and dying of lung cancer that "something worse will happen." Maybe the world is resting on the back of giant turtles who like to breathe cigarette smoke and if we all stop smoking the turtles will get mad and drop the earth and it will break.
I wish I was joking but I am not. I personally, and through second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth degrees of "Kevin Bacon" know people that believe all of the above: a LOT of them. They believe it not only in the actual analogy that I give, but worst of all, they believe it when you apply this analogy about acknowledging the reality of the one true God and of obeying him. They "postpone" or refuse in total to believe in God and to immediately obey him for all those reasons I have listed above.
So we have used logic to list the reactions and reasons of the three groups of people in the smoking analogy. And we have used logic to recognize that just as the analogy cites doctors who document the facts that, in the pretend USA example, that every smoker will get lung cancer and die, this analogy can now be applied to belief in God. God is the doctor who explains that if one smokes that each and every person who smokes will get lung cancer and die. Thus to transfer the work we did on the pretend case study to actuality, God is like the doctor who warns what will one hundred percent will happen, disbelief in God and sins are like the smoking of cigarettes (the thing that is dangerous and wrong to do even if it is "fun"), and hell (not being saved and not having eternal life) is like the inevitable lung cancer in our pretend analogy.
Do you see how powerful logic based on facts can be? Now you can use the logic you developed in the pretend analogy to understand why so many people deny God or worse, even when they understand the risk and reality (the consequences of "cancer") they PUT OFF obeying what they can see and suspect is true and worse, hold their friends, family and society itself back from being believers and immediate obeying of God. You can work down the list of seven I gave to you above and now substitute disbelief/sin/disobeying of God for wherever we list the action of smoking. We can list not being saved, being punished by God in this world, going to hell, and hurting other people by being unjust and/or sinning or spreading unbelief as the substitute for the getting and dying of lung cancer.
Let's work through one example, the first one. The smokers in the first example of pride think they can resist the consequences of smoking longer than anyone so they keep smoking and figure they will quit at the last possible moment. Thus they figure because they are physically and spiritually "better" than anyone else, they can keep smoking until just "before" they actually "get" cancer and then quit in the nick of time. That's the "logic" of pride in the first reasons to keep smoking example.
Now here is how it translates. Yeah, OK, maybe there is a God and maybe he will punish us if we sin. But because I am physically and spiritually "stronger" than anyone else, I will keep doing what I feel like, including sin, because I figure due to my superiority and my good deeds that if I figure out there really is a God, I will by lying around on my death bed after a really fun life and can quickly convert and be forgiven. I know that God will give me a really cool life, including with postponing obedience to him, because he made me so physically strong, good looking, popular, smart and spiritually so "complete" and "evolved" that I can control when I "flip" to believe in God, if he convinces me AND still have postponed obeying him until the last minute.
Here's the problems with this thinking. *sigh* I can't believe I even have to explain this but here goes. If one is disbelieving and disobeying God, no matter what "good deeds" you are doing, you are still 1) sinning 2) encouraging by your life other people to sin and 3) refusing to give God what is due to him on the spot NOW and FOREVER, throughout your life. The people in this category think they are so "blessed" that they can decide if or when to totally surrender to God. They imagine that they are just so wonderful that they can keep making this "personal" decision and that it's theirs to make AND that they will have ample time to "make the switch" if they must. But what happens? Let's go back to our analogy.
1. They keep smoking and get the cancer much faster than anyone else. Hmm.
2. They keep smoking and make money off of it by keeping others smoking through their business and/or their example. Thus their postponed obedience costs other people their lives.
3. They get in a crash and die before they can "make the switch." Ooops.
4. They don't realize that by the time they think they can "make the switch" that they already have the deadly cancer growing undetected. So they stop smoking and then find they have the cancer already because they "postponed" too long.
You can logic through, then, how this maps to disbelieving/postponing obeying God.
1. They disbelieve or postpone obedience and their sin or behaviors kill them even quicker. They go to hell.
2. They know what they are doing is wrong but they make money off of it or at worse by continuing to do so their children do the same neglect of God and thus they make money and tempt others by neglecting God, piling up a lot of unforgiven and some unforgivable sins. They go to hell AND they bring others with them through their delays in obedience.
3. Life happens and they get in a wreck and die or something else happens before they can repent. They go to hell.
4. They wait so long that their hearts are so hardened that even when they "decide" to "make the switch" they just can't do it, because they can't be humble, tender and flexible enough to finally do what they so called "planned" to do all along. So when they are ready to "switch" they find they can't at all, or they do it half hearted, and with a cold heart, like God is a formula to now apply. They go to hell.
I'll leave this with you to work through mapping in your own minds the other "reasons" for disbelief/postponing obeying God, listed 2 through 7, matching the smoking/lung cancer analogy and "reasons" with what that means for disbelieving/postponing obeying God. Pay special attention to the lack of one person converting in their heart to God as a bad example that then leads others back down that path to ruin. This is the heart of why God's judgment is especially stern to those who aren't really making an "individual life style choice," but are actually leading others the same way, often deliberately, as in reasons number 5, 6 and 7 but really all of them, as they want to "party on" with what they are doing, and that requires undermining those who might otherwise have repented and followed God.
*sigh*
Young people, you've been sold a bill of goods (an expression for being stiffed) by the previous generation. Previous generation, wise up.
Here I am going to first give you an analogy that you can all relate to, and then we will use logic to analyze the analogy.
Suppose that a society, such as the United States, recognizes all at once that cigarette smoking is dangerous for one's health and causes cancer. (I'm not doing a smoking bash here or making an extreme medical statement; I just want to use a genuine topic based on facts for the analogy). So let's suppose that everyone realizes all at once that smoking causes specifically lung cancer and that it is certain to happen for each person eventually. You will have, based on human nature, reactions that divide the population into roughly thirds. One third will quit immediately. One third will want to quit but being pretty heavy smokers or with a big addiction, they have to use various methods to quit, but they have perfect intention to do so as SOON as they can. But then we come to the other third. That third will plan to quit "someday" and use "magical thinking" to manipulate the situation, thinking that they "know better" than the doctors. So that third group will "plan" to quit someday but will continue to smoke and, actually, will work on the members of the first two groups to get them to continue to smoke along with them.
This third group gives this reaction, this very bad reaction, for a combination of reasons, but they all come down to 1) lack of faith and 2) arrogance and self pride overcoming logic. The lack of faith is simple in that they just do not believe either the dire warnings of the doctors or the evidence of their own eyes, which is lots of people getting lung cancer and dropping dead of it, including in their own families. They just refuse to believe and have lack of faith in either the policy or the facts because of reason number two, their arrogance and self pride. That arrogance and pride gets its strength from "magical" thinking. Here are examples of magical thinking:
1. I can keep on smoking longer than anyone else without getting the lung cancer because I'm physically and spiritually better than anyone else.
2. Because I know better than everyone else I can tempt people to also keep smoking, which they enjoy after all, longer, and not have to give up something they enjoy too! So I'm putting to rest their "false fears."
3. Besides, it's not fun being part of a rapidly dwindling group of smokers. I want company and to heck with the consequences, so long as I am partying out and smoking with lots of friends. Hey they know the risk so if they listen to me keep smoking and get cancer, it's their fault ("destiny") anyway.
4. I want to keep doing this wrong and dangerous thing and to rationalize it and keep having a good time with lots of smoking friends, I will tell them they were "born to die of cancer" or that it is "their destiny" if something happens and they get sick. I will make it sound like "the force is with them" or they have "karma" or they will have a better "future life" to make up for their current life being cut short by doing this dangerous smoking.
5. I'm an addict and a weakling and can't quit. But I'm too proud to ask for help, especially because I mocked the very people who did this health study and made the discovery of the danger. So instead of doing what I know I should do and ask for help, I'm too proud and self superior so I'll not ask for help, keep on doing so, and, in fact, sabotage any smoker quitting service I can, since that way I can tell myself that even if I was not proud, none of the smoker quitting services exist or really work anyway.
6. I'm neurotic, obsessive compulsive, depressed, anxious and/or paranoid. I think everyone is pretending that smoking is dangerous and pretending to get sick and die. I also think they are pretending that dead is really dead.
7. I'm all or some of the above in 6 and I think, since I can't think properly, that if people stop smoking and dying of lung cancer that "something worse will happen." Maybe the world is resting on the back of giant turtles who like to breathe cigarette smoke and if we all stop smoking the turtles will get mad and drop the earth and it will break.
I wish I was joking but I am not. I personally, and through second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth degrees of "Kevin Bacon" know people that believe all of the above: a LOT of them. They believe it not only in the actual analogy that I give, but worst of all, they believe it when you apply this analogy about acknowledging the reality of the one true God and of obeying him. They "postpone" or refuse in total to believe in God and to immediately obey him for all those reasons I have listed above.
So we have used logic to list the reactions and reasons of the three groups of people in the smoking analogy. And we have used logic to recognize that just as the analogy cites doctors who document the facts that, in the pretend USA example, that every smoker will get lung cancer and die, this analogy can now be applied to belief in God. God is the doctor who explains that if one smokes that each and every person who smokes will get lung cancer and die. Thus to transfer the work we did on the pretend case study to actuality, God is like the doctor who warns what will one hundred percent will happen, disbelief in God and sins are like the smoking of cigarettes (the thing that is dangerous and wrong to do even if it is "fun"), and hell (not being saved and not having eternal life) is like the inevitable lung cancer in our pretend analogy.
Do you see how powerful logic based on facts can be? Now you can use the logic you developed in the pretend analogy to understand why so many people deny God or worse, even when they understand the risk and reality (the consequences of "cancer") they PUT OFF obeying what they can see and suspect is true and worse, hold their friends, family and society itself back from being believers and immediate obeying of God. You can work down the list of seven I gave to you above and now substitute disbelief/sin/disobeying of God for wherever we list the action of smoking. We can list not being saved, being punished by God in this world, going to hell, and hurting other people by being unjust and/or sinning or spreading unbelief as the substitute for the getting and dying of lung cancer.
Let's work through one example, the first one. The smokers in the first example of pride think they can resist the consequences of smoking longer than anyone so they keep smoking and figure they will quit at the last possible moment. Thus they figure because they are physically and spiritually "better" than anyone else, they can keep smoking until just "before" they actually "get" cancer and then quit in the nick of time. That's the "logic" of pride in the first reasons to keep smoking example.
Now here is how it translates. Yeah, OK, maybe there is a God and maybe he will punish us if we sin. But because I am physically and spiritually "stronger" than anyone else, I will keep doing what I feel like, including sin, because I figure due to my superiority and my good deeds that if I figure out there really is a God, I will by lying around on my death bed after a really fun life and can quickly convert and be forgiven. I know that God will give me a really cool life, including with postponing obedience to him, because he made me so physically strong, good looking, popular, smart and spiritually so "complete" and "evolved" that I can control when I "flip" to believe in God, if he convinces me AND still have postponed obeying him until the last minute.
Here's the problems with this thinking. *sigh* I can't believe I even have to explain this but here goes. If one is disbelieving and disobeying God, no matter what "good deeds" you are doing, you are still 1) sinning 2) encouraging by your life other people to sin and 3) refusing to give God what is due to him on the spot NOW and FOREVER, throughout your life. The people in this category think they are so "blessed" that they can decide if or when to totally surrender to God. They imagine that they are just so wonderful that they can keep making this "personal" decision and that it's theirs to make AND that they will have ample time to "make the switch" if they must. But what happens? Let's go back to our analogy.
1. They keep smoking and get the cancer much faster than anyone else. Hmm.
2. They keep smoking and make money off of it by keeping others smoking through their business and/or their example. Thus their postponed obedience costs other people their lives.
3. They get in a crash and die before they can "make the switch." Ooops.
4. They don't realize that by the time they think they can "make the switch" that they already have the deadly cancer growing undetected. So they stop smoking and then find they have the cancer already because they "postponed" too long.
You can logic through, then, how this maps to disbelieving/postponing obeying God.
1. They disbelieve or postpone obedience and their sin or behaviors kill them even quicker. They go to hell.
2. They know what they are doing is wrong but they make money off of it or at worse by continuing to do so their children do the same neglect of God and thus they make money and tempt others by neglecting God, piling up a lot of unforgiven and some unforgivable sins. They go to hell AND they bring others with them through their delays in obedience.
