Understanding God: God is Active & Involved (2)

I just wanted to have some follow up detail and amplification of what I wrote yesterday, so here are some loosely connected thoughts on the same subject.

Let's start with one that pretty much stands alone, which is the question of miracles. People have become so mushy in their thoughts about miracles that it is a truly disturbing subject, rather than one that is joyful and affirming. It is a joyful and affirming subject because miracles are evidence that God will intervene in the natural order of things on occasion, so by knowing miracles can and do happen one has a comforting evidence of God's existence. The Bible documents in both the Old and the New Testament miracles performed by God either directly or through his Prophets or through Jesus Christ. There is something you must take care to notice. Collectively there are very few miracles documented in the Bible except for those performed by Jesus Christ. Thus I have to remind you of the obvious: genuine miracles are an exceedingly rare event. This is contrary to the popular babble that I see everyday that "miracles occur all the time" and "miracles are all around us." That is simply not true. The Bible demonstrates that genuine miracles may occur only once every several hundred years, if one studies their occurrence and their time tables.

Before these modern times when so much is blurred between reality and imagination (or wishful thinking), believers understood that miracles were very rare. They prayed to God for cures for their loved ones and so forth but they understood they were not praying for miracles. Believers pray to God for his mercy, his grace, and therefore "best outcomes" of ordinary situations. Believers before these modern times would never think to pray for a miracle per se because they understand that it is a rare event and granted by God according to his own initiative and for his own reasons. Now, I am not trying to be unkind or harsh, so I will explain that one reason that people confuse wonderful outcomes with miracles is that people have forgotten that life is punctuated by events that are what we would call "wondrous" or makes people "marvel." Someone who pulls back from the brink of death to a full recovery is an example of an event where people should marvel and have a feeling of wonderment, but not assume that it is a miracle. It might be an example of an excellent and unexpected outcome, one based either on a stirring combination of good things happening at once (great medical care, strong fortitude, and some extra grace) but not a miracle. So much of what people think are "miracles" are, instead, wondrous and marvelous outcomes to unlikely situations.

So what is a real miracle? A real miracle is one and only one thing, which is that God personally intervenes to overcome the natural order of things. Think of when God, as the Angel of the Lord, appeared with two other angels to Abraham and told him that he and Sarah would bear a son in their extreme old age. We know that is a miracle because God made it happen; it would not have happened otherwise. However, an elderly woman becoming pregnant in either ancient times or now in modern times cannot be called a "miracle" by any stretch of the imagination. It might be a medical wonder or a marvelous unexpected glorious event, but it is not a miracle. A miracle is not a fortunate escape from an accident, or a fantastic medical comeback from the brink of death, unless God is overcoming all natural law (biology and physics) and consequences (results of human actions) to make it so. That in all honesty very rarely happens, and that is obvious through study of scripture.

The one and only time where miracles became "common" was, of course, those by Jesus Christ. Again, remember that these are miracles performed by God through Jesus. We know this because Jesus explains that there are certain things he does to result in a successful miracle, such as prayer and fasting. By the way, it's not like Jesus fasted before performing a miracle. Jesus, as God's instrument, kept himself a pure vessel for the performing of miracles through his continual pattern of prayer life and fasting. Thus Jesus was always in the state of grace to perform a miracle without "preparation." This is why in one event the disciples could not perform a miraculous cure and Jesus told them that those types of miracles required prayer and fasting. Jesus did not mean that it's like a magic formula to do before the miracle, but rather that they were not the perfect vessels that he was (and, by prayer and fasting, maintained in perfect communion with God). So while the Gospels record only a few of Jesus' specific miracles, the Gospel authors indicate that Jesus performed many miracles that go unrecorded. For example, Jesus would cure all those who were ill or infirm in an entire village. Thus one can have confidence that Jesus, and Jesus alone, performed hundreds and over a thousand miracles.

