How to use logic when understanding God

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exodus 33:18-23

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Understanding God: advice and role models

In my previous post in the series “understanding God” I explained how the error of predestination is the result of misunderstanding the attribute of God’s all knowingness. I want to dovetail a related concept here, just to build upon this basis of understanding.

God is impossible to fully understand, not because he keeps part of himself secret, but because his vastness of “perspective” is genuinely unknowable. In fact, the more that the great religious minds have come to know God, the more they are in awe of all that is unknowable by the human mind, which is bounded by limitations of matter, energy and time. Saint Thomas Aquinas is the shining example of the saint who most used intellectual and logic capabilities to explain faith and through the centuries many have revered and studied him for precisely that reason. He is the one who has brought generation after generation to God through “the human mind.” Thomas Aquinas left volumes of writings, all based on faith and logic through reasoning, which are treasures today. Still, what was the thing that enraptured him so much that ultimately he stopped writing? It was the mystery of God in the Holy Mass, specifically in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. The way that God reveals himself, physically and spiritually, in the Holy Mass, in all its mystery and simplicity was what gave Aquinas more understanding, and at the same time more awe of the mystery, than any intellectual progress in understanding God.

Before I continue on my main point, let me make an aside. Many people outside of the Catholic Church misunderstand why Catholics venerate the saints so much. There are two reasons, one of which is related to how we understand being part of their community, the “communion of saints,” even as they are already in heaven and we are still alive here on earth. The other reason that I want to explain to you is that the saints are teachers and role models, not just as examples of holiness and redemption, but also in the many varied ways that each of them grew in their understanding of God. There are many techniques, for lack of a better word, for individuals to better understand God and often one or two saints are role models that a person can relate to in their progress themselves toward understanding God. St. Thomas Aquinas has for centuries been the inspiration for those who desired or needed to approach their understanding of God through a rigorous path of logic and reasoning. He is one of the thirty-three Doctors of the Church. Yet in direct proportion to his logic, reasoning and intellectual approach to God, Aquinas also had an intense and mystical communion directly with God, one that yielded miraculous fruits. Thus one of his titles is “The Common Doctor,” for he leads the average person to reason their way to God, while another of his titles is “The Angelic Doctor,” for his mystical qualities are comparable to how the angels themselves know God. I cannot recommend St Thomas Aquinas highly enough, therefore, to modern generations for veneration and role modeling in emulating his intellectual approach, and being inspired by the divine gifts that he, in parallel, received.

In his prologue to his best known work, The Summa Theologica, he wrote: Since the teacher of Catholic truth must instruct not only the advanced but also the beginners, according to the word of St. Paul (1 Cor. 3:1-2), “as to little ones in Christ, I fed you with milk, not with solid food…” so that the purpose and intent of this work is to treat those things that pertain to the Christian religion in a manner suitable to the instruction of beginners…with confidence in the divine help, try to present the contents of sacred doctrine as briefly and clearly as the matter allows.

Father Rengers in his book “The 33 Doctors of the Church” comments that “St. Thomas, who fought fro and is remembered for his emphasis on the place of reason in theology, relied primarily on the guiding hand of divine love” and quotes St. Thomas, “Ardor precedes illumination, for a knowledge of truth is bestowed by the ardor of charity.”

Just as another aside, Shiite Muslims have a similar understanding of saints with Catholics, where they understand that saints are to be revered, but not worshipped, and that saints are the role models for not only their virtue but also their methods of learning about God and teaching accordingly.

Therefore, St. Thomas Aquinas, who has such an intellectual approach to teaching about God, role models and articulates two important things to bear in mind,. One is to always remember that “baby steps” are needed in understanding and teaching about God, not demonstrations of one’s supposed intellectual prowess and “sophistication” of thought. He critiques previous works as being too difficult and agenda driven for many to learn from, and that is a problem that moderns are especially vulnerable toward. Indeed there is an entire industry of very marginal people writing books about God and faith who have little if any solid factual education, particularly in Christianity, yet peddle to the public books filled with the most bizarre and arcane claptrap, presented as “lofty” and sophisticated “spiritual insight.” In contrast, the greatest “expert” in God in modern times, Thomas Aquinas, always built his writings on solid intellect and baby steps, ensuring that neither his doctrine nor the readership goes even one inch astray. When Aquinas taught he started with the basics, from truly the very beginning, such as why God created humans, and what are the attributes of heaven, not with sweeping declarations of his “personal revelation” and condescending “wisdom.” The true geniuses, especially those on the subject of God and faith, are always remarkably humble and allow only one step at a time on solid factual and theological foundation that is not of their own invention.

The second thing that Aquinas role models and articulates is that when writing about God, one cannot, no matter how intellectual, write from a perspective of no love. No one can accurately discuss or represent God if one does not have or actively aspire to having love of God. At the face of this, moderns might object that loving God presents then “bias” into written works about God, but on examination that is ridiculous. God is love and all of love comes from God. One cannot genuinely write about God, including in a strictly intellectual way, without having love of God, “ardor” as St Thomas calls it or at the very least is seeking to have love of God, acknowledging that as his or her objective in writing and study. To attempt to write about God without loving God as God exists (and not how you wish him to be) is like a chemist trying to write about chemistry but not believing in hydrogen, or a physician writing about the treatment of wounds and refusing to believe that bandages exist, or a home builder who seeks to build a shelter but refuses to believe there is such a thing as walls and a roof. Thus one cannot explain or study God without feeling love of God as he is, since ultimately the sum total of understanding God is understanding and feeling love of God. One can no more understand God without loving God than one can hope for rain in a drought yet not believe in water.

So to understand God one must take baby steps based on sound and factual basis of reasoning, but one must also have love of God in one’s heart as one’s motivation, even if that love is painfully imperfect at first. One other error that moderns make is the excessive focus on God, specifically in Jesus Christ, as some sort of symbol of unconditional “love,” a love that excuses sin, and is not actually directed toward genuine love of God or genuine, rather than self serving, loving charity of neighbor. If one reads the Gospels, yes, Jesus preaches a great deal about love and charity, but he also in equal measure dishes out a great deal of criticism and reminder of the penalty of failure and of a continually sinful and godless life, which will end in being burned as the chaff. Moderns, ever since the so-called hedonistic “Love Generation,” ignore the reality of what Jesus taught about God and instead portray Jesus as some sort of pastel colored ever forgiving and ever accepting love machine. In order to write intellectually honest and correct works about God, one must have genuine love of God as either one’s reality or one’s objective, and not an agenda driven self serving interpretation of the “endless boundaries” of God’s love.

For example, many of the saints loved to read about God and write about God. But there is a remarkable difference between their motivations and the motivations of many today. The saints loved to read about God because they loved God, not because they were trying to analyze, dissect and understand him with the intent of controlling his powers. For example, when one is truly in love one wants to know more about the object of one’s love because love creates the desire to know more and immerse one’s self in the loved one’s milieu. One should not, however, wish to read more and more about one’s loved one as a way to manipulate and control him or her. Thus one who is well balanced seeks to read about God because one loves God, or wishes to love God or love him even more, and not to wrest imaginary “secrets” out of God as a way to accomplish some sort of secondary agenda in one’s life.

Likewise the saints loved to write about God because, again, they loved God and wished to share their love of God with others. Similarly, many moderns also misunderstand and misuse their own motivations for writing about God. Far too many, especially in the so-called New Age arena, write about God in order to show off their supposed enlightenment and cash in on it. I’m not saying that one cannot charge money for a book, to earn a living or to at least break even in the cost of publication. What I am saying is that too many so called “spiritual” writers write about God or their New Age “spirit” as ways to self promote. They often proclaim their “humility” while at the same time puffing up their possession of spiritual “insight” and “gifts.” Thus you have New Age Hindus or Buddhists or whatever actually writing and marketing books about Jesus Christ, and then doing the “talk show circuit” as “spiritual experts.”

