Friends, this will probably sound a little critical, but do not take it to heart, as I am not criticizing scripture citers, and in fact I enjoy very much even the free wheeling citing that takes place on Twitter. I am, however, going to finally address two errors that many make in citing scripture.
1. Many err by approaching friends (or foes) and cutting loose with their opening statements as scripture citations. Instead of being person-person and then citing scripture as the conversation develops IF NECESSARY, scripture is used as the "opening salvo" as if a war or prosecution weapon. That is Satan's role modeling, not Christ's (Matthew 4:1-10).
2. Many think that you cite scripture first, then "understanding" will follow. It is the other way around. You must understand God before you cite scripture, and that means the entire context. You do not fire, aim, ready with scripture, you ready (understand), aim (discern appropriateness) then fire (cite). Rev. Billy Graham in his daily question column is an excellent role model for the correct order, by the way.
But above all, look to Jesus and how he spoke so you can understand what I mean, and you can follow his scriptural direction with worthiness. Let's go to the positive example of his Sermon in Matthew 5, before analyzing the negative example by Satan as I pointed out to you in Matthew 4.
Matthew 5
1. And seeing the crowds, he went up the mountain. And when he was seated, his disciples came to him. 2. And opening his mouth he taught them, saying,
[Notice that Jesus is on the mountain, seated, and surrounded by disciples. These are three postures of authority, understanding and discernment. Previously in Jesus' life as documented in the Gospels, you realize that he has authority from God, is in communion with God and thus receiving direction and understanding, and he has assumed the teaching role, thus demonstrating discernment. You must likewise develop your own understanding and discernment before you put yourself on a mountain, be seated, surround yourself with disciples, and then even open your mouth!]
3. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
[Does Jesus "cite scripture here?" No.]
4. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth."
[Does Jesus wow them with citing scripture? No.]
5. "Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted."
[Does Jesus finally whip out all that scripture to cite yet? No.]
6. "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied."
[Still waiting for the scroll & verse?]
7. "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."
[Hey! I'm not gonna listen anymore cuz Jesus doesn't say where God says that in the Bible."]
8. "Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God."
["That Jesus sure gonna be in trouble if he doesn't provide us with where God defines in the scripture what "clean of heart" means, sheesh!"]
9. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."
["I thought God didn't have children? Where's that in the scripture?]
10. "Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice's sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
[Hey! "Where's that listed in the redeemable rewards index in the Bible???!!!?"]
11. "Blessed are you when men reproach you, and persecute you, and speaking falsely, say all manner of evil against you, for my sake. 12. Rejoice and exult, because your reward is great in heaven; for so did they persecute the prophets who were before you.
[Wow, Jesus will surely be in trouble now because he then goes on to teach that disciples are compared to salt and light in the world, without listing by citing in scripture exactly which prophets were persecuted!!!! Goodness, why isn't that Jesus Christ citing scripture!!!]
By the way, Jesus could have cited scripture from Psalms for Matthew:4, Isaiah for Matthew 5:5, and again Psalms for Matthew 5:8. Early Church scholars spent a lot of time analyzing Old Testament scripture to identify and footnote the New Testament to identify scripture that Jesus would have been well aware of.
Now, let's look at the negative example, of what I am teaching you about today, Matthew 4.
Matthew 4
1. Then Jesus was led into the desert by the Spirit, to be tempted by the devil. 2. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.
[Many people jump right to the dialogue between Satan and Jesus, and miss the huge point that Jesus was fasting, and thus in contemplative prayer, for forty days before they spoke! Again, you must understand that the point is not that "Jesus was sure real hungry" but that Jesus spent forty days of spiritual preparation before opening his mouth and citing scripture!]
3. And the tempter came and said to him, "If thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread."
[Satan opens the conversation and you might say, "Hey, he's not starting with scripture." That is true but he is referring to Jesus being the Messiah, promised throughout the Old Testament! So Satan is starting the scripture based accusing first. This is the mistake that SO MANY supposedly pious Christians make today; they walk up to someone and immediately accuse or assume based on scripture, without even asking as much as "Could you explain to me what you are doing and why?"]
4. But he answered and said, "It is written, Not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God."
[Notice two things. Jesus, knowing that Satan is correctly accusing him of being the promised Messiah, does not even bother to confirm that via scripture. Jesus does not dignify the "IF" that Satan starts the accusation with, by confirming the truth of that accusation, that Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus addresses the temptation with scripture, knowing full well the thoughts of Satan, who is going to engage in dueling scripture with him, and who started it by alluding to Jesus "if" being the Son of God, the promised Messiah. Secondly notice that Jesus paraphrases the scripture, not getting hung up in citing every single word in the 'original' order nor citing the book and verse.]
***
In Matthew 4:5-7 they again duel in scripture, with Satan citing first. In Matthew 4:8-10 Satan does not cite or allude to scripture at all (except to imply that he is the fallen prince who is able to supply all worldly things to Jesus) and instead, directly tempts, which Jesus replies to with scripture, and Satan departs.
Jesus' authority is once again confirmed as being from God the Most High and Holy in Matthew 4:11 where "behold, angels came and ministered to him." Angels did not have to "help Jesus out" by sending him "spiritual guide messages" to "tell him what to say to Satan." This is another delusion of modern people, even those who seem to be good Christians, that there is "coaching" going on from heaven. There is not and that is a total misunderstanding of being infused with the Holy Spirit.
To remain, however, with my main point. Study how many times Jesus could have cited scripture, and did not. Further, study how perfectly appropriate Jesus is when he does choose to cite scripture, and how he does it with patience and never as a rebuke with people.
With some people, many, actually, *sigh with sadness,* about all the scripture one hears from a human is when they are rebuking or trying to shame or embarrass another person. Where's that in the Gospel? Where does Jesus role model that?
When you go up to someone and immediately spout a Ten Commandment to someone, or some other scripture in order to discomfort them, all you do is copy the enemy, Satan, not Jesus. You further yourself, and probably the person you are speaking to, from the Kingdom of God, not drawing closer, through love and plain ordinary truthful every day speech, as you would use if you were really following Jesus. You rely on the scripture for your own understanding and discernment, you don't use it as your opening salvo, as the punches you exchange in the ring. You don't hope for that "killer scripture" that will "sucker punch" your "opponent." How much farther from Jesus could you be with that? Any farther would take you into the dangerous realm of not being a genuine believer, but an agenda driven utilizer of script.
Again, do not be alarmed about sharing favorite scripture, such as on Twitter, or in conversation. Be warned, though, that if you are using scripture to fire sniper bullets, you are going to hit yourself with them.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
Showing posts with label discernment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label discernment. Show all posts
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
understanding Jesus: numbers not important
I've been meaning to blog about this since Sunday when the scripture I will reference was discussed in Sunday school. Here are the scriptures describing the two separate occasions when Jesus fed thousands of people by miraculously multiplying a tiny amount of food.
Mark 6:39-44
And he ordered them to make all the people recline in groups on the green grass. And they reclined in groups of hundreds and of fifties. And he took the five loaves and the two fishes and, looking up to heaven, blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and the two fishes he divided among them all. And all ate and were satisfied; and they gathered up what was left over, twelve baskets full of fragments, besides what was left over of the fishes. Now those who had eaten were five thousand men.
Mark 8:1-9
In those days when again there was a great crowd, and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples together and said to them, "I have compassion on the crowd, for behold, they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat; and if I send them away to their homes fasting, they will faint on the way for some of them have come from a distance." And his disciples answered him, "How will anyone be able to satisfy these with bread, here in the desert? He asked them, "How many loaves have you?" And they said, "Seven."
And he bade the crowd recline on the ground. Then taking the seven loaves, he gave thanks, broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute; and they set them before the crowd. And they had a few little fishes; and he blessed them, and ordered them to be distributed. And they ate and were satisfied; and they took up what was left of the fragments, seven baskets. Now those who had eaten were about four thousand. And he dismissed them.
---
Alright, there are so many things that one should discuss and understand about these two miracles, but I have found that a very common error in approach to understanding these miracles derails most of the modern discussion of these events away from their core spiritual and literal meanings. Sure enough, right after reading one of these passages our Sunday school teacher (who I really like, so this is no criticism) almost immediately fell into the derailment by reading what all these highly educated commentators have said about these miracles: *I'm rolling my eyes* .... "the symbolism of the number of loaves and fishes".....*I'm rolling my eyes again, as I can't even repeat this without being frustrated, argh*
He then starts to repeat what "they" (the wonderful commentators) have "analyzed" about the "meaning" of how many loaves and fishes they were, and what holy numbers they symbolized, blah blah blah. I interrupted him right there and said something like, "I know all the commentators discuss it but they are wrong: there is absolutely no symbolism in either of these miracles by Jesus." I briefly stated why and here I will explain it to you.
First of all, let's discuss why people get so easily misled into missing the events and then worthy analysis of the miracles' greater meanings (not "symbolisms" as a greater meaning is different than "symbolism.") One cannot discuss a greater meaning of these events without first agreeing on the facts. So that is what Mark and the other gospel writers set forth when they wrote about Jesus: first the facts, then what Jesus actually did, and then any greater meaning (John's Gospel tends to include more of that kind of thought), including any explanation of how/why that Jesus provided. There are two reasons modern people are so easily mislead into discussing ridiculous things like the "meaning" and "symbolism" of "how many" loaves and fishes were used by Jesus. First of all, people today do not understand why such trivial data is supplied, unless it has a "deep" and "heavy" "symbolic" "meaning." That is because they no longer understand that detailing such small items (which happens throughout the Bible) is what people were taught to do, back when only oral history and verbal contracts existed, which is to "bear witness." I include the label here "witness" where I have previously explained this.
So what modern people think is either a trivial point (who cares if it was five loaves) or a big heavy "symbolism" (ooooh, it must have been "five" for "a reason," yeah, a "mystical reason..." followed by profound and eerie music and nods of agreement by the scholars who are paid and make names for being so smart) the reason it was recorded down to the number of loaves and fishes is that.... that is what actually happened, and the people of those times were all taught by their families and teachers to be scrupulously accurate in bearing witness to great events. It's part of the accuracy record, to them, and that is the automatic mindset.
One reason it is important to be accurate is so that readers (or those who hear the Gospel verbally) understand exactly how big or small an event just took place. Look at the two extremes in an analogy. If Jesus fed 5000 people with let's say 1000 loaves, that would not be such a huge miracle, would it? On the other hand, if Jesus fed people with no loaves, making the loaves out of thin air, it would be a huge miracle (but not more huge than what actually happened.) What, you say... why is that? Why would in theory no loaves be equally as miraculous as feeding from five loaves? Remember the Exodus, when Moses asked God to feed the people and manna fell from the skies. The Jewish people would all have been VERY mindful of that seminal miracle in their faith history, when God provided the bread of manna out of nothing, as it rained down from the sky. They thus would have viewed Jesus as having done the same thing, mediating between the hungry people and God, who provides for them out of nothing. So anyone alive during that time who carried witness either verbally or in writing would have routinely recorded how many loaves and fishes because it allowed the listener or the reader to put what happened in the proper context with the facts.
The second reason modern people, including supposedly smart scholars, fall into the trap of putting numinous and irrelevant meaning on the number of loaves and fishes is, well, there is no subtle way to put it, they are a bit weak in their faith. Either consciously but (to give them the benefit of the doubt) unconsciously, they tend to think that the number is important because it is contrived. I'm not saying they full out think this is a made up story, but there is always the temptation to disbelieve something so incredible, always nibbling and gnawing in the back of the mind. So these commentators figure, "Well, just in case this actually did not happen, we can still derive a 'greater spiritual lesson' by 'analyzing the meaning' of what the 'authors' (not God) did 'present.'" You see what I mean? When there is even a five percent of doubt of the literal accuracy of the Gospel in one's mind, no matter what a believer and a "scholar" you are, your understanding of the plain words will be mislead and warped. Previous generations could discuss "meaning" and "symbolism," sure, but they did so on the firm basis of 100 percent believing the facts of the miracles: that is the sad difference between then and these smarty pants modern times.
So how did I bring an abrupt halt to that line of thought? I will explain it to you now and offer it to you as a faith and reasoning case study. I said something like this. Well, if the numbers are so "symbolic" and "mean something else," does that mean that if only four loaves were there instead of five, Jesus would have hit his forehead and said, "Darn! Now I can't do the miracle! It's the wrong symbolic number of loaves!" Or if they had loaves but no fishes, would Jesus have said, "Wish I could help, but it's just not the right holy symbolic numbers of ingredients." Ha ha ha, yes, my readers, I did see a few fellow Sunday school members narrow their eyes at me ha ha when I said that ha. But they have to see in parody, sometimes, how silly they are being (or how easily misled). I mean, this is deadly serious: Jesus Christ, born of God by the Holy Spirit overshadowing the Blessed Virgin Mary, healed, performed miracles, and conquered death, resurrecting after being crucified and ascending into heaven. The facts are mighty just as they are, I mean, duh. The facts don't have to also be "symbolic" of like lucky numbers or something. The way to detox from such thinking (that there is some "formula" or "bigger meaning" to the small facts, the insignificant number of the loaves and fishes) is to test the theory that the number of each item is instrumental to the miracle taking place. That is what I did, by making the people answer, "Well, if those numbers are so symbolic, does that mean Jesus could or would do the miracle only if a certain number of the items were there?"
Would Jesus "not be able" to do the miraculous feeding if there wasn't the "holy symbolic" number of items? Of course not. Jesus could do it with zero loaves or 1000 loaves.
Would Jesus refuse to feed the hungry people because there isn't the "right number of 'holy symbolic' items there?" Imagine that, Jesus saying: "Oh oh, there is supposed to be five loaves because that's a really holy important number, and you have only four loaves, so sorry, I'm not going to do the miracles and you have to walk home hungry, hope you don't hit your head on a rock while you are faint with having followed me for days." Obviously not, and I included the passage where Jesus states his concern for the health of people who had been fasting for so long already (and that is the motivation for the miracle, not to demonstrate his power and authority).
You see, that is what people ought to be gleaning from their personal reading of the Bible, the facts, the context, Jesus' words and explanations, and the Gospel writers words and explanations. Young people who use computers, you know WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). The Bible must be read and understood that way, that what you see is what you get, and also "it is what it is." Jesus was followed by many people, on two different occasions, to remote areas for several days where there was no fresh food to gain after what people had brought with them had run out. Out of concern for them Jesus takes whatever is found and turns that through his miraculous God given ability into much food for the multitude. All that is documented so that the listeners and readers of these events comprehend how big and precise a miracle this was, so that they get it even though they were not there.
The key to the miracles is that Jesus demonstrated he can make do with what people provided. If it was no loaves or many loaves or, as in the reality, just a very few loaves, Jesus can and did work with whatever people had.
That, then, is the larger meanings of these miraculous events because yes, sure, there are the events and then there is the larger meaning to glean from it, but it's not "magic" or "holy" "numbers" kind of meanings. I can write more about them some other time as I really want to keep this confined to the case study of understanding how to avoid the pitfall of missing the really important facts and points of a Biblical event by derailing on something unimportant and thus not seeing the outline of what one should indeed contemplate. So here is in closing just a list of how to mindfully approach the "bigger and greater meaning" of the miraculous events.
1. Notice the circumstances and think about them. People obviously were so committed to hearing what Jesus said that thousands followed him into barren areas with no thought of their food or water.
2. Notice Jesus' motivation for the miracles, which is simple plain love and humanity for their plight, after showing such commitment and attention to him. This is far away from the nagging scribes and Pharisees, so Jesus is not performing these miracles in order to demonstrate his God given authority. It is plain and simple loving need.
3. Notice that Jesus uses whatever is available, for he has the might of God with him, and lots of bread and fishes or no bread and fishes, God can do anything.
4. Notice that Jesus gives thanks and don't slide over that thinking that is like saying grace before food, for it is not a pre-meal prayer of thanksgiving to God. Jesus is thanking God for the ability to perform what, only through God, he is about to do, which is feed the people. Jesus is thus both on his own thanking God for what is about to occur, but also giving the people a role modeling of how always to be so whenever one uses one's God given abilities, to be thankful first and foremost to God.
