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.
Showing posts with label all glory and credit to God alone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label all glory and credit to God alone. Show all posts
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Saturday, November 28, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, August 10, 2009
A quick answer about angels
Someone recently asked Rev. Billy Graham, in his daily column, why humans should not also worship angels. He, as always, gave a fine reply. He explained that God alone is all powerful and has always been, while angels are beings created by God, and therefore cannot be worshipped.
For those of you who like definitive scripture, I point you to St. Paul.
1 Colossians 2:18
Let no one cheat you who takes pleasure in self-abasement and worship of the angels, and enters vainly into what he has not seen, puffed up by his mere human mind.
This is included in Paul's list of erroneous practices.
I hope you have found this helpful. Check the Bible: it's all in there.
For those of you who like definitive scripture, I point you to St. Paul.
1 Colossians 2:18
Let no one cheat you who takes pleasure in self-abasement and worship of the angels, and enters vainly into what he has not seen, puffed up by his mere human mind.
This is included in Paul's list of erroneous practices.
I hope you have found this helpful. Check the Bible: it's all in there.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Identifying vanity, which can be quite subtle
I don't really have a long commentary or case study to provide at the moment, but just a thought that I had while reading some commentary on the Psalms by famed British Baptist Charles Spurgeon. Yes, even though he was a Baptist, John Calvin was, well, Calvinist, and Matthew Henry was Presbyterian, I do enjoy reading their commentaries.
Now, one of the great quarrels that the children of the Reformation, especially the Baptists, have with the Catholic Church is that they object to infant baptism. Spurgeon wrote a treatise condemning it quite soundly.
I have written before (check under the baptism label) explaining that infant baptism is biblical and there is scripture that alludes to its practice among the Israelites, who ceremonially washed infants and birth and wrapped them in new swaddling clothing which, when they are taken to the Temple, indicates their admittance into the faith. This is why the Gospel makes a point of Jesus being wrapped in swaddling clothing (he would have been washed first) and at the right time taken to the Temple.
The Israelites and thus Judaism, from which Christianity springs, had no concept of "waiting" for infants to become adults where they then "declare" for God! Jewish infants were consecrated to God and their faith community upon washing, swaddling, and the Temple presentation with sacrifice. It is from that custom and ritual that John the Baptist obtained the idea to baptize.
That is the greatness of John the Baptist. I often have wondered why more people did not wonder, and ask, "From where did John the Baptist get the idea to baptize people with water?" John the Baptist got the "idea" when the Holy Spirit inspired him to realize that the people needed a new baptism to prepare for the Messiah, the one whose way he knew he was preparing. Thus John the Baptist repeats what people were already doing, but with his strong message of the need to repent and convert. The Jewish people were already dedicating their newborns to God through their washing, swaddling, and infant presentation to the Temple with sacrifice.
It is for this reason that Catholics correctly maintain that the proper Biblical stance is to baptize infants as their entry into the faith community, just as the Israelites had washed, swaddled and brought their infants to the Temple. John the Baptist, through his greatness (remember that Jesus himself called John the Baptist the greatest of men), recognized through the Holy Spirit that the people needed to prepare for a new way, for the Messiah. Thus he "re-washed" believers, baptizing them, just as if they are spiritual and physical infants again. That is why John the Baptist performed "adult" baptism, because he was preparing the way, the new way, the New Covenant, that would come through Jesus Christ. But he used the method that was already firm tradition and the ritual that was part of the Law, which is to wash, swaddle and present at the Temple infants... except now these of necessity were adults who were like infants again, awaiting the Messiah and Savior.
So where does the vanity enter into the point that I am making? With the best of intentions and the most pure of heart, those who are the most critical of the Catholic Church for infant baptism are guilty of vanity. It seems as though no pastors want to give up being "the one" to "lead" and "conduct" an adult to God through adult baptism.
