understanding spiritual warfare

I understand that many passages in scriptures have the power of sounding like a succinct rallying call, one that "cuts to the chase" and inspires people. However, you have to be very cautious about any particular scripture passage being your "motto," your "vow" (remember, Jesus most strongly warned against making any vows before God, ANY, no matter how worthy appearing) or having a passage be like your Cliff Notes (study summary) that gives you a "bottom line" for your spiritual life. The reason I am writing this is that I know many are fascinated with much of what Paul wrote, particularly Ephesians 6:10-18. (I'm not going to type it out because if you look it up yourself you really should read the whole short chapter 6 to have it in context).

Here's the problem. Whenever someone extracts one saying from the Bible, one is in danger of doing a transplant from the common understanding of the Bible authors and participants to the people of the time (which is what God intended) to reworking those quotes into a modern context.

First, a silly example for a smile. Suppose the Bible wrote about whales traveling in pods and how important it is to be like whales and travel in pods. Some modern people might think, "Whoa! The Bible is saying to always carry your IPods!" Yeah, I'm being silly but I want you to right up front understand what I mean about transplanting a valid scripture, but said in a certain understanding (that all observant Jews who were the early Christians, especially Paul, well understood about God and human life) into a modern cultural set of blinders that has trimmed away much of the richness of understanding of what they wrote about and lived within.

OK, so here is the problem with passages like Ephesians 6:10-18 taken out of context. Paul is writing about the need to "arm" one's self in spiritual combat, against the dark forces that rule earth. He is of course entirely correct. However, people of his time (and your own Christian and Jewish ancestors, and the Muslims too) would have understood this the way it was intended, and not the way moderns would view it. You see, moderns want "bad guys," especially "bad guy aliens" or "good guy superheroes." So many moderns see Eph 6:10-18 as validation that evil spirits walk the earth and manipulate people. Often moderns then view this as permission to shun or harm those they think are "on the other side." I mean, war has two sides, right? Combat is "against" someone, right?

OK, now, slam on the brakes. Who wrote this scripture? Where was the war at? How did Paul "know" there's a battle with dark spirits on one side against the good guys?

Well, here's the bombshell of understanding you have all forgotten. Paul was on "both sides." Paul was a Jew, a highly observant Jew, but he was also a Roman citizen. Ta da! When you forget that you have total misunderstanding of what Paul means as combat. Romans had enslaved the Jews. Paul "belonged" to both sides, as he was both a highly religious Jew (the slave) and a highly placed and favored Roman citizen being prepared for high secular office (the slave owner).

Remember, Jesus was crucified because he would not lead an armed rebellion (using his miracles as firepower) on behalf of the Jews against the Romans. Jesus was not crucified because he did not "wrestle....against principalities,...rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places..." This is why Paul emphasizes WE WRESTLE NOT AGAINST FLESH AND BLOOD (Eph 6:12).

PAUL IS POUNDING IT INTO PEOPLE'S HEADS THAT NO FLESH AND BLOOD IS "THE ENEMY" BECAUSE DUE TO THAT ERROR JESUS WAS CRUCIFIED.

Notice too that when he writes about battling principalities, powers, rules of darkness and spiritual darkness and spiritual wickedness, he is speaking of battling SIN and FAITHLESSNESS. He is not speaking of battling either evil "spirits" in the way that people think of them today NOR is he speaking of declaring a group of people (like Romans, the hot enemy at the time) as being either demonic or flesh and blood enemies. No one is more qualified to role model and speak of that than PAUL, who was both well placed Roman citizen AND Jewish/now Christian oppressed.

Paul did not stop being Roman and renounce it for Christianity. Duh, read the scripture, as he invoked his Roman rights to trial throughout his ministry and died in Rome (via the means of death given to Romans, the sword, not crucifixion, like Peter suffered.) Paul did not say, "Hey, crucify me just like the Lord was." He took advantage of being Roman elite right to the end and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, because he stayed alive longer to get the Gospel spread through his Evangelizing without being hypocritical.

So people well understood Paul's words in Ephesians and elsewhere as the battle being against the dark forces of SINS and UNBELIEF, not against evil "spirits" the way moderns think of them, or one group of humans against the other. Paul was against the bad spirituality (to use the modern terms) that is festering and spread in high places and principalities (places of authority, both secular and religious) via sin, hypocrisy and disbelief. Paul did not go to Rome to fight "against" them in "combat" to "defeat them." Paul went, like Peter, to Rome to defeat spiritual darkness (paganism and corruption) and CONVERT THEM. Spiritual combat aims at conversion, NOT fighting imaginary sources of power. No imagination is needed about the source of darkness if you read the scriptures and I don't mean just Satan. So I now need to explain the second part of this confusion, and let's use another example.

Let's use HIV/Aids disease as an example. No, I'm not causing grief by using this example but rather it is a perfect example to study. Sometime in the past century, scientists have a good idea but of course will never know exactly, the virus jumped from simian species like chimps onto a single human being. It then modified and changed as it adjusted to being in a human body and became the disease we are all too familiar with today.

So my first point is that Adam and Eve were the origin of the first sin, which was disobedience to God per temptation by Satan. Adam and Eve were tempted to "know as much as God," so to speak, so they ate the apple so they could know what evil was like. (There was nothing in the apple by the way. It was the sheer act of disobedience to the all good and loving God that opened their eyes to evil. I mean, if they had kicked God in the shins they would have also gotten the same info, the same 411, about good and evil because just being mean and disobedient to God is the initiation into sin and evil).