5. Notice that Jesus gives the food to the disciples to distribute. Of course some of that is logistics, as many hands can distribute the food faster. But the greater meaning is that Jesus is a) preparing the disciples and the people for the time when they can do some of this themselves, for remember all the Apostles and original disciples became able to perform miracles and b) that the word of God needs to be carried and spread by everyone, not just, as we would say today, the "guru." Jesus is always modest and that was a sincere modesty because he never for a second of his life forgot that everything he was able to do was directly from God the Father. Thus Jesus did not have to "showboat" and hand out the food himself so people would be grateful to him and impressed by him.... Jesus always demonstrated that a) all power and glory go to God alone and b) his disciples were extensions of him and Jesus did not always need to be "the one." Remember that Jesus himself did not baptize, but his disciples baptized their followers. Jesus was always showing how the faith community was to come together and function, as it would have to when he was no longer there.
6. Notice that they record what fragments remain. This is part of what I explained about the witnessing to the facts of what happened. It is also OK and valid to ponder the greater meaning that even after Jesus through God provides all that is needed, there is even more leftover. God's grace is always more than expectations and there is always more than the bare minimum of human needs.
I hope you have found this helpful! Do not be afraid to discover that even wise experts, in these modern times in particular, miss the forest through the trees. (That's an old saying, for those of you who are English second language or may not have heard it, meaning that some people are so obsessed with details that they notice one or two trees without ever realizing those one or two trees are accompanied by many trees in a forest all around them.) Glomming onto an imaginary importance of how many loaves is like missing the entire event because your mind is hijacked into thinking it's all about those loaves "conveying" a "numeric" "message" "from God," and thus you don't get points 1-6 at all as you look just at that diversion.
*Sigh* Like I said, much of this comes from lack of understanding the simpler times when people really did just write down the facts without an agenda.
Oh, that makes me realize something I can add quickly here, which is "spotting agenda." Here is a quick example that merits a huge amount of writing elsewhere.
OK, you've seen Jesus, and his Apostles, and all the events that took place. Maybe you are a distant relative of one of the disciples. The focus would be entirely on documenting exactly what happened. No one would have an agenda (except, as we saw, the Jews and Romans who put Jesus to death, for they covered up that he resurrected by bribing the guards and spreading the story that his body was removed and "hidden.") So the Gospels and the Epistles (the letters) of the New Testament are all agenda free because people in a really verbal and oral culture were attempting to get precisely in writing exactly what happened. What happened was so detailed and astonishing that for brevity much is left out that is repetitive. By that I mean that for example Jesus performed thousands of individual miracles, but the means to write down details of every one of them would have been impossible then. People memorized and shared the data of the essentials, writing down what people needed to know for the faith that had factually occurred.
But now let's imagine that some hundred years or more has gone by. Someone in your family may have been that relative of a disciple I mentioned (imagine if you belonged to Judas Iscariot's family descendants!) Now you have to watch for agenda. This is the problem with so called Books that people wave around once in a while and claim that they are "true" and "give the real story" of "what happened." These are well known, and a few years ago media manipulators tried to get everyone all excited about the Book of Judas with claims that he and Jesus had an agreement, blah blah blah. The same has popped up about Mary Magdalene and others. There is of course more pious versions such as the stories of the Blessed Virgin Mary and how Joseph selected her (or she him) with like a flowering wand or something like that. These are all written many years, often centuries, after Jesus, of course, was actually alive, by people who were not there.
How do I know they weren't there? Use logic my friends. If they were there it would have been in the Gospels, Acts and Epistles, duh. People were doing agenda-free documenting of all that needed to be known about Jesus (we don't know what side he slept on or what cereal he liked best) but we know absolutely everything about his ministry and the nature of the New Covenant with God. So anyone who actually had been on the scene and had a significant role would have been documented accordingly.
So through dating but also pure logic we know that all these extra books are ancient but not comtemporary with Jesus. Anything that pops up centuries later and claims to contain secret or "real" information is bogus because no one had any need to "hide" anything when Jesus was alive (except the Jewish religious authorities after he resurrected, ha). Jesus lived an entirely open life surrounded by hundreds of people constantly, and Jesus was doing a continual stream of teaching and role modeling, preaching and ministry at all time: there were no secret deals or any such imaginings. That would have lost the entire point anyway. Jesus did not have to arrange with Judas to be betrayed (it would be funny if it was not so faith warping) because, duh, the Gospels document how often Jesus had to flee or dodge people who wanted to kill him right then and there (even in his hometown).
So this is why you have to use a little common sense to discern agenda. The Gospels and rest of the New Testament had no agenda except to document and communicate the marvelous events that had happened, plus the teachings of Jesus. Anything from a later date that is not part of the Christian community communications via letter, sermons and so forth is going to be a combination of two very modern phenomena: 1) Spin doctoring by people who wanted to get their piece of celebrity action, so like I said, I bet Judas' descendant family members would have wanted to write a 'he didn't do it' saga and 2) Genuine remnants of memories of things like the life of the Virgin Mary, but now glossed with all sorts of sentimental fiction to romanticize her genuine purity and virtue (in other words, the "cute meet" story between her and Joseph that is supposedly preserved).
Thus remember, which is why I brought this up, the disciples had no agenda as they authored the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles, and Revelation, rather than to record precisely what had occurred as this was a nearly total verbal culture and society in the world. The model for such precision in writing was of course the Torah and all the books of the Old Testament. People used witnessing to get the facts in writing to reach those areas they could not achieve through travel, and also to preserve and hand down the information to the next generations of what had actually happened. Likewise God had no "agenda" other than send his Son, the Savior and Messiah, to do what he did. God did not have to plant "significant numbers" or "hidden meanings" or any such thing because that is self defeating and remember that God is all perfection. God is what he is. So don't get diverted thinking there is hidden or arcane meaning to be "gained" in the scripture, since, well, think about it, God seems to have to hit humans over the head again and again and again with the simple truth. Subtlety is lost on humans and God would have no reason not to make things very, very, VERY plain over and over and over. Points 1-6 rather than "oooooh, the number of loaves 'means something!'" Finally spot agenda before it spots you. Use common sense to discern the difference between people who were part of the fact checking witnessing of the group of disciples who were actually there versus writings by some sort of imaginary hanger oners years and centuries after the fact who have obvious "My grand pappy's neighbor's shepherd knew them too!" types of motivations (or like Judas Iscariot's poor family descendants, ugh, who would want to have been them?)
I hope this helps.
Mark 6:39-44
And he ordered them to make all the people recline in groups on the green grass. And they reclined in groups of hundreds and of fifties. And he took the five loaves and the two fishes and, looking up to heaven, blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and the two fishes he divided among them all. And all ate and were satisfied; and they gathered up what was left over, twelve baskets full of fragments, besides what was left over of the fishes. Now those who had eaten were five thousand men.
Mark 8:1-9
In those days when again there was a great crowd, and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples together and said to them, "I have compassion on the crowd, for behold, they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat; and if I send them away to their homes fasting, they will faint on the way for some of them have come from a distance." And his disciples answered him, "How will anyone be able to satisfy these with bread, here in the desert? He asked them, "How many loaves have you?" And they said, "Seven."
And he bade the crowd recline on the ground. Then taking the seven loaves, he gave thanks, broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute; and they set them before the crowd. And they had a few little fishes; and he blessed them, and ordered them to be distributed. And they ate and were satisfied; and they took up what was left of the fragments, seven baskets. Now those who had eaten were about four thousand. And he dismissed them.
---
Alright, there are so many things that one should discuss and understand about these two miracles, but I have found that a very common error in approach to understanding these miracles derails most of the modern discussion of these events away from their core spiritual and literal meanings. Sure enough, right after reading one of these passages our Sunday school teacher (who I really like, so this is no criticism) almost immediately fell into the derailment by reading what all these highly educated commentators have said about these miracles: *I'm rolling my eyes* .... "the symbolism of the number of loaves and fishes".....*I'm rolling my eyes again, as I can't even repeat this without being frustrated, argh*
He then starts to repeat what "they" (the wonderful commentators) have "analyzed" about the "meaning" of how many loaves and fishes they were, and what holy numbers they symbolized, blah blah blah. I interrupted him right there and said something like, "I know all the commentators discuss it but they are wrong: there is absolutely no symbolism in either of these miracles by Jesus." I briefly stated why and here I will explain it to you.
First of all, let's discuss why people get so easily misled into missing the events and then worthy analysis of the miracles' greater meanings (not "symbolisms" as a greater meaning is different than "symbolism.") One cannot discuss a greater meaning of these events without first agreeing on the facts. So that is what Mark and the other gospel writers set forth when they wrote about Jesus: first the facts, then what Jesus actually did, and then any greater meaning (John's Gospel tends to include more of that kind of thought), including any explanation of how/why that Jesus provided. There are two reasons modern people are so easily mislead into discussing ridiculous things like the "meaning" and "symbolism" of "how many" loaves and fishes were used by Jesus. First of all, people today do not understand why such trivial data is supplied, unless it has a "deep" and "heavy" "symbolic" "meaning." That is because they no longer understand that detailing such small items (which happens throughout the Bible) is what people were taught to do, back when only oral history and verbal contracts existed, which is to "bear witness." I include the label here "witness" where I have previously explained this.
So what modern people think is either a trivial point (who cares if it was five loaves) or a big heavy "symbolism" (ooooh, it must have been "five" for "a reason," yeah, a "mystical reason..." followed by profound and eerie music and nods of agreement by the scholars who are paid and make names for being so smart) the reason it was recorded down to the number of loaves and fishes is that.... that is what actually happened, and the people of those times were all taught by their families and teachers to be scrupulously accurate in bearing witness to great events. It's part of the accuracy record, to them, and that is the automatic mindset.
One reason it is important to be accurate is so that readers (or those who hear the Gospel verbally) understand exactly how big or small an event just took place. Look at the two extremes in an analogy. If Jesus fed 5000 people with let's say 1000 loaves, that would not be such a huge miracle, would it? On the other hand, if Jesus fed people with no loaves, making the loaves out of thin air, it would be a huge miracle (but not more huge than what actually happened.) What, you say... why is that? Why would in theory no loaves be equally as miraculous as feeding from five loaves? Remember the Exodus, when Moses asked God to feed the people and manna fell from the skies. The Jewish people would all have been VERY mindful of that seminal miracle in their faith history, when God provided the bread of manna out of nothing, as it rained down from the sky. They thus would have viewed Jesus as having done the same thing, mediating between the hungry people and God, who provides for them out of nothing. So anyone alive during that time who carried witness either verbally or in writing would have routinely recorded how many loaves and fishes because it allowed the listener or the reader to put what happened in the proper context with the facts.
The second reason modern people, including supposedly smart scholars, fall into the trap of putting numinous and irrelevant meaning on the number of loaves and fishes is, well, there is no subtle way to put it, they are a bit weak in their faith. Either consciously but (to give them the benefit of the doubt) unconsciously, they tend to think that the number is important because it is contrived. I'm not saying they full out think this is a made up story, but there is always the temptation to disbelieve something so incredible, always nibbling and gnawing in the back of the mind. So these commentators figure, "Well, just in case this actually did not happen, we can still derive a 'greater spiritual lesson' by 'analyzing the meaning' of what the 'authors' (not God) did 'present.'" You see what I mean? When there is even a five percent of doubt of the literal accuracy of the Gospel in one's mind, no matter what a believer and a "scholar" you are, your understanding of the plain words will be mislead and warped. Previous generations could discuss "meaning" and "symbolism," sure, but they did so on the firm basis of 100 percent believing the facts of the miracles: that is the sad difference between then and these smarty pants modern times.
So how did I bring an abrupt halt to that line of thought? I will explain it to you now and offer it to you as a faith and reasoning case study. I said something like this. Well, if the numbers are so "symbolic" and "mean something else," does that mean that if only four loaves were there instead of five, Jesus would have hit his forehead and said, "Darn! Now I can't do the miracle! It's the wrong symbolic number of loaves!" Or if they had loaves but no fishes, would Jesus have said, "Wish I could help, but it's just not the right holy symbolic numbers of ingredients." Ha ha ha, yes, my readers, I did see a few fellow Sunday school members narrow their eyes at me ha ha when I said that ha. But they have to see in parody, sometimes, how silly they are being (or how easily misled). I mean, this is deadly serious: Jesus Christ, born of God by the Holy Spirit overshadowing the Blessed Virgin Mary, healed, performed miracles, and conquered death, resurrecting after being crucified and ascending into heaven. The facts are mighty just as they are, I mean, duh. The facts don't have to also be "symbolic" of like lucky numbers or something. The way to detox from such thinking (that there is some "formula" or "bigger meaning" to the small facts, the insignificant number of the loaves and fishes) is to test the theory that the number of each item is instrumental to the miracle taking place. That is what I did, by making the people answer, "Well, if those numbers are so symbolic, does that mean Jesus could or would do the miracle only if a certain number of the items were there?"
Would Jesus "not be able" to do the miraculous feeding if there wasn't the "holy symbolic" number of items? Of course not. Jesus could do it with zero loaves or 1000 loaves.
Would Jesus refuse to feed the hungry people because there isn't the "right number of 'holy symbolic' items there?" Imagine that, Jesus saying: "Oh oh, there is supposed to be five loaves because that's a really holy important number, and you have only four loaves, so sorry, I'm not going to do the miracles and you have to walk home hungry, hope you don't hit your head on a rock while you are faint with having followed me for days." Obviously not, and I included the passage where Jesus states his concern for the health of people who had been fasting for so long already (and that is the motivation for the miracle, not to demonstrate his power and authority).
You see, that is what people ought to be gleaning from their personal reading of the Bible, the facts, the context, Jesus' words and explanations, and the Gospel writers words and explanations. Young people who use computers, you know WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). The Bible must be read and understood that way, that what you see is what you get, and also "it is what it is." Jesus was followed by many people, on two different occasions, to remote areas for several days where there was no fresh food to gain after what people had brought with them had run out. Out of concern for them Jesus takes whatever is found and turns that through his miraculous God given ability into much food for the multitude. All that is documented so that the listeners and readers of these events comprehend how big and precise a miracle this was, so that they get it even though they were not there.
The key to the miracles is that Jesus demonstrated he can make do with what people provided. If it was no loaves or many loaves or, as in the reality, just a very few loaves, Jesus can and did work with whatever people had.
That, then, is the larger meanings of these miraculous events because yes, sure, there are the events and then there is the larger meaning to glean from it, but it's not "magic" or "holy" "numbers" kind of meanings. I can write more about them some other time as I really want to keep this confined to the case study of understanding how to avoid the pitfall of missing the really important facts and points of a Biblical event by derailing on something unimportant and thus not seeing the outline of what one should indeed contemplate. So here is in closing just a list of how to mindfully approach the "bigger and greater meaning" of the miraculous events.
1. Notice the circumstances and think about them. People obviously were so committed to hearing what Jesus said that thousands followed him into barren areas with no thought of their food or water.
2. Notice Jesus' motivation for the miracles, which is simple plain love and humanity for their plight, after showing such commitment and attention to him. This is far away from the nagging scribes and Pharisees, so Jesus is not performing these miracles in order to demonstrate his God given authority. It is plain and simple loving need.
3. Notice that Jesus uses whatever is available, for he has the might of God with him, and lots of bread and fishes or no bread and fishes, God can do anything.
4. Notice that Jesus gives thanks and don't slide over that thinking that is like saying grace before food, for it is not a pre-meal prayer of thanksgiving to God. Jesus is thanking God for the ability to perform what, only through God, he is about to do, which is feed the people. Jesus is thus both on his own thanking God for what is about to occur, but also giving the people a role modeling of how always to be so whenever one uses one's God given abilities, to be thankful first and foremost to God.
5. Notice that Jesus gives the food to the disciples to distribute. Of course some of that is logistics, as many hands can distribute the food faster. But the greater meaning is that Jesus is a) preparing the disciples and the people for the time when they can do some of this themselves, for remember all the Apostles and original disciples became able to perform miracles and b) that the word of God needs to be carried and spread by everyone, not just, as we would say today, the "guru." Jesus is always modest and that was a sincere modesty because he never for a second of his life forgot that everything he was able to do was directly from God the Father. Thus Jesus did not have to "showboat" and hand out the food himself so people would be grateful to him and impressed by him.... Jesus always demonstrated that a) all power and glory go to God alone and b) his disciples were extensions of him and Jesus did not always need to be "the one." Remember that Jesus himself did not baptize, but his disciples baptized their followers. Jesus was always showing how the faith community was to come together and function, as it would have to when he was no longer there.
