An analogy you need to "hear"

If you destroy your sense of hearing, or that of someone else, that does not mean that the world stops making sounds. You, or that other person, simply have become deaf.

Likewise if you destroy your own or someone else's ability to hear God (as he actually speaks), that doesn't mean God has gone away. It simply means that you have committed spiritual suicide or murder. God is still there even if you destroy your own or someone else's organs of hearing.

This is why God insists that children be raised "in the faith." It is not an "adult option." Would you pour lye in your children's ears figuring they shouldn't hear anything until they are adults and can have "hearing aids of their own choosing" installed.

Wise up. Hell's packed already but has infinite capacity, expanding to need.

The three simple steps to God and faith

This is the plainest and simplest way to understand the direct path toward faith in God.

1. Truth: knowledge that he exists

This is supposed to be presented to children at the youngest age, at the same time that they understand who they are, who their parents and other relatives are, and identity of people in general. Children need to be told that God exists, but cannot be seen. When children ask how do we know God exists, explain that many people have seen and spoken with him a long time ago and they left the book (the Bible) that states that he is there and what happened. Children of Islam, the same understanding is given to children about God's existence and the book of the Qur'an. As Christian children grow older they start to understand that God proved his existence in latter years by sending his Son Jesus Christ.

You see, you cannot have faith or reach God if you don't accept that people a lot closer to God than you have testified to his existence and left records of that in the Bible and the Qur'an. If you try to "have faith" or "understand if God exists" you are unlikely to succeed because you are starting with the unspoken assumption that you are smarter or closer to the truth than the authors of the Bible and the Qur'an, and you most certainly are not. This is why you cannot "logic" or "faith" your way to God. You have to first understand that impeccable witness has been given through thousands of years by people who know and saw with their own eyes. No one can duplicate or surpass that; you simply have to accept the facts of the written Word.

2. Love and goodness: You understand that all love and goodness comes ultimately from God, not humans, plants, animals or imaginary beings.

Thus immediately upon accepting the facts, the truth, that God exists, one understands, accepts and embraces that God IS love, that God is all the goodness that ever existed and could ever exist. This is where the child (and those late to finding God) accept the gift of love and give all glory and credit to God for the goodness of creation, the goodness of life, and any blessings. In other words, one understands God's true being, his identity. One can therefore start to develop one's own personal relationship with God. Children start by accompanying their parents in prayer and worship.

3. Consequences of disbelief and sin: You understand that achieving heaven and being with God in eternity is by no means guaranteed, and that sin displeases God mightily and he will react accordingly.

This is something that teenagers, young adults and often extended to middle age adults grapple with but absolutely must not deny or dodge. Children start to learn this from parents and also their worship community, as they recognize right from wrong in general, and what sin is and how it aggrieves God specifically. Sin is understood to be not only an offense against God but also working in opposition and contradiction to what God alone understands is good for each person and for humanity in general. That understanding often comes with age, but no one is guaranteed the time to "find that out in one's own time" so again, children when they reach appropriate ages of understanding must be taught the balance between a loving and forgiving God, but the grave error in taking that for granted and indeed jeopardizing one's relationship with God.

That third stage is the first of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, "Fear of the Lord."

Notice that this foundational gift, which is needed before other gifts can truly be received from the Holy Spirit, is thus the first step in the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, but the third step in having faith in God. Faith in God requires: acceptance of his truth of existence, acceptance of his love and goodness, and knowledge of the consequences of sin and disbelief. When you have that "package" of those three steps, you have faith in God, and you are ready to start receiving the unmerited grace of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the first of which is "Fear of the Lord."

I hope this has been helpful to parents, children, young people, caregivers, preachers, those responsible for faith formation, and those who are patching and repairing their faith journey, which they may have been deprived of in total, or had missteps along the way.

Understanding "why" religions "exist"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christmas/Hanukkah ideas -2

Hi again, and this idea is also especially for you young people out there (hey! :-)

It's time to purchase, if you are using traditional mail, which you should in addition to ecards, your Christmas or Hanukkah greeting cards.