You see, when an infant is baptized one cannot take "credit" for bringing that soul to God, since the infant's parents, and godparents who sponsor the baptism, have made that decision for the child. Thus Catholics are exactly like the people of the Old Covenant, the Chosen People, the Israelites, the Jews of biblical times: they do not "wait" for the child to become an adult and 'choose' God. An infant is washed (baptised), swaddled (the baptismal gown), and presented to the Temple for presentation with sacrifice (brought to the church, blessed, and recorded as a member of the faithful).
My point is not to have dueling scripture or to re-argue the problem and the error of misunderstanding. My point is to help many of you to understand that vanity, personal vanity where one takes "credit" for "bringing a soul to God," is very, very pernicious and subtle, and it hides in even the best and most well intentioned of men and women. The Catholic Church continues what the biblical Temple attending Jews did throughout the centuries and there is no "credit" for doing what is obviously one's parental and faith forming duty, which is to dedicate one's infant to God at the early appropriate time.
Obviously in the early days of the Church, baptism started with adults because it symbolized the break from the Old Covenant and the joining of the New Covenant. But remember this: the New Covenant applies to all, Jesus Christ as Lord brought it for everyone, not just for adults who one day suddenly realize they are "ready." I have observed in people's hearts that one barrier to fruitful dialogue and understanding of the Catholic doctrine-and its origins-results from the unconscious clinging to the vanity of adult baptism, as personal "credit" for "bringing the adult into the fold, "credit" which is pointless and not even part of the Catholic psyche since one is simply doing one's parental duty when one has one's infant baptized.
If you are being honest with me, and yourself, if you imagine and picture the scenario of the truth that I am saying, you will watch your inner screen of emotions carefully and thus detect that qualm of not wanting to give up the adult person being baptized looking at YOU as the one giving them the gift. The fiercely denominational and independent structure of the Protestant faiths is another way to understand this "credit" and baptism "competition" of vanity. Catholic churches don't compete with each other, for example, for being "the one" who "brought that infant to baptism." If anything they have gone too far in the other direction, where it's not as personal a family experience as it used to be in my day. I still remember with horror my godson's baptism was part of something like two dozen families all have a massive baptism event, rather than the personal family experience that it was when my niece was baptized years earlier. Baptism in some parishes have more the whiff of bureaucracy, in other words, than any whiff of vanity. But if one is objective one cannot help but to observe that those who conduct adult baptism and who go out of their way to be intolerant and critical of Catholic infant baptism are, in fact, very strongly tied to the vanity of the taking "credit" for "adding an adult to one's personal flock." Remember, that's God's job and all credit and glory are to him and him alone.
I hope that this has given you something to think about. Vanity, especially in faith, is a very pernicious, subtle, and strong power, one that must be guarded against lest it harm rather than promote humility, sanctity, and giving the true glory to God.
Now, one of the great quarrels that the children of the Reformation, especially the Baptists, have with the Catholic Church is that they object to infant baptism. Spurgeon wrote a treatise condemning it quite soundly.
I have written before (check under the baptism label) explaining that infant baptism is biblical and there is scripture that alludes to its practice among the Israelites, who ceremonially washed infants and birth and wrapped them in new swaddling clothing which, when they are taken to the Temple, indicates their admittance into the faith. This is why the Gospel makes a point of Jesus being wrapped in swaddling clothing (he would have been washed first) and at the right time taken to the Temple.
The Israelites and thus Judaism, from which Christianity springs, had no concept of "waiting" for infants to become adults where they then "declare" for God! Jewish infants were consecrated to God and their faith community upon washing, swaddling, and the Temple presentation with sacrifice. It is from that custom and ritual that John the Baptist obtained the idea to baptize.
That is the greatness of John the Baptist. I often have wondered why more people did not wonder, and ask, "From where did John the Baptist get the idea to baptize people with water?" John the Baptist got the "idea" when the Holy Spirit inspired him to realize that the people needed a new baptism to prepare for the Messiah, the one whose way he knew he was preparing. Thus John the Baptist repeats what people were already doing, but with his strong message of the need to repent and convert. The Jewish people were already dedicating their newborns to God through their washing, swaddling, and infant presentation to the Temple with sacrifice.