3. Life happens and they get in a wreck and die or something else happens before they can repent. They go to hell.
4. They wait so long that their hearts are so hardened that even when they "decide" to "make the switch" they just can't do it, because they can't be humble, tender and flexible enough to finally do what they so called "planned" to do all along. So when they are ready to "switch" they find they can't at all, or they do it half hearted, and with a cold heart, like God is a formula to now apply. They go to hell.
I'll leave this with you to work through mapping in your own minds the other "reasons" for disbelief/postponing obeying God, listed 2 through 7, matching the smoking/lung cancer analogy and "reasons" with what that means for disbelieving/postponing obeying God. Pay special attention to the lack of one person converting in their heart to God as a bad example that then leads others back down that path to ruin. This is the heart of why God's judgment is especially stern to those who aren't really making an "individual life style choice," but are actually leading others the same way, often deliberately, as in reasons number 5, 6 and 7 but really all of them, as they want to "party on" with what they are doing, and that requires undermining those who might otherwise have repented and followed God.
*sigh*
Young people, you've been sold a bill of goods (an expression for being stiffed) by the previous generation. Previous generation, wise up.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Both God and Jesus have roles in judgement
I've noticed there is some confusion among some people based on the completeness of the authority given to Jesus by God to judge all of humankind. Here is a quick way to help you to understand precisely what God does and intends.
Yes, Jesus has complete authority to judge, which he will do at the Second Coming. The Book of Revelation explains that through the eyes of the Apostle John, who is taken to heaven in vision to see some of what will happen in the final days leading up to the Apocalypse and Christ's Return. God remains on his heavenly throne while the world passes away and Jesus judges all, the living and the dead.
However, until that time comes, people have individual lives and they live and they die. Each person is judged on their death by God himself. How do we know this? Again, turn to what seems to be my most cited scripture, Luke 16, where Jesus describes what happens to a rich man who goes to hell.
"There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores...When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried, and from the netherworld, where he was in torment, he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he cried out, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames" (Luke 16:19-20, 22-24).
Now, remember that Jesus has a greater point to make in telling this story, this actual event that has happened, so you must read it for both 1) the main point and 2) any other insight one can glean since everything that Jesus said is saying it "as it really is."
Notice that the rich man does not say, "Abraham! HEY! What in the world am I doing in hell? I was a great guy!" The rich man knows exactly why he is there so he does not bother to ask for an explanation, which he already knows (and in fact is gazing on the very reason, his neglect of the poor, suffering and dying Lazarus). This is because God judged that man as he woke up in hell. It's not like there's a kind of courtroom or waiting room where God calls people in and judges each one in a neutral spot in turn. One wakes up from death in the place where one is sent, with the knowledge of God's judgement. Period. The angels escorted the poor man Lazarus, carrying him to heaven. God's judgment was apparent by the fact the angels were taking him to heaven. Likewise God's judgement was apparent and the facts about "why" given into the spiritual heart and mind of the person who ends up in hell. So the first thing that careful reading and trusting that Jesus is precise and truthful and complete in all things reveals is that people die and wake up in either heaven or hell, knowing exactly why they are there, which only God can provide.
The second thing you notice is that Jesus did not say at any point that he, Jesus, was the one who judged Lazarus or the rich man. If that were the case he would have said so, since Jesus' complete ministry is to be open, freely sharing the facts of the Kingdom of God, and he would have told the disciples if he, Jesus, were the one who was already judging each person who died, even before he was alive as Son of Man on earth and before his crucifixion and resurrection. That would have been an extremely important fact to share in the Gospel and Jesus would have done so if that were the case. Indeed, it would have been mind boggling for the disciples to hear that even before Jesus was born to Mary on earth that he was in heaven judging each person who died! So even though Jesus is of course of God and thus eternal, when he speaks of his role of judge and authority to judge whether one goes to heaven or hell he means at the Second Coming.
So when Abraham explains why the rich man cannot have a drop of water, Abraham is not breaking the news to him about why he is in hell, Abraham is explaining the unchangeable rules and conditions, that no aid or comfort will be given to those in hell.
"Abraham replied, 'My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented. Moreover, between us a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours" (Luke 16:25-6).
Do you see? If Jesus had judged the rich man, Jesus would have told the disciples that "And I told him during judgement exactly how many times he had ridden past the poor bleeding hungry and dying Lazarus while riding on his horse and then I had told him each and every one of his sins and that's why he's in hell." But Jesus did not do that....God himself did that. Another way that you can understand that it was God and not pre-born Jesus doing the judging is that Jesus mentions that angels carried the poor man Lazarus to heaven, and everyone realizes that God sends angels to do his bidding. For example, when Jesus is praying before the betrayal in Gethsemane, God sends an angel to comfort him; Jesus does not summon angels. He could do so but he never did so, as Jesus and God work in harmony in all things. It is in the Second Coming where Jesus sends angels and judges. Until then it is exactly as it has always been, which is that God himself renders personal individual judgment and the sending of a soul to heaven or hell upon that person's death.
So to continue the reading, the rich man now asks for permission to send Lazarus (and can you see that he still does not "get it," I mean, he's in hell for how he neglected Lazarus in the first place and he's still trying to order Lazarus to go on his errands... the road to hell is pride, pride, pride...) to warn his brothers. Again, if you carefully read this you can glean an important insight. The rich man is not so much wanting to share the sins that got him into hell, but, and this is important, he wants to tell his brothers how bad and final the suffering of hell is!
"He said, 'Then I beg you, father, send him [Lazarus] to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment'" (Luke 16:27).
See? It is the horror of hell in its actuality that spurs the rich man to want to warn his brothers. It's not a genuine repentance since he is still trying to get the very poor miserable "beneath his notice" Lazarus, even as he's glorified to heaven, to go back to earth and do his bidding! So it's not like the rich man didn't "realize" "why" he was in hell since he wasn't judged until Abraham "explained" it to him: he knew full well all along since the story does not start out with "Hey! What's that poor bum Lazarus doing in heaven while I've found myself in hell? What gives?" He immediately hits up Lazarus, through Abraham, for a drop of water. This is how you can infer from what Jesus relates are the facts that people are transported, waking up to find themselves in either heaven or hell with full understanding of how and why they were judged to go there by God. Jesus tells the disciples this actual portrayal of heaven and hell and two people who go to their judgement respectively to make the broader point about what God expects regarding charity, but also to explain how the reality of heaven and hell "works." This is why Abraham explained not only the "why" of why he would not given the rich man even a drop of water or send warning to living five brothers, but also the mechanism, the physics, of heaven and hell, where the great chasm prevents any crossing in either direction. So Jesus was providing a moral and lesson in the telling of what actually happened in this case of the judgment of two men, but also describing for the disciples, who of course needed to know, how the reality of hell and the divide between heaven and hell "works."
Since that is Jesus' intention, if Jesus were "already" judging individual human beings upon their death, he would have said so. To use the expression "it goes without saying" that the disciples understood that God had simultaneously rendered/conveyed judgment to each person and had them conveyed to their place of eternity, either heaven or, of course, hell.
So yes, Jesus has all authority and he will Judge. But do not fall into the trap of thinking that upon personal death (not the End of Days when all will die and rise again for judgement) that when one dies one goes into kind of a waiting room area where one can argue one's case in front of stereotype "forgiving and easy going" Jesus. One is BANG! in heaven or hell, receiving simultaneously judgement and full knowledge of the why's from God himself. Simultaneous with being conveyed by the angels to heaven Lazarus would have received the light of God praising him for his belief and comforting him for his suffering with reward in heaven. Simultaneous with waking up in hell, the rich man would have received full knowledge of the why's of his condemnation and judging by God, which we know because as Jesus relates, it's not like the rich man was puzzled at seeing that "loser" Lazarus in heaven with Abraham. No dialogue is wasted in him asking why that is, because he wakes in hell fully knowing how and why God judged him. No, he's just shocked at how truly unbearable, unrelievable and eternal that hell actually is. It is that shock of suffering that makes him want to warn his brothers that ignoring that dirtbag Lazarus and other poor losers like him is a bad idea. In other words, by how the dialogue progresses you can see that if hell were in theory not such a bad place, but not heaven, this guy would never have bothered trying to warn his brothers, since he still doesn't "get" how unrighteous and unjust he was to Lazarus through his neglect. He's solely motivated by how dreadful that hell is and how he truly can't order the peasant around to do his bidding like he did on earth.
That's why, to remind you of a few postings ago, pride is the downfall of MANY who go to hell. Pridefulness, especially putting one's self before God's priorities, IS a grievous sin and merits hell, regardless of the other "good deeds" or whatever.
When one decides that Jesus is one's Lord and Savior, it is not so you can show a membership card to Jesus, because he's not the one checking at the door upon death: it's God. This is why Jesus repeatedly explains he is the "way." Jesus is not saying that he is judging people's entry into heaven. Remember when James and John's mother asked Jesus if he would have them sit at his right and left hand in his kingdom? What did Jesus say? He said that was up to God. Jesus promised them to go prepare the places for them in heaven. Jesus did not say that he would be the judge when they die. Jesus is the way in the sense that if one trusts him to not only save but to be LORD over one's life, then one will pass judgement from God. It is at the End of all Days, at the Apocalypse, at the Second Coming, that all who lived and died in all humanity will resurrect and be judged by Jesus. Until that time each individual person's death and rendering of judgement to heaven or hell is in God the Father's hands.
Finally, another way you can understand this is to recall one of the most insightful, but most subtle and unnoticed, of all the writings of St. Paul.
And do not grieve the holy Spirit of God, with which you were sealed for the day of redemption (Ephesians 4:30).
You see? Here Paul is reminding the readers that the Holy Spirit also partakes in the final judgement! What he is basically saying that if Christians are "All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling...along with all malice" (Ephesians 4:30-31) then these Christians risk losing, by giving sadness and grief to the Holy Spirit, the seal which will get them redeemed. This is powerful and serious stuff, people. Again, this is why I must caution you not to allow a kind of video image of Jesus in the waiting room giving easy judgement upon a person's death to delude you that it's not something that can't be lost. One can accept Jesus as one's Savior but if one does not also follow completely his "way" and indeed, going further, grieves the Holy Spirit, if Jesus is not truly Lord, then one is not prepared to be judged favorably by God, who does the judging based on 1) one's belief and 2) one's righteousness, through the guidance and filter of both Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Paul is warning good believers of the early Christian community that they can lose the seal of redemption if they grieve the Holy Spirit through the actions as listed above.
Yes, Jesus has complete authority to judge, which he will do at the Second Coming. The Book of Revelation explains that through the eyes of the Apostle John, who is taken to heaven in vision to see some of what will happen in the final days leading up to the Apocalypse and Christ's Return. God remains on his heavenly throne while the world passes away and Jesus judges all, the living and the dead.
However, until that time comes, people have individual lives and they live and they die. Each person is judged on their death by God himself. How do we know this? Again, turn to what seems to be my most cited scripture, Luke 16, where Jesus describes what happens to a rich man who goes to hell.
"There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores...When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried, and from the netherworld, where he was in torment, he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he cried out, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames" (Luke 16:19-20, 22-24).
Now, remember that Jesus has a greater point to make in telling this story, this actual event that has happened, so you must read it for both 1) the main point and 2) any other insight one can glean since everything that Jesus said is saying it "as it really is."
Notice that the rich man does not say, "Abraham! HEY! What in the world am I doing in hell? I was a great guy!" The rich man knows exactly why he is there so he does not bother to ask for an explanation, which he already knows (and in fact is gazing on the very reason, his neglect of the poor, suffering and dying Lazarus). This is because God judged that man as he woke up in hell. It's not like there's a kind of courtroom or waiting room where God calls people in and judges each one in a neutral spot in turn. One wakes up from death in the place where one is sent, with the knowledge of God's judgement. Period. The angels escorted the poor man Lazarus, carrying him to heaven. God's judgment was apparent by the fact the angels were taking him to heaven. Likewise God's judgement was apparent and the facts about "why" given into the spiritual heart and mind of the person who ends up in hell. So the first thing that careful reading and trusting that Jesus is precise and truthful and complete in all things reveals is that people die and wake up in either heaven or hell, knowing exactly why they are there, which only God can provide.