Now, once HIV/Aids jumped the one time to a human, it does not need to rejump from ape to human with each person who is infected, I mean, duh, right? Same with the flu or common cold. It does not need to be reinvented each time someone gets sick with cold or flu, right? Likewise is spiritual darkness. Satan only had to tempt Eve and her take it to Adam, and Satan can sit back in his lawn chair and watch. So when Satan is "at work" or there is spiritual darkness, it is not Satan running around reinventing temptation with each generation of each human being. Like Aids, it is out there and people spread it through contact with each other.

To misunderstand Ephesians 6 is like what happened with demonizing specific groups who suffer from HIV/Aids. Every type of person gets HIV/Aids, yet certain groups (like gay men) became demonized as the "causes." When one views Ephesians 6 in the wrong way, one is tempted to do likewise, to nominate yourself as the "clean" and "clear" "spirit warrior," and to thus thrust on the "other side" the "dark principalities" role and that is totally false to what Paul said AND LIVED.

Paul, following in Jesus' path, was condemning the unseen darkness of sin, disbelief, hypocrisy, spiritual slavery and corruption, while at the same time dampening down the tendencies to want flesh and blood warfare which he (as a persecutor) had also succumbed to, which is to kill the "enemy" in bodily form.

So Paul's inspiring words must be correctly understood as being against the dark invisible powers of sin, hypocrisy, corruption and disbelief, and not against invisible cartoon absurd imaginary "spirits" like so many modern dopes believe.

How to understand spiritual combat? Read about sin in the Bible. Start with these passages BY PAUL in 2 Timothy.

2:3 Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
2:5 And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully.
2:9 Wherein I suffer trouble, as an evil-doer, even unto bonds; but the word of God is not bound. (Paul is saying he is treated like a bad guy, even put into prison, but despite what is done to him God's truth cannot be imprisoned).
2:15 Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
2:16 But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.
2:24 And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient.
2:25 In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.
2:26 And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.

I put 2:26 in bold italics because that's the heart of it. Satan has set the original snare and that is the combat, to EVADE THAT SNARE. Satan has no need to run around inventing new snares and sending evil spirits to go after each person in each generation, duh. That is the combat, to recover themselves (pull themselves out of the snare that, like slavery, humans are born into through sin and continual temptation.)

3:13 But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.
3:15 And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
(Notice that Paul is referring to scriptures still being needed, and that is OLD TESTAMENT scriptures, as New Testament didn't exist yet as Paul wrote this).
3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
3:17 That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

What is the remedy, the "armor," the "combat" that Paul orders, to deal with the worsening evil of humans over time (3:13)? Scriptures, particularly the Old Testament for wisdom, and as the training path toward perfected humans into obedient goodness to God. PAUL ENDORSES NO OTHER APPROACH OR WAY.

4:2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine.

You have to read page after page after page of what Paul truly instructs before one can enjoy, be inspired by, understand, and "follow" the much loved punch lines of Eph 6:10-18.

Here is further reading to understand the dark power is sin and disobedience, not imaginary sci fi aliens or evil spirits etc.

Separates from God Isa 59:2
Its wages: death Rom 6:23
Begets moral cowardice Josh 7:11-13
Hardens the heart Heb 3:13
Is very destructive Ps 34:21
Caused Israel's downfall 2 Chr 28:22-23
Causes misery Job 15:20
Brings reproach Prov 14:34
Enslaves the will 2 Tim 3:13
Excludes from heaven 1 Cor 6:9, 10
The forgiven warned "not to continue in sin" John 5:14, John 8:11, Rom 6:12
All have sinned Rom 3:23
All have gone astray Isa 53:6
To claim sinlessness is to lie Prov 20:9, 1 John 1:8-10
Jesus alone without sin 1 Pet 2:21-22
Through Satan's deception and subtlety Gen 3:1-13, 2 Cor 11:3
In the heart Matt 15:18, 19
Through lust of flesh James 1:13-15
Against the Holy Ghost Matt 12:31-32
Is destructive Prov 11:3
Is inexcusable John 15:22
Man obdurate in sin Amos 4:6-11

Fruits of the Holy Spirit(3): Continence (II)

We have just learned what the first fruit of Continence is, by studying two people who totally lacked it, Adam and Eve. This is called learning by "negative example," where you first learn the definition of something by studying something that lacks that quality. In that way you see the consequences of not having it. Now we will look at the one person who had total, perfect Continence, the anti-Adam of Continence, and that would be Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the model of what perfect Continence (which no person can ever achieve) looks like. Jesus Christ alone has the perfect gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit because he was conceived of the Holy Spirit, and thus he has not only the perfected nature of the Holy Spirit but also the Holy Spirit's indwelling. Here is the scripture where he demonstrates perfect Continence.