This year be sure to purchase or create at least one set of religious theme cards. Resist buying neutral arty or "season" cards alone, no matter how beautiful they are or how cute, or what worthy cause they support. Trust me, I understand and have bought many sets of "happy holidays" or other neutral cards because 1) they are pretty or artistic or support a good cause or 2) in politically correct times I've not wanted to "impose" a religious theme on some recipients.

Young people, these are urgent critical times and we must swing the pendulum back to the side of expressing the faith first and being safe or neutral second.

Here's the problem. Media, marketers, secularists and others with "agenda" have created an atmosphere where many are ashamed and abashed to actually send what would have been the most ordinary of cards (Merry Christmas and Nativity scenes, or a serious Hanukkah card) not that long ago (but seems like another eon). It's a lie to celebrate Christmas and deny the reality that it celebrates, which is the birth of Jesus Christ. If you believe then the time has come that you really have to make what would have been an ordinary action a few decades and now requires some boldness and thought, which is to send a religious theme card among your set of purchases.

It promotes, rather than diminishes, peace and comfort. I can testify that one of my favorite cards to receive each year was a Christmas theme card sent to me by a Muslim friend.

So when you purchase a "snail mail" card, select an ecard, and/or design and create your own cards, please put "the reason for the season" loud and proud in your selection and honor your faith. Don't worry about "offending" anyone; it is far more offensive to not care about genuine spiritual comfort and God based peace in the world.

Part two of this suggestion is to obtain names and addresses of military service men and women and be sure to get them some cards. I believe that a good place to start is finding out who is serving from your community, and/or is based near your community, as that will give them a touch of home. But also find names of those who don't get much mail, I seem to recall there are such sources, at least during the time of the beginning of the Iraq conflict I remember that we could find service people who would like to receive mail, especially if they didn't receive much from home. I personally know how much that means to service people. Also you can send cards to service people in Veterans hospitals and rehab centers. So parcel off a portion of your cards to send to those who just don't receive many cards and greetings and who need to be remembered.

Thanks for your Santa or Hanukkah bush help! ;-)

Why incorrect faiths have some merits

It's a provocative sounding title, but not meant to be, just terse in order to fit in the heading space. However, I know that many (though hopefully fewer than there used to be) will not like the implication that there are incorrect faiths. This is because people confuse tolerance with truth. Tolerance means you put up with people who may believe something totally wrong. Truth means it is correct and based on facts. It is not being intolerant to say that certain faiths and "beliefs" lack a truthful and/or factual foundation. It's being brave to say that, ha, but not being intolerant.

Rather than pursue this logic thread I'm going to leap ahead first to the core of what I want to explain, and then return to the first paragraph to further explore tolerance versus truth seeking.

You know the old sayings (usually said about love) regarding how can something so wrong "feel" "so right?" I am going to explain why faiths and "beliefs" that are factually incorrect 1) do have merits of validity and 2) "feel" so right.

No matter what culture one is from, what generation one was born into, raised and lived in, or whether one is young, old, rich, poor, believing or not, the fact is that the same God created the universe and all in it, created and raised humans from the animals by giving each person a soul at conception, and is present everywhere, All Knowing, even if no one is paying any attention to him in a particular place. So the same God is present and has always been present whether he is among believers or non-believers, whether God is overlooking a deserted island or the most crowded city. The same one God always has been and always will be. God's reality does not change at all whether people believe in him or not, or if people even exist.