6. Notice that they record what fragments remain. This is part of what I explained about the witnessing to the facts of what happened. It is also OK and valid to ponder the greater meaning that even after Jesus through God provides all that is needed, there is even more leftover. God's grace is always more than expectations and there is always more than the bare minimum of human needs.
I hope you have found this helpful! Do not be afraid to discover that even wise experts, in these modern times in particular, miss the forest through the trees. (That's an old saying, for those of you who are English second language or may not have heard it, meaning that some people are so obsessed with details that they notice one or two trees without ever realizing those one or two trees are accompanied by many trees in a forest all around them.) Glomming onto an imaginary importance of how many loaves is like missing the entire event because your mind is hijacked into thinking it's all about those loaves "conveying" a "numeric" "message" "from God," and thus you don't get points 1-6 at all as you look just at that diversion.
*Sigh* Like I said, much of this comes from lack of understanding the simpler times when people really did just write down the facts without an agenda.
Oh, that makes me realize something I can add quickly here, which is "spotting agenda." Here is a quick example that merits a huge amount of writing elsewhere.
OK, you've seen Jesus, and his Apostles, and all the events that took place. Maybe you are a distant relative of one of the disciples. The focus would be entirely on documenting exactly what happened. No one would have an agenda (except, as we saw, the Jews and Romans who put Jesus to death, for they covered up that he resurrected by bribing the guards and spreading the story that his body was removed and "hidden.") So the Gospels and the Epistles (the letters) of the New Testament are all agenda free because people in a really verbal and oral culture were attempting to get precisely in writing exactly what happened. What happened was so detailed and astonishing that for brevity much is left out that is repetitive. By that I mean that for example Jesus performed thousands of individual miracles, but the means to write down details of every one of them would have been impossible then. People memorized and shared the data of the essentials, writing down what people needed to know for the faith that had factually occurred.
But now let's imagine that some hundred years or more has gone by. Someone in your family may have been that relative of a disciple I mentioned (imagine if you belonged to Judas Iscariot's family descendants!) Now you have to watch for agenda. This is the problem with so called Books that people wave around once in a while and claim that they are "true" and "give the real story" of "what happened." These are well known, and a few years ago media manipulators tried to get everyone all excited about the Book of Judas with claims that he and Jesus had an agreement, blah blah blah. The same has popped up about Mary Magdalene and others. There is of course more pious versions such as the stories of the Blessed Virgin Mary and how Joseph selected her (or she him) with like a flowering wand or something like that. These are all written many years, often centuries, after Jesus, of course, was actually alive, by people who were not there.
How do I know they weren't there? Use logic my friends. If they were there it would have been in the Gospels, Acts and Epistles, duh. People were doing agenda-free documenting of all that needed to be known about Jesus (we don't know what side he slept on or what cereal he liked best) but we know absolutely everything about his ministry and the nature of the New Covenant with God. So anyone who actually had been on the scene and had a significant role would have been documented accordingly.
So through dating but also pure logic we know that all these extra books are ancient but not comtemporary with Jesus. Anything that pops up centuries later and claims to contain secret or "real" information is bogus because no one had any need to "hide" anything when Jesus was alive (except the Jewish religious authorities after he resurrected, ha). Jesus lived an entirely open life surrounded by hundreds of people constantly, and Jesus was doing a continual stream of teaching and role modeling, preaching and ministry at all time: there were no secret deals or any such imaginings. That would have lost the entire point anyway. Jesus did not have to arrange with Judas to be betrayed (it would be funny if it was not so faith warping) because, duh, the Gospels document how often Jesus had to flee or dodge people who wanted to kill him right then and there (even in his hometown).
So this is why you have to use a little common sense to discern agenda. The Gospels and rest of the New Testament had no agenda except to document and communicate the marvelous events that had happened, plus the teachings of Jesus. Anything from a later date that is not part of the Christian community communications via letter, sermons and so forth is going to be a combination of two very modern phenomena: 1) Spin doctoring by people who wanted to get their piece of celebrity action, so like I said, I bet Judas' descendant family members would have wanted to write a 'he didn't do it' saga and 2) Genuine remnants of memories of things like the life of the Virgin Mary, but now glossed with all sorts of sentimental fiction to romanticize her genuine purity and virtue (in other words, the "cute meet" story between her and Joseph that is supposedly preserved).
Thus remember, which is why I brought this up, the disciples had no agenda as they authored the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles, and Revelation, rather than to record precisely what had occurred as this was a nearly total verbal culture and society in the world. The model for such precision in writing was of course the Torah and all the books of the Old Testament. People used witnessing to get the facts in writing to reach those areas they could not achieve through travel, and also to preserve and hand down the information to the next generations of what had actually happened. Likewise God had no "agenda" other than send his Son, the Savior and Messiah, to do what he did. God did not have to plant "significant numbers" or "hidden meanings" or any such thing because that is self defeating and remember that God is all perfection. God is what he is. So don't get diverted thinking there is hidden or arcane meaning to be "gained" in the scripture, since, well, think about it, God seems to have to hit humans over the head again and again and again with the simple truth. Subtlety is lost on humans and God would have no reason not to make things very, very, VERY plain over and over and over. Points 1-6 rather than "oooooh, the number of loaves 'means something!'" Finally spot agenda before it spots you. Use common sense to discern the difference between people who were part of the fact checking witnessing of the group of disciples who were actually there versus writings by some sort of imaginary hanger oners years and centuries after the fact who have obvious "My grand pappy's neighbor's shepherd knew them too!" types of motivations (or like Judas Iscariot's poor family descendants, ugh, who would want to have been them?)
I hope this helps.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Urgent observation: who do you believe?
You are taught by your parents, your teachers, your friends, and society as a whole. Yet despite all the education that surrounds you, there is less truth being spoken than ever in human history. Young people (yes, this is mostly for you, as the older generations have a lot of zombie and metal robot mind that is now ingrown and a barrier), I have discussed the search for truth in the faith context, here is now secular guidance.
I'm stimulated to blog this because I just heard a talk show host whine about how much of a weird martyr he is, blah blah blah, as he tries to be the "educator" of truth. Now, understand this: I'm annoyed by that attitude even if I do agree with a particular statement. Here is why:
You cannot be taught by someone who serves two masters: the truth and commercial enterprise.
No one, no matter how well intentioned or well informed can be the "guru" or the "teacher" of the truth if they are partly zombie due to their being paid for their "truth giving."
This is the downfall of every false prophet, every paid teacher, every parent who has an agenda other than parenthood, and of course politics, media and the school systems in general.
All of them are being paid not to tell the truth, but to enact a role.
Before I continue to explain the problem, let me veer into the faith side of faith and reasoning (which is what I am teaching to you) to help you understand, now, more clearly God. Now you can understand that not only is God the truth in all matters, God is the gold standard by which you must measure truth because... God cannot be paid. God is everything and created everything, and is all Knowing and is everything that ever was or ever will be. God is the only existence that is not only all truth, but is not and cannot be reimbursed in any way for the truth. God gives his truth to the poorest person who gives him nothing; God even gives only the truth to people who spit on him and do not believe him.
So how do you determine who is a truthful teacher? Well, here's a big ring on the clue phone. How much are they paid, depend on having a paying job, write books and charge money for seminars, have perks and position, have prestige lavished on them, or, at the innocent end of the same spectrum though, are enslaved by people who hold their livelihood in their hands, and thus must toe the line in what they teach?
Friends, in the old days, many teachers were unpaid monks and nuns. The elders of villages that had no education system at all told the truth of their culture's beliefs unchanged by agenda to their children generation after generation. This is in contrast to salaries, prestige, offices, titles, retirement plans, second homes and other gains that drive just about every person who "teaches" in this society. How much can you believe the truth? You better understand that you are not getting the truth (intentionally or unintentionally) by anyone who is gaining lots of lucre, swag and ass kissing as a part of their job.
People in the talk show circuit of course are big shots and also peddle their wares and those of others. Don't bother telling me how they have to make a living and support their family; I get that more than anyone else. (By the way, if you've not read my capitalism series, or are ready to do so again, check it out under that label). But the problem is that in the old days people could survive without a salary (they could grow their own food, build their own houses, marry someone with a job, etc). So there was no monetary motivation to tell a particular "truth" or "truthiness." Parents genuinely wanted their kids to get life, to not stumble over the same stuff they did. But now parents teach their kids stuff that is commercial agenda driven, whether they know it or not. It may be innocent (you need to learn this in order to get a high paying job) or agenda driven (they want to justify their own bad behavior and lifestyle by teaching you stuff that is plain bogus... and if you wonder what I mean think of the worst example which is a household where parents justify drugs and alcohol). You are not going to get truth and you are not going to get even facts that you can string together using reasoning because it is not in the agenda and economic interest of just about everyone to teach: 1) faith 2) reasoning 3) facts about human history 4) discernment. Schools now teach none of the above.
In some kindness to your parents, they were the first guinea pigs to come out of the "nu" educational systems, the ones that don't teach 1-4, so they could not, in general, do better with you, even if they were aware and wanted to. I hope as they read my blog they want to change too, but my focus is on you, young people. This is because as I said here, the previous two generations are maimed in their ability to self critique. I have never seen people resist honest self assessment as these. They don't want to change a THING about themselves, but they want to go to seminars to be super heroes.
Young people, use the check list I have given to you here and be aware that no one can receive any sort of prestige or compensation and then be a totally truthful agenda free teacher to you or to anyone. Money, rather than truth and your welfare, drives everyone who opens their mouth, uses a pen, inputs to a computer or media device. God drives the truth.
If you connect with God, directly, in your own personal humble relationship with him, as you get to know him you understand that he is never compensated for being the truth, and he is not "paid" or "honored" in return for caring for every human being, believer or non believer. Once you have your gold standard for truth telling, which is God, you can now discern the motivations and infrastructures of learning that human beings offer to you. You will start to better understand teachers with a political or monetary axe to grind, versus those who are yes, stuck in the system, but who still do the best they are able to convey unvarnished truth and the tools by which to learn (1-4). Still, hear me and believe me: you cannot rely on anyone because everyone is stuck in the tar pit. You must supplement your honest learning from even the best of sources with your own study and powers of observation. Unfortunately it is a chain reaction whereby even well meaning teachers today rely on the bull crap that was taught to them.
I have more thoughts but want to get this essential message out because from this understanding all else derives. All the best and thinking of you.
I'm stimulated to blog this because I just heard a talk show host whine about how much of a weird martyr he is, blah blah blah, as he tries to be the "educator" of truth. Now, understand this: I'm annoyed by that attitude even if I do agree with a particular statement. Here is why:
You cannot be taught by someone who serves two masters: the truth and commercial enterprise.
No one, no matter how well intentioned or well informed can be the "guru" or the "teacher" of the truth if they are partly zombie due to their being paid for their "truth giving."
This is the downfall of every false prophet, every paid teacher, every parent who has an agenda other than parenthood, and of course politics, media and the school systems in general.
All of them are being paid not to tell the truth, but to enact a role.
Before I continue to explain the problem, let me veer into the faith side of faith and reasoning (which is what I am teaching to you) to help you understand, now, more clearly God. Now you can understand that not only is God the truth in all matters, God is the gold standard by which you must measure truth because... God cannot be paid. God is everything and created everything, and is all Knowing and is everything that ever was or ever will be. God is the only existence that is not only all truth, but is not and cannot be reimbursed in any way for the truth. God gives his truth to the poorest person who gives him nothing; God even gives only the truth to people who spit on him and do not believe him.
So how do you determine who is a truthful teacher? Well, here's a big ring on the clue phone. How much are they paid, depend on having a paying job, write books and charge money for seminars, have perks and position, have prestige lavished on them, or, at the innocent end of the same spectrum though, are enslaved by people who hold their livelihood in their hands, and thus must toe the line in what they teach?
Friends, in the old days, many teachers were unpaid monks and nuns. The elders of villages that had no education system at all told the truth of their culture's beliefs unchanged by agenda to their children generation after generation. This is in contrast to salaries, prestige, offices, titles, retirement plans, second homes and other gains that drive just about every person who "teaches" in this society. How much can you believe the truth? You better understand that you are not getting the truth (intentionally or unintentionally) by anyone who is gaining lots of lucre, swag and ass kissing as a part of their job.
People in the talk show circuit of course are big shots and also peddle their wares and those of others. Don't bother telling me how they have to make a living and support their family; I get that more than anyone else. (By the way, if you've not read my capitalism series, or are ready to do so again, check it out under that label). But the problem is that in the old days people could survive without a salary (they could grow their own food, build their own houses, marry someone with a job, etc). So there was no monetary motivation to tell a particular "truth" or "truthiness." Parents genuinely wanted their kids to get life, to not stumble over the same stuff they did. But now parents teach their kids stuff that is commercial agenda driven, whether they know it or not. It may be innocent (you need to learn this in order to get a high paying job) or agenda driven (they want to justify their own bad behavior and lifestyle by teaching you stuff that is plain bogus... and if you wonder what I mean think of the worst example which is a household where parents justify drugs and alcohol). You are not going to get truth and you are not going to get even facts that you can string together using reasoning because it is not in the agenda and economic interest of just about everyone to teach: 1) faith 2) reasoning 3) facts about human history 4) discernment. Schools now teach none of the above.
In some kindness to your parents, they were the first guinea pigs to come out of the "nu" educational systems, the ones that don't teach 1-4, so they could not, in general, do better with you, even if they were aware and wanted to. I hope as they read my blog they want to change too, but my focus is on you, young people. This is because as I said here, the previous two generations are maimed in their ability to self critique. I have never seen people resist honest self assessment as these. They don't want to change a THING about themselves, but they want to go to seminars to be super heroes.
Young people, use the check list I have given to you here and be aware that no one can receive any sort of prestige or compensation and then be a totally truthful agenda free teacher to you or to anyone. Money, rather than truth and your welfare, drives everyone who opens their mouth, uses a pen, inputs to a computer or media device. God drives the truth.
If you connect with God, directly, in your own personal humble relationship with him, as you get to know him you understand that he is never compensated for being the truth, and he is not "paid" or "honored" in return for caring for every human being, believer or non believer. Once you have your gold standard for truth telling, which is God, you can now discern the motivations and infrastructures of learning that human beings offer to you. You will start to better understand teachers with a political or monetary axe to grind, versus those who are yes, stuck in the system, but who still do the best they are able to convey unvarnished truth and the tools by which to learn (1-4). Still, hear me and believe me: you cannot rely on anyone because everyone is stuck in the tar pit. You must supplement your honest learning from even the best of sources with your own study and powers of observation. Unfortunately it is a chain reaction whereby even well meaning teachers today rely on the bull crap that was taught to them.
I have more thoughts but want to get this essential message out because from this understanding all else derives. All the best and thinking of you.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Age of youth responsibility-a bit more
Without getting into a large theology and religious ritual and sacraments discussion, let me touch on some of the implications of what I wrote about for the seven year olds.
It is ironic that in a modern society filled with a lot of hot air about self examination and self discovery that many applaud the abandonment of the longest living and most justified form of it, which is childhood confession.
Think back to Biblical, and Qur'anic society. If a child sinned or committed an offense, the child was responsible and there was a code of punishment that the parents would have to follow on the child's behalf to atone. For example, beside any legal or civic judgment the Israelite parent would have to perform certain sacrifices at the temple to atone to God. This meant that two things were going on. One is that there is a process by which confession and atonement is followed. The other is that there is an understanding that one must only punish the child when the child has achieved an age of reason. Thus all the faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are founded in an understanding that knowledge of sin and wrong doing is a reality once a child is old enough to achieve an age of reason AND that regardless of secular restitution (let's say the child stole something) there is also a purification process needed before God.
This is why the Catholic Church has taught the sacrament of Confession, (now called Penance and Reconciliation in order to emphasis that confession is not enough but genuine regret and reconciliation is also needed) starting at the age of seven.
Children at that age have been recognized throughout history, both secular and faith history, that they have achieved the age of reason and they should and must know right from wrong. That's why children are well along at being in school by then, I mean, think about it. It is a traditional and vital part of Christian faith that children know how to discern that they have sinned and confess their sins. How do we know "that is in the Bible?" When Jesus warned about those who lead children into sin, implicit in that remark is that people are able to recognize sin when it occurs, and that includes children who have reached the age of reason.
There is no more maturity process than one by which parents and their church teach children not only what is "right from wrong" but "what is a sin" and furthermore, how to avail one's self of confession and cleansing of that sin. Why in the world do some denominations think that children do not need to recognize and confess their sins? It is part of raising a well balanced child, rather than letting society and soft porn TV do it for you.
