I know someone has a question regarding why occult work seems to work, and then suddenly and repeatedly falls apart along the exact same lines as the original formulation.
Not in a mood for heavy blogging, so here's the gist. When someone does occult activity they lay down tracks, and the more they use the tracks the heavier a path they leave. Suppose they think they fulfilled their original objective. It's not like they can "pick up the tracks" of the path they had laid. The path of their spelling, or other occult activities (astrology, anagrams, numbers, cards, etc) remains because they made it happen. It's not like they can undo history like it never happened, as they obviously did those occult things to achieve a presumed result. Once the result is obtained (or as more usual, is a total fail), the spiritual and activity path remains as they have left footprints.
At this point the "wages of sin is death" kicks in along the pathway that was laid down. Occult work is sinful and evil because it places a pathway in place and presumes someone's right to oppress another person (or "self bless") where that right belongs to God alone. So the footsteps remain of the original occult activity. Punishment, either deliberate delivered via God by his angels, or natural (consequences of very bad decision making) then follows the same footsteps that person had laid down.
Let me use an easy example. Let's say someone put a spell down, or did occult work, against someone using the number five. Let's say it was done through numerology (where they whammy some person using presumed "5" power) or it was done through anagram or other "word" power (using the letters F, I, V, E, as in "fie to V" or something like that to whammy someone with a V or whatever). Working or not, valid or bogus, the occult work drew a line that involves the number 5 or the letters F, I, V and E. God and his creation nature will respond and follow that path back to the person, their supporters, and/or even those who benefit from other parallel bad deeds (not necessarily part of the whammy 5 group).
A natural backlash example would be if the person uses 5 for magic/occult and then is blind to some real life danger that involves 5, since they are thinking only of magic and not real world. So they get run over by a truck on route 5 or something because they fall into an unconscious neglect of their normal real life caution since they think they "control 5." So without even realizing it they drive along route 5 and ignore normal safety protocol.
A God backlash example is he allows his angels to confound the occult maker by opposing them via the same pathways they had laid down. So angels will throw, with God's permission, a boomerang, so to speak, along the 5 or the F,I,V,E footsteps, and that boomerang will often hit something that at some point is in service to or allied with or a beneficiary of the person who had performed the occult in the first place.
So the bottom line answer is that when someone does an occult deed the footprints never disappear since the act, successful or bogus, was real and a part of actual history. It is thus opened not only the one way original sense of the whammy or whatever, but not only back along the path to the originator, but also creates tributaries (like a river) along similar streams. So a 5 whammy by person A against person B can well create 5 whammy paths to C, D, E and so forth because energy will settle into similar channels of connectivity. Duh.
That is why all occult activity is forbidden by God and never can be considered "good," ever.
Showing posts with label angels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label angels. Show all posts
Friday, May 28, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Understanding the Bible: definition of "judge"
A quick point, related to what I've been blogging about (understanding context of the times).
Whenever you read the word "judge" in the Bible, remember there are two totally different meanings, do not assume the first meaning, while is a legal judging, such as a magistrate might do. Yes, it is sometimes used in that context, but just as often it is used to mean:
a hero or military leader who is called by God.
That is why the Book of Judges is called, um, the Book of Judges, as it's about military leaders and heroes who led Israel when Israel did not yet have kings. These were not legal folks who rendered magistrate justice.
So while St Paul is indeed writing about legal matters and the need for justice and righteousness in 1 Cor 6, you have to remember that he, a zealous Jew (so zealous he turned Christians over for death before his conversion) would always have the two definitions of "judge" in this mind, somewhat intertwined. When he mentions "judging angels" he is speaking of the other definition, embedded within his discussion of more legal matters and definition.
He's not wrong to do this, but it is, as all epistles are, a bit of unsupported statement since producing long written documents was tough enough and Paul like others assumed the recipient of their letters understood many of the extenuating meanings and nuances that others would not outside of a previously Jewish context. In other words he was not writing in a way to explain to people who would later (like moderns) think "judge" always and only means magisterial.
Remember that Israel was an entity completely under and of God, not an organized government nor a kingship in its early days. Instead God chose people to lead, starting with Moses. When Josue (Joshua) died the people asked God who they should select as their next military leader. This is because the Israelites were still, through military force, claiming their promised land, so their leader's first and foremost job was to be a military leader, one that God approved and supported. It had nothing to do with being a judge of legal matters, so there were twelve, for lack of a better word, heroes of Israel whose job was to lead the Israelites in times of danger and/or in military matters. They were given the title of "judges," using, obviously, the second definition.
Thus it is very easy for Paul in both his thinking and his writing to slip from one definition of judge into the other. He is building an argument, in 1 Cor 6, that people need to be just in all matters and not be hypocrites, and he uses public litigation as the example that he gives, where he questions and chastises how people can be just if they are so unjust and be litigation crazy (yes they were already suing each other right and left to get money and settle scores in those times). In 1 Cor 6:7 he implies that people should not sue each other and just suffer even obvious wrongs in silence and without counter suit and legal remedies (turn the other cheek, as Jesus taught). He then, having raised the problem of legal fights and injustice, and the related problem of being unworthy to judge even small matters of life, say nothing of the large ones, in 1 Cor 6:1-8 onward, then shifts in 1 Cor 6:9 onward to discussing the unjust, unsanctified and unjustified sinners and their impending judgment from God in general.
So you see what I mean? He is writing about a problem he sees 1) being too litigious and also being unforgiving and unjust, 2) points out the flaws in that mindset, 3) introduces a higher more Christian mindset and 4) concludes with warnings what to avoid and 5) the sacredness of the body in service to Christ. Paul is starting with a specific problem in order to raise the level of thinking, action and sanctity of those he is writing to and 1 Cor 6 progresses accordingly.
So, how to understand 1 Cor 6:3 "Do you not know that we shall judge angels?" Even though that is smack dab in the middle of him speaking of earthly legal matters, he does not mean that humans will judge (as in adjudicate or assess) the actions of angels or the angels themselves. He is hearkening back to the second definition of judges, the heroism and God given leadership, that humans who are truly within Jesus Christ will receive from God. In an effort to get people's heads out of the petty earthly legalities Paul drags angels into his writing in order to uplift people to their correct perspective which is to be genuine leaders authorized by God through Christ, and it is then that yes, people have the right to "judge" as in to "lead into spiritual battle" angels.
That is not so far fetched. Do you not all each have a guardian angel that God gave you to accompany you always while you live? Most times do you even remember that your guardian angels exists? Do you lead your guardian angel in times of danger such as witnessing for Christ? Or do you forget you have a guardian angel?
Your actions on earth in your individual sanctified service to Christ is your training wheels, your practice, in leading ("judging") an angel.
When you are a saint (as in dead and gone to heaven), then you will, God willing, have a role in leading (as in "judging") angels on their home turf, heaven, regarding earthly matters.
It's not too tough to understand that those who did not partner with their guardian angel, with humility, while alive on earth aren't exactly leading the charge of the angel brigade in heaven when it is that time.
1 Cor 6:2 Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters?
So you see, Paul is basically scolding most severely the people who look forward to being saints and angel partners as being incapable of even keeping themselves out of greedy and vengeful legal lawsuits, and he is warning that they are not even on the first rung of "judging angels."
o Current situation, constant litigation about earthly matters such as money, power and revenge.
o The current situation must be improved by bringing the matters before the saints, which means in other words having a Christian response (such as turning the other cheek). Paul means the saints are (second definition) providing the example, the leadership of behavior. He means that just as the saints did not seek money, power and revenge through the courts, likewise people must turn to the saints for their example to shun that response likewise.
o In the future the saints (most of whom were martyrs) will judge the world because they, in heaven, will bring their petitions of injustice received before God.
Revelation 8:4-5
And with the prayers of the saints there went up before God from the angel's hand the smoke of the incense. And the angel took the censer and filled it with the fire of the altar and threw it down upon the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, and flashes of lightning and an earthquake.
See, Paul wrote Corinthians well before John saw the revelation of the Apocalypse and in fact Paul was martyred decades before John died a natural death (the only one of the Apostles not to be martyred). Paul was dead for decades before John witnessed to Revelation, to the Apocalypse. Yet Paul correctly understood within the spirit of Jesus Christ that the sufferings of the martyrs and saints will accumulate before God's throne, and will in turn be justification for the End of Times. This is why the angel throws the censer with fire from the altar and the prayers of the saints onto earth to smite it.
And so now you can see that through the Holy Spirit the genuine Apostles and disciples of Christ are all reading from the same page, to use an old saying. Paul knew in his heart what John would later see in person, which is the role of the saints in judging (both meanings) the people of the earth. All who learned first hand from Christ understand the inevitability if not the timing of God's judgment of those alive on earth with the saints as witness and examples.
Now, the angels have never been and never will be part of earthly life, since angels abide within God in heaven and are not of time, matter or energy. Thus they of course are not "judged" by humans in a legal or a behavior sense. They are, however, available to be led by genuinely God appointed humans, but only after death. How do we know this? Because Jesus Christ himself never called upon an angel (though one was sent to him in the Garden of Gethsemane and others after the temptation). Jesus pointed out he could have called angels to protect him and destroy the city at any time, but he did not because that was not his purpose. Likewise the Apostles understood that the only angels on earth are the guardian angels, and that the combat will occur only at the End of Times.
So in a few sentences Paul is cramming together the mundane but very dire state of the litigious supposed Christians who are suing each other and pagans for money, power and revenge, the need for a higher thinking, and then, of course, the highest calling which will mostly occur in heaven, when the righteous and justified people are indeed among the angels.
This is a complicated but essential part of my point that one cannot understand the Bible if one does not understand the mental, spiritual and linguistic context of the various authors, all of whom write under the guidance of the Holy Spirit but in the language and meaning of that contemporary time.
I hope that this was helpful!
Whenever you read the word "judge" in the Bible, remember there are two totally different meanings, do not assume the first meaning, while is a legal judging, such as a magistrate might do. Yes, it is sometimes used in that context, but just as often it is used to mean:
a hero or military leader who is called by God.
That is why the Book of Judges is called, um, the Book of Judges, as it's about military leaders and heroes who led Israel when Israel did not yet have kings. These were not legal folks who rendered magistrate justice.
So while St Paul is indeed writing about legal matters and the need for justice and righteousness in 1 Cor 6, you have to remember that he, a zealous Jew (so zealous he turned Christians over for death before his conversion) would always have the two definitions of "judge" in this mind, somewhat intertwined. When he mentions "judging angels" he is speaking of the other definition, embedded within his discussion of more legal matters and definition.
He's not wrong to do this, but it is, as all epistles are, a bit of unsupported statement since producing long written documents was tough enough and Paul like others assumed the recipient of their letters understood many of the extenuating meanings and nuances that others would not outside of a previously Jewish context. In other words he was not writing in a way to explain to people who would later (like moderns) think "judge" always and only means magisterial.
Remember that Israel was an entity completely under and of God, not an organized government nor a kingship in its early days. Instead God chose people to lead, starting with Moses. When Josue (Joshua) died the people asked God who they should select as their next military leader. This is because the Israelites were still, through military force, claiming their promised land, so their leader's first and foremost job was to be a military leader, one that God approved and supported. It had nothing to do with being a judge of legal matters, so there were twelve, for lack of a better word, heroes of Israel whose job was to lead the Israelites in times of danger and/or in military matters. They were given the title of "judges," using, obviously, the second definition.
Thus it is very easy for Paul in both his thinking and his writing to slip from one definition of judge into the other. He is building an argument, in 1 Cor 6, that people need to be just in all matters and not be hypocrites, and he uses public litigation as the example that he gives, where he questions and chastises how people can be just if they are so unjust and be litigation crazy (yes they were already suing each other right and left to get money and settle scores in those times). In 1 Cor 6:7 he implies that people should not sue each other and just suffer even obvious wrongs in silence and without counter suit and legal remedies (turn the other cheek, as Jesus taught). He then, having raised the problem of legal fights and injustice, and the related problem of being unworthy to judge even small matters of life, say nothing of the large ones, in 1 Cor 6:1-8 onward, then shifts in 1 Cor 6:9 onward to discussing the unjust, unsanctified and unjustified sinners and their impending judgment from God in general.
So you see what I mean? He is writing about a problem he sees 1) being too litigious and also being unforgiving and unjust, 2) points out the flaws in that mindset, 3) introduces a higher more Christian mindset and 4) concludes with warnings what to avoid and 5) the sacredness of the body in service to Christ. Paul is starting with a specific problem in order to raise the level of thinking, action and sanctity of those he is writing to and 1 Cor 6 progresses accordingly.
So, how to understand 1 Cor 6:3 "Do you not know that we shall judge angels?" Even though that is smack dab in the middle of him speaking of earthly legal matters, he does not mean that humans will judge (as in adjudicate or assess) the actions of angels or the angels themselves. He is hearkening back to the second definition of judges, the heroism and God given leadership, that humans who are truly within Jesus Christ will receive from God. In an effort to get people's heads out of the petty earthly legalities Paul drags angels into his writing in order to uplift people to their correct perspective which is to be genuine leaders authorized by God through Christ, and it is then that yes, people have the right to "judge" as in to "lead into spiritual battle" angels.
That is not so far fetched. Do you not all each have a guardian angel that God gave you to accompany you always while you live? Most times do you even remember that your guardian angels exists? Do you lead your guardian angel in times of danger such as witnessing for Christ? Or do you forget you have a guardian angel?
Your actions on earth in your individual sanctified service to Christ is your training wheels, your practice, in leading ("judging") an angel.
When you are a saint (as in dead and gone to heaven), then you will, God willing, have a role in leading (as in "judging") angels on their home turf, heaven, regarding earthly matters.
It's not too tough to understand that those who did not partner with their guardian angel, with humility, while alive on earth aren't exactly leading the charge of the angel brigade in heaven when it is that time.
1 Cor 6:2 Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters?
So you see, Paul is basically scolding most severely the people who look forward to being saints and angel partners as being incapable of even keeping themselves out of greedy and vengeful legal lawsuits, and he is warning that they are not even on the first rung of "judging angels."
o Current situation, constant litigation about earthly matters such as money, power and revenge.
o The current situation must be improved by bringing the matters before the saints, which means in other words having a Christian response (such as turning the other cheek). Paul means the saints are (second definition) providing the example, the leadership of behavior. He means that just as the saints did not seek money, power and revenge through the courts, likewise people must turn to the saints for their example to shun that response likewise.
o In the future the saints (most of whom were martyrs) will judge the world because they, in heaven, will bring their petitions of injustice received before God.
Revelation 8:4-5
And with the prayers of the saints there went up before God from the angel's hand the smoke of the incense. And the angel took the censer and filled it with the fire of the altar and threw it down upon the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, and flashes of lightning and an earthquake.
See, Paul wrote Corinthians well before John saw the revelation of the Apocalypse and in fact Paul was martyred decades before John died a natural death (the only one of the Apostles not to be martyred). Paul was dead for decades before John witnessed to Revelation, to the Apocalypse. Yet Paul correctly understood within the spirit of Jesus Christ that the sufferings of the martyrs and saints will accumulate before God's throne, and will in turn be justification for the End of Times. This is why the angel throws the censer with fire from the altar and the prayers of the saints onto earth to smite it.
And so now you can see that through the Holy Spirit the genuine Apostles and disciples of Christ are all reading from the same page, to use an old saying. Paul knew in his heart what John would later see in person, which is the role of the saints in judging (both meanings) the people of the earth. All who learned first hand from Christ understand the inevitability if not the timing of God's judgment of those alive on earth with the saints as witness and examples.
Now, the angels have never been and never will be part of earthly life, since angels abide within God in heaven and are not of time, matter or energy. Thus they of course are not "judged" by humans in a legal or a behavior sense. They are, however, available to be led by genuinely God appointed humans, but only after death. How do we know this? Because Jesus Christ himself never called upon an angel (though one was sent to him in the Garden of Gethsemane and others after the temptation). Jesus pointed out he could have called angels to protect him and destroy the city at any time, but he did not because that was not his purpose. Likewise the Apostles understood that the only angels on earth are the guardian angels, and that the combat will occur only at the End of Times.
So in a few sentences Paul is cramming together the mundane but very dire state of the litigious supposed Christians who are suing each other and pagans for money, power and revenge, the need for a higher thinking, and then, of course, the highest calling which will mostly occur in heaven, when the righteous and justified people are indeed among the angels.
This is a complicated but essential part of my point that one cannot understand the Bible if one does not understand the mental, spiritual and linguistic context of the various authors, all of whom write under the guidance of the Holy Spirit but in the language and meaning of that contemporary time.
I hope that this was helpful!
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Understanding God: little look at big picture
How to say a few words about the gigantic subject of why God has chosen to allow humans to know him in the way that he has. In other words, many wonder why things have gone the way they have in getting to know God, rather than perhaps God imposing more of his presence on everyone in the world simultaneously. So here goes, but to keep this reasonably short and sweet, a few points to ponder rather than discourse.
1. God did introduce himself to everyone in the world, since he created Adam as first man, Eve as first woman, and they not only knew who God was but he was physically present in a form with them in Eden. We know this because they heard God's footsteps as he walked in the Garden in the cool of the evening, so God took a human form to interact with them face to face. (No, this does not mean that "all of God" is thus inserted into a human form. God IS everything, both visible and invisible, so he can't take all of himself away from heaven and the universe and stick his entirety into one place and not still be everywhere else. It never occurred to me to have to explain that until I came across people who actually thought that, particularly regarding Jesus. Pagans have a mental block with this, since they imagine their mythical and bogus gods to be able to move their position in a godlike way, appearing here and there, but when they are "there" they are only there. Pagan gods are by definition false since their believers do not acknowledge that the one true God can only be all encompassing and everywhere at the same time, since life and time do not exist outside of him. Thus God manifests in angelic or Theophany form, but that's an image of him, not his totality of spirit by any stretch of the imagination). So God did do the logical thing, which is to create a perfect place on earth where the first man and woman can know him and be companions to him.
2. Thus, even when they disobeyed God and were put out of Eden, they of course retained knowledge of God and a relationship with him. We know this because their sons, Cain and Abel, knew how to make offerings to God and received direct feedback from God on how worthy (or not) their offerings were. So God continues to speak with all the people of earth at the same time through Adam and Eve, their children, and the extended families that these children married into and beget on their own. Thus God continues in dialogue and relationship with each growing generation after Adam and Eve.