The second thing you notice is that Jesus did not say at any point that he, Jesus, was the one who judged Lazarus or the rich man. If that were the case he would have said so, since Jesus' complete ministry is to be open, freely sharing the facts of the Kingdom of God, and he would have told the disciples if he, Jesus, were the one who was already judging each person who died, even before he was alive as Son of Man on earth and before his crucifixion and resurrection. That would have been an extremely important fact to share in the Gospel and Jesus would have done so if that were the case. Indeed, it would have been mind boggling for the disciples to hear that even before Jesus was born to Mary on earth that he was in heaven judging each person who died! So even though Jesus is of course of God and thus eternal, when he speaks of his role of judge and authority to judge whether one goes to heaven or hell he means at the Second Coming.
So when Abraham explains why the rich man cannot have a drop of water, Abraham is not breaking the news to him about why he is in hell, Abraham is explaining the unchangeable rules and conditions, that no aid or comfort will be given to those in hell.
"Abraham replied, 'My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented. Moreover, between us a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours" (Luke 16:25-6).
Do you see? If Jesus had judged the rich man, Jesus would have told the disciples that "And I told him during judgement exactly how many times he had ridden past the poor bleeding hungry and dying Lazarus while riding on his horse and then I had told him each and every one of his sins and that's why he's in hell." But Jesus did not do that....God himself did that. Another way that you can understand that it was God and not pre-born Jesus doing the judging is that Jesus mentions that angels carried the poor man Lazarus to heaven, and everyone realizes that God sends angels to do his bidding. For example, when Jesus is praying before the betrayal in Gethsemane, God sends an angel to comfort him; Jesus does not summon angels. He could do so but he never did so, as Jesus and God work in harmony in all things. It is in the Second Coming where Jesus sends angels and judges. Until then it is exactly as it has always been, which is that God himself renders personal individual judgment and the sending of a soul to heaven or hell upon that person's death.
So to continue the reading, the rich man now asks for permission to send Lazarus (and can you see that he still does not "get it," I mean, he's in hell for how he neglected Lazarus in the first place and he's still trying to order Lazarus to go on his errands... the road to hell is pride, pride, pride...) to warn his brothers. Again, if you carefully read this you can glean an important insight. The rich man is not so much wanting to share the sins that got him into hell, but, and this is important, he wants to tell his brothers how bad and final the suffering of hell is!
"He said, 'Then I beg you, father, send him [Lazarus] to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment'" (Luke 16:27).
See? It is the horror of hell in its actuality that spurs the rich man to want to warn his brothers. It's not a genuine repentance since he is still trying to get the very poor miserable "beneath his notice" Lazarus, even as he's glorified to heaven, to go back to earth and do his bidding! So it's not like the rich man didn't "realize" "why" he was in hell since he wasn't judged until Abraham "explained" it to him: he knew full well all along since the story does not start out with "Hey! What's that poor bum Lazarus doing in heaven while I've found myself in hell? What gives?" He immediately hits up Lazarus, through Abraham, for a drop of water. This is how you can infer from what Jesus relates are the facts that people are transported, waking up to find themselves in either heaven or hell with full understanding of how and why they were judged to go there by God. Jesus tells the disciples this actual portrayal of heaven and hell and two people who go to their judgement respectively to make the broader point about what God expects regarding charity, but also to explain how the reality of heaven and hell "works." This is why Abraham explained not only the "why" of why he would not given the rich man even a drop of water or send warning to living five brothers, but also the mechanism, the physics, of heaven and hell, where the great chasm prevents any crossing in either direction. So Jesus was providing a moral and lesson in the telling of what actually happened in this case of the judgment of two men, but also describing for the disciples, who of course needed to know, how the reality of hell and the divide between heaven and hell "works."
Since that is Jesus' intention, if Jesus were "already" judging individual human beings upon their death, he would have said so. To use the expression "it goes without saying" that the disciples understood that God had simultaneously rendered/conveyed judgment to each person and had them conveyed to their place of eternity, either heaven or, of course, hell.
So yes, Jesus has all authority and he will Judge. But do not fall into the trap of thinking that upon personal death (not the End of Days when all will die and rise again for judgement) that when one dies one goes into kind of a waiting room area where one can argue one's case in front of stereotype "forgiving and easy going" Jesus. One is BANG! in heaven or hell, receiving simultaneously judgement and full knowledge of the why's from God himself. Simultaneous with being conveyed by the angels to heaven Lazarus would have received the light of God praising him for his belief and comforting him for his suffering with reward in heaven. Simultaneous with waking up in hell, the rich man would have received full knowledge of the why's of his condemnation and judging by God, which we know because as Jesus relates, it's not like the rich man was puzzled at seeing that "loser" Lazarus in heaven with Abraham. No dialogue is wasted in him asking why that is, because he wakes in hell fully knowing how and why God judged him. No, he's just shocked at how truly unbearable, unrelievable and eternal that hell actually is. It is that shock of suffering that makes him want to warn his brothers that ignoring that dirtbag Lazarus and other poor losers like him is a bad idea. In other words, by how the dialogue progresses you can see that if hell were in theory not such a bad place, but not heaven, this guy would never have bothered trying to warn his brothers, since he still doesn't "get" how unrighteous and unjust he was to Lazarus through his neglect. He's solely motivated by how dreadful that hell is and how he truly can't order the peasant around to do his bidding like he did on earth.
That's why, to remind you of a few postings ago, pride is the downfall of MANY who go to hell. Pridefulness, especially putting one's self before God's priorities, IS a grievous sin and merits hell, regardless of the other "good deeds" or whatever.
When one decides that Jesus is one's Lord and Savior, it is not so you can show a membership card to Jesus, because he's not the one checking at the door upon death: it's God. This is why Jesus repeatedly explains he is the "way." Jesus is not saying that he is judging people's entry into heaven. Remember when James and John's mother asked Jesus if he would have them sit at his right and left hand in his kingdom? What did Jesus say? He said that was up to God. Jesus promised them to go prepare the places for them in heaven. Jesus did not say that he would be the judge when they die. Jesus is the way in the sense that if one trusts him to not only save but to be LORD over one's life, then one will pass judgement from God. It is at the End of all Days, at the Apocalypse, at the Second Coming, that all who lived and died in all humanity will resurrect and be judged by Jesus. Until that time each individual person's death and rendering of judgement to heaven or hell is in God the Father's hands.
Finally, another way you can understand this is to recall one of the most insightful, but most subtle and unnoticed, of all the writings of St. Paul.
And do not grieve the holy Spirit of God, with which you were sealed for the day of redemption (Ephesians 4:30).
You see? Here Paul is reminding the readers that the Holy Spirit also partakes in the final judgement! What he is basically saying that if Christians are "All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling...along with all malice" (Ephesians 4:30-31) then these Christians risk losing, by giving sadness and grief to the Holy Spirit, the seal which will get them redeemed. This is powerful and serious stuff, people. Again, this is why I must caution you not to allow a kind of video image of Jesus in the waiting room giving easy judgement upon a person's death to delude you that it's not something that can't be lost. One can accept Jesus as one's Savior but if one does not also follow completely his "way" and indeed, going further, grieves the Holy Spirit, if Jesus is not truly Lord, then one is not prepared to be judged favorably by God, who does the judging based on 1) one's belief and 2) one's righteousness, through the guidance and filter of both Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Paul is warning good believers of the early Christian community that they can lose the seal of redemption if they grieve the Holy Spirit through the actions as listed above.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Friday, October 23, 2009
The road to hell is paved with pride
Pride: inordinate self-esteem; conceit; worldly, materialistic
A damning vice:
...Rash and self-willed, such men in their deriding do not regard majesty; whereas angels, though greater in strength and power, do not bring against themselves an abusive charge...They promise them freedom, whereas they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whatever a man is overcome, of this he is also the slave (2 Peter 3:10-11, 19).
Do not love the world, or of the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him; because all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life; which is not from the Father, but from the world. And the world with its lust is passing away, but he who does the will of God abides forever (1 John 2:15-17).
Stirs up strife:
The greedy man stirs up disputes, but he who trust in the Lord will prosper. He who trusts in himself is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom is safe (Proverbs 28:25-26).
Prevents instruction:
They answered and said to him, "Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us?" And they turned him out (John 9:24). [These are the Jews, specifically the Pharisees, who refuse to believe in their pride that the man witnessing to them had been cured of his blindness by Jesus.]
Leads to enmity:
Proudly the wicked harass the afflicted, who are caught in the devices the wicked have contrived. For the wicked man glories in his greed, and the covetous blasphemes, sets the Lord at nought. The wicked man boasts, "He will not avenge it"; "There is no God," sums up his thoughts (Psalm 9B (10): 3-4).
Leads to ruin:
Pride goeth before disaster, and a haughty spirit before a fall (Proverbs 16:18). [Yes, God's word in the Bible is the origin of the famous expression "Pride goeth before a fall."]
Will be abased and destroyed:
For lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven, when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble,
And the day that is coming will set them on fire, leaving them neither root nor branch, says the LORD of hosts (Malachi 3:19 or in some older Bibles Malachi 4:1).
[The prophet who calls himself Malachi (which was like saying "anonymous" back then, since he was in fear of denouncing, even though he spoke with God's authority, the wickedness of the chosen people the Israelites, including the priests) is repeating God's words and notice that God is going to burn not only the evildoers but also the proud.]
A damning vice:
...Rash and self-willed, such men in their deriding do not regard majesty; whereas angels, though greater in strength and power, do not bring against themselves an abusive charge...They promise them freedom, whereas they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whatever a man is overcome, of this he is also the slave (2 Peter 3:10-11, 19).
Do not love the world, or of the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him; because all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life; which is not from the Father, but from the world. And the world with its lust is passing away, but he who does the will of God abides forever (1 John 2:15-17).
Stirs up strife:
The greedy man stirs up disputes, but he who trust in the Lord will prosper. He who trusts in himself is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom is safe (Proverbs 28:25-26).
Prevents instruction:
They answered and said to him, "Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us?" And they turned him out (John 9:24). [These are the Jews, specifically the Pharisees, who refuse to believe in their pride that the man witnessing to them had been cured of his blindness by Jesus.]
Leads to enmity:
Proudly the wicked harass the afflicted, who are caught in the devices the wicked have contrived. For the wicked man glories in his greed, and the covetous blasphemes, sets the Lord at nought. The wicked man boasts, "He will not avenge it"; "There is no God," sums up his thoughts (Psalm 9B (10): 3-4).
Leads to ruin:
Pride goeth before disaster, and a haughty spirit before a fall (Proverbs 16:18). [Yes, God's word in the Bible is the origin of the famous expression "Pride goeth before a fall."]
Will be abased and destroyed:
For lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven, when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble,
And the day that is coming will set them on fire, leaving them neither root nor branch, says the LORD of hosts (Malachi 3:19 or in some older Bibles Malachi 4:1).
[The prophet who calls himself Malachi (which was like saying "anonymous" back then, since he was in fear of denouncing, even though he spoke with God's authority, the wickedness of the chosen people the Israelites, including the priests) is repeating God's words and notice that God is going to burn not only the evildoers but also the proud.]
Monday, October 19, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Cancer's important, but what about hell?
Here's an example of how messed up, I would say, even f***ed up western society has become.
You have a month, October, in America, dedicated to obsessing about cancer. Every day we are supposed to read about it and wring our hands. And yes, by the way, I have a near relative who is a "breast cancer survivor," so forget the "insensitive" accusations LOL.
Here's the thing. Children starve to death every day around the world, and we have no daily reminder of them, do we? Or a month dedicated to babies and children who starve to death. And more so, no matter how sad an illness, or how politically correct it is, is there anything more important than a daily reminder to be genuinely and truly alright with God, since God assures us that there is a genuine and dreadful hell for all eternity?
So why not have at least a month, if not every day, reminding people of the certainty of hell for those who take the wide and easy road, and who ignore the warnings of Jesus Christ.
Now THAT would be a public service announcement of some importance. See, all the millions and millions and millions of people already in hell cannot do that public service announcement for you (see Luke 16). And, as I've pointed out before, the Qur'an is filled with assurances of the reality of hell (one could probably read one passage a day for an entire month on that subject in fact).