Think again about my example of the chemist who wants to write a chemistry book but does not believe in the existence of hydrogen. Would you want to read anything that he or she has to say? Would you want to conduct any of his or her experiments? I mean, go ahead, light up that cigarette since hydrogen does not exist, LOL. That would be irresponsible and crazy enough, to be a chemist who does not believe in the existence of hydrogen and teaches accordingly. However, imagine this. Suppose it is a biologist who writes that chemistry book and the biologist is both is not a chemist, but also does not believe in hydrogen! So that author would not even be an irresponsible expert; he or she would be an irresponsible non-expert, a uneducated intruder into the field of chemistry.

Now imagine that a biologist writes a book about chemistry where not only do they not believe in hydrogen, but they think that neon has been treated “unfairly” and does not get sufficient “attention,” and thus pushes a “neon agenda” throughout their chemistry book. “It’s not fair that neon is an inert gas,” the author thinks, and decides to insert neon into many equations and chemical reactions in the place of the actual element that occurs there. They do not believe in hydrogen, and they think that neo does not get enough attention. Thus they teach that the chemical formula for water, H2O, is actually Ne2O. Need some water? Smash some neon and oxygen together!

To understand God one must understand God the way God actually is, based on the facts of God’s interaction with the faithful and his inspired words on the subject, not on how someone wants God to be in order to enable their own agendas. The saints are the reliable way who show the genuine path to understanding and loving God, and that is why thousands of these role models exist. The saints have all come to God in a myriad of lifestyles and life experiences, so there’s a saint that resonates somewhere for anyone in any station of life. However, they all come together in one commonality, which is orthodox and reliable, faith and reasoning based understanding and love of God. None of them, no matter where they came from in life, “made up” out of their own minds their own theology and their own “interpretation” of God. They found their way on their own paths to the same God; they did not invent different Gods as the result of “going their own way.” I cannot believe how foolish people are today when some of them basically say they are finding the “right” God who “suits their needs.” I’m sorry, but there’s only one God, the powerfully eternally consistent one, who is waiting when your life is over and you are judged, and it’s not the “convenient” God who was “best suited to your lifestyle.” God is God and the same God, no matter what people are doing on earth, or even if this planet is blown to smithereens. God never changes and it does not matter one iota if you think that God is not “suitable to your present needs.”

To summarize, just as one learns how to drive a car from someone who knows how to drive, one can rely on studying one or more of the saints for ideas about how to better understand God and make him real in your life. Do not let “the blind lead the blind.” People used to read about and study the saints so that they would have ideas and role models about how to learn about God, not to follow the saints to the stake, LOL. Many saints were not martyrs and had even ordinary and non-dramatic lives, with the problems and challenges that all average people encounter in life.

Let me give an example of how that works best, and how that might be misunderstood. St. Paul has been through the centuries one of the most frequently role modeled of the saints, but there is a correct way to role model St. Paul and an incorrect way to role model St. Paul. Remember that Paul, when he was still Saul and a violent persecutor of Christians, was an ardent believer in God. Saul was extremely God fearing and very studious in his Jewish faith. It was this love of God that became extremist zealotry which motivated his erroneous persecution of Christians. In a way Saul was like the Pharisees who persecuted Jesus because obviously the Pharisees believed very much in God. So both Saul and the Pharisees were filled to overflowing with belief in God’s existence and in the tenets of their faith. In a way Saul was better than the Pharisees because he was not a hypocrite. Saul did not have the material and prestigious benefits of the wealth of the priesthood, for example; he was a tent maker. However, obviously Saul was worse off than those Pharisees who only argued with Jesus but who personally did not seek his death, leaving that to the other Pharisees. Saul did not argue with Christians; he sought to arrest them and have them killed. Then Saul was thrown from his horse on the way to Damascus by the light and the voice of the resurrected Christ, and he was converted.

Therefore St. Paul has been a role model for many generations of Christians who relate to several aspects of his life: his belief in God but disbelief in Jesus, his dramatic conversion rather than one based on gradual study, his transformation from a destroyer of a faith to a planter of churches, and his suffering for the faith through many trials and pains after his conversion to Christianity. However, I have noticed that St. Paul has been somewhat popular as a modern role model for those who did not believe in God at all. I’m not saying that such moderns are not welcome to use St. Paul as a role model, far from it, I welcome it. But I need to point out that an important aspect of understanding St. Paul is that he always was a God fearing pious believer. The resurrected Christ’s confrontation with him did not prove to Saul that God existed, since Saul always believed that, but was irrefutable proof of the identity of Jesus Christ as specifically the Savior and the Messiah. Moderns who do not believe in God but seek him through St. Paul’s role modeling tend to make one mistake accordingly. Moderns who do not believe in God and role model themselves after St. Paul tend to maintain an inner weakness toward disbelief and pagan practices. This is because St. Paul does not offer in his own life a refuting of total disbelief or of pagan superstitions because he himself had no need of that witness and testimony in his own life, since he always believed in God.

Thus selection of a “role model” saint is very important to proper faith formation. People who have no belief in God or cultist pagan New Age temptations are often better off emulating saints who grew up in pagan households who then converted. They can surely, and should, venerate and honor St. Paul studying, as all aspiring and actual Christians should, his life and his writings. But for moral support and for approaching God through the proven path that is most near one’s own actual situation in life, one should look at the other saints for guidance and both moral and intellectual support. For example St Justin Martyr is one of the best known and helpful of the saints to those who come from a disbelieving, pagan, or excessively secularized pseudo-intellectual background. Justin Martyr lived circa 100-165 and was of a very educated pagan family. As a pagan teacher of philosophy, rhetoric, history and poetry he was inspired by an old man who had met to study Christian Scripture. He became a Christian at the age of thirty, debated with pagan philosophers, and opened a school of philosophy. Justin Martyr was raised as a child, became an intellectual, a teacher and ultimately converted when paganism was by far the majority, and Christianity was the radical, persecuted minority. Thus someone with a very godless background, especially one that was intellectual, can especially relate to Justin Martyr and his existing writings.

For many generations Christian men, whose vocation was to have an average married life with children looked to St. Joseph, spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary and stepfather to Jesus, for their path and inspiration, even though Joseph authored no testimonies or sacred literature. During the generations where many did not read or write, who were poor, and who attempted only to do the best they could for their families, the deeds of St. Joseph, his obedience to God, and his love of Jesus were all the inspiration that they needed. They read about the Apostles, studied the Bible and their catechism, but they simply loved St. Joseph. I still remember the time when millions of men looked to St. Joseph for their support and strength, finding God through St. Joseph’s humble and unique example. Oddly we live in times where people buy St. Joseph statues and bury them in the ground upside down so that they can have “better luck” in selling their real estate properties. Maybe that has not been the right approach to God, no? St. Joseph is often forgotten except as a pagan practice to shill someone’s real estate. How sadly the times have changed. As St. Joseph has fallen away as a role model for the average Christian man, we have a real estate crisis (where his statue was used for pagan purposes, not totally a coincidence) plus we have the epidemic of stepfathers and “boyfriends of the mother” brutalizing and killing infants. A generation of humans is very much like the saints that they emulate, and, to their detriment, the saints that they ignore or defy in role modeling. I can think of no more stark example, except for the degrading of God himself, of the downfall of an entire category of humans (men) and their falling away from the best human role model they ever had, St. Joseph, spouse of Mary and step father to Jesus.

Thus to better understand God it is obvious that hundreds and indeed thousands of saints who have already found their way there can and must provide role modeling and example setting to people from a full diversity of life experience and perspective.

Further, one does not better understand God by omitting one’s God given intellect and believing any baloney that anyone makes up and sells to you, including your own self delusion. Far from abandoning reason and intellect, Christianity, Islam and Judaism are rich in the opportunities to use your brain, not put it in mothballs (or some other chemicals).