3. Now, as I discussed, at the same time as God is the creator of all that exists, both seen (earth and the universe) and unseen (heaven) in a physical way, God is also the creator in a spiritual way. Understanding God's role in the physical realm is like one lens in your pair of glasses, while understanding God's role in the spiritual (faith) realm is like the other lens in your pair of glasses. You need to look through them both at the same time, in a balanced way, to have a full and correct view. So it is alright for some of the faithful to be totally comfortable with Adam and Eve being literally the first humans created directly from dust by God, while others of the faithful believe that God created all that exists, including Adam and Eve, but that they are the beginning of "faith history," the "faith parents," not the only two human beings that exist in the beginning of humanity. Why do we know it is OK to have either view and still be faithful to God's word in scripture? Because if it were not OK to understand that other humans come into existence, God would have explained where the spouses of Adam and Eve's children came from. So it is not unfaithful to God's word in scripture to believe that Adam and Eve are either or both the actual biological parents of all human beings or they are the faith parents of all human beings, since they are the first and only that God chose to make himself known to.
The whole debate about evolution or creation, seven twenty-four hour days or millions-of-years God-days is really a diversion from faith, rather than faith affirming, because it is trying to textbook scripture into a "how did God actually do it, molecule by molecule" attempt that hinders rather than strengthens faith. I know that many in good faith feel the opposite, that they are somehow being disloyal to scripture if they believe that God had other people alive soon after Adam and Eve's creation, or that God may have used his own definition of a "day" during creation, rather than an earth-solar day. But again, if you really have faith in the scripture, which 1) states that the children of Adam and Eve married real people and had real children and 2) which states that God created the animals and the plants, but does not give details about his exact process, but extols Adam's naming and stewardship of them, you have to recognize that God used visible processes that humans can later discover, study, name, ponder and so forth as they collect knowledge (knowledge being one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, by the way).
Adam and Eve got into trouble because they sought the wrong knowledge, knowledge that would be used, they hoped, to be like God. So there is nothing wrong with knowledge (in fact, God teaches them how to create clothes from animal skins once they had their fall and had shame over nakedness in his sight). God expects humans to study nature and ponder how God made things work and ponder their wonder. There is a lengthy discourse by God in the scriptures (I'll let you look it up, LOL) where when he chastises humans and puts them in their place, he recounts the qualities of various animals that he, not humans, created, and the forces of nature that he, not humans, create and command. That is "good" knowledge, to understand (another gift of the Holy Spirit) the world around you, both geological and life forms, and the processes like weather... but the "bad" knowledge is to 1) think humans created it 2) that humans or idols control it, and not God and 3) to use that knowledge to be bad rather than good stewards, or to be unjust rather than just. So people of faith need to have faith that they are not "letting God down" or being "disloyal to his word" if they acknowledge that they do not fully understand how, or even why, God rendered creation as he did, using the time frames and processes that he created, ordained and commanded.
4. So now you start to understand why so much of Genesis is genealogy, with lists of who begot who. It is not just the list of proud parents and sons, but it is also a list of the humans and their families who keep in touch with God, who preserve the knowledge and dialogue initiated with Adam and Eve and their children. This is why it is called "faith history" in addition to "secular history." It is regular human history in that it lists events and places, but it is also faith history because it lists those who continued to know God and pass that knowledge and access to him through worship from generation to generation.
5. As I discussed in a recent blog, the early descendants of Adam and Eve met humans who, being from actual cities and their equivalent of "advanced civilization", seemed wondrous and they intermarried. We can understand that human nature is the same from the beginning to today. Some of the descendants of Adam and Eve would marry and bring their spouses into the faith, and knowledge of God, while others would marry and drift away, settling in distant places (which in those days could have been as short a distance as fifty miles) and not take their faith with them, and instead adapt to the local pagan beliefs and mythologies.
You see that same behavior on a micro scale every day in each family. Children in families that are religious move away, marry, and may change faith, lose faith, or transmit their faith to others. This is what happened, since humans are humans and God has given them free will, to the descendants of Adam and Eve. This is why a core of people retained the knowledge of God as he introduced himself to them, while others melded into the local pagan beliefs and mythologies.
6. This is where one must have faith and admire, rather than be disturbed, that God did not chase after every human being and demand that they know the one and only true him. Why is that reassuring rather than worrisome? Well, for many reasons. But the bottom line is this. Human beings will continue to exist and thrive only if they live in a truth based world, one that is genuine reality and honesty. The core of truthfulness and reality is realization of God's existence and his control of all that is and ever will be. Understanding humanity and understanding God are the most basic survival needs for the human species to continue living, say nothing of salvation after death. When humans start to deny God, it is the first warning sign that they will not thrive, and indeed could self destruct, very soon thereafter. This is not because God will smite them for not believing in him (as you can see, he lets regimes that deny him come and go, such as Communism). It is because when humans start to deny reality in the form of God, they will then start to engage in other self destructive behavior that is counter to reality as it really exists. Humans who live outside of truth and reality rapidly decay and fall apart, both individually and socially. We see much of that happening now. So God allows free choice (as he did when he created the angels and some decided not to serve and obey him, and hence fell from heaven) because free choice IS reality. God always opts for truthfulness and authenticity. If he wanted cool titanium robots he would have made them. He didn't. He made angels and he made human beings and they both have the ability to make a choice to believe and serve or not. The angels that fell believe God, obviously, since they were there in heaven with him and thus knew "how he did it," but they would not serve. Humans have to believe and choose to serve if they are to acknowledge truth and reality. It really is as simple as that.
7. Because God loves his creations, humans, who he considers, as the scriptures say, adopted children (and there is all sorts of cultural nuance in the esteem of those Biblical times for foster or adopted children, but rather than get into detail, scripture presents God's love as such to make clear that God is not false like the pagan gods, who presumably have biological children and so forth... God thus calls humans his adopted or foster children when he wants to be precise about that)....because God loves his children, even if they leave him and no longer believe, God has put in place a fail safe mechanism, LOL, or, a beacon, or a homing device, or a longing... or an emergency cell phone, whatever image you prefer, in their soul... a longing to know him. That is the movement of the Holy Spirit.
8. The Holy Spirit moves constantly among all individual human beings, and gatherings of them, whether near or afar, believers or not, stirring them to the desire to know the truth and to reach for that which is higher and the only genuine goodness that exists, that being God and a relationship with him. It is the Holy Spirit that maintains that yearning in people even through the spiritual aridity of living under God-denying tyrants and despots, of pagan rulership, or of people who drift away from knowledge of God and who have forgotten him and their faith history with him. It is that yearning, from the Holy Spirit, that results in societies and cultures developing respect for natural law and codes of conduct and humanity. It is the Holy Spirit who stirs among people who may develop a faith that is good intentioned but erroneous in theology, because the Holy Spirit is able to get at least a partial response that people want to be good to each other, and want both a more prosperous but also a more spiritual world.
I don't have the book in front of me now (probably in storage) but in one of the books, I think the series of books that interviewed Pope Benedict XVI before he was Pope, and he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, that he explains this in a very kind and insightful way that impressed me as I read it. I think he was being asked about other faiths, such as Buddhism and so forth, and why God would allow them to develop. The Pope explained, and here I am using my own words, that each faith that seeks belief in a higher power and spirituality and an inherent goodness among humans to each other is in a way, even obscurely or dimly, trying to reflect as in a mirror some level of acknowledgement of God through the work of the Holy Spirit.
So this is why as the growing multitudes of descendants of Adam and Eve populated the earth, just the core group, detailed generation by generation in the Bible, in the secular and faith history, maintained knowledge of the true God as he made himself known from the very beginning. However, you read in the Bible examples of where even pagan king, certain ones, had a open mindedness and even a longing for, and thus grew to respect and to worship, the God of the Israelites. Often that was through a demonstration of his power, as when God gifted Joseph with interpreting Pharaoh's dream. But there is no mistaking that there are examples in the Old Testament of where the demonstration of the true one God's power is the door opener, there is a yearning to understand the truth, a higher truth of God, that is like a slow growing seed, even among those who worshipped many idols and false gods.
9. So.... one of the questions, asked in jest sometimes but often in pain or puzzlement, by Jews is "why were we the Chosen People?" What I have detailed is why... because they are the lineage that through the generations of proliferating descendants of Adam and Eve, they have had consistent knowledge of the true one God, even when they were at their most disobedient. This is why I commented that the Jews know, at a gut level, God better than anyone. They have a continuity of God's constancy and eternal oneness and sameness through just about every possible variation of human history and challenge to their faith. This is why they were, Biblically, the Chosen People, because they have the unbroken continuity of knowing God as God first introduced himself to the first human beings.
10. To use a modern music term, Jews heard and hear the same song that is the true God, both plugged and unplugged.
11. However, God has always been consistent in stating that humans need and he will send the Savior, the Messiah. All of scripture points to the coming of Jesus Christ. God alone comprehends all of the perfection of his timing, that he sent Jesus when he did, where he did, to minister as he did, and to fulfill the scriptures and proclaim the New Covenant. This is, obviously, a huge topic of itself, but Jesus must be understood in the context of what I am explaining to you as being the refreshment, the renewal, of God's relationship to humans, beyond the tenuous, extreme minority of human population that were the descendants who have held fast to the continuity of the lineage of knowing God from the time of Adam and Eve to the then present. In the perfect timing that only God understands, since he is All Knowing, and knows all of what humans need, Jesus, who already existed in heaven as part of God himself eternal the beginning and the ever being of All, took human form in order to bring knowledge of God to all the world.
12. Previous to Jesus being born to humanity, humans knew God one of the two ways I have described. The first was through the lineage of those who recall and renew their relationship and service to God since Adam and Eve. The second was through those who seek God, in often very wrong or imperfect guises, but in honest response to the urgings of the Holy Spirit throughout the world. This is one reason that Jesus is given a title of the New Adam, not only because Jesus, corrects the great wrong of disobedience by Adam, but also because Jesus brings the face of God to all the world, as Adam first knew God in the Garden face to face. Jesus ministered only to the Jews, since Jesus was fulfillment of the Old Covenant with the Israelites and the bringing of the New Covenant to them... but it was obvious that Jesus was, as he said, the sign for all humankind. After his Resurrection and the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, God made it known that now the Gospel was to be preached to all. Jesus was like global email :-)
13. Now you might better understand what I have explained in previous blog postings about Islam. Descendants of Adam and Eve, and of Abraham, the Patriarch of what would become the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the forefathers of the Arabic people who would become Muslims were of that lineage who knew the true God, but who moved and settled at a distance from their brethren. This is all detailed in the Old Testament, but not what happened specifically to them, but we know through the obvious secular history that they settled among pagans in the area that is now Saudi Arabia. Thus they are a group of the many descendants who did not take the faith "along with them." That was not easy to do, since the Israelites were local patriarchs and eventually after the Exodus, a theocracy (religious rulership) on a very local basis, with the Ark and the Temple central. It's not like today where people could pack up their faith and believe in another neighborhood or country. So when people spread out to gain land for their growing families (and to avoid conflict), they could not really take their faith and remembrance with them. The Prophet (PBUH) reconnected those descendants back to the lineage of remembering and knowing the one true God, the God of Abraham, and also faithfully repeating the message and miracles of Jesus. Islam was born in order to plug those descendants of Adam and Eve back into the shared lineage of knowledge of the one true God.
To wrap up this little look at the big picture, one must, in honesty, admire and appreciate that God is no autocrat. God makes himself known as he really is, as he truthfully is, and is consistent and constant through the generations of human beings and indeed through the ages, since he is Eternal and Unchanging. He does not force humans into robotic or other artificial obedience since that is not his nature but more important than that, it is not the truth. Life and love is the truth, not coerced or enforced behavior, and God is the source of all life and love. Thus God provided a constancy of access to knowing him from the very beginning, and sent prophets among believers when they needed to correct the disobedience and straying of his people. Why does God punish, as we know he does, then? Because what he is punishing is denial of truth. Denying truth is, as I explained in the beginning of this commentary, not a useful survival trait for humanity. Disobedience to God is denial of truth, not God being arbitrary. For example, it's disobedient but also more to the point simply wrong, a lie, to worship an idol, a false god that simply does not exist, or the workings of human beings own hands. God punishes humans when they deny the truth because ultimately humans will destroy themselves (as they are most certainly doing now) by living amidst a fake world of lies. Denial of truth, constant lies and falseness are already destroying the livelihood, the sanity, the health, the morality, the ethics, and the decency of humanity... God dumping an asteroid onto the earth would just be the icing on the crumbling cake of what humanity is already doing to itself by denying truth in all arenas of life.
A species, human beings, cannot continue to thrive and/or survive in a world that they perceive in increasingly total falsehood. God already knows "how it will all turn out." More to the point, though, is to recognize that each saved soul is precious to God, just as each and every of the innumerable multitude of angels are known to him individually and loved by him, and as they serve God they share in his beatific vision of all that can and will be. Thus God will continue to be patient with generation after generation of unfaithful disbelievers because he loves and will save those, however few, that DO remain faithful to him and thus cognizant of the truth. I wrote not too long ago about the importance of not seeking the "best" or "right" faith, but seeking the truth, which will if honestly (and sanely) done will only lead you to the one true God who is truth and the source of all that is true. This is why humans can, and should, only marvel at the one true God, not the imaginings of human beings, who can in his perfection balance the giving of human beings the "free will" that they, like the angels in the beginning, craved and demanded, but will also draw a firm line in the sand about reality and the inevitable consequences of denying the truth and, thus, him.
Denying the truth of God is just like denying the truth in a secular life or death situation. If the bridge is out, broken over a raging river, it is not a survival strategy to deny the truth of the bridge being out and driving over it, and thus plunging to one's death, nonetheless. News story commenters often sardonically call that "Darwin at work," when someone does something incredibly stupid. It is the same with believing in the truth of how the world and the universe really works and of God's real presence. Disbelieving the truth means bad and stupid decisions that have their own consequences in the near term (as we see all over the world these days) AND, even if one evades outright denial of survival trait truths in life, when one dies one finds out the reality of God when it is too late to change what one has done in disobedience while alive. Again, it's not just because people "behaved bad" and God's "mad at them," but because disobedience to the God and denial of the truth is viral... disobedient believers and disbelievers don't just harm themselves but they harm others and lead others away from the truth. We see this on a massive scale today, one of the greatest perils facing young people today who have grown up in such hugely false times, knowing nothing different from fraud, fakery, poseurs, pride, denial and falsehood.
How difficult is that to understand? When Satan refused to serve he then got busy egging humans on to likewise not serve God. In a similar way, disbelievers and disobedient believers behave like mini-Satans, since their teachings, deeds and life examples are likewise intended to mislead others, leading them astray from God. That all ends badly, either by making life a lie and thus unbearable in either the short or the long term, or at the very end, when one finds that indeed God exists and he knows all that you have thought and done and has judged you upon your death.
The reassurance of God's constancy and ability to forgive anything (if sincere and immediate) should be of far greater comfort to humans than it is. Why is it not more reassuring? Because people have become somewhat addicted to uncertainty and falsehood, where even miserable lies are "better" than hopeful and good truths, in the minds of many.
In closing that line of thought, let's loop back to Adam. Think about how he dealt, poorly and thus fatally, with certainty and uncertainty. Adam embraced certainty, but only partially. He obviously believed in God, being face to face and taught by God, and thus he believed that the tree of knowledge had fruit that would give him some of God's knowledge. But here is what I mean by false love of uncertainty. God tells him not to eat the fruit of that tree. Eve, at the prompting of Satan, brings the apple to Adam. You must understand that in that moment Adam loved uncertainty, the "maybe" .... because obviously he thought, "Maybe I can get away with this." That is the horror of what modern humans are increasingly falling into. They have become in love with lies and uncertainty, and even denial of truth, since it plays to their weakness, which is pride. I mean, how dumb could Adam be? He believes God about everything, but then when offered the first chance to be uncertain about the truth of one specific thing that God says, he "bites." But far from being dumb, Adam is classic human being, where pride tempts a human to disbelieve the truth since he, or she, then thinks they control other "options." Then, like I gave the analogy above, people will drive over bridges that have fallen down, thinking that they have "options" rather than the humility of truth that the bridge has fallen down.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
1. God did introduce himself to everyone in the world, since he created Adam as first man, Eve as first woman, and they not only knew who God was but he was physically present in a form with them in Eden. We know this because they heard God's footsteps as he walked in the Garden in the cool of the evening, so God took a human form to interact with them face to face. (No, this does not mean that "all of God" is thus inserted into a human form. God IS everything, both visible and invisible, so he can't take all of himself away from heaven and the universe and stick his entirety into one place and not still be everywhere else. It never occurred to me to have to explain that until I came across people who actually thought that, particularly regarding Jesus. Pagans have a mental block with this, since they imagine their mythical and bogus gods to be able to move their position in a godlike way, appearing here and there, but when they are "there" they are only there. Pagan gods are by definition false since their believers do not acknowledge that the one true God can only be all encompassing and everywhere at the same time, since life and time do not exist outside of him. Thus God manifests in angelic or Theophany form, but that's an image of him, not his totality of spirit by any stretch of the imagination). So God did do the logical thing, which is to create a perfect place on earth where the first man and woman can know him and be companions to him.
2. Thus, even when they disobeyed God and were put out of Eden, they of course retained knowledge of God and a relationship with him. We know this because their sons, Cain and Abel, knew how to make offerings to God and received direct feedback from God on how worthy (or not) their offerings were. So God continues to speak with all the people of earth at the same time through Adam and Eve, their children, and the extended families that these children married into and beget on their own. Thus God continues in dialogue and relationship with each growing generation after Adam and Eve.
3. Now, as I discussed, at the same time as God is the creator of all that exists, both seen (earth and the universe) and unseen (heaven) in a physical way, God is also the creator in a spiritual way. Understanding God's role in the physical realm is like one lens in your pair of glasses, while understanding God's role in the spiritual (faith) realm is like the other lens in your pair of glasses. You need to look through them both at the same time, in a balanced way, to have a full and correct view. So it is alright for some of the faithful to be totally comfortable with Adam and Eve being literally the first humans created directly from dust by God, while others of the faithful believe that God created all that exists, including Adam and Eve, but that they are the beginning of "faith history," the "faith parents," not the only two human beings that exist in the beginning of humanity. Why do we know it is OK to have either view and still be faithful to God's word in scripture? Because if it were not OK to understand that other humans come into existence, God would have explained where the spouses of Adam and Eve's children came from. So it is not unfaithful to God's word in scripture to believe that Adam and Eve are either or both the actual biological parents of all human beings or they are the faith parents of all human beings, since they are the first and only that God chose to make himself known to.
The whole debate about evolution or creation, seven twenty-four hour days or millions-of-years God-days is really a diversion from faith, rather than faith affirming, because it is trying to textbook scripture into a "how did God actually do it, molecule by molecule" attempt that hinders rather than strengthens faith. I know that many in good faith feel the opposite, that they are somehow being disloyal to scripture if they believe that God had other people alive soon after Adam and Eve's creation, or that God may have used his own definition of a "day" during creation, rather than an earth-solar day. But again, if you really have faith in the scripture, which 1) states that the children of Adam and Eve married real people and had real children and 2) which states that God created the animals and the plants, but does not give details about his exact process, but extols Adam's naming and stewardship of them, you have to recognize that God used visible processes that humans can later discover, study, name, ponder and so forth as they collect knowledge (knowledge being one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, by the way).
