Bible Reading: Genesis 11:4-5, 8

And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth, and they left off to build the city.

understanding God: Eyes of the Lord

Are in every place:

The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.

Proverbs 15:3


Upon the righteous:

The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry.

Psalms 34:15


Run to and fro:

For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the entire earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars.

2 Chronicles 16:9


Open toward his house:

That thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place of which thou hast said, My name shall be there: that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall make toward this place.

1 Kings 8:29


A flame of fire:

His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.

Revelation 19:12

Qu'ran Reading 8:69

Eat then of the lawful and good (things) which you have acquired in war, and be careful of (your duty to) Allah; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

Understanding "why" religions "exist"

I heard someone kind of stumble through a bit of a debate with a talk show host today and during my listening I heard the caller make the same old error in both facts and logic that you all are dealing with in the past two generations. In fact, this error has been taught in schools, so you are not alone in hearing it and taking it for granted. Here is the statement that is not factual or logical:

"Religions were developed by humans in order to make them behave in the way the society feels is proper."

Um....nooooooo, that's so wrong that it doesn't even pass the first and simplest criticism.

But before I shred the facts and logic, let me tell you the proper statement that is factual and logical, and thus you can follow my critique and criticism more easily. Here is a factual and logical truthful statement:

"Religions were developed as a means to interact with divine forces. A true religion is one based on actual interaction with the actual one and only God. A false religion is one based on presumed interactions with divinities that in actuality do not exist."

Here is the first and simplest way to totally refute the first statement and prove the second statement. What part of the pagan religion of the Greeks and Romans (worshipping the various gods of Olympus such as Zeus/Jupiter, Hera/Juno, Mars/Ares, etc) is an attempt to codify good behavior in humans? *tick tock tick tock tick tock....ring ring ring!* That's right: absolutely none. The pagan religions have two purposes and thus two activities (the "what" and the "why"), and one purpose/activity (the "what") is to tell stories (mythologies) about all the things those rascal gods are up to: sex, booze, jealousy, warfare, lots of lying and deception, tons of coveting, etc. So the Greek/Roman religions were filled with voyeuristic watching, through stories, of the shenanigans of the gods, and were certainly not templates for human behavior, and not even an idiot would have written down those mythologies claiming they inspire righteous behavior.

The second component, the "why" of those Greek/Roman beliefs is that they feared the world, which they did not understand, and so they projected (a human psychological term) their own "what if I were a god" thoughts upon the supposed supernatural forces. Ancient story tellers and elders would have thought of, using what they thought were reasonable assumptions, that gods were just like humans but much more powerful, and thus they organized their thoughts about the supernatural to resemble what "all powerful" human families (aka syndicates) would act like. So the "why" is that if gods were just like humans but with hair trigger anger and lots of gift/punishment ability, let's set up a system to worship and appease them with sacrifice and flattery.

So this is the easiest and most obvious way for you to see that for centuries, and indeed thousands of years, false religions developed because humans started with the "what you see is what you get" notion of a template for the so called gods and goddesses, which is what "we humans do here on earth, well, they must do the same thing but on a super scale 'up there.'" That is the opposite of a religion being developed to codify righteous behavior, because false religions imagine that gods are just like humans but "more so."

Now let's look at a shade of gray area, which is Hinduism. And remember, as I've stated before, I've never criticized sincere traditional follows of any religion, but I will point out error (and have done so including in my own religious institution (not the doctrine) of the Catholic Church.) So here is the problem with Hinduism: what part of the most rigid caste system ever developed among humanity is a "way to make people behave better" or be more righteous? None, of course. However, you do start to see how even in religions that contain error, the impulse to understand and cultivate goodness is there, and that is why the erroneous but understandable principle of karma and/or reincarnation came into being. So Hinduism is like a blending of the two "whats" about why a religion is developed, why it comes into being: one part is the what of imagining that there are multiple gods in human like family groups with sex, war, coveting and so forth, and so sacrifice must be made to them because they will be angry, or to gain favor, but there is also the second part which is an attempt to interact with divinity by being good, and thus through some un-understandable way receive good karma and better reincarnation.

I explained that the Holy Spirit of the one true God does indeed move among all people of the world, all the time, believers or non-believers (more urgently in the latter, obviously), in order to make the true one God known. Likewise people reach out to the "spirit," knowing in their hearts that there must be some ultimate goodness, even if it cannot be seen. In this effort the people who first codified Hinduism felt a touch of the Holy Spirit and interpreted that in some unseen way one does live on forever based on good behavior.

Buddhism is a prime example of what I am saying, even though people who don't give it much thought ascribe the first hypothesis (the erroneous one) to its existence. People have a reflexive, and understandable, though wrong, thought that since much of Buddhism is about goodness and good behavior that it must have developed for that reason. Well, the history shows otherwise. People, including the Buddha, do not meditate in order to come up with a list of good behaviors and thus "invent" a religion! If they wanted to "invent" a religion they would consult lawyers, judges, elders and so forth and have a list of do's and don'ts. No.... a person who goes into a contemplative life, one filled with meditation, is not trying to come up with a list of do's and don'ts, but is trying to communicate with divinity. So once again, like the Hinduism, Buddha and the early Buddhists touched some aspects of the Holy Spirit, but did not discern the presence of the one God. A key difference is that we know that the Buddha had disciples who wrote down his thoughts and thus created a system for passing on and amplifying the insights and conclusions of his meditations. Again, that's further demonstration that the Buddha's disciples were not setting out to "invent" a religion to "control" or encourage good behavior per se, though they were obviously pleased at whatever work they did that did so as a result.

So here is how you can now turn to the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and easily understand they were not "developed" in order to "make people be good." God initiated conversation with Adam and Eve when they were in Eden, when they had "everything," when they had no need to be "good." God started "talking" to human beings directly at a time when God provided everything for them, not when they were lawless and needing "goodness." A true religion arises (as distinct from being developed or invented) when humans have authentic communication with the actual one true God.

The caller argued that Judaism/Christianity was "invented" when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. Um, what? That was thousands of years after when God first made himself known and had many, many, many generations of interactions with believers who had a genuine relationship with him. Um, the religion had already come into being at the first moment of genuine communication with the one true God, well before God responds to the needs of humans in order to serve him (not in order to be "good") by giving them his Laws.

Remember, humans were already "good" because they were created by God, and all his creations were deemed "good" by God. So there is a vast difference between "good behavior," which should be the desire of all people, and "knowing and serving God," which is the purpose of true religion of the true God.

Adam and Eve did not fall from God's favor because they had unlawful or bad behavior in the way that modern humans think of it. They fell because they disobeyed the one thing God told them not to do, which is to try to duplicate what God himself only is able to do. They wanted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge not so they could commit more burglaries or engage in voter fraud, or have domestic violence, etc.... they wanted to have the wisdom that God alone has. And who tempted them? Not the angel who runs around committing grand larceny, molesting little kids, robbing banks, declaring wars, etc, but the angel who thought he knew as much or if not as much then at least the loopholes of God, the angel who would not serve, Lucifer.

So there is nothing in the thousands of years of factual, legitimate and truthful dialogue between the one true God and the humans who heard and believed him that is a step by step cookbook or programming exercise in developing a list of good behaviors for humans to follow. What you do have is a history of people trying to understand God, know God and most of all, serve God, no matter how imperfectly. When one faithfully loves and knows God, good behavior is a natural outflow of serving God.

Here is where people who still have some trouble with what I am explaining raise the following (bogus but understandable) comparison. "Yes," they say, "But you say pagans sacrifice to false gods out of fear of their moodiness and capriciousness based on their power over humans. So why does the true God 'make' people sacrifice to him, as in the Old Testament?"

Ah, but if you read the passages in Genesis about sacrifice (many of which I have keyed into this blog and commented on), each of the earliest sacrifices (starting with the first documented by Cain and Abel) were not done for fear of God, but to celebrate "giving back" part of their harvests. Sacrifice to God is not idolatry but the first form of tithing, of returning to God a part of what God has given to people in the first place. Each and every subsequent building of an altar and an offering of sacrifice to God commemorated gratitude for a significant event. Abraham was and remains the model for understanding the true purpose of building an altar and offering a sacrifice, so do read the passages where he does so and you'll better understand what I mean.

When God codified the requirements of sacrifice through Moses (where he made formal ritual and requirements for sacrifice) he did so thousands of years after people had already been behaving in godly ways in service to him and had been sacrificing in honor and tithing to God. God made more formal requirements for two reasons (and notice none of them are to "make people behave better.") The first reason is that when people did commit sin they needed a consistency in paying a penalty to God. So the people as a whole were expected to do the same thing upon the same occasions for the same reason that if one of your children lies you make them do without dessert while if the other child lies you beat them, that would be a gross inconsistency. Humans have enough trouble with understanding the All Knowingness and All Power of God, and humans are notoriously bad at determining the price of "other people's" "sin." Imagine if God had not regulated sacrifice how if the person who caught the envy of someone in power would suffer odious requirements for "penance," while for the same "sin" the buddy of the chief would get off with sacrificing an old shoe or something. So God required a constancy and consistency of sacrifice when humans had reached the point where they would be tempted to use God's "forgiveness" in self serving ways.