We know this from the scripture. As God created all things, starting with heaven and the material universe, with the sky and earth, think about it... God's the same God even though people had not even been created yet. God's the same God before creation, on Day One of creation, on Day Two of creation and so forth, and he remains the same God as he creates human beings, as some believe in God and some don't, as many are faithful but some fall away, as many are unfaithful but some remain faithful: throughout all this God remains the same, as he does eternally. This is how to combine faith + logic to understand and draw the same conclusions as I have shown you how to do here, which is that by reading the scripture one learns the obvious that is not spelled out because it is obvious, which is that God's "reality" or "strength" did not grow (or diminish, or change in any way) whether he is overseeing the material things of the universe (rocks, plants, animals) or humans. The scriptures would have obviously pointed this out otherwise. God is understood with the very first words of scripture in the Bible (and the Qur'an) to have always been in existence, to be the source of everything, to be All Knowing, and to be constant and unchanging, regardless of one's vantage point in the universe or one's timeline. The same God created and watches some small piece of rock asteroid millions of miles away as he created and watches a large city of humans with all kinds of genuine faith or bogus "beliefs." The same God created and watches a tribe of indigenous people who may have had no contact with the Gospel, or the God of Abraham. So God is 1) the Creator 2) always aware and 3) always present, no matter what the place or circumstances.

How, then, is God present everywhere, regardless of the presence of people at all, or whether or not they are believers? God's Holy Spirit constantly moves and inspires in all places at all times throughout God's creation. So the Holy Spirit is as present over deserted landscapes as it is among populated areas, and the Holy Spirit is as present among believers as among non-believers, or of those who have genuine faith or those who have bogus beliefs. The presence of the Holy Spirit is the defacto status: it is not a "Good Housekeeping" seal of approval. The Holy Spirit is "there," just as oxygen is always "there," whether people are doing the right thing or not.

So when prehistoric people first started to have self awareness and wonder about the forces of nature and their place within it, the Holy Spirit was there before they started wondering, as they wondered and drew some conclusions, and remains there even if they have drawn false, and even horrifying, conclusions. For example the Holy Spirit obviously was present when indigenous tribes of Central and South America performed bloody human sacrifice because obviously the Holy Spirit does not abandon areas that fall into even the gravest of error. One could argue that the Holy Spirit works even harder to try to bring genuine and not false enlightenment. Likewise in even the most dreadful of enforced atheist countries, such as the USSR under Stalin, it's not like the Holy Spirit was never there or fled, anymore than people's guardian angels take a hike even if their human doesn't believe in them or behaves badly. Even the worst murderers still have their guardian angel to the end of that person's life. (Who wants that job hey? That's one of the differences between angels and humans, which is another reason that people who try to proclaim themselves angels are so pathetic).

But not to get off track with discussing angels, returning then to what I was speaking of, God is present everywhere all the time, regardless if humans are there or not, or whether they have proper belief or not. God's presence is not a reward or a seal of approval, but his being there is the defacto state of all of being, whether heavenly or material realm. The Holy Spirit is, for lack of a better term, the "observable" or "interactive" manifestation of God on earth. God, of course, is always directly approachable by each and every human being through prayer. God, however, tends to carry about individual and group agenda (for lack of a better word) through the Holy Spirit. This is why the Holy Spirit has been compared to and actually seen as the wind, a creature of the wind (the dove), water and fire because this accurately reflects that God is the source of all (the source of wind, doves, water and fire) and his influence that dwells unasked for among people is the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes people read the scriptures and get a little self righteous thinking that they invoke or receive the Holy Spirit due to their faith and goodness. Remember that Jesus sent the Holy Spirit, as he said he would, at Pentecost: the Apostles, Mary and the rest of the disciples did not "summon" the Holy Spirit or "earn" the Holy Spirit through deeds, birthright or other human conceptions of merit. The Holy Spirit is always everywhere on earth, whether it is asked for or not. It is another sign of the faithfulness of God even when humans are either oblivious to him or unfaithful to him in turn. Pentecost was the infusion of those present with the Holy Spirit. That does not mean the Holy Spirit was nowhere to be found in Jerusalem before Pentecost, ha. The Holy Spirit is always there, even where people do not exist, so most assuredly the Holy Spirit is there when people reach out to seek God, either incorrectly or correctly.

This, then, is my point about why even incredibly incorrect and unfactual "beliefs" can have some merits. By merits I mean points of validity and even virtues, but obviously those points of validity by no means guarantees or delivers salvation and eternal life. I am explaining this so that 1) those of you with faith in the one true God experience deepening of faith and understanding of God and 2) those of you with no or questionable beliefs can understand that a sprinkling of good things in a belief system does not salvation make.