Adam and Eve got into trouble because they sought the wrong knowledge, knowledge that would be used, they hoped, to be like God. So there is nothing wrong with knowledge (in fact, God teaches them how to create clothes from animal skins once they had their fall and had shame over nakedness in his sight). God expects humans to study nature and ponder how God made things work and ponder their wonder. There is a lengthy discourse by God in the scriptures (I'll let you look it up, LOL) where when he chastises humans and puts them in their place, he recounts the qualities of various animals that he, not humans, created, and the forces of nature that he, not humans, create and command. That is "good" knowledge, to understand (another gift of the Holy Spirit) the world around you, both geological and life forms, and the processes like weather... but the "bad" knowledge is to 1) think humans created it 2) that humans or idols control it, and not God and 3) to use that knowledge to be bad rather than good stewards, or to be unjust rather than just. So people of faith need to have faith that they are not "letting God down" or being "disloyal to his word" if they acknowledge that they do not fully understand how, or even why, God rendered creation as he did, using the time frames and processes that he created, ordained and commanded.
4. So now you start to understand why so much of Genesis is genealogy, with lists of who begot who. It is not just the list of proud parents and sons, but it is also a list of the humans and their families who keep in touch with God, who preserve the knowledge and dialogue initiated with Adam and Eve and their children. This is why it is called "faith history" in addition to "secular history." It is regular human history in that it lists events and places, but it is also faith history because it lists those who continued to know God and pass that knowledge and access to him through worship from generation to generation.
5. As I discussed in a recent blog, the early descendants of Adam and Eve met humans who, being from actual cities and their equivalent of "advanced civilization", seemed wondrous and they intermarried. We can understand that human nature is the same from the beginning to today. Some of the descendants of Adam and Eve would marry and bring their spouses into the faith, and knowledge of God, while others would marry and drift away, settling in distant places (which in those days could have been as short a distance as fifty miles) and not take their faith with them, and instead adapt to the local pagan beliefs and mythologies.
You see that same behavior on a micro scale every day in each family. Children in families that are religious move away, marry, and may change faith, lose faith, or transmit their faith to others. This is what happened, since humans are humans and God has given them free will, to the descendants of Adam and Eve. This is why a core of people retained the knowledge of God as he introduced himself to them, while others melded into the local pagan beliefs and mythologies.
6. This is where one must have faith and admire, rather than be disturbed, that God did not chase after every human being and demand that they know the one and only true him. Why is that reassuring rather than worrisome? Well, for many reasons. But the bottom line is this. Human beings will continue to exist and thrive only if they live in a truth based world, one that is genuine reality and honesty. The core of truthfulness and reality is realization of God's existence and his control of all that is and ever will be. Understanding humanity and understanding God are the most basic survival needs for the human species to continue living, say nothing of salvation after death. When humans start to deny God, it is the first warning sign that they will not thrive, and indeed could self destruct, very soon thereafter. This is not because God will smite them for not believing in him (as you can see, he lets regimes that deny him come and go, such as Communism). It is because when humans start to deny reality in the form of God, they will then start to engage in other self destructive behavior that is counter to reality as it really exists. Humans who live outside of truth and reality rapidly decay and fall apart, both individually and socially. We see much of that happening now. So God allows free choice (as he did when he created the angels and some decided not to serve and obey him, and hence fell from heaven) because free choice IS reality. God always opts for truthfulness and authenticity. If he wanted cool titanium robots he would have made them. He didn't. He made angels and he made human beings and they both have the ability to make a choice to believe and serve or not. The angels that fell believe God, obviously, since they were there in heaven with him and thus knew "how he did it," but they would not serve. Humans have to believe and choose to serve if they are to acknowledge truth and reality. It really is as simple as that.
7. Because God loves his creations, humans, who he considers, as the scriptures say, adopted children (and there is all sorts of cultural nuance in the esteem of those Biblical times for foster or adopted children, but rather than get into detail, scripture presents God's love as such to make clear that God is not false like the pagan gods, who presumably have biological children and so forth... God thus calls humans his adopted or foster children when he wants to be precise about that)....because God loves his children, even if they leave him and no longer believe, God has put in place a fail safe mechanism, LOL, or, a beacon, or a homing device, or a longing... or an emergency cell phone, whatever image you prefer, in their soul... a longing to know him. That is the movement of the Holy Spirit.
8. The Holy Spirit moves constantly among all individual human beings, and gatherings of them, whether near or afar, believers or not, stirring them to the desire to know the truth and to reach for that which is higher and the only genuine goodness that exists, that being God and a relationship with him. It is the Holy Spirit that maintains that yearning in people even through the spiritual aridity of living under God-denying tyrants and despots, of pagan rulership, or of people who drift away from knowledge of God and who have forgotten him and their faith history with him. It is that yearning, from the Holy Spirit, that results in societies and cultures developing respect for natural law and codes of conduct and humanity. It is the Holy Spirit who stirs among people who may develop a faith that is good intentioned but erroneous in theology, because the Holy Spirit is able to get at least a partial response that people want to be good to each other, and want both a more prosperous but also a more spiritual world.
I don't have the book in front of me now (probably in storage) but in one of the books, I think the series of books that interviewed Pope Benedict XVI before he was Pope, and he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, that he explains this in a very kind and insightful way that impressed me as I read it. I think he was being asked about other faiths, such as Buddhism and so forth, and why God would allow them to develop. The Pope explained, and here I am using my own words, that each faith that seeks belief in a higher power and spirituality and an inherent goodness among humans to each other is in a way, even obscurely or dimly, trying to reflect as in a mirror some level of acknowledgement of God through the work of the Holy Spirit.
So this is why as the growing multitudes of descendants of Adam and Eve populated the earth, just the core group, detailed generation by generation in the Bible, in the secular and faith history, maintained knowledge of the true God as he made himself known from the very beginning. However, you read in the Bible examples of where even pagan king, certain ones, had a open mindedness and even a longing for, and thus grew to respect and to worship, the God of the Israelites. Often that was through a demonstration of his power, as when God gifted Joseph with interpreting Pharaoh's dream. But there is no mistaking that there are examples in the Old Testament of where the demonstration of the true one God's power is the door opener, there is a yearning to understand the truth, a higher truth of God, that is like a slow growing seed, even among those who worshipped many idols and false gods.
9. So.... one of the questions, asked in jest sometimes but often in pain or puzzlement, by Jews is "why were we the Chosen People?" What I have detailed is why... because they are the lineage that through the generations of proliferating descendants of Adam and Eve, they have had consistent knowledge of the true one God, even when they were at their most disobedient. This is why I commented that the Jews know, at a gut level, God better than anyone. They have a continuity of God's constancy and eternal oneness and sameness through just about every possible variation of human history and challenge to their faith. This is why they were, Biblically, the Chosen People, because they have the unbroken continuity of knowing God as God first introduced himself to the first human beings.
10. To use a modern music term, Jews heard and hear the same song that is the true God, both plugged and unplugged.
11. However, God has always been consistent in stating that humans need and he will send the Savior, the Messiah. All of scripture points to the coming of Jesus Christ. God alone comprehends all of the perfection of his timing, that he sent Jesus when he did, where he did, to minister as he did, and to fulfill the scriptures and proclaim the New Covenant. This is, obviously, a huge topic of itself, but Jesus must be understood in the context of what I am explaining to you as being the refreshment, the renewal, of God's relationship to humans, beyond the tenuous, extreme minority of human population that were the descendants who have held fast to the continuity of the lineage of knowing God from the time of Adam and Eve to the then present. In the perfect timing that only God understands, since he is All Knowing, and knows all of what humans need, Jesus, who already existed in heaven as part of God himself eternal the beginning and the ever being of All, took human form in order to bring knowledge of God to all the world.
12. Previous to Jesus being born to humanity, humans knew God one of the two ways I have described. The first was through the lineage of those who recall and renew their relationship and service to God since Adam and Eve. The second was through those who seek God, in often very wrong or imperfect guises, but in honest response to the urgings of the Holy Spirit throughout the world. This is one reason that Jesus is given a title of the New Adam, not only because Jesus, corrects the great wrong of disobedience by Adam, but also because Jesus brings the face of God to all the world, as Adam first knew God in the Garden face to face. Jesus ministered only to the Jews, since Jesus was fulfillment of the Old Covenant with the Israelites and the bringing of the New Covenant to them... but it was obvious that Jesus was, as he said, the sign for all humankind. After his Resurrection and the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, God made it known that now the Gospel was to be preached to all. Jesus was like global email :-)
13. Now you might better understand what I have explained in previous blog postings about Islam. Descendants of Adam and Eve, and of Abraham, the Patriarch of what would become the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the forefathers of the Arabic people who would become Muslims were of that lineage who knew the true God, but who moved and settled at a distance from their brethren. This is all detailed in the Old Testament, but not what happened specifically to them, but we know through the obvious secular history that they settled among pagans in the area that is now Saudi Arabia. Thus they are a group of the many descendants who did not take the faith "along with them." That was not easy to do, since the Israelites were local patriarchs and eventually after the Exodus, a theocracy (religious rulership) on a very local basis, with the Ark and the Temple central. It's not like today where people could pack up their faith and believe in another neighborhood or country. So when people spread out to gain land for their growing families (and to avoid conflict), they could not really take their faith and remembrance with them. The Prophet (PBUH) reconnected those descendants back to the lineage of remembering and knowing the one true God, the God of Abraham, and also faithfully repeating the message and miracles of Jesus. Islam was born in order to plug those descendants of Adam and Eve back into the shared lineage of knowledge of the one true God.
To wrap up this little look at the big picture, one must, in honesty, admire and appreciate that God is no autocrat. God makes himself known as he really is, as he truthfully is, and is consistent and constant through the generations of human beings and indeed through the ages, since he is Eternal and Unchanging. He does not force humans into robotic or other artificial obedience since that is not his nature but more important than that, it is not the truth. Life and love is the truth, not coerced or enforced behavior, and God is the source of all life and love. Thus God provided a constancy of access to knowing him from the very beginning, and sent prophets among believers when they needed to correct the disobedience and straying of his people. Why does God punish, as we know he does, then? Because what he is punishing is denial of truth. Denying truth is, as I explained in the beginning of this commentary, not a useful survival trait for humanity. Disobedience to God is denial of truth, not God being arbitrary. For example, it's disobedient but also more to the point simply wrong, a lie, to worship an idol, a false god that simply does not exist, or the workings of human beings own hands. God punishes humans when they deny the truth because ultimately humans will destroy themselves (as they are most certainly doing now) by living amidst a fake world of lies. Denial of truth, constant lies and falseness are already destroying the livelihood, the sanity, the health, the morality, the ethics, and the decency of humanity... God dumping an asteroid onto the earth would just be the icing on the crumbling cake of what humanity is already doing to itself by denying truth in all arenas of life.
A species, human beings, cannot continue to thrive and/or survive in a world that they perceive in increasingly total falsehood. God already knows "how it will all turn out." More to the point, though, is to recognize that each saved soul is precious to God, just as each and every of the innumerable multitude of angels are known to him individually and loved by him, and as they serve God they share in his beatific vision of all that can and will be. Thus God will continue to be patient with generation after generation of unfaithful disbelievers because he loves and will save those, however few, that DO remain faithful to him and thus cognizant of the truth. I wrote not too long ago about the importance of not seeking the "best" or "right" faith, but seeking the truth, which will if honestly (and sanely) done will only lead you to the one true God who is truth and the source of all that is true. This is why humans can, and should, only marvel at the one true God, not the imaginings of human beings, who can in his perfection balance the giving of human beings the "free will" that they, like the angels in the beginning, craved and demanded, but will also draw a firm line in the sand about reality and the inevitable consequences of denying the truth and, thus, him.
Denying the truth of God is just like denying the truth in a secular life or death situation. If the bridge is out, broken over a raging river, it is not a survival strategy to deny the truth of the bridge being out and driving over it, and thus plunging to one's death, nonetheless. News story commenters often sardonically call that "Darwin at work," when someone does something incredibly stupid. It is the same with believing in the truth of how the world and the universe really works and of God's real presence. Disbelieving the truth means bad and stupid decisions that have their own consequences in the near term (as we see all over the world these days) AND, even if one evades outright denial of survival trait truths in life, when one dies one finds out the reality of God when it is too late to change what one has done in disobedience while alive. Again, it's not just because people "behaved bad" and God's "mad at them," but because disobedience to the God and denial of the truth is viral... disobedient believers and disbelievers don't just harm themselves but they harm others and lead others away from the truth. We see this on a massive scale today, one of the greatest perils facing young people today who have grown up in such hugely false times, knowing nothing different from fraud, fakery, poseurs, pride, denial and falsehood.
How difficult is that to understand? When Satan refused to serve he then got busy egging humans on to likewise not serve God. In a similar way, disbelievers and disobedient believers behave like mini-Satans, since their teachings, deeds and life examples are likewise intended to mislead others, leading them astray from God. That all ends badly, either by making life a lie and thus unbearable in either the short or the long term, or at the very end, when one finds that indeed God exists and he knows all that you have thought and done and has judged you upon your death.
The reassurance of God's constancy and ability to forgive anything (if sincere and immediate) should be of far greater comfort to humans than it is. Why is it not more reassuring? Because people have become somewhat addicted to uncertainty and falsehood, where even miserable lies are "better" than hopeful and good truths, in the minds of many.
In closing that line of thought, let's loop back to Adam. Think about how he dealt, poorly and thus fatally, with certainty and uncertainty. Adam embraced certainty, but only partially. He obviously believed in God, being face to face and taught by God, and thus he believed that the tree of knowledge had fruit that would give him some of God's knowledge. But here is what I mean by false love of uncertainty. God tells him not to eat the fruit of that tree. Eve, at the prompting of Satan, brings the apple to Adam. You must understand that in that moment Adam loved uncertainty, the "maybe" .... because obviously he thought, "Maybe I can get away with this." That is the horror of what modern humans are increasingly falling into. They have become in love with lies and uncertainty, and even denial of truth, since it plays to their weakness, which is pride. I mean, how dumb could Adam be? He believes God about everything, but then when offered the first chance to be uncertain about the truth of one specific thing that God says, he "bites." But far from being dumb, Adam is classic human being, where pride tempts a human to disbelieve the truth since he, or she, then thinks they control other "options." Then, like I gave the analogy above, people will drive over bridges that have fallen down, thinking that they have "options" rather than the humility of truth that the bridge has fallen down.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
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, August 4, 2009
How to use logic when understanding God
I demonstrated several blog postings ago that Jesus himself phrased some of his teachings in order for those who listened to him (and later, through the Gospel, read what he said) to understand and follow along with his statements through the use of human logic. Faith is great and the foundation of understanding God, but God also expects humans to use their brains and to be logical and intellectual about what he says and does. While listening to one of my favorite radio talk shows, mention was made of how God created humans in his image, as stated in the Book of Genesis. I realized that this would be a great example for me to demonstrate two uses of logic, in the form of deductive reasoning, that God is utilizing in explaining himself in scripture.
The first example is really obvious and demonstrates how you are using deductive reasoning to understand the scriptures when you read them, without even realizing it. Consider how we all know that angels were created by God before God created humans, even though that is not stated per se in the Bible. There are two kinds of people, those who trust their deductive reasoning, without even knowing they are using it, and those who don't trust their deductive reasoning, and therefore miss the point, think that there's some conspiracy or 'secret' information, or who simply fail to grasp facts when they are offered in that format. This is why the first example is very helpful to look at.
Genesis 1:1-13 describes how God created, in this order: light, darkness, day, night, heaven and then the earth. Heaven is not described at all, while earth is described (it has dry land, it has seas, it has vegetation produced from seeds, trees bear fruit according to their specific type of seed).
So our first fact, our first premise, is that heaven is created before the earth.
We have details about the life forms on earth, but nothing is said about life forms in heaven.
However, after God continues in his great creation, where he now creates the lights in the earth's sky, and the animals that live on earth, God now says:
Genesis 1:26 God said, "Let us make mankind in our image and likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, over all the wild animals and every creature that crawls on the earth."
Notice that God uses the word "us." Those who read the scripture with both faith and logic understand that God is referring to the angels who dwell in heaven with him when he says "us." Just because God does not detail anything about heaven, either its structure or its inhabitants, does not mean heaven is empty or that "us" means multiple gods, aliens, etc. God talks to humans in simple to understand truth. It is important to hear and receive what he says accordingly.
So the faithful are expected to use their brains, which is articulated through this simple logic.
1. Heaven is created before the earth.
2. Angels live with God in heaven, while humans live on earth.
3. Therefore angels were created before humans.
When you have an obviously accurate conclusion based on sound deductive reasoning, as demonstrated in this example, one still feels better when one "tests" the results of one's deduction with further confirming scripture.
Genesis 1:27 God created man in his image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them.
Now you can draw a second conclusion based on deductive reasoning.
1. God created Heaven.
2. Angels live in heaven with God.
3. God is speaking to other beings, known as "us."
4. Since humans have not yet been created, "us" refers to God and the angels.
5. God suggests making humans "in our image and likeness."
6. We can conclude that angels and God share the same or similar "image" and "likeness."
7. God created the angels.
8. We can conclude that God created angels in the sharing of God's image and likeness.
Again, those with simple faith and sound logic draw these conclusions based on deduction without even realizing it. This is because God gives all humans everything they need to know and understand him and what he is saying. People are not supposed to be combinations of Einstein and paranoid/rocket scientist/conspiracy theorists!
So we now know based on scripture and deductive reasoning that angels were created before human beings, and that angels were the first to share with God his image and likeness. God now suggests to the angels that God, when he creates humans, likewise creates them to share in the image and likeness now enjoyed by God and the angels.
By the way, the Qur'an spells out that the audience during God's creation of human beings is, indeed, the angels of heaven, who are already in existence before human beings are created.
Now we can use deductive reasoning to understand something a bit deeper about God, which is what exactly God means by humans sharing his image and likeness? It's not difficult to believe that angels, in their heavenly forms, share the luminous wonder, and often awe inspiring to the point of terror, magnificence and power in form of God, who is all light and glory. But how do mundane flesh based human beings "share" God's image and likeness? Here is how we can use some logic and deductive reasoning to understand this.
Genesis 1:28 Then God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it."
1. God's first orders to humans, therefore, are to be fruitful and multiply.
2. God gave these first orders immediately after his act of creation.
3. Therefore we can conclude that God considers humans to be the most in his likeness when they are being fruitful and multiplying.
Someone might raise, logically, two concerns. One is, "Hey, if angels are in his likeness, does that mean they procreate?" Angels do procreate, but not biologically. Angels procreate the Word of God, the Will of God, and praise of God. In the scripture we see that angels procreate by spreading the word when commissioned by God among humans (such as the Annunciation) AND they continually procreate in service of God when they continually sing and shout His praise in heaven. So humans are expected to procreate biologically to be consistent with the likeness of God, while angels procreate the Will of God to be consistent with the likeness of God.