It is obvious that Jesus was graced by God to perform these miracles in order to provide evidence of the mercy and power of God, and that God is present in the world. Thus Jesus performed miracles to authenticate his identity in the name of the Father, God. This is why the Apostles were able to perform some miracles, especially Peter, both during Jesus' life but most particularly after Jesus resurrected from the dead and ascended into heaven. Paul, who encountered the resurrected and ascended Jesus, also gained from Jesus the ability to perform miracles. But the volume of miracles is far less by Peter, Paul and the other disciples because performing "lots" of miracles was no longer the point. The point was to spread the Good News, the Word, the New Covenant, not to continue to "prove" that God exists and that Jesus was his Son and messenger.

Look at St John the Apostle and Evangelist, the longest living of the Apostles, and the only one not to be martyred. One would think that he would leave a long list of miracles, if God had been "opening the floodgates" to make miracles common, but the treasure he left was not a lot of cured ill people but his Gospel, his Letters, and the Book of Revelation. So the entire point of the miracles performed by Jesus and gifted to others to perform in his name was not either to 1) make miracles more commonplace or 2) make miracles the preferred form of "proof" of God's power and mercy. Rather, the situation kind of can be described as going back to how it was during the time of the Israelites, where God will intervene for a miracle on rare occurrences for reasons only God understands. The one difference is that while the focus on how one always looks to God for the miracle remained true, the Israelites had prophets among them, or God would appear through his Angel, while in modern times the miracles would come through the name of Jesus Christ. God is still the one performing the miracle, but ordinary people who called upon God using the name of Jesus became saints who could perform miracles at God's behest. In the time of the Israelites God would suddenly call upon one of his priests or prophets, such as Eliseus, and send him on a miracle "mission," for example. After Jesus Christ all who believed were able to trust in God through Jesus to call upon him. In other words, all can ask, and have a path by which they can ask with confidence and faith, but that does not, of course, mean that a miracle will be granted or that miracles can be "produced" at one's own behest.

I am sure that one of the reasons people are confused by this in modern times is that they match what Jesus said about asking anything of God in his name and it will be granted with the automatic assumption that this is like a miracle formula process. That simply is not true. But rather than be disappointed, or think that Jesus was exaggerating, one should feel better and affirmed if one truly understands what Jesus was saying. What many people think today (including many preachers who ought to know better) is fraught with error. Again, I am not trying to be unkind but to get people on the right track again (as their forefathers and foremothers were, who well understood what Jesus meant).

First of all, remember that the Gospels are written records of what Jesus said to his followers. Jesus did not speak with "the pen in mind, where his words will be written down to apply to everyone." What I mean by this is that Jesus was not dictating a recipe book... he was speaking to specific people at a specific time. Thus when Jesus said "you" can ask God he meant the people he was speaking to, his followers, can ask. Yes, of course, Jesus means that what he says specifically to the disciples will also apply to all people in the future...up to a point. For example, when Jesus spoke to the disciples, or those in the synagogues when he preached, and those who gathered on the hills to hear him, he was speaking to believing Jews. In other words, his audience was Jewish people who lived lives of belief in God. Even the Pharisees who he quarreled with about doctrine were, of course, God fearing and believing Jews. Jesus accused them of being hypocrites, not unbelievers. So there is a baseline that you must understand. When Jesus says "you" can ask God for something, the "you" he meant was believers, since that is who he is addressing.

Now, this is not elitist or limiting, and here's how to use some logic to understand it. Suppose that you were there when Jesus said those words. You get on a fast horse and gallop out of town until you find the first village of non-Jews or unbelievers. You tell them "I have discovered a magic formula! If you ask anything of [whatever they call God if they believe at all] using this name 'Jesus Christ' you will get what you ask for!" Um, duh, how likely do you think that would be? Could then the first Roman pagan that you found ask for a bar of gold using the name of Jesus and it would fall out of the sky? (Unless God had a sense of humor that day and hit him in the head). Obviously not. Your Jewish, Christian and Muslim forefathers all understood perfectly well that Jesus was not giving out a "magic formula" to "get whatever you want."