The obvious example of what I am speaking about are the faiths and "beliefs" who value and seek peace. It is the influence of the Holy Spirit that draws even those people who do not believe in God, or who believe in false gods or worship principalities (such as natural forces or the supposed power of rites), to believe in peace. The Holy Spirit generates and maintains a yearning for good things-of truly good things-like peace among all humans. The danger is that without understanding the reality of God and the Holy Spirit, the objective and the framework for the structure of yearning, the motivations and the actions, and the desired outcome of the people yearning for peace can be all wrong and lead to the opposite, to destruction. Thus you have people who say things like "Buddhism is so peaceful and tolerant and so good, so it must be true." Well, there are two things true about Buddhism. One is that the Buddha existed and had an encounter with the Holy Spirit, but one that was without the context of belief in the one God. So the second true thing is that much of the goodness of behavior and philosophy advocated by genuine Buddhists is worthy and even inspired by contact with the Holy Spirit, but the objectives and the factual world view is off target due to the lack of recognition of the reality of the one God. Thus one can believe in a faith or a "belief" that has worthy and even inspired components while still faithfully following the wrong path because the facts are missing or incorrect.

While Pope Benedict XVI (writing as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) was not specifying Buddhism in this passage in his book "The Spirit of Liturgy" I include it here because it explains some of the problem that I am bringing to your attention in this blog posting.

"...then we can now define the intention of the account of creation as follows: creation exists to be a place for the covenant that God wants to make with man. The goal of creation is the covenant, the love story, of God and man...Only when man is in covenant with God does he become free. Only then are the equality and dignity of all men made manifest. If, then, everything is directed to the covenant, it is important to see that the covenant is a relationship: God's gift of himself to man, but also man's response to God...the fundamental process of salvation history, that is, the election and separation of pure from impure, and therefore the inauguration of the history of God's dealings with man. Thus begins the spiritual creation, the creation of the covenant, without which the created cosmos would be an empty shell...Now if worship, rightly understood, is the soul of the covenant, then it not only saves mankind but is also meant to draw the whole of reality into communion with God...True surrender to God...consists...in the union of man and creation with God. Belonging to God has nothing to do with destruction or non-being: it is rather a way of being" (p. 26-28).

Notice the part that I was thinking of when Pope Benedict writes that belonging to God (substitute "being spiritual" for those who deny God as he really is) consists of neither destruction nor non-being. In other words even peaceful detachment as a philosophy and a belief is damaging and erroneous, just as, obviously, destruction is an error. If one does not believe in God as he actually is one is not participating in creation the way God intended and as it factually is, which is the stage of an ongoing covenant with God, but one that does have a beginning and an end with each person's life and death:

"For Christian thinkers, the circle is seen as the great movement of the cosmos. The nature religions adn many non-Christian philosophies think of it as a movement of unceasing repetition...in the Christian view of the world, the many small circles of the lives of individuals are inscribed within the one great circle of history as it moves from exitus [departure] to reditus [return]...In these circles, the mystery of beginning is repeated again and again, but they are also the scene of the end of time, of a final collapse, which may in its own way prepare the ground for a new beginning...Cult, then, has to do with the movement turning around. It is the sudden awareness that one has fallen, like the prodigal son's remorse, when he looks back to where he has come from...The fascination with such views is very great; they seem so easily identifiable with the Christian message...The religions of the Far East have teh same basic pattern. That is why the various kinds of teaching on redemption that they offer seem highly plausible. Exercises for relaxing the body and emptying the mind are seen as the path to redemption. They aim at liberation at finitude, indeed, they momentarily anticipate that liberation and so have salvific power...[in contrast] Christian thought distinguishes the two movements [exitus [departure] reditus [return]] from one another. Exitus is not a fall from the infinite, the rupture of being adn thus the cause of all sorrow in the world. No, exitus is first and foremost something thoroughly positive. It is the Creator's free act of creation. It is his positive will that the created order should exist as something good in relation to himself, from which a response of freedom and love can be given back to him...It accepts a creation from God as his offer of love, and thus ensues a dialogue of love, that wholly new kind of unity that love alone can create. The being of the other is not absorbed or abolished, but rather, in giving itself, it becomes full itself. Here is a unity that is higher than the unity of indivisible elementary particles..." (p. 31-33).