The second reason that Laws and accompanying sacrifice and other rituals became codified by God is so that people would not have to imagine, rightly or wrongly, what was "all right" or "OK" to do to serve God and what was not. Remember, God has chosen his people, the Israelites, so they were already his, as he led them through Moses out of slavery. Now God is telling them how to serve him, not "how to behave good." Serving God is the first and utmost requirement and it is no coincidence that the Commandments are ordered accordingly. If one truly honors the name of God, fears God, loves God and keeps one's self sanctified to him, one then does not really want to murder, steal, lie and covet.

It's not like the Israelites were all running around in the desert robbing banks or something, and so God puts His foot down and says, "They need some laws to behave right." No, God explained to them how to serve God, and that is the job that they were failing miserably at (all the backsliding into idolatry even as God is right there with them, for example), not lawlessness or bad behavior. In the later books in the Bible, those before and during the captivity to Babylon, you read about the lawlessness and bad behavior in all those conventional ways (rich extorting the poor, etc) but that was because they had already abandoned so much of their service to God in their hearts. Bad behavior is an outflow of not sanctifying one's self to God's service. That is why a person could commit a million "good deeds" to "help fellow humanity" and yet still not be saved because it is serving God that earns one heaven, which is unmerited grace, not "works" or "good behavior."

Notice that Jesus Christ in preaching the Beatitudes, his first great (mega-) sermon to the crowds, that he starts not with a list of "good behavior" or don'ts, but in comforting those who were doing without through no fault of their own the goodness of life's joys.

Matthew 5:1-12
And seeing the crowds, he went up the mountain. And when he was seated, his disciple came to him. And opening his mouth he taught them, saying,
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.
Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice's sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when men reproach you, and persecute you, and speaking falsely, say all manner of evil against you, for my sake.
Rejoice and exult, because your reward is great in heaven; for so did they persecute the prophets who were before you.

If you truly read and examine the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, you will notice, just as in the Old Testament, how little is "do's" and "don'ts" of good behavior. It is ALL about serving God and thus goodness is the outflow from what comes first, knowing, honoring and fearing God (read my series on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit to understand how the path to sanctity in service to God is scripturally explained).

Think about this carefully because Jesus is the "beginning" of Christianity. How much of what Jesus preached is codifying "laws" for Christian "good behavior?" This is an easy question to get wrong because Jesus is the model of good Christian behavior, but not because he set forth more or less do's and don'ts. Thus no one can read the Gospel and say that people "made it up" in order to "make people behave good." Christianity is so obviously not invented with the purpose of making more ordered, law abiding, good behaved people. Christianity is the heralding of the New Covenant with the already well understood God, and in the New Covenant of serving God by understanding Jesus to be Lord and Savior (the Messiah), good behavior is the natural outflow of genuine sanctification in God's sight by emulating and following Jesus as he actually was, not how he was imagined or caricatured.

You understand a man or woman by where he or she places their priorities in life. We all know people who care the most about their jobs, or their children, their health or their addictions, etc. Whenever you get a little lost about understanding the divine and human complexity of Jesus, read Matthew 5:1-12 over and over, and think of this. Of all the things he could have stated in the opening of his first, great mega-sermon, he chose to list the comforts, including seeing God, that those who genuinely lack in the joys of life today will receive. He did not start with a list of admonishments of bad behavior. Jesus' priority was to turn those who were poor, unhappy and suffering due to shortages in life toward God's nearness, and not in chastising those who have any part in causing deprivation or suffering. Why? Because Jesus came in order to show the people the face of God via the human form of Jesus and draw people nearer to God, not to regulate their behavior.

Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.
Jesus does not have to list all the ways that people have dirty hearts and then tell them not to do it and chastise them, reminding them of certain punishment. If Christianity were "invented" so that people "behaved better," then this would be the starting place to list all the problems, loopholes, errors and bad thinking, but 1) that has already be covered in abundance throughout the Old Testament and 2) God is comforting those on the right path, that of service to and trusting in God, the Father.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.
Jesus does not have to list all the "bad" wars, and explain "good conflict" from "inappropriate conflict." Again, if you serve God honestly and with a whole heart it becomes rather obvious who is a peacemaker and who is not. Jesus is reaching out God's comfort to those who already are on the path to being children of God because they have their hearts open to Jesus' message and they need his comfort.

So, to wrap up this posting and give you time to think about what I've touched upon here, do not fall into the trap of agreeing with something that sounds "logical" and "obvious" but does not, if you pause even briefly, stand up to any scrutiny or proof. It seems so "logical" that religions were "invented" so that people "behave good," yet the history of each religion shows that this is not at all what/why and "how" religions were "developed" at all! It's amazing how in these modern generations such errors are repeated over and over. If you asked one hundred years ago any person "why religion" "existed," he or she would have answered "to know God." It's only recently that it seems that everything people used to understand has been removed from their brains, willfully, and replaced with agenda and phoniness. Modern control freaks think that their ancestors were control freaks, and it just was not so and the proof is in the actual writings of each faith. True faiths, even those based on some error, all stem from a genuine attempt to reach and commune with God in understanding and good will. False faiths are those who do not connect authentically with the Holy Spirit, and those that attempt to diminish the all power and control of the one true God into a flawed human model. But even the most false of the faiths (the Greek and Roman pantheon of so called gods) did not arise because some author was trying to "get the people to be good." Har, har, ha ha, some models those were, if so. No, it was from those people's misunderstanding that divinity must be flawed like humans, of trying to pull the presumed dwellers of the firmament down to earth to be "like humans" but with "godly powers." So even the falsest of the well known "religions" of modern times did not spring from the presumed agenda based ambitions of someone with the intention of "thinking up some religion to make people be good." Sometimes the facts are just ridiculously obvious, but one must not be bum rushed into believing something that sounds so "logical," yet withstands absolutely no real scrutiny.

(Hi young people, miss you....) thinking of you as always and hoping that you in particular find this helpful. Someday some of you must tell me just what they ARE exactly teaching in schools, if not facts and logic? Hmm.

Misplaced awe

This reflection and spiritual direction is particularly directed at the young people (hi there!) One reason is that I know you have many questions and have only gotten from the previous generations for the most part crap. The other reason is that while of course I hope the oldsters are reading what I blog too, and benefiting from it, so many of them are so brain damaged that I really wonder if they will ever get it and repent.

We have a problem. We have many problems but one of the fundamental problems with these modern times is misplaced awe. We (and I'm speaking in fellowship so you understand that I totally get the problem and the blockages people have) want to be awed and need to be awed. There's two types of legitimate awe. Well, really three, but let's look at the really solid forms of legitimate awe first. The top and ultimately only awe that one should feel is with God. One should totally be in awe of God, in totality, in awe with his All Knowingness, in awe of him as Creator, awe of him as the source of all that is truly Good, in awe of his mercy and his love, and in awe of his total power of Judgment and Reckoning. Being in awe of God is not only legit and understandable, but it is the smart thing to do because being in awe of God means that you are in touch with reality. If you are in awe of God and only God, in general that means you have a firm grasp on reality and how the cosmos is ordered and the place of humanity within it. This does not mean you are looking down on humans at all because genuine awe of God raises up humans due to God's awesome gifts (listed above), particularly as Creator and source of all Love and Mercy. Being reality based does not mean that you have to have self loathing of the human race and in fact that is part of the problem because self loathing of one's self or humanity is not reality based, since God did not create anything, including humans, that are inherently low and loathsome. Sin and unrighteousness and injustice are loathsome, not human beings.

The second form of legitimate awe is awe in God's creation. There is absolutely no problem and in fact it is Biblically founded (and alluded to in the Qur'an) as being scripturally correct. Before we go further here is the Big Caution. It is fine to be in awe of God's creation, but NOT to worship or attempt to sanctify any components of God's creation. In other words you can marvel and be in awe of a beautiful sunset, but must not worship the sun, as it is simply a creation of God's. You can marvel and be in awe of beautiful mountain ranges and love their mystery and perhaps even succumb to their challenge of being climbed, but you must not worship the mountains nor consider them a tool in achieving spirituality. That is idolatry. Again, one can have one's breath taken away in awesomeness by mountains and even feel a closeness to God in a symbolic way, but one absolutely must not have a relationship with the mountains that infuses them with any supposed power, for that is idolatry. You can be a scientist and marvel and be in awe as you study DNA and genetics, and admire God's creation, but you absolutely cannot be in awe of how you can play God and manipulate life. That is the path to hell that is guaranteed to take a lot of people with you.