The second concern might be that God is endorsing that humans be like him in being creators? Nope, that is a very clearly stated prohibition, when Adam and Eve are thrown out of the Garden of Eden and humans are told not to try to seek God's Knowledge. But here in this scripture you can understand the difference. Genesis explains that seeds create trees, and trees create fruit that is natural to them (fruit is their offspring). Thus it is obvious that God is telling humans to yield their own fruit-human children-by being "fruitful" and "multiplying," not being creators themselves, which is strictly forbidden in the telling of the temptation and expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Revelation 4:8 ...And they do not rest day and night, saying Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God almighty, who was, and who is, and who is coming.
Many joke, good heartedly, that heaven must get boring if one is just playing the harp and singing for all eternity! On the serious side, you must understand that the continual praise of God by the angels is their way of procreating His Word and His Will, and the saved humans who join them in heaven are now part of this work and this bliss.
Now, how can we use deductive reasoning in the scriptures to better understand how humans can share the same "image" as God, who is known to be awesome, blinding light that cannot be viewed by humans? Here is one way to understand it from the one who saw God's image close-up, the man who was Moses.
Exodus 33:18-23
Then Moses said, "Do let me see your glory!" He answered, "I will make all my beauty pass before you, and in your presence I will pronounce my name 'Lord'; I who show favors to whom I will, I who grant mercy to whom I will. But my face you cannot see, for no man sees me and still lives. Here," continued the Lord, "is a place near me where you shall station yourself on the rock. When my glory passes I will set you in the hollow of the rock and will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand, so that you may see my back; but my face is not to be seen."
What do we learn about something that God and humans share in their image? Both God and humans have a "front" and a "back." Humans have a biological front (where their sensory organs are concentrated on one side, such as eyes, ears, mouth and ease of touching and reach) while God has a spiritual "front," which represents the full force of his focus, which, as God explains, no human can endure and remain alive. However, Moses is given the grace and strength by God to be able to view the "back" of God, which is not biological, but, rather, the lesssening of God's full force of attention. So God has a "front" and a "back," which are not at all biological in format or in limitations to his ability to be uniformly everywhere and all powerful in all "directions" but, as humans mirror, the fullness of his attention and focus "front" being like the concentration of human sensory organs, and a deflected and less force of focus and attention being like God's "back" as he passes by Moses.
Notice that, however, God gives Moses an extra gift, an extraordinary grace, which no human has ever experienced in addition to the singular allowing to Moses alone of his viewing God in his glory: God pronounces his Name for Moses. Think of this as hearing God's voice pronouncing his Name of all Power as a small amount of what would have been his full front viewing presence of his full glory, which Moses nor no human could survive! Thus God allows Moses to see him the only way he can, which is his back in passing, but also with hearing God speak his name from His "front."
1. God shares his image with angels and humans.
2. Moses is the only human to see God in his full glory on earth.
3. God explains that he has a front and a back.
4. Therefore we understand that a key component of the shared image of God and humans is that there is a "side" that has full sensory focus and the other "side" which has less sensory focus.
Again, remember in God's case this is not a lack in any way regarding either his powers or how he "looks" but, rather, God creates his "front" when he presents himself in full glory, and God presents his "back" when he withholds some of his glory so that Moses can endure being in his presence.
The presence and image of God is so powerful that even when Moses stands in front of the Lord as he appears as the cloud, and not his full glory, Moses's "skin of his face had become radiant while he conversed with the Lord" Exodus 34:29. The face is on the "front" and so powerful is the presence of God that when Moses faces even the cloud of God, each time his face is made radiant by God's image. So we can further deduce from scripture that the ability to be radiant is another shared image between God and humans, except that again, as with the front and back, God is always radiant, while humans can become radiant only in God's presence.
I guess, thinking back about how God, has a "front" and a "back" (again, please keep in mind that these are not biologically but, rather, how God radiates the fullness of his glory and focus, or veils it) that, just to have a little whimsy and humor here, the fish the most like God must be the flounder!
I hope that you have found this helpful.
The first example is really obvious and demonstrates how you are using deductive reasoning to understand the scriptures when you read them, without even realizing it. Consider how we all know that angels were created by God before God created humans, even though that is not stated per se in the Bible. There are two kinds of people, those who trust their deductive reasoning, without even knowing they are using it, and those who don't trust their deductive reasoning, and therefore miss the point, think that there's some conspiracy or 'secret' information, or who simply fail to grasp facts when they are offered in that format. This is why the first example is very helpful to look at.
Genesis 1:1-13 describes how God created, in this order: light, darkness, day, night, heaven and then the earth. Heaven is not described at all, while earth is described (it has dry land, it has seas, it has vegetation produced from seeds, trees bear fruit according to their specific type of seed).
So our first fact, our first premise, is that heaven is created before the earth.
We have details about the life forms on earth, but nothing is said about life forms in heaven.
However, after God continues in his great creation, where he now creates the lights in the earth's sky, and the animals that live on earth, God now says:
Genesis 1:26 God said, "Let us make mankind in our image and likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, over all the wild animals and every creature that crawls on the earth."
Notice that God uses the word "us." Those who read the scripture with both faith and logic understand that God is referring to the angels who dwell in heaven with him when he says "us." Just because God does not detail anything about heaven, either its structure or its inhabitants, does not mean heaven is empty or that "us" means multiple gods, aliens, etc. God talks to humans in simple to understand truth. It is important to hear and receive what he says accordingly.
So the faithful are expected to use their brains, which is articulated through this simple logic.
1. Heaven is created before the earth.
2. Angels live with God in heaven, while humans live on earth.
3. Therefore angels were created before humans.
When you have an obviously accurate conclusion based on sound deductive reasoning, as demonstrated in this example, one still feels better when one "tests" the results of one's deduction with further confirming scripture.
Genesis 1:27 God created man in his image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them.
Now you can draw a second conclusion based on deductive reasoning.
1. God created Heaven.
2. Angels live in heaven with God.
3. God is speaking to other beings, known as "us."
4. Since humans have not yet been created, "us" refers to God and the angels.
5. God suggests making humans "in our image and likeness."
6. We can conclude that angels and God share the same or similar "image" and "likeness."
7. God created the angels.
8. We can conclude that God created angels in the sharing of God's image and likeness.
Again, those with simple faith and sound logic draw these conclusions based on deduction without even realizing it. This is because God gives all humans everything they need to know and understand him and what he is saying. People are not supposed to be combinations of Einstein and paranoid/rocket scientist/conspiracy theorists!
So we now know based on scripture and deductive reasoning that angels were created before human beings, and that angels were the first to share with God his image and likeness. God now suggests to the angels that God, when he creates humans, likewise creates them to share in the image and likeness now enjoyed by God and the angels.
By the way, the Qur'an spells out that the audience during God's creation of human beings is, indeed, the angels of heaven, who are already in existence before human beings are created.
Now we can use deductive reasoning to understand something a bit deeper about God, which is what exactly God means by humans sharing his image and likeness? It's not difficult to believe that angels, in their heavenly forms, share the luminous wonder, and often awe inspiring to the point of terror, magnificence and power in form of God, who is all light and glory. But how do mundane flesh based human beings "share" God's image and likeness? Here is how we can use some logic and deductive reasoning to understand this.
Genesis 1:28 Then God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it."
1. God's first orders to humans, therefore, are to be fruitful and multiply.
2. God gave these first orders immediately after his act of creation.
3. Therefore we can conclude that God considers humans to be the most in his likeness when they are being fruitful and multiplying.
Someone might raise, logically, two concerns. One is, "Hey, if angels are in his likeness, does that mean they procreate?" Angels do procreate, but not biologically. Angels procreate the Word of God, the Will of God, and praise of God. In the scripture we see that angels procreate by spreading the word when commissioned by God among humans (such as the Annunciation) AND they continually procreate in service of God when they continually sing and shout His praise in heaven. So humans are expected to procreate biologically to be consistent with the likeness of God, while angels procreate the Will of God to be consistent with the likeness of God.
The second concern might be that God is endorsing that humans be like him in being creators? Nope, that is a very clearly stated prohibition, when Adam and Eve are thrown out of the Garden of Eden and humans are told not to try to seek God's Knowledge. But here in this scripture you can understand the difference. Genesis explains that seeds create trees, and trees create fruit that is natural to them (fruit is their offspring). Thus it is obvious that God is telling humans to yield their own fruit-human children-by being "fruitful" and "multiplying," not being creators themselves, which is strictly forbidden in the telling of the temptation and expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Revelation 4:8 ...And they do not rest day and night, saying Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God almighty, who was, and who is, and who is coming.
Many joke, good heartedly, that heaven must get boring if one is just playing the harp and singing for all eternity! On the serious side, you must understand that the continual praise of God by the angels is their way of procreating His Word and His Will, and the saved humans who join them in heaven are now part of this work and this bliss.
Now, how can we use deductive reasoning in the scriptures to better understand how humans can share the same "image" as God, who is known to be awesome, blinding light that cannot be viewed by humans? Here is one way to understand it from the one who saw God's image close-up, the man who was Moses.
Exodus 33:18-23
Then Moses said, "Do let me see your glory!" He answered, "I will make all my beauty pass before you, and in your presence I will pronounce my name 'Lord'; I who show favors to whom I will, I who grant mercy to whom I will. But my face you cannot see, for no man sees me and still lives. Here," continued the Lord, "is a place near me where you shall station yourself on the rock. When my glory passes I will set you in the hollow of the rock and will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand, so that you may see my back; but my face is not to be seen."
What do we learn about something that God and humans share in their image? Both God and humans have a "front" and a "back." Humans have a biological front (where their sensory organs are concentrated on one side, such as eyes, ears, mouth and ease of touching and reach) while God has a spiritual "front," which represents the full force of his focus, which, as God explains, no human can endure and remain alive. However, Moses is given the grace and strength by God to be able to view the "back" of God, which is not biological, but, rather, the lesssening of God's full force of attention. So God has a "front" and a "back," which are not at all biological in format or in limitations to his ability to be uniformly everywhere and all powerful in all "directions" but, as humans mirror, the fullness of his attention and focus "front" being like the concentration of human sensory organs, and a deflected and less force of focus and attention being like God's "back" as he passes by Moses.
Notice that, however, God gives Moses an extra gift, an extraordinary grace, which no human has ever experienced in addition to the singular allowing to Moses alone of his viewing God in his glory: God pronounces his Name for Moses. Think of this as hearing God's voice pronouncing his Name of all Power as a small amount of what would have been his full front viewing presence of his full glory, which Moses nor no human could survive! Thus God allows Moses to see him the only way he can, which is his back in passing, but also with hearing God speak his name from His "front."
1. God shares his image with angels and humans.
2. Moses is the only human to see God in his full glory on earth.
3. God explains that he has a front and a back.
4. Therefore we understand that a key component of the shared image of God and humans is that there is a "side" that has full sensory focus and the other "side" which has less sensory focus.
Again, remember in God's case this is not a lack in any way regarding either his powers or how he "looks" but, rather, God creates his "front" when he presents himself in full glory, and God presents his "back" when he withholds some of his glory so that Moses can endure being in his presence.
The presence and image of God is so powerful that even when Moses stands in front of the Lord as he appears as the cloud, and not his full glory, Moses's "skin of his face had become radiant while he conversed with the Lord" Exodus 34:29. The face is on the "front" and so powerful is the presence of God that when Moses faces even the cloud of God, each time his face is made radiant by God's image. So we can further deduce from scripture that the ability to be radiant is another shared image between God and humans, except that again, as with the front and back, God is always radiant, while humans can become radiant only in God's presence.
I guess, thinking back about how God, has a "front" and a "back" (again, please keep in mind that these are not biologically but, rather, how God radiates the fullness of his glory and focus, or veils it) that, just to have a little whimsy and humor here, the fish the most like God must be the flounder!
I hope that you have found this helpful.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Do not pray intentions to angels except the 3
This is very urgent and important. When you are doing "intentional" prayer (asking for intercession or for strength or inspiration) never pray "open ended" to angels. The only exceptions are the Biblical archangels (Michael, Raphael, Gabriel) and it is also OK to ask one's guardian angel for protection, as Jesus mentioned them explicitly. Do NOT pray to "angels" in general except to honor them as a community in the liturgy, where the intentions cannot be mistaken and are properly directed.
Why is that? First of all it is obvious that one should not pay homage through intercessory prayer to non-Biblical figures. Yes, angels are mentioned in the Bible: but both the angels that chose heaven, and those who chose to follow Lucifer into not serving. When you "open end" prayer to "angels" you are addressing both groups, dummies. God only knows who is responding to you. Many of you who invoke the power and protection of angels in general are receiving responses from "the other place."
In fact, the Qur'an also makes this clear because God brings the obedient angels with him and tells them to pay homage to Adam. By this God is doing two things. He is demonstrating that angels love and honor humans only because God loves humans; they do not do so "naturally." Angels are not the fluffy little cuddly spirits with pretty Renaissance gowns that only want to tiptoe around and give you stock tips and help you out of jams you have gotten yourself into that modern New Agers have made them. Angels are fully devoted to God and are quite fierce (read Apocalypse again if you need a reminder).
Thus it is fine and appropriate to honor the angels as a group within the liturgy of the Mass, for example, as in that consecrated time and space it is obvious who is being mentioned. We know that because the Lord instructed Israel to ornament the Ark with angels. Thus it is fine and appropriate to honor and respect angels in the organized place of Christian worship.
It is also scripturally sound to, within reason, appeal to the three Biblical archangels as they have been clearly identified as being messengers of benevolence from God to humans. Thus it is fine to ask Michael, Raphael and Gabriel for assistance and spiritual strength and purity.
Also, one's individual guardian angel is a gift from God, so obviously one can turn to one's guardian angel, such as in the traditional prayers of the evening. One's guardian angel is of the Holy Spirit, and obviously one is in totally pure handling when one commits one's self to the Holy Spirit. Most importantly, as I mentioned, Jesus, when chastising the disciples who sought to block children from approaching him, mentioned that their guardian angels constantly face God and therefore one has total confidence in knowing that it is scripturally sound to be respectful of one's own guardian angel and to know of their totality of connection through the Holy Spirit to God.
However, when you address prayer intentions to "angels" in general, you have an inaccurate image in your mind of what angels are and what they "do." Thus, if you think you are getting "a response" you should be quite alarmed. The demonic powers jump at every opportunity to mimic what one thinks one is evoking. This, by the way, is one of the dire and deadly errors of paganism. Paganism assumes knowledge of qualities of spirits that both don't exist and are also inaccurate representations of natural forces. Thus when one appeals in what one thinks is a good frame of mind and intention to spiritual forces that one is inaccurate about in the first place, Satan, the demons and also human's own unconscious hubris tends to accept that invitation to "put on the mask" and "respond," and thus starts messing with your mind and your soul. That never ends up in a good place.
I cannot believe the foolishness by which several generations of New Age and other inclined people have called down upon themselves a "spirituality" that is, to put it kindly, imaginary angel imitating. I have commented before that the genuine angels have quite a disgust for humans who do that and if you don't believe me, reread the Apocalypse, for there it all comes to a head. Notice those are not named angels (except for Michael) who wield the destruction and tribulations upon earth.
So stick with praying to God, to asking for the intervention of Mary, Joseph, and the saints, who you know are with God and pure in his eyes and respond only to his will. Honor angels as the servants of God in the liturgy, and of course one can safely address the Biblical three archangels who are designated messengers to humans, and also one's own guardian angel (but understanding they are gifts themselves, not gift and favor dispensers to you). Only God dispenses favors, gifts and grace.
Innocence of intention is absolutely no protection. If you "innocently" pray to angels in general, Satan deludes the innocent even more eagerly and quickly than the cynical. When so called "intuitives" and "psychics" bring you descriptions of angels and "messages" from them, the demons ("jin" if you are Muslim) are laughing their asses off, because you sure are not receiving messages from God's angels. They do one of two things. They either watch your own mind fool yourself and laugh, laugh, laugh, or they take on the appearance of what you think you are invoking and laugh, laugh, laugh as they mislead you to a very bad place, under some very sweet outer coating and coverage.
Whenever you are tempted to "channel" an "angel" or "the angels," reread the Apocalypse and then decide not, repeat, not to pray to "angels" in general.
Why is that? First of all it is obvious that one should not pay homage through intercessory prayer to non-Biblical figures. Yes, angels are mentioned in the Bible: but both the angels that chose heaven, and those who chose to follow Lucifer into not serving. When you "open end" prayer to "angels" you are addressing both groups, dummies. God only knows who is responding to you. Many of you who invoke the power and protection of angels in general are receiving responses from "the other place."
In fact, the Qur'an also makes this clear because God brings the obedient angels with him and tells them to pay homage to Adam. By this God is doing two things. He is demonstrating that angels love and honor humans only because God loves humans; they do not do so "naturally." Angels are not the fluffy little cuddly spirits with pretty Renaissance gowns that only want to tiptoe around and give you stock tips and help you out of jams you have gotten yourself into that modern New Agers have made them. Angels are fully devoted to God and are quite fierce (read Apocalypse again if you need a reminder).
Thus it is fine and appropriate to honor the angels as a group within the liturgy of the Mass, for example, as in that consecrated time and space it is obvious who is being mentioned. We know that because the Lord instructed Israel to ornament the Ark with angels. Thus it is fine and appropriate to honor and respect angels in the organized place of Christian worship.
It is also scripturally sound to, within reason, appeal to the three Biblical archangels as they have been clearly identified as being messengers of benevolence from God to humans. Thus it is fine to ask Michael, Raphael and Gabriel for assistance and spiritual strength and purity.
Also, one's individual guardian angel is a gift from God, so obviously one can turn to one's guardian angel, such as in the traditional prayers of the evening. One's guardian angel is of the Holy Spirit, and obviously one is in totally pure handling when one commits one's self to the Holy Spirit. Most importantly, as I mentioned, Jesus, when chastising the disciples who sought to block children from approaching him, mentioned that their guardian angels constantly face God and therefore one has total confidence in knowing that it is scripturally sound to be respectful of one's own guardian angel and to know of their totality of connection through the Holy Spirit to God.
However, when you address prayer intentions to "angels" in general, you have an inaccurate image in your mind of what angels are and what they "do." Thus, if you think you are getting "a response" you should be quite alarmed. The demonic powers jump at every opportunity to mimic what one thinks one is evoking. This, by the way, is one of the dire and deadly errors of paganism. Paganism assumes knowledge of qualities of spirits that both don't exist and are also inaccurate representations of natural forces. Thus when one appeals in what one thinks is a good frame of mind and intention to spiritual forces that one is inaccurate about in the first place, Satan, the demons and also human's own unconscious hubris tends to accept that invitation to "put on the mask" and "respond," and thus starts messing with your mind and your soul. That never ends up in a good place.