Here is an analogy to help you to understand, though I think that Pope Benedict is so remarkably brilliant in his explanation here that few will miss his point. His focus, though, is on explaining the history of the relationship between God and his people in order to comment on the development of the liturgy, thus he was not authoring a description of the problem of "good ideas" in factually insufficient faiths and beliefs, as I am writing here. Thus the analogy will help.

God created Creation, the cosmos and all in it, including human beings, in order to have a loving relationship in covenant with human beings as a whole, and individually. This relationship has a beginning (the birth of the person) and an end, which is initiated by the death of the person and then their judgment of where he or she will spend their eternal life, in heaven, or not. As a whole there is also going to be an ending to the entire covenant at the end of time, when the world passes away, the living and the dead are judged, and the heavenly Jerusalem is brought into being. So my analogy is that each person's life is like a single telephone conversation between two persons, in this case the human person and God. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The end is not really an end because at the end of the conversation the person gets up, leaves their home, walks to God's home and knocks on the door. The person will either be let in or not, and if not will be exiled for eternity in a godless and tormented place.

Now, the conversation can going in many directions and different people have different conversations. It may start out nice but develop into a quarrel. People might hang up the phone on God but then call him back. People might say unworthy things on the phone, or they may only say nice things. Think of it as a play where there may be many scenes and events, but ultimately the play, ie. the conversation, does come to an end.

Christians, Jews and Muslims have this worldview, this true understanding of God, that creation and life is the stage for this one conversation with God, one that has a beginning and an end, and the result of it will be that when one knocks on God's door in person, God will either bring him or her into eternal life in his presence and bliss, or due to their own rejection, sin, injustice or faithlessness, cast them eternally out of his presence.

Faiths and "beliefs" that do not understand this essential try to control the conversation's content for "goodness" or "peacefulness," without understanding that one is in a conversation with God and that this conversation will be followed up by a one-way encounter at death when one knocks at God's door. Thus practices like being peaceful, non-violent, not stepping on little bugs when one walks, detaching from interest in the material things of the world, working through a list of activities that presumably gives advantage in a theoretical, but bogus, future life and incarnation all sound "good" and their spirit may be wholesome in original intent, but they miss the entire point of life, miss the realization that it is all a one-on-one phone call with God, and miss that there is only one door out of life and it leads to God's reality and his front steps.

This is the futility of incorrect beliefs that have good merits. One can talk endlessly about peacefulness and love, but have no idea that God is on the other end of the line and thus waste the entire conversation. Instead of talking about peace in the abstract one should have been paying attention to God in the reality. It's like if you had a conversation with the President of the United States about the health care bill and all you talked about with him is what you saw on the soap opera yesterday. Good use of time? Practical pursuit of worthy goals? Not really. Again, I'm using simple analogies to help understand why something that may "feel" logical and "good" can be so misguided and futile.

Worse, when one is focused on detaching from the world and not believing in the one way street to God, that is like you are constantly trying to hang up the phone. As Pope Benedict explains so well, creation is not the result of the fall, or a futile recycling (my words there); creation is the place that God established in order to have a loving relationship based on a covenant with humankind. It has a purpose and an exit point, even though much of life overall feels iterative as each generation faces the same joys and sorrows, ease or difficulties, as previous ones, but here is the point: It feels iterative but it is not because it is one covenant between one God and all humans, and each human being has their own "phone conversation" with God, the end of which consists of going to God's door and being allowed in or cast down into the netherworld eternally.