You can fly in spaceships and photograph distant stars and wonder about as yet undiscovered planets and wonder, and this is the key, wonder if God created life on any other planets. All of the universe, seen and unseen, is God's creation, just as the Book of Genesis explains. One of my first career interests was astronomy (the science) not astrology (the occult practice), as a youngster, so I have spent many hours admiring and researching and just marveling about the cosmos... but any awe that I have is 1) rooted in the awe of God's creation, and not imagined powers or capacities of either material or energy beings and 2) dwarfed by the awe that I have of God, and that I never spend even one minute of my life being unaware of.

The third kind of awe that is OK, but a slippery slope, is to be in awe of the actions of a merciful and/or loving person. Every once in a while we read or hear about or even know someone who does something truly awesome. But only God knows the genuine circumstances and what is in the heart of that person, and so one can safely admire an awesome moment, but must stop short of being in awe of the total person. There are two reasons for this caution. The first is that unfortunately in this very ego centric and self conscious society, there are few genuinely real and awesome people but, rather, people who sculpt themselves to have a list of, well, "awesomeness" that is of the world and not of God. These are the people who just seem like, as their handlers put them, (and yes, of course, their genuine family members), "saints on earth" or "angels." Um, remember the Good Samaritan in the Bible? Notice when Jesus told the story to his disciples he did not say that the Good Samaritan was "like an angel," or "like a saint on earth," or "generous" or anything else. He was simply "good," and from Jesus that was the highest praise for it meant that the Samaritan naturally utilized God's, not his own, goodness. The best of "heroes" and other "awesome" people of today are infused with God, not a list of heroic talents and deeds. Just about everyone today is over produced and I must admit I know very few genuinely awesome people (I could probably count them on one or two hands). So the first reason to avoid placing a person on your "awe" list is that few people today are genuinely awe worthy (yep, those bubbles bursting everywhere) and second, awe directed at people inevitably becomes a stumbling block to your having genuine awe of God. If you have awe of God you can recognize the few people that do come along who do something awesome, but the reverse is NEVER true. If you are in awe of people you will never have genuine awe of God because you misdirect yourself as a result in your awe expectations.

This is why I, like most of you, probably roll your eyes when you hear someone described as a "Good Christian." There was a time when that meant a very good thing, which was when it denoted, as I described above, a person who was naturally infused with awe of God and thus lived their life accordingly. But now the "Good Christian" seal of approval is passed around from self praising Christian to other self praising Christian because they attend the right congregation and they follow all the right rules. God may or may not have anything to do with that person supposedly being a "Good Christian." You know what it is like? It's like when being a "lady" or a "gentleman" meant something genuine, and then it became a class thing, a matter of wealth, or even of irony. Perfectly good labels of admiration become something foolish in modern context. Being a "Good Christian" has become a foolish label, because a truly godly person does not seek or need that label as he or she is focused only on God, in awe of him and sanctifying themselves to his will.

Now I am not the spoiler of the party, young people, so don't worry, I'm not saying to drop using "awesome" in slang, as I do it myself! I am speaking of the genuine feeling of awe here :-)

Here is how I can explain to you the collective societal problem that has developed due to misplaced awe. People have fallen into idolatry by being "awe junkies" and "awe seekers." And the reason they do so is that they avoid having awe for God because deep down inside they do not want to obey God and stop sinning, stop being warlike, stop being violence junkies, stop abusing substance, stop being evil, stop being unjust and stop being dishonorable and stop being unrighteous. People think if they tear down and criticize the institutions of God that they have an excuse for not being awed at God himself. Wrong. Oh, how deadly wrong that is.

If anything one must only be in increased awe of God at his forbearance and giving of many (but not infinite) second chances. You could destroy every church, mosque, or synagogue that you feel is too "orthodox" off the face of the earth, and kill or humiliate every person who is genuinely a servant of God and you would not diminish God's awesomeness one speck. It only underscores how God will, at the end of each person's life, and at the Final Judgment, hold each person accountable and there will be nothing anyone can say in their defense, since as we know, God is awesome in his All Knowingness, and knows all that happened, what would have happened, and was in each person's heart. God knows when you deny him his due as the only one to be in awe of, to worship, and the only Deity to exist because you want to keep on having some sort of sin or presumed power/control over others in your life. No matter how much you tear down the religious edifices, no matter what their presumed "quality" in your mind, where you think you can critique how others worship in orthodox settings, God is always God and he knows not only what you do but your motivations at all times.

So, young people, this is what I most worry about for you, which is that the sinful generations who have raised and taught you desire to keep sinning, lying, being unjust, being vicious, being on power trips and lost in a fantasy world, is that they have dangled so much of the real or the imaginary world and universe in front of you as being "awesome," while trying to diminish God and thus they blind you to the truth and hide it from you. Awesome robots and "aliens" might exist, every day in cartoons and other entertainment, but a mention of the legit awesomeness of God is not only lacking but forbidden. Parents and teachers and the whoremongers of commerce fear that if you, oh consumers and spenders of dollars, realize how awesome God is and how pale everything else is in comparison, that they will lose their presumed power over you, over earthly events (such as politics) and most of all through commerce and the almighty buck.

How do you steer through this mess? By recognizing misplaced awe and putting it where it should be instead, as I described above. It's fine to call something awesome (like a great room styling) or even a person awesome (like if they did a really fabulous good deed) and to be in awe of sunsets or tornado chasing or mountain climbing K2, or the beauty of outer space, wondering what's in those other galaxies over there IF one reserves genuine AWE for God. If you remember that God not only created all that exists but remains and always will be in control of it, you can marvel alongside of God at the beauty of life and of the material world while never being in danger of idolizing it and putting pieces of it over God in your priorities. You can call it "guilt free awe," ha. If you reserve genuine awe for God by remembering God as he really is at all times (as I listed in the beginning of this), you need not fear being swept away into sin and neglect because people dangle inappropriate awe in front of you. Who wants to work on world peace if they secretly think there are imaginary forces more powerful than God and that "they" "control" them? Earth has become like an abandoned house full of neglect and ruin with grass that is unmowed and vagrants that sit around waiting for something to happen instead of maintaining their residence. They want to be "awed" by something other than God and they want to watch cartoons of themselves with their presumable "step in" "awesome" powers rather than be in awe of the one true God AND be able to enjoy the awesomeness of his creation.

I hope that you understand what I am saying. Until next time, remember, seek only God and all else will fall into place and be given to you that is good for you.

Understanding God: His "emotions"

God does not have emotions in the way that humans think of emotions, where emotions are defined as strong feelings. God has what one needs to think of as perfect appropriate responses to human activities. God is beyond complete understanding, but it is important that you be on the right path toward understanding him truthfully, rather than think you understand him and are on a completely wrong path of supposed insight. So I thought of this analogy (of course!)

When I say that God has "perfect appropriate responses" this is what I am trying to say. Since God is total perfection, his "emotional" response to anything that a human does (or anything else) is perfect for the situation. God "feels" only what is entirely truthful and authentic and correct to feel, regardless of the situation, since obviously there is no situation in heaven or in the God created universe, all of which were created by God, that he does not already have complete insight regarding. Thus God has "emotions" that humans sometimes observe, but what they are is the perfect appropriate response that God give to a situation, even if the humans who observe God's response don't fully understand it. But do not kid yourselves. If you read the scriptures you will notice that people are rarely actually "puzzled" or "dumbfounded" by God's reactions... people can pretty much understand in advance when God is wrathful or when God is pleased, since Biblical people pretty much knew full well what to expect. So here is the analogy I thought of to help modern people understand God's "feelings" better.

Suppose that you lived in a city that had one courthouse and one judge, and that judge always rendered perfect justice. In other words, the judge never made a mistake in any case brought before him. Here's how to understand God's wrath. Imagine that a person drags an innocent person off the street, into the courthouse, and right in front of the judge shoots the innocent person dead. The judge would be wrathful but not with the tinges of human anger. That perfect judge, who has already rendered perfect judgment to all types of cases would not be, like a human, "angry," "shocked," or "scared." The judge's reaction would be wrath. Wrath is also called "righteous anger," because it is a combination of indignation at unjust behavior combined with the perfect comprehension of what happened, all the implications and having the perfect "final say" in what happens to punish that person.

Because God is all knowing, whenever a person sins or is unjust, it is as if that sinning or unjust person dragged a innocent person in front of God the judge and shot the person, and one better be prepared for God's wrath, either immediately (on the spot justice, which means during one's life) or deferred wrath (which means upon the person's death and judgment).

So that is how to understand in Biblical times and in present times God's "anger," which is really wrath. It means that it is punishment time, either immediate or delayed, for the sins and injustice that God, as judge, always observes since he is all knowing. People who think God does not see and know all sins and all injustice are like the person in the analogy who drags an innocent person before the perfect judge and shoots him right in his presence, doing so either for shock effect, terrorism, or because he actually thinks he is better than the judge and is showing the judge "how to get things done." God is always present and God already knows all the circumstances around every thought and deed of humans, and thus there is no defiance or shock value one can manipulate before God. Further, God, like the judge in the analogy, is going to render perfect justice regardless if the crime is done in an anger inducing way by a human or not.

