understanding Bible: sin definition case study

I started out planning to blog about something else (which I will), but I came across this historical information that will help you in your faith & reasoning development. In the past few postings I've mentioned how the Bible states that even foolish thoughts, and then of course obviously mean and unrighteous thoughts, are sins, even if no one takes action on them. I explained that and gave the scripture references in previous posts some time ago.

Well, I know that one of the things you need to think about is: how has accurate and complete understanding of the Bible diminished so much over the two thousand years of Christianity that my explaining the Bible has this information has become a news flash? Something that very, very, VERY few pastors and other moral leaders know about or if they do, even mention? Why does no one warn their flock that even foolish thoughts are considered by God to be sins?

Before you, or anyone, can answer that question, you need to "fact find." Young people (yes, hi there, I think of you fondly as always), the scientific method and the use of problem solving logic means that like a detective, you trace how far in history from the time of the Bible writings to the present that awareness of this particular admonishment in the Bible exists in both the religious and secular consciousness.

Thus I want to give you an example of how, while leafing through my prayerbook, I came across written evidence that just over three hundred years after Jesus Christ lived that people still knew full well and embraced the Bible teaching that foolish and sinful thoughts are actual sins. So while I'm not planning to spend time studying this for you, I thought, hey! What a perfect example to show you how to reconstruct how modern thought has gone so wrong. So the first step is to trace since the time of Jesus, using impeccable written factual sources (not imaginings of false prophets and 'psychics') what people actually thought and did regarding the topic that you are studying, in this case how the Bible states that foolish and sinful thoughts are sins, even if no actions follow.

Here is some background of the person I am going to quote. Ambrose was born around the year 320 AD (and thus was born nearly three hundred years after Jesus Christ was crucified and resurrected) into a upper class family in the Roman Empire. Ambrose's family had been Christian for several generations. Ambrose had in his family tree, in fact, a Christian martyr, St. Soteris. Ambrose and his family received classic legal education, so they were well educated and prepared for high civil office, so Ambrose became a lawyer and a governor. When a local bishop died, Ambrose was sent to help sort out arguments among the people about who should be appointed bishop in the place of the deceased. As he addressed the crowd on this subject a child in the crowd called out that Ambrose himself should become bishop! The crowd agreed and the two arguing sides with their respective candidates fell into agreement about Ambrose (who was shocked and did not want to be the bishop). He was well on his way up the lawyer and government "career ladder," and was still studying and deepening his own individual faith. But because the people wanted him so badly and basically drafted him, he was baptized, received the holy orders of priesthood, and was consecrated Bishop of Milan (Italy) all within a month of time! He was very obviously a pious and sanctifying man from the start (the people's instinct was correct!) He gave to the Church and the poor his considerable personal wealth, he sorted through the problem of the genuinely poor from those who were shams, he studied scripture and doctrine for twenty three years, was a prolific author and being a priest, as all bishops are, Ambrose celebrated Mass (the Holy Eucharist) every day. He even raised the three grandchildren of a friend.

With that as background, seeing this was a holy man who didn't even in fact seek out fame or a livelihood due to his sanctity, here is what he wrote, with his opinion of his own sinfulness! This is a long prayer he wrote that he recited before celebrating the Holy Eucharist (the "Lord's Supper") in daily Mass and I include here the opening of the prayer and the places where you see evidence of the realization of those times that all people are considered prone to sin, including of mere thoughts that are foolish or unworthy:

O Gracious Lord Jesus Christ, I, a sinner, presuming not on my own merits, but trusting to Thy mercy and goodness, fear and tremble in drawing near to the Table on which is spread Thy Banquet of all delights. For I have defiled both my heart and body with many sins, and have not kept a strict guard over my mind and my tongue....

...To Thee, O Lord, I show my wounds, to Thee I lay bare my shame. I know that my sins are many and great, on account of which I am filled with fear. But I trust in Thy mercy, for it is unbounded...

...Hearken unto me, for my hope is in Thee; have mercy on me, who am full of misery and sin, Thou who wilt never cease to let flow the fountain of mercy. Hail, Thou saving Victim, offered for me and for all mankind on the tree of the cross...

Remember, O Lord, Thy creature, whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy Blood. I am grieved because I have sinned, I desire to make amends for what I have done. Take away from me therefore, O most merciful Father, all my iniquities and offences, that, being purified both in soul and body, I may worthily partake in the Holy of Holies...