I cannot believe the foolishness by which several generations of New Age and other inclined people have called down upon themselves a "spirituality" that is, to put it kindly, imaginary angel imitating. I have commented before that the genuine angels have quite a disgust for humans who do that and if you don't believe me, reread the Apocalypse, for there it all comes to a head. Notice those are not named angels (except for Michael) who wield the destruction and tribulations upon earth.
So stick with praying to God, to asking for the intervention of Mary, Joseph, and the saints, who you know are with God and pure in his eyes and respond only to his will. Honor angels as the servants of God in the liturgy, and of course one can safely address the Biblical three archangels who are designated messengers to humans, and also one's own guardian angel (but understanding they are gifts themselves, not gift and favor dispensers to you). Only God dispenses favors, gifts and grace.
Innocence of intention is absolutely no protection. If you "innocently" pray to angels in general, Satan deludes the innocent even more eagerly and quickly than the cynical. When so called "intuitives" and "psychics" bring you descriptions of angels and "messages" from them, the demons ("jin" if you are Muslim) are laughing their asses off, because you sure are not receiving messages from God's angels. They do one of two things. They either watch your own mind fool yourself and laugh, laugh, laugh, or they take on the appearance of what you think you are invoking and laugh, laugh, laugh as they mislead you to a very bad place, under some very sweet outer coating and coverage.
Whenever you are tempted to "channel" an "angel" or "the angels," reread the Apocalypse and then decide not, repeat, not to pray to "angels" in general.
Friday, February 13, 2009
About heaven: people you don't like who are there
A few days ago Reverend Billy Graham in his daily column, which I love to read, addressed a question where the writer asked how he or she should deal with the idea that he or she doesn't like certain people who he or she knows will be in heaven. The writer is obviously assuming that he or she will achieve heaven, and will thus endure the company of people from his or her church etc who he or she does not like.
"There will be no discord in heaven"
Q: How can we be happy in heaven if it's going to have people in it that we don't necessarily like? There are several people in our church, for example, who are really hard to get along with, and frankly I can't imagine being around them for eternity.
Reverend Graham wrote a really fine reply. He pointed out that heaven is the place of supreme happiness because all sin, hurts and upsets are removed for all are changed before they enter into heaven (including the people who annoy you and of course, you and your biases yourself). Reverend Graham closed with the suggestion that people, while they are alive, work on being more like Christ (he implies that people should work on those irritations and biases while one can, to be more like Christ).
I always marvel how Reverend Graham writes beautiful and helpful replies in only three to four short paragraphs. Not being limited by space, I am more wordy and will therefore add a few thoughts onto his reply.
One reason I want to add these extra points is to help the type of person who has such a mindset, so that I can address some of their fears and make the transformation that Reverend Graham suggests easier.
1) When one reads the Book of Revelation, you see that St. John sees only a few dozen of the personages of heaven. In other words, this one true glimpse that an apostle has of heaven reveals that it is not a place where everyone who ever existed is in a giant receiving line, or a mosh pit of billions. There is organization and purpose even in heaven. Therefore an individual soul will by no means "meet" or "encounter" everyone who is in heaven. You are highly unlikely to ever see the people you disliked on earth. Souls exist in different areas of heaven according to their spiritual totality and also their purposeful eternal existence. For example only several dozen elders surround the throne of God. By that fact that St. John observes and records for posterity one can infer that there are logical groupings of souls in heaven, not a willy-nilly mingling.
What to conclude from that as an "action step?" Strive more for being at the "good place" near Christ, near God, rather than worry about avoiding some humans. If you focus on being as spiritually close and true to being like Christ (genuinely, not Machiavellian), you will find yourself in a more elevated place of heaven with those of a like minded spirit and purpose.
2) Who inflicts the most hurt on a person in their lifetime? Not usually the person who works your last nerve and who you dislike, but someone in your own family, whether a relative or an ex-loved one. Yet just about everyone hopes to see their family in heaven, even those family members who have been hurtful (assuming we are not speaking of grave abuse and mortal sin, in which case one must pray for their soul's survival at all).
So there is a pettiness to focus on acquaintances you do not like while forgetting that the most hurtful wounds are from family, and you of course hope that they all will be transformed and saved. If you feel that way about a family member who has hurt you at some time in your life, you obviously cannot be a hypocrite and worry about someone annoying and "hard to get along with." Instead of worrying about those who have a petty relationship with you, focus on praying that all your family members will change and be saved.
3) Before one enters heaven one's eyes are opened to one's own role in failed relationships. As part of judgment each person is purified of their sinfulness (Catholics call that purgatory, while Reverend Graham phrases it: "All their sins and their selfish way will be destroyed, and they will be exactly the way God meant them to be! They'll no longer be short-tempered or unloving or boastful or thoughtless. Instead they will be like Christ.")
One way that is achieved, in what we Catholics call Purgatory, is that you have to "walk in the shoes" of the other people with whom you have had unfortunate and less than charitable interactions. You learn about and feel the internal hurt that some "cranky" person might have had that you were unaware of, and you realize how good in soul they actually were. You then feel bad and regret the times you were uncharitable and did not work with them to give them the benefit of the doubt. That is why Purgatory takes a VERY LONG TIME for certain people.
4) If anyone should be resentful of the "hard to get along with" getting into heaven, it ought to be the angels. The angels see everything through God's eyes and they know all that YOU have done that is not so splendid, yet they rejoice, as Jesus reminds everyone, for even the worse sinner who arrives in heaven after repenting. Angels don't say "There goes the neighborhood" and neither should you, and you'd be wise to keep that in mind.
5) Never forget that millions and millions of the souls in heaven are the uncountable numbers of children who have died. One is "outnumbered" by the peacefulness and innocent light of those who died as pre-born, as babies, toddlers, or young children. It's hard to have a snarky attitude (even if that were possible in heaven) when one is surrounded by billions of the humans who died as the very young and pure.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
"There will be no discord in heaven"
Q: How can we be happy in heaven if it's going to have people in it that we don't necessarily like? There are several people in our church, for example, who are really hard to get along with, and frankly I can't imagine being around them for eternity.
Reverend Graham wrote a really fine reply. He pointed out that heaven is the place of supreme happiness because all sin, hurts and upsets are removed for all are changed before they enter into heaven (including the people who annoy you and of course, you and your biases yourself). Reverend Graham closed with the suggestion that people, while they are alive, work on being more like Christ (he implies that people should work on those irritations and biases while one can, to be more like Christ).
I always marvel how Reverend Graham writes beautiful and helpful replies in only three to four short paragraphs. Not being limited by space, I am more wordy and will therefore add a few thoughts onto his reply.
One reason I want to add these extra points is to help the type of person who has such a mindset, so that I can address some of their fears and make the transformation that Reverend Graham suggests easier.
1) When one reads the Book of Revelation, you see that St. John sees only a few dozen of the personages of heaven. In other words, this one true glimpse that an apostle has of heaven reveals that it is not a place where everyone who ever existed is in a giant receiving line, or a mosh pit of billions. There is organization and purpose even in heaven. Therefore an individual soul will by no means "meet" or "encounter" everyone who is in heaven. You are highly unlikely to ever see the people you disliked on earth. Souls exist in different areas of heaven according to their spiritual totality and also their purposeful eternal existence. For example only several dozen elders surround the throne of God. By that fact that St. John observes and records for posterity one can infer that there are logical groupings of souls in heaven, not a willy-nilly mingling.
What to conclude from that as an "action step?" Strive more for being at the "good place" near Christ, near God, rather than worry about avoiding some humans. If you focus on being as spiritually close and true to being like Christ (genuinely, not Machiavellian), you will find yourself in a more elevated place of heaven with those of a like minded spirit and purpose.
2) Who inflicts the most hurt on a person in their lifetime? Not usually the person who works your last nerve and who you dislike, but someone in your own family, whether a relative or an ex-loved one. Yet just about everyone hopes to see their family in heaven, even those family members who have been hurtful (assuming we are not speaking of grave abuse and mortal sin, in which case one must pray for their soul's survival at all).
So there is a pettiness to focus on acquaintances you do not like while forgetting that the most hurtful wounds are from family, and you of course hope that they all will be transformed and saved. If you feel that way about a family member who has hurt you at some time in your life, you obviously cannot be a hypocrite and worry about someone annoying and "hard to get along with." Instead of worrying about those who have a petty relationship with you, focus on praying that all your family members will change and be saved.
3) Before one enters heaven one's eyes are opened to one's own role in failed relationships. As part of judgment each person is purified of their sinfulness (Catholics call that purgatory, while Reverend Graham phrases it: "All their sins and their selfish way will be destroyed, and they will be exactly the way God meant them to be! They'll no longer be short-tempered or unloving or boastful or thoughtless. Instead they will be like Christ.")
One way that is achieved, in what we Catholics call Purgatory, is that you have to "walk in the shoes" of the other people with whom you have had unfortunate and less than charitable interactions. You learn about and feel the internal hurt that some "cranky" person might have had that you were unaware of, and you realize how good in soul they actually were. You then feel bad and regret the times you were uncharitable and did not work with them to give them the benefit of the doubt. That is why Purgatory takes a VERY LONG TIME for certain people.
4) If anyone should be resentful of the "hard to get along with" getting into heaven, it ought to be the angels. The angels see everything through God's eyes and they know all that YOU have done that is not so splendid, yet they rejoice, as Jesus reminds everyone, for even the worse sinner who arrives in heaven after repenting. Angels don't say "There goes the neighborhood" and neither should you, and you'd be wise to keep that in mind.
5) Never forget that millions and millions of the souls in heaven are the uncountable numbers of children who have died. One is "outnumbered" by the peacefulness and innocent light of those who died as pre-born, as babies, toddlers, or young children. It's hard to have a snarky attitude (even if that were possible in heaven) when one is surrounded by billions of the humans who died as the very young and pure.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
An analogy for understanding why evil exists
I thought of an analogy tonight while reading “Life Wisdom from Billy Graham,” which was a Christmas gift to me. Regular readers know that I am a great fan of Billy Graham’s. I was reading the section where he writes about the question he most commonly receives, “Why does God allow evil?” I also read the address that he made after September 11, 2001, that I had watched as it was broadcast from the National Cathedral in the memorial service, which also touches on that important and puzzling subject. As I was reading his words I was imagining us in conversation, and what I’d say and the analogy that I would explain to him was what occurred to me. Here it is. Remember, it is an analogy, which is an aid in understanding, not a complete answer in theological terms.
Think about when God created the angels, who are separate from God’s creation of humans and animals. The angels dwell in heaven, which is outside of the material realm of space, time, matter or energy. Thus the angels are created of a uniform spiritual substance that is of God. Upon creation the angels are complete and had only one “decision” to make, which is to serve God or not. This decision is made after their creation. In other words, God did not withhold creating angels that he knew in advance would refuse to serve. God created the entire order of angelic beings, knowing that some, a very few of the uncountable numbers of angels, would refuse to serve.
This is the first example of God as love that one can study in the scripture. God does not play “eugenics,” to use an abhorrent human concept, of culling by suitability. God did not omit creating angels at all, or certain angels, to cull in advance those who would not serve. God loves them, regardless. So God creates the angels, a few refuse to serve him, and they fall, but do not perish or are taken out of existence by God. I can’t speak for God but you can wisely elicit from the fact that God does not destroy the angels that disobey him that God always leaves the door open and loves even the most incorrigible. That is the nature of God, as the source of all love. This does not mean he accepts or enables the angels who disobey. It means he will exile them but not destroy them, nor does he wish he never created them, nor does he cull them out from being created in advance based on his all knowing of which angels he creates will serve and which will not.
Now think about humans and animals. Unlike angels humans and animals live in a universe with physical boundaries and realities of time, space, matter and energy. Thus humans do not spring into being fully grown and able to choose, or not, God. Humans and animals are born as infants and have long times of growing before they are even mature and capable of making worldly decisions, say nothing of consistently choosing God throughout their lives. Further, humans and animals live among each other in the physical universe, not among God’s realm like the angels. Thus humans and animals interact among themselves and other species, and are formed and shaped according to their interactions in the physical world.
So instead of angels all being created out of the spiritual substance that allows eternal life in heaven, humans and animals are each like a hunk of marble that is yet unformed. A sculptor will use that blank stone to create a human, or an animal, in the “finished product.” However, unlike the actual art of sculpting there are two differences. The sculptor is the human him or her self and his or her companion humans who chip away at the stone to reveal the finished product of human within. Also, the process of revealing the finished product within is the entire corporeal lifetime of the human. Angels were made, “Voila!” and then they chose. Humans sculpt themselves and each other as a “work in progress” through their entire lives and the finished product is the human on the threshold of their death and hopeful joining of God in heaven.
So let us use a real example of a person most of the world knew who has died, such as Mother Teresa. Imagine that as she was born she was that rectangle of marble, with her God given soul within. As Mother Teresa was an infant, named Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu, pieces of the rock would be chipped away by herself, as she learned as all babies do that she is alive, an individual, a human, a member of a family, and by her parents and rest of her family and caregivers. Mother Therese herself would “hold the chisel” on herself, her family would use their chisels on her, and society and her environment at large would also use their chisels on her. So what is evil? Evil are events and actions that as they chisel at the marble of the individual do that person harm.
Thus think of typical events in an infant’s life. Being kept warm, fed, safe, and cuddled with love are all loving events that chisel the person out of the marble block in productive ways. But what if someone struck her? That is an evil act because it is harmful use of the “chisel” that forms the person out of their foundational block of marble. As she is fed wholesome and adequate food she grows and thrives and thus the environment and her family provide “good” chiseling. But what if she grew up in a polluted area where she was exposed to a toxic chemical as a child and became sick or deformed? For example in Japan many were stricken with mercury poisoning in their seafood in the 1960’s. That would have been an “evil” act, as the polluters and the environment wielded the chisel on her in a destructive way. But you see, that is the complexity of evil. Slapping an infant is pure evil. However, a polluter is not psychic and does not plan to harm an individual or group of people in the future through their mindless dumping of a toxin. Thus the outcome is evil but the actions are not necessarily that of an evil person. Further, suppose that we continue to think about the example in Japan for a moment. There is a range of outcomes from a mindless act of neglect that range from evil to good. At its worst it truncated the lives of the innocent, killing or maiming them, and thus there were evil outcomes of the pollution actions. However, others who observed what happened and learned from it and, better yet, gained knowledge of the danger of pollution and how to remediate it, obtained “good” chiseling out of the “evil” act.
Thus you must recognize that when people ask “Why does God allow evil?” they are usually referring to an obvious event of evil that has demolished goodness through murder or other evil mayhem. We used the example of slapping a baby. Mostly people ask that question after an act of terror or a heinous crime. But the reality of a corporeal limited life in a physical environment of time, space, matter and energy is that there is a continuum of results generated by people interacting and chiseling themselves and each other as “works in progress” out of the marble. Thus in our example of pollution, one person’s cruel demise or crippling as a result of the pollution, and thus suffering from evil, is another person’s character building and good opportunity, as doctors develop remedies and governments and companies seek to curb dangerous pollution. You now start to see that it is not like evil is a set of independent events that God should purge out of life and then everything would be fine. For example, it is evil if someone burns another person. But it is not evil that fire consumes substances, including humans. If God were to “not allow” evil in such as case where one human burns another, should God have done so by 1) changing fire so that fire does not consume substances and thus it no longer exists, 2) stop the person assaulting the victim with fire by stepping in and holding back his or her hand, 3) do what God did not do with the angels and that is, cull in advance any human who God knows will commit evil at some point in their life (how many people do you think would ever have populated the earth at all then?)
Evil is the chisel that is cruelly used on one’s self, on another person, or on society as a whole. Thus an addict commits an evil when he or she uses and thus abuses the gift of their mind and body from God. An abuser commits an evil when he or she strikes a baby. A tyrant performs an evil when he or she performs genocide in society at large. But the definition of evil is the harmful impact of actions that are otherwise part of life. For God to eliminate evil, God would have to either 1) cull in advance all who will ever commit evil and as I said, I would not bet that there would be many humans at all left or 2) take away from humans much of physical law (fire burns, hands can be used with great force, and humans can order others to do things on a large scale through blind loyalty or fear). How would humans live if fire was no longer fire, if fire no longer burned and thus no one could ever harm someone else by setting them on fire again? But if fire no longer burned and thus did not exist, how would the sun shine and how would humans have ever been warmed? Many plants only germinate after a fire. There would be no life without fire.
So if you turn to God and ask why God allows evil, think about the example that is giving you the heartbreak and frustration, such as the terrorist attacks, and think of the component actions. Which would you wish that God denied to humans? Airplanes? Combustion? Zealotry? Fanaticism? Thus to not permit evil, which physical laws should God change or ban, or which humans or their behaviors should God cull in advance, when he did not even do that for the angels who he knew would, in some small number, refuse to serve? Should God never allow humans who will commit an evil to ever have been born?
It is easy to say, for example, that a murderer of a loved one should never have been born and that your loved one would still be alive today. That is entirely understandable, especially in the pangs of one’s grief. But when you are going to be thoughtful and scholarly about the subject, think about the specifics. Suppose that the terrorist or murderer had been a father or mother before he or she committed evil. Should their children then have never been born since God, knowing in advance the parent’s future evil plans, not allow the future evil doer to be born at all? I wonder how many people would be alive today if God did not allow evil ancestors to live and procreate! All humans have the potential for evil and all commit more evil than they realize. Much evil, such as the example I gave of the toxic pollution, is evil of sin of omission or neglect and not as dramatic as a Hitler or a murderer, or a child abuser. How does not then “extract” “evil” from the condition of being alive?
So look back to the example of Mother Teresa. She received her calling, and her fame, from ministering to those who suffer from the evil of poverty and neglect. Much of the marble that was chiseled from her foundational block of stone that formed her was therefore a chisel that did not harm her personally, but was in reaction to the harmful and often evil chiseling of others. Thus “evil” had a hand in carving out of the stone the goodness of Mother Teresa. “Evil” has a hand in carving out of stone the goodness of every trauma emergency room physician. “Evil” has a hand in carving out of stone each child advocate, each lawmaker, and each parent and each concerned citizen and enforcer of the law who responds to the crisis of child abuse. So as evil seems to target a victim, at the same time that evil is a part of the misuse of natural law (hands can build or hit, fire can warm or scar) and evil is the catalyst for the carving of goodness out of the respondents out of their individual blocks of marble.