You have a month, October, in America, dedicated to obsessing about cancer. Every day we are supposed to read about it and wring our hands. And yes, by the way, I have a near relative who is a "breast cancer survivor," so forget the "insensitive" accusations LOL.
Here's the thing. Children starve to death every day around the world, and we have no daily reminder of them, do we? Or a month dedicated to babies and children who starve to death. And more so, no matter how sad an illness, or how politically correct it is, is there anything more important than a daily reminder to be genuinely and truly alright with God, since God assures us that there is a genuine and dreadful hell for all eternity?
So why not have at least a month, if not every day, reminding people of the certainty of hell for those who take the wide and easy road, and who ignore the warnings of Jesus Christ.
Now THAT would be a public service announcement of some importance. See, all the millions and millions and millions of people already in hell cannot do that public service announcement for you (see Luke 16). And, as I've pointed out before, the Qur'an is filled with assurances of the reality of hell (one could probably read one passage a day for an entire month on that subject in fact).
Monday, October 5, 2009
A caution about murder-suicide
This is from an article in dailymail.co.uk. A millionaire in his 70's shot his wife while she slept then took his own life. Investigators found that he had supposedly received a diagnosis of cancer, and this is the motivation for him killing his wife, then himself.
Here is my common sense caution. "Hell" hurts a lot more, and for all eternity, than "Cancer."
It's not even like in a moment of suffering weakness two elderly people have a suicide pact. This guy not only didn't want to go through cancer, but I guess he didn't want his wife to have the rest of her life? Anyone think God will reward him for murdering his wife? No pain meds in hell.
There are so many murder-suicides recently that I'm putting this obvious, but I guess necessary, observation out to you all. I would think the problem with murder-suicide would be kind of obvious, but I guess it is not. God does not "comfort" "suffering" people who kill others before killing themselves, robbing them of their God given lives. Good grief, what is the matter with people? (Rhetorical question).
So please, those of you out there who know people under stress. Try to make sure that they understand that, well, "hell hurts a lot more than cancer," and "God never thanks people for murdering their loved ones to 'bring them to heaven sooner.'"
Here is my common sense caution. "Hell" hurts a lot more, and for all eternity, than "Cancer."
It's not even like in a moment of suffering weakness two elderly people have a suicide pact. This guy not only didn't want to go through cancer, but I guess he didn't want his wife to have the rest of her life? Anyone think God will reward him for murdering his wife? No pain meds in hell.
There are so many murder-suicides recently that I'm putting this obvious, but I guess necessary, observation out to you all. I would think the problem with murder-suicide would be kind of obvious, but I guess it is not. God does not "comfort" "suffering" people who kill others before killing themselves, robbing them of their God given lives. Good grief, what is the matter with people? (Rhetorical question).
So please, those of you out there who know people under stress. Try to make sure that they understand that, well, "hell hurts a lot more than cancer," and "God never thanks people for murdering their loved ones to 'bring them to heaven sooner.'"
Go ahead and hate the Catholic Church
Honestly, it does not bother me at all. I'm posting this just to save some time and energy for those who go further and further in their hatred of the Church, trying to get some additional pain or reaction from me, or others. No lie, I could not care less if a billion people hated the Catholic Church as badly as the worst of them (check comments section of any article about religion to see what I mean.) God's truth: I could not care less if one billion people or more hated the Catholic Church just as much as the most despising individuals we see today. Why is that?
You can hate the Catholic Church to pieces, but it doesn't change the fact that there is a God, one to whom everyone, both people who are guilty of abuse in the Church AND haters in general, must be accountable to.
People keep confusing the institution with the reality of God. You know what that is? Darwin at work.
To hate a religious institution because of the abuse of some or even "many" is in opposition to one's own survival traits (terminology I've used before) and thus is "Darwin at work" for two reasons:
1. By hating the Catholic Church you diminish your own faith in God in general, regardless of your denomination and woe especially to you if you are atheist, as it's blinders on top of blinders.
2. By hating priest sex abusers you channel all your presumed "righteous indignation" toward the Church and away from, oh, I don't know, maybe parents who rape their own babies' behinds and mouths, give them drugs, sell (or trade them) for sex, or who have incest with their older children, or pose infants to teenagers for porn. I'm not a statistician but I could make a smart bet that there's much more of that, which ruins generations and destroys intimacy (and murders) many more individuals than all the abuse in the Church, and that's assuming a lot.
By doing any of the above you are diminishing your own survival traits and just fulfilling Darwin, like the clown who says "watch this" while handing a beer to his friend.
So pour on the hate: I am serious. Let's see how much we have to deal with and then the peanut gallery of good natured but uninvolved people on the sidelines will eventually say, just as I explained above, "Hmm. As outrageous as the abuse was, and how grievous, is the Catholic Church really the source of all perversion in the world?" *Glances at the newspaper and sees another "boyfriend" stuck his **** into his girlfriend's infant before beating it to death.*
Sooner or later if people are going to survive at all, they are going to have to get proportional and sane again. If on the way to that road (which may result in the Second Coming, by the way, where there are more disappointed people than joyful ones) you have to reach spittle flying total hatred for the Catholic Church, go ahead, it does not raise my blood pressure, nor make me boo hoo hoo into my hanky. I just think, with a small amount of chortling, how surprised YOU all will be when you discover that you can hate abusing doctors, but that does not mean that medicine is invalid. Get ready for God to pin that medal on your chest (or Satan to pin it on your backside).
And, just for a little theology, let's come up with an awful scenario. Let's suppose that millions of people rose up in hatred against the Church and individual Catholics, oppressing, attacking and even murdering them. Theologically that's an awesome thing, because even those lukewarm cafeteria Catholics would become martyrs, and we all know (if we actually read the Bible) how all martyrs are glorified by God for eternity.
Have a nice day!
You can hate the Catholic Church to pieces, but it doesn't change the fact that there is a God, one to whom everyone, both people who are guilty of abuse in the Church AND haters in general, must be accountable to.
People keep confusing the institution with the reality of God. You know what that is? Darwin at work.
To hate a religious institution because of the abuse of some or even "many" is in opposition to one's own survival traits (terminology I've used before) and thus is "Darwin at work" for two reasons:
1. By hating the Catholic Church you diminish your own faith in God in general, regardless of your denomination and woe especially to you if you are atheist, as it's blinders on top of blinders.
2. By hating priest sex abusers you channel all your presumed "righteous indignation" toward the Church and away from, oh, I don't know, maybe parents who rape their own babies' behinds and mouths, give them drugs, sell (or trade them) for sex, or who have incest with their older children, or pose infants to teenagers for porn. I'm not a statistician but I could make a smart bet that there's much more of that, which ruins generations and destroys intimacy (and murders) many more individuals than all the abuse in the Church, and that's assuming a lot.
By doing any of the above you are diminishing your own survival traits and just fulfilling Darwin, like the clown who says "watch this" while handing a beer to his friend.
So pour on the hate: I am serious. Let's see how much we have to deal with and then the peanut gallery of good natured but uninvolved people on the sidelines will eventually say, just as I explained above, "Hmm. As outrageous as the abuse was, and how grievous, is the Catholic Church really the source of all perversion in the world?" *Glances at the newspaper and sees another "boyfriend" stuck his **** into his girlfriend's infant before beating it to death.*
Sooner or later if people are going to survive at all, they are going to have to get proportional and sane again. If on the way to that road (which may result in the Second Coming, by the way, where there are more disappointed people than joyful ones) you have to reach spittle flying total hatred for the Catholic Church, go ahead, it does not raise my blood pressure, nor make me boo hoo hoo into my hanky. I just think, with a small amount of chortling, how surprised YOU all will be when you discover that you can hate abusing doctors, but that does not mean that medicine is invalid. Get ready for God to pin that medal on your chest (or Satan to pin it on your backside).
And, just for a little theology, let's come up with an awful scenario. Let's suppose that millions of people rose up in hatred against the Church and individual Catholics, oppressing, attacking and even murdering them. Theologically that's an awesome thing, because even those lukewarm cafeteria Catholics would become martyrs, and we all know (if we actually read the Bible) how all martyrs are glorified by God for eternity.
Have a nice day!
Monday, September 28, 2009
understanding Satan, another point re: angels
I hope the previous blog post was helpful. This morning it occurred to me that you might still find it difficult to understand how ex-lead angel, fallen angel Satan can lack comprehension of God's All Knowingness. After all, would not an angel know better than anyone? That is exactly my point: no, they do not. None of the angels comprehend God's All Knowingness since it is totally impossible to comprehend, by either angels or human beings! But here is the difference. The angels in heaven believe. They have total faith in God, which overcomes their inability, as created beings, to totally understand God's All Knowingness. Only God himself understands his All Knowingness.
You see, some "New Age" thinking has crept into the thinking of both believers and non-believers that once one achieves heaven, or nirvana, or "is one with the universe" that suddenly one "understands everything." You most certainly do not. No one has ever believed that until these modern technical times, where humans have started thinking of themselves as having the ability to "be anything you want to become" and to "achieve anything." Older humans were a lot more humble and realistic. They realized that going to heaven meant being constantly at peace in God's presence in paradise, NOT becoming God given "experts." So no, the fallen angels, the multitude that is unimaginable that are in heaven with God, and humans who achieve paradise through salvation do not at all understand God's All Knowingness. The difference is that the multitude of angels who serve God have total faith that he is the All Knowing, and humans who achieve heaven also have as their reward total faith and ability to believe with no question that God is indeed who he is, but the fallen angels recognize God, but lack faith that God is all that he really is. To use a modern term, fallen angels (and living humans) have a "mental block," an inability to comprehend God's All Knowingness.
Humans have that mental block as a condition of their being alive in a finite world within finite bodies that are limited (no matter how intelligent or "spiritual") by the neurons of the brain and the reality of the body. So humans are incapable of truly comprehending God's All Knowingness because they are in bodies and minds that can't grasp it. They can, however, develop marvelous and tremendous faith, in that way emulating the angels in heaven who believe because of course they are there and can see God all the time. It is important to cultivate faith because faith overcomes natural blindness. That is precisely the problem with Satan and those who follow him. Lacking faith that God is totally who he truly is, they have mental blocks and blind spots to understanding God's true nature and All Knowingness, even though Satan can and does, as we see in scripture, continue to be able to speak to God face to face when God allows it. Satan can look at God and obviously believe in his powers and obviously attest that God most certainly exists and is the creator of all (since Satan like the other angels saw it all), but Satan and the fallen angels are flawed not by being "born evil," but because they would not serve.... and service, in heaven, means having perfect faith!
Generations of humans have been saved and reach heaven based on faith, not on their ability to perform "good deeds." Without getting into that whole argument (that is based on misunderstanding plus a weakness of faith in God, ironically), the faith versus works artificial argument among some denominations is a similar lack of faith problem in God's All Knowingness. How is it that the poorest of the poor, those who are unable to do any "good deeds" such as "works," but have unshaken faith go to heaven (see the Beatitudes for the scriptural references) while at the same time, rich people with faith risk going to hell if they do not accomplish the very specific works that God expects them to do, rather than works of their own choosing (see Luke 16)? It all comes down to faith in God's All Knowingness. God knows the true state of each person's heart, soul, thoughts and purity of intentions. This is why a poor person unable to do any works but filled with faith will go to heaven, while a rich person who believes in God but thinks that he or she can pawn off certain works "good deeds" or "social work" with the intention that those are earned tokens toward heaven certainly risks hell instead. God knows before one even has the thought just how dumb a person thinks that God is.
So Satan must be understood in exactly that light-of being unable to understand, as we see in scripture, God's All Knowingness-to serve as the correct negative role model for human beings who wish to be saved. When you read the beginning of the Book of Job, if you understand what I have just pointed out to you in these two posts, now the scales will fall from your eyes and you will really "get" the Book of Job properly. Why did Job suffer so much? Because Satan, like humans, cannot understand God's All Knowingness, and constantly challenge, marginalize and test it, while the faithful, such as Job, do not lack understanding that God is All Knowing.
