Glory to God, not pride, the path to safety

The world is an unsafe place, ever since Adam and Eve sinned their way out of God's perfect protection of Eden. It does not matter how "good" or "wicked" you are, nor what your intentions are behind your deeds, or your motivations behind your thoughts or actions, nor what religion or not that you are, and certainly not how "gifted" or "enlightened" you think you are. The world remains an unsafe place because mishaps and death are a fact of life.

Having said that, the one way to be the safest possible in a physically unsafe world is to use one yardstick, one measure, in all your thoughts and deeds, and even your day to day actions. Do not do anything unless you dedicate your action to the greater glory of God first and foremost. If you do something based on your own pride, you are more vulnerable to mishaps and death.

Pride causes people to take chances that they do not need to risk. Pride causes people to crave money, power and media attention with public adulation. Pride causes companies and governments to not have the correct attention to the correct risks, dangers and problems that they and other people face. Pride causes people to mistrust other people's good advice.

Proverbs 16:18

Proverbs 18:12


If you pause before anything that you do, and ask yourself just very quickly, "Is God glorified in what I am about to do, or am I about to do something based on pride?" I guarantee that while death and mishaps still will occur, one's priorities will be more correct and many mishaps will be avoided.

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Sirach 6:16-18
A faithful friend is a life-saving remedy, such as he who fears God finds; for he who fears God behaves accordingly, and his friend will be like himself. My son, from your youth embrace discipline; thus will you find wisdom with graying hair.

Proverbs 16:18
Pride goeth before disaster, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Proverbs 18:12
Before his downfall a man's heart is haughty, but humility goes before honors.

Understanding God: punishment

I noticed an article by a pastor refuting the idea that God ever punishes (via weather or individual tragedy) in these modern times. You can find it by doing a Google news search on punishment, which is how I came across it. I thought about writing to the pastor but decided to write a quick column here instead.

Now, I'm going to say this with kindness, but firmly. Too often pastors who want to minister in a time of grief are so mushy that they surrender all scriptural integrity and thus ultimately lose their credibility with the believers that they are trying to help. The tone of that opinion piece, for those who don't read it on their own, is as follows. 1) He's quivering with indignation at those pastors who imply that disasters such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina etc might be the full or partial result of God's wrath 2) He is faced with a person situation where members of his flock have suffered the loss of a small child in a tragic accident 3) The parents, grief stricken, worry if they are at fault via sinfulness or omission of faith in some way and 4) Pastor assures them that God does not punish temporally. What???

I am ALL for comforting the parents. Here is how it ought to have been done. 1) Yes, God does punish, because the scripture is full of God's own words of warning and specific follow up, and he does punish both individuals and nations 2) Thankfully his punishment is very rare because most humans suffer their own consequences of misdeeds, so God tends to punish mostly in instances of great sin and falling away of faith, such as idolatry 3) They can, however, receive great comfort from the Gospel's clear and unmistakable correction of two sinful misapprehensions of the time of Jesus, which is that the sins of fathers and mothers are visited upon the children (Jesus refutes that) and that children are not of great worth to God (Jesus most certainly refutes that).

So this pastor should have confirmed rather than minimized or denied that God has, does and will indeed punish both individuals and nations, but thankfully that is rare and it is very difficult to second guess a specific incident. He should have praised them for their self examination in this matter. He then should have comforted them most strongly by explaining that Jesus himself refuted what was a popular belief which is that calamity fell upon children due to either their own sinfulness or that of their parents, plus Jesus explained that children are the role models for those who wish to enter heaven. Thus it is extremely unlikely that God would punish parents for some imagined (or real) fault by having their little child run down by a car.

The pastor probably would have to explain the difference between God being in control and allowing bad things to happen versus God actually smiting via punishment, since people, including those in ministry, seem not to understand that, so of course the people are also confused. It is back to the obvious truth that God put into place natural laws and consequences, including the dangers due to mechanics and physics of death via injury due to mishap or lack of care or attentiveness. God is not going to step in with a miracle to overcome such an inevitability in a finite and injury/sickness prone human life. That is the difference between God "being in control/allowing" bad things to happen versus God "punishing" or "smiting."