So what was Jesus saying? Again, remember his audience, the Apostles and disciples. They were already his followers and believed, not only in God but they believed in Jesus, and thus were the first Christians. By their mindsets and their actions (giving up all they had and following him) they were already predisposed to asking of God only what is of the greatest good. If Peter or James, or Andrew, for example, said to Jesus, "OK, we are now going to try out what you just told us and ask of God something in your name," you know they would not ask for a bigger paycheck, or to have the most beautiful woman throw herself at them, or to have riches and fame. What they prayed for and asked for, and what was given to them by Jesus as he was among them and the Holy Spirit after Pentecost can be listed 1) greater faith 2) the ability to perform miracles to glorify God and strengthen belief and 3) the ability to turn the hearts of men and women through their words.

This is what is like "moving a mountain." Peter would not ask for bars of gold or a long life, but he would walk into Rome and pray to God in the name of Jesus "that he convert and save as many souls as possible..." and look what Peter did.

So how does one take the words that Jesus gave to his specific audience, the believers who were his disciples, and apply them today? By understanding that 1) you must ask of God only what is for the greatest good, and let God determine that and 2) obviously you must believe in God, and Jesus, as they really are with your full heart and soul. I do not know many people alive today who could meet those requirements, and this is why you do not see many examples of asking something of God in the name of Jesus Christ and having it answered. (Or at least, not as you expected it).

What did the Apostles and disciples worry about the most and want the most? The right words to convert hearts and minds and to save souls. And thus, what were they most granted? The right words to convert hearts and minds and to save souls.

This is why the saints have risen through the years since Jesus and the Apostles were alive on earth and have been able to perform, some of them, astonishing miracles. They asked to do so to glorify God, not themselves and not even to be "good deed doers." Miracles are not an alternative form of charity! Miracles happen in order to 1) glorify God, 2) strengthen belief and 3) fulfill God's mysterious will, and not as a human determined form of charity, "good deed" or "kindness." So called "spiritual healers" are often the furthest away from God, not the nearest, because they view what they strive to do as a "good deed" to "promote healing" and to "cure," but not as an adjunct to what should be their "main business," which is the glorification of God.

Does this help? I think it should. It has become a very confusing cloud of wishy washy thinking where people talk about miracles as if they have a meaning that is totally different than what is clearly enunciated in the Bible (and the Torah and the Qur'an). Miracles were never a new age "charity coin" or a "wow, did that turn out well" phenomenon. Miracles are the extremely rare genuine occurrences of God "reaching into" natural law and the consequences of "cause and effect" and changing the outcome. The miracles performed by Jesus make this abundantly clear, from the raising of the dead to the healing of broken bones in an instant, as if they had never been broken, or the restoration of eyesight, including to those who were born blind. God, who controls all, since he is the creator of all, overturns his own rules when a miracle-a genuine miracle-occurs.

This is why when one reads the lives of the saints you do not see a lot of examples of saints running around "miraculously" curing hundreds of people or providing through "miraculous" means social services or kindness of food or housing to the poor. Miracles are not charity. Instead one reads of yes, sometimes remarkable cures, but one or two instances in order to glorify God, not to make miracles as a social service. What is far more common are the miracles by which the saints proclaim the glory of God through their miracles, such as when St Anthony showed the mourning family the heart of their miser family head in his treasure chest of coins rather than in his body. It was far more important that St Anthony use one miracle to demonstrate that God will judge the greedy and unjust by the shocking transportation of the heart from the body to his treasure chest than if St Anthony became a "miracle heart specialist," "miraculously curing" a bunch of people of their heart murmurs and so forth. Great escapes from accidents, providential cures from dire medical circumstances, and lucky breaks are not miracles! When I say a providential cure I mean that God has constructed a world where it is his will that some people do have wondrous and marvelous remissions, cures, births and other natural phenomenon without it being "a miracle," where God has overturned, for the moment, the natural order of humanity and things.