I remember when I was six years old, approaching seven, of course, and playing around with my Catholic child friends and we'd joke that we only had a few months to go before we were accountable to God for anything we did wrong! Remember, I'm not speaking of raising children to "behave," to be "good" and "play nice." I'm speaking here of children who are raised properly who also are able by the age of seven to discern sin in themselves and others, and to have a God given process by which to repent, confess and atone.
I cannot begin to describe to you what a difference in producing mature youngsters than that, and that is the way it used to be.
This is why the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes this comment in another context, which is regarding preparation for the sacrament of Holy Communion (the "Lord's Supper" as some non-Catholics call it):
1244 The Latin Church, which reserves admission to Holy Communion to those who have attained the age of reason...
In other words, the Catholic Church teaches to seven year olds how to initiate the sacrament of Confession in order to prepare for the sacrament of Holy Communion because no one should partake in Holy Communion (or the "Lord's Supper") who is not able to discern their own sin and repent it. When I was growing up seven year old children who then went to their First Confession and First Communion from that point onward availed themselves of "going to Confession" whenever they felt the need.
Can people today only fantasize about a time when eight, nine, ten, eleven and twelve year old children would on their own initiative self-examine and decide that they needed to go to Confession? That was indeed how it was when I was growing up and indeed as children several of us would go together, not at prompting by parents or priests, when it was time to go.
Can you see what I mean by 1) how misunderstood the Catholic faith is and 2) how infantilized our modern children are? The "Greatest Generation," that Catholic component, was raised like that, for the most part, where children knew very well not only what was a crime, or what was bad behavior, but what was also sin and they took their own responsibility for initiating and carrying out their sacrament of Confession.
Leave aside the argument, the old, tired arguments, about the role of a priest in Confession. Do not even try to pretend that those of you who teach that "confession is between 'myself' and God and 'does not need a so called mediator'" are raising your children-no matter how good they are-to be at that age as introspective and recognizing of sin in themselves and others as was done traditionally. I cannot even compare the seven year old child of Biblical times, the seven year old child of early Islamic times, and the seven year old child of the early, middle and even later Christian times with the seven year old child of today and how blind to sin.... even worse than that, how blind and eager and self excusing for sin that they have become!
Children are eager to be grown up and adults have robbed them of one of the most fundamental gifts of the faith which is at the age of reason to recognize and self examine for sin, to elect to reject sin, and to have sacramental self initiated means to confess and repent sin.
Please do think about that. Children are eager to be all grown up, and instead of the ways they have always learned to be "grown up," which is to recognize, shun and repent sin, that has been taken from them, a vital part of becoming a genuine child of God upon their age of reason.
Like I said, I am not trying to have a theological discussion or debate here. I guess you might think of this as part of the "faith and reasoning" series I am teaching, where I am showing you that far from being hocus-pocus, faith in God makes total sense and has for hundreds, indeed thousands of years been reality paced with factual human development. So think about it and you young people in particular, imagine what it was like to be raised where at seven years old you could not only discern "right from wrong" and being "good from bad," but also examine yourself (and observe others) to discern sin and what displeases God, and to have the religious gift at your own initiation to partake of, as I had when I was growing up. I cannot believe it, many times as I look around, at how children have been robbed of both their childhood and their access to mature religious participation at their own free will.
Further, often children would confess to sins and the priest would counsel them in the privacy of the confessional that perhaps their tentatively confessed feelings of envy or so forth were not actually full out sins, but temptations and normal human weaknesses. Far from being strict, children who worried that perhaps wishing they had something as nice as what the neighbor's child had was not a sin of envy or coveting, but a natural feeling of sadness, wistfulness. The priest would be, and often was back then, a reassuring figure in a child's discernment of sin rather than a harsh taskmaster. I remember my friends would discuss among ourselves "I wonder if that feeling was a sin" and the child who wondered would report after confession what the priest said, and the reassurances he gave, or the gentle warnings he would impart. That is, again, why it's not just a matter of being "between me and God" but confession with that mediator present does not mean the priest is forgiving sins instead of God, but is able to, as was documented to as early as the second century of Christianity, provide context for the one confessing regarding the dimensions and impact of their sin. Catholic kids used to discuss their sins and what the priest said all the time and it was a huge part of the development of their real and active faith. Kids need spiritual feedback that is real and access that is under their control more than even, particularly in these fake times.... especially when at best good godly parents but they are still sway to the temptations of the world, and at worst the the baby momma's drug using and child abusing boyfriend are far from being the ultimate resource in sin discernment!
It is ironic that in a modern society filled with a lot of hot air about self examination and self discovery that many applaud the abandonment of the longest living and most justified form of it, which is childhood confession.
Think back to Biblical, and Qur'anic society. If a child sinned or committed an offense, the child was responsible and there was a code of punishment that the parents would have to follow on the child's behalf to atone. For example, beside any legal or civic judgment the Israelite parent would have to perform certain sacrifices at the temple to atone to God. This meant that two things were going on. One is that there is a process by which confession and atonement is followed. The other is that there is an understanding that one must only punish the child when the child has achieved an age of reason. Thus all the faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are founded in an understanding that knowledge of sin and wrong doing is a reality once a child is old enough to achieve an age of reason AND that regardless of secular restitution (let's say the child stole something) there is also a purification process needed before God.
This is why the Catholic Church has taught the sacrament of Confession, (now called Penance and Reconciliation in order to emphasis that confession is not enough but genuine regret and reconciliation is also needed) starting at the age of seven.
Children at that age have been recognized throughout history, both secular and faith history, that they have achieved the age of reason and they should and must know right from wrong. That's why children are well along at being in school by then, I mean, think about it. It is a traditional and vital part of Christian faith that children know how to discern that they have sinned and confess their sins. How do we know "that is in the Bible?" When Jesus warned about those who lead children into sin, implicit in that remark is that people are able to recognize sin when it occurs, and that includes children who have reached the age of reason.
There is no more maturity process than one by which parents and their church teach children not only what is "right from wrong" but "what is a sin" and furthermore, how to avail one's self of confession and cleansing of that sin. Why in the world do some denominations think that children do not need to recognize and confess their sins? It is part of raising a well balanced child, rather than letting society and soft porn TV do it for you.
I remember when I was six years old, approaching seven, of course, and playing around with my Catholic child friends and we'd joke that we only had a few months to go before we were accountable to God for anything we did wrong! Remember, I'm not speaking of raising children to "behave," to be "good" and "play nice." I'm speaking here of children who are raised properly who also are able by the age of seven to discern sin in themselves and others, and to have a God given process by which to repent, confess and atone.
I cannot begin to describe to you what a difference in producing mature youngsters than that, and that is the way it used to be.
This is why the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes this comment in another context, which is regarding preparation for the sacrament of Holy Communion (the "Lord's Supper" as some non-Catholics call it):
1244 The Latin Church, which reserves admission to Holy Communion to those who have attained the age of reason...
In other words, the Catholic Church teaches to seven year olds how to initiate the sacrament of Confession in order to prepare for the sacrament of Holy Communion because no one should partake in Holy Communion (or the "Lord's Supper") who is not able to discern their own sin and repent it. When I was growing up seven year old children who then went to their First Confession and First Communion from that point onward availed themselves of "going to Confession" whenever they felt the need.
Can people today only fantasize about a time when eight, nine, ten, eleven and twelve year old children would on their own initiative self-examine and decide that they needed to go to Confession? That was indeed how it was when I was growing up and indeed as children several of us would go together, not at prompting by parents or priests, when it was time to go.
Can you see what I mean by 1) how misunderstood the Catholic faith is and 2) how infantilized our modern children are? The "Greatest Generation," that Catholic component, was raised like that, for the most part, where children knew very well not only what was a crime, or what was bad behavior, but what was also sin and they took their own responsibility for initiating and carrying out their sacrament of Confession.
Leave aside the argument, the old, tired arguments, about the role of a priest in Confession. Do not even try to pretend that those of you who teach that "confession is between 'myself' and God and 'does not need a so called mediator'" are raising your children-no matter how good they are-to be at that age as introspective and recognizing of sin in themselves and others as was done traditionally. I cannot even compare the seven year old child of Biblical times, the seven year old child of early Islamic times, and the seven year old child of the early, middle and even later Christian times with the seven year old child of today and how blind to sin.... even worse than that, how blind and eager and self excusing for sin that they have become!
Children are eager to be grown up and adults have robbed them of one of the most fundamental gifts of the faith which is at the age of reason to recognize and self examine for sin, to elect to reject sin, and to have sacramental self initiated means to confess and repent sin.
Please do think about that. Children are eager to be all grown up, and instead of the ways they have always learned to be "grown up," which is to recognize, shun and repent sin, that has been taken from them, a vital part of becoming a genuine child of God upon their age of reason.
Like I said, I am not trying to have a theological discussion or debate here. I guess you might think of this as part of the "faith and reasoning" series I am teaching, where I am showing you that far from being hocus-pocus, faith in God makes total sense and has for hundreds, indeed thousands of years been reality paced with factual human development. So think about it and you young people in particular, imagine what it was like to be raised where at seven years old you could not only discern "right from wrong" and being "good from bad," but also examine yourself (and observe others) to discern sin and what displeases God, and to have the religious gift at your own initiation to partake of, as I had when I was growing up. I cannot believe it, many times as I look around, at how children have been robbed of both their childhood and their access to mature religious participation at their own free will.
Further, often children would confess to sins and the priest would counsel them in the privacy of the confessional that perhaps their tentatively confessed feelings of envy or so forth were not actually full out sins, but temptations and normal human weaknesses. Far from being strict, children who worried that perhaps wishing they had something as nice as what the neighbor's child had was not a sin of envy or coveting, but a natural feeling of sadness, wistfulness. The priest would be, and often was back then, a reassuring figure in a child's discernment of sin rather than a harsh taskmaster. I remember my friends would discuss among ourselves "I wonder if that feeling was a sin" and the child who wondered would report after confession what the priest said, and the reassurances he gave, or the gentle warnings he would impart. That is, again, why it's not just a matter of being "between me and God" but confession with that mediator present does not mean the priest is forgiving sins instead of God, but is able to, as was documented to as early as the second century of Christianity, provide context for the one confessing regarding the dimensions and impact of their sin. Catholic kids used to discuss their sins and what the priest said all the time and it was a huge part of the development of their real and active faith. Kids need spiritual feedback that is real and access that is under their control more than even, particularly in these fake times.... especially when at best good godly parents but they are still sway to the temptations of the world, and at worst the the baby momma's drug using and child abusing boyfriend are far from being the ultimate resource in sin discernment!
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Advice from Confucius
"Confucius told others that he was a transmitter, not an innovator-that he 'was fond of antiquity and had faith in it.'" His disciples and his son seem to attest that this was indeed the case. They all agreed that what he taught was knowledge of the past as culture and ritual practice. But once he had imparted what he knew, how could Confucius be sure that instead of spurring his students on as he had hoped, this body of knowledge would not in fact deluge them, leaving them dazed and dampened? He himself had said: 'If you simply learn but do not think, then you will be bewildered. But if you simply think but do not learn, you will be in danger.' The knowledge he passed on, therefore, could not have been knowledge garnered wholesale but knowledge he had distilled by way of thought." (page 149)
From "The Authentic Confucius" A Life of Thought and Politics by Annping Chin, Scribner, NY, 2007. A quite good book.
From "The Authentic Confucius" A Life of Thought and Politics by Annping Chin, Scribner, NY, 2007. A quite good book.
Friday, August 29, 2008
I support McCain's choice of Sarah Palin
You know you can count on me to tell it like it is, and also put things in a proper context so that you can make your own decisions. So here are some points to remember, and not have an automatic liberally biased knee jerk reaction.
1) If someone is intelligent, flexible and of high moral fiber, there is no job they cannot do, including the Presidency. When one has a foundation that is firm, one can make decisions off of that. In evidence I offer the Founding Fathers. Absolutely all they had was the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, since when the country was new, obviously no one had "presidential experience." Yet from the Founding Fathers who had only a firm vision of a republic based in democracy, a piece of paper, and state militias sprang one President after the other in the first days of the United States. The only thing they had in common as "experience" was being a landowner. For most of human history being a landowner was the basis of all political office and "experience."
2) During the "women's liberation" movement, there were few women of "experience," in either politics or academia, or in industry, or high technology positions. Yet no one made women "wait to get their promotions until they have the same experience as men" once the glass ceilings were broken. To "wait" for the "same" or "comparable experience" promotes a kind of mindset that ensures that the pace of the disenfranchised group always remains behind. Women, blacks, Native Americans, etc cannot "wait" until they have exactly comparable years and type of experience as men who have held an office. This is especially outrageous when an "inexperienced" but moral and intelligent candidate is denigrated compared to a "experienced" leader who has made repeated and often immoral mistakes. Do you keep voting a corrupt politician back into office because he or she "has more experience" than the challenging candidate? Think about it.
3) Women's groups back in the 1960's-1980's promised that one of the "benefits" of more women candidates would be a higher morality and more compassion. The most hardened shrew bra burning hippies would even say this. Now they have drawn away from that position because they have discovered that morality implies self control and boundaries on behavior. Thus they have totally reneged on their promise of promoting "more compassionate and moral" women leaders, and instead push those that support tax and spend, hedonism, anti-religion, and self absorption rather than constancy and patriotism. So the very radical "women's libbers" promised more compassion and morality from women candidates and have for the past twenty five years totally run from (and worked against) this model of candidate. Witness their reaction to Sarah Palin.
Let's be honest. Many on the radical left, which controls the Democratic Party and the media, mix up compassion with hedonism. They do not recognize compassion when they see it. A woman like Sarah Palin has five children, including one with a disability that was known of pre-birth, and they act like she's hard hearted. Yet you know that many women these radicals push as "compassionate" would have happily had five abortions. How ironic that five abortions would be viewed as "more compassionate" than five living and loved children in a traditional family setting. If that does not tell you more about what this country has come to, I don't know what will open your eyes.
4) I'm already tired of the "how will she stand up against Putin" and "she won't have respect in the Middle East." Wrong. Here's why. We've had Secretary Rice "Russian expert" for four years or whatever, and what has she given us in foreign policy and respect? Wow, she sure put those Russians and Middle East sheiks in their place. *Yawn.* And how about the Middle East? Many in positions of power are Emirs, Princes, Sheiks, who received their office through tribal and familial position and status. They will respect a moral woman who has many children in a traditional marriage far more than you realize. And this includes the terrorists, by the way, who are often reactionaries against what they view as depraved Western moral values (gee, I wonder why they think that?)
I think many men (and women) have been brainwashed by a false ideal of what "foreign policy experience" really is in truth. Being a wonk and having "traveled the world" does not provide good foreign policy or respect among leaders from different cultures. Yet that idea is pushed over and over even though any dummy can see the repeated failed results in both parties who provide "experienced" UN Ambassadors and Secretaries of States. Most of them have been TERRIBLE and you'd have to be dumb to not see how respect and results have not come from "experience."
5) Many are repelled by her pro life position (and that tells you how much abortion has become the number one hobby and sacrament among liberals, rather than cultivating and nurturing the having of children in stable loving settings). And those people will not vote for anyone pro-life, even if they have no ability to wave a magic wand and turn back time. Yet the other side is expected to be mature and vote for anti life candidates, because we are expected to look at the overall candidate's offerings. So the anti life people get to be "single issue" while accusing the pro life people of being "single issue." For example, I have voted for anti life candidates because I have assessed that they were the person I wanted to vote for at that time in that office, and knowing realistically that they will not "make abortion worse" than it already is due to the public's addition to abortion and lack of familial responsibility and context. So I act like a grown up adult and not vote single issue, yet any pro-life candidate (especially a woman) is instantly rejected with disgust by many of these fanatics rather than admiration! It boggles my mind.
6) I supported Geraldine Ferraro when she was the first nominated Vice President female candidate in 1984 and I voted for her ticket. (I even have her autograph on an engraving from an environmental fund raising benefit). And what was she attacked for during her candidacy? "Lack of foreign policy experience." She was mightily dismissed and patronized to and I hear already THE SAME WORDS, but this time from WOMEN TOO, in the first reactions to Governor Palin from the Democrats. They are saying about Governor Palin the exact same thing I heard throughout the campaign against Rep Ferraro. I tell you, they have no shame.