Think of the time when the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt and God sent punishments, warned of by Moses and intending to motivate the Egyptians to let the people go. God sent punishments that on a low scale happen anyway, for the most part. For example, grasshoppers eat crops all the time, and people die of plagues, etc. When it is normal part of life, it is an example of God being in control but not punishing. However, when Moses warned the Pharaoh that he was defying God's will and then God backs up what Moses says with an eruption of pests or the sudden onslaught of plague, that is God smiting or punishing. If one always uses common sense when reading scripture one always finds illumination.

So the pastor could have explained to the parents that little children get into tragic accidents all the time and it is a constant but natural danger of life, which God is in control of but does not manipulate arbitrarily... far from it, since he allows humans to stumble into finally doing the right thing (such as automobile safety features, safe food laws, etc) all on their own taking decades or even hundreds of years to do so. Like the natural hardships in Egypt, their child's accident is a consequence of a routine risk of being alive. God intervenes with punishment, as the scripture demonstrates, only when the people and their religious leaders as a whole fall away from him, especially those who engage in idolatry.

The parents may be grieving but they are thinkers. They will read the Bible and wonder why any pastor denies that God does punish somewhere and somehow since the Bible is filled with examples. The pastor's job is not to strip God part of his job description, but to explain how to wisely discern and be comforted through the Gospel, the word of the Lord Jesus Christ, who addressed exactly those questions during his time (see where the disciples ask Jesus about deaths in a recent rebellion, plus deaths in an accident involving a collapsed tower, where they asked him who was the sinners that caused these current news tragedies, and Jesus explains that it does not work like that in God's eyes.)

I hope you have found this helpful, especially if you are in a helping profession where such questions are encountered on just about a daily basis.

.... I just decided to add one more thought, as I'm trying to pretend this is a conversation and anticipate questions. What if I was asked, "OK, suppose these parents were idolators? Does this mean that God kind of sent that car to run over the child as punishment?"

My answer is that no, it's not such a direct action, since God never causes evil to happen. What it means is that if the child's death is at all connected to the parents' idolatry, this is how it would occur, in one of two ways. The first is that their idolatry distracted them from routine precautions and responsibilities. I'll make an extreme example just because it's simple to get. Suppose those parents thought that nothing bad would ever happen to their child whenever the Moon is in the sign of Leo (which occurs for a few days every month). So on those couple of days the parents are very lax in their dilligence of their child's safety, thinking that due to the idolatrous teachings of their cult that their child is "protected" due to idolatrous and bogus powers. Thus God does not have to "send the car" to hit the child since the parents' own false beliefs prompted through natural law of cause and effect a dangerous situation with no precautions. So it is a punishment of their own making for putting their faith in false idols instead of in God and in the truth of the world as it really is, which is that children must always be watched and protected, where at all possible without turning yourself into a total control freak.

The second possibility is that again, suppose the parents were secret idolators. As idolators that means they have no faith in the true God, or that they are lukewarm believers who diminish God's authority in their personal lives by sharing it with bogus idolatrous beliefs. In this case God has a option to perform a miracle and save their child by having an angel tap the shoulder of the driver, or push the child out of the way, etc. but God will usually withhold a miracle if, I mean, duh, people are diminishing his authority through disbelief and idolatry. Thus, again, God does not send the car to hit the poor child and instead, God's heart breaks for the child, but he does not intervene with a miracle if that miracle is going to be attributed to glorify idolatry and occult beliefs. Again, that is punishment that is a natural outcome of the people's own actions, in this theoretical scenario...

Another exercise in clarity of thought

As always, I have especially the young people in mind, although also those who are older who have suffered at the hands of very poor educational and spiritual formulators in their personal lives and who are trying to correct those deficiencies and errors.

Today I had a thought in which I used the word "fateful" correctly. And so I realized this would be a good time to correct the misconceptions that have arisen over the years around two words and their associated concepts: "destiny" and "fate."

The concepts of destiny and fate are ancient and come from pre-religious and pagan human societies and their effort to understand what hidden powers and forces control all or parts of their lives. Destiny implied a predestination of an entire life, from start to finish. Fate implied a foregone conclusion to a particular event. They have slightly different meanings, therefore. A person would be viewed as having a "destiny" that describes their entire life, while "fate" is like a momentous conclusion to an event or chapter of life which may or may not be the end of the person's life.