Before we start, let me point out two things that now that your eyes are open, you will notice anyway. One is how this event was just like the Garden of Eden, except Jesus is now demonstrating how Adam and Eve should have behaved in that situation. The other point is to answer what some ask, which is how Jesus, being perfect, could be tempted? He was not tempted in the sense of ever considering anything anyone says that takes him from his perfect will to God, of course. The Holy Spirit took him to the desert so that generations after him can study what Adam and Eve should have done. In other words, the devil is doing the tempting, but simply because Jesus is being "tempted by the devil," this is not an open ended tempting whereby Jesus ever would consider doing what the devil suggests. Jesus did all this in order to "rewrite" history, in a sense, as the Redeemer, Jesus demonstrated what Adam and Eve should have done.

Matthew 4:1-11

Then Jesus was led into the desert by the [Holy] Spirit, to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, "If thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread." But he answered and said, "It is written, Not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God."

Then the devil took him into the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, "If thou art the Son of God, throw thyself down; for it is written, He will give his angels charge concerning thee; and upon their hands they shall bear thee up, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." Jesus said to him, "It is written further, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. And he said to him, "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." Then Jesus said to him, "Begone, Satan! for it is written, The Lord thy God shalt thou worship and him only shalt thou serve." Then the devil left him; and behold, angels came and ministered to him.

We need not discuss here all the vast richness of this event in the life of Jesus for all its teachings and meanings, since they are well covered by preachers and in previous postings. Just look at the amazing and perfected example of the fruit of the Holy Spirit of Continence, demonstrated by Jesus.

1. Adam and Eve already had food aplenty, with no effort, the company of God, the servitude of animals and the promise of dominion of the world, and yet they so lacked self control that they accepted the offer of the devil for something they did not even understand (they wanted to know evil without even knowing what it was! Duh!)

2. Jesus had fasted for forty days and forty nights (try that out sometime, most humans would be dead of course), Jesus was alone as he had not yet chosen his Apostles and, further, he did not take angels along to minister to him, and Jesus had no earthly prestige at all yet, even though his was the actual King to come of all the earth and beyond, of course. So lacking at the time everything that Adam and Eve actually had surrounding them, Jesus demonstrates perfect Continence on the opposite side of the spectrum from Adam and Eve. In his extreme privation and isolation Jesus never once considered anything that the devil (or anyone else) seriously or even jokingly as a diversion from his ministry to come.

No one can be like Jesus, of course, but the reason the Holy Spirit led Jesus to the fasting and encounter in the desert is so that believers in the world can see and marvel what the perfected fruit of the Holy Spirit of Continence looks like. Jesus had total self control and containment of both his needs and his desires and thus demonstrated perfect Continence.

Continence thus also needs to be understood as an appreciation of timing, and also of trust in God. Adam and Eve failed in both respects, as they believed Satan equally as they believed God and thus gave Satan's temptation serious thought and merit, but they also, incredibly, had no patience, even though they had everything in front of them already. Patience is another fruit of the Holy Spirit, and we will discuss it in due turn. My point is that Continence is a friendly partner with Patience, because people are able to be more self restrained and thus Continent when they are willing to not only deny themselves something whose time has not yet come or is not good for them, but also to wait for what God genuinely intends for them.

Adam and Eve do not have the excuse that they did not know what God intended for them because they were already living it. The only thing that had not yet occurred was them having children and them inheriting the earthly Garden of Eden. It would be far more understandable if Jesus had been impatient, as he had fasted alone for forty days and nights, and had not yet surrounding himself with his followers, yet of course it was Jesus' timing as much as God's. Jesus and God had, of course, perfect agreement in timing and the order of things, always with eternity in mind. No, Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit to have the dueling scriptures with Satan in the desert so that people who have now, of course, well known through the scriptures the history of the failure of Continence (and obedience) by Adam and Eve could now see "how it should have gone." This is one reason that some have given the title to Jesus of the "New Adam." Not because there is any comparison, of course, but because Jesus role models how Adam, on his much smaller scale, should have behaved.

Thus Jesus demonstrated how the perfected ripened fruit of Continence looks, having been grown on the perfected tree of the Holy Spirit.

Fruits of the Holy Spirit (2): Continence

When I discussed with you the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, I presented them in a particular order because there is an order from foundational to ultimate that is a logical progression in likely receipt of the gifts. For example, one is not likely to receive any of the gifts if one is not first in receipt of and in appreciation of Fear of the Lord. The scripture teaches that Fear of the Lord is the foundational gift.

I'm going to present to you the different way that one must use understanding (a gift of the Holy Spirit! :-) to perceive the fruits of the Holy Spirit. That is I am going to follow closely in the scripture the actual development (or failure) of people to receive and develop the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Thus the first fruit of the Holy Spirit we will discuss, and understand to be the foundational fruit, is not Charity, as one might guess, but Continence.

The definition of Continence is the ability to contain something successfully, and in behavior terms it is often best understood as the ability to have "self control." Most people have heard the term continence in the medical context, where to have incontinence means that one cannot control one's bladder or bowel movements. But naturally as you would expect the term continence has a traditional meaning that is much more spiritual than whether one can wait to go to the lavatory!