7) I supported Jimmy Carter when he ran for President, in large part because he had something I liked seeing, which is military experience (submarine service in his case). His terrible management of all military endeavors have put me off of looking for "military experience" in the resumes of Presidential candidates (although I am glad for Senator McCain's honorable service and the high price he paid).
Again, Jimmy Carter is an example of having "experience" in an area is often a boomerang, where they end up being terrible because they think they understand something and they do not. Young people do not remember that Carter tried to "rescue" the embassy hostages in Iran by sending helicopters into a nighttime desert storm with no preparation or understanding of combat and evacuation in a desert setting (something we now have lots of experience in now).
8) I am so annoyed with the obsessing about Senator McCain "dying in office." What if all of you had totally wasted the eight years that Ronald Reagan served as President by obsessing that he would "die in office" and thus only paid attention to the Vice President? And President Clinton had his serious heart ailment just a few years ago; what if that had happened when he was traveling, in office, perhaps had been worse? Would anyone have predicted that based on his age? (Maybe from his affinity for fast food, which was a topic of humor that became tiresome too). All I am saying that this strange culture of death has made people obsessed with "being ready" for someone dying rather than looking at what is actually happening and having some faith that people set into roles that they are suddenly called upon to serve. It's not like they are all alone on a tennis court in a match. Through generations of humanity people have stepped into huge roles when suddenly called to do so, by their country, by their faith, or by their family's needs. It's amazing how much people come through in a pinch, and it's a sign of the depressive negativity of western culture today that no one seems to understand that. (Yet Americans expect people in other countries to throw incumbents out of office that they don't like, and just assume the successor will be "acceptable," "experience" or not).
In a way, Catholics have a better understanding of this because they relate to the sudden thrusting of the office of the Pope onto a cardinal during an enclave, and who truly knows who is "ready" from "experience" to be the Vicar of Christ? Only God, and God sees them through when each candidate in turn receives that office. I wish people would be less arrogant about "qualifications" and more trusting of human character and the ability to step up to a calling or a challenge.
9) Being a fiscal conservative by definition gives a man or a woman a strong leg up in having good judgment. Thus, Governor Palin's strong fiscal conservatism and her stance about ethics in spending will, by definition, be the framework for great decision making that others who lack fiscal conservatism and ethics but have "more experience" lack. Why is this? Think about the family budget. If you have to make hard choices about spending you tend to be more thoughtful about cost and benefit, and the consequences of a bad investment. Tax and spend liberals think they can buy their way out of every problem, and spend little time thinking about consequences of their fiscal decisions. I would take a no experience fiscal conservative over a twenty year tax and spend liberal any day of the week. And Governor Palin has experience, so there you go, figure it out.
10) She has a realistic balance between understanding consuming of natural resources and conservation of natural resources and you better believe that this balance in understanding is alarmingly rare nowadays. This is where hobbies, pastimes and lifestyle are assets even if they are not "experience." The first generations of effective conservationists were farmers, hunters, and other consumers of natural resources who also understood how to preserve and enhance our planet and its ecosystems. Many who claim to be "green" today are so wrapped in plastic and lack genuine understanding of how humans are part of the ecosystem, yes, but also are at the top of the pyramid. Many "greens" today would shudder at actually getting their hands dirty, and thus lack an understanding of some of the realities of life. I grew up with the generation of environmentalists who actually viewed themselves as being alive and part of the ecosystems as both stewards and consumers. I've seen that generation replaced with a very freaky intellectual view of being "green" that is anti-human and also totally ineffective in doing the dirty work to protect the environment (like building sewage treatment plants; they'd rather worry about carbon in the air than actually take care of real problems that are not so glamorous and certainly do not offer money mining opportunities through scams like "carbon credits.") The oceans are dying because people won't build toilets for a billion people and to control wastewater and run off but boy oh boy, they want to jet around lecturing about a theoretical problem with carbon while cashing in on it. Governor Palin's lifestyle shows that she has the balance and understanding just right and that is a very rare commodity that cannot be measured as "experience," but is in truth even better than what passes for modern day plasticized "experience."
I hope that you find this helpful.
1) If someone is intelligent, flexible and of high moral fiber, there is no job they cannot do, including the Presidency. When one has a foundation that is firm, one can make decisions off of that. In evidence I offer the Founding Fathers. Absolutely all they had was the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, since when the country was new, obviously no one had "presidential experience." Yet from the Founding Fathers who had only a firm vision of a republic based in democracy, a piece of paper, and state militias sprang one President after the other in the first days of the United States. The only thing they had in common as "experience" was being a landowner. For most of human history being a landowner was the basis of all political office and "experience."
2) During the "women's liberation" movement, there were few women of "experience," in either politics or academia, or in industry, or high technology positions. Yet no one made women "wait to get their promotions until they have the same experience as men" once the glass ceilings were broken. To "wait" for the "same" or "comparable experience" promotes a kind of mindset that ensures that the pace of the disenfranchised group always remains behind. Women, blacks, Native Americans, etc cannot "wait" until they have exactly comparable years and type of experience as men who have held an office. This is especially outrageous when an "inexperienced" but moral and intelligent candidate is denigrated compared to a "experienced" leader who has made repeated and often immoral mistakes. Do you keep voting a corrupt politician back into office because he or she "has more experience" than the challenging candidate? Think about it.
3) Women's groups back in the 1960's-1980's promised that one of the "benefits" of more women candidates would be a higher morality and more compassion. The most hardened shrew bra burning hippies would even say this. Now they have drawn away from that position because they have discovered that morality implies self control and boundaries on behavior. Thus they have totally reneged on their promise of promoting "more compassionate and moral" women leaders, and instead push those that support tax and spend, hedonism, anti-religion, and self absorption rather than constancy and patriotism. So the very radical "women's libbers" promised more compassion and morality from women candidates and have for the past twenty five years totally run from (and worked against) this model of candidate. Witness their reaction to Sarah Palin.
Let's be honest. Many on the radical left, which controls the Democratic Party and the media, mix up compassion with hedonism. They do not recognize compassion when they see it. A woman like Sarah Palin has five children, including one with a disability that was known of pre-birth, and they act like she's hard hearted. Yet you know that many women these radicals push as "compassionate" would have happily had five abortions. How ironic that five abortions would be viewed as "more compassionate" than five living and loved children in a traditional family setting. If that does not tell you more about what this country has come to, I don't know what will open your eyes.
4) I'm already tired of the "how will she stand up against Putin" and "she won't have respect in the Middle East." Wrong. Here's why. We've had Secretary Rice "Russian expert" for four years or whatever, and what has she given us in foreign policy and respect? Wow, she sure put those Russians and Middle East sheiks in their place. *Yawn.* And how about the Middle East? Many in positions of power are Emirs, Princes, Sheiks, who received their office through tribal and familial position and status. They will respect a moral woman who has many children in a traditional marriage far more than you realize. And this includes the terrorists, by the way, who are often reactionaries against what they view as depraved Western moral values (gee, I wonder why they think that?)
I think many men (and women) have been brainwashed by a false ideal of what "foreign policy experience" really is in truth. Being a wonk and having "traveled the world" does not provide good foreign policy or respect among leaders from different cultures. Yet that idea is pushed over and over even though any dummy can see the repeated failed results in both parties who provide "experienced" UN Ambassadors and Secretaries of States. Most of them have been TERRIBLE and you'd have to be dumb to not see how respect and results have not come from "experience."
5) Many are repelled by her pro life position (and that tells you how much abortion has become the number one hobby and sacrament among liberals, rather than cultivating and nurturing the having of children in stable loving settings). And those people will not vote for anyone pro-life, even if they have no ability to wave a magic wand and turn back time. Yet the other side is expected to be mature and vote for anti life candidates, because we are expected to look at the overall candidate's offerings. So the anti life people get to be "single issue" while accusing the pro life people of being "single issue." For example, I have voted for anti life candidates because I have assessed that they were the person I wanted to vote for at that time in that office, and knowing realistically that they will not "make abortion worse" than it already is due to the public's addition to abortion and lack of familial responsibility and context. So I act like a grown up adult and not vote single issue, yet any pro-life candidate (especially a woman) is instantly rejected with disgust by many of these fanatics rather than admiration! It boggles my mind.
6) I supported Geraldine Ferraro when she was the first nominated Vice President female candidate in 1984 and I voted for her ticket. (I even have her autograph on an engraving from an environmental fund raising benefit). And what was she attacked for during her candidacy? "Lack of foreign policy experience." She was mightily dismissed and patronized to and I hear already THE SAME WORDS, but this time from WOMEN TOO, in the first reactions to Governor Palin from the Democrats. They are saying about Governor Palin the exact same thing I heard throughout the campaign against Rep Ferraro. I tell you, they have no shame.
7) I supported Jimmy Carter when he ran for President, in large part because he had something I liked seeing, which is military experience (submarine service in his case). His terrible management of all military endeavors have put me off of looking for "military experience" in the resumes of Presidential candidates (although I am glad for Senator McCain's honorable service and the high price he paid).
Again, Jimmy Carter is an example of having "experience" in an area is often a boomerang, where they end up being terrible because they think they understand something and they do not. Young people do not remember that Carter tried to "rescue" the embassy hostages in Iran by sending helicopters into a nighttime desert storm with no preparation or understanding of combat and evacuation in a desert setting (something we now have lots of experience in now).
8) I am so annoyed with the obsessing about Senator McCain "dying in office." What if all of you had totally wasted the eight years that Ronald Reagan served as President by obsessing that he would "die in office" and thus only paid attention to the Vice President? And President Clinton had his serious heart ailment just a few years ago; what if that had happened when he was traveling, in office, perhaps had been worse? Would anyone have predicted that based on his age? (Maybe from his affinity for fast food, which was a topic of humor that became tiresome too). All I am saying that this strange culture of death has made people obsessed with "being ready" for someone dying rather than looking at what is actually happening and having some faith that people set into roles that they are suddenly called upon to serve. It's not like they are all alone on a tennis court in a match. Through generations of humanity people have stepped into huge roles when suddenly called to do so, by their country, by their faith, or by their family's needs. It's amazing how much people come through in a pinch, and it's a sign of the depressive negativity of western culture today that no one seems to understand that. (Yet Americans expect people in other countries to throw incumbents out of office that they don't like, and just assume the successor will be "acceptable," "experience" or not).
In a way, Catholics have a better understanding of this because they relate to the sudden thrusting of the office of the Pope onto a cardinal during an enclave, and who truly knows who is "ready" from "experience" to be the Vicar of Christ? Only God, and God sees them through when each candidate in turn receives that office. I wish people would be less arrogant about "qualifications" and more trusting of human character and the ability to step up to a calling or a challenge.
9) Being a fiscal conservative by definition gives a man or a woman a strong leg up in having good judgment. Thus, Governor Palin's strong fiscal conservatism and her stance about ethics in spending will, by definition, be the framework for great decision making that others who lack fiscal conservatism and ethics but have "more experience" lack. Why is this? Think about the family budget. If you have to make hard choices about spending you tend to be more thoughtful about cost and benefit, and the consequences of a bad investment. Tax and spend liberals think they can buy their way out of every problem, and spend little time thinking about consequences of their fiscal decisions. I would take a no experience fiscal conservative over a twenty year tax and spend liberal any day of the week. And Governor Palin has experience, so there you go, figure it out.
10) She has a realistic balance between understanding consuming of natural resources and conservation of natural resources and you better believe that this balance in understanding is alarmingly rare nowadays. This is where hobbies, pastimes and lifestyle are assets even if they are not "experience." The first generations of effective conservationists were farmers, hunters, and other consumers of natural resources who also understood how to preserve and enhance our planet and its ecosystems. Many who claim to be "green" today are so wrapped in plastic and lack genuine understanding of how humans are part of the ecosystem, yes, but also are at the top of the pyramid. Many "greens" today would shudder at actually getting their hands dirty, and thus lack an understanding of some of the realities of life. I grew up with the generation of environmentalists who actually viewed themselves as being alive and part of the ecosystems as both stewards and consumers. I've seen that generation replaced with a very freaky intellectual view of being "green" that is anti-human and also totally ineffective in doing the dirty work to protect the environment (like building sewage treatment plants; they'd rather worry about carbon in the air than actually take care of real problems that are not so glamorous and certainly do not offer money mining opportunities through scams like "carbon credits.") The oceans are dying because people won't build toilets for a billion people and to control wastewater and run off but boy oh boy, they want to jet around lecturing about a theoretical problem with carbon while cashing in on it. Governor Palin's lifestyle shows that she has the balance and understanding just right and that is a very rare commodity that cannot be measured as "experience," but is in truth even better than what passes for modern day plasticized "experience."
I hope that you find this helpful.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Catholics need to be patient with China
I posted this comment on the Ignatius Press blog site, and feel it is important to repeat here. It can be used as another case study for young people in particular to be able to put current events and issues in a proper context in order to discern the optimal opinion and actions.
This is very interesting and astute analysis, and all true. However, it is important to keep several things in mind to moderate one's reaction and to do the most good. The first is to recognize that one must be very patient with China. The Communist form of government will be only fifty-nine years old on October 1 of this year. If you put that in American terms, with the Declaration of Independence in 1775, China is in age as the United States would have been in 1834. When one looks at it that way, as much as others may deplore its shortcomings, there has been a remarkable evolution from the original Communist vision in a short 59 years. What seems as slow as paint drying to us is quite alarming to a government who has responsibility for over one billion three hundred million souls. Remember that it has been only thirty years since Chairman Mao died and the "Gang of Four" who were responsible for most of the Communist "Cultural Revolution" excesses were arrested. The government felt burned during the liberalizations that culminated in the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstration and suppression. So I actually have been relieved to see the liberalization resume at all, and certainly at the pace that it has. Yes, I wish that Catholics were not tormented, persecuted and arrested. But there is something that they can do to help themselves in this regard too. That is to not try to serve two masters: God (via their Catholic faith) and social/political advocacy. I cringe when I read about bishops who on the one hand should be focused on shepherding their flocks and building respect and confidence by the Chinese government in their sincere piety, but on the other hand dabble in social/political/economic and environmental commentary. The reason that Catholics are often singled out by the Chinese is because they respect the potency of the Catholic faith, the Papacy and the power of its message and mission. The Chinese, therefore, realize that Catholics who so strong through the ages can be a potent destabilizing force in areas outside of their faith, such as pushing changes on the Communists faster than either they or, in their opinion the populace at large, can absorb. It is one of those examples of the degree of persecution being something of a compliment. Recognizing that reality, I urge Chinese religious and laity to emphasize the establishment of trust by focusing on the cultivation of their faith, and leaving social and political advocacy to other groups. Remind yourself that the United States was very fragile in 1834, the same age as the People’s Republic of China, and the United States had no where near the scale of challenge that China has with a population that has gone through a revolution with great suppression and suffering, and is now making remarkable progress, as impatient as we may be. I believe that as the Chinese government increasingly perceives Catholics to be very worshipful people first and foremost and not chomping at the bit to be social and political activists, that suppression will decrease and progress will accelerate. One never goes wrong when one’s primary focus is on God, and one can only set a good example and build confidence even among those who do not share the faith in fullness, or even at all.