For more scriptural reassurance on what I am saying, read the sections where the mother of James and John asks Jesus that they sit at his right and left hand when Jesus comes into the Kingdom (which she of course misunderstands the nature of). But think about what the court favorites who sit around the king indicate. These are people who are near to the king, but not the king. These are people who are rewarded by the king, but do not as a result receive or have the power or the knowledge of the king. Everyone in Biblical times understood full well that even the people who achieve heaven do not receive "secrets" or gain God's knowledge, etc... they hoped for being in his constant presence.
And thus you can see that indeed happens for some as you read the Book of Revelation. John sees that a number of (unidentified) elders surround the throne of God, casting their crowns in front of him and worshipping him. If these are the few humans, the prophets and elders, who achieved such proximity to God, and they are still in the form of humans in their spiritual glorified bodies who glorify God all day, you have to understand that there is still that distinction between God and everyone else, both angels and saved humans. No one is "absorbed" into God's All Knowingness. That is a fake technology industrialized and now New Age affectation and false belief that has no bearing on reality since obvious physics of God and his created creatures belie that if you give it any thought, and the scriptures illustrate actual scenes and events that show such thinking is totally false. The difference is that in heaven, both angels and saved humans have perfect faith and know that God is All Knowing: a belief that the faithful have while on earth but have rewarded in the knowing when in heaven.
That lack, by the way, is one way to characterize humans who go to hell. No one who really, really, REALLY believes that God is All Knowing is stupid enough to do the things that they do, and think the things that they think, that ends them up in hell for eternity of suffering and punishment. Every chronic sinner (both of sins of commission and omission), does not, despite what they may say, believe that God is All Knowing. Again, a great way to improve one's chances of salvation is to have faith in God, but the God as God really is... because when you believe all there is to believe about him exactly as he has constantly presented himself to generations of the faithful and the chastised unfaithful, you in turn will have cascading changes in behavior and mindset that improve greatly your chances of becoming worthy.
Here's a mental image for you. Suppose that someone in hell was taken out of hell by God, put back in their body on earth, and "given another chance." What would happen? Your knee jerk reaction is to say, "Well, of course that person learned his or her lesson and that he or she will lead a wonderful life that is corrected from all bad ways." Wrong! The person who goes to hell, and then in theory gets a second chance at life, thinks to his or her self, "Ha! I knew the religions were wrong and that hell is permanent. See? I'm back." A person who goes to hell is permanently flawed, like Satan, in their lack of faith, so that even if God gave them mercy and through a miracle took them out of hell and gave them a second chance at life, the person would view that as another cornerstone to their lack of faith rather than increasing their faith. They figure if God "breaks his own rules," then the rules are bogus in the first place. That is why no one ever leaves hell, not even to give a message of warning to those who are in danger of hell themselves on earth (Luke 16). God in his All Knowingness knows that those who merit hell are incapable of increasing anyone's faith, no matter what mercy God bestows on them, since they have warped their soul into being incapable of having humility of faith, say nothing of conveying it to others still alive. How can you feel comfortable inferring this? Notice how even in hell the rich man expects the poor man, Lazarus, who is being comforted by Abraham himself in heaven, to be the one to bring him some water in hell. The man in hell is too darned arrogant and stupid to do something like pray to God for relief, even as heaven is opened up to him in this one time event! Luke 16 is a constant gold mine of understanding God's reality, faith, and the pernicious problem of lack of faith.
So yes, the angels observe and serve God all the time in heaven, and have perfection of faith, but this does not mean that they are now "extensions" of God, that they share in his All Knowingness, which is not possible. They do, however, have perfection of faith in God, as do all humans who are saved and gain eternity in heaven. This is one reason, by the way, for my Muslim friends, that in the Qur'an you read that God ordered the angels to worship Adam right after God created Adam. The angels are not worshipping Adam per se as the flawed vessel that all humans are by nature (even though Adam had not yet sinned) but the angels are paying obeisance to God's All Knowingness in his wisdom to create goodness. So the angels are not lifting Adam up, but they are acknowledging that they are to continue to have faith in, believe and honor the works of God.
Those who are saved have as their hallmarks either the simple faith in God of the good hearted and naturally humble, or faith in God that they have had to constantly work at, like a garden that is always threatened with weeds, so they look to the saints, and the read the scriptures, and they work, really work, at increasing their faith, not their works. Good works and what God expects of everyone in charity is a natural fruit of faith: it does not have to be artificially planned and managed like on a spreadsheet or a shopping list that has check off marks. If one works only on fear of God and increased faith, one will naturally heed God's expectations for their works as a result.
I hope you have found this helpful!
You see, some "New Age" thinking has crept into the thinking of both believers and non-believers that once one achieves heaven, or nirvana, or "is one with the universe" that suddenly one "understands everything." You most certainly do not. No one has ever believed that until these modern technical times, where humans have started thinking of themselves as having the ability to "be anything you want to become" and to "achieve anything." Older humans were a lot more humble and realistic. They realized that going to heaven meant being constantly at peace in God's presence in paradise, NOT becoming God given "experts." So no, the fallen angels, the multitude that is unimaginable that are in heaven with God, and humans who achieve paradise through salvation do not at all understand God's All Knowingness. The difference is that the multitude of angels who serve God have total faith that he is the All Knowing, and humans who achieve heaven also have as their reward total faith and ability to believe with no question that God is indeed who he is, but the fallen angels recognize God, but lack faith that God is all that he really is. To use a modern term, fallen angels (and living humans) have a "mental block," an inability to comprehend God's All Knowingness.
Humans have that mental block as a condition of their being alive in a finite world within finite bodies that are limited (no matter how intelligent or "spiritual") by the neurons of the brain and the reality of the body. So humans are incapable of truly comprehending God's All Knowingness because they are in bodies and minds that can't grasp it. They can, however, develop marvelous and tremendous faith, in that way emulating the angels in heaven who believe because of course they are there and can see God all the time. It is important to cultivate faith because faith overcomes natural blindness. That is precisely the problem with Satan and those who follow him. Lacking faith that God is totally who he truly is, they have mental blocks and blind spots to understanding God's true nature and All Knowingness, even though Satan can and does, as we see in scripture, continue to be able to speak to God face to face when God allows it. Satan can look at God and obviously believe in his powers and obviously attest that God most certainly exists and is the creator of all (since Satan like the other angels saw it all), but Satan and the fallen angels are flawed not by being "born evil," but because they would not serve.... and service, in heaven, means having perfect faith!
Generations of humans have been saved and reach heaven based on faith, not on their ability to perform "good deeds." Without getting into that whole argument (that is based on misunderstanding plus a weakness of faith in God, ironically), the faith versus works artificial argument among some denominations is a similar lack of faith problem in God's All Knowingness. How is it that the poorest of the poor, those who are unable to do any "good deeds" such as "works," but have unshaken faith go to heaven (see the Beatitudes for the scriptural references) while at the same time, rich people with faith risk going to hell if they do not accomplish the very specific works that God expects them to do, rather than works of their own choosing (see Luke 16)? It all comes down to faith in God's All Knowingness. God knows the true state of each person's heart, soul, thoughts and purity of intentions. This is why a poor person unable to do any works but filled with faith will go to heaven, while a rich person who believes in God but thinks that he or she can pawn off certain works "good deeds" or "social work" with the intention that those are earned tokens toward heaven certainly risks hell instead. God knows before one even has the thought just how dumb a person thinks that God is.
So Satan must be understood in exactly that light-of being unable to understand, as we see in scripture, God's All Knowingness-to serve as the correct negative role model for human beings who wish to be saved. When you read the beginning of the Book of Job, if you understand what I have just pointed out to you in these two posts, now the scales will fall from your eyes and you will really "get" the Book of Job properly. Why did Job suffer so much? Because Satan, like humans, cannot understand God's All Knowingness, and constantly challenge, marginalize and test it, while the faithful, such as Job, do not lack understanding that God is All Knowing.
For more scriptural reassurance on what I am saying, read the sections where the mother of James and John asks Jesus that they sit at his right and left hand when Jesus comes into the Kingdom (which she of course misunderstands the nature of). But think about what the court favorites who sit around the king indicate. These are people who are near to the king, but not the king. These are people who are rewarded by the king, but do not as a result receive or have the power or the knowledge of the king. Everyone in Biblical times understood full well that even the people who achieve heaven do not receive "secrets" or gain God's knowledge, etc... they hoped for being in his constant presence.
And thus you can see that indeed happens for some as you read the Book of Revelation. John sees that a number of (unidentified) elders surround the throne of God, casting their crowns in front of him and worshipping him. If these are the few humans, the prophets and elders, who achieved such proximity to God, and they are still in the form of humans in their spiritual glorified bodies who glorify God all day, you have to understand that there is still that distinction between God and everyone else, both angels and saved humans. No one is "absorbed" into God's All Knowingness. That is a fake technology industrialized and now New Age affectation and false belief that has no bearing on reality since obvious physics of God and his created creatures belie that if you give it any thought, and the scriptures illustrate actual scenes and events that show such thinking is totally false. The difference is that in heaven, both angels and saved humans have perfect faith and know that God is All Knowing: a belief that the faithful have while on earth but have rewarded in the knowing when in heaven.
That lack, by the way, is one way to characterize humans who go to hell. No one who really, really, REALLY believes that God is All Knowing is stupid enough to do the things that they do, and think the things that they think, that ends them up in hell for eternity of suffering and punishment. Every chronic sinner (both of sins of commission and omission), does not, despite what they may say, believe that God is All Knowing. Again, a great way to improve one's chances of salvation is to have faith in God, but the God as God really is... because when you believe all there is to believe about him exactly as he has constantly presented himself to generations of the faithful and the chastised unfaithful, you in turn will have cascading changes in behavior and mindset that improve greatly your chances of becoming worthy.
Here's a mental image for you. Suppose that someone in hell was taken out of hell by God, put back in their body on earth, and "given another chance." What would happen? Your knee jerk reaction is to say, "Well, of course that person learned his or her lesson and that he or she will lead a wonderful life that is corrected from all bad ways." Wrong! The person who goes to hell, and then in theory gets a second chance at life, thinks to his or her self, "Ha! I knew the religions were wrong and that hell is permanent. See? I'm back." A person who goes to hell is permanently flawed, like Satan, in their lack of faith, so that even if God gave them mercy and through a miracle took them out of hell and gave them a second chance at life, the person would view that as another cornerstone to their lack of faith rather than increasing their faith. They figure if God "breaks his own rules," then the rules are bogus in the first place. That is why no one ever leaves hell, not even to give a message of warning to those who are in danger of hell themselves on earth (Luke 16). God in his All Knowingness knows that those who merit hell are incapable of increasing anyone's faith, no matter what mercy God bestows on them, since they have warped their soul into being incapable of having humility of faith, say nothing of conveying it to others still alive. How can you feel comfortable inferring this? Notice how even in hell the rich man expects the poor man, Lazarus, who is being comforted by Abraham himself in heaven, to be the one to bring him some water in hell. The man in hell is too darned arrogant and stupid to do something like pray to God for relief, even as heaven is opened up to him in this one time event! Luke 16 is a constant gold mine of understanding God's reality, faith, and the pernicious problem of lack of faith.
So yes, the angels observe and serve God all the time in heaven, and have perfection of faith, but this does not mean that they are now "extensions" of God, that they share in his All Knowingness, which is not possible. They do, however, have perfection of faith in God, as do all humans who are saved and gain eternity in heaven. This is one reason, by the way, for my Muslim friends, that in the Qur'an you read that God ordered the angels to worship Adam right after God created Adam. The angels are not worshipping Adam per se as the flawed vessel that all humans are by nature (even though Adam had not yet sinned) but the angels are paying obeisance to God's All Knowingness in his wisdom to create goodness. So the angels are not lifting Adam up, but they are acknowledging that they are to continue to have faith in, believe and honor the works of God.
Those who are saved have as their hallmarks either the simple faith in God of the good hearted and naturally humble, or faith in God that they have had to constantly work at, like a garden that is always threatened with weeds, so they look to the saints, and the read the scriptures, and they work, really work, at increasing their faith, not their works. Good works and what God expects of everyone in charity is a natural fruit of faith: it does not have to be artificially planned and managed like on a spreadsheet or a shopping list that has check off marks. If one works only on fear of God and increased faith, one will naturally heed God's expectations for their works as a result.