I really don't know what to make of the recent generations fascination with tools and techniques that detach themselves from God and his goodness rather than as they believe genuinely increase their presumed "spirituality." One reason I have not criticized my ersatz supposed friends in the past who had these beliefs (including my own niece and others) is that I trust the Holy Spirit who constantly moves among people to bring them to the truth, painful as it may be when one has been so mislead and misleading others. But in private I have been sad to see many people hang up the phone to God or blather their own self focused rubbish on the line, knowing that in the end God will have to say to them "I did not know you."

Sadly, God has generations of experience at of course having to say that to people who believe they mouthed all the right words during life, they were "tolerant," they were "peaceful," they "gave to good causes," they "detached themselves from the evils of the material world..." and then, ooops, you see, that is the problem. The world is not evil, it is the loving home that God created for his loving relationship and covenant with humans. And further, they wasted their entire lives not once acknowledging God on the other end of the line.

So that is why incorrect faiths and "beliefs" can have some merits as in valid thinking, valid philosophies, and even inspired goodness, yet still be factually incorrect. The faith or belief fathers or mothers felt the presence and inspiration of the Holy Spirit but rather than taking it all the way to recognizing God and his covenant, they tried to imitate traits of what they perceived the Holy Spirit to be. At best it is well meaning people who totally miss the point of creation which is to be in loving covenant with a real and active God. At worst it becomes cult where ritual, tech and even abhorrent practices (human sacrifice, blood drinking, etc) are viewed as acceptable and even admirable means to some sort of "greater purpose," but that purpose and that play and that conversation are all made up and bogus self delusion.

You know how many people have dreams where they are back in school again but they have missed showing up for a school exam? It's a classic anxiety dream. Well, people who do not believe in God as he actually is, no matter how nice and "well meaning" they are have missed the entire conversation, the entire classroom, even showing up for school, say nothing of missing the school exam. The Holy Spirit worked to keep yearning for God alive in even the most soul deadening places such as Stalin's Soviet Union. How baffling is it that many faiths and "beliefs" try to deaden awareness of God and his covenant in places where there is absolutely no excuse for doing so.

That is why traditional faiths must be respected, such as Buddhism, because the Buddha and his followers did with good intention seek if not the face of God then the influence of the Holy Spirit, who was always present, even if they did not realize so. But modern variations on these faiths and synthesized "beliefs" are totally bogus and dangerous because they are not at all working within the piece, however small, of the valid Holy Spirit that the faith ancestors did but rather since they do not recognize God as he actually is, yet they have access to knowledge (it's not like they were raised under a rock and never heard of the Bible, Torah or the Qur'an), they create self serving delusion models of a mechanized cosmos, not matter how many loving, peaceful and tolerant, benevolent vocabulary they hide behind. They do not do credit to their faith ancestors who were either of the mainstream believing faiths or those who, like Buddhism, with good intentions, created worldviews based on legitimate input from the Holy Spirit, even though they lacked the context.

I hope this helps. I have to wrap it here because I'm a housekeeper and my boss is wondering where to best display on the living roomwall his blowgun while waving it around and telling me to bend over. *sigh* Kind a distraction from thinking about God and giving spiritual direction.

understanding Satan, another point re: angels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope you have found this helpful!

Understand real Satan not cartoon Satan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bible Reading: Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today. Drill them into your children. Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest. Bind them at your wrist as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates.

Roles of father and mother with children

All the indoctrination and "political correctness" in the world will not change the fact that a child has a different relationship and need between the child's father and the child's mother. There is no one like a father in a child's life, and there is no one like a mother. This is true whether or not the child is the biological child or if there are complicated familial relationships. Every child needs his or her father and every child needs his or her mother.

To a child the mother is the image of love and security, because the mother is the giver of life to the child and the child is totally dependent on the mother both biologically and emotionally. The mother unlocks for the child the reality of being alive and of having both awareness and feelings that are safely expressed and understood.