Additionally, love of God, even if it is unknown to you or painfully incomplete, must be your motivation for seeking to understand God. Motivations other than love of God all lead to truncated, misleading or dead ends and great error in interpretation. Likewise, however, the love of God must be understood correctly, and not as human labeling of weakness or hedonism as being justified by some open ended sloppy agenda based philosophy of supposed “love.” God’s love is infinitely strong and infinitely pure, and one cannot understand God if one has an unwillingness to understand that. God is both understanding and forgiving, but one must also remember that God’s purity of love is never compromised. Thus that which is stained and full of sin, no matter how much God “loves all his children,” cannot enter heaven.

The many paths to finding the one true God as demonstrated by the thousands of saints, both famous and mostly unknown, demonstrates again that God wishes all to find him, and does not “predestine” anyone to heaven or hell. Like evolution and natural selection has developed many thousands of species of birds in nature, for example, each person finds the same God in their own heart and soul through various paths. What is important to remember is, however, that the paths are all real and grounded on actuality, not self invented delusion. The saints demonstrate that people can and do come to God in various directions at various times in their lives: some were child saints, holy at even a small age, while others became saints late in life after much error and sinfulness. Obviously if people were “predestined” God would not have allowed such many examples of those who individually find sanctity and role model to others. Just to close this topic, here is the statement of the Catholic Church doctrine regarding predestination:

1037. God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of the faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance”:

Father, accept this offering
From your whole family
Grant us your peace in this life,
Save us from final damnation,
And count us among those you have chosen.

Loving Math without risking idolatry

Loving Math without risking idolatry

As part of my continuing series on faith and reason, and improving skills in both areas, I’d like to offer more about a topic I’ve previously discussed. Previously I’ve written about mathematics specifically in the context of debunking the occult practice of numerology, and helping people to detox from both the occult and obsessive compulsive disorder of “counting.” Now I want to offer a quick “top down” or “bottom up” (either way, a foundational basis) for understanding God’s stance toward mathematics.

Everyone who is at all spiritual feels the mystical glory of God and his universe in certain settings. Often this setting is in the great outdoors, such as in the wilderness, mountains, seashore or just in one’s own garden or woodlands. Many people, however, feel that wonder in a different way. For example, the late great surgeon Dr. DeBakey said he was gripped with awe at God’s creation the first time he saw an actual human heart during surgery.

Likewise, there are many people who feel awe and a mystical draw when they study mathematics. This is very common and completely understandable. People are especially fascinated with numbers that seem foundational to the universe, such as Pi. They have both a sense of awe but also a sense of “peeking” inside “the secrets” of the universe, measuring and understanding its “inner workings.” And this is the slippery slope that poorly formed faith and reason can lead one upon, even to deliberate or completely unconscious idolatry. This is what I want to explain.

First of all, there really is no such thing as “mathematics” as far as material reality. God did not “create mathematics.” Wow, what could I mean by that? God created the universe (all of it, including “other universes” that some people like to fantasize are hidden from view. They aren’t there but that’s a subject for another blog posting). “What You See Is What You Get.” The reason people fantasize and claim to have calculated “other universes” is that they refuse to accept a physical reality of God’s influence, and so compensate for that “energy,” for lack of a better term, by making up the concept of invisible dimension and hidden universes. That’s an erroneous conceit that refuses to accept that there is a physical reality, motion and movement where the universe “intersects” (for lack of a better term) God’s realm.

So anyway, back to my explanation about God’s view of “mathematics.” God created the entire universe, which is by definition all of reality, comprised of matter, energy and time. God created the universe using three measurements: not enough, just right, and too much. It really is as simple as that: there is no mathematics, just that one measurement based on need and appropriateness. Once God created matter, energy and time, so that for things to exist and events to happen, there had to be “just the right” quantity of all of the three at any given time, God pretty much lets “the chips fall where they may” because natural law, which God created, takes over from there. Mathematics is simply the language that humans use to understand “not enough,” “just right” and “too much.”

Let’s start with the obvious everyday example, which is your car’s gas tank. Your car does not need 10.583393939344444 gallons to work. It needs “enough gas” in your tank to get you to where you want to go, or to the next filling station. Mathematics helps YOU to measure “just right” and avoid “not enough” or “too much.” For example, if your tank only holds 12 gallons of gas, spraying an extra 2 gallons all over the paint finish does not extend the driving range of your car. So “14 gallons” can be easily understood as “too much” for your car to hold at a given time. You may need 14 gallons to get to your planned destination, so you have to plan a gas refill stop at “just the right time” to get at least the additional two gallons. So there is absolutely no significance to those numbers except as a way for humans to measure and comprehend in any given situation “not enough, “just right” and “too much.”

That is why you get strange and mysterious numbers such as PI. It’s not that God started out with that number, “Hmm, what a cool number. That will drive them crazy and make me look really mysterious. Yeppers, I’m going to use that number to make circles with.” Nooooo… what God did was create the concept of a circle, or rather, God creates the physical reality of matter, time and energy that can produce a circle, and the formula that humans “discover,” such as the calculation PI, simply are a way for humans using the numeric system of their choice to measure “what was enough linear distance” in order to create a circle. The fact that it comes out to PI “every time” simply means that the universe does function using measurable quantities of observable things over constancy of time. Some mysterious force is not behind the scenes changing the physical reality of a geometric circle shape, so sometimes PI “comes out to be” 3.1415 etc and other times it is 8.888111, just to use some “numerologically significant” numbers for a giggle and to give occult readers a thrill. LOL.

But back to being serious. All of life, both sentient and inert, can be understood as being simple “not enough,” “just right,” and “too much.” For example, geologists and astronomers understand many of the principles whereby interstellar clouds and gas condensed to form stars and planets. No one needed to know any mathematics for that to happen. If is sufficient to know that when enough dust and matter condenses with enough pressure and enough energy, over enough time, and without an interrupting event, such as an exploding star (hence the quantity of time and distance is sufficient), that things will clump together and form a planet or a star. As illuminating case studies and to learn more about the physical forces and needs, sure, scientists measure using mathematics the raw data so they can better understand the quantities of, yes, you guessed it, “not enough,” “just right,” and “too much.” You don’t sit down to dinner (unless you are dieting and calorie counting, or diabetic) and measure all your food and eat only a “magic number” worth of it. You eat what is “good enough” (calories and nutrition) and “enough” in quantity that it fulfills your needs. For example, if you are going to be working all day and unable to have three meals, you might pack it in during the one meal you do have. There’s no magic number about that. “Oh wow, I’m going to be working all day so I better eat the holy number of seven pancakes instead of my usual holy number of three pancakes.” Er, um, nooooo…. You are eating and “calculating” using “mathematics” what you know you need to eat based on experience to be “enough” aka “just right” in order to get you through your day, in this example.

So why do numbers appear to be “mystical” in the Bible? Again, God creates and oversees events that are “not enough, “Just right,” or “too much.” Humans apply numbers to them by counting, in order to explain to others more precisely what they have seen. That is one extremely obvious and simple reason. When St. John saw the beast, he wanted to describe it in as useful a way as possible, so being precise, he counts what is on the beast (the horns and so forth). This is especially true when the quantity is unusual. For example, when a mystical goat or ram is seen, the Prophets rarely pause to add, “And it had the usual two horns.” Humans tend to count when something is of extraordinary importance to convey to others AND it is out of the ordinary.

The second reason the Bible authors would emphasize holy or extraordinary number is that they unconsciously realize (as modern humans have forgotten) that it is a way to measure how much something is imitating God, or not. So it is not the fact that seven is observed to be a holy number in heaven so much as seven of whatever quantity of item is being counted is “just the right amount” for its purpose. So the beast having “seven” of something does not mean anything so far as the number seven. It means it is mocking or imitating a quantity of what God found good and pleasing and therefore “just right” somewhere else. If you erased all human ability to count and perform mathematics, it would not change one iota the events and meanings of things experienced and recorded in the Bible. It’s not like if the number seven never existed that all things in sevens would never have happened. I mean, duh. It just means that humans could never have achieved a descriptive tool and device (and eventually an engineering capability) that would rely on people being exact about what they observed about the material world.