Continence can be best thought of as the ability to exercise self control of one's needs and desires, and not in a repressive and suppressive way. Continence has the tone of a person who is also able to be moderate and temperate in their needs. So Continence is not to be understood as someone who can, for example, jab needles in their arms and not flinch from the pain because they are "in control." Rather, Continence means to be serene and moderate in the satisfaction of both one's good desires, but also to rebuff temptations. To use a simple example, someone is demonstrating Continence if they really, really, REALLY enjoy a particular item of food, beverage, or activity, such as a sport, yet you would not realize that unless they told you because they do not hoard or over-indulge in anything, even if they really enjoy it. As you can imagine people with the fruit of Continence are not addicts because no substance or activity overcomes their discernment of 1) whether it is good or bad for them and 2) even if it is harmless, it does not ever have control over these people by immoderate usage. A person with Continence can indeed have one piece of a favorite food once in a while, but does not need to tuck into that food in huge quantities on every occasion. A person with Continence might even love a food, sticking with these secular examples, yet not even indulge in it at all, or maybe once a year for special occasions!

Thus a person with spiritual Continence is moderate and in self control in not only secular matters but also spiritual matters. People with the fruit of Continence are not power hungry, for example. And now I imagine you know why I started with this fruit to be in discussion.

Genesis 3:1-6
Now the serpent [Satan] was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, [Eve] "Did God say, 'You shall not eat of any tree of the garden'?" The woman answered the serpent, "Of the fruit of all the trees in the garden we may eat; but 'Of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden,' God said, 'you shall not eat, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'"

But the serpent said to the woman, "No, you shall not die; for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Now the woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for the knowledge it would give. She took of its fruit and ate it, and also gave some to her husband [Adam] and he ate.

Naturally generations of preachers have spoken about the great tragedy and fall of humankind, just as it had been created in the forms of Adam and Eve, through simple disobedience of an almost incomprehensible foolishness. Here Adam and Eve had everything they needed, including the actual presence of God in the Garden, and they had the promise of children, of dominion over the world, and of peace of mind. With everything that modern humans cannot even imagine having been given to Adam and Eve, how on earth could Eve have been with a single sentence of suggestion been so easily fooled by Satan to eat of the one fruit tree that had been forbidden to them by God? Eve lacked Continence, and so did Adam.

There is no more striking example of a lack of Continence than Eve and Adam in all of human history, of course. It is the classic example of "wanting more" when one already had absolutely everything that there was to have. This is so far from someone just being greedy and out of control over something that one really wanted and/or needed. Adam and Eve had everything that a human could possibly have, promised by God, within their reach and their destiny (ample food, shelter, dominion over the world, the presence of God by their side, and peace of mind), so it's not like Eve wanted for example "more" food, or "more" dominion, or "more" of God's company, or "more" peace. They were the starting point of having it all. Yet within hours of creation Eve at only one sentence from Satan threw it all away, starting with peace of mind.

You see, when a human has knowledge of good and evil, that human loses peace of mind. While Eve believed Satan thinking that she and Adam would "gain" something to be "like God," what they did not realize is that what God can "handle" is a net loss to humans. When Adam and Eve learned about evil, they lost their peace of mind. Rather than having "more" of God, they lost what they had, which was already the most and everything that a human could have!

Contrast this, now, and I'll discuss it later under a different fruit of the Holy Spirit topic, with the sin of Satan and the angels who followed him when they were created by God and then given the choice to serve God or not. Eve followed by Adam made a sin of lack of self control. The angels who refused to serve God did not lack self control, they lacked humility. At a glance you might think these are similar, but they are not, and that is why I will explain them as being linked to the lack of two different fruits of the Holy Spirit.

So Eve and Adam did not have inflated egos as did the disobedient angels. At first glance one might think that as it seems as though both Adam and Eve and the disobedient fallen angels want to be "like God." But Eve did not think she would be completely like God in every way. Eve thought that she would gain a talent, some knowledge, that being the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve did not have a clue what evil was at all. They thus thought it was something that they could own, that knowledge, just "like God." They never dreamed that they would through this knowledge supposedly be "like God" in total. No, Eve and then Adam lacked Continence. They already had everything imaginable yet they lacked even the tiniest will power to just say no to Satan who offered them something they didn't even understand, when they already had everything that humans could ever have desired or possessed, including the day to day presence of God by their side. The disobedient angels, on the other hand, refused to serve God, but like Adam and Eve they did not of course kid themselves that they would ever be like God or equivalent to him. That is something Adam and Eve and the fallen angels share: they knew full well that they would not become God or godlike. Adam and Eve thought they would have a piece of knowledge (what evil is) that God had, and thus be like him in that respect, while the disobedient angels thought that they were "as good" as God in the sense that they did not have to humble themselves to him and serve him. Neither thought they would actual be step-ins or mini versions of God himself in any way, shape or form.

Adam and Eve simply could not push themselves away from the table that was already groaning under the weight of everything good for humans imaginable, and say "No" to Satan offering to put the one forbidden thing on their plate, which would be knowledge of evil. Adam and Eve of course already knew what good was because they were in the presence of God and God gave them everything good already. So how does one best understand the knowledge of "good and evil?" Here is an analogy. Suppose that you were created and lived in a world that was only one color, let's say blue. You would not understand that blue is "blue" because you don't even realize that it is only one of a choice of thing called "colors." So such a person would of course know totally the experience of being "blue" as they and everything around them is blue, but they don't realize that it is "blue" because they do not know a second color at all, and that color choices exist. Thus Adam and Eve did not need to find out what "good" was since they were living it; they just did not realize it. Once they ate the fruit and knew that there is a second choice, called "evil," now it all snapped into place where they realized that everything they already had was "good," but they now also know what "evil" is and how it can be achieved. They saw and were the victims of the first evil, which is human deception.