It is for this reason that Catholics correctly maintain that the proper Biblical stance is to baptize infants as their entry into the faith community, just as the Israelites had washed, swaddled and brought their infants to the Temple. John the Baptist, through his greatness (remember that Jesus himself called John the Baptist the greatest of men), recognized through the Holy Spirit that the people needed to prepare for a new way, for the Messiah. Thus he "re-washed" believers, baptizing them, just as if they are spiritual and physical infants again. That is why John the Baptist performed "adult" baptism, because he was preparing the way, the new way, the New Covenant, that would come through Jesus Christ. But he used the method that was already firm tradition and the ritual that was part of the Law, which is to wash, swaddle and present at the Temple infants... except now these of necessity were adults who were like infants again, awaiting the Messiah and Savior.
So where does the vanity enter into the point that I am making? With the best of intentions and the most pure of heart, those who are the most critical of the Catholic Church for infant baptism are guilty of vanity. It seems as though no pastors want to give up being "the one" to "lead" and "conduct" an adult to God through adult baptism.
You see, when an infant is baptized one cannot take "credit" for bringing that soul to God, since the infant's parents, and godparents who sponsor the baptism, have made that decision for the child. Thus Catholics are exactly like the people of the Old Covenant, the Chosen People, the Israelites, the Jews of biblical times: they do not "wait" for the child to become an adult and 'choose' God. An infant is washed (baptised), swaddled (the baptismal gown), and presented to the Temple for presentation with sacrifice (brought to the church, blessed, and recorded as a member of the faithful).
My point is not to have dueling scripture or to re-argue the problem and the error of misunderstanding. My point is to help many of you to understand that vanity, personal vanity where one takes "credit" for "bringing a soul to God," is very, very pernicious and subtle, and it hides in even the best and most well intentioned of men and women. The Catholic Church continues what the biblical Temple attending Jews did throughout the centuries and there is no "credit" for doing what is obviously one's parental and faith forming duty, which is to dedicate one's infant to God at the early appropriate time.
Obviously in the early days of the Church, baptism started with adults because it symbolized the break from the Old Covenant and the joining of the New Covenant. But remember this: the New Covenant applies to all, Jesus Christ as Lord brought it for everyone, not just for adults who one day suddenly realize they are "ready." I have observed in people's hearts that one barrier to fruitful dialogue and understanding of the Catholic doctrine-and its origins-results from the unconscious clinging to the vanity of adult baptism, as personal "credit" for "bringing the adult into the fold, "credit" which is pointless and not even part of the Catholic psyche since one is simply doing one's parental duty when one has one's infant baptized.
If you are being honest with me, and yourself, if you imagine and picture the scenario of the truth that I am saying, you will watch your inner screen of emotions carefully and thus detect that qualm of not wanting to give up the adult person being baptized looking at YOU as the one giving them the gift. The fiercely denominational and independent structure of the Protestant faiths is another way to understand this "credit" and baptism "competition" of vanity. Catholic churches don't compete with each other, for example, for being "the one" who "brought that infant to baptism." If anything they have gone too far in the other direction, where it's not as personal a family experience as it used to be in my day. I still remember with horror my godson's baptism was part of something like two dozen families all have a massive baptism event, rather than the personal family experience that it was when my niece was baptized years earlier. Baptism in some parishes have more the whiff of bureaucracy, in other words, than any whiff of vanity. But if one is objective one cannot help but to observe that those who conduct adult baptism and who go out of their way to be intolerant and critical of Catholic infant baptism are, in fact, very strongly tied to the vanity of the taking "credit" for "adding an adult to one's personal flock." Remember, that's God's job and all credit and glory are to him and him alone.
I hope that this has given you something to think about. Vanity, especially in faith, is a very pernicious, subtle, and strong power, one that must be guarded against lest it harm rather than promote humility, sanctity, and giving the true glory to God.
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