To a child the father is the image of love and strength, because every child looks up to his or her father, regardless if the father is the strongest guy on the block, or the biggest bread winner or not. Babies are able to perceive love from each parent, and indeed they need love from each parent. But babies are also able to perceive the gender based difference between the mother and the father and indeed to do so is a survival trait that is the gift of millions of years of evolution. Humans look to the father for love that comes in the form of protection and instruction. Humans look to the mother for love that comes in the form of emotional security. It is stupid and self defeating to argue otherwise.

Both parents have roles therefore in the faith formation of their child. Children must be introduced to the reality of God at the earliest age and instructed in their family faith by both parents. There is a valuable nuance of difference in roles between the father and the mother in teaching of faith, however, one that used to be natural and instinctive, but one which now requires awareness to be made and reinforcement.

As the father figure who provides both love and strength, protection and physical security to the child, father has a particularly valuable perspective to give to his young child about God. The father should teach the child how "even daddy has someone that he looks up to for strength and protection, and that is God." Thus the child learns that there is someone so strong and reliable that even his father looks up to him and turns to him for protection. So that is the nuance that gives great dimension and perspective to the child that is unique to the father figure. Traditionally that is taught in Christian families in the context of explaining God and St. Joseph to the young child. God helps St. Joseph to protect the young baby Jesus. Children can instantly understand that, as they feel that their protection comes from their fathers.

Throughout the faith history of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) it is the father's responsibility to ensure that the child is raised from its first days to know about God, to love and respect God, and to know the tenets of their faith. Notice I say it is the responsibility of the father; this does not mean that he is the one who does everything and has this duty as some sort of privilege of gender. Of course not and in fact, it is the mother who often provides the most quantity of religious instruction to the child. But what I am explaining is that "the buck stops here" in the well organized, loving and God fearing family, for it is the father who is ultimately responsible for how well or how poorly the child is instructed in God and his or her faith. This is why it is important for the father to explain the context and reality of God to the child at the earliest age that the child can understand, and in child appropriate ways and language of course. The father ensures that the child understands that daddy believes in God, that daddy has a relationship with God and looks to God for protection and strength, and that daddy makes sure that the child receives all that he or she needs to learn and practice their faith.

The mother has the equally important role, recognizing that nuance is complimentary rather than competitive with the father. For example, the mother is often the one to explain to the child the questions the child will later ask about human relationships from the mother, such as "Where does God come from," "Does God have a mommy and daddy," and "What is heaven like?" We all know that children tend to ask personal and intimate questions from the mother. Thus by working together the father and the mother give a fully dimensional and complimentary faith formation to the child. Another typical place that children tend to learn their faith is that mom is often the one to help them with their prayers before bed. Traditionally, moms would help with the night prayers while dads helped with saying grace before meals. That was how it was in my home, where my stepfather always ensured that grace was said at dinner, while mother's role was the night time routine with the before bed prayers.

I know that many are thinking, "Oh how Ozzie and Harriet. That's not how it is today." Well, yes and no. I am presenting the ideal, but it is the living and real ideal that worked for two thousand years and more. This is not a cool idea of mine; it is an explanation to you of how things actually worked in the Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths for many hundreds of years. The father always had the responsibility to leverage the role modeling that he provided by virtue of simply being a father and from that perspective teach the child how father has a relationship with God that he can count on, and ensuring that the child had access to religious instruction and worship service.

Also, remember that lifespans were much shorter and unpredictable in the hardships of more primitive times. It's only in the last century that the norm was to have both parents have a good chance of avoiding early deaths from illness, conflict, poverty and in the woman's case, childbirth. So there were many households that did lose a mother or a father and yet this pattern was followed. How was that done? Obviously in the time of responsible extended families the loss of a father meant that uncles or grandparents took over the religious instruction and responsibility. There was no "gap" in the father's role to ensure religious instruction and the basics of belief in God from the earliest age. Likewise if the mother died due to illness or childbirth, or from wearing out in hardship as many men did of the time too, aunts and grandmothers equally ensured that the child had the portion of religious formation that came from the mother, with the maternal nuance that is to be expected. Older brothers and sisters also had a great responsibility and role in raising their younger siblings in the faith. And this was not a chore but a welcome activity even among children, since they enjoyed their piety and religious instruction within the family. (Remember that for most of human civilization there was no "entertainment" media, like adventure books. Children enjoyed Bible stories as children today enjoy "adventure" stories. So children loved the Bible and reading about saints because they were nonfiction adventure, to put it in a modern analogy of terminology). If you read the lives of the saints you will see that many had influential siblings and how they shared their joy in God.