This is very interesting and astute analysis, and all true. However, it is important to keep several things in mind to moderate one's reaction and to do the most good. The first is to recognize that one must be very patient with China. The Communist form of government will be only fifty-nine years old on October 1 of this year. If you put that in American terms, with the Declaration of Independence in 1775, China is in age as the United States would have been in 1834. When one looks at it that way, as much as others may deplore its shortcomings, there has been a remarkable evolution from the original Communist vision in a short 59 years. What seems as slow as paint drying to us is quite alarming to a government who has responsibility for over one billion three hundred million souls. Remember that it has been only thirty years since Chairman Mao died and the "Gang of Four" who were responsible for most of the Communist "Cultural Revolution" excesses were arrested. The government felt burned during the liberalizations that culminated in the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstration and suppression. So I actually have been relieved to see the liberalization resume at all, and certainly at the pace that it has. Yes, I wish that Catholics were not tormented, persecuted and arrested. But there is something that they can do to help themselves in this regard too. That is to not try to serve two masters: God (via their Catholic faith) and social/political advocacy. I cringe when I read about bishops who on the one hand should be focused on shepherding their flocks and building respect and confidence by the Chinese government in their sincere piety, but on the other hand dabble in social/political/economic and environmental commentary. The reason that Catholics are often singled out by the Chinese is because they respect the potency of the Catholic faith, the Papacy and the power of its message and mission. The Chinese, therefore, realize that Catholics who so strong through the ages can be a potent destabilizing force in areas outside of their faith, such as pushing changes on the Communists faster than either they or, in their opinion the populace at large, can absorb. It is one of those examples of the degree of persecution being something of a compliment. Recognizing that reality, I urge Chinese religious and laity to emphasize the establishment of trust by focusing on the cultivation of their faith, and leaving social and political advocacy to other groups. Remind yourself that the United States was very fragile in 1834, the same age as the People’s Republic of China, and the United States had no where near the scale of challenge that China has with a population that has gone through a revolution with great suppression and suffering, and is now making remarkable progress, as impatient as we may be. I believe that as the Chinese government increasingly perceives Catholics to be very worshipful people first and foremost and not chomping at the bit to be social and political activists, that suppression will decrease and progress will accelerate. One never goes wrong when one’s primary focus is on God, and one can only set a good example and build confidence even among those who do not share the faith in fullness, or even at all.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Case study of interpreting animal behavior
There's a cool study where Google has been used to look at cows, noticing that they tend to align themselves in a north-south direction, predominately north. The theory is that they have a magnetic (directional) capability in their brains, similar to whales, with whom they share evolutionary ancestry. OK, read the article then I'll point out how people so quickly settle on just one or two explanations.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-cows26-2008aug26,0,3764260.story
snip
Cows are known to align their bodies facing uphill, facing into a strong wind to minimize heat loss or broadside to the sun on cold mornings to absorb heat, but the fact that the pictures were taken at many locations, at different times of day and in generally calm weather minimized the impact of environmental factors, the researchers said.
snip
What the benefit could be for cows, however, remains a mystery. It might help them find their way home, experts said, or perhaps it is simply a vestigial sense that is no longer used for any purpose.
Furthermore, the authors noted, no one has examined cows or deer to determine whether their brains contain magnetic particles.
Experts acknowledged that the research almost certainly has no practical applications.
***
OK, this is a classic example of a brilliant observatory research study (use Google to just observe some aspect of animal behavior, without setting out to prove a theory, just observe). So just by using material that has become available something significant is noticed.
Then is the next step, which is to develop theories about what one is observing. This tends to fall into two parts, "how they do it" (magnetic capability) and "why they do it" (instinct from vestigial capability, or just saying who knows). This is where the research typically gets weak. There is a too rapid jump from observing something significant to immediately trying to hypothesize a "why."
Because there is no way to ask the cows, or to test this further, they quickly conclude there is no practical application. Well, giving it a whole 30 seconds of thought I can posit a how and why that is useful. Watch this:
Suppose cows have a magnetic sense, so they can distinguish directions and orient themselves accordingly. Well, think about their environs. Cows live all day in fields, exposed directly to the elements, most specifically, no matter where you are in the world, the sun. The researchers mention that thinking only of the heat (cows like to expose their sides to the sun if they are somewhat cold), but the researchers too quickly conclude that has no bearing on the study (because they observe the orientation through all variations of sunlight and heat).
But the sun does something else, as all cancer paranoid humans talk about today. It damages skin (no problem with cows who are covered with hair) but constant sun exposure also damages eyes. (This is why many humans are told to wear sunglasses when outdoors to protect the eyes from sun damage). Cows have huge eyeballs and are stuck in the sun all day. They can't close their eyes for hours on end because of the evolutionary need to watch against predators. So cows have instinctively evolved to use their vestigial magnetic detection capability to face north, away from the direct light of the sun on their eyes.
My theory demonstrates that it's not as simple as 1) has capability and 2) must have capability for one "reason." Usually animals (and people) have a capability that then is modified or utilized depending on a variety evolutionary and environmental circumstances. So cows have settled into a "best configuration" based on several factors, but the one factor true throughout the world is that cows are exposed to the sun's light in addition to it's heat, regardless of the season. Remember, snow blindness is a problem in the cold weather. So it is the light of the sun that cows have developed a self protective pattern regarding their eyes, not the heat of the sun (for which they have a different pattern, which is seek shade in the extreme heat, and expose the side to the sun to gain more heat when they are cold).
I hope you've found this useful. This is the way to more accurately and productively develop a series of hypotheses. Also, usefulness doesn't just mean applying it to cow pastoral practices, but observing what animals find "prudent" to do is useful in reinforcing or refuting theories that humans have about themselves. Thus I point out this very well might be a confirmation by cows that constant exposure of their eyes to the light of the sun is to be avoided. There's then further room for research, for example, noting directness of light, whether north or south hemisphere, etc. In other words, when you have a variety of theories you can do more fact finding of the data, rather than reach a self imposed brick wall by settling on a "one theory or nothing" mentality.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-cows26-2008aug26,0,3764260.story
snip
Cows are known to align their bodies facing uphill, facing into a strong wind to minimize heat loss or broadside to the sun on cold mornings to absorb heat, but the fact that the pictures were taken at many locations, at different times of day and in generally calm weather minimized the impact of environmental factors, the researchers said.
snip
What the benefit could be for cows, however, remains a mystery. It might help them find their way home, experts said, or perhaps it is simply a vestigial sense that is no longer used for any purpose.
Furthermore, the authors noted, no one has examined cows or deer to determine whether their brains contain magnetic particles.
Experts acknowledged that the research almost certainly has no practical applications.
***
OK, this is a classic example of a brilliant observatory research study (use Google to just observe some aspect of animal behavior, without setting out to prove a theory, just observe). So just by using material that has become available something significant is noticed.
Then is the next step, which is to develop theories about what one is observing. This tends to fall into two parts, "how they do it" (magnetic capability) and "why they do it" (instinct from vestigial capability, or just saying who knows). This is where the research typically gets weak. There is a too rapid jump from observing something significant to immediately trying to hypothesize a "why."
Because there is no way to ask the cows, or to test this further, they quickly conclude there is no practical application. Well, giving it a whole 30 seconds of thought I can posit a how and why that is useful. Watch this:
Suppose cows have a magnetic sense, so they can distinguish directions and orient themselves accordingly. Well, think about their environs. Cows live all day in fields, exposed directly to the elements, most specifically, no matter where you are in the world, the sun. The researchers mention that thinking only of the heat (cows like to expose their sides to the sun if they are somewhat cold), but the researchers too quickly conclude that has no bearing on the study (because they observe the orientation through all variations of sunlight and heat).
But the sun does something else, as all cancer paranoid humans talk about today. It damages skin (no problem with cows who are covered with hair) but constant sun exposure also damages eyes. (This is why many humans are told to wear sunglasses when outdoors to protect the eyes from sun damage). Cows have huge eyeballs and are stuck in the sun all day. They can't close their eyes for hours on end because of the evolutionary need to watch against predators. So cows have instinctively evolved to use their vestigial magnetic detection capability to face north, away from the direct light of the sun on their eyes.
My theory demonstrates that it's not as simple as 1) has capability and 2) must have capability for one "reason." Usually animals (and people) have a capability that then is modified or utilized depending on a variety evolutionary and environmental circumstances. So cows have settled into a "best configuration" based on several factors, but the one factor true throughout the world is that cows are exposed to the sun's light in addition to it's heat, regardless of the season. Remember, snow blindness is a problem in the cold weather. So it is the light of the sun that cows have developed a self protective pattern regarding their eyes, not the heat of the sun (for which they have a different pattern, which is seek shade in the extreme heat, and expose the side to the sun to gain more heat when they are cold).
I hope you've found this useful. This is the way to more accurately and productively develop a series of hypotheses. Also, usefulness doesn't just mean applying it to cow pastoral practices, but observing what animals find "prudent" to do is useful in reinforcing or refuting theories that humans have about themselves. Thus I point out this very well might be a confirmation by cows that constant exposure of their eyes to the light of the sun is to be avoided. There's then further room for research, for example, noting directness of light, whether north or south hemisphere, etc. In other words, when you have a variety of theories you can do more fact finding of the data, rather than reach a self imposed brick wall by settling on a "one theory or nothing" mentality.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Understanding God
People say that the only dumb question is the one that is not asked. That is true, especially if the question is about something of vital importance. However, there are genuinely dumb questions, even though they must be asked (because unless they hit the light of day the stupid and often dangerous premises of the question aren't known and can't be addressed and refuted).
Carl over at the Ignatius Press blog ponders a truly dumb (and very narcissistic) question, put forth by the navel gazing sector of fuzzy brained and often heretical Christians. He's referring to "exercises" like gazing in a mirror to "see" that "God is within 'me'" (says the puffed up gazer) and pondering such "deep" questions as "If God didn't know he was God would he still be God?" So rather than let this one go I decided to use that as one of my "faith and reasoning" case studies here on the blog.
For example, when one is a child, asking questions, even if they are silly, is the only way a child can learn. Children can ask in all innocence questions about God that they might ask about anyone else-let’s say, for example, astronauts. So children might wonder what God eats, if God ever sleeps, does God go to the bathroom, does God really see what everyone is doing, etc. This is normal and very sweet.
When adults ask this type of question, however, there is snark, sarcasm and at the very least a wise cracking agenda based on lukewarm or no belief. These are, then, dumb questions, and they certainly are not age appropriate questions. I mean, adults really ought to have some more maturity than the average inquisitive five year old. But even if the person is being a smart alec or, worse, asking these types of questions in order to shake and sabotage the faith of others, it is important to answer them. At least it is important for me to answer them because of the cultist tendency to think that silence on my behalf is confusion. It’s usually being dog vomit tired and disgusted with the whole thing, but if my gorge isn’t rising too much I don’t mind answering even the smart ass “questions.” Carl is right that if you have to ask that kind of question, that’s not so good and it is obvious what is going on. I agree and I think Catholics in particular should never feel the need to take the bait. My approach though is to figure out what is behind the snark, the agenda or the heresy and then address that via answering the “question.”
So, to answer the question, the situation would never arise where God “doesn’t know who he is,” since God is the self aware totality of everything that ever existed, exists now and will exist. As the creator and the only one to have eternal existence, God of course knows who he is at all times. Now, we know there are two background “reasons” and agendas behind this question. To be kind, we can say there are two confusions that at are the base of even asking such a cheeky, silly and disrespectful question. So these are what I will try to correct in the minds of those who are confused. People who might think about or even ask this type of question tend to be led to wondering about this question because they have taken one of these two (or even both) paths of erroneous thinking process.
The first is that some people have come to think that God is not really a personage, but some sort of “force” or life energy in the universe. So in their mistaken thinking, they might think of God as being something akin in nature to gravity, electricity, etc, where it is a natural law or phenomenon but obviously inert as far as self awareness. So, for example, just as gravity “does not know it is gravity,” these New Age addled unbelievers think that there is a natural life cycle of some sort that is what our dumb ancestors imagined was a personage called “God.” So when someone like that asks that sort of question, like “If God doesn’t know he is God is he still God?” that is a snarky way for them to hint to you that in their superior sophistication and “enlightenment” that they are “helping you” to “contemplate” whether “God is just a natural force, an inevitable one, but one with no identity or self awareness.” This is very typical of this stage in humanity where there is pride and hubris all around, and people find “reasonable explanations” (including some of the craziest beliefs you can imagine) for everything, including encounters with God. For example, they would not recognize a genuine communication from God if they heard one and they certainly would not recognize a good smiting by God when it happens. This is because this generation is so smarty pants that they think that “aliens,” for example, would actually be a more “scientific” and “reasonable” explanation for something beside God. Despite the total silence of the supposedly life filled galaxy around them, they will make up all sorts of theories about aliens, “the force,” natural phenomenon, so called past lives and reincarnation and so forth, rather than believe that their ancestors have spoken and observed God directly over thousands of years and documented their consistent encounters with God throughout sacred monotheistic literature such as the Bible and the Qur’an. So their “question” is actually a statement of disbelief, and the “opening musical overture” to whatever crazy belief they have made up in their heads or adopted from other “visionaries” to “explain” how the universe “really works.”
So you get crackpots like Scientologists who believe in some moronic space opera with evil alien souls, all taking place millions of years ago on earth at certain volcanoes, never bothering to notice that those land masses, say nothing of the volcanoes, did not even exist then. They don’t believe clean and sober religious people who didn’t puff on peyote or eat magic mushrooms, who tilled the fields, herded animals, had honorable marriages and children and oh, by the way, had an ongoing relationship with the one God from generation to generation from the very beginning of self aware humanity through to today. So they don’t believe the Bible or the Qur’an, yet they will believe anything that an egomaniac schizophrenic drunk will tell them “really happened,” even if the most fundamental fact checking would show it to be impossible. So whether it is the new age moon calf type of loon, or the cynical and manipulative evil cult, you have the same “reasoning” behind that question, which is willful disbelief in humanity’s encounter with God and the holy scriptures that document it through all the centuries and millennia.
The second motivation behind that type of question is a little more understandable, though it still comes from an incredible lack of faith in God, coupled with inordinate faith in one’s own imaginative and scholarly powers. These are the Christians who have a very fundamental stumbling block and inability (or unwillingness) to understand the nature of God and Jesus Christ. Now, I know that the Trinity is very difficult to comprehend, and obviously God and his ways are beyond any human’s understanding. And I am sympathetic because like I said, the only way to learn is to ask questions and study scripture, and the writings of those genuinely saintly people who discerned these questions before you. However, again, there is a smart alec assumption behind the scenes of this question among many Christians, and it is very dangerous and annoying. It comes about because in this generation’s arrogance there is a feeling that God can be thought about and contemplated using human logic, human rules and human limitations.
So where these people get in trouble is trying to reconcile “maybe” believing in the divinity of Jesus Christ, but then putting the entire label of “God” onto the human nature of Jesus. In other words, these people tend to think of “God” as being like a force or spirit that can be put in a zip lock bag and inserted into Jesus. Now, this is foolish to the extreme if you challenge them on even the most basic contradiction to their assumption that God can be “stuffed” inside of Jesus (and thus they think, ah ha, Jesus as a small child “probably did not know he was God” and if he “didn’t know he was God,” then God “doesn’t know he is God,” and therefore God is, what, “asleep at the wheel,” as Aztec Two Step would say?)
Here’s the problem. If God “zipped himself” up inside a forgetful Jesus for part of his earthly existence, um, who were the rest of the world praying to? I mean, do these fine new agers and scholars think that no body was home upstairs for the entire world? So prayers of the faithful around the world, regardless of their faith and creed were unheard in heaven because God was busy forgetting he was God zipped inside of Jesus? I mean, how stupid and “intolerant” is THAT belief if you think about it. These “world view” Christians try to tell you how wonderful everyone is, with equal rights and equal “validity” of “belief,” yet they figure that God would have made himself forgetfully inaccessible to everyone in the world while he is “forgetting he is God while in the ‘unaware’ Jesus?” Um, that is stupid beyond belief. If that was true, why wasn’t Satan totally running wild on earth, instituting his realm while God “forgot who he was?” And who did the guardian angels (who everyone believes in, if for no other reason than to claim they speak to them and/or to sell angel merchandise and books) report to while God was “forgetting he was God?” Obviously a cretin would realize that God did not fold up his entire identity, insert himself into Jesus and then “forget” who he was for a while. As I pointed out before, God is the entire sum totality of the ability to exist eternally (even the angels cannot live except within God’s life sustaining will) and so God cannot be taken in sum total from one place to another because God IS everything that exists, both in the material universe and in the unseeable heavenly realm that is not comprised of matter, energy or time span.
So even if “Jesus didn’t know who he was” for part of his life (and that is not true; Jesus knew full well who he was) it is a metaphysical impossibility for God to reside within any person or object in a contained way. The Holy Spirit can and does touch a human’s soul but the Holy Spirit himself does not exist within anything or any span of time. That type of mindset is pagan throwback and idolatry, where there is the belief that any part of the divine can be captured inside of the body of the flesh or any other human made container. That is obviously not true. I try not to be discouraged, but the incredible fat egos with absolutely no cause for pride that lie behind these types of “questions” and beliefs are scarier for the future of humanity than any ancient Assyrian despot or lead pipe polluted water drinking Roman emperor and that is a fact. Something very terrible has gone wrong with the minds and sanity of many, many people today, and that kind of thinking is a symptom that is dire in its dimensions.