...I purpose to partake, may be to me the full remission of my sins, the perfect cleansing of my offences, the means of driving away all evil thoughts and of renewing all holy desires, and the advancement of works pleasing to Thee...

Do you see how often this obviously holy man (remember, the crowd proclaimed him when he had no clue of wanting to leave a high career for the sanctified priesthood) emphasizes and repeatedly confesses and asks for help for his sins of thoughts????

If you ever wonder what holy people confess to God, that is what it is. Truly holy and sanctified people continue to "renew all holy desires" by acknowledging that all humans have foolish, evil and sinful thoughts. This is the genuine humility before God that ALL believers should have, which is the acknowledgment that even the holiest of people have, due to being broken vessel human beings, regardless of their level of faith, have to mindfully struggle against having even silly and mean or vain thoughts, say nothing of how profound a sin that thinking, even idly and fleetingly, thoughts about sinful matters are.

So, young people, and others, this is how you can see that no, we don't "lack evidence" of "what the church was like" and "what people believed" "back then" in "Biblical times." This lawyer/governor who became priest/bishop only a few hundred years after Christ left plenty of written evidence of his thoughts and what the people believed, and what they retained of their understanding of the Bible, both Old and New Testament. The notion that even idle, foolish and sinful thoughts are actual sins (as the Bible states) was a hot forefront belief several hundred years after Christ.

Thus, young people, and others, you now have a piece of your investigation, if you were doing so, that for certain in the four century that the knowledge that bad and foolish thoughts are sin was well known and frequently meditated about and prayed regarding, including DAILY by this Bishop of Milan, Ambrose.

Those of you new to studying the saints, let me explain that they were not tucked away in a corner. Ambrose, while he was living, was studied by many who would become great saints themselves. Further, while there was no email, ha, or post office, there was indeed snail mail and these people were all in correspondence. So if you continue your investigations you will see that a writing by a priest or bishop was never a "personal" so called "interpretation of scripture." This was the prevailing belief, kept intact from Old Testament times and the times of Jesus, that foolish and bad thoughts are indeed sins.

I hope that you have found this helpful both in further understanding what I have been reminding people about what the scriptures actually say, but also as you can see that you don't have to imagine and make stuff up, but you can look at written agenda-free evidence to deduce what people knew and believed, and how the word of God is preserved, and when parts of it started to fall out of public consciousness. Here we have filled in the blanks of several hundred years, knowing that the early Christians were keenly aware of what the Israelites knew and what those who followed Jesus knew, which is that God states that foolish, bad, mean and/or sinful thoughts are indeed actual sins, whether actual action follows or not.

Killed for a piece of watermelon

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

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

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

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

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

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

Urgent msg re: cancer and "healing thoughts"

Rather than people being more logical (reasoning) and developing their faith in God, there has been for years an alarming trend where people "send healing thoughts" and "send vibrations" and so forth "toward" cancer sufferers and others with diseases or injuries. This really has to stop because it is part of the problem and not part of the solution. Here is the "why."

Without giving an anatomy lesson, think of cancer as the body's reaction to what it thinks is something wrong, an internal wounding or attack. So the cancer sufferer's body "thinks" that he or she is under attack, and the development of cancer is the "healthy" but inappropriate response to the perception or reality of attack. When you mentally "urge" someone's body to "heal," you are egging on the cancer response, not diminishing it. Yeah, oops.

To better understand, think about what we do know about the causes of cancer, and what we don't know. We do know some direct correlations between contaminants such as smoke from cigarettes or the breathing of asbestos fibers and the resulting cancers. This is because as I have explained, the body "thinks" it is under attack, because it really is. Cancer is then the inadequate response to something the body cannot naturally dispose of, such as the asbestos fibers. If you mentally "urge" someone's body-or your own-to "heal" itself, you are encouraging the stimulation of the very response that the body thinks it IS using to heal, which is cancer.

On the other hand, think about people who develop lung cancer but are not smokers, or maybe have not even been around second hand smoke. Why do they get cancer? They may have some other irritant that no one realizes that has finally reached a threshold point. It's impossible, really, to analyze every particle, compound, chemical or other matter that a person has breathed in their life to date. So there are many contaminants that singularly or in group also trigger a cancer response, even if they are as yet unrecognized as carcinogens, etc. There was a lot of talk about barbecue and wood burning in the science literature for a while. See, it doesn't have to be one thing. If a person was around mild doses each but multiple sources of irritants (for lack of a better word), the adding on effect can and does cause cancer. They then wonder how they got cancer because they weren't around any of the famous well known causes. Yeah, but they were around below the threshold levels of a few or many different irritant sources, and those added together makes the normal body feel it is under attack, and hence it responds with the development of cancer cells.