Two things ought to have changed human beings' views of so-called destiny and fate. One is that better understanding of science, biology, society and the consequences of freedom of choice have taken the mystery out of ordinary life events. For example, remember that early humans did not understand the origins of many diseases. Now instead of thinking a certain person was "destined" to die young, people understand that a person may have contracted a terminal disease or develop a condition with no cure. People ascribed to "destiny" all sorts of things they did not understand, like hygiene, undetectable medical conditions, droughts and famines, etc.

The second thing that has in fact also improved human debunking of so-called destiny and faith are the understanding of a benevolent one God, who only wishes well for humans and gives them freedom of choice along with guidance. The faithful came to understand that while God knows all and knows what choices humans will make, and what future conditions (such as the weather) will bring, God is not treating humans like pre-programmed game pieces.

In this secular and occult infested modern society, however, I noticed that the old and inappropriate definitions of destiny and fate have crept into common thinking. Sadly, the words are also the tools of those who push anti-religious agendas and who seek to mislead people through pseudo-"spirituality." So this is why I want to help people to understand the origins of the concepts, the reason they should be debunked, and also how one can correctly use the terms (after all, I'm not saying it's "word banning" time!)

One can safely and correctly use the word "destiny" when describing a human laid plan for another human, but you must at the same time recognize how rarely it comes true. See, throughout history people have used the words "destiny" and "fate" not in in the beginning of a human's life, but looking "back" and applying such a label to a life lived to its conclusion. So people would write books and say that someone was "destined" or "fated," but they are "Monday morning quarterbacking" by looking back on what has already occurred and choosing those labels! In truth you can rarely say in advance that someone is "destined" or "fated" to anything at all! Here is an obvious example.

One could say that The Prince of Wales is "destined" to be King of England. He is the heir and his mother, the Queen, will not live forever (though God grant her many years, I hope). So one could safely say that the Prince of Wales is destined to be the King of England as that is his accepted position and those are the "rules." But can you actually say that even in this most obvious and safest of examples of the use of the word and concept "destiny?" Actually, no. In recent years the media has speculated about all sorts of scenarios where that might not actually take place. Life is simply unpredictable (and only God knows for sure what will happen) that even the most obvious human example of "destiny" is dubious at best! So I actually advise against using the word "destiny" simply because it no longer (if it ever did) measure up in the reality based world.

You cannot even say that someone is "destined" to starve to death in Darfur. After all, many agencies and people of good will fight to prevent that from happening. So perhaps a hundred years ago someone unknown (but to God) and obscure in a remote area might be "destined" to starve simply because there were no real alternatives. But now reporters and agencies have a presence everywhere and anything is indeed possible, if only humans put their minds to it. "Destiny" is a bad word, in my opinion, because it saps humans of their God given will power to work hard for the better alternatives to the dire situation someone may be forced to endure.

"Fate" is a safer word if someone uses it properly. Here's how I view it. I never use the word "fate" because of the same objections and reality of freedom of will and choice that humans have. However I do occasionally use the word "fateful" when I express solidarity with a human who has had a momentous consequence or outcome to a routine action or choice. I do so only in that I marvel at how a fullness of effect has occurred, but this by no means indicates that the "fateful outcome" was inevitable.

I was reading the excellent www.latimes.com coverage of the tragic collision of trains north of Los Angeles city and they have a section with basic information and memorials for each identified deceased victim. All of them are so sad, and we all mourn the pointlessness of an accident or tragedy that should not have happened, and pray for the survivors' strength and recovery, and the identification of further safety measures to eliminate at least more of the risk from whatever was the cause. It was while I was reading one of the victim's information that I thought, "How fateful!"

By that I meant I was deeply moved by the routine actions and decisions that resulted in that person being on that train, in that car, and suffering fatal wounds. And so the culmination of all the routine and totally justifiable daily actions of that person culminated in such a fateful outcome. This does not mean that this was the person's "destiny" or "fate!" What it means is that this particular person's life just converged with a separate uncontrollable and unforeseeable event that is fateful in magnitude.