Because people get all irrational about prophecy, let’s back away from the beast example, but keep it heavenly and prophetic to remain interesting. Revelation 4:4: “Surrounding the throne I saw twenty-four other thrones on which twenty-four elders sat, dressed in white garments and with gold crowns on their heads.” OK, so St. John saw twenty four elders each with his own throne. That’s great! He is able to precisely convey to his readers exactly what he saw. Notice what he did not write. He did not say, for example, “And God told me it’s like this all the time, and that those same 24 are always sitting there for all eternity.” He did not say, “There are always 24 thrones with 24 elders because 24 is a really important number.” He did not say, “And those are the most honored people in heaven, and so it’s like musical chairs, and there are only 24 chairs for the most honored elders.” Um, no to all of that; St. John wisely just records what he saw and what he heard. He knew he was not authorized or given knowledge to speculate, and you will notice that St. John does not interpret any of the furnishings or events of heaven. So obviously you would ask, why where there twenty four elders on twenty four thrones? Because that was “just enough” for whatever God’s purpose was at THAT moment to have St. John present. “Enough” elders were there at that time doing what they do and being whoever they are for that purpose, that message, that tableau, and that vision of a part of the reality of heaven for St. John to be invited to observe. For all you know, “right after St. John left,” 124,333 thrones with elders on each could have been moved in! God is not bound by concepts that humans invent in order to communicate with each other. God did not “place 24 thrones for 24 elders” around his throne, God lets happen the events and participants that suits his will for the needs at the time.

See, St. John lived the longest of all the Apostles, he was the one “who Jesus loved,” he became the son of the Blessed Virgin Mary in order to care for her during her lifetime, and he was the only one not martyred. St. John knew about as much about Jesus and God as anyone who ever lived. St. John did not need to be “given a literal tour” of heaven in order to bolster his faith. St. John only needed to see what was necessary to convey the messages, prophecy and warnings that God desired him to see. So obviously there are more than 24 of the highest and most honored elders In heaven, but God did not have to show St. John that or give him a tour to show him “where the other elders were at” or if indeed “there are only 24 seated by the throne for all eternity.” Maybe yes and maybe no, would be the answer, but it’s not likely to guess that God throughout eternity can be measured so simplistically in his actions. Therefore it was sufficient that St. John observe that 24 elders each with a throne were there, because it was a message that the elders, who are in significant quantity, accompany God in heaven. That is really all one needs to know. The fact that St. John counted the quantity was not because the quantity mattered, but in order to convey to everyone else who was not there, obviously, what he saw as accurately as possible.

So there is nothing wrong with feeling awe and satisfaction about certain numbers. If you ask me what I feel when I think about the event of the elders, I feel satisfaction and fullness because being a country girl, I think of 24 as being two dozen eggs, which represents an abundance. That does not mean that this is the “significance” of the 24 elders. It is a way to share with you that a human reaction to certain numbers is inevitable and completely understandable, and it tends to be related to the enculturation of our upbringing and surroundings. To old fashioned families, a dozen eggs was “an abundance,” while two dozen would be just a plentitude. So I like the number 24, just as I like all numbers, because I have sane and positive associations with all numbers and measurements.

For younger readers let me make an aside, as I enjoy doing about “the good old days,” just because it helps understand the broad range of experience humans have available to them, and how perceptions can be different but positive. I lived for a few months with my grandparents in Berlin, and they were in a semi-rural setting and had chickens, a vegetable garden, and fruit and nut trees. I would go in the morning to check if the chickens laid eggs, and it was always a thrill if one or two were there, or on the very rare occasion three. That was the usual way of families who had a few chickens. Imagine how many chickens they would need to have a dozen eggs at one time! So this is why America in the 1950’s and later was viewed as so incredibly prosperous and blessed. People could easily go into a store and buy a dozen eggs at a time. So “one dozen” grew to be a number that connotes fullness and even some excess. A dozen affordable eggs is “more than enough.” A “baker’s dozen,” which is the quantity thirteen, was even better because it means merchant generosity. The baker would sell to the customer a dozen pieces of bread or rolls, for example, and then throw an extra one in free. So a baker’s dozen is a “great” and entirely positive number, and what is that quantity? Thirteen!

See, people who become detached from farm life, small town reality, and the goodness of simple pleasure have too much time and neurosis on their hands, and so they make up things like magic numbers and numerology. I’ve made the point previously that there is no such thing as an “unlucky” or “bad” quantity of a good thing, and there is no such thing as a “lucky” or “good” quantity of a bad thing. One car crash is enough to kill or maim. So the number "one" is bad? In that case, rather, "one car crash" was "too much."

I mean, numerologists are literally unhinged from the well balanced perception of life. That’s why a very common mental disorder is OCD accompanied by compulsive counting. Farmers who hoped to find one or two eggs laid each morning for breakfast for themselves and their families were not mentally wired to obsessively count or view any quantity as anything other than “not enough,” “just right,” or “too much.” Too much meant you could sell the extra eggs to the neighbors! Anyway, humans have really messed up their wiring and I thought my younger adult readers would relate to the egg laying example since it’s also insight into why I have a “Little Mary Sunshine” attitude toward quantities. I love “Just right” or even more, “abundance,” of good human needs being met. That’s my wiring. I posted about how 3000 mango trees were planted in Qatar and yielded 30 or so cartons of fruit, and I glowed with pleasure and mentally preened as if I had grown them myself, ha. That is because it is not the “magic number” but the “Oh wow, what a great harvest and there’s plenty for everybody” vibe.

So to recap: God does not bless or withhold blessing from “numbers.” God does not manage the universe according to numbers. Humans invented numbers and mathematics so that they could manage the survival necessity of measuring “not enough,” “just right,” and “too much.” Humans are entitled to have pleasure and awe over the mysteries that numbers reveal, and yes, even the fun of number games and puzzles. But humans must be very careful not to be idolatrous and imbue their own simple creation with a magical significance, and certainly not as a mechanism by which to sin and do “identity theft” of God’s will and purpose. Too many people do this nowadays and I condemn it in the strongest terms. Other than that, have a nice day!

Another fine Islam commentary re creation

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

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

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

Correcting people's thinking about "Hitler"

Regarding Hitler and his dispensation to hell. Yes, this is going to be one of my informative but definitely increasingly irate posts.

I cannot believe that I have to explain this to people (how many times have I said and thought that sentiment) but it is obvious that misunderstanding only increases over time rather than clarity and sane reasoning with understanding of God’s will prevail.

Hitler was a bad man. Hitler is dead. Hitler is in hell.

OK? Is that simple enough for you? Actually, I’ve come to observe through my study of the cultists and the secular society that those statements are not enough for modern “magical thinking” pea brains to understand. Part of me is sympathetic in understanding one aspect of the confusion, and that is that I realize that because of the enormity of the Holocaust, it is difficult to grasp on a spiritual level. So I’m not mocking or discouraging talk about how the Holocaust essentially sealed Hitler’s doom and Hitler as an incredible study in evil. But notice what I said: the Holocaust sealed his doom. Yes, you read correctly that he had already merited hell before the Holocaust. Hitler's not still "hanging around." This is what it is important for you all to understand if you have ANY hope of sanity and of saving your own souls not only that Hitler has long ago gotten his final judgment and doom, but also exactly why and when he triggered this doom. In other words, what does God judge in someone like Hitler?

Here it is in summary:

Anyone who knows God exists, and defies him, his commandments and laws, AND leads others away from their belief in God merits and will find themselves in hell. That alone is quite enough.

This, incidentally, is why Henry VIII, jolly old guy as he was, "merits" hell. I’m not saying he is there or not because only God will say that. I do speak on authority from the Holy Spirit about Hitler today, though, because of the gravity of human error and warped discussion that affects salvation of people alive today.

However, I mention Henry VIII to reiterate two points: 1. he meets the "he is dead" judgment decision point and 2. that he "merits" hell (he knew God existed, he defied him and he lead others away from the faith).