Adam and Eve would never have heard a lie or have been deceived, since they lived within the goodness of God's total truth. Their children would have been born, and their children, and their children, never even thinking of the concept of lying or deceiving. Once Eve and then Adam ate the fruit they got a crash course in 1) what evil is 2) that they had good all along and didn't realize it since they knew nothing of evil to compare it to and 3) the first example of evil, being the willing victims of Satan's deception. Then, in immediate hindsight, they would have realized the second evil to happen in sequence, which is disobeying God.

So the fruit of Continence springs from several gifts of the Holy Spirit. Before we list them, let us recap what Continence means and implies:

1) self control
2) a preference for all things in moderation
3) understanding the genuine value of limitations

In both secular and spiritual matters, therefore, you can see that a fruit of the Holy Spirit is born and yielded by a tree of the Holy Spirit that is comprised of the gifts of Fear of the Lord, Piety, Knowledge, Understanding and Wisdom.

It is not a one-to-one match where a certain given "gift" of the Holy Spirit yields a certain or given specific matching "fruit."

You can understand this by looking back at Adam and Eve. What would have prevented them from listening to Satan? If they had great Fear of the Lord, the fundamental gift of the Holy Spirit, they may well have trembled at the very first mention of disobeying God's order not to eat fruit from that one tree of the many they had. In other words Fear of the Lord alone may well have been enough to yielded the fruit of Continence, and thus given them pause to have self restraint. Suppose they did not have Fear of the Lord (since there was no reason for God to have given them that need, since he was as yet not having to demonstrate any admonishment or punishment in righteous wrath, since they lived in the perfection of the place he had created for them as humans)? They had the gift of Knowledge because God explained not only all the world to them but they also were given the Knowledge of the one unbreakable rule, which is not to eat of the fruit of that one tree. So Adam and Eve were not gift-less, they did not lack the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They had an abundance of the gift of the Holy Spirit of Knowledge.

Those of you who followed my series on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, though, remember that one rung up from Knowledge is Understanding. By one rung up I mean that one can have Knowledge as the groundwork but still lack Understanding and Wisdom, and that was the stage of development that Adam and Eve were at. If they had asked God, "Please tell us why you do not want us to eat from the fruit of the tree," God would have truthfully answered them, and they would have gained the gift of the Holy Spirit of Understanding. Thus even if they did not have Fear of the Lord (and may never have needed it), if they added Understanding to the abundant Knowledge that they had, they would have through this second scenario avoided disobeying God and losing it all by eating the fruit from the one tree that was forbidden to them.

If they had by one scenario or the other avoided disobeying God, they would have had children in Eden. They then would have raised and taught their children about God. That would have been the third rung, which is they are now the sources of Wisdom, as one cannot have Wisdom without first Knowledge (the "facts") and then Understanding (the "comprehension.") Wisdom is the synthesis and the culmination of facts plus comprehension plus experience and inspiration. If Adam and Eve had reached within Eden the gift of the Holy Spirit of Wisdom, they would have fully understood why not to disobey God without ever having to "know" what evil actually is and the literal pitfalls of knowing about evil. To go back to our color analogy, they would have known and understood that "blue" is their totality of experience, and that to expand that experience would be a diminishment rather than a gain. They'd never have needed to lose their peace of mind by actually knowing what evil is and that it exists. Imagine what the world would have been like. *sigh,,,,*

So the most fundamental, the "first fruit" of successful receipt and cultivation of any of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is Continence.

Simple logic about God & human scandal/sin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bible reading for previous post

Genesis 2:7
Then the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.

Notice that earlier in the scriptures when animals are created (Genesis 20-25) God created them, as all things in the universe, through the Holy Spirit but he did not bring them through life through his breath, but through his Word.

Then, in Genesis 26 God discusses with the angels how he will make mankind in their image and likeness (as the angels were already created in God's image, which is why God says "our" image and likeness...)

In order to be in the likeness of God and the angels, one must not only physically "look" like them, but also have a component that is the spirit, which is the soul.

Now you can understand more clearly that Genesis 2:7, cited above, is the point when God breathed into the clay he had risen the first soul, given to Adam, making him the first man, the first human being.

A human being is not an animal because a human being has a soul and an animal, no matter how good, loved, useful, or intelligent, does not have a soul. Far from diminishing the importance of animals, the lack of a soul means humans have a greater obligation to be honorable in their treatment of animals, to be good stewards.

But back to the main point, you can trust the responsible evidence of your own eyes, which is accurate and not manipulative interpretation of geology, fossil records and other evidence of evolution in all animals, including the apes and so forth, and evolution to proto, as in "before" human beings. But remember that God is always truthful and accurate in all things and the scriptures record this accordingly. God raised the first human out of the clay and dust when he breathed into Adam a soul. Adam is then able to give a soul to his spiritual descendant, Eve, who then is his spouse, and then they bear children who have souls the normal way that God put into motion, which is a soul and a guardian angel given to each human at conception. This is what is meant when God created Eve from the rib of Adam. They really kind of shared the first soul, and they shared the first guardian angel. From that point onward, though, the process of bearing children who receive from God their own soul and their own guardian angel commenced.