I hope you have found this helpful!
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Decades of my "would have been" Twitters
If Twitter existed through my life and I had been using it, here is what I would have tweeted every hour of every day of every year for decades.
First, for young people, and those poor in history and facts, look up "Josef Mengele" in Wikipedia, so that you understand my "cultural reference."
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
(every hour of every day thus far through 2009)
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
(every hour of every day through 2008)
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
(every hour of every day through 2007)
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
(every hour of every day through 2006)
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
(every hour of every day through 2005)
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
(every hour of every day through 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004...)
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
(every hour of every day through 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999...)
and so on and so on and so on, every hour and every day throughout my years of simply hanging on.... even throughout the 1980's, with perm big 80's hair and all
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
And now this morning as I'm wakened after another short night of unrestful so called sleep, as I was urged to Twitter this by the Holy Spirit, who knows what people need to hear in order to have even a chance of understanding and being saved from hellfire:
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
6 am local time 24/9/2009 posted from my virtual Twitter account on blogspot
First, for young people, and those poor in history and facts, look up "Josef Mengele" in Wikipedia, so that you understand my "cultural reference."
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
(every hour of every day thus far through 2009)
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
(every hour of every day through 2008)
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
(every hour of every day through 2007)
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
(every hour of every day through 2006)
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
(every hour of every day through 2005)
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
(every hour of every day through 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004...)
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
(every hour of every day through 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999...)
and so on and so on and so on, every hour and every day throughout my years of simply hanging on.... even throughout the 1980's, with perm big 80's hair and all
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
And now this morning as I'm wakened after another short night of unrestful so called sleep, as I was urged to Twitter this by the Holy Spirit, who knows what people need to hear in order to have even a chance of understanding and being saved from hellfire:
Sad that thousands more have gone to hell, while I am stuck as the cult Mengele family's laboratory rat.
6 am local time 24/9/2009 posted from my virtual Twitter account on blogspot
Monday, September 21, 2009
Understanding God: timing of his wrath
This is going to be a short post that should hopefully provide lots of thought. I can't really believe that I have to explain this, but here goes. The motivation for this topic is the gradual uncovering of the many occult beliefs that have permeated society, culminating with so called Satanic worshippers and horror rap, etc., such as that Sam guy who is accused of murdering four people. He poses with religious icons and graves to degrade them, etc. This has shocked some people who are "in the know" enough to at least admit the widespread problem in the comment sections of news articles, etc. So I'm going to now "spell it out for you" whether God is tolerating this evil or not, and help you to understand his timing.
First of all, you must understand something right up front. No one "gets away" with evil and living lives full of sin. No one. Why? Because God's "batting average" is one hundred percent to send them to hell for all eternity when they die. It really is as simple as that.
Somehow these past two generations have decided that if God does not zorch on the spot someone who sins or "disrespects him and his" that God either doesn't exist or does not mind, or is powerless. That is so lame, stupid and wrong that it would be laughable if it wasn't so serious for the millions and millions (imagine a very big number) of evil people AND chronic sinners who now occupy hell. They all thought they "got away with it" until they died and woke up in hell, thrust there by God's avenging angels. No, they do not get to "argue their case" in front of God: they wake up in hell, forever (Luke 16).
That's why I mentioned my combination of boredom and dismay several years ago when kids made Internet vids kind of daring the Holy Spirit and God by stating their disbelief and blasphemy. They should have stated their youthful stupidity instead. The Bible and the Qur'an make perfectly clear that humans lead lives filled with their own crap and own free will, and then when they die, rather than be "free and clear" and "getting away with it," they awake in hell with no dialogue, no appeal to God, no nothing but "There you Are!"
The second point is that the Bible and the Qur'an make clear that God does indeed smite when he chooses to do so, either in temporal (while alive) punishment of some sort or in actually striking down a person or even a country. God usually does so by "raising up an enemy" against the sinners, rather than actually striking the blow out of the blue, miraculously. Why? For the mercy, duh. He, who is ALL Knowing, intervenes when certain points that only he knows are reached in his patience. You can trust that since he knows all that will ever happen, he smites when there is a maximum chance of those who observe and likewise sin to come to their senses, while at the same time doing minimum "loss of patience" intervention.
For a reminder of that read the section of Genesis, recently blogged about here, where Abram (Abraham) negotiates with God (who appears as an angel) about how few good people who might exist in Sodom and Gomorrah would be enough for God not to strike down the entire city. This will help you to understand that God knows all the "numbers" in advance, obviously, yet he allows even one human being to try to speak up for the rest and change the free will that humans exercise. So when God hardens his heart and lets someone evil or sinful fall on their own sword, or, as he will do, directly smite them, you can trust that it is because he knows the best time to do this so that 1) those around the persons will get the point and maybe, just maybe, actually repent and convert and 2) future evil that the persons he smited will either perform willfully or enable is minimized. Sometimes God pulls the plug for just that reason. Think of King Solomon, much loved by God, who lived to an old age, but could have lived a lot longer if he had not started to worship idols brought in by his many wives and concubines. God curtailed his life rather than 1) allow him to throw away all his grace and mercy and risk hell and 2) so that he not continue for more years to lead many souls of his people into idolatry.
Only God can do that, as I have repeatedly reminded and warned people. No human can "decide" in kind of "star chambers" who is "good" and who is "not" and thus who should be "contained" or "harmed" for the greater good. Nazis thought that and believe me, they obviously 1) did a lot of damage and 2) there is a lot of screaming done in German in hell. The analogy I've been using is that if people who think they "know who is good" and believe they can "defend" "people" from "evil forces," would have been the first to kill Saul (who persecuted Christians, them doing so in "self defense" you know) before the resurrected Christ converted Saul to, yes, St. Paul. It is absolutely forbidden in the Bible to have even evil and judging thoughts about another person, say nothing of taking God's place in judgment and thus gravely sinning, even to murder. Seen a lot of that recently.
Regardless if someone evil or a completely incorrigible sinner or enabler of sin seems to live out his or her life and is does "OK," believe the Bible and the Qur'an, and the testimony of Jesus himself (Luke 16) that those people, to their astonishment, wake up on their death in hell, one hundred percent. There is no debate or conversation with God, St. Peter or anyone else, for those who God will send to hell for their deeds: they wake up there without any argument or advocacy.
Finally, I really hope that kids (and adults) who are punked out and who think that hell really can't be all that bad a place and that Satan will "take care of them there," wise up and grow up. The Qur'an is helpful in letting you know that God ups the punishment in hell to the totally unbearable for all eternity, not Satan. Satan despises the people he fools and torments them even worse.
Why and how do we know that? Because the more Satan leads astray the sooner the End of Times and the full wrath of God will descend, and when the earth is destroyed Satan is stuck without his main home and now has to spend all of his time in hell. Duh! In the Bible you read how Satan roams the earth. Do you think he wants to be in hell? DUH! If he thought the people he fools (allegedly, since most people are wicked all on their own) are such awesome company and he could turn the thermostat so that it is cooler, why would he spend all his time on earth and dread being chained into hell with the losers?
If you actually read the Bible and/or the Qur'an, it is amazingly helpful.
Remember, no one "gets away" with evil or unrepentant continual sin and enabling: it is one hundred percent to hell for all eternity, regardless of the lack of obvious smiting any individual (or country) may experience up until that day of personal death.
Sleep well!
First of all, you must understand something right up front. No one "gets away" with evil and living lives full of sin. No one. Why? Because God's "batting average" is one hundred percent to send them to hell for all eternity when they die. It really is as simple as that.
Somehow these past two generations have decided that if God does not zorch on the spot someone who sins or "disrespects him and his" that God either doesn't exist or does not mind, or is powerless. That is so lame, stupid and wrong that it would be laughable if it wasn't so serious for the millions and millions (imagine a very big number) of evil people AND chronic sinners who now occupy hell. They all thought they "got away with it" until they died and woke up in hell, thrust there by God's avenging angels. No, they do not get to "argue their case" in front of God: they wake up in hell, forever (Luke 16).
That's why I mentioned my combination of boredom and dismay several years ago when kids made Internet vids kind of daring the Holy Spirit and God by stating their disbelief and blasphemy. They should have stated their youthful stupidity instead. The Bible and the Qur'an make perfectly clear that humans lead lives filled with their own crap and own free will, and then when they die, rather than be "free and clear" and "getting away with it," they awake in hell with no dialogue, no appeal to God, no nothing but "There you Are!"
The second point is that the Bible and the Qur'an make clear that God does indeed smite when he chooses to do so, either in temporal (while alive) punishment of some sort or in actually striking down a person or even a country. God usually does so by "raising up an enemy" against the sinners, rather than actually striking the blow out of the blue, miraculously. Why? For the mercy, duh. He, who is ALL Knowing, intervenes when certain points that only he knows are reached in his patience. You can trust that since he knows all that will ever happen, he smites when there is a maximum chance of those who observe and likewise sin to come to their senses, while at the same time doing minimum "loss of patience" intervention.
For a reminder of that read the section of Genesis, recently blogged about here, where Abram (Abraham) negotiates with God (who appears as an angel) about how few good people who might exist in Sodom and Gomorrah would be enough for God not to strike down the entire city. This will help you to understand that God knows all the "numbers" in advance, obviously, yet he allows even one human being to try to speak up for the rest and change the free will that humans exercise. So when God hardens his heart and lets someone evil or sinful fall on their own sword, or, as he will do, directly smite them, you can trust that it is because he knows the best time to do this so that 1) those around the persons will get the point and maybe, just maybe, actually repent and convert and 2) future evil that the persons he smited will either perform willfully or enable is minimized. Sometimes God pulls the plug for just that reason. Think of King Solomon, much loved by God, who lived to an old age, but could have lived a lot longer if he had not started to worship idols brought in by his many wives and concubines. God curtailed his life rather than 1) allow him to throw away all his grace and mercy and risk hell and 2) so that he not continue for more years to lead many souls of his people into idolatry.
Only God can do that, as I have repeatedly reminded and warned people. No human can "decide" in kind of "star chambers" who is "good" and who is "not" and thus who should be "contained" or "harmed" for the greater good. Nazis thought that and believe me, they obviously 1) did a lot of damage and 2) there is a lot of screaming done in German in hell. The analogy I've been using is that if people who think they "know who is good" and believe they can "defend" "people" from "evil forces," would have been the first to kill Saul (who persecuted Christians, them doing so in "self defense" you know) before the resurrected Christ converted Saul to, yes, St. Paul. It is absolutely forbidden in the Bible to have even evil and judging thoughts about another person, say nothing of taking God's place in judgment and thus gravely sinning, even to murder. Seen a lot of that recently.
Regardless if someone evil or a completely incorrigible sinner or enabler of sin seems to live out his or her life and is does "OK," believe the Bible and the Qur'an, and the testimony of Jesus himself (Luke 16) that those people, to their astonishment, wake up on their death in hell, one hundred percent. There is no debate or conversation with God, St. Peter or anyone else, for those who God will send to hell for their deeds: they wake up there without any argument or advocacy.
Finally, I really hope that kids (and adults) who are punked out and who think that hell really can't be all that bad a place and that Satan will "take care of them there," wise up and grow up. The Qur'an is helpful in letting you know that God ups the punishment in hell to the totally unbearable for all eternity, not Satan. Satan despises the people he fools and torments them even worse.
Why and how do we know that? Because the more Satan leads astray the sooner the End of Times and the full wrath of God will descend, and when the earth is destroyed Satan is stuck without his main home and now has to spend all of his time in hell. Duh! In the Bible you read how Satan roams the earth. Do you think he wants to be in hell? DUH! If he thought the people he fools (allegedly, since most people are wicked all on their own) are such awesome company and he could turn the thermostat so that it is cooler, why would he spend all his time on earth and dread being chained into hell with the losers?
If you actually read the Bible and/or the Qur'an, it is amazingly helpful.
Remember, no one "gets away" with evil or unrepentant continual sin and enabling: it is one hundred percent to hell for all eternity, regardless of the lack of obvious smiting any individual (or country) may experience up until that day of personal death.
Sleep well!