Interestingly I do not mean Henry VIII’s defiance of Rome and Papal authority, wrong as that was. I mean, quite simply, the destruction of the monasteries and places of worship, and the outright killing of priests, friars and other of the faithful. THAT is what "merits" Henry VIII hell (and let me repeat, God has rendered judgment on him at his death; there is no stupid or intelligent reincarnation at all, whatsoever).

So this is what you must understand about Hitler. Hitler knew that God exists not only because of his exposure to the faith as a child but because he had the nerve, even after rejecting God and the institutional church, to invoke God’s name and intentions on occasion. What more proof does anyone need of a person who KNOWS God exists because even as he defies him he invokes him claiming, for example, that God has a purpose for him?? This observation ought to make all of YOU think long and hard. Hitler is no different than someone who has been raised or otherwise exposed to the faith and the reality of God (who can miss it in this day and age, unless one is raised in a basement as a prisoner) who then denies God as God has chosen to present himself and yet invoke something about God when it suits him or her to do so. So that is the first of the dooming criteria for hell. He was raised to know and believe in God, he rejected and defied God, yet he also invoked God on occasion for his evil purposes. (Kind of like atheists who make money off of God, but that is another story!)

So knowing that God exists, rejecting him, and yet invoking some of his power and authority as your own are the two things that put a person on a certain track to hell. That is violation of the first Two Commandments, and there is nothing more fundamentally dangerous than that to do. However, when you set a public example for your manipulative disbelief/belief then you compound it enormously because now you lead others to break the first Two Commandments. Hitler closed down religious institutions, persecuted not only priests and other consecrated religious but also the faithful themselves. He imposed a pagan state cult on the people and children were raised in this cult. If Hitler had stopped “there” and had done “nothing else,” including the Holocaust, he would have nonetheless without question been put into hell at his death.

I know how humans think, and that is not a joyful capability, believe me. So I know that some people are feeling actually a disappointment reading this, because they feel like I am implying that committing the Holocaust was somehow “optional” and "additonal" to Hitler’s already being on the evil path to damnation, not the pivotal reason. But yes, that is correct, and as hard to understand as that is, you should upon contemplation have greater faith and understanding of God, not lesser. I know this is confusing so let me be plainer. Hitler already was headed to hell even before he executed the entire Holocaust due to his actions prior.

Suppose we could rewrite history, as I outlined above, where Hitler “only” knew of God, denied him, and then imposed the cult belief, suppressing all religions, and killed the rabbis, burned the synagogues, but let the Jews live under the pagan German government. Aren’t you glad and understanding of God’s justice to know that “that alone” would have merited Hitler’s eternal damnation in hell? To put it more plainly, if Hitler had taken the ability to practice the Jewish faith away from the people under his control, but let the Jews live, he would have already merited hell, for certain.

Millions of people “did not have to die” in order to assure today’s public consciousness that Hitler merited, and got, hell. Jesus and ALL of the prophets, both in the Old Testament and New, plus the Qur’an reiterate that denial of God when one has the opportunity to know of his reality AND leading others from the faith, especially if holy and pious leaders are slain, are anathema, abomination and most certainly the direct route to hell.

This understanding, which is totally accurate and crystal clear, ought to make cult and secular leaders very nervous today. You don’t need “a Holocaust” to virtually guarantee yourself hell if you do the things that I have outlined above, either by the gun and sword OR BY THE PEN OR COMPUTER.

So why did Hitler survive so long, and why were so many people killed?

God in his mercy does not oversee human events that they do to each other with the intention of weeding out bad people by smiting them “early on” in their evil career. Honestly, God might as well get rid of the entire human race, then. Why? Because if you as humans cannot recognize evil in your midst and DEAL with it promptly YOURSELVES then why are you even alive?

Look at how much argument took place among humans, and what subterfuge Roosevelt had to use, to even get people involved in hindering Hitler in the early days! Many people dragged their feet, and all governments were complicit in complacency, if nothing else. The railroad tracks to the concentration camps were not bombed, which would have greatly hindered the Holocaust. Refugees were turned away. Those people, who did help surreptitiously, such as the Pope, are vilified by spineless publicity seekers today who only seek to second hand guess what they themselves would have pissed in their own pants if they had to defy Hitler as real people did everyday.

The Americans eventually had to pull all the weight on a two front war. If humans cannot make intelligent and merciful decisions about how to deal with a God denying mass murderer in their midst, how can you say you are entitled to life or existence at all? So God does not “weed out” the “bad guys” for you, because that is life by definition, learning how to live it and abide in God’s commandments, and dealing with those who don’t and who murder others.

The Holocaust happened simply because it became the measure of how far humanity’s indifference and outright inhumanity will extend. It’s like the levels of the ocean rising when icebergs melt (to use an example not because it is prophecy but because it is a popular topic). The ocean would rise only so far as the volume of melting ice will allow it to, because once the ice is completely melted there is no more frozen water to add to the ocean and thus it stops rising. That is the Holocaust, where it simply was a matter of “how much is too much” for humanity’s own consciousness and ability to act in defense of both the neighbor and the innocent stranger in another country.

So God certainly wasn’t “sitting out there” on a cloud “allowing the Holocaust” to happen. He was watching with dismay and grief, but in his infinite knowledge and wisdom, no surprise, how far humans will let the ocean of an evil rise before they stop it.

Reading some mystical significance into the predominance of Jews in the Holocaust is wrong, at least from God’s point of view. Killing ANYONE is wrong, and certainly for their faith, ANY faith in God that is persecuted is martyrdom, and there are not either bonus points, or demerits, if one is Jewish and a martyr.

It is outrageous how motives have been impugned to God regarding the Jewish component of the Holocaust. That is like saying he “chose” ice to melt in global warming. I mean, duh? What would melt beside ice when the evil of man, to use this natural analogy, caused global warming? So when a pagan state is imposed the pious are killed and melted, regardless of their faith, Jewish or not. Humans use it as an excuse to seize properties, try to find a way to rationalize the killing of Jews and so forth, but that is not it, in the bottom line. The bottom line is that Jews, for the most part, were a community that would have resisted a pagan government that destroyed their ability to practice their faith, destroyed their synagogues and killed their rabbis.

I rest my case and explanation with the obvious example, which is Rwanda. In a matter of DAYS hundreds of thousands were hacked to pieces and no one did anything. The USA could have flown Marines into Rwanda and shot dead the leaders of the mobs and put an end to that massacre in a New York minute.

Why did that “Holocaust” happen if oh so wise humans have “learned their lesson” from the Holocaust itself? Who cared about Rwanda? Apparently years later movie makers did, but not so much when it happened. Humans STILL need to learn how to, um, you know, identify God defying people who slaughter their own people and stop it on the spot, whether “your ox is being gored” or not. (In other words, even if there is not a “national interest.”) Hell, I think the Israeli army should have flown in and shot a few of the leaders of the Rwandan massacre, and said “Never again” on the behalf of a helpless populace humanity who did not share their skin color, their origins or their faith, nor had a national interest.

This, by the way, is one of the things I will always be interested in asking Bill Clinton, former USA President, about. The first DAY it was happening I was raging at the TV in my mind thinking “Do something; send in the marines, you foolish idiots!”

And where do you think the Rwandan who killed “only one” person versus the one who killed hundreds, or thousands at his or her behest will go? It’s hell regardless if it was one person or many.

So yes, keep discussing the moralities of what happened during the reign of Hitler, because obviously it is a deep wound in humanity that is not well understood. But please stop with the stupid “Hitler is reincarnated” or “Hitler had a special purpose from God” crap. Thinking like that keeps blots in human viability and further existence like Cambodia under Pol Pot, Rwanda and other genocidal pits of human’s own making going and going with no increase in comprehension.

The only “special purpose” anyone and everyone, including Hitler, had or has is to repent, return to God and make amends, and that door is open only when one is alive, and before God hardens his heart and removes the opportunities for repentance.

Hitler, like all humans, could have repented and had a SINCERE and TOTAL conversion up until the end of his last hour of life.

In his lifelong evil and madness, he probably confused the promptings of the Holy Spirit, who speaks to all, urging them to repent and convert as proof of “his special purpose.” People like him feel a touch of the numinous from God seeking their return to good ways and instead impugn their own "psychic" powers to that touch.