When you understand that, you can more fully appreciate how often God holds back his wrath, deferring it, allowing some time (but not as much as you think) for repentance and conversion of the heart and soul back to God. You also can understand why God "doesn't seem angry" because "he allows the wicked to flourish," but then those wicked find out just how "angry" God "really is" because they all wake up in hell when they die.

So God does not get "angry" like humans do for imagined or real slights, out of fear or shock, or vengeance, or jealousy, or even what some imagine to be good reasons to be angry (like being in war, for example). God is only "angry" when a person sins or is unjust (and that includes sins of neglect, meaning they are not doing the honorable things in service to God and in charity that they should be doing.)

You can also use this analogy to understand how God can be "sad," "grieved," be "aggrieved" or have a "grievance." You see how flexible the root concept of grief/grievance is, because it means both grief as in sadness, and grievance as in having a complaint. Complaint is a similar word, where one may complain over an inconvenience, but to be "plaintive" is to be sad (as in plaintive music). God cannot be sad in the way that humans are because humans are sad when they are in a situation that cannot be changed, while God is the source of all help and so he is never in a situation he cannot "change." So God can grieve but he is not sad. Here's how to use the analogy to understand it.

Suppose that after the shooting is done in the analogy courtroom, the bystanders suddenly realize that the innocent person who was dragged in front of the judge and shot was the child of the judge himself. A human judge would of course feel unbelievable sadness and grief at having his child murdered in front of him, because that child is now dead and gone. God, though, receives that child "on the other side," in heaven, and thus God is not sad the way the human judge would be because God "fixes it." God is not stuck with being "without" the child because of course the child is now in heaven. The human judge would be remaining stuck in sadness, however, because he is now without his beloved child. So for a human sadness is added to anger, while for God sadness is not added to his righteous wrath.

However, both God and the human judge in the analogy would both feel grief. How to understand grief? Grief is what happens when one has to now tell the grandparents, the mother, the siblings, the cousins, and the friends that the child has been killed. Grief is seeing the sadness that others must endure because of that action. This is why St Paul in Ephesians warns not to grieve the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not made sad, but feels grief.

Now, to expand on the analogy to better understand God and especially grief, which he manifests, for lack of a better word, through the Holy Spirit. Suppose the innocent person who was murdered was not a child and perhaps not even a good person. Suppose the innocent person was a sinner or an evil doer, or an unbeliever. God would still feel grief for that person even though that person does not count among those who are saved and going to heaven. Why? Because only God takes no joy in injustice, whether against good people or "bad" people because it tarnishes in the darkness of sin both the person who performs the injustice and it cuts short the chance for the so called "bad" person to be redeemed. I say "only God" because just about every person I know succumbs to temptation to gloat at injustice if that injustice happens to someone "who deserves it." Some of the most unspiritual people I know like to post "karma is a bitch," because they are already gloating at a hopeful injustice happening in the future to catch up with an unjust person. In other words, the Bible warns that one will "reap what one sows," but that is different from an almost pagan hope that something bad will "happen" in the future, unrelated, to "make up for" something "bad" the person did in the past. That is trying to justify injustice with another injustice, a very unspiritual and incorrect take on reaping what one sows.

Anyway, remember, God knows the future, not only what will happen but all that could have happened. God knows if, for example, the innocent but sinful person who was killed in that analogy would have someday repented his or her ways and had been converted in heart and saved. But due to the injustice of the murderer that person's life ended and he or she receives perfect judgment, resulting in hell, if that be the case. The Holy Spirit grieves 1) at any injustice because it is against the good ways of God that God has enjoined upon humans 2) at the person who is not saved and goes to hell and 3) at the besmirching of the soul of the person who perpetrates the injustice. The Holy Spirit is not "sad" because as I said, God dispenses all perfect justice (both comfort and punishment) and thus is not ever in the helpless situation of sadness. The Holy Spirit of God does, most assuredly, feel deep grief (hence reference in scripture to the groaning of the Holy Spirit). It is not "sadness," it is grief... grief at the wrong road taken by humans, grief at the dirtying of their own and others' souls by humans, and grief at the unnecessary and avoidable chastisement that humans who perform and/or enable injustice must endure.

I hope that you have found this useful to think about and ponder. You can think of God's perspective of "joy" and "satisfaction" also in the way that "sadness" and "grief" were analyzed. Because God is the source of all joy and satisfaction, he does not feel per se those feelings which depend on fluxuating circumstances and processes required to reach those feelings which God already is (not "has" but "is"), but he does feel them, like grief, on behalf of humans in various situations. The one exception is creation, which God as Creator feels indeed as pure satisfaction, not self-satisfied the way humans are, but when God creates because all is good, and thus God is pleased with that. This is why God is able to appreciate a beautiful sunset alongside humans but of course from his perspective of its goodness, not only the aesthetics.

I just thought of a quick way artists can relate. Think of your favorite work of art and the time, either short or long, it took you to develop it. Part of your satisfaction with it is not just the aesthetics of it, which pleases you, but the method and time by which you achieved it. God created the entire universe with less than a sentence of speech, ha, so you can understand how God's aesthetic appreciation is pure as it is centered on its goodness, and not in the effort or cleverness or talent that went into its making. God didn't have to "work hard" to "paint" a perfect sunset. I hope that helps you understand! And "Hi" and "hey" to all the young people. God is not emo :-)

More about understanding God

So here are some thoughts as helpful follow up to what you read previously about understanding and explaining God's All Knowingness.

If you really understood the imagery regarding God's All Knowingness that I used in order to describe God, and really work with the comprehension and illumination it provides, you should have two simultaneous reactions. One is to be completely boggled by the awesomeness and completeness of God. When you understand that he simultaneously and at all times knows all that there is to know, including the history through eternity of even the smallest quantity of vacuum, nothingness, in the universe, and all that could ever befall it, you have to be totally boggled by the immensity, perfection and completion of God. However, you should also have a simultaneous feeling of "click," of a light bulb lighting, of dawning understanding, a relief that you finally "get" what God is really all about. At the same time that God is revealed as truly all that ever can be or will be, to a level of detail and completion that no angel or human can understand, you should also feel that at last you DO understand a very important part of God, and thus he is, in an almost paradoxical way, more approachable to you personally.

By chipping off this individual insight about God, really understanding his All Knowingness, you receive cascading benefits of illumination and comprehension about him. For one, you lose that mindless, amorphous, fuzzy wuzzy temptation to believe that he's a name, a personification, given to some "universal force." That, you now understand, is total rubbish, because God is the creator and outside of the universe itself, and so the universe's matter and "energy forces" cannot at all be compared to him, and also you realize that any "energy forces" that do exist, and are not bogus human imaginings, fall under God's creative actions and his control anyway. Secondly, you realize that God is indeed a "person" and not some goopy syrup of "vibes" or "energy." God is not a name given to forces that just kind of churn around in a mosh pit of "energy" and "vibrations"... God is a personage, someone who is totally mindful and in control of all that was and ever will be.

By understanding the extraordinary and indescribable scope of God's All Knowingness, you also understand that God can be described as having three basic "activities," very broadly speaking. Again, I'm trying to help by putting them in human context. One is that God creates and then lets creation (and subsequent maintenance and ongoingness of his creation) proceed according to natural laws he has put into place, such as gravity, biology, geology, etc all reveal. So God creates and when he creates he also creates the natural laws that then are the ongoing mechanisms put into place. An obvious example is reproduction, where after creating life, the natural laws and processes that God has put into place allows plant and animal species to reproduce on their own: God does not have to intervene.

The second "activity" that God "spends time doing" is, thus, intervention. God rarely intervenes in the way that most of you think about, such as miracles, smiting evil doers, and/or temporarily suspending natural laws. However, God is constantly intervening in two ways. God is constantly available to have a relationship with any individual person and will respond to prayers, though not always in a way that one expects or can perceive. God is also constantly working on the heart and soul of every person, even those who hate him, through the presence and invitation of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is always there, moving among even the most arid and hateful of people and communities, and even among the worse sinners, trying to reach them and bring them back to genuine humanity, charity, self respect, and relationship with God. This is why you cannot really claim a faith or religion is either "unfair" or "the only way" because its believers believe that only through their rites etc will they be saved by God or whatever. In many ways it is a moot point because God does seek individual relationship and the Holy Spirit does indeed move even in Communist atheist countries, as we have seen in history. However, one must always, as I've boggled before, seek the truth, not the "right" or "best" "faith." If you seek the truth you find it, because God is the truth. False religions and faith put a checkered flag in front of you too soon, so that you think you have found the "right" or "best" "faith," before you have really completed (or even sincerely started) the search and discernment of the truth about God.

For example, it became an anti-establishment fad in the 1960's and continuing today to rebel against the "irrelevant" and "boring" and "hypocritical" faith of one's parents. Now, I'm speaking of the mainstream monotheistic faiths, primarily Judaism and Christianity. Islam has thus far not suffered from the throwing away of the parents' faith by the children just because the children want to sin and feel all grown up and rebel "against the machine" of religion. But for forty years Jewish kids and Christian kids grew up to be denomination switching, converting, God denying, or pagan faith pursuing rebels who think they are smarter than their boring and sheep like parents. Ooops. Why is that an ooops? This is where God's All Knowingness is so important to understand.