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Understanding sin or "doing something bad"
Hi young people especially. It has been a while... I've not been blogging much (and not much that is cheerful) because I've been sad and upset about a friend of a friend's unnecessary death... and also some continuing really bad behavior I've been seeing and experiencing. So I've thought of a kind of spiritual lesson to think about today that is rooted in these past few days, and also one that I think young people need to better understand (since they've not gotten good data on this in the past!)
Bad behavior is sin; they are not two separate matters. This is a confusion that has crept into the modern mind and you young people get the brunt of the confusion regarding understanding God, and avoiding sin, as a result.
Let's look at an obvious easily agreed upon example and analogy. Suppose that someone murders someone else. That can be easily categorized as: bad behavior, a crime, and a sin. So everyone can easily understand that a murder is both doing something really bad to a person, but also a sin against God.
See, many people think that a "sin" is defined as breaking a list of laws or instructions that God has given you. If the thing is "not on the list" then people think it might be bad behavior, or uncouth, but not a sin. That's wrong and not Biblically accurate. No where does the Bible say that sin is the breaking of a list of specific laws given by God, and the rest falls into kind of optional "good" or "bad" behavior that does not "involve God" since it is person-to-person behavior. In fact, the opposite is true that all bad behavior including even thoughts but not follow up deeds ARE sins against God.
If you missed it, you can go back in my haphazardly organized blog ;-) and read my long commentary that cites scripture indicating that Jews and Christians have well understood from the very beginning that even having a mean thought about another person is a sin against God, not just a mean spirited thing against a fellow human being. I probably labeled that under "sins" so you might find it easily that way. So I won't repeat all that, but I cited much scripture regarding the explicit statement that even having a mean thought about another human, even if you don't actually follow up on it, is not only a mean spirited and unrighteous feeling to have, but also an actual sin and offense against God himself. So yes, every mean thought, say nothing of actual follow up bad behavior, is a sin against God, even though common modern thought assumes that it is "just" poor behavior and lack of self control or "spirituality."
So here is where you get into very tricky territory indeed. If you pick on someone, or scorn them, or otherwise torment them, such as stalking and bullying, even if you are not breaking a "Biblical law" or Commandment or committing a human "crime," you are committing a sin directly against God. There are two Biblically cited ways that one can understand why that is.
The first reason is that avoiding sin is not a matter of do's and don'ts, but the maintenance at all time of a righteous mind. Throughout the Bible there are numerous explanations that all humans are sinners, but it is the righteous who are saved. Righteous is not defined as someone who dodges a list of sins. A righteous person is one who strives ALWAYS to do and to think/feel only what is Godly, pure and correct. When one walks in righteousness one does not "do good deeds" but have a mind and a heart like a sewer. Righteousness is a lot like the old fashioned concept of being "honorable." This is why in Revelation 21 you see, depending on the translation, that God through Jesus Christ at the End of Times states that "dogs" or "the fearful" or other translations of kind of craven sorts will not be in heaven. I blogged about that too, recently, that God does not mean that four footed canines are denied heaven but that "dog" is a widespread ancient cultural concept for humans who act dishonorably or who are dishonorable. Someone who thinks something dirty in their mind about a child he or she sees, for example, is a
"dog" and craven, and even if the person does not follow up that thought with actual molestation, they are guilty of that sin.
So to summarize the first way to understand the enormity of the problem to maintain a state of not sinning against God, remember that sin is not simply refusing to heed a stated prohibition in the Bible but is being un-righteous in any way at all, both in the commission of un-righteousness, but also in the thoughts or feelings of it AND, further, deliberately avoiding chances to be righteous. That is why some translations of Revelation 21 include the word "fearful." Those who are fearful to be righteous will not inherit their place in heaven and will, instead, go to the lake of eternal fire.
The second Biblical way to understand how crucial it is to not sin against God by behaving badly toward other human beings is to understand that God stated that he created men and women "in his image." When one torments another human being through bullying, for example, one is mocking and degrading a person who is created, like everyone else, in God's image, just one step below angels. No matter how ugly or unpleasant that you think the person might be, having that thought falls in the category of un-righteousness, and hence a sin, because you are being 1) uncharitable, which Jesus repeatedly said is a requirement of his saving grace and 2) you are mocking something that God has created. A human being may have a bad hair style, but that human being's body and dignity is created by God. There is a huge difference (and that is called "sin") between thinking that a person has a bad haircut that does not suit them, and is even a bit funny (but humorous through kindness) and having degrading thoughts about that person, which is mocking God's creation and a sin. Skin color, as in racism, ought to be another obvious example, one much more serious than the haircut example (though the cruelty of these times regarding a person's appearance is astonishingly destructive and thus serious). Blacks who hate whites and whites who hate blacks are committing individual sins with each and every thought and deed generated by that un-righteousness, since God is neither black nor white, but all are created in his image.
God will not be mocked, as St Paul warns in the scripture. One mocks God not only directly, by making fun of God or attempting to degrade Him, but one also mocks God by tormenting and mocking one of His creations: a fellow human being. Beware of this because hell is getting packed, yet there is always plenty of room.
Bad behavior is sin; they are not two separate matters. This is a confusion that has crept into the modern mind and you young people get the brunt of the confusion regarding understanding God, and avoiding sin, as a result.
Let's look at an obvious easily agreed upon example and analogy. Suppose that someone murders someone else. That can be easily categorized as: bad behavior, a crime, and a sin. So everyone can easily understand that a murder is both doing something really bad to a person, but also a sin against God.
See, many people think that a "sin" is defined as breaking a list of laws or instructions that God has given you. If the thing is "not on the list" then people think it might be bad behavior, or uncouth, but not a sin. That's wrong and not Biblically accurate. No where does the Bible say that sin is the breaking of a list of specific laws given by God, and the rest falls into kind of optional "good" or "bad" behavior that does not "involve God" since it is person-to-person behavior. In fact, the opposite is true that all bad behavior including even thoughts but not follow up deeds ARE sins against God.
If you missed it, you can go back in my haphazardly organized blog ;-) and read my long commentary that cites scripture indicating that Jews and Christians have well understood from the very beginning that even having a mean thought about another person is a sin against God, not just a mean spirited thing against a fellow human being. I probably labeled that under "sins" so you might find it easily that way. So I won't repeat all that, but I cited much scripture regarding the explicit statement that even having a mean thought about another human, even if you don't actually follow up on it, is not only a mean spirited and unrighteous feeling to have, but also an actual sin and offense against God himself. So yes, every mean thought, say nothing of actual follow up bad behavior, is a sin against God, even though common modern thought assumes that it is "just" poor behavior and lack of self control or "spirituality."
So here is where you get into very tricky territory indeed. If you pick on someone, or scorn them, or otherwise torment them, such as stalking and bullying, even if you are not breaking a "Biblical law" or Commandment or committing a human "crime," you are committing a sin directly against God. There are two Biblically cited ways that one can understand why that is.
The first reason is that avoiding sin is not a matter of do's and don'ts, but the maintenance at all time of a righteous mind. Throughout the Bible there are numerous explanations that all humans are sinners, but it is the righteous who are saved. Righteous is not defined as someone who dodges a list of sins. A righteous person is one who strives ALWAYS to do and to think/feel only what is Godly, pure and correct. When one walks in righteousness one does not "do good deeds" but have a mind and a heart like a sewer. Righteousness is a lot like the old fashioned concept of being "honorable." This is why in Revelation 21 you see, depending on the translation, that God through Jesus Christ at the End of Times states that "dogs" or "the fearful" or other translations of kind of craven sorts will not be in heaven. I blogged about that too, recently, that God does not mean that four footed canines are denied heaven but that "dog" is a widespread ancient cultural concept for humans who act dishonorably or who are dishonorable. Someone who thinks something dirty in their mind about a child he or she sees, for example, is a
"dog" and craven, and even if the person does not follow up that thought with actual molestation, they are guilty of that sin.
So to summarize the first way to understand the enormity of the problem to maintain a state of not sinning against God, remember that sin is not simply refusing to heed a stated prohibition in the Bible but is being un-righteous in any way at all, both in the commission of un-righteousness, but also in the thoughts or feelings of it AND, further, deliberately avoiding chances to be righteous. That is why some translations of Revelation 21 include the word "fearful." Those who are fearful to be righteous will not inherit their place in heaven and will, instead, go to the lake of eternal fire.
The second Biblical way to understand how crucial it is to not sin against God by behaving badly toward other human beings is to understand that God stated that he created men and women "in his image." When one torments another human being through bullying, for example, one is mocking and degrading a person who is created, like everyone else, in God's image, just one step below angels. No matter how ugly or unpleasant that you think the person might be, having that thought falls in the category of un-righteousness, and hence a sin, because you are being 1) uncharitable, which Jesus repeatedly said is a requirement of his saving grace and 2) you are mocking something that God has created. A human being may have a bad hair style, but that human being's body and dignity is created by God. There is a huge difference (and that is called "sin") between thinking that a person has a bad haircut that does not suit them, and is even a bit funny (but humorous through kindness) and having degrading thoughts about that person, which is mocking God's creation and a sin. Skin color, as in racism, ought to be another obvious example, one much more serious than the haircut example (though the cruelty of these times regarding a person's appearance is astonishingly destructive and thus serious). Blacks who hate whites and whites who hate blacks are committing individual sins with each and every thought and deed generated by that un-righteousness, since God is neither black nor white, but all are created in his image.
God will not be mocked, as St Paul warns in the scripture. One mocks God not only directly, by making fun of God or attempting to degrade Him, but one also mocks God by tormenting and mocking one of His creations: a fellow human being. Beware of this because hell is getting packed, yet there is always plenty of room.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
About heaven: attention parents/young people
While watching Mass this morning an analogy to help understand heaven occurred to me, one that is based on obvious scriptural statements as made by Jesus, but with a modern context so that even the very young can understand it.
This analogy will help everyone understand heaven, faith and the issue of sins better, but it will most especially help young people, particularly little children, thus I want to teach this to parents. Young people, especially as you go into the world (school, college, etc.) this understanding will be an enormous help to you too.
Heaven is like your home that you leave before going on a long journey. It can only be opened with one key and you carefully guard that key, which you must take with you, as you travel from place to place. At the end of your journey you put the key in the lock, open the door and return home forever.
Now, here is why this analogy is so scriptural and illuminating. First of all, the key is your soul, given to you when you are conceived, as your soul is made by God in heaven. So God makes every person their individual "key" to "return home," after death, to heaven.
You can explain this to very young children very easily, as soon as they are able to understand that they are watching mommy or daddy use a key to open the family house or apartment. You can explain that God has given to you an individual, but invisible, key that allows you to open the door to your place in heaven when it's time for you to go there.
As children grow older and they begin to be exposed to other children of unbelieving parents, and are put in increasingly unbelieving places, such as school, you can explain it as this. If mommy or daddy allowed the key to be lost or bent, it will no longer allow the family home to be opened (don't traumatize your kids about actual lost keys, LOL). Explain that just like if the parents were irresponsible about the house key, a child who is tempted to do bad things by other kids is risking making their key dirty, bent or lost. So they need to feel sorry for kids who don't understand that they have God given keys, and who put their keys at risk, but do not be tempted to do the same. That is how you can start to explain sin (in addition to the traditional way of it being a bad thing), by putting it in an absolute God context, but one that is lovingly oriented rather than punishment oriented.
Young people, as you become preteens and teenagers, college students, drop outs or new to your first jobs, (Hi again, always happy to know that many of you read my blogging! ;-) you can now really relate to how I am describing the key. This key is not a computer generated key, easily duplicated, like keys to dorms or many hotels. There's not a locksmith who can duplicate based on the shape or number of your God given key another key if you lose it. This is an individual eternal key, only for you and irreplaceable.
So when you are tempted to sin by your posse or by the many opportunities around you, understand that you are giving your key a whack, or getting some serious dirt on it, that may rust or bend it, especially over time. That's the risk of lots of "little sins," as Neil Young said, "rust never sleeps." It's not just the big one time sin that one must worry about, but continued abuse of your key resulting in it being so abused it no longer fits in the lock, or it is lost, in the sense of only opening a door to hell, rather than opening the door that has been prepared for you and is your birthright in heaven.