Let me repeat, it's not like evil cancer cells fly into a body and attach themselves. Think of cancer as the body starting a feverish campaign to manufacture its own bandages. Tumors and cancer cells can be thought of as the body's normal, healthy but ultimately futile effort to churn out more and more bandages. When you mental monkeys send "healing vibes" to people with cancer, including yourselves, you are urging your body or theirs to produce more "bandages," more futile causing cancer efforts to address the real or perceived irritants.

Researchers know that genetic miscues are a contributor to cancer. Again, genes are healthy and normal real building blocks of your body's existence. When a gene is miscued that means it is garbling instructions that it is receiving. Like if the factory manager is told to make 100 bandages and instead he hears 10000 bandages. THAT is the "problem" with cancer.

We know that thoughts have power, which is why the Bible forbids sinful AND even "foolish" thoughts. Thoughts directed at others are real and are thus a form of ESP, which everyone has to some degree. So when you think you are some sort of mental marvel magician and "spirit worker" and send "healing thoughts" to someone, it doesn't matter what you think of that person or even if your intention is supposedly pure. You are sending another irritant to the locations where the body is already fully involved in the production of cancer. You are speeding up the assembly line of the misunderstood bandages, not slowing it down. "Healing vibes" to someone with cancer or ANY illness is a grave danger. It's like you are sending more garbled messages to the bandage producing frenzied assembly line.

That, by the way, is a reason that those who voodoo or otherwise engage in sending "bad" vibes, like wishing cancer on someone, often finds it boomerangs. Cancer is the body doing natural and healthy things, but inappropriate or inadequate to the actual task. So if you send your "enemy" wishes that he or she "gets cancer," you are urging their body to be more effective in being healthy. LOL. And because you are using your mind and spirit to do bad things, you are providing your own and your supporters own "irritants" that can very well boomerang your intentions back onto your selves. People, I've been trying to explain this to you for years in order to save you grief, not because I'm lacking in items of conversation. Unlike you, I do not wish ill on anyone: even those who amply deserve it. I know that the consequences of injustice and sin will return to the person, either in their lifetime or at God's absolute judgment of them upon their death. So those of you who think people "cause" cancer, or, in turn, think that you can wish it onto someone, take a look at how well that has turned out for you, your loved ones, and the world. FAIL.

But my focus is really on those of you who in the frenzy of wishing to "do good" and "focus on cancer" during the so-called cancer awareness month, are really trying to do a good thing but don't realize the harm that you ARE doing. This is why, I repeat, God in both the Bible and the Qur'an forbids magical type of thinking, in addition to actual magical deeds. It's because you really don't understand the biological implications of the complexity of the human body and mind, say nothing of the spiritual goodness or not. Believing that you have the power to "heal" through thoughts, and not actual band-aids and iodine, is a total fail. This is why the second thing that God insists on is prayer to him, not "vibrations" to other people. Charity, not "healing vibes" when you don't even know how the disease or situation exists in reality. Pray for the well being in God's hands of the other person; don't "manifest" your trite and simplistic views of what is "good" and what is "not."

I was reading on the blog of a friend her thoughts about silence and sound. I like what she wrote but more to the point, silence is a crucial part of healthy life. Think of cancer as a cacophony of noise, clashing frantic internal assembly lines of trying to produce more well intended but inadequate "bandages." Your ill friends and family need more silence, not more sound, so everyone should silently direct prayers to God on the friend's behalf and not add to the fail noise that is going on inside of his or her's body.

It's so ironic that the generations that value "meditating" actually provide more spiritual and actual bodily pollution noise in the name of so called "healing" than any generation past. For your own sakes stop using your minds for stupid thoughts and turn them instead back toward God, in prayer, and each other in actual hands-on charity, which is where they should have been all along. By the way, I write this in honor and memory of the great Danny Thomas, who knew first hand where all good things and healing comes, through his patron St. Jude.

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

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

Here is an art analogy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Better than any university lecture, the Pope!

Do read his discourse from yesterday in Paris, on the topic of Christian culture and art, and how it arose from the monastic system in its quest for God based on God's revealed known and true word. This is very scholarly and yet easy to understand. I might make some comments and explanations in a subsequent blog posting.

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/206663?eng=y