Thus when one asks, “Why does God allow evil,” it is a question that God understands that one cries out in anger and hurt, and thus is a valid question, but it is an unbalanced question. It presumes that evil is a separable quality that God could “exile” or “forbid” if only he wanted to. But now with this analogy you can understand that everyone uses the chisel on themselves, on others, and on society and the world at large in ways that can lead to evil even if unintentional. Remember how Nobel invented TNT? Suppose that God, responding to people’s cries about eliminating evil, thought about all the people who would be killed through TNT and thus decided that Nobel should never have been born, or “not permitted” to invent TNT. Yet TNT was essential for much safe construction as it was used for blasting rock and demolition, saving humans from back breaking work and danger. It is easy to point to the obvious examples and say, “Why did God ever allow Hitler to be born?” But first, do not forget that most evil in the world is very small scale and mundane, horrible for the individual child who is abused and that family, for example, but not of the grand scale of the tyrants of history. So recognize that one is selecting what seems like the obvious and fungible example when one uses say a Hitler as an example. But far more evil is done through neglect or love of money or power or spontaneous hysterical hatred. Look at Rwanda where something like 800,000 people were killed in only a few days. Look at the Sudan. These are all the less obvious examples of evil at work.
And here is the second problem with let us say, why did God not stop Hitler from being born? How do you know that “everything would have been fine” otherwise? Humans have all sorts of mischief and it is constantly leading them astray. How do you know that even if there was not a Hitler that a German scientist might have still worked to invent the atomic bomb? Without World War II the Allies would never have developed atomic bombs on their own. Atomic bombs were developed in response to Hitler trying to develop a bomb, which was the ultimate horror scenario. But how do you know that in that “alternate scenario” of Hitler having never been born that some other nut might not have worked in secret for an atomic bomb, and then used it, or sold it to an unscrupulous government? So perhaps there would have been no Hitler and no Holocaust, but instead some mad scientists develop the atomic bomb and test it on Paris and Geneva.
Humans are too singular in their thought processes about evil and they can’t help it, which is one of the problems of the human brain and ego. They think that individual persons and actions are fungible, as in they can be taken “out” of action and then history will trundle along better, having eliminated that “problem.” Only God, however, knows all the “what if’s.” Only God knows what else humans would have done even if there never was a Hitler. If you do not believe me, just look at the evidence in Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime. There is a constancy of temptation of great evil among very average and mundane humans. That temptation does not “go away” if God smites or “doesn’t allow” individual evil doers to be alive and for them and all around them to have freedom of choice. Evil is the doing of very bad things using very good physical law. Does God eliminate the physical laws (such as fire, which is actually necessary for life), entire classes of behavior (thus God treats humans as robots, something he did not do even to the angels who are of his very spiritual substance), or does God eliminate all who would ever do evil (and thus all their offspring) and then, well, how many people would actually be alive on earth at all?
To wrap up this analogy, let’s look again at Mother Teresa. Who was she and what was the completed work of individual sculpture that emerged from her marble stone at the end of her life, the finished work? Her words live on after her in the book “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light.” One of the realities of the human limitations of perspective and vision is that each person does not understand their own completed sculpture. Only God knows who a person really is in total. Mother Teresa received her calling and her goodness by ministering to those who, one can safely argue, suffer from genuine evil of poverty, prejudice, untreated illness, loneliness and neglect. I argue that conditions that allow so many who would need a Mother Teresa in that vocation is an evil, for humans by now should have been much better at sharing the bounty and helping all the poor, the sick and the lonely. So Mother Teresa was in a large part chiseled out of her interaction with that large reservoir of evil in the world which is human deprivation and neglect of their fellow human beings. So on the one hand the evil of deprivation and neglect rubbed and chiseled great goodness out of the marble block that is Mother Teresa.
But interaction with evil and its products can be a two edged sword and cause damage and confusion to the do-gooder him or herself. This is particular true with those of the religious or spiritual persuasions. I’m not a sculptor so excuse my possibly ignorant examples, but let’s assume that sculptors use a range of tools, from blunt ones to remove much stone like a hammer, to finer and finer chisels, and then eventually to sandpaper to rub finished parts smooth. When one is totally melded to unrelenting and total ministering to what is evil and dark, it is like being constantly sculpted with the hammer and never allowing one’s self to be chiseled or smoothed gently. Mother Teresa is the poster child of this problem. All social workers know about “compassion fatigue.” Well, religious or spiritual humans are vulnerable to a compassion fatigue that is much worse, as it is rather than a compassion fatigue a goodness starvation. Social workers who have compassion fatigue have a work crisis, for example, but they still have access to normal parts of life beyond their social work, which is their own families, friends and other pleasures of life. Someone like a Mother Teresa willfully deprive themselves of all that is balancing and good in life, allowing their entire spirit to be subsumed by the evil that they are ministering to. Thus you read very odd and dark lacks of understanding such as the following:
Mother Teresa believed her mission would continue beyond her death. Her mission statement says this plainly: “If I ever become a saint-I will surely be one of ‘darkness.’ I will continually be absent from heaven-to light the light of those in darkness on earth” (p. 338).
I cringe whenever I open that book, by the way, and read those types of thoughts and this incredible inflation, as in this:
Mother is here to help you, guide you, lead you to Jesus. Time is coming closer when Mother also has to go to God. Then Mother will be able to help each one for you more, guide you more and obtain more graces for you (p. 338).
She actually viewed herself as a dark saint, full of drama, able to pop back and forth from heaven to earth, helping others (as obviously no one else can but her, classic signs of inflation) and worst of all “obtain more graces for you.” How can a woman of God, a Christian, become so fundamentally detached from the most basic doctrine and rational balance, where she anticipates being a dark co-mediatrix with Jesus dispensing graces? Good grief, what a mess.
The problem is that she became totally absorbed in the damaging effects of the evil of deprivation and neglect and allowed that to skew her perception of God as being likewise wounded and only of the suffering. The book states that she “always led us to Jesus,” but there are two problems with that. She started assuming that she was actually leading people to Jesus and thus necessary to the process and that simply is not true. All conversion and all grace come from God alone. She started believing that if she was not there that she’d actually have to come back from the dead or “reach down from heaven” in order to ‘bring people to Jesus.’ Whoa, is that a real problem. I guess she figured that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit were lax on the job and could not do it without her.
I am being blunt but not unkind. I mean, if she’s so essential to bringing people to Jesus, why is India more hostile to their own Christians than ever AND why are countries like China finding their own way to greater belief all without either literally her or an equivalent “Mother Teresa?” Every religious knows that all grace and conversion come from God through the Holy Spirit, not through individuals. Look at what Billy Graham said:
If anything has been accomplished through my life, it has been solely God’s doing, not mine, and He-not I-must get the credit (p. 55).
That is our mission… to be Christ’s ambassadors to the whole world, asking people to be reconciled to God. The primary message that I’ve tried to carry all over the world has been that God loves you. He gave His Son to die for you (p. 59).
I don’t have any supernatural power to do something for you. I am just a man, like you are. I am just a preacher. And my message is that God loves you, He accepts you and forgives you. He is ready to enter your hearts today (pg. 61).
The deepest problems of the human race are spiritual. They are rooted in man’s refusal to seek God’s way for his life. The problem is the human heart, which God alone can change (p. 78).
Jesus must increase, and I must decrease. I sort of cringe when I hear my name called in something I know has been the work of God through these years (p. 96).
All that I have been able to do, I owe to Jesus Christ. I feel I am a spectator watching what God is doing (p. 98).
I feel so undeserving of all the Spirit has done, because the work has been God’s and not man’s. I want no credit or glory. I want the Lord Jesus to have it all (p. 100).
As I look back over the years…I know that my deepest feeling is one of gratitude. I cannot take credit for whatever God has chosen to accomplish through us and our ministry; only God deserves the glory, and we can never thank Him enough for the great things He has done (p. 103).
God measures people by the small dimensions of humility and not by the bigness of their achievements or the size of their capabilities (pg. 17).
Without [Lists people he has worked with]-and all the other people who have served on our board and worked on the crusades-our ministry would be nothing. You would never have heard of me. I give all the credit and glory on this earth to them. And all the glory we give collectively to God, because without His Holy Spirit, we couldn’t have done it (p. 33).
Now, Billy Graham is the evangelist and if anyone could claim to “lead people to Jesus” it would be he. Yet read the constancy through the decades of his ministry of his humility and recognition that it all comes from God through the Holy Spirit, and not through any man or woman. I know that he would cringe at what I am doing but it must be said because without pointing out the corrosive effects of evil on good people, such as Mother Teresa, by comparing to one who uses humility and God’s grace as a protective shield, as does Billy Graham, the errors will continue. Great social work and sacrifice does not a saint make. Worse, a constant view of social work as evangelizing (when one is actually not even evangelizing) leaves harmful scars in one’s personal sculpture and the role model that one sets.
Through embracing her interior darkness, Mother Teresa became a “saint of Darkness.” Jesus’ call “Come-carry me into the holes of the poor.-Come be My light,” urged her “to give [herself]-without any reserve to God in the poor of the slums and the streets.” Disregarding her own suffering, she reached out to others whose suffering seemed greater than her own, bringing the light of God’s love to the hopeless and the helpless, to the poorest of the poor. Though she had carried Jesus into many “dark holes,” there were many more; and even when her strength was notably failing her spirit remained resolute. She carried on (p. 336).
Oh-my-goodness; the entire book makes my hair stand on end. She is “carrying” Jesus into “many dark places?” You mean Jesus is not there unless she brings him there? This is inflation and a martyr complex and not healthy devotion, regardless of the merits of her social work.
One must recognize that evil has strange effects beyond the obvious. It’s like a triple boomerang, if such a thing exists. On the one hand there is the evil of deprivation and extreme poverty and neglect, which harms those who suffer from it, but ennobles those who address it, such as Mother Teresa. So the evil harms the innocent, but the worthy step in and rebuke the evil with their works. But then a certain number of those who constantly immerse themselves in what they think is combating evil or being the only way by which people achieve God now get smacked in the head and soul by the evil in a secondary effect. They succumb to the temptation to believe that they are co-redeeming and co-dispensing of grace along with God; that God is less successful without them!
All of Mother Teresa’s personal writings can be read as a diagnosis of this problem. The boomerang of evil of poverty and deprivation is thrown and hits the innocent. Mother Teresa catches it and throws it back unceasingly through her total devotion to not God where he is, in heaven and among everyone, but “God in the poor.” By only seeing God as being completely in the poor and in fact she takes credit for CARRYING “Jesus into many ‘dark holes’” she then is smacked herself in turn by the evil of deprivation in a way she never recognizes: By being an acolyte of the suffering of deprivation she has now deprived herself of the comfort, the reality and the all glory and power to God and God alone.
I get into this whole tangle to show you that evil is a subtle and multistep process, not simply the obvious example of a great evil deed, and that it is impossible to separate from “good” life. The problem is succumbing to the temptations of evil, which is to study it too closely, to unconsciously or consciously emulate it, or to take credit for that which only God can do.
She was called to share in a distinct way in the mystery of the Cross, to become one with Christ in His Passion and one with the poor she served. Through this sharing she was led to a deep awareness of the “painful thirst” in the Heart of Jesus for the poorest of the poor (p. 335).
WHAT? Where is THAT in the Bible? Jesus on the Cross had a “painful thirst” for the poor in his Heart that he “called” her to share? Oh-my-goodness. Um, not to be a critic but she needed some time out and a strong and not co-enabling spiritual director as she dabbled in heretical and inflationary thoughts.
Her painful darkness mysteriously united her so intimately with her crucified Spouse, that He became the sole “object of her thoughts and affections, the subject of her conversations, the end of her actions and the model of her life" (p. 335).
Christ as spiritual Spouse is not the problem, and even her meditations on the crucified Christ, which is a rich and valid Catholic tradition. But to interpret his crucifixion as being about the poor is like she came from another planet and never read the Gospel.
I don’t have to repeat what I most recently blogged regarding why Christ was crucified, and it was not because his “Heart” had a “painful thirst” for the “poorest of the poor.” To correlate God sending his Son to redeem humans from the bonds of original sin and to establish the New Covenant with Jesus supposedly having a “painful thirst” in his “Heart” for the “poorest of the poor” makes me sympathize with Protestants who shake their heads at Catholics.
Thus evil tarnishes even the good.
The worst of evil is not the raving maniacs who murder, though that is the most heinous. The broadest impact of evil is to diminish God’s power and glory rather than diminish one’s self. The broadest impact of evil is thus to succumb both consciously and unconsciously to temptations of imbalance, whether it is the imbalance of the deprivation of poverty and access to life sustaining sustenance, or the imbalance of thinking that one is actually carrying Jesus around and he can’t go certain places without you taking him there. I’m not saying Mother Teresa was evil, but I am using her as a case study of a very good person who is eroded in what she could have been as the “finished product” by the corrosive effects of constant immersion in the despair of evil, the evil of deprivation. She was so long among the deprived that she started thinking that it is normal that God is deprived too, that Jesus was crucified because he had a “painful thirst for the poor of the poor.” (I keep expecting my laptop to go up in flames every time I type that phrase, good Lord).
What Jesus said:
John 12:7-8
So Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Let her keep this for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
Um, does that sound like Jesus has a (watch for the laptop on fire) “painful thirst for the poor of the poor,” one that he disturbs the peace of mind of one Mother Teresa with, in person, two thousand years later? “You always have the poor with you” does not sound like someone with a “painful thirst” for the “poorest of the poor.”
In fact, it is the judging and stern Jesus who admonishes that in the final judgment those who saw him in the poor and ministered to them will be rewarded, while those who neglect the poor will be punished. That is far from saying that Jesus needs to be lugged by one woman and placed in “dark holes” (hopes my laptop does not catch on fire as I really can’t afford another one right now).
So God allows evil because evil is the sum total of the physical world and human condition since evil is simply misuse of natural law (hand can built a home or strike an infant caused by the same force equals mass times acceleration natural law) and succumbing to temptations, from the most appalling and wicked to the most insidious and subtle. Evil cannot be eliminated in any form without removing natural law and human independence of action, and doing either of that would really eliminate human life. Animal life could certainly continue on since animals have no concept of evil, only survival and raising their young. This then means the only answer would be for God to cull in advance anyone he knows since he is all knowing will perform evil, and again, we have the problem that few humans would exist. Look at the odds. Out of Adam, Eve, Abel and Cain, three of the four performed evil and the fourth was killed as a result of the evil act. If God eliminated evil he should not have created Adam and Eve in the first place (knowing they’d commit evil in advance) and thus there would be no humans in faith history. Obviously as with the angels example God is demonstrating that love is all powerful and is the reason, and that he will never close the door by culling like some sort of animals those angels or humans he knows will disobey and do evil. A lot of “good” people alive today descend from someone who did a lot of evil somewhere along the line, and if the line ended there, there would be a lot of whales and polar bears on earth but not a lot of humans, if any.
Jesus does not have to be “carried” into the slums; Jesus, like God, is already there.
John 12:26
“Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.”
John 14:20
“On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.”
John 14:27
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”
Evil is contrariness to the will of God, so it is not only the breaking of Commandments and other laws of God, but it is the cruelty and misleading of humans by other humans. A subtle but destructive form of evil and temptation is the destruction of the peace of Jesus, which is not just the peace of a lack of war and conflict, but also the serenity of peace of mind. Jesus does not teach an obsessive compulsive philosophy of works. He gives peace even as the world is in its flawed condition, and he tells all to NOT let their hearts be troubled or afraid. Jesus is about as far from having a “painful thirst” as you can imagine. (Is my computer getting hotter, or am I just imagining it?) I better wind up this blogging.
I hope that you have found this rather lengthy commentary helpful.
Think about when God created the angels, who are separate from God’s creation of humans and animals. The angels dwell in heaven, which is outside of the material realm of space, time, matter or energy. Thus the angels are created of a uniform spiritual substance that is of God. Upon creation the angels are complete and had only one “decision” to make, which is to serve God or not. This decision is made after their creation. In other words, God did not withhold creating angels that he knew in advance would refuse to serve. God created the entire order of angelic beings, knowing that some, a very few of the uncountable numbers of angels, would refuse to serve.
This is the first example of God as love that one can study in the scripture. God does not play “eugenics,” to use an abhorrent human concept, of culling by suitability. God did not omit creating angels at all, or certain angels, to cull in advance those who would not serve. God loves them, regardless. So God creates the angels, a few refuse to serve him, and they fall, but do not perish or are taken out of existence by God. I can’t speak for God but you can wisely elicit from the fact that God does not destroy the angels that disobey him that God always leaves the door open and loves even the most incorrigible. That is the nature of God, as the source of all love. This does not mean he accepts or enables the angels who disobey. It means he will exile them but not destroy them, nor does he wish he never created them, nor does he cull them out from being created in advance based on his all knowing of which angels he creates will serve and which will not.
Now think about humans and animals. Unlike angels humans and animals live in a universe with physical boundaries and realities of time, space, matter and energy. Thus humans do not spring into being fully grown and able to choose, or not, God. Humans and animals are born as infants and have long times of growing before they are even mature and capable of making worldly decisions, say nothing of consistently choosing God throughout their lives. Further, humans and animals live among each other in the physical universe, not among God’s realm like the angels. Thus humans and animals interact among themselves and other species, and are formed and shaped according to their interactions in the physical world.
So instead of angels all being created out of the spiritual substance that allows eternal life in heaven, humans and animals are each like a hunk of marble that is yet unformed. A sculptor will use that blank stone to create a human, or an animal, in the “finished product.” However, unlike the actual art of sculpting there are two differences. The sculptor is the human him or her self and his or her companion humans who chip away at the stone to reveal the finished product of human within. Also, the process of revealing the finished product within is the entire corporeal lifetime of the human. Angels were made, “Voila!” and then they chose. Humans sculpt themselves and each other as a “work in progress” through their entire lives and the finished product is the human on the threshold of their death and hopeful joining of God in heaven.
So let us use a real example of a person most of the world knew who has died, such as Mother Teresa. Imagine that as she was born she was that rectangle of marble, with her God given soul within. As Mother Teresa was an infant, named Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu, pieces of the rock would be chipped away by herself, as she learned as all babies do that she is alive, an individual, a human, a member of a family, and by her parents and rest of her family and caregivers. Mother Therese herself would “hold the chisel” on herself, her family would use their chisels on her, and society and her environment at large would also use their chisels on her. So what is evil? Evil are events and actions that as they chisel at the marble of the individual do that person harm.
Thus think of typical events in an infant’s life. Being kept warm, fed, safe, and cuddled with love are all loving events that chisel the person out of the marble block in productive ways. But what if someone struck her? That is an evil act because it is harmful use of the “chisel” that forms the person out of their foundational block of marble. As she is fed wholesome and adequate food she grows and thrives and thus the environment and her family provide “good” chiseling. But what if she grew up in a polluted area where she was exposed to a toxic chemical as a child and became sick or deformed? For example in Japan many were stricken with mercury poisoning in their seafood in the 1960’s. That would have been an “evil” act, as the polluters and the environment wielded the chisel on her in a destructive way. But you see, that is the complexity of evil. Slapping an infant is pure evil. However, a polluter is not psychic and does not plan to harm an individual or group of people in the future through their mindless dumping of a toxin. Thus the outcome is evil but the actions are not necessarily that of an evil person. Further, suppose that we continue to think about the example in Japan for a moment. There is a range of outcomes from a mindless act of neglect that range from evil to good. At its worst it truncated the lives of the innocent, killing or maiming them, and thus there were evil outcomes of the pollution actions. However, others who observed what happened and learned from it and, better yet, gained knowledge of the danger of pollution and how to remediate it, obtained “good” chiseling out of the “evil” act.