The Bible clearly states how Jesus at the age of twelve years old taught in the Temple, asking and answering questions, and telling his parents, Mary and Joseph, that he is doing “his Father’s” work. Jesus didn’t say, “Oooh, I woke up one morning and realized I am God!” Jesus has been in constant communication with God, who he knew to be his Father, from the earliest age. Jesus and God are separate personages, since God is the totality of the Godhead, the one God who is everything everywhere for all eternity. Jesus demonstrated clear prayer dialogue with God the Father and never once gave anyone any reason to accuse him of having “God residing within him in totality” (forgotten or aware!) And we have further attestation to this from a source that is, according to human logic, the place that is the most unlikely to find it, which is the Qur’an. The Qur’an attests that Jesus knew his identity and spoke for himself from the moment of birth. Now, why would the Qur’an have such powerful “pro Jesus” witnessing? I mean, if you are trying to “market” Islam, why would you have such graceful and beautiful attestation that Jesus spoke for himself as a newborn infant? Because it is the truth, and it was provided by one who would know, being the archangel Gabriel. Far from being hostile to Jesus the Qur’an is filled with respectful love and awe for Jesus and Mary (something certain Christians could learn from, by the way). It is even more evidence that the faith that believes that Jesus was “the one,” the Messianic prophet, but not literally the Son of God, would nonetheless attest to his prophetic self awareness from the first moment of infancy. Who would have “expected” that? So there is no cynical human reason that the Prophet (PBUH) would have engineered putting such material in that would be totally amazing and unthinkable in the context of his beliefs and societal setting in the first place!
I hate to even write blog postings like this because I have to put into words what to me is so repugnant about what humans are thinking. But I have to do it to prove to you that I read your minds and I know your thoughts and your agendas, including the chaotic, profane and defiant ones. It is the only way to refute and hopefully correct and maybe even someday heal the mess that you all have made of comprehending life outside of your scripts, agendas and video games. I mean, people who no longer know how to build a house and grow their own food (and find life so depressing they need drugs and drink) are actually sitting there theorizing about the nature of Jesus Christ and God??? You can’t even remember your own human natures; you have become so estranged from them. Yet you think you are more “enlightened” and “sophisticated” than the very priestly people who stood in the presence of God and who wrote down all that transpired each time it happened? So I hate writing what I know you think (or, hopefully, used to think in the past as you grasp your way back to the light and the sanity). Decent people shudder at the thought of heresy and hubris, and we hate putting it on our lips in even the most essential teaching circumstances of the direst nature. I am very prayerful and have recourse to the protective and cleansing power of the Holy Spirit when I write something like this post, where I have to insert dialogue from the profane in order to address and refute it. I have a healthy fear of the Lord, which you should too.
Carl over at the Ignatius Press blog ponders a truly dumb (and very narcissistic) question, put forth by the navel gazing sector of fuzzy brained and often heretical Christians. He's referring to "exercises" like gazing in a mirror to "see" that "God is within 'me'" (says the puffed up gazer) and pondering such "deep" questions as "If God didn't know he was God would he still be God?" So rather than let this one go I decided to use that as one of my "faith and reasoning" case studies here on the blog.
For example, when one is a child, asking questions, even if they are silly, is the only way a child can learn. Children can ask in all innocence questions about God that they might ask about anyone else-let’s say, for example, astronauts. So children might wonder what God eats, if God ever sleeps, does God go to the bathroom, does God really see what everyone is doing, etc. This is normal and very sweet.
When adults ask this type of question, however, there is snark, sarcasm and at the very least a wise cracking agenda based on lukewarm or no belief. These are, then, dumb questions, and they certainly are not age appropriate questions. I mean, adults really ought to have some more maturity than the average inquisitive five year old. But even if the person is being a smart alec or, worse, asking these types of questions in order to shake and sabotage the faith of others, it is important to answer them. At least it is important for me to answer them because of the cultist tendency to think that silence on my behalf is confusion. It’s usually being dog vomit tired and disgusted with the whole thing, but if my gorge isn’t rising too much I don’t mind answering even the smart ass “questions.” Carl is right that if you have to ask that kind of question, that’s not so good and it is obvious what is going on. I agree and I think Catholics in particular should never feel the need to take the bait. My approach though is to figure out what is behind the snark, the agenda or the heresy and then address that via answering the “question.”
So, to answer the question, the situation would never arise where God “doesn’t know who he is,” since God is the self aware totality of everything that ever existed, exists now and will exist. As the creator and the only one to have eternal existence, God of course knows who he is at all times. Now, we know there are two background “reasons” and agendas behind this question. To be kind, we can say there are two confusions that at are the base of even asking such a cheeky, silly and disrespectful question. So these are what I will try to correct in the minds of those who are confused. People who might think about or even ask this type of question tend to be led to wondering about this question because they have taken one of these two (or even both) paths of erroneous thinking process.
The first is that some people have come to think that God is not really a personage, but some sort of “force” or life energy in the universe. So in their mistaken thinking, they might think of God as being something akin in nature to gravity, electricity, etc, where it is a natural law or phenomenon but obviously inert as far as self awareness. So, for example, just as gravity “does not know it is gravity,” these New Age addled unbelievers think that there is a natural life cycle of some sort that is what our dumb ancestors imagined was a personage called “God.” So when someone like that asks that sort of question, like “If God doesn’t know he is God is he still God?” that is a snarky way for them to hint to you that in their superior sophistication and “enlightenment” that they are “helping you” to “contemplate” whether “God is just a natural force, an inevitable one, but one with no identity or self awareness.” This is very typical of this stage in humanity where there is pride and hubris all around, and people find “reasonable explanations” (including some of the craziest beliefs you can imagine) for everything, including encounters with God. For example, they would not recognize a genuine communication from God if they heard one and they certainly would not recognize a good smiting by God when it happens. This is because this generation is so smarty pants that they think that “aliens,” for example, would actually be a more “scientific” and “reasonable” explanation for something beside God. Despite the total silence of the supposedly life filled galaxy around them, they will make up all sorts of theories about aliens, “the force,” natural phenomenon, so called past lives and reincarnation and so forth, rather than believe that their ancestors have spoken and observed God directly over thousands of years and documented their consistent encounters with God throughout sacred monotheistic literature such as the Bible and the Qur’an. So their “question” is actually a statement of disbelief, and the “opening musical overture” to whatever crazy belief they have made up in their heads or adopted from other “visionaries” to “explain” how the universe “really works.”
So you get crackpots like Scientologists who believe in some moronic space opera with evil alien souls, all taking place millions of years ago on earth at certain volcanoes, never bothering to notice that those land masses, say nothing of the volcanoes, did not even exist then. They don’t believe clean and sober religious people who didn’t puff on peyote or eat magic mushrooms, who tilled the fields, herded animals, had honorable marriages and children and oh, by the way, had an ongoing relationship with the one God from generation to generation from the very beginning of self aware humanity through to today. So they don’t believe the Bible or the Qur’an, yet they will believe anything that an egomaniac schizophrenic drunk will tell them “really happened,” even if the most fundamental fact checking would show it to be impossible. So whether it is the new age moon calf type of loon, or the cynical and manipulative evil cult, you have the same “reasoning” behind that question, which is willful disbelief in humanity’s encounter with God and the holy scriptures that document it through all the centuries and millennia.
The second motivation behind that type of question is a little more understandable, though it still comes from an incredible lack of faith in God, coupled with inordinate faith in one’s own imaginative and scholarly powers. These are the Christians who have a very fundamental stumbling block and inability (or unwillingness) to understand the nature of God and Jesus Christ. Now, I know that the Trinity is very difficult to comprehend, and obviously God and his ways are beyond any human’s understanding. And I am sympathetic because like I said, the only way to learn is to ask questions and study scripture, and the writings of those genuinely saintly people who discerned these questions before you. However, again, there is a smart alec assumption behind the scenes of this question among many Christians, and it is very dangerous and annoying. It comes about because in this generation’s arrogance there is a feeling that God can be thought about and contemplated using human logic, human rules and human limitations.
So where these people get in trouble is trying to reconcile “maybe” believing in the divinity of Jesus Christ, but then putting the entire label of “God” onto the human nature of Jesus. In other words, these people tend to think of “God” as being like a force or spirit that can be put in a zip lock bag and inserted into Jesus. Now, this is foolish to the extreme if you challenge them on even the most basic contradiction to their assumption that God can be “stuffed” inside of Jesus (and thus they think, ah ha, Jesus as a small child “probably did not know he was God” and if he “didn’t know he was God,” then God “doesn’t know he is God,” and therefore God is, what, “asleep at the wheel,” as Aztec Two Step would say?)
Here’s the problem. If God “zipped himself” up inside a forgetful Jesus for part of his earthly existence, um, who were the rest of the world praying to? I mean, do these fine new agers and scholars think that no body was home upstairs for the entire world? So prayers of the faithful around the world, regardless of their faith and creed were unheard in heaven because God was busy forgetting he was God zipped inside of Jesus? I mean, how stupid and “intolerant” is THAT belief if you think about it. These “world view” Christians try to tell you how wonderful everyone is, with equal rights and equal “validity” of “belief,” yet they figure that God would have made himself forgetfully inaccessible to everyone in the world while he is “forgetting he is God while in the ‘unaware’ Jesus?” Um, that is stupid beyond belief. If that was true, why wasn’t Satan totally running wild on earth, instituting his realm while God “forgot who he was?” And who did the guardian angels (who everyone believes in, if for no other reason than to claim they speak to them and/or to sell angel merchandise and books) report to while God was “forgetting he was God?” Obviously a cretin would realize that God did not fold up his entire identity, insert himself into Jesus and then “forget” who he was for a while. As I pointed out before, God is the entire sum totality of the ability to exist eternally (even the angels cannot live except within God’s life sustaining will) and so God cannot be taken in sum total from one place to another because God IS everything that exists, both in the material universe and in the unseeable heavenly realm that is not comprised of matter, energy or time span.
So even if “Jesus didn’t know who he was” for part of his life (and that is not true; Jesus knew full well who he was) it is a metaphysical impossibility for God to reside within any person or object in a contained way. The Holy Spirit can and does touch a human’s soul but the Holy Spirit himself does not exist within anything or any span of time. That type of mindset is pagan throwback and idolatry, where there is the belief that any part of the divine can be captured inside of the body of the flesh or any other human made container. That is obviously not true. I try not to be discouraged, but the incredible fat egos with absolutely no cause for pride that lie behind these types of “questions” and beliefs are scarier for the future of humanity than any ancient Assyrian despot or lead pipe polluted water drinking Roman emperor and that is a fact. Something very terrible has gone wrong with the minds and sanity of many, many people today, and that kind of thinking is a symptom that is dire in its dimensions.
The Bible clearly states how Jesus at the age of twelve years old taught in the Temple, asking and answering questions, and telling his parents, Mary and Joseph, that he is doing “his Father’s” work. Jesus didn’t say, “Oooh, I woke up one morning and realized I am God!” Jesus has been in constant communication with God, who he knew to be his Father, from the earliest age. Jesus and God are separate personages, since God is the totality of the Godhead, the one God who is everything everywhere for all eternity. Jesus demonstrated clear prayer dialogue with God the Father and never once gave anyone any reason to accuse him of having “God residing within him in totality” (forgotten or aware!) And we have further attestation to this from a source that is, according to human logic, the place that is the most unlikely to find it, which is the Qur’an. The Qur’an attests that Jesus knew his identity and spoke for himself from the moment of birth. Now, why would the Qur’an have such powerful “pro Jesus” witnessing? I mean, if you are trying to “market” Islam, why would you have such graceful and beautiful attestation that Jesus spoke for himself as a newborn infant? Because it is the truth, and it was provided by one who would know, being the archangel Gabriel. Far from being hostile to Jesus the Qur’an is filled with respectful love and awe for Jesus and Mary (something certain Christians could learn from, by the way). It is even more evidence that the faith that believes that Jesus was “the one,” the Messianic prophet, but not literally the Son of God, would nonetheless attest to his prophetic self awareness from the first moment of infancy. Who would have “expected” that? So there is no cynical human reason that the Prophet (PBUH) would have engineered putting such material in that would be totally amazing and unthinkable in the context of his beliefs and societal setting in the first place!
I hate to even write blog postings like this because I have to put into words what to me is so repugnant about what humans are thinking. But I have to do it to prove to you that I read your minds and I know your thoughts and your agendas, including the chaotic, profane and defiant ones. It is the only way to refute and hopefully correct and maybe even someday heal the mess that you all have made of comprehending life outside of your scripts, agendas and video games. I mean, people who no longer know how to build a house and grow their own food (and find life so depressing they need drugs and drink) are actually sitting there theorizing about the nature of Jesus Christ and God??? You can’t even remember your own human natures; you have become so estranged from them. Yet you think you are more “enlightened” and “sophisticated” than the very priestly people who stood in the presence of God and who wrote down all that transpired each time it happened? So I hate writing what I know you think (or, hopefully, used to think in the past as you grasp your way back to the light and the sanity). Decent people shudder at the thought of heresy and hubris, and we hate putting it on our lips in even the most essential teaching circumstances of the direst nature. I am very prayerful and have recourse to the protective and cleansing power of the Holy Spirit when I write something like this post, where I have to insert dialogue from the profane in order to address and refute it. I have a healthy fear of the Lord, which you should too.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
A comment on my faith and reasoning teaching
I want to point out that nearly everything that I teach in my spiritual direction and my "how to apply faith and reasoning skills" posts uses easy to use concepts taken directly from scripture (from the Bible and also from the Qur'an) and from the two thousand year doctrine of the Catholic Church. In other words, it is mostly concepts that you yourself could deduce; I am not bringing any new information to the table. Far from bringing new doctrine or "revealing secret information," I am trying to improve the discernment of those who work with me so that they can regain the clarity of thought and faith based reasoning that prior pious generations had. Societal and technology changes have hindered rather than helped the average person to actually understand what they are reading when they, for example, read a chapter in the Bible or have a fullness of understanding of the doctrine and its origin of their own faith. It seems like nowadays everyone with a big mouth and media under their control veers on the danger of being a "false prophet." This can be easily identified by noticing that modern false prophets are always claiming to bring new material to the divine books and worse, "decoding secrets" and "channeling the real hidden information." Anyone who is trying to "reveal secrets" or "add prophecy" to the given word of God is by definition a false prophet. So I wanted to point out to you that I do not veer from doctrine, nor do I use techniques that are not fully available to anyone who reads his or her own Bible.
So with that introduction, here is a quick post building on the collection of my teaching about faith and reasoning skills especially for, as always, young readers who are dear to my heart as they seek a revitalization of the faith (and learning) that much of the society of the faithless broken family has shortchanged them. Today I want to mention that when one wants to read the Bible, or study one's faith history and doctrine, there are two opposing forces of extremes that work against your efforts, and you must be aware of them and their motivations. This is not anything sinister, but it is an erroneous and misleading mindset that motivates the producers of material that you might read (or people whom you may interact with).
One extreme is the person who has a faith agenda that they justify through extracted quotations and interpretations from scripture. In its most innocent this is the person who uses several favorite quotes from the Bible as the motivators and leitmotifs of their faith and secular life. We all know people like that and there is nothing wrong with it, though it has the risk of limiting them in their full understanding of God. See, faith, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian, was a gift by God that was to be held in unity and community within the faith. Faith was a family and communal trait and responsibility, and it was not a "individual" matter of "conscience." So the mindset of the devout individual that we often encounter today who has up his or her sleeve five or more quotations from the Bible (usually Jesus or Paul) that motivates and fuels their entire faith stance would be unheard of in ancient times and actually considered quite scandalous. So I'm not criticizing the person who truly loves Jesus and who has a few of his sayings to guide them in life, but I am pointing out to you that you must recognize, with charity, that this person often subconsciously uses this device to avoid really exploring the give and take of genuine adult relationship with God within the institutional faith community.
So having said that, there is both the casual and innocent user of this technique but also those who are evangelical, fundamentalist, dispensationalist, and often non-denominational who have a set of Bible quotations that are used as prickly attack devices (which we Catholics feel the most). This is because these types of believers have a genuine love of Jesus, but they also feel they have reduced the entire message of the Bible into a series of "punch lines." This is exactly the opposite of the intention of the Bible and again, this would be unrecognizable to believers of any generation before these last few. Again, it's a free world and they can think what they want, but I want to teach you to recognize that this is a limited and dangerous technique and not to fall for it. By fall for it I mean to be impressed by those who can rattle off quotations to justify their "true" interpretations of the Bible. These types try to make other Christians, especially Catholics, "feel bad and inadequate" when they don't rattle off passages in return. This is faulty thinking at its root. Here is why. The entire Bible is important and valuable in its entirety. No one really knows what God will do in his own time. Here are two examples of how to use discernment.