How can any one person decide to rebel or religion "shop" if they really understood God's All Knowingness first? One really has to come to know God within one's own family mainstream and orthodox faith FIRST before becoming any sort of religion critic. This is because all the mainstream, orthodox Monotheistic faiths are founded on truths of communication between the one true God and his people, which is why they are described as the offsprings of Abraham. Here's a modern analogy. Suppose you really want to get to know all about a celebrity who you admire. But you decide to throw away thousands of years of dialogue that your ancestors have had with this celebrity, because you want to find the place where you supposedly can really get to know him. I mean, think about it, that's so absurd. But that is what two to three generations of rebellious religion "shoppers" have done, and are still doing.

So when you understand God's All Knowingness and perfection of totality and completeness, and you understand both his creation/let it be role and his role of personal intervention, you realize that the Bible, the Qur'an, and the writings of many orthodox rabbis throughout history is actual records of that "celebrity" that you want to know: and your parents' mainstream faith records their share of understanding the actual God. You should fully respect and immerse yourself in your mainstream orthodox Jewish, Christian and Muslim faith first before seeking "additional" information and most certainly before diving into the rites of other faiths. I mean, if you don't understand the full purpose and relationship of your own faith first, how do you recognize, supposedly, a "better" faith? Duh. :-)

And finally, by understanding God's All Knowingness, you understand the third activity that God engages in which is to be in fellowship with the angels, the humans, and all creation. I don't mean this in the fuzzy wuzzy "they are all one in the ether" kind of creepy New Age thinking. I mean God, as a personage, "hangs out" with the angels, with humans, and with the living things, and the inorganic things, of the universe. It's one of the first things humans learn about God, what God is "like," in the Book of Genesis in the Bible, that God would walk in the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve, in the coolness of the evening. [God doesn't get too "hot" or "cold" so one is supposed to understand that God is hanging out with Adam and Eve at the time of day they would most enjoy, doing what many humans do, which is to walk around the yard, or the garden, or sit on the porch, at the end of day.] This is how we know, in addition to other scriptural references, that God spends much of his "time" just being in companionship with the beings he created, and the places that he created.

Just to wrap up this segment of posting about understanding God's All Knowingness, here is another insight that such analogies and knowledge about God should be giving you. Now you understand how even non-believers and people who do some pretty bad things can feel "blessed" and have what they think are "good lives," because while they are alive, they are swept along on the tide of goodness that God has set into motion for everyone. In other words, the rats benefit from being on the good ship. But when the ship goes aground, as it must someday do, either on an individual basis, or a culture or a nation, or totally, at the End of Time, or at a person's death and individual judgment, they realize they were riding the coattails of God's overall blessings and providence, but were doing so as rats rather than good stewards and believers. When one understands God's All Knowingness, you better understand why it seems that bad people get away with a lot, and even have "good lives," but they do not, as God knows the actions of every particle or vacuum that ever was or could be. Their judgment will be full and complete, when it is their time.

However, in this blogging I want to keep you focused on the joyful search for understanding the true God as he has already repeatedly revealed himself as he alone chooses to, so I don't want to close with just that warning above. Those of you who believe in God, or who were deprived of faith, or given false examples to follow, will benefit greatly by taking the first step of understanding that God is truly All Knowing and in control, in the ways that I've described above, as explained in Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy scripture. When an auto accident happens, God is in control because he established the laws of physics where energy and matter react, and humans decide if their use is for goodness or for not so good. Also, humans are flawed vessels, through both their physical limitations and their ignorance or vanity, so they cannot expect to live within a universe of natural laws but act like they are superhuman beings. Every child figures that out when he or she first decides he or she is like superman and then jumps off their garage (a childhood friend of mine did that and got the expected broken leg). Adults need to understand that God is in control through the natural laws he established in his creation, but that adults should not be puffed up about their role. Where they should feel pride is as St. Paul described, pride in Jesus Christ, pride in being brought to God within Jesus Christ, not through their own works or their imagined superhuman powers.

Rather, one needs to have comfort and consolation and understanding that even as God Knows All, he still desires and puts forth the Holy Spirit to help in this, fellowship and parenthood of all humans, bringing them, those that are worthy and just, into the companionship where God is all the time, which are the angels in heaven. God wants to walk with each human in what remains of the Garden on earth, but he will only do so if you truly seek him, not a fraud. God knows every particle and every non-particle that ever was and ever could be... if you understand that and come to accept that knowledge joyfully, that becomes a key part of your foundation of faith and trust in God. I've observed that humans find it difficult to trust God and have faith in him in large part because they continue to not understand the full dimensions of his All Knowingness, and the categories of his involvement, as I've described here. Evangelicals often leap too quickly into telling people to trust God without helping their followers to understand the fullness of God's "dimensions" and thus his trustworthiness. That is why the prophets before Jesus, and then culminating in Jesus himself, performed awesome miracles, as through observation of those powers that could only be God given, people mutually trusted the prophets but also grew in their trust of God, knowing intuitively how only the All Knowing can do those miraculous things that they saw.

I hope you have found this helpful and a special hello, as always, to the young people out there.

Being impressed by God

This is another in my "understanding God" series, with particular attention to God's All Knowingness. Now, I've already used the basic principle of the example I'm going to present to you here, but I think that it is so important and powerful to you to understand that I'm giving you a variation.

But first, I'm going to explain my title, about "being impressed by God." We live in a media and "impact" obsessed modern society. The television program "Saturday Night Live" spoofed this with a series of skits called "Impress Ed Asner." The actual actor, Ed Asner, would sit there and rate various goofy people do funny or disgusting things, to see if he was impressed.

Well, if one really understands the All Knowingness of God, you will definitely be impressed with him. Young people, this is why I think of these examples with you in mind, since you've been raised by your parents and teachers to be good consumers, being impressed with products that you will spend money for. Likewise, you have grown up in a high tech age and so you have a built in tendency to look at everything to assess its functionality, and then decide if you are impressed. This is not a criticism of you, but of course, as you know, I think that being raised that way has lost for you a lot of the genuine mystery and wonderment of life, including, especially, of God. So here is another of my examples of the All Knowingness of God.

A few minutes ago, just before I sat back down in front of the computer, I went into the kitchen and filled my beverage glass (a genuine Coca Cola 75Th anniversary edition, LOL) with ice from the freezer, and then Coca Cola from the bottle I just bought today. I then took my first sip from that glass.

So here is a sample of God's All Knowingness. As I hold the glass, God could tell you all about every subatomic particle that makes up that glass: how many they are, what they are like, and where they came from. So just to select one subatomic particle in that glass, God could tell you when and how that subatomic particle came into being, and where it has been and where it traveled, and what function that particle performed at all points in time. God could then tell you where that subatomic particle, and remember, all of its millions of fellow particles, will go to next, and next and next, all the way to the end of time and space. In other words, God knows what will happen to that glass in the future, even though I do not know yet myself. Will I sell it, keep it, will it be around for a long time, or accidentally broken and then discarded? Whatever happens to it God not only knows where it and all its tiny subatomic particles will be, God also knows all the "could have beens." In other words, God knows what I, and then later other people, will do with that Coca Cola glass, and when its broken or lost what becomes of the particles as they break down and degrade, BUT God ALSO knows all the "alternative futures" if I did otherwise than I will do. In other words, God knows that, for example, I might keep that glass for many years, but he also knows what would have but will not happen to that glass if I gave it to a friend or threw it away, or lost it.

Just so you are not confused, I'm not saying that there are "alternative futures," which is a popular fantasy in science fiction genre of entertainment. There is only one future, because that is the reality of what actually happens. "The future" is reality as it unfolds, as the result of many decisions people make. People do not "change the future." The future is always exactly the same as the Present, since the future is what is happening at the moment in reality. In other words, the definition of "the future" is "the current day reality that has not yet happened."

Today and all the things you did today was as recently as yesterday, "the future." But it doesn't feel like "the future," since it was "today." The future is simply every "today" that has not yet occurred. It's kind of boring but accurate to think of it that way. So God knows in advance what every "today" will be in reality, to the smallest imaginable detail....

However, God is also so amazing that he could tell you what it would have been like if different types of "today" happened in the future. Let's give an example. Today is nearly over with, as I'm typing this in early evening, and so I can type with pretty good confidence that there was not an asteroid that hit the earth today. There's a lot of discussion about the lunar probe that will be crash landed into the moon tomorrow to look for water there. But if one of you were chatting with God, you could say to him, "What if an asteroid had hit the earth today? What would have happened?" God could tell you in all the detail (like in our example, down to each subatomic particle) of what would have been the results of such an event that did not, actually, take place.