This is why there is an institutional church, by the way, so people don’t run around “hearing their own personal revelation” and having a terrible distortion as Hitler did, and as SO MANY do today. People have enough trouble with “hearing voices” that come from drug abuse or mental disorder that they don’t need equally psycho people interpreting “purpose from God” on top of their delusion.

It’s sure hot and unpleasant, more than you can imagine, in hell. Pray, repent and convert before you join the many others who have found out with no chance out because they threw away and flaunted God to his face. The reason I am so mad is that I know darn well that some people manipulate Hitler "study" in occult ways to either claim he is reincarnated or to mislead Jews regarding why "God let it happen." I hope that what I wrote above, extremely irate as it is, because I am so sick of the wasted time and souls, is helpful.

Qur'an Reading Surah 3:7

Actually, before I get to the next blog posting I mentioned, let me insert here a section of the Qur'an that I was just reading this morning, thinking about how to present it to my readers as part of an instructional commentary. I find that it helps to amplify what I just wrote in the previous posting about the Muslim shared attitude toward accepting "God's will."

Surah 3:7

He it is Who has revealed the Book to you; some of its verses are decisive, they are the basis of the Book, and others are allegorical; then as for those in whose hearts there is perversity, they follow the part of it which is allegorical, seeking to mislead, and seeking to give it (their own) interpretation, but none knows its interpretations except Allah, and those who are firmly rooted in knowledge say: We believe in it, it is all from our Lord; and none do mind except those having understanding.

***

This is an extremely important teaching about God for both Muslims and Christians to understand. It is saying that God gives his messages and instructions two ways, either in direct statements or in allegories (which are examples or parables, just as Jesus spoke). We all know that allegories are often easier to understand, and this is why Jesus used them so often to great outcome and understanding by those who listened.

This passage in the Qur'an warns that just because God gives an allegory, in order to help the listener to understand, does not mean that one should "take advantage" of it being an allegory to pour one's own skewed understanding into it. Those of pure mind, heart and faith listen to the allegory and comprehend its over all intention, but do not claim to understand all the details that God did not choose to put into direct statements instead of allegory.

For example, those who seek perversity would seize upon, say, the type of person who is being used in the allegory and say, "See! it only applies to someone like her." It would be like if you told a moral lesson about a man who went into a building and said this and that to a woman, if the person went away from your moral lesson thinking "Oh, that lesson only applies if it is a man talking to a woman. It does not apply if it is a woman talking to a man, or a woman talking to a woman, or a man talking to a man, or if the man talking to the woman is doing so outside the building, since it the allegory only mentioned a man talking to a woman in a building. So I can ignore this allegory if it is a man talking to many people over TV!" And so on and so on. Perverse people take the generosity of an allegory (or a parable) and seek to twist the choice of imagery used in the allegory in order to give themselves wiggle room or worse, interpretive "power" over "what God meant."

Oh boy do you see a lot of that in non institutional Christianity! This is one reason, as I've mentioned before, that Islam was given to the faithful in a very strict narrow and direct form to understand and obey. There are entire cottage industries of people who think they can state what God means, especially when God uses allegory. They should beware and be warned that this is risky, false and misleading to others.

This is why I quote this passage from the Qur'an for the benefit of Christians too, because while the Bible admonishes against the same general arrogance, it does not word it so susinctly as here in the Qur'an!

Another thought about what I just wrote

I know people who like to argue (or "better understand" to put it charitably) will run to their Bibles to look for passages about how people's days are numbered etc. They will say, "See! The Bible says each person's days are numbered and their time is up!"

Listen, again, I am trying to orient you back toward wise reading of those passages, rather than defensive and agenda driven reading of them.

What would I say, if I was a pastor, talking to this family? I would say "God is in control" rather than "It was God's will that her time was up." "God is in control" is the more accurate Christian contemporary type of abbreviated condolence saying because it is not targeted on the death of the person herself. "God is in control" of everything, which means the dispensation of all people and agencies involved at all times. God does not focus his will or control on just one person's accidental death. God is in control of the ultimate outcome of all of human beings' own actions. God makes all things good; God does not make the errors. So to comfort a family you tell them that God is in control, assuring them that justice, mercy and blissful joy will be awarded to even those who suffer at the hands of deliberate or accidental cruelty and loss by other humans.

That is the meaning that all days are numbered, which is there are limitations, and God in his all knowing knows in advance what people will do to each other, and the number of days each person has before age, mishap or illness catches up with them. It's a totally different meaning than God winding up some clock for each person! Gosh I hate that New Age thinking. God knows and foresees all that happens and it is "his will" that it takes place because he does not intervene, in general, in how humans manage themselves. He is not disinterested, and the Holy Spirit works tirelessly to convert and bring everyone to more charitable and responsible behavior, for the glorification of God and for the survivability of humanity. So no one can accuse God of being some detached blob of "universal energy" "detached" and "not caring" about what goes on with individuals, each of whom, truth be told, he knows in their very soul and cares about deeply.

People keep forgetting about guardian angels too. They are not guardian angels in the sense of throwing themselves in front of irresponsible drivers to save their charges from disaster. They are, though, the voice that whispers "Don't drink and drive" and "Put on your seat belt" and "Care about your neighbor." Guardian angels are just one proof that no human lives, or dies, alone. Remember that when this lady in the car hit and run died, her guardian angel went to see God with her. That's an uncaring God? Get over yourselves, please!

Now, Muslims often use the expression "It is God's will." They will say it at times like this, such as tragically losing a family member. But they really are saying "God is in control" because when they say "It is God's will" they are not saying "God did this to her," but they are confessing their knowledge that God is in control of everything, and that events like this fall within his universal control and will. Again, this is a broader and thus more theologically accurate statement than what Christians have come to mean in these personally obsessive and "God limiting" phrases and observations. So when a Muslim says "It is God's will (that a person died)" they will not claim that they know what God is planning or thinking, or even how God perceives humans at all. They mean "God is in control and it is his will that events like this do happen (because he has given life to humans and life does have sorrow and loss by definition.)" Muslims, no matter what sect they are, have a firm and accurate perception of God that God is unknowable and has a much more vast scope of control and perspective than humans could ever have, and that no one event or human life can be interpreted as being a humanly understandable example of his taking action. It is God's will but it cannot be claimed that a human understands what, if any, action God is taking in a human life or event. Only Christians and others who think they can cut God down into understandable parcels think like that. Muslims don't.

I hope this helps. My next blog posting touches, actually, even though I wrote it earlier this morning, on an extreme example of where people need to better understand how they cannot characterize God's will in any correct or understandable way.

Day's funny quote but serious reflection on it

Quote for the day

When I woke up this morning, this thought occurred to me, and so I thought I’d make it my erstwhile quote of the day. (For non English as native language readers, erstwhile means that even though I say “quote of the day,” it’s actually something that is not a daily regular but rather more sporadic, kind of like the expression, “when I get around to it.”)

“I would not blame God if he sometimes wished he had created talking dogs instead of humans.”

LOL.

(Now, by dogs I mean dogs in the Western view of them as lovable cuddly pets and loyal coworkers who are members of the family, not the connotation of dogs as an unclean animal or symbolic of infidels.)

Anyway, it occurred to me that a lot of people don’t understand that proto-humans learned to speak in large part because God chose to converse with them. This is one of the obvious implications of the creation event and the Garden of Eden, which is where God spoke, using human’s own language, with them for the first time. This is what gave humans that incredible breakthrough in speech, by the way.

So this is why I thought, gosh, with what God hears from humans, and what they say to each other, I bet he often wished he gave dogs the capacity to speak instead. Even if dogs spent half of their time talking about what they sniffed under each other’s tails, in each other’s mouths, and on the sidewalk, that would still be more pleasant than what many humans think about (which God hears) and speak about. Dogs are just trying to get along and collecting information, certainly not for any mean reasons since dogs, by definition are sinless, like all animals.
This is probably why God encourages dolphins and whales to speak. It certainly is much better listening in to what they talk about than what humans are inclined to say and think. But I know that God is grieved at the depletion of these intelligent species. Much of their speech is plaintive searching for even one other of their own species. Articles have appeared about this in the press recently, where species of whales that are depleted so that there are only a few solo individuals probably spend much of their time calling for a mate or another social community member. That is sad and grieves God.