No one who is human is perfect, but Jesus Christ, even as he was incarnated in human flesh, he alone was both perfect and perfected by God. Jesus was perfect and sinless from the moment of his conception, but he was also perfected in a process by God in order to be the Messiah and Savior. The analogy is that if perfection is gold, Jesus was born as pure gold, and then shaped into a form that all human beings can wear. That's how something that is already perfect, and in this case only Jesus was perfect, can be "perfected" by God. That's what the scripture means when it says Jesus "learned." It's not like he didn't "know" everything that was God's will, but he was being shaped in his perfection to be accessible in his public ministry and also ultimately as fulfilled Savior to be accessable to all who seek him and believe.
Thus there is a continual balancing act of knowing that one is not perfect and is increasingly surrounded by an increasingly sinful and imperfect people with recognizing that God is forgiving and merciful. If you understand the key analogy you understand how you can sin and be forgiven, but you can also have a bad surprise that you have pushed it too far and your key is lost or ruined when you die. This will help you to better discern what temptations are "worth" taking, such as they are. Little children who hit other children, for example, in addition to getting traditional parental discipline and behavior formation by their parents can also have it explained to them that when they hurt someone like that, it is as if mommy or daddy used the key to their house to hit someone. Not only is it wrong and it hurts but it also risks damaging the key.
Now, here is where this analogy can help you to understand the difference-the very dire difference-between a sin that is of the usual sort and a sin that leads others to sin. When you sin you damage, rust, and otherwise put at risk your key's condition, one that, thankfully, can be forgiven and restored by God if confessed and repented sincerely by you, and that path of sin is totally abandoned. However, what if you are a false prophet who leads others to sin and/or to false beliefs about God, including the occult and the denying of Jesus Christ and the one true God? You are damaging other people's keys, and you can never restore them again. People you lead astray from the faith go through their lives with damaged keys, and you cannot ever repair what is done to their keys (only God can do that, but if these people do not believe and repent, and become pure again to God, and not tainted by the false beliefs and sin you have led them to, and they've now adopted, how will they ever avail themselves of God's ability to forgive and "repair" them and their keys).
That is why Jesus warns that it is better to pluck out one's own eye or cut off one's own hand if that is the limb or organ being used to sin. Jesus is warning you that it's better to have only one hand than two if you still have your key intact. (This is not a pagan self mutilation formula by the way, but an ANALOGY by Jesus. Anyone but an ego maniac and/or drug or booze addict would understand that one is not expected to body mutilate in reality, I mean, duh). This is why I think my analogy supports the scriptures in a modern context. Even a blind man can find the lock on his house and insert the key if he (or she) had kept the key safe and intact.
This is why Jesus issues too a most dire warning to those who lead children to sin (saying they might as well put a heavy stone around their necks and throw themselves into the water). Jesus is warning that even worse than leading one's own self to sin (and thus one should symbolically cut off that eye or that hand), one's entire life (and key) is lost when one encourages and leads children to lose their keys to heaven. I tell you, you should shudder, as this is not the imaginary hippy groovy Jesus who thinks smart mouth unbelieving drug taking mean and sexualized children are a product that you should be honing and developing in any way shape or form. Those who not only lose, bend, rust and profane their own keys but also lead other, especially the children, who have no choice, to do so are truly totally doomed. Trust me, hell is packed with both false prophets and also those who lead children to sin (and thus put them on sinful paths that destroy their own keys as adults when they grow up bent).
OK, that's the dark but truthful side, suitable for adult/teenager discussion. Let's go back to the light filled and hopeful side, which is to use this gentle, but totally scriptural, analogy of the key to help your children know, love and serve God better, and preserve their own places in heaven, more easily, in an increasingly poisoned and difficult world.
As an aside, I've mentioned before that young children need to be told about the reality of God, particularly, for Christians, through Jesus Christ, from the earliest age. This is usually done by mentioning God daily (such as saying Good Night to him, particularly as parents do nightly prayers with their kids). I've mentioned that a traditional way is to have a picture of Jesus and have the very young kiss Jesus good night, or at least tell him good night :-)
What I wanted to mention is that, sadly, those of you who are married to military service people, who are away on duty, have much experience with children remembering their parents through pictures, while they are gone. Kids get messages from their on duty parents through the computer, videos, phone messages and calls, and also photographs. Just as that works and is very helpful, you young people can now understand the wisdom of the traditional believers several generations ago, who used to have their kids know and love Jesus through even perhaps only one faded picture in the Bible or on the wall. It's just as if a modern child has the comfort and continuity of a picture of their in service parent. Again, it is crucial that, both new parents and those of you who have neglected this but still have kids you can talk to, you regain these traditional ways of making God part of your child's life from the very beginning.
It's not "up to them" or even is it up to your Church or Sunday school to do that, because if you do not tell them about their key in the home, they have no context for understanding God as a part of their real life, rather than later where God is an abstract set of rules, to be "believed or not." I mean, would you let your kid decide whether his father serving in Afghanistan "is real or not?"
I hope that this has helped.
This analogy will help everyone understand heaven, faith and the issue of sins better, but it will most especially help young people, particularly little children, thus I want to teach this to parents. Young people, especially as you go into the world (school, college, etc.) this understanding will be an enormous help to you too.
Heaven is like your home that you leave before going on a long journey. It can only be opened with one key and you carefully guard that key, which you must take with you, as you travel from place to place. At the end of your journey you put the key in the lock, open the door and return home forever.
Now, here is why this analogy is so scriptural and illuminating. First of all, the key is your soul, given to you when you are conceived, as your soul is made by God in heaven. So God makes every person their individual "key" to "return home," after death, to heaven.
You can explain this to very young children very easily, as soon as they are able to understand that they are watching mommy or daddy use a key to open the family house or apartment. You can explain that God has given to you an individual, but invisible, key that allows you to open the door to your place in heaven when it's time for you to go there.
As children grow older and they begin to be exposed to other children of unbelieving parents, and are put in increasingly unbelieving places, such as school, you can explain it as this. If mommy or daddy allowed the key to be lost or bent, it will no longer allow the family home to be opened (don't traumatize your kids about actual lost keys, LOL). Explain that just like if the parents were irresponsible about the house key, a child who is tempted to do bad things by other kids is risking making their key dirty, bent or lost. So they need to feel sorry for kids who don't understand that they have God given keys, and who put their keys at risk, but do not be tempted to do the same. That is how you can start to explain sin (in addition to the traditional way of it being a bad thing), by putting it in an absolute God context, but one that is lovingly oriented rather than punishment oriented.
Young people, as you become preteens and teenagers, college students, drop outs or new to your first jobs, (Hi again, always happy to know that many of you read my blogging! ;-) you can now really relate to how I am describing the key. This key is not a computer generated key, easily duplicated, like keys to dorms or many hotels. There's not a locksmith who can duplicate based on the shape or number of your God given key another key if you lose it. This is an individual eternal key, only for you and irreplaceable.
So when you are tempted to sin by your posse or by the many opportunities around you, understand that you are giving your key a whack, or getting some serious dirt on it, that may rust or bend it, especially over time. That's the risk of lots of "little sins," as Neil Young said, "rust never sleeps." It's not just the big one time sin that one must worry about, but continued abuse of your key resulting in it being so abused it no longer fits in the lock, or it is lost, in the sense of only opening a door to hell, rather than opening the door that has been prepared for you and is your birthright in heaven.
No one who is human is perfect, but Jesus Christ, even as he was incarnated in human flesh, he alone was both perfect and perfected by God. Jesus was perfect and sinless from the moment of his conception, but he was also perfected in a process by God in order to be the Messiah and Savior. The analogy is that if perfection is gold, Jesus was born as pure gold, and then shaped into a form that all human beings can wear. That's how something that is already perfect, and in this case only Jesus was perfect, can be "perfected" by God. That's what the scripture means when it says Jesus "learned." It's not like he didn't "know" everything that was God's will, but he was being shaped in his perfection to be accessible in his public ministry and also ultimately as fulfilled Savior to be accessable to all who seek him and believe.
Thus there is a continual balancing act of knowing that one is not perfect and is increasingly surrounded by an increasingly sinful and imperfect people with recognizing that God is forgiving and merciful. If you understand the key analogy you understand how you can sin and be forgiven, but you can also have a bad surprise that you have pushed it too far and your key is lost or ruined when you die. This will help you to better discern what temptations are "worth" taking, such as they are. Little children who hit other children, for example, in addition to getting traditional parental discipline and behavior formation by their parents can also have it explained to them that when they hurt someone like that, it is as if mommy or daddy used the key to their house to hit someone. Not only is it wrong and it hurts but it also risks damaging the key.
Now, here is where this analogy can help you to understand the difference-the very dire difference-between a sin that is of the usual sort and a sin that leads others to sin. When you sin you damage, rust, and otherwise put at risk your key's condition, one that, thankfully, can be forgiven and restored by God if confessed and repented sincerely by you, and that path of sin is totally abandoned. However, what if you are a false prophet who leads others to sin and/or to false beliefs about God, including the occult and the denying of Jesus Christ and the one true God? You are damaging other people's keys, and you can never restore them again. People you lead astray from the faith go through their lives with damaged keys, and you cannot ever repair what is done to their keys (only God can do that, but if these people do not believe and repent, and become pure again to God, and not tainted by the false beliefs and sin you have led them to, and they've now adopted, how will they ever avail themselves of God's ability to forgive and "repair" them and their keys).
That is why Jesus warns that it is better to pluck out one's own eye or cut off one's own hand if that is the limb or organ being used to sin. Jesus is warning you that it's better to have only one hand than two if you still have your key intact. (This is not a pagan self mutilation formula by the way, but an ANALOGY by Jesus. Anyone but an ego maniac and/or drug or booze addict would understand that one is not expected to body mutilate in reality, I mean, duh). This is why I think my analogy supports the scriptures in a modern context. Even a blind man can find the lock on his house and insert the key if he (or she) had kept the key safe and intact.
This is why Jesus issues too a most dire warning to those who lead children to sin (saying they might as well put a heavy stone around their necks and throw themselves into the water). Jesus is warning that even worse than leading one's own self to sin (and thus one should symbolically cut off that eye or that hand), one's entire life (and key) is lost when one encourages and leads children to lose their keys to heaven. I tell you, you should shudder, as this is not the imaginary hippy groovy Jesus who thinks smart mouth unbelieving drug taking mean and sexualized children are a product that you should be honing and developing in any way shape or form. Those who not only lose, bend, rust and profane their own keys but also lead other, especially the children, who have no choice, to do so are truly totally doomed. Trust me, hell is packed with both false prophets and also those who lead children to sin (and thus put them on sinful paths that destroy their own keys as adults when they grow up bent).
OK, that's the dark but truthful side, suitable for adult/teenager discussion. Let's go back to the light filled and hopeful side, which is to use this gentle, but totally scriptural, analogy of the key to help your children know, love and serve God better, and preserve their own places in heaven, more easily, in an increasingly poisoned and difficult world.
As an aside, I've mentioned before that young children need to be told about the reality of God, particularly, for Christians, through Jesus Christ, from the earliest age. This is usually done by mentioning God daily (such as saying Good Night to him, particularly as parents do nightly prayers with their kids). I've mentioned that a traditional way is to have a picture of Jesus and have the very young kiss Jesus good night, or at least tell him good night :-)
What I wanted to mention is that, sadly, those of you who are married to military service people, who are away on duty, have much experience with children remembering their parents through pictures, while they are gone. Kids get messages from their on duty parents through the computer, videos, phone messages and calls, and also photographs. Just as that works and is very helpful, you young people can now understand the wisdom of the traditional believers several generations ago, who used to have their kids know and love Jesus through even perhaps only one faded picture in the Bible or on the wall. It's just as if a modern child has the comfort and continuity of a picture of their in service parent. Again, it is crucial that, both new parents and those of you who have neglected this but still have kids you can talk to, you regain these traditional ways of making God part of your child's life from the very beginning.
It's not "up to them" or even is it up to your Church or Sunday school to do that, because if you do not tell them about their key in the home, they have no context for understanding God as a part of their real life, rather than later where God is an abstract set of rules, to be "believed or not." I mean, would you let your kid decide whether his father serving in Afghanistan "is real or not?"
I hope that this has helped.
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