How does God do it? How is he capable of telling people, if they were to have such a conversation with him, not only every detail of what will happen, but answer even strange "what if" type of future questions? Here's how you can understand it using some modern analogies.

Most people understand that in business people often do trend analysis. In other words, if data seems to trend in a certain direction, they can, based on experience, guesstimate where the data will move next. God does not have to guess because he knows exactly what reaction results from each action. So God would be able to tell you, in that "what if" scenario, what matter and what energy would react, in the "what if" asteroid collision, down to the smallest detail, such as, as we are discussing, the subatomic particles. So God does not have to "trend line," because God knows what each and every real reaction would be to each and every change... and he knows it all at once, all the time, for any and all times in the past, present and future, and even beyond the end of the universe and time, matter and energy at all (which is the realm of heaven).

So God could tell you what will happen to every subatomic particle in my Coca Cola glass in reality, as it really will occur in the future, and he could also tell you what would have happened "instead" if you came up with a hypothetical change to what has actually happened and what actually will happen. He could tell you the answer to silly questions, like what if human beings still had fur, or if they could flap their wings and fly. God could detail for you exactly what would have happened if that had been the reality.

For example, a lot of entertainers like to produce works based on "what if Hitler had won the war?" Well, God could tell you exactly what "would have happened," down to every subatomic particle (and beyond, since God knows even what is happening in the absence of matter), but God would remind you that he also, of course, knows, and has known all along, what would indeed in fact happen. He could educate and amuse you with answering your questions about "what if," but that's all it would be, since God knows the reality of what each future "today" will be: the sum total of all that actually is happening and will happen.

Now, even to marvel that God is like an amazing computer that can calculate the outcomes of any hypothetical scenario is to sell short God's All Knowingness. That is because the universe is not like a great machine, even though it operates with natural laws of time, matter and energy. God knows two things that cannot be computer "trend lined"... he knows what he will do in response to certain choices that humans make (his divine intervention) AND God knows in advance great shifts that will take place as the Holy Spirit ever works to turn people away from self destructive paths. God is not a passive god who has set the universe like a clock in motion and then sits back to watch, any more than humans are like that. Yes, humans go through terrible times of passivity in the face of evil, despair and indifference, and even ignoring God himself, but humans are not by nature total couch potatoes. So any sort of image of God, or humans, as, respectively, great and perfect, or flawed and imperfect, machines is totally misguided. Just as God's Holy Spirit never rests, human beings never reach a state where absolutely no one is responsive to the yearning for avoiding evil and doing good, and finding the real, and not the convenient, truthfulness of matters. So God knows not only the mechanics of the cause and effect of all past, present and future events, large or minuscule, but he also knows in advance the interaction of spirit and the healing, correcting, and even chastising effects of God's intervention throughout all human existence.

So suppose in the future someone steals my Coca Cola glass from me, LOL. God already knows in advance not only the logistical cause-and-effect of the movement of matter in time, space, with energy, and what happens to the glass, and to me, and to the perpetrators, but God also knows the spiritual goodness and damage that will result from individual choices made in that action. God knows in advance, before the thief steals my Coca Cola glass, that this was his or her intention, and why he or she thought that was a good idea, and what the state of their heart and soul is, and what will be the consequences, both cascading from the specific action, but also spiritually, all the way to the ultimate outcomes of each person at the end of their life, in personal judgment. Thus I am sitting here not knowing if in reality someday someone will steal my Coca Cola glass from me, but God not only knows (down to that incredible microcosm that only he has, such as knowing what subatomic particles of air are jostled as the person takes my glass, imagine that!)... but God also knows whether that person ever will regret, atone, remedy, or, rather, if it is just a pattern of cascading decisions that will result in more loss of potential grace, more downfall, more erosion of spirituality... and implications (such as others being led into sin by observing and condoning the future stealing of my Coca Cola glass). God already knows ALL of these things, all the thoughts and all the deeds, and all the movements of all the particles of the universe, as he has known even before he created the universe at all.

If you were able to exist before God even created the universe, God could tell you, "And some day this lady, Mary Major, will be blogging about me and explain to you my All Knowingness, and will use as an example her Coca Cola glass, and now I can tell you that...." [and here he would tell you what will eventually happen one way or the other to my Coca Cola glass]. God knows everything even before he created anything.

This is why you should be impressed with, and ultimately, love God, and fear him (in the good way, as in fearing that you would ever lose God through your own actions). Not only because his All Knowingness is so awesome and just about indescribable, but more to the point, even knowing all that he does, including what will happen, he seeks a personal relationship with each human being and meets you on a level that you can understand, and have dignity of response with him, through the choices you have, even though he knows all of the choices you will make in advance. God is always totally "in the moment" with each person, not withholding or holding against them what God knows they will do in the future. God does, however, know the sincerity and motivation through which you seek (or avoid) a relationship with him, and so of course he is never fooled.

Just to complete the example, as I sipped my Coca Cola (which I finished while typing this and the ice cubes are just about all melted), God knows how each of the particles of my beverage will pass through my system, which drops of fluid will replenish the moisture of my body, and which is excess that will get voided away into the fine bathroom (ironically said, ha) next door to my room. God then knows where those droplets of water and urea acids and whatnot and whatever will go into the sewage and drainage system, and where they will flow next and what they will do and where they will go, so far into the future and so long as the subatomic particles that make them up survive and exist. And should one have had such a conversation with God, one could ask him what would have been the difference if I had had a glass of skim milk instead, ha. Then he could also tell you what cows contributed to that glass of milk, etc. Really, God does know everything, not only as it happened, as it is happening, but in total into all of the future too, and he knows all of this all the time and simultaneously.

I hope that you have found this interesting, even my beverage choices and the location of the nearest bathroom in this household...

Humor aside, I really hope and pray that it restores, or gives to you for the first time, real comprehension of the awesome dimensions and reality of God the All Knowing.

understanding Satan, another point re: angels

I hope the previous blog post was helpful. This morning it occurred to me that you might still find it difficult to understand how ex-lead angel, fallen angel Satan can lack comprehension of God's All Knowingness. After all, would not an angel know better than anyone? That is exactly my point: no, they do not. None of the angels comprehend God's All Knowingness since it is totally impossible to comprehend, by either angels or human beings! But here is the difference. The angels in heaven believe. They have total faith in God, which overcomes their inability, as created beings, to totally understand God's All Knowingness. Only God himself understands his All Knowingness.

You see, some "New Age" thinking has crept into the thinking of both believers and non-believers that once one achieves heaven, or nirvana, or "is one with the universe" that suddenly one "understands everything." You most certainly do not. No one has ever believed that until these modern technical times, where humans have started thinking of themselves as having the ability to "be anything you want to become" and to "achieve anything." Older humans were a lot more humble and realistic. They realized that going to heaven meant being constantly at peace in God's presence in paradise, NOT becoming God given "experts." So no, the fallen angels, the multitude that is unimaginable that are in heaven with God, and humans who achieve paradise through salvation do not at all understand God's All Knowingness. The difference is that the multitude of angels who serve God have total faith that he is the All Knowing, and humans who achieve heaven also have as their reward total faith and ability to believe with no question that God is indeed who he is, but the fallen angels recognize God, but lack faith that God is all that he really is. To use a modern term, fallen angels (and living humans) have a "mental block," an inability to comprehend God's All Knowingness.

Humans have that mental block as a condition of their being alive in a finite world within finite bodies that are limited (no matter how intelligent or "spiritual") by the neurons of the brain and the reality of the body. So humans are incapable of truly comprehending God's All Knowingness because they are in bodies and minds that can't grasp it. They can, however, develop marvelous and tremendous faith, in that way emulating the angels in heaven who believe because of course they are there and can see God all the time. It is important to cultivate faith because faith overcomes natural blindness. That is precisely the problem with Satan and those who follow him. Lacking faith that God is totally who he truly is, they have mental blocks and blind spots to understanding God's true nature and All Knowingness, even though Satan can and does, as we see in scripture, continue to be able to speak to God face to face when God allows it. Satan can look at God and obviously believe in his powers and obviously attest that God most certainly exists and is the creator of all (since Satan like the other angels saw it all), but Satan and the fallen angels are flawed not by being "born evil," but because they would not serve.... and service, in heaven, means having perfect faith!

Generations of humans have been saved and reach heaven based on faith, not on their ability to perform "good deeds." Without getting into that whole argument (that is based on misunderstanding plus a weakness of faith in God, ironically), the faith versus works artificial argument among some denominations is a similar lack of faith problem in God's All Knowingness. How is it that the poorest of the poor, those who are unable to do any "good deeds" such as "works," but have unshaken faith go to heaven (see the Beatitudes for the scriptural references) while at the same time, rich people with faith risk going to hell if they do not accomplish the very specific works that God expects them to do, rather than works of their own choosing (see Luke 16)? It all comes down to faith in God's All Knowingness. God knows the true state of each person's heart, soul, thoughts and purity of intentions. This is why a poor person unable to do any works but filled with faith will go to heaven, while a rich person who believes in God but thinks that he or she can pawn off certain works "good deeds" or "social work" with the intention that those are earned tokens toward heaven certainly risks hell instead. God knows before one even has the thought just how dumb a person thinks that God is.