This leads me to another thing I thought of today that I want to explain. Secularists and non believers, and infidel New Agers, often try to find “human attributes” and even “flaws and limitations” in God. This is impossible of course, since God is complete, perfect and all goodness comes from him, since God is all goodness. The only thing that I can explain to people about how to connect emotionally to God in a somewhat human way that expresses a shortcoming is that God does grieve. What I mean is that God feels sadness when things do not go the way he wants them to, which means that humans are unhappy and sinning. God wants humans to not sin, and to be happy, but he will not force that on them. The whole point of creation was to create sentient beings who are the children of God, but who have their own personalities, willpower and freedom of choice. If God wanted to force happiness on humans he would not have made them at all.

Why do I say that? Because angels are independent personalities but ones that are entirely “facing,” as Jesus once described them, God. So the uncountable numbers of angels in heaven are all distinct in their identity and personality, but they are like electrical appliances that are constantly turned on and plugged in to God. Thus they are alive and animated only by goodness and beatific joy. Angels are literally made of the same substance of God in that sense of deriving their entire life force from his goodness and will. So when God wants beings that are constantly sin free and constantly happy, all he has to do is look around him and there are uncountable (except by him of course) numbers of angels that are exactly that.

But remember, angels live in God’s space, God’s realm, which means they have no matter, no energy and no time. Heaven is a place that is only of God’s substance, which has no dimensions, either of physicality or of time passing. However, even without matter, energy or the passing of time (since that’s what eternity is, not endless time ticking away, but no before and after of time at all), heaven is full of the will for the impulse of life. It is the origin of the desire to see life come into being and flourish. It can be thought of as the origin of the desire to plant a garden and obviously that is what Genesis tried to explain, putting literal but not easy to understand works of God in terms that humans could understand. And so there is the radiation from heaven of God’s will to be always pro-life, as in the ultimate desire to see new life come into being and flourish. That is why the physical universe came into being through God’s creation. In order to grow life and let it flourish, the dimensions of matter, of energy and of time had to be “willed into being” by God, and this became the Big Bang that originated the universe. It really is as simple as that.

This is why humans have substance (bodies) and the reality of time (events take place in sequence in order to allow life to come into being and to grow). But this is also why there is a limit to life spans, both of living beings and of galaxies and chunks of rock. The only things that are in existence “forever” are those in the realm of God, made of his substance.
So back to the talking dogs. God does not “need” to “make” people be good or be happy. He’s got “plenty of that” in heaven with countless angels, and the millions of just souls who lived good lives, were found worthy and achieved heaven. The soul is the substance of God, and this is why it is able to abide in heaven, while the body cannot. So you must understand that God has no need of any one person in particular. If you think you are pissing off God by doing something deliberately wicked or sacrilegious for example, it’s not like God is sitting there going, “Oh my, what will I do, he or she is sooooo irreplaceable and dear to me.” Um, not so much. God loves all his children, but he does not need any one of them. (*Dash of cold water that is much needed on humans today*). Heaven is packed with awesome and cool angels and saved human souls. Heaven is so awesome that people whose family members, um, don’t make it to there are never even missed by them. Sooooo… humans who sin and who are evil, or determined to defy God, grieve God and make him sad because they are a lost child. But God will, at some point, to use an accounting expression “write them off.” This will particularly happen when that sinning and unhappy soul is leading others of God’s children into sin and unhappiness. This is what Jesus warned about. This is also what the Bible writers mean by "fear of God." They don't mean that they fear he is going to do something bad to them. No, what fear of God means is the fear of losing your relationship with him. When you lose your relationship with God then your soul is not going to go to heaven, it's really that simple. This is why Jesus warned not to fear humans or the devil, but fear the one (God) who can destroy a soul (do not permit it to come to heaven, and thus it can only go one place and that is the really bad place "down there" and I don't mean Oz.

So this is why I made the comment about the talking dogs. Dogs aren’t trying to lead other dogs into damnation or nihilism. The worst they do is to promote pack instincts regarding chasing and hunting for food, and possibly stealing the pizza off of the counter top, and maybe hump a visitor’s leg. But dogs don’t talk trash (they may dig in it for fun), they don’t try to addict other dogs, and they don’t try to lead puppies into sin and depravity. So while God is listening in on his children (not in a creepy way, as I’ve explained before, but in his capacity to know all that has transpired in someone’s entire lifetime), I know he must be so weary of the nihilistic, depressive, sinning and often downright evil thoughts and talk that humans use their God given speech abilities to promote. So listening to tail sniffing dogs talk about it probably would be some sort of relief to him in comparison!

More perspective how humans have changed

As so often happens, I thought of another angle to present to those of you who are interested in having a fuller perspective and context for thinking about religious, social and political matters. One area I focus on quite a bit is to explain how to interpret the Bible readings and admonitions of God in their correct context. For example, as I blogged a few days ago, it is important to understand that in Biblical times, having a family and offspring was the highest priority of any man or woman, including people who might have had gay tendencies, since sexual gratification was very far down the priority list when people literally lived from one meal to the next, one harvest to the next, or as nearly everyone did until recently, accumulate family sustainability through the work of one's hands, where "leisure time" and "paychecks" were completely unknown. I'd like to now provide some similar context in regard to people's attitudes toward what is called The Lord's Return, the Second Coming, the Apocalypse, the End of Days, or the End of Times.

While humans like to think that they are smarter, more sophisticated, and more imaginative than were the people during Biblical times, they are actually mistaken. Or, rather, I would be more precise to say that people during Biblical times were both more reality based AND more imaginative than modern people. Actually, the increased technology, sophistication, secularization, socialization and education had diminished modern humanity's two polar, but complimentary and necessary, talents of being reality based and imaginative. Instead of being superior in these regards, modern humans are actually inferior in both traits compared to Biblical humans (and by Biblical humans I mean those of any culture or belief system, not just the ancient Israelites or early Christians). Here is why, and how that is linked to humanity's ability to understand the Lord's Return.

As I have explained, but many people have forgotten, or cannot relate to due to poor education plus the pressures of taking modern life for granted, until the past century humans were extremely reality based. The vast majority of the population world wide worked daily in food production. They did not have jobs or receive paychecks, and industrialization had not created jobs that produced products unrelated to basic survival needs. There was no such thing as leisure time, and life was "real" all the time. "Reality" has actually come to mean cynicism, manipulation and unreality (performance art) in modern society. People have become very divorced from the reality of the formula for successful living and thriving and often have no idea where their food even comes from. So people in Biblical time were very reality based and while this is a risky terminology to use, they were "happier." I don't mean the mythical happy peasant toiling in the fields. What I mean is that they knew what dangers were (famine due to a crop failure) and didn't dream up imaginary fears (what if aliens arrive and they don't like humans). As a result people were extremely well balanced and firmly grounded. Children were respected as having a vital role in maintaining and contributing to the household's functioning and the thriving of the family. Children not only knew where bread and butter came from but they helped to make it. Staying close to biological reality is a critical survival skill and necessity for both the human mind and body, but also the spiritual life too. If one is "keeping it real," one is not easily fooled, depressed or deceived.