There is another point I want to make about the Catholic Church's emphasis on the Communion of Saints, especially the veneration of St. Joseph and his spouse, the Blessed Virgin Mary. During the times where there were frequent deaths of a parent due to the primitive and harsh conditions of life prior to this past modern century, the child would often turn to Joseph or Mary to be their heavenly parent if one of their earthly parents perished. Thus a Catholic child who lost their father would often look toward St. Joseph as their substitute for their real father, and the child who lost their mother would look toward Mary as their substitute for their real mother. Thus there was a great comfort and role modeling provided by the Communion of Saints that complimented the roles of the earthly extended family. You can read examples of this again in the lives of the saints and other literary sources. Popes who lost one of their parents, especially the mother, have mentioned that they felt as a child or a young man a turning toward Mary as their "mother" in lieu of their own mother's earthly presence.

This is another reason why it is so vital to a child's well being to introduce them to God and instruct them in God and their faith at a very early age. Previous generations gave their children a stability of faith formation that is essential to not only spiritual well being of the child, but also their physical, mental and emotional well being. The saints were real people and real role models and, as Catholics do, teaching the child that they are "part of the family" and part of the extended family in spirit as well as the physical extended family gives the child a bulwark against feelings of extreme isolation, existentialism and alienation when life gets rough. You don't have to be a social scientist to see that the past several generations have been robbed of that right and that reality. That's why the sacrament of Baptism is performed for infants in the Catholic Church. It is not the water and the oil itself, but it is the heralding of the beginning of the child's religious instruction and privileges of knowing the Communion of Saints as their own family too. Catholics adhere to the Jewish tradition and faith that the parents instruct the children in their faith and initiate them through ritual into the faith from their very birth. (Prior to baptising the equivalent was the presentation of infants in the temple and the sacrifices made on their behalf). There is no foundation in any of the three Abrahamic faiths for "waiting" until the child "decides on their own" to have a "personal relationship with God." That very idea would have been a total scandal among Jews, Christians and Muslims.

I hope that this has given you something to think about. Fathers need to remember that there is real dignity in fatherhood and much of it comes from the God given duty that they are ultimately responsible for their child's faith formation. God frowns on the idea that boys or men think that their pride comes in being a "baby daddy" and that's it. Regardless of the circumstances of the conception, if you are old enough to be a "baby daddy" you are old enough and therefore responsible for raising the child within faith in God (and that applies whether "you" "fully believe or not.") Analogy: you give your infant milk to drink even though you may not drink milk yourself. I mean, duh.

Likewise this is not to shortchange mothers or their role and dignity in the faith formation of their children. I'm putting the onus on both parents to understand that everyone has to do more, and do more earlier and consistently for their children. It is a scandal how, even in my own family, children were raised without their faith or even being baptized. Societal "revolution" and breakdown have cheated children of their birthright in knowing God and practicing their faith. Not raising your child in your institutional mainstream faith is dumber, not smarter, low scale, not "sophisticated," depressive and not "enlightened," oppressive and not "liberating." To raise children so that they don't know of God and his love, guidance and security is scandalous and is one of the worst forms of "parental malpractice." It's also self defeating because it robs you as a parent of one of the greatest joys that parents have, and have attested to throughout the centuries, which is introducing your infants to God and teaching your children his ways, how to make their way in the world, and how to hope for achieving the Kingdom of Heaven in their turn when their time comes.

I hope that you found this helpful. It's never too late, by the way, even with grown children. Tell them what you both have missed out on and learn about God together, wherever you are and in whatever stages of life's journey.