So Satan must be understood in exactly that light-of being unable to understand, as we see in scripture, God's All Knowingness-to serve as the correct negative role model for human beings who wish to be saved. When you read the beginning of the Book of Job, if you understand what I have just pointed out to you in these two posts, now the scales will fall from your eyes and you will really "get" the Book of Job properly. Why did Job suffer so much? Because Satan, like humans, cannot understand God's All Knowingness, and constantly challenge, marginalize and test it, while the faithful, such as Job, do not lack understanding that God is All Knowing.

For more scriptural reassurance on what I am saying, read the sections where the mother of James and John asks Jesus that they sit at his right and left hand when Jesus comes into the Kingdom (which she of course misunderstands the nature of). But think about what the court favorites who sit around the king indicate. These are people who are near to the king, but not the king. These are people who are rewarded by the king, but do not as a result receive or have the power or the knowledge of the king. Everyone in Biblical times understood full well that even the people who achieve heaven do not receive "secrets" or gain God's knowledge, etc... they hoped for being in his constant presence.

And thus you can see that indeed happens for some as you read the Book of Revelation. John sees that a number of (unidentified) elders surround the throne of God, casting their crowns in front of him and worshipping him. If these are the few humans, the prophets and elders, who achieved such proximity to God, and they are still in the form of humans in their spiritual glorified bodies who glorify God all day, you have to understand that there is still that distinction between God and everyone else, both angels and saved humans. No one is "absorbed" into God's All Knowingness. That is a fake technology industrialized and now New Age affectation and false belief that has no bearing on reality since obvious physics of God and his created creatures belie that if you give it any thought, and the scriptures illustrate actual scenes and events that show such thinking is totally false. The difference is that in heaven, both angels and saved humans have perfect faith and know that God is All Knowing: a belief that the faithful have while on earth but have rewarded in the knowing when in heaven.

That lack, by the way, is one way to characterize humans who go to hell. No one who really, really, REALLY believes that God is All Knowing is stupid enough to do the things that they do, and think the things that they think, that ends them up in hell for eternity of suffering and punishment. Every chronic sinner (both of sins of commission and omission), does not, despite what they may say, believe that God is All Knowing. Again, a great way to improve one's chances of salvation is to have faith in God, but the God as God really is... because when you believe all there is to believe about him exactly as he has constantly presented himself to generations of the faithful and the chastised unfaithful, you in turn will have cascading changes in behavior and mindset that improve greatly your chances of becoming worthy.

Here's a mental image for you. Suppose that someone in hell was taken out of hell by God, put back in their body on earth, and "given another chance." What would happen? Your knee jerk reaction is to say, "Well, of course that person learned his or her lesson and that he or she will lead a wonderful life that is corrected from all bad ways." Wrong! The person who goes to hell, and then in theory gets a second chance at life, thinks to his or her self, "Ha! I knew the religions were wrong and that hell is permanent. See? I'm back." A person who goes to hell is permanently flawed, like Satan, in their lack of faith, so that even if God gave them mercy and through a miracle took them out of hell and gave them a second chance at life, the person would view that as another cornerstone to their lack of faith rather than increasing their faith. They figure if God "breaks his own rules," then the rules are bogus in the first place. That is why no one ever leaves hell, not even to give a message of warning to those who are in danger of hell themselves on earth (Luke 16). God in his All Knowingness knows that those who merit hell are incapable of increasing anyone's faith, no matter what mercy God bestows on them, since they have warped their soul into being incapable of having humility of faith, say nothing of conveying it to others still alive. How can you feel comfortable inferring this? Notice how even in hell the rich man expects the poor man, Lazarus, who is being comforted by Abraham himself in heaven, to be the one to bring him some water in hell. The man in hell is too darned arrogant and stupid to do something like pray to God for relief, even as heaven is opened up to him in this one time event! Luke 16 is a constant gold mine of understanding God's reality, faith, and the pernicious problem of lack of faith.

So yes, the angels observe and serve God all the time in heaven, and have perfection of faith, but this does not mean that they are now "extensions" of God, that they share in his All Knowingness, which is not possible. They do, however, have perfection of faith in God, as do all humans who are saved and gain eternity in heaven. This is one reason, by the way, for my Muslim friends, that in the Qur'an you read that God ordered the angels to worship Adam right after God created Adam. The angels are not worshipping Adam per se as the flawed vessel that all humans are by nature (even though Adam had not yet sinned) but the angels are paying obeisance to God's All Knowingness in his wisdom to create goodness. So the angels are not lifting Adam up, but they are acknowledging that they are to continue to have faith in, believe and honor the works of God.

Those who are saved have as their hallmarks either the simple faith in God of the good hearted and naturally humble, or faith in God that they have had to constantly work at, like a garden that is always threatened with weeds, so they look to the saints, and the read the scriptures, and they work, really work, at increasing their faith, not their works. Good works and what God expects of everyone in charity is a natural fruit of faith: it does not have to be artificially planned and managed like on a spreadsheet or a shopping list that has check off marks. If one works only on fear of God and increased faith, one will naturally heed God's expectations for their works as a result.

I hope you have found this helpful!

Understand real Satan not cartoon Satan

Satan is a very real risk to all humans, both believers who risk their faith being disturbed, and non-believers who risk never opening their hearts enough to believe and be saved. So I am always glad when I hear a preacher remind their listeners that Satan is a continual reality that cannot be ignored.

However, it is, like all topics related to faith, important that one protects one's self by understanding the real threat, and not a misrepresentation or cartoon of the threat and as always one has to rely on God's word in the scriptures, and the actual events depicted within.

We know that Satan is the leader of the group of angels who, after being created by God, when given the choice of free will (a gift God gives to all whom he loves, both angels and humans), chose not to serve God. Because of this they were cast out of heaven. Satan is allowed to roam the earth at will and has great influence over human world events (which is why he is scripturally refered to as ruling on earth... he's not THE ruler of earth, but he receives that title because by not serving God he can only serve and thus influence things of the world. In other words he is both in the world and "of" the world. Christians in contrast are taught by Jesus to be "in the world" but not ruled by the world, hence they are not "of the world." Their priority, unlike Satan's, is heavenly directed in service to God even while alive on earth and not in heaven).

So there are two aspects of Satan that sound alarming and powerful on the surface, especially the non-scriptural depictions, but are not all that difficult to refute and to have some peace of mind about. One is that Satan is obviously not THE ruler of all earth since he obviously, both in scriptural and in secular earth history, does not run around undoing God's creation. Satan does not blow up mountains, destroy cities, poison the water, kill baby animals as they are born, uproot trees, change the weather, etc. God is still in control of his creation, which he has declared "good" upon the making of each component, and Satan has never had any power, authority or ability to use godly powers to harm life or the natural processes and features of earth. If Satan had that power then there would be nothing left of earth a long time ago, as he would have caused havoc everywhere. But the scripture reports that Satan just wanders around the earth, tempting people to sin against God and each other at every obvious opportunity. Thus it is totally wrong and alarming for no reason to have any concern at all that Satan has some sort of like running amok, evil destroyer, invading alien, anti-life, kicker of sand in the faces of baby dinosaurs type of ability or impulse. Satan's sole interest is to tempt human beings.

And that is the second reality check that people need to keep in mind. As I've pointed out before in my blogging, and I've heard more preachers allude to it recently, Satan by no means denies the existence of God. That is a weird misconception that is pretty recent and is refuted by any even casual reading of the Bible. Satan, actually, is by his obvious existence and interaction with God (the Book of Job detailing a far from hostile conversation between God and Satan) is kind of the ultimate witness to God's reality! People who want to get into witchcraft and so forth or believe strange things have recently thought of the impossibility that Satan is like an "alternative possibility" to believing in God. That's obviously ridiculous since the scriptures show that Satan continues to not only acknowledge God's reality, but interact with him, including promptly showing up to test and tempt Jesus Christ at the beginning of his ministry. Further, Satan obeys God when God establishes limits on how much Satan can afflict Job. Demons and so forth who serve Satan are the first to recognize Jesus, before Jesus even speaks to them, and they rapidly proclaim their belief, their alarm and their subservience to Jesus' authority to cast them out. So people who think that maybe there's a real powerful Satan but no God are totally delusional on two basic points. Satan has very little power and controls none of the infrastructure of earth or the life upon it AND Satan himself is the first on most scenes to acknowledge God's reality and his movement in human matters.

So, if Satan does not deny God AND Satan has no actual power except to tempt, how is he so persuasive, so effective and so dangerous? This can best be understood and thus defeated by thinking of the common saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." This old saying means that many humans end up going to hell because they did something evil, wrong and sinful because they "meant well." In a way, Satan is very much like the humans who go to hell because they do wrong things but self justify that their "intentions were good." Don't get me wrong because I'm not using the word "good" with "Satan," but I'm preparing you for the analogy. Satan's basic error is that he cannot grasp God's All Knowingness; he just doesn't get within the core of his being that God already knows all that there is to know. Satan's a bit condescending to God, thinking that he knows better than God, particularly when it comes to human weaknesses.