About evolution and Adam

I see some very good and intelligent discussion is taking place about evolution among believers of various faiths.

I just want to put forward a quick reflection, just so that in the sweep to accept accurate science that those of faith do not in then inaccurate cascading thoughts and conclusions marginalize what God has said he did.

I am concerned that those believers of good hearts who accept evolution in regard to human beings will then assume that God did not make Adam out of the clay, as he said he did. That is the beginning of eroding the scriptures, which is incorrect.

What you need to remember is that animals do not have souls. Only human beings have souls. God made Adam out of the clay when he rose him up and gave him a soul. Adam is the first spiritual human being in addition to being biologically human. This is how to understand the accuracy of the scriptures together with the accuracy of genuine fossil evidence. It is also at that time that humans, through Adam, even become really noticeable and the object of honor by God's angels. Angels aren't really involved with other forms of life, since while precious and good and God created, they lack souls. When Adam received a soul, and thus was raised from the clay, created by God, he also then received the first guardian angel. The Qur'an mentions God ordering the angels to honor Adam. That's when this happened. All subsequent humans receive souls at conception and a guardian angel.

I hope you find this helpful.

(Hi young people, by the way.... hope you are hanging in there and working on what you need and want to do....thinking of you....).

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!

Understanding God: little look at big picture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Western women would make Eve blush

So western commentators are "outraged" at how "women are treated by Islamic fundamentalists," and indeed, some of the abuses are abhorrent. However, at least they have an excuse of either ignorance of what the Qur'an really teaches, or cultural excess that has continued without moderation.

I suggest, though, that westerners shut their mouths and clean up their own situation. From what I see, many western women, enabled by men, do things that would make Eve blush and that Eve, mother of humanity, would never have considered doing (nor would have responded to if the devil had tempted her in those ways).

o Abortions, especially as it is more casual and with less thought than updating one's wardrobe or getting a new hair style.

o Women teachers who sexually prey on both boy and girl students.

o Women who abuse and murder their own children.

o Women who are neglectful in daycare centers.

o Women who enable their children to use drugs and/or alcohol.

o Women who allow or even encourage their children to have plastic surgery and other beauty "enhancement" treatments.

o Women who know about every diet on the planet but give their infants and toddler children soda pop and tons of fruit juice instead of milk, and then wonder why they are "fat," or have hyperactivity issues.

o Women who bring "lovers" and "boyfriends" into their home who then sexually abuse, beat and even kill their boy or girl children.

o Women who dress their little children like whores.

o Women, whether celebrities or in the community, by life style or as paid promoters, who role model sexualized behavior and demeanor so as to degrade the morality of the young who observe them in public.

o Women who raise their children ignorant of God, and worse, use them in occult or bizarre pagan beliefs, ruining those children's peace of mind for life.

o Women, teenagers and girl children who use the Internet and cell phone cameras to sexualize themselves or violate the privacy of others, and who thus promote a child pornography and visual rape mentality.


So before you get all worried about what the Taliban or fundamentalist Islamists are doing with their women and children, how about a little focus on one or all of those problems? Notice that in fundamentalist Islamic communities, no matter what else you think of them, they are not "struggling" with even ONE of the above issues. And you wonder why they don't want "western women 'values'" in their society? Even the most well meaning and virtuous western woman who tries to intervene in Muslim fundamentalist matters brings with her the taint of all that is happening above in the society at large. It is embarrassing and disgraceful at how low western society has fallen in these extreme matters (and I'm not talking about the age old issues of 'fooling around;' what I list above is the terrible destruction of the feminine as guardian of the young and overall bulwark against depravity and total loss of social anchorage).

Do we want to send the female Sunday school teacher who is accused of raping and murdering an eight year old neighbor to the east to role model "liberated female morality" to the Muslims? I didn't think so.

As Jesus stated, before removing the mote (a very small particle) out of the neighbor's eye, be sure to remove the beam (a huge piece of lumber) from your own eye.

Understanding God: Who gets into heaven? (2)

Part Two

Too many modern people go religion or “spirituality” “shopping.” These people have the mentality that a human being, especially an intelligent and “enlightened” one as themselves (if they are “humble” they call themselves “seekers”) can either 1) determine “which belief” is the “most accurate one” and/or 2) “which belief” will get them to heaven or a better position in whatever worldview they believe in. Here is the problem with this theory. One is not starting out on an “even footing” among all faiths, as if they are all perfectly good looking jeans but you are selecting the size that “fits you.” All of the different “beliefs” are NOT on an “equal footing” because God has had different types of relationships with communities throughout history, and it is communities that codify their belief systems. In other words, God has a consistent relationship with individuals, a personal relationship (after all, everyone has a soul created by God and a guardian angel, whether they believe in God or not, or have never even heard of God). But communities gather and codify collective “beliefs” and of course God is not providing them with their belief; that is what has come out of the past where humans grappled to assemble a world view out of the three components I listed in the first post on this subject. But then everything changed because God made himself known to ONE group of people, his chosen. No longer are the “beliefs” of others gathered from guesses about supernatural powers combined with human based creations myths, centered on speculation about the natural landscape in which communities abide. God made himself known to ONE group of people and further, embarked on a side by side witnessed relationship that is documented with facts for hundreds of years.