Think of a person's life as being a line that extends into the distance. Another person, and their analogous line of life, intersects. If it is a routine intersection (say you both go to work for the same employer and meet each other for the first time on the job) that is simply "life." Life is the intersection of many individuals and events, day in and day out. But when there is a momentous conclusion, either good or dire, one can marvel and say "how fateful" as a way to describe how momentous that intersection was, as in this train collision. Most strongly, though, you must remind yourself that this is not "fate at work" or "destiny." No one "has to die" or is "fated to die" because someone else misses a red light signal or equipment breaks down. But one can honestly wonder and shake one's head at the fatefulness of the intersection when it does take place with such a momentous outcome.

My deceased cousin's wife was once complaining to me, while my cousin was still alive, how unfair it was that she missed out on a big company downsizing payout. (Turns out she already had tons of money I didn't know about, so I dealt with her complaint with sympathy since I didn't know she was just being greedy for more on top of what she already had). I told her and my cousin that just because she didn't get that check does not mean she should obsess about "injustice." I asked, "What if you got run over by a car on the way to the bank to cash that check?" When I said that I was reminding her that there is no "A" or "B" series of events in one's life. It is all a complexity of realistic possibilities. There is no "safe" or "guaranteed" thread of destiny or fate to detect and follow. All events are both fraught with meaning (because they all contribute to life) and are at the same time insignificant, in the sense that there are not "sliding doors" where if one goes one way your whole life is different than if you went another. That is "stinking occult thinking."

Here's an example. When writing about the train accident the news media routinely reports on other recent California train accidents. The most recent one before this past week's is that guy who decided to suicide by parking his car on the train tracks. So here is an example of where one might think, ah, this guy chooses to suicide, and so he is "selecting that sliding door" (A) instead of (B) which is "not suiciding." But what happens? Um, (Z). He chickens out to not suicide (not A) but is not (B) because guess what? He leaves the car there so that the train rams into it and something like eleven passengers are killed. He's in prison. So there was no (A) or (B) sliding door because people and life are complex, messy and more robust than people give life credit for. Life is not so delicate that it hinges on a series of (A) or (B) choices. That's how you get a (Z) out of an (A) or (B) decision. This guy soaked his car in fuel, left it there on the tracks, ran away and did not try to warn people, maybe he was addicted and under influence or withdrawal at the time he "planned," etc etc... and so there is a sequence of events that are not "foreordained" or "fated" but are fateful in their outcome.

So one can only react, once in a while, as I did, to the complexity of real genuine life and shake one's head in sympathy and say or think to oneself, "How fateful," as kind of a memorial to the culmination of separate events that intersect in such a momentous way. It will be additionally "fateful" if one finds during investigations that chances to avoid this were missed, but not because it was "meant to be," but rather, how great in sacrifice is the reaping of what might or might not have been sown. For example, if someone had voted down a budget for more safety, and then he or she is on the very train that derails. I'm not saying that this would happen, but that is an example of where one might notice a "fatefulness" of the confluence of the decisions and how they intersect. That starts to go into the subject of "consequences" and "implications" of action rather than fatefulness. Fatefulness has more of a random feeling to it because the intersection is so unforeseen and unforeseeable. Consequences is like sending soldiers into battle without body armor; that's hardly "destiny" or "fate."

I hope you find this helpful and a way to exercise clearing your mind of the gunk of occult enabling and dehumanizing thinking, and seeing human life and its continuum of complexity of options more simply and truthfully.

Am so sad for victims of LA trains crashing

It is just a terrible and sad thing. I was a daily train commuter for many years and grew up in a "railroad town" near the tracks, and I just feel such sadness for all who were killed, terribly injured, traumatized and for the suffering families and loved ones.

I want to make a mention of appreciation for heavy equipment operators, who are essential to these rescues and recoveries. I marvel how they get the equipment in place where there is such unexpected terrain (as they have to get to wherever the accident occurred), lift such heavy wreckage, and yet do it delicately so that rescuers can get within safely and that for those who may survive the odds, that they do not harm any who might be trapped within. Seeing the photos from this accident it reminded me of the iron workers and heavy equipment operators at the World Trade Center. I think these heavy equipment operators all deserve a lot of ongoing credit and appreciation, in addition to the many rescue services.

Prayers and condolences for all involved.