Realistically, can anyone of even weak faith think that God knows less than Satan in any scenario? But that is the Achilles heel of both Satan and human beings, which is why they are such a potent mixture. Satan thinks he knows better than God and thus is even somewhat "protective" and condescending toward God. We see this in the Book of Job, where Satan is debating with God whether Job is really truly faithful to God and if he would stay faithful if God's protection were removed from him. Um, duh, Satan thinks that God doesn't already know every "what-if" scenario already? I've blogged before how one must realize God's All Knowingness by using analogies humans can grasp, such as how God knows every subatomic particle that ever existed or will exist in the universe and all the places each particle was and will be. So God doesn't know what Job will do when hardships befall him? God knows everything already because he is God and he is the only All Knowing.

But you can see that Satan honestly thinks something like this: "Wow, that God is naive. Sure Job loves and worships God now, since he's blessed by God and has a great life and many possessions due to God's protection. I've got to show God that he can't trust Job to stay faithful to him once things start going bad for him." Satan simply does not grasp that God already knows everything, absolutely everything. We know this because Satan recognizes who Jesus is, and promptly shows up to tempt him, and Satan thinks, what, that God didn't know that Satan is going to tempt Jesus? And that Jesus, as the Son of God, would be temptable? It's like Satan thinks that maybe God didn't prepare Jesus enough, or send him with enough power, and thus there is some actual chance of tempting Jesus to disobedience to God!

So the crux of understanding Satan and his enormous power over many human beings is to realize that Satan just does not grasp and ultimately does not have faith in the All Knowingness of God. Satan has plenty of faith that God exists because more than anyone he's been there around God "from the beginning" and so obviously God's reality is Satan's continual focus. But what Satan just does not understand is God's greater plan, which is, of course, the culmination of God's All Knowingness.

And that pride, since that is indeed what we are describing, a condescending pride of Satan's, is exactly the same prevalent flaw in many human beings. Can you think of many humans who do not at some point think they know "better" than God does? Or that God "needs their help?" Brothers and sisters, you know exactly what I mean.

While few people would confess to actually thinking that God needs their "help" or that they "know better than God," they do it all the time when they cherry pick what part of God's word they choose to believe. When they discard or ignore large parts of scripture, (or even just small parts that prohibit one's favorite sin), that is more than being someone of weak faith, or maybe a hypocrite. Secretly, subconsciously, that person is thinking that he or she knows "what God really meant" and that he or she can thus figure that "God would agree with me that this part of the Bible is out of date, and that part doesn't apply to me, but that I can go along with that other stuff because those sinners out there (not me) don't do enough of the good things and God needs my help" and so on and so forth. That is music to Satan's ears and fertile ground for him to sow weeds.

This is why some people are such willing and easy dupes and tools of Satan, while others seem to have a Teflon coating and barely notice Satan's existence. Satan works best with humans who do not believe in, have faith in, or trust God's All Knowingness. The people who diminish God's power in their minds but magnify and glorify their own potential roles in both earthly and, imagine that, heavenly matters are natural allies and pawns of Satan, since they have the same weakness and "philosophy." People who lack fear of God but magnify their own spirituality, resourcefulness and role in life are the most prone to be influenced at alarming speed and depth by Satan. People who fear God (in the way I've explained in previous posts on this subject) and who are humble about their role in the major matters of divinity tend not to be tempted by or hear Satan at all. Satan totally gives a pass by to those who are shielded by their sincere fear of God and their sincere humility.

Now, some of the most devout saints suffered from great torments by Satan. I'm about to say something that is not meant to be unkind or unloving, since these were indeed genuine Christian saints of great sanctity. However, even some saints have insufficient fear of God and humility to render themselves safe from any attacks (or imagined attacks) from Satan. Some very revered Christian saints who were indeed sanctified and worthy of God had the all too human flaw of being sucked into thinking that they are linchpins in some sort of huge "good versus evil" striving. I mean, how scriptural is that? Not at all. What do I mean? Here is what I would have said to some medieval saint in the making who is afflicted by torments he or she feels is sent by Satan:

Read the scripture about the Last Supper and the betrayal of Christ by Judas. Judas, the most ripest, the biggest target of all who ever existed for temptation, was only entered by Satan at the moment he left the table to betray Jesus. Satan spent only a matter of minutes, until the betrayal was done, in Judas. Why in the world do you think Satan is having supposedly hours, days, months or years of battle within YOU?

Sometimes you have to be a tough spiritual director, even with the most sanctified of people.

Humans all are in constant grave danger of the "road to hell is paved with good intentions" weakness and pride. Saints are no exception except in one matter: their suffering (even if self induced or exaggerated) never destroys their faith in God or takes them from their sanctity of service. But I explain this problem with certains saints in order to point out to you the scriptural basis for what I am saying: Satan does not occupy or vie with human beings. Satan only strews temptations that those who fear God and are genuinely humble never even notice, while those who do not fear God and who are prone to pridefulness catch themselves up in the temptations all of the time. Satan's temptations are like lint or dust on furniture: you don't even notice it unless you think it is your job to clean it up. That's the danger of not believing completely in God's All Knowingness and over exaggerating your role in "helping" God. You start thinking that you are the one who has to dust all the furniture, and thus those hundreds and thousands of tiny nearly invisible temptations to sin, like dust motes, gather together as you focus your attention on them. The rest of us live with dusty furniture ha ha. (Just some levity for a serious subject... please excuse the humor, I so rarely get to demonstrate it!)

Do you see what I mean? This is why an analogy is so powerful. Satan is constantly scattering tiny harmless temptations, most centered around insufficient faith in God and excess pride in one's own judgment and supposed "goodness." People who are not vulnerable to temptations of hubris, pride or vanity, and who are firm in their fear of God and trust in his All Knowingness, never even notice the tiny dust motes of temptation. But those who are prone to scrutinizing the dust particles start to pick them up in quickly growing clumps that stick to them and they are now accepting of and subjugated to Satan's temptations with alarming weight and rapidity.

Taking upon one's self a perception that you personally are "battling Satan" is a grave and not-scripturally based error. Remember, Judas himself did not "battle" Satan, nor was he owned by Satan or possessed by Satan. Rather, Judas picked up a lot of "dust particles" of pride which estranged him from his basic trust in God's providence, and then Satan only had to enter him for a few minutes to actually perform that greatest betrayal. If you think that you are in combat with some supposed spiritual forces, you have deviated from the truth of what is in the Bible (no one in the Bible is combating Satan etc on a personal basis). What they are doing is resisting Satan's temptations. There is a huge difference between the two.

This is why Paul said that Christians must be "dead to sin." When one is dead one is inert and like a chemical that just won't react with anything. Being in a hypersensitive and combative stance toward anything is not being "dead to sin." Rather, like collecting the dust motes, it is a problem of insufficient protection (study of scripture, faith in God's power, cultivating fear of God and humility) while completely over exaggerating one's own interaction with temptations. People, like that class of afflicted saints, who think they are in some sort of numinous and supernatural "combat" against "evil forces, such as Satan" are driving themselves nuts by collecting every dust mote of temptation that Satan has laid out there for them. Who in the Bible is actually "combating" Satan? Jesus did not even waste an hour of his earthly time doing so. Moses didn't. David didn't. Isaiah didn't. Joseph and Mary didn't. John the Baptist didn't. All the prophets and holy people of the Bible were focused on two things 1) teaching God's will based on righteousness to the people and 2) strengthening their faith so they resist all temptations, both the worldly everyday ones and the opportunistic ones by Satan himself.

Here's another analogy, with pop culture. Remember how in "Lord of the Rings" Gandolf is going crazy trying to open the door that is secured by a magic spell? He is reading the sign that says "Speak friend and enter." He thinks that if you are a real friend you will be able to guess the secret magic password phrase, but all his guesses are wrong. After a painfully long time he realizes that the password IS to speak "friend."

Satan and his temptations are exactly that obvious. There is no secret profound "battle" between humans and Satan or other "evil forces," one where humans must "help out" the obviously hapless God who is just not handling things without the supposed wisdom and combativeness of humans. You just don't pick up the temptations of Satan; it really IS AS SIMPLE AS THAT. Thinking you are battling him personally and that God is just kind of hanging around waiting to see what happens IS one of Satan's most effective temptations: "Guaranteed to work on saints and sinners alike."

I hope that you have found this thought provoking and helpful. Read the Bible (or Qur'an, of course, for my Muslim friends). It really is that simple. Fear of God and humility regarding the puniness of humans compared to the All Knowing of God is the best protection from temptation, such that those who attain it barely notice temptation even if there was a ton of it piled in front of them because, like those particles of dust, the truly faithful and humble just don't even notice worldly or Satan provided temptations.