So it is an error to believe that one can “shop around” among “beliefs” because the only belief systems that are valid so far as your “accuracy” criterion are those based on the events of God’s relationship with humans as documented in the Bible. Notice I am not saying that one cannot get to heaven otherwise (the second criterion) and so let’s put that aside for the moment and just discuss the “accuracy” objective. No belief system that is not based on the faith history of the factual events documented between God and his chosen can be considered “correct” by any stretch of the imagination. They are all human produced stories and beliefs, worthy or not. The ancient polytheistic faiths emerged from humans having a shared gift of wanting to know God, but limited abilities to do so until God made himself explicitly and specifically known to them in return. Therefore if one is “shopping” for “accuracy” one cannot consider a belief that is not Judaism, Christianity or Islam. The Abrahamic faiths are all rooted in the actual documented dialogue and covenant between God’s chosen and God.

When we use the term “chosen” or “elect” we certainly don’t mean smarter, more holy or more moral than all the rest of people. One doesn’t have to go too far in reading the Bible to understand that. The Israelites were dancing around worshipping a golden calf as Moses was just a few miles away receiving the Ten Commandments from God in person. The term “chosen” means these are the people that God selected, as in “chose,” to reveal himself to and to establish an ongoing relationship that is God given and thus accurate, not based on human invention or speculation. God’s first choice was to covenant with all of humans, and that was through Adam and Eve. Their inability to obey and not in a minor area but in the worse of all areas, wanting to be like God and command good and evil, was humanity’s first chance and first fail. Therefore while they are the faith ancestors and their faithful descendents maintained knowledge of God and piety, the second chance that God gave was to select the people, the tribe, the individuals with whom he would lay down a many-generational relationship that would provide guidance for all humans, starting with the events written in the Torah.

Thus God had relationships with the series of patriarchs and prophets that were the continuity of year after year of his consistent face among them, concern and presence. Remember that writing per se did not exist in those days, so it’s not like the patriarchs and prophets were able to keep diaries of their relationship with God. But two things happened: 1) they, as all primitive people, memorized and kept oral history, passing each carefully to their next generations and 2) God provided Moses with the knowledge of all that had gone before and how to record these events in what would become the foundation of the Torah-the Pentateuch-the “Five Books of Moses.” Here is one modern way to think of Moses. When one uses a computer and a word processor, it is a program that has pre-established formats where one can create documents. When one sits to write it’s not like you have to invent for yourself the idea of an alphabet, numbers, paper, language, sentences, etc. We all have reached a common understanding of how written communications work, and a word processor makes it consistent in terms of results. Moses provided the first “template” of how to document in writing the events in faith history, of the ongoing and very real relationship and interaction between the chosen people and God. Thus among the many things that Moses did, and how great he was in God’s eyes, one of them you need to understand is that Moses himself was guided by God to take their relationship out of the oral history and put it in writing as witness for future generations.

Once this revelation was made, that God not only wants but co-authors, in a manner of speaking, the written documentation of God’s relationship with the chosen, it does not really matter whose actual quill is put to the parchment. Scribes abounded from the earliest times of writing and yes, they took “dictation.” What mattered is that Moses created the “template” by which only events that are of God (involving God’s relationship with the chosen) are included and that they must be “witnessed” events. By witnessed we mean that the events are attested to following the God given directives of how to observe and assert the truth of the matter. Jesus has a very lengthy comment about the difference between human witnessing (asserting the truth of the matter following the witness rules) and God witnessing, which is that God’s intervention is obvious and thus God himself is witnessing to the accuracy of his prophet. Jesus was irked but did not lose his temper when questioned by the scribes and Pharisees about how he could “witness to himself” because Jesus understood that they were speaking from disbelief, yes, but also the caution of having dutifully followed the “template” that Moses had first provided for documenting their relationship with God. I’ll include that passage later, but do not want to lose the train of thought in this location.

So Moses is the author of the first five books of what Christians call the Old Testament of the Bible and what is the Pentateuch of the Torah. By “author” we mean that he developed the “format” that all others will emulate when “adding books to the Bible” (although of course it was not a sequential writing process) and Moses provided the information God gave to him about events that transpired before there was written history, from the moment of creation to their present time of the Exodus. Many different physical hands, of course, copy the books of the Bible generation after generation and indeed it is likely that Moses was far to busy to actually put quill to parchment of every word himself. But the template was established that only the truthful and the witnessed (either by humans or by God) could be recorded, and that it would be written with great diligence of names, places and dates in faith history being recorded. The Old Testament has therefore always been a combination of secular and faith history events. That is why one cannot “faith shop” among different “beliefs” because there is no equivalent to the Old Testament of the Bible, as God did not elect to reveal himself to any other community.

To give you better understanding of the continuity of this dialogue, here is a much summarized timetable for sections of the Old Testament. The events described in the beginning of faith history, from creation to Adam to Eve and their offspring all, obviously occurred before writing was developed, and thus occurred more than three thousand years before the Christian Era, thus at least five thousand years ago. The period of the Patriarchs (what is described in Genesis 12-50) is also before written history and occurred two thousand years to around thirteen hundred years before the Christian era. Thus during the time of Moses and the Exodus, around thirteen to twelve hundred years before the Christian era, Moses received from God understanding of what had transpired during the previous two thousand or so years of God’s relationship with his elect and first had this history transcribed. When Moses died Aaron and his descendants added the last moments of Moses to the writings and then from that point carried on in the template of documenting the faith history as it occurred. Thus the next book after the first five books of Moses is called Josue (Joshua), named after a successor of Moses and picks up where the books leave off in recording the conquest, division and occupation of Chanaan by the Israelites under his leadership. Most likely the book is a combination of actual writing by Joshua and the later putting of quill to scroll of events based on oral memory.