Thus you must recognize that when people ask “Why does God allow evil?” they are usually referring to an obvious event of evil that has demolished goodness through murder or other evil mayhem. We used the example of slapping a baby. Mostly people ask that question after an act of terror or a heinous crime. But the reality of a corporeal limited life in a physical environment of time, space, matter and energy is that there is a continuum of results generated by people interacting and chiseling themselves and each other as “works in progress” out of the marble. Thus in our example of pollution, one person’s cruel demise or crippling as a result of the pollution, and thus suffering from evil, is another person’s character building and good opportunity, as doctors develop remedies and governments and companies seek to curb dangerous pollution. You now start to see that it is not like evil is a set of independent events that God should purge out of life and then everything would be fine. For example, it is evil if someone burns another person. But it is not evil that fire consumes substances, including humans. If God were to “not allow” evil in such as case where one human burns another, should God have done so by 1) changing fire so that fire does not consume substances and thus it no longer exists, 2) stop the person assaulting the victim with fire by stepping in and holding back his or her hand, 3) do what God did not do with the angels and that is, cull in advance any human who God knows will commit evil at some point in their life (how many people do you think would ever have populated the earth at all then?)
Evil is the chisel that is cruelly used on one’s self, on another person, or on society as a whole. Thus an addict commits an evil when he or she uses and thus abuses the gift of their mind and body from God. An abuser commits an evil when he or she strikes a baby. A tyrant performs an evil when he or she performs genocide in society at large. But the definition of evil is the harmful impact of actions that are otherwise part of life. For God to eliminate evil, God would have to either 1) cull in advance all who will ever commit evil and as I said, I would not bet that there would be many humans at all left or 2) take away from humans much of physical law (fire burns, hands can be used with great force, and humans can order others to do things on a large scale through blind loyalty or fear). How would humans live if fire was no longer fire, if fire no longer burned and thus no one could ever harm someone else by setting them on fire again? But if fire no longer burned and thus did not exist, how would the sun shine and how would humans have ever been warmed? Many plants only germinate after a fire. There would be no life without fire.
So if you turn to God and ask why God allows evil, think about the example that is giving you the heartbreak and frustration, such as the terrorist attacks, and think of the component actions. Which would you wish that God denied to humans? Airplanes? Combustion? Zealotry? Fanaticism? Thus to not permit evil, which physical laws should God change or ban, or which humans or their behaviors should God cull in advance, when he did not even do that for the angels who he knew would, in some small number, refuse to serve? Should God never allow humans who will commit an evil to ever have been born?
It is easy to say, for example, that a murderer of a loved one should never have been born and that your loved one would still be alive today. That is entirely understandable, especially in the pangs of one’s grief. But when you are going to be thoughtful and scholarly about the subject, think about the specifics. Suppose that the terrorist or murderer had been a father or mother before he or she committed evil. Should their children then have never been born since God, knowing in advance the parent’s future evil plans, not allow the future evil doer to be born at all? I wonder how many people would be alive today if God did not allow evil ancestors to live and procreate! All humans have the potential for evil and all commit more evil than they realize. Much evil, such as the example I gave of the toxic pollution, is evil of sin of omission or neglect and not as dramatic as a Hitler or a murderer, or a child abuser. How does not then “extract” “evil” from the condition of being alive?
So look back to the example of Mother Teresa. She received her calling, and her fame, from ministering to those who suffer from the evil of poverty and neglect. Much of the marble that was chiseled from her foundational block of stone that formed her was therefore a chisel that did not harm her personally, but was in reaction to the harmful and often evil chiseling of others. Thus “evil” had a hand in carving out of the stone the goodness of Mother Teresa. “Evil” has a hand in carving out of stone the goodness of every trauma emergency room physician. “Evil” has a hand in carving out of stone each child advocate, each lawmaker, and each parent and each concerned citizen and enforcer of the law who responds to the crisis of child abuse. So as evil seems to target a victim, at the same time that evil is a part of the misuse of natural law (hands can build or hit, fire can warm or scar) and evil is the catalyst for the carving of goodness out of the respondents out of their individual blocks of marble.
Thus when one asks, “Why does God allow evil,” it is a question that God understands that one cries out in anger and hurt, and thus is a valid question, but it is an unbalanced question. It presumes that evil is a separable quality that God could “exile” or “forbid” if only he wanted to. But now with this analogy you can understand that everyone uses the chisel on themselves, on others, and on society and the world at large in ways that can lead to evil even if unintentional. Remember how Nobel invented TNT? Suppose that God, responding to people’s cries about eliminating evil, thought about all the people who would be killed through TNT and thus decided that Nobel should never have been born, or “not permitted” to invent TNT. Yet TNT was essential for much safe construction as it was used for blasting rock and demolition, saving humans from back breaking work and danger. It is easy to point to the obvious examples and say, “Why did God ever allow Hitler to be born?” But first, do not forget that most evil in the world is very small scale and mundane, horrible for the individual child who is abused and that family, for example, but not of the grand scale of the tyrants of history. So recognize that one is selecting what seems like the obvious and fungible example when one uses say a Hitler as an example. But far more evil is done through neglect or love of money or power or spontaneous hysterical hatred. Look at Rwanda where something like 800,000 people were killed in only a few days. Look at the Sudan. These are all the less obvious examples of evil at work.
And here is the second problem with let us say, why did God not stop Hitler from being born? How do you know that “everything would have been fine” otherwise? Humans have all sorts of mischief and it is constantly leading them astray. How do you know that even if there was not a Hitler that a German scientist might have still worked to invent the atomic bomb? Without World War II the Allies would never have developed atomic bombs on their own. Atomic bombs were developed in response to Hitler trying to develop a bomb, which was the ultimate horror scenario. But how do you know that in that “alternate scenario” of Hitler having never been born that some other nut might not have worked in secret for an atomic bomb, and then used it, or sold it to an unscrupulous government? So perhaps there would have been no Hitler and no Holocaust, but instead some mad scientists develop the atomic bomb and test it on Paris and Geneva.
Humans are too singular in their thought processes about evil and they can’t help it, which is one of the problems of the human brain and ego. They think that individual persons and actions are fungible, as in they can be taken “out” of action and then history will trundle along better, having eliminated that “problem.” Only God, however, knows all the “what if’s.” Only God knows what else humans would have done even if there never was a Hitler. If you do not believe me, just look at the evidence in Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime. There is a constancy of temptation of great evil among very average and mundane humans. That temptation does not “go away” if God smites or “doesn’t allow” individual evil doers to be alive and for them and all around them to have freedom of choice. Evil is the doing of very bad things using very good physical law. Does God eliminate the physical laws (such as fire, which is actually necessary for life), entire classes of behavior (thus God treats humans as robots, something he did not do even to the angels who are of his very spiritual substance), or does God eliminate all who would ever do evil (and thus all their offspring) and then, well, how many people would actually be alive on earth at all?
To wrap up this analogy, let’s look again at Mother Teresa. Who was she and what was the completed work of individual sculpture that emerged from her marble stone at the end of her life, the finished work? Her words live on after her in the book “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light.” One of the realities of the human limitations of perspective and vision is that each person does not understand their own completed sculpture. Only God knows who a person really is in total. Mother Teresa received her calling and her goodness by ministering to those who, one can safely argue, suffer from genuine evil of poverty, prejudice, untreated illness, loneliness and neglect. I argue that conditions that allow so many who would need a Mother Teresa in that vocation is an evil, for humans by now should have been much better at sharing the bounty and helping all the poor, the sick and the lonely. So Mother Teresa was in a large part chiseled out of her interaction with that large reservoir of evil in the world which is human deprivation and neglect of their fellow human beings. So on the one hand the evil of deprivation and neglect rubbed and chiseled great goodness out of the marble block that is Mother Teresa.
But interaction with evil and its products can be a two edged sword and cause damage and confusion to the do-gooder him or herself. This is particular true with those of the religious or spiritual persuasions. I’m not a sculptor so excuse my possibly ignorant examples, but let’s assume that sculptors use a range of tools, from blunt ones to remove much stone like a hammer, to finer and finer chisels, and then eventually to sandpaper to rub finished parts smooth. When one is totally melded to unrelenting and total ministering to what is evil and dark, it is like being constantly sculpted with the hammer and never allowing one’s self to be chiseled or smoothed gently. Mother Teresa is the poster child of this problem. All social workers know about “compassion fatigue.” Well, religious or spiritual humans are vulnerable to a compassion fatigue that is much worse, as it is rather than a compassion fatigue a goodness starvation. Social workers who have compassion fatigue have a work crisis, for example, but they still have access to normal parts of life beyond their social work, which is their own families, friends and other pleasures of life. Someone like a Mother Teresa willfully deprive themselves of all that is balancing and good in life, allowing their entire spirit to be subsumed by the evil that they are ministering to. Thus you read very odd and dark lacks of understanding such as the following:
Mother Teresa believed her mission would continue beyond her death. Her mission statement says this plainly: “If I ever become a saint-I will surely be one of ‘darkness.’ I will continually be absent from heaven-to light the light of those in darkness on earth” (p. 338).
I cringe whenever I open that book, by the way, and read those types of thoughts and this incredible inflation, as in this:
Mother is here to help you, guide you, lead you to Jesus. Time is coming closer when Mother also has to go to God. Then Mother will be able to help each one for you more, guide you more and obtain more graces for you (p. 338).
She actually viewed herself as a dark saint, full of drama, able to pop back and forth from heaven to earth, helping others (as obviously no one else can but her, classic signs of inflation) and worst of all “obtain more graces for you.” How can a woman of God, a Christian, become so fundamentally detached from the most basic doctrine and rational balance, where she anticipates being a dark co-mediatrix with Jesus dispensing graces? Good grief, what a mess.
The problem is that she became totally absorbed in the damaging effects of the evil of deprivation and neglect and allowed that to skew her perception of God as being likewise wounded and only of the suffering. The book states that she “always led us to Jesus,” but there are two problems with that. She started assuming that she was actually leading people to Jesus and thus necessary to the process and that simply is not true. All conversion and all grace come from God alone. She started believing that if she was not there that she’d actually have to come back from the dead or “reach down from heaven” in order to ‘bring people to Jesus.’ Whoa, is that a real problem. I guess she figured that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit were lax on the job and could not do it without her.
I am being blunt but not unkind. I mean, if she’s so essential to bringing people to Jesus, why is India more hostile to their own Christians than ever AND why are countries like China finding their own way to greater belief all without either literally her or an equivalent “Mother Teresa?” Every religious knows that all grace and conversion come from God through the Holy Spirit, not through individuals. Look at what Billy Graham said:
If anything has been accomplished through my life, it has been solely God’s doing, not mine, and He-not I-must get the credit (p. 55).
That is our mission… to be Christ’s ambassadors to the whole world, asking people to be reconciled to God. The primary message that I’ve tried to carry all over the world has been that God loves you. He gave His Son to die for you (p. 59).
I don’t have any supernatural power to do something for you. I am just a man, like you are. I am just a preacher. And my message is that God loves you, He accepts you and forgives you. He is ready to enter your hearts today (pg. 61).
The deepest problems of the human race are spiritual. They are rooted in man’s refusal to seek God’s way for his life. The problem is the human heart, which God alone can change (p. 78).
Jesus must increase, and I must decrease. I sort of cringe when I hear my name called in something I know has been the work of God through these years (p. 96).
All that I have been able to do, I owe to Jesus Christ. I feel I am a spectator watching what God is doing (p. 98).
I feel so undeserving of all the Spirit has done, because the work has been God’s and not man’s. I want no credit or glory. I want the Lord Jesus to have it all (p. 100).
As I look back over the years…I know that my deepest feeling is one of gratitude. I cannot take credit for whatever God has chosen to accomplish through us and our ministry; only God deserves the glory, and we can never thank Him enough for the great things He has done (p. 103).
God measures people by the small dimensions of humility and not by the bigness of their achievements or the size of their capabilities (pg. 17).
Without [Lists people he has worked with]-and all the other people who have served on our board and worked on the crusades-our ministry would be nothing. You would never have heard of me. I give all the credit and glory on this earth to them. And all the glory we give collectively to God, because without His Holy Spirit, we couldn’t have done it (p. 33).
Now, Billy Graham is the evangelist and if anyone could claim to “lead people to Jesus” it would be he. Yet read the constancy through the decades of his ministry of his humility and recognition that it all comes from God through the Holy Spirit, and not through any man or woman. I know that he would cringe at what I am doing but it must be said because without pointing out the corrosive effects of evil on good people, such as Mother Teresa, by comparing to one who uses humility and God’s grace as a protective shield, as does Billy Graham, the errors will continue. Great social work and sacrifice does not a saint make. Worse, a constant view of social work as evangelizing (when one is actually not even evangelizing) leaves harmful scars in one’s personal sculpture and the role model that one sets.
Through embracing her interior darkness, Mother Teresa became a “saint of Darkness.” Jesus’ call “Come-carry me into the holes of the poor.-Come be My light,” urged her “to give [herself]-without any reserve to God in the poor of the slums and the streets.” Disregarding her own suffering, she reached out to others whose suffering seemed greater than her own, bringing the light of God’s love to the hopeless and the helpless, to the poorest of the poor. Though she had carried Jesus into many “dark holes,” there were many more; and even when her strength was notably failing her spirit remained resolute. She carried on (p. 336).
Oh-my-goodness; the entire book makes my hair stand on end. She is “carrying” Jesus into “many dark places?” You mean Jesus is not there unless she brings him there? This is inflation and a martyr complex and not healthy devotion, regardless of the merits of her social work.
One must recognize that evil has strange effects beyond the obvious. It’s like a triple boomerang, if such a thing exists. On the one hand there is the evil of deprivation and extreme poverty and neglect, which harms those who suffer from it, but ennobles those who address it, such as Mother Teresa. So the evil harms the innocent, but the worthy step in and rebuke the evil with their works. But then a certain number of those who constantly immerse themselves in what they think is combating evil or being the only way by which people achieve God now get smacked in the head and soul by the evil in a secondary effect. They succumb to the temptation to believe that they are co-redeeming and co-dispensing of grace along with God; that God is less successful without them!
All of Mother Teresa’s personal writings can be read as a diagnosis of this problem. The boomerang of evil of poverty and deprivation is thrown and hits the innocent. Mother Teresa catches it and throws it back unceasingly through her total devotion to not God where he is, in heaven and among everyone, but “God in the poor.” By only seeing God as being completely in the poor and in fact she takes credit for CARRYING “Jesus into many ‘dark holes’” she then is smacked herself in turn by the evil of deprivation in a way she never recognizes: By being an acolyte of the suffering of deprivation she has now deprived herself of the comfort, the reality and the all glory and power to God and God alone.
I get into this whole tangle to show you that evil is a subtle and multistep process, not simply the obvious example of a great evil deed, and that it is impossible to separate from “good” life. The problem is succumbing to the temptations of evil, which is to study it too closely, to unconsciously or consciously emulate it, or to take credit for that which only God can do.
She was called to share in a distinct way in the mystery of the Cross, to become one with Christ in His Passion and one with the poor she served. Through this sharing she was led to a deep awareness of the “painful thirst” in the Heart of Jesus for the poorest of the poor (p. 335).
WHAT? Where is THAT in the Bible? Jesus on the Cross had a “painful thirst” for the poor in his Heart that he “called” her to share? Oh-my-goodness. Um, not to be a critic but she needed some time out and a strong and not co-enabling spiritual director as she dabbled in heretical and inflationary thoughts.
Her painful darkness mysteriously united her so intimately with her crucified Spouse, that He became the sole “object of her thoughts and affections, the subject of her conversations, the end of her actions and the model of her life" (p. 335).
Christ as spiritual Spouse is not the problem, and even her meditations on the crucified Christ, which is a rich and valid Catholic tradition. But to interpret his crucifixion as being about the poor is like she came from another planet and never read the Gospel.
I don’t have to repeat what I most recently blogged regarding why Christ was crucified, and it was not because his “Heart” had a “painful thirst” for the “poorest of the poor.” To correlate God sending his Son to redeem humans from the bonds of original sin and to establish the New Covenant with Jesus supposedly having a “painful thirst” in his “Heart” for the “poorest of the poor” makes me sympathize with Protestants who shake their heads at Catholics.
Thus evil tarnishes even the good.
The worst of evil is not the raving maniacs who murder, though that is the most heinous. The broadest impact of evil is to diminish God’s power and glory rather than diminish one’s self. The broadest impact of evil is thus to succumb both consciously and unconsciously to temptations of imbalance, whether it is the imbalance of the deprivation of poverty and access to life sustaining sustenance, or the imbalance of thinking that one is actually carrying Jesus around and he can’t go certain places without you taking him there. I’m not saying Mother Teresa was evil, but I am using her as a case study of a very good person who is eroded in what she could have been as the “finished product” by the corrosive effects of constant immersion in the despair of evil, the evil of deprivation. She was so long among the deprived that she started thinking that it is normal that God is deprived too, that Jesus was crucified because he had a “painful thirst for the poor of the poor.” (I keep expecting my laptop to go up in flames every time I type that phrase, good Lord).
What Jesus said:
John 12:7-8
So Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Let her keep this for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
Um, does that sound like Jesus has a (watch for the laptop on fire) “painful thirst for the poor of the poor,” one that he disturbs the peace of mind of one Mother Teresa with, in person, two thousand years later? “You always have the poor with you” does not sound like someone with a “painful thirst” for the “poorest of the poor.”
In fact, it is the judging and stern Jesus who admonishes that in the final judgment those who saw him in the poor and ministered to them will be rewarded, while those who neglect the poor will be punished. That is far from saying that Jesus needs to be lugged by one woman and placed in “dark holes” (hopes my laptop does not catch on fire as I really can’t afford another one right now).
So God allows evil because evil is the sum total of the physical world and human condition since evil is simply misuse of natural law (hand can built a home or strike an infant caused by the same force equals mass times acceleration natural law) and succumbing to temptations, from the most appalling and wicked to the most insidious and subtle. Evil cannot be eliminated in any form without removing natural law and human independence of action, and doing either of that would really eliminate human life. Animal life could certainly continue on since animals have no concept of evil, only survival and raising their young. This then means the only answer would be for God to cull in advance anyone he knows since he is all knowing will perform evil, and again, we have the problem that few humans would exist. Look at the odds. Out of Adam, Eve, Abel and Cain, three of the four performed evil and the fourth was killed as a result of the evil act. If God eliminated evil he should not have created Adam and Eve in the first place (knowing they’d commit evil in advance) and thus there would be no humans in faith history. Obviously as with the angels example God is demonstrating that love is all powerful and is the reason, and that he will never close the door by culling like some sort of animals those angels or humans he knows will disobey and do evil. A lot of “good” people alive today descend from someone who did a lot of evil somewhere along the line, and if the line ended there, there would be a lot of whales and polar bears on earth but not a lot of humans, if any.