Look back at yesterday's post about the Luminous Mysteries, where I list each of the 150 psalms of the Book of Psalms by topic. You can see what a diverse and comprehensive list of faith topics is included in the list. It's actually somewhat mind boggling when one looks at it that way, especially when one fully appreciates one person's, David's, authorship of so many of the psalms. Now imagine that you know someone who loves Jesus and thinks that they understand all that is needed of them, based on one, maybe two, sentences of quotation from the entire Book of Psalms. How logical would that be? It makes no sense at all. So you can read the Book of Psalms (as everyone should do) and then imagine meeting someone who has selected two lines from Psalms as not just their favorite passages (which is fine) but the "bottom line" of "all they need to know." Imagine meeting a person who feels that all they need to know from Psalms is "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want" (Psalms 23:1) and "Thoroughly wash me from my guilt and of my sin cleanse me" (Psalms 51:4). That would be the entire content "of value" that this person takes from the Book of Psalms, passages that emphasize that the Lord will provide all to that individual, and that the Lord will cleanse them of all guilt and sin. Again, these are fine as favorite passages, but can the entire content of King David and others' praise and teaching be reduced to this, out of one hundred and fifty psalms? That is crazy and self justifying thinking! This is why there is a different reading from Psalms each and every day in the Catholic Mass. Psalms cannot be reduced to a couple of "summarized" quotes that "tell you all you need to know." They are a body of knowledge and covenant with God, provided by men who knew God in their personal relationship very, very well, notably King David and King Solomon.
A second example is the use of the measure of a "day" when it applies to God's prophecies. So there are many people who know darn well that when God created the heavens and earth in six days that God was using God's own definition of the length of a "day," (even if they don't admit that God's "day" could be millions of years), but then they claim to be able to decode timing of Apocalyptic events, for example, based on the measure of the human calendar of twenty four hour days. This is an example of this selective quotation "bottom line" reduction of the Bible by those who have agendas of their own preconceived notions. Thus they ignore not only many Biblical events and teachings that demonstrate the challenges of understanding God's timetables, but they ignore contradictions in their own minds. For example, many of these "thinkers" know fully well that the universe, including the earth, was created over a period of billions of years, yet they insist that they can calculate future events of God's based on the use of the "number of days" for these events prophesied in the Bible.
So in conclusion for that one extreme in thinking, recognize, dear friends, that much of it is innocent (people reduce scriptures to favorite sayings that bolster their chosen devout lifestyle), but much of it is a tool of those who, frankly, discard most of the Bible in favor of "interpreting" "punch line events" that are consistent with their hidden or open agendas, and that often leads them into grave error and sin of hubris. Lots of these people write books by the way. So this is why I want to point out to you that there is a difference between citing scripture and reducing the entire book of the Bible into several punch lines, jumping over the body of what God has taught about how humans should have a relationship with him.
Speaking of citing scripture, now I can explain to you the other extreme to guard against, and that is the "Bible history scholar." So on the one hand you have the believer who reduces the Bible to a handful of passages that they feel justifies their stance. On the other hand you have scholars who attempt to "prove" (or "disprove") the Bible. They extract scripture not for its faith meaning but for clues that they can apply to archaeology, historical writings or other corollary "supportive data" to tell you whether "it is probable or not that this or that passage in the Bible is based on any truth or not."
Now obviously I am not criticizing Biblical scholars as a whole! We would not have the body of doctrine and tradition that we do have in the Catholic Church if we did not have two thousand years of Biblical scholars. In a way, you must think of the early collectors of relics as being "faith archaeologists," and be more charitable in your opinion of them than many secular cynics are nowadays in modern times. They understood the value to the faith and to understanding their faith history timing by documenting the martyrs and discovering relics of Jesus (such as the stairs of King Herod's palace, or the True Cross), or of the saints. They may have been wrong and unscientific in many cases, but often they were quite accurate in gaining information from local residents who were descendants of the native people of the time, who could point them in the right directions (for example St. Helen's scouring of the Holy Land for relics and identification of landmarks). And obviously Bible scholars are crucial to understanding documents, such as the Dead Sea scrolls, and to mapping Biblical events to historic times and places. I am all for Bible scholars.
However, there has been a very unattractive modern trend among some "Bible scholars" and this you must use discernment very sharply in order to identify them and understand their error and agenda. There is a modern mindset that ancient people were ignorant and superstitious, and made up stuff right and left because they didn't know better. So these types of "Bible scholars" think that the entire Bible is subject to "proving" or "disproving." They take the principle of the scientific method and misapply it to the Bible in whole pieces. Here are several examples that I can use to help you to understand their mindset. First let's start with an analogy.
Suppose a Bible scholar of this type visited you in your home for coffee. In the course of the evening you bring out your family photograph album and show it to her. You flip through the pages and point out pictures of your great grandparents, your grandparents, parents, your siblings, and you as a child, and you growing up. Photos are taken in various locations, such as your childhood home, on vacations, college campus, and where you married and raised children of your own. You wonder why your visitor looks at you so skeptically, so you ask her what she is thinking. The Bible scholar tells you that because she is a "scientist" she cannot believe anything just based on its "appearances" and what you in your misguided affection (and simple mind) may believe, and hence she cannot authenticate that you did in fact have a family and that those pictures were of real people, and certainly without a DNA test, there is no proof they are actually your relatives, or ever actually existed at all. You might be an egomaniac with Photoshop, she tells you.
That is the problem with this type of "Bible scholar." They ignore that the Bible is not a single book written by someone with an agenda to push, but is instead both a historical and faith document that is fact based and added to in constancy over hundreds of years. They think they look cool and chic by being "skeptical" of everything, and "dig" for the "facts" with a bias toward showing at the very least a "lack of proof of Biblical events" or, they secretly hope, to have the "exclusive" on "disproving" parts (or all) of the Bible. While this is understandable among atheists with empty lives and axes to grind, it actually is very poor "scholarship" and, shockingly, even some "believing Christians" (on campuses no less) fall into this mindset. I'm only being slightly exaggerating and snarky when I say that it bugs them to no end that they have to believe at least that Jews are real and exist because they are still walking and talking in the millions here today! So gosh, they have to at least believe the part of the Bible that "mentions the existence of Israel." Duh! But these extremists literally believe that everything else in the Bible is fair game to be disproved, or at least reduced to "well, this can't be proven so ....." and then they let you feel that it might have been all made up fantasy, like your family photo album doesn't "prove" that you actually had relatives or had been to or lived in the places photographed.
So these are the two extremes of people who you meet either casually as friends or acquaintances, or who you might hear the opinions of in the media, perhaps even purchasing their books in good faith, where you must be cautious. Their techniques and tools, and their arguments seem so reasonable, and easily put you on the defensive. Do not go on the defensive, and use your discernment to recognize the two errors that infest their methodologies. One group errs because they believe in God, but think that his works can be reduced to "bottom lines" and the rest is really moot. The opposite group is biased by disbelief (even if they state otherwise) and a lack of respect for the good intentions of the faithful who lived during or documented subsequently Biblical times. I hope you found this helpful!
So with that introduction, here is a quick post building on the collection of my teaching about faith and reasoning skills especially for, as always, young readers who are dear to my heart as they seek a revitalization of the faith (and learning) that much of the society of the faithless broken family has shortchanged them. Today I want to mention that when one wants to read the Bible, or study one's faith history and doctrine, there are two opposing forces of extremes that work against your efforts, and you must be aware of them and their motivations. This is not anything sinister, but it is an erroneous and misleading mindset that motivates the producers of material that you might read (or people whom you may interact with).
One extreme is the person who has a faith agenda that they justify through extracted quotations and interpretations from scripture. In its most innocent this is the person who uses several favorite quotes from the Bible as the motivators and leitmotifs of their faith and secular life. We all know people like that and there is nothing wrong with it, though it has the risk of limiting them in their full understanding of God. See, faith, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian, was a gift by God that was to be held in unity and community within the faith. Faith was a family and communal trait and responsibility, and it was not a "individual" matter of "conscience." So the mindset of the devout individual that we often encounter today who has up his or her sleeve five or more quotations from the Bible (usually Jesus or Paul) that motivates and fuels their entire faith stance would be unheard of in ancient times and actually considered quite scandalous. So I'm not criticizing the person who truly loves Jesus and who has a few of his sayings to guide them in life, but I am pointing out to you that you must recognize, with charity, that this person often subconsciously uses this device to avoid really exploring the give and take of genuine adult relationship with God within the institutional faith community.
So having said that, there is both the casual and innocent user of this technique but also those who are evangelical, fundamentalist, dispensationalist, and often non-denominational who have a set of Bible quotations that are used as prickly attack devices (which we Catholics feel the most). This is because these types of believers have a genuine love of Jesus, but they also feel they have reduced the entire message of the Bible into a series of "punch lines." This is exactly the opposite of the intention of the Bible and again, this would be unrecognizable to believers of any generation before these last few. Again, it's a free world and they can think what they want, but I want to teach you to recognize that this is a limited and dangerous technique and not to fall for it. By fall for it I mean to be impressed by those who can rattle off quotations to justify their "true" interpretations of the Bible. These types try to make other Christians, especially Catholics, "feel bad and inadequate" when they don't rattle off passages in return. This is faulty thinking at its root. Here is why. The entire Bible is important and valuable in its entirety. No one really knows what God will do in his own time. Here are two examples of how to use discernment.
Look back at yesterday's post about the Luminous Mysteries, where I list each of the 150 psalms of the Book of Psalms by topic. You can see what a diverse and comprehensive list of faith topics is included in the list. It's actually somewhat mind boggling when one looks at it that way, especially when one fully appreciates one person's, David's, authorship of so many of the psalms. Now imagine that you know someone who loves Jesus and thinks that they understand all that is needed of them, based on one, maybe two, sentences of quotation from the entire Book of Psalms. How logical would that be? It makes no sense at all. So you can read the Book of Psalms (as everyone should do) and then imagine meeting someone who has selected two lines from Psalms as not just their favorite passages (which is fine) but the "bottom line" of "all they need to know." Imagine meeting a person who feels that all they need to know from Psalms is "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want" (Psalms 23:1) and "Thoroughly wash me from my guilt and of my sin cleanse me" (Psalms 51:4). That would be the entire content "of value" that this person takes from the Book of Psalms, passages that emphasize that the Lord will provide all to that individual, and that the Lord will cleanse them of all guilt and sin. Again, these are fine as favorite passages, but can the entire content of King David and others' praise and teaching be reduced to this, out of one hundred and fifty psalms? That is crazy and self justifying thinking! This is why there is a different reading from Psalms each and every day in the Catholic Mass. Psalms cannot be reduced to a couple of "summarized" quotes that "tell you all you need to know." They are a body of knowledge and covenant with God, provided by men who knew God in their personal relationship very, very well, notably King David and King Solomon.
A second example is the use of the measure of a "day" when it applies to God's prophecies. So there are many people who know darn well that when God created the heavens and earth in six days that God was using God's own definition of the length of a "day," (even if they don't admit that God's "day" could be millions of years), but then they claim to be able to decode timing of Apocalyptic events, for example, based on the measure of the human calendar of twenty four hour days. This is an example of this selective quotation "bottom line" reduction of the Bible by those who have agendas of their own preconceived notions. Thus they ignore not only many Biblical events and teachings that demonstrate the challenges of understanding God's timetables, but they ignore contradictions in their own minds. For example, many of these "thinkers" know fully well that the universe, including the earth, was created over a period of billions of years, yet they insist that they can calculate future events of God's based on the use of the "number of days" for these events prophesied in the Bible.
So in conclusion for that one extreme in thinking, recognize, dear friends, that much of it is innocent (people reduce scriptures to favorite sayings that bolster their chosen devout lifestyle), but much of it is a tool of those who, frankly, discard most of the Bible in favor of "interpreting" "punch line events" that are consistent with their hidden or open agendas, and that often leads them into grave error and sin of hubris. Lots of these people write books by the way. So this is why I want to point out to you that there is a difference between citing scripture and reducing the entire book of the Bible into several punch lines, jumping over the body of what God has taught about how humans should have a relationship with him.
Speaking of citing scripture, now I can explain to you the other extreme to guard against, and that is the "Bible history scholar." So on the one hand you have the believer who reduces the Bible to a handful of passages that they feel justifies their stance. On the other hand you have scholars who attempt to "prove" (or "disprove") the Bible. They extract scripture not for its faith meaning but for clues that they can apply to archaeology, historical writings or other corollary "supportive data" to tell you whether "it is probable or not that this or that passage in the Bible is based on any truth or not."
Now obviously I am not criticizing Biblical scholars as a whole! We would not have the body of doctrine and tradition that we do have in the Catholic Church if we did not have two thousand years of Biblical scholars. In a way, you must think of the early collectors of relics as being "faith archaeologists," and be more charitable in your opinion of them than many secular cynics are nowadays in modern times. They understood the value to the faith and to understanding their faith history timing by documenting the martyrs and discovering relics of Jesus (such as the stairs of King Herod's palace, or the True Cross), or of the saints. They may have been wrong and unscientific in many cases, but often they were quite accurate in gaining information from local residents who were descendants of the native people of the time, who could point them in the right directions (for example St. Helen's scouring of the Holy Land for relics and identification of landmarks). And obviously Bible scholars are crucial to understanding documents, such as the Dead Sea scrolls, and to mapping Biblical events to historic times and places. I am all for Bible scholars.
However, there has been a very unattractive modern trend among some "Bible scholars" and this you must use discernment very sharply in order to identify them and understand their error and agenda. There is a modern mindset that ancient people were ignorant and superstitious, and made up stuff right and left because they didn't know better. So these types of "Bible scholars" think that the entire Bible is subject to "proving" or "disproving." They take the principle of the scientific method and misapply it to the Bible in whole pieces. Here are several examples that I can use to help you to understand their mindset. First let's start with an analogy.
Suppose a Bible scholar of this type visited you in your home for coffee. In the course of the evening you bring out your family photograph album and show it to her. You flip through the pages and point out pictures of your great grandparents, your grandparents, parents, your siblings, and you as a child, and you growing up. Photos are taken in various locations, such as your childhood home, on vacations, college campus, and where you married and raised children of your own. You wonder why your visitor looks at you so skeptically, so you ask her what she is thinking. The Bible scholar tells you that because she is a "scientist" she cannot believe anything just based on its "appearances" and what you in your misguided affection (and simple mind) may believe, and hence she cannot authenticate that you did in fact have a family and that those pictures were of real people, and certainly without a DNA test, there is no proof they are actually your relatives, or ever actually existed at all. You might be an egomaniac with Photoshop, she tells you.
That is the problem with this type of "Bible scholar." They ignore that the Bible is not a single book written by someone with an agenda to push, but is instead both a historical and faith document that is fact based and added to in constancy over hundreds of years. They think they look cool and chic by being "skeptical" of everything, and "dig" for the "facts" with a bias toward showing at the very least a "lack of proof of Biblical events" or, they secretly hope, to have the "exclusive" on "disproving" parts (or all) of the Bible. While this is understandable among atheists with empty lives and axes to grind, it actually is very poor "scholarship" and, shockingly, even some "believing Christians" (on campuses no less) fall into this mindset. I'm only being slightly exaggerating and snarky when I say that it bugs them to no end that they have to believe at least that Jews are real and exist because they are still walking and talking in the millions here today! So gosh, they have to at least believe the part of the Bible that "mentions the existence of Israel." Duh! But these extremists literally believe that everything else in the Bible is fair game to be disproved, or at least reduced to "well, this can't be proven so ....." and then they let you feel that it might have been all made up fantasy, like your family photo album doesn't "prove" that you actually had relatives or had been to or lived in the places photographed.
So these are the two extremes of people who you meet either casually as friends or acquaintances, or who you might hear the opinions of in the media, perhaps even purchasing their books in good faith, where you must be cautious. Their techniques and tools, and their arguments seem so reasonable, and easily put you on the defensive. Do not go on the defensive, and use your discernment to recognize the two errors that infest their methodologies. One group errs because they believe in God, but think that his works can be reduced to "bottom lines" and the rest is really moot. The opposite group is biased by disbelief (even if they state otherwise) and a lack of respect for the good intentions of the faithful who lived during or documented subsequently Biblical times. I hope you found this helpful!
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