Now, it’s not like people kept the Bible in one place and “added” the books to it in sequence after the Pentateuch. Here is where the word processing template analogy is handy. What the Israelites now had was a faith template. They knew that it was not only allowable to record faith history but an imperative given to them by God. Thus the priests and prophets had what one could call a spiritual template based on the Torah, the first five books, whereby they copied and emulated the recording of both secular and faith events. Thus the next book after Joshua, The Book of Judges, is a compilation of the events regarding twelve military leaders of Israel in the time between the death of Joshua and the establishment of the monarchy in Israel. Thus scribes “followed the template” and recorded the secular and divine events of this period, again, probably a combination of some being written “on the scene” and the rest committed to oral memory until it could be compiled and synthesized into the book. Judges covers a period of about two hundred years. The next books of the Bible then record the establishment of the consecrated monarchy in Israel, another period of several hundred years. This is how each book was written to correspond to actual secular and faith events during a period of time, and then following the “template” of Moses, at some point put into writing in a scroll or parchment. The most recent pre Christian era book of the Old Testament was written only one or two hundred years before Christ.

Therefore, it is important to understand that what Christians call the Old Testament is a compilation of books written to document actual secular and faith events, where God is consistently present throughout in an active participatory manner, for over thirteen hundred thousand years of actual writing, of scribing. There is no other “belief system” or “faith” that documents the active participation by God in a perfectly consistent fashion (it’s the same God with the same expectations year after year and generation after generation) paired with the actual secular historical events. The Bible is not an “option;” it is the documented secular and faith history of the people who are the elect of God, whether one chooses to “believe” or not.

Now, to understand the Qur’an, think of my analogy of the template, and also of how God had to “catch Moses up” with all that had happened that was true in the thousands of years of faith history before the Exodus. God had to “catch up” the people who would become the Muslims that they too were of the heritage of the elect that their physical and spiritual forefathers trace back to Adam and Eve and through Abraham to Ishmael and where they are today. The Prophet (PBUH) was like Moses in that regard of getting the divine revelation that was catching them up to realizing they have the same heritage. God gives them their own “template” and that is the Qur’an. Instead of being a template for future writings, since there is no addition to the Qur’an nor will there be, this template is to rediscover their sacred sites, such as those established by Abraham, and the template of worshipful behavior. That is why the shared faith history of Jews/Christians and Muslims is highly summarized in the Qur’an. The Qur’an in that regard is a “catch up” of what had gone before and is shared, but provided so that the spiritual template of the Qur’an for those who believe to have context and understanding of God. Thus the Qur’an touches on spiritual history from Adam and Eve to Jesus Christ, establishing for Muslims the lineage of the prophets.

Why did God do it this way? Because this is the only way that God can reveal himself to humans but also preserve their free will and freedom of choice. If God wanted to love preprogrammed obedient robots he would have invented those in the first place instead of allowing humans to arise from the clay. It’s not love if it has to be forced, and God forces no one to love him. It is, however, a really good idea to love God. Why? Because one cannot truly love fellow human beings, either as intimates or friends, or the community of “neighbors” if one does not love God because God is the source of all authentic love. However, this is why you need to have faith that throughout history those who did not know about God but who loved life, their family and their neighbors, and who had genuine charity would somehow be taken care of by God when it is their time to pass. God is wherever there is genuine love and people do not have to “wait” to love one another in his name. That is why one must have faith that those who “fell asleep” who were righteous but who did not know God or know of him are treated with the perfection of discernment of doing what is right for them in eternity that only God possesses.

Everything changes, however, as humans demand to control good and evil, and to use their “free choice” to make their “own decisions” about what is “right and wrong.” No longer are humans like the early childlike humans, who struggle to survive and who have to do the best that they can in their lives, and then fall into sleep in God when they die, if they have been good and righteous. This is why God made two “interventions,” to use a modern term often used to describe the beginning of rehab. One is the intervention of his elect, his chosen people, where God makes himself known and is “living” side by side with them so that they can know God, fear God (fear in the sense I’ve explained in the gifts of the Holy Spirit) and provide the gift of witness, the scripture, that is the truth and expectations of God and his people, humans. The second intervention is Jesus Christ, the Savior. This is so that the doorway to God and the pathway (one that each person must choose to walk, because with the knowledge of good and evil no one is just going to roll their way into heaven like the “kind Neanderthal”) to God can be opened to all, and not just to his elect.

Conclusion of Part Two.

Matthew 21:23-27

And when he had come into the temple, the chief priests and elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority dost thou do these things? And who gave thee this authority?” Jesus answered and said to them, “I also will ask you one question, and if you answer me this, I in turn will tell you by what authority I do these things. Whence was the baptism of John? From heaven, or from men?”

But they began arguing among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From men,’ we fear the people, for all regard John as a prophet.” And they answered Jesus and said, “We do not know.” Then he in turn said to them, “Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things.”