So if I say that Biblical people and humans in general until the past one hundred years were much more reality based than modern humans, then how can I say they were also more imaginative, if they had to have their noses to the grindstone all the time? Aren't people who dream up wild and crazy entertainment scenarios, great, sophisticated and/or "edgy" pieces of art, or musical compositions much more "imaginative" than Biblical people. Not so fast with that assumption, because I would explain to you that they are not. Modern people are not "imaginative," they are all like cows in a herd. That is because they are wild and crazy and "imaginative" within invisible boundaries and shared values and assumptions that limit rather than free them. For example, many think that "pushing boundaries in art" means the same as increasing the shock value or the novelty value. In other words, they are bounded by a hidden objective of manipulating an audience or media reaction. They have eliminated the mysterious in life, and when one does that one creates boundaries. It is like when people didn't realize that the lights they saw in the sky were planets and suns just like earth and "our" sun. Another saying that relates is that "when you are a hammer everything looks like a nail." Humans manipulate the same theories and activities over and over again and call that being imaginative.

Biblical people did not try to be "imaginative" at all, and therefore they were actually more imaginative in their potential than modern humans. How does this work? Biblical people believed that "anything is possible with God." They did not try to "imagine" the "wildest" or "most creative" thing that they could. They felt that God "had that covered." Look at the Annunciation when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary. No one could ever have "thought up a plot line" where an angel would appear to a young, pure, pious betrothed girl, in the first place, tell her that she is full of grace and chosen to be the mother of the Messiah, in the second place, and shortly after prophesy so movingly and accurately as Mary did in her canticle at her visitation to Elizabeth. And what was Mary's response to the angel? Just a single question, which is "how can that be because I do not know man" (she was committed to a life of virginity). An angel appears and announces the Messiah will be born to her, and this young girl "unimaginative" and "unsophisticated" takes it all in stride, just asking how it would be done. When one is reality based yet entirely open to the power and might of God, one does not try to create one's own "imaginative creations," but one is entirely open and receptive to whatever incredible and unheard of event that God sends. Mary is a case study and model for many virtues, but she is also a cultural marker to show how a very reality based people took in stride the most incredible and mighty divine events as they happened. This is why Mary, true Mary, should never be ignored or underestimated. In addition to her model of grace and piety, modern humans have a living snapshot of how a young religious girl reacted to the greatest salvation news, brought by an archangel, that while unique to her is also instructive as being representative of how open the ancient pious people were to incredible events that defy "imagination."

So with this in mind, consider now how modern humans are constantly seeking signs, omens, clues, indications and "opportunities" in the promised Second Coming of Christ at the End of Days. If you detect that I'm disapproving of this tendency, you are right. But, you would object, didn't the Apostles constantly ask Jesus about it and write about it themselves? Yes, indeed they did and the Second Coming (and associated Apocalyptic topics) were very important and "hot" during the time of Jesus and for some decades afterward. But here are the differences in mindset and mentality between Biblical people and modern humans.

1. Biblical people were still incredibly reality based even as they had these conversations. Remember that the apostles were fishing to feed their families within days after Jesus was crucified and resurrected. Saul, who became Paul, continued to make tents while he evangelized in order to have an income to sustain his preaching. They could discuss the loftiest theology and prophecy, but they still were firmly rooted in subsistence living, just as everyone was throughout most of human history. So Mary, even bearing the Savior, hurried to help her pregnant cousin who was further along in her pregnancy by six months. There were no armchair philosophers; everyone had to work the land with the sweat of their brow even as they accompanied Jesus and spread his message. Many modern people have no clue or remainder of reality, since they get paychecks, hop into cars, have food they purchase, buy ready made clothes, buy houses and furnishings. Modern conveniences create an inevitable air of unreality in modern humans that absolutely did not exist in even the relatively wealthier families of Biblical times.

2. Modern human "creativity" and "imagination" is actually a narrowing of choices and scenarios rather than what they think, which is an expanding and broadening endeavor. Here's what I mean. St. John saw a great vision when he was brought by an angel toward heaven, which he documents in the Book of Revelation (also called The Apocalypse). He was strictly a "reporter," though he did ask the occasional question. Incredible and mysterious things are shown to him. Now, fast forward to modern times. People start digging and digging and digging at what is in this and other books trying to "match" what John saw to anything real or imaginary that people can think of, regarding people, places, timing, events and materials. But by doing that they are by definition "limiting" themselves to speculating about a small set of things that they either have knowledge of or can "imagine." In their arrogance they figure that they can "work out" what God "means." How can anyone think that? How can anyone think that trotting out the usual tired suspects of aliens, asteroids, bad Muslims, bad Catholics, war in this country or disease in that country, demonizing loud mouth politicians as being the anti-Christ brings anyone actually closer to what God in the infinite fullness of HIS time and HIS will can or will do to fulfill what is seen in these or any other prophecy? How puny is the imagination of humans compared to what God sees and knows. Biblical people did not dare assume that they can "work the angles" and "think of all the scenarios" of what God will wrought during the End of Days or any time else. So as a result, Biblical people are more imaginative in potential because they know that people cannot predict or even mimic the mindset of God in the fullness of his power and his divine will.

3. So we see the Biblical people and their descendants be able to be extremely interested in the Second Coming and End of Days, and be anxious to be "ready" (as in judged worthy to be saved and brought resurrected to the New Kingdom), yet on the other hand, "get on with positive living." What do we see modern humans doing in increasing numbers? "Give up" and almost gloat and hope for the End of Days or what I describe in my previous blog posting as "Jesus comes back to close up shop." Modern people have totally skewed what "being prepared" means. Biblical people understood that they will not know when the end comes, so they need to live worthy lives. This doesn't mean shuffling along thinking, "Ha, I'm a blameless Christian and so 'I'm covered.'" Even the Apostles who had every right to think that did not do so, and emphasized only the hope and trust in God through Christ Jesus. Modern humans are not increasingly interested in the Second Coming because they have perfected their grace and charity and are "ready to go." They are increasingly obsessed with the Second Coming because they have given up on so many of the terrible problems of the world and the failings of humanity to exercise good God given free will judiciously. So there is this odd detachment from the End of Days being what it really is THE END to thinking "Oh, this is when the fireworks begins and Jesus fixes everything." Thank God that no matter how intense the Apostles' interest was in the Second Coming that they did not draw the same conclusions as modern humans.

Instead, they could have lofty conversations about the Return of the Lord on one hand, but get on with day to day reality based life making the world a better and safer place for their children and grandchildren, and for the generations after them. They went on to build the Church. Can you imagine what would have happened if every time a bishop was martyred that the early Christians would "figure" that "this was a sign of an imminent arrival of the end of days?"

And not just Christians but people around the world in the past two thousand years have only worked to better their lives and those of their children, not "wait around" and "decode" when the miserable and glorious "end" will finally come. Every time someone is obsessing about a modern event being "part of Revelation" I want to say, "Well, Einstein, while you were doing your book promotion tour another thousand babies were aborted, and another ten thousand children died of famine, and more of the oceans have been depleted of their fish because no one's working on restocking, and etc. etc. etc." It's not like God is in a hurry to allow the end to the much loved creation that he himself has made! So why are people such depressive do nothings? Because they have lost contact with the reality of life, and they have lost their spiritual way.

Brothers and sisters, the Biblical people were much more better prepared for the Second Coming and the End of Days than these so called good modern people are today. Both Jesus and the Apostles said to live in hope. That's "live" in hope, not sit around in stagnation waiting for God to clean up the mess. "Live" in hope, not hang around waiting for the best. "Live" in hope, not figure "I'm OK, you're OK." "Live" in hope, not force bad things to happen to people thinking that will help "trigger" the Second Coming. Biblical people and indeed pious people through the centuries had it right as they retained their optimism and hopes for themselves, their families, and their children, even when the world went through a soul breaking experience such as the Holocaust. No one, not even those who had the biggest right to feel despair, sat around after surviving the Holocaust and "hoped" that the world will end and "God will fix it." They pieced together their shattered lives and families and said, "Never again," not "Oh well, this sucked, let's wait for God to destroy the world and rapture or resurrect us and our friends and family." World War II veterans and survivors had more optimism and "get going and make it better" than any generation has since then. How have modern humans become such a bunch of depressives that the end of the world sounds like "a good idea?" Well, basically they shattered the family, became a culture of death, and lost contact with the reality of biological life and how to make it thrive.

I hope this helps to provide some valuable context and perspective. God knows it is desperately needed.