Jesus does not have to be “carried” into the slums; Jesus, like God, is already there.
John 12:26
“Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.”
John 14:20
“On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.”
John 14:27
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”
Evil is contrariness to the will of God, so it is not only the breaking of Commandments and other laws of God, but it is the cruelty and misleading of humans by other humans. A subtle but destructive form of evil and temptation is the destruction of the peace of Jesus, which is not just the peace of a lack of war and conflict, but also the serenity of peace of mind. Jesus does not teach an obsessive compulsive philosophy of works. He gives peace even as the world is in its flawed condition, and he tells all to NOT let their hearts be troubled or afraid. Jesus is about as far from having a “painful thirst” as you can imagine. (Is my computer getting hotter, or am I just imagining it?) I better wind up this blogging.
I hope that you have found this rather lengthy commentary helpful.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Words of comfort for those who lost children
Hardly a day goes by where we do not see in the news yet another tragic loss of children, in automobile accidents, often due to drunk driving, incredible murders (all four children in one family in Oklahoma, along with their mother), tragic illnesses or mishaps (such as drowning in pools), and other ailments that result in the loss of a young life.
I've written before about his to console those who are bearing the unbearable. Nothing can really ease the loss of a child. However, I realize that it helps if I can assure those who mourn of several things.
One is that no matter how horribly the child may have been frightened or in pain, they enter heaven unafraid and with no thought of the pain or trauma of their passing. It's not that they "forget" or have memories erased or anything. Rather, heaven is so awesome that it truly washes away the attention completely from the sadness and pain and they are only focused on looking forward, at the "here and now" of heaven. You know how when you do something you truly enjoy that you are totally absorbed and content, and even for just a few moments don't think of your problems? It is like that but a million times better! The child does not need to have memories erased or to be soothed because the child's soul is refreshed instantly at being in the place that is only love and light.
Second, this is true even if your child was raised, as far too many are, without any knowledge of the genuine faith and nature of the one God. It's not like when they arrive they are confused and scared because all that they had been taught was wrong, or that they have a total blank slate about the faith due to lack of traditional faith transmission by parents and caregivers. First of all, they have an instinctive recognition of God, and they feel from the start that they always knew about him. Why is that? Well, remember that their guardian angels were always with them when alive, so having a guardian angel is like hearing God talking or humming in the background, even if one is not a believer. It's that feeling you have that you are never really alone (the comforting feeling, not the feeling that paranoids or stalking victims have, ha). No, all people have that white noise access to God even if they do not believe, due to their guardian angel and also the constant efforts of the Holy Spirit to reach everyone.
Because young children are innocent they cannot be held to blame for not receiving instruction in God and the true faith. Thus their instinctive connectivity via their guardian angel is pure, and they feel at home and "knowledgeable" right away in heaven. Jesus himself assured the disciples that the angels of children constantly face God. Adults are another matter entirely, who have their own accountability for ignoring the faith. Children, however, cannot help how they are raised, but a parent or caregiver who is suffering the loss of a child does not need to worry that their being remiss in teaching them the faith has caused them to now be scared or in pain after suddenly dying. Their guardian angel is with them right to heaven, as the angel was with them in the womb before they even "knew" they were a person. (Just think, mothers of twins, triplets and other multiple births have that many guardian angels along for the ride too :-) However, this is no excuse not to raise any living child in the faith because children need knowledge of God and faith in him in order to live properly and fully. Faith is about living and all children need the support and love of knowledge of God to live full and rational lives. So I am making these points in order to reassure those who were remiss in teaching their children, and who are in pain of loss, and not to tell parents of living children that it is "OK" to skip the faith and God part and it all sorts itself out anyway. That is because you hope your child will grow up to be adults, and then it is an entirely different matter.
However, if the worst happens, be assured that children do not need to know about God in order to find him and not be afraid when they die. After all, premature, aborted and newborn babies who die all find their way to heaven without having any knowledge about life at all, say nothing of instruction in the faith. In heaven babies are aware in a way that I can't really explain because words are inadequate. The easiest way to think of it is that they share in the knowledge of the angels. So while they do not have worldly years and experiences, like the angels they are aware in ways that living beings are not. It's not a bookish or "experience" awareness, but it's a knowing of how things "really are," and a share in the infinite goodness of eternal life outside of time, matter and energy (none of which exist in heaven, so souls in heaven are not "energy beings," since there is no "energy" in heaven, just as there is no matter or time). So even premature babies, aborted embryos, however short their life all gain a portion of the knowledge and awareness of angels, since, like angels, they receive all of their life sustenance from God's will and power. All that exists in heaven exists because it is within God. Thus, even the tiniest of infants who never got to live at all are not deprived of mature awareness, but it is a totally heavenly based maturity, not earthly based maturity of experience at living life.
Children do not become angels, by the way. I mean, sure, it's fine to call them God's littlest angels, but angels are spirits created by God who never lived in conditions of time or matter. Children lived, even if only a few weeks in the womb, with the soul in the body's temple. Thus the souls of humans go to heaven; they are not transformed into being angels since angels are of totally different spiritual substance, not having ever been of earth.
Further, children are greeted by their nearest relatives who have achieved heaven. Through their angelic and God given awareness, they know who everyone is, even if it is a grandfather or grandmother, even multi generational back in time. Like I said, the "nearest relatives who have achieved heaven." God will go back however far he has to, ahem. I like to think that every child has a lot of relatives in heaven and they do, but sometimes it's not of the current generations, to be bluntly honest. People who want to be reunited with their children need to understand that heaven is merited individually; having a child in heaven is not one's "meal ticket" to getting into heaven. God always hopes that people will be more open in their hearts, led by their children, into more love and belief, not less. I can tell you that many times it is the desire to see one's child again that has melted cold hearts of disbelief in their parents, their grieving families, and their caregivers. Sometimes that takes time, of course, but throughout human faith history that has been a powerful directional toward God, to think about the loving care that one's child is receiving there with God, and to yearn for reunion in time.
This is, by the way, what I tell adults who aborted their children, and who years later regret it. Do not ever lose focus on the fact that you can be with that child, and not in disgrace or recriminations or embarrassment, but as all are reunited in joy and the drying of tears in heaven. There are no grudges in heaven and certainly children remember only the joy of reunion. So do not ever make the error that Judas made, of total despair, believing that God cannot fix even such a sad situation as when he betrayed Christ: if only Judas had repented and believed! Likewise, even in abortion, have faith in God and his reality, and seek him during your life, and you can live in the hope of joyous reunion with the children you never knew.
In heaven there are not really "activities" per se, but one can think of it as the place where God knows the bliss that each soul most desires. Thus children who really crave the mothering find much mothering in heaven, and those who crave the fathering find only the goodness of fatherhood in heaven. Children who loved animals see their pets in heaven, and the other beings of heaven that are of that spirit. When Jesus tells the story of the poor man Lazarus who died in pain, neglect and poverty, Jesus points out that Lazarus is in the bosom of Abraham in heaven. Abraham is the father of all the faiths in the one God, and thus one can see an example of what I mean. The poor man Lazarus needed a father, a provider, and thus his bliss is to be cradled by the great father of all the faiths, Abraham, in heaven. So it is with children where they are surrounded and loved by whatever relatives, saints, angels and fellow souls that they could ever desire for their bliss in God's presence. They do not "miss" anyone, no matter how much they loved on earth, because there is no passage of time in heaven with which to miss anyone. It is difficult to imagine how the heavenly abode is, totally outside of the existence of time. The best way to describe it is that whoever is going to be in heaven seems to be "already there," even though there is passage of time on earth. In other words, your child does not have time to miss you, quite literally, he or she does not have the time since there is no such thing as time itself. That does not diminish the joy of when you are reunited.
That, by the way, is why the Apostles and disciples thought so much about the resurrection of the body at the end of time. It is too mind boggling for them to comprehend heaven and their existence as souls, so they focused on trying to understand what it would be like when their bodies are resurrected, all of life passes, time ends, and there is the new heavenly "Jerusalem" for those who merit it. It's not like they didn't understand that they would individually be with Jesus in heaven when each of them died, obviously. But rather than try to imagine that, they instead asked Jesus about when they would be in their resurrected bodies and all the earth would be anew. THAT they could understand and quiz Jesus about. But as Jesus reminded them, even he himself did not know when the end of time would take place, only God knows that. So Jesus reminded them that he was going to heaven to prepare places for them in heaven, explaining to them that God has many mansions (rooms) in heaven and that he, Jesus, would go ahead and prepare their places. Again, Jesus is using terms that humans can understand. It's not like God literally has little houses custom decorated to the liking of each human (sorry New Agers). What Jesus means by mansions or rooms is what I explained, that the place of one's bliss is prepared.
So when people joke that when someone dies, "God must have needed another musician," or "God needed another baseball player," etc., that is in a joking way actually closer to the truth of heaven than imagining little marble mansions or log cabins of one's own. Spirits in heaven cluster around their love relationships from earth and also their commonality of bliss. It is not so much the type of interest but the type of love that they most desire. The gravity of heaven is the love of God and it is love of God and being in his light that ennobles through and of God the relationships that one has in heaven. So just as gravity on earth keeps one steady on the planet and able to move and breathe the atmosphere that is also kept in place by gravity, God's love and presence is the gravity of heaven and all gather within heaven feeling the mutual bonds of love and bliss. Yes, there is a lot of singing in heaven because the angels constantly sing God's praise, and it is never tiresome and it never grows old (and one does not have to worry about being out of tune or not having perfect pitch ;-)
So the only comfort that I can offer grieving parents is a powerful one, but one that is forward looking as time slowly heals sufficiently so that the grief becomes bearable and life can go on. The comfort is that no matter what the circumstances of their passing, innocent children do not carry fear or pain with them, they find heaven, they know God, and they are surrounded by relatives, angels and others who provide love and bliss.
I hope that you have found this in some way helpful.
I've written before about his to console those who are bearing the unbearable. Nothing can really ease the loss of a child. However, I realize that it helps if I can assure those who mourn of several things.
One is that no matter how horribly the child may have been frightened or in pain, they enter heaven unafraid and with no thought of the pain or trauma of their passing. It's not that they "forget" or have memories erased or anything. Rather, heaven is so awesome that it truly washes away the attention completely from the sadness and pain and they are only focused on looking forward, at the "here and now" of heaven. You know how when you do something you truly enjoy that you are totally absorbed and content, and even for just a few moments don't think of your problems? It is like that but a million times better! The child does not need to have memories erased or to be soothed because the child's soul is refreshed instantly at being in the place that is only love and light.
Second, this is true even if your child was raised, as far too many are, without any knowledge of the genuine faith and nature of the one God. It's not like when they arrive they are confused and scared because all that they had been taught was wrong, or that they have a total blank slate about the faith due to lack of traditional faith transmission by parents and caregivers. First of all, they have an instinctive recognition of God, and they feel from the start that they always knew about him. Why is that? Well, remember that their guardian angels were always with them when alive, so having a guardian angel is like hearing God talking or humming in the background, even if one is not a believer. It's that feeling you have that you are never really alone (the comforting feeling, not the feeling that paranoids or stalking victims have, ha). No, all people have that white noise access to God even if they do not believe, due to their guardian angel and also the constant efforts of the Holy Spirit to reach everyone.
Because young children are innocent they cannot be held to blame for not receiving instruction in God and the true faith. Thus their instinctive connectivity via their guardian angel is pure, and they feel at home and "knowledgeable" right away in heaven. Jesus himself assured the disciples that the angels of children constantly face God. Adults are another matter entirely, who have their own accountability for ignoring the faith. Children, however, cannot help how they are raised, but a parent or caregiver who is suffering the loss of a child does not need to worry that their being remiss in teaching them the faith has caused them to now be scared or in pain after suddenly dying. Their guardian angel is with them right to heaven, as the angel was with them in the womb before they even "knew" they were a person. (Just think, mothers of twins, triplets and other multiple births have that many guardian angels along for the ride too :-) However, this is no excuse not to raise any living child in the faith because children need knowledge of God and faith in him in order to live properly and fully. Faith is about living and all children need the support and love of knowledge of God to live full and rational lives. So I am making these points in order to reassure those who were remiss in teaching their children, and who are in pain of loss, and not to tell parents of living children that it is "OK" to skip the faith and God part and it all sorts itself out anyway. That is because you hope your child will grow up to be adults, and then it is an entirely different matter.
However, if the worst happens, be assured that children do not need to know about God in order to find him and not be afraid when they die. After all, premature, aborted and newborn babies who die all find their way to heaven without having any knowledge about life at all, say nothing of instruction in the faith. In heaven babies are aware in a way that I can't really explain because words are inadequate. The easiest way to think of it is that they share in the knowledge of the angels. So while they do not have worldly years and experiences, like the angels they are aware in ways that living beings are not. It's not a bookish or "experience" awareness, but it's a knowing of how things "really are," and a share in the infinite goodness of eternal life outside of time, matter and energy (none of which exist in heaven, so souls in heaven are not "energy beings," since there is no "energy" in heaven, just as there is no matter or time). So even premature babies, aborted embryos, however short their life all gain a portion of the knowledge and awareness of angels, since, like angels, they receive all of their life sustenance from God's will and power. All that exists in heaven exists because it is within God. Thus, even the tiniest of infants who never got to live at all are not deprived of mature awareness, but it is a totally heavenly based maturity, not earthly based maturity of experience at living life.
Children do not become angels, by the way. I mean, sure, it's fine to call them God's littlest angels, but angels are spirits created by God who never lived in conditions of time or matter. Children lived, even if only a few weeks in the womb, with the soul in the body's temple. Thus the souls of humans go to heaven; they are not transformed into being angels since angels are of totally different spiritual substance, not having ever been of earth.
Further, children are greeted by their nearest relatives who have achieved heaven. Through their angelic and God given awareness, they know who everyone is, even if it is a grandfather or grandmother, even multi generational back in time. Like I said, the "nearest relatives who have achieved heaven." God will go back however far he has to, ahem. I like to think that every child has a lot of relatives in heaven and they do, but sometimes it's not of the current generations, to be bluntly honest. People who want to be reunited with their children need to understand that heaven is merited individually; having a child in heaven is not one's "meal ticket" to getting into heaven. God always hopes that people will be more open in their hearts, led by their children, into more love and belief, not less. I can tell you that many times it is the desire to see one's child again that has melted cold hearts of disbelief in their parents, their grieving families, and their caregivers. Sometimes that takes time, of course, but throughout human faith history that has been a powerful directional toward God, to think about the loving care that one's child is receiving there with God, and to yearn for reunion in time.
This is, by the way, what I tell adults who aborted their children, and who years later regret it. Do not ever lose focus on the fact that you can be with that child, and not in disgrace or recriminations or embarrassment, but as all are reunited in joy and the drying of tears in heaven. There are no grudges in heaven and certainly children remember only the joy of reunion. So do not ever make the error that Judas made, of total despair, believing that God cannot fix even such a sad situation as when he betrayed Christ: if only Judas had repented and believed! Likewise, even in abortion, have faith in God and his reality, and seek him during your life, and you can live in the hope of joyous reunion with the children you never knew.
In heaven there are not really "activities" per se, but one can think of it as the place where God knows the bliss that each soul most desires. Thus children who really crave the mothering find much mothering in heaven, and those who crave the fathering find only the goodness of fatherhood in heaven. Children who loved animals see their pets in heaven, and the other beings of heaven that are of that spirit. When Jesus tells the story of the poor man Lazarus who died in pain, neglect and poverty, Jesus points out that Lazarus is in the bosom of Abraham in heaven. Abraham is the father of all the faiths in the one God, and thus one can see an example of what I mean. The poor man Lazarus needed a father, a provider, and thus his bliss is to be cradled by the great father of all the faiths, Abraham, in heaven. So it is with children where they are surrounded and loved by whatever relatives, saints, angels and fellow souls that they could ever desire for their bliss in God's presence. They do not "miss" anyone, no matter how much they loved on earth, because there is no passage of time in heaven with which to miss anyone. It is difficult to imagine how the heavenly abode is, totally outside of the existence of time. The best way to describe it is that whoever is going to be in heaven seems to be "already there," even though there is passage of time on earth. In other words, your child does not have time to miss you, quite literally, he or she does not have the time since there is no such thing as time itself. That does not diminish the joy of when you are reunited.
That, by the way, is why the Apostles and disciples thought so much about the resurrection of the body at the end of time. It is too mind boggling for them to comprehend heaven and their existence as souls, so they focused on trying to understand what it would be like when their bodies are resurrected, all of life passes, time ends, and there is the new heavenly "Jerusalem" for those who merit it. It's not like they didn't understand that they would individually be with Jesus in heaven when each of them died, obviously. But rather than try to imagine that, they instead asked Jesus about when they would be in their resurrected bodies and all the earth would be anew. THAT they could understand and quiz Jesus about. But as Jesus reminded them, even he himself did not know when the end of time would take place, only God knows that. So Jesus reminded them that he was going to heaven to prepare places for them in heaven, explaining to them that God has many mansions (rooms) in heaven and that he, Jesus, would go ahead and prepare their places. Again, Jesus is using terms that humans can understand. It's not like God literally has little houses custom decorated to the liking of each human (sorry New Agers). What Jesus means by mansions or rooms is what I explained, that the place of one's bliss is prepared.
So when people joke that when someone dies, "God must have needed another musician," or "God needed another baseball player," etc., that is in a joking way actually closer to the truth of heaven than imagining little marble mansions or log cabins of one's own. Spirits in heaven cluster around their love relationships from earth and also their commonality of bliss. It is not so much the type of interest but the type of love that they most desire. The gravity of heaven is the love of God and it is love of God and being in his light that ennobles through and of God the relationships that one has in heaven. So just as gravity on earth keeps one steady on the planet and able to move and breathe the atmosphere that is also kept in place by gravity, God's love and presence is the gravity of heaven and all gather within heaven feeling the mutual bonds of love and bliss. Yes, there is a lot of singing in heaven because the angels constantly sing God's praise, and it is never tiresome and it never grows old (and one does not have to worry about being out of tune or not having perfect pitch ;-)
So the only comfort that I can offer grieving parents is a powerful one, but one that is forward looking as time slowly heals sufficiently so that the grief becomes bearable and life can go on. The comfort is that no matter what the circumstances of their passing, innocent children do not carry fear or pain with them, they find heaven, they know God, and they are surrounded by relatives, angels and others who provide love and bliss.
I hope that you have found this in some way helpful.
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