So, the next logical question is, why does it sometimes "work" to pray to a saint for a miracle and it happens? First of all, this is why the Catholic Church has a rigorous process to determine if it really is a miracle or if it is just one of those providential goodnesses that occurs, so that one can determine if there is valid cause and effect between praying to a saint and, for example, a cure. Wondrous things can and do happen without God intervening. By the way, I know that some people in modern times have claimed false miracles and even think they have "fooled the Church" by providing bogus documentation and so forth. What is to be gained by that? Do you want miracles or not? Fooling the Church authorities does not mean that miracles are bogus in concept or that the Church does not know what it is talking about. God continues to grant miracles-legitimately-wherever and whenever he wills it, even if there are a sad and mean spirited group of people who for whatever reason falsify the information they give to Church authorities. This was a particular problem during the time of Pope John Paul II, and the sad and ultimately self defeating why's of that are a subject for another time. But pretending that your Aunt Millie had a miraculous cure by praying to Saint [fill in your local favorite] does not change one iota the validity of rare but genuine miracles and how God chooses to dispense them (though I'd not hold your breath if you someday need a miracle and you've spent a lot of time manipulating the faithful).

So, the Church has a process by which they determine, as best as they can in an increasingly false and agenda driven world, if praying to a saint or the intervention of a saint resulted in a bona fide miracle. When they determine this they recognize the miracle and also start the process of sainthood, which I won't get into here. My point is to explain, when a miracle "really" occurs, why does a saint have a role in it? If all miracles come from God, why does praying to a saint sometimes "work?"

All miracles come from God. God is all knowing and so, of course, if you pray to St. Mary, for example, God hears your prayer and he (and he alone) answers. So why pray to St. Mary and not directly to God? Because you are honoring and venerating the virtue of the saint who has proven through his or her life their glorification of God. When you ask God something through a saint you are being humble. It pleases God when someone, for example, approaches St. Joseph in prayer, or St. Mary, and asks them to intervene and intercede with God. It pleases him because you are honoring the virtue and devotion that those saints, who he dearly loves, glorifies him and are testimonies to faith and the truth.

The Bible and other literature shows how often someone who needs a favor from someone first contacts the most beloved child of that potentate, such as the first son, or the favorite daughter, and asks them to put in a good word. It softens the heart of the person from whom you seek favor when you recognize and respect how much that person loves the intercessor. This is why the name of Jesus is so powerful, and must not be cheapened by asking Jesus for a successful drug deal or some escape out of a jam that dishonesty got you into. Mercy, yes. God will flow mercy on those who approach him through Jesus, so great is his love for Jesus. But, obviously, you must show that you honor and recognize the love and devotion and the goodness of the intercessor's glorification of God.

So that is why God has often giving miracles, both requested and unsolicited, to those who approach God through veneration of the saints. That is what it meant when it is said that St. Mary, for example, will "intercede" for her children. It's not like Mary knocks on the door of God's office and says, "Please help this guy out" and God says either yes or no. In the process of praying to Mary for intercession God is, of course, able to discern the amount of honor that you are giving Mary, your motivations, and what is for the greater good. Mary, who lives, as all the saints do, within God, is in a constant state of wishing the best for all (which is why God has allowed her to come to earth in specific authentic apparitions, such as at Fatima). As the pure vessel that preserved from sin by God gave birth to Jesus Christ, Mary, by her very existence, is perpetual intervention to God... it is up to the person to demonstrate to God their respect for Mary's sanctity and intercessor power, not Mary. Mary does not have to "ask" God; it is one's demonstration that one wishes Mary to ask, for what and for why, that is necessary. This is why it is obviously not, as some Protestants charge, Mary "worship." Rather one is demonstrating to God that one honors the love and perfection of faith that Mary, and the other saints, have demonstrated for the glorification of God. That is why it is very difficult, so to speak, for God to turn away anyone who asks something appropriate and with the genuine foundation of love and faith in Mary's goodness.

This is why there have been genuine miracles by genuine saints in the centuries since Jesus Christ walked the earth. The miracles have been motivated, and thus granted, for the glory of God and the strengthening of faith, not using the methods humans chose but by God's methods. God, for example, will not "prove he exists" by "miraculously curing cancer" while people continue to smoke and pollute. I mean, how obvious is that? You can't pour sewage into a river and say to God "Prove to me you exist by letting me drink even this polluted water and be healthy and live to be over one hundred years old." Miracles strengthen faith by demonstrating that God can, and does, intervene when he wills it, but not as a constant button to be pressed whenever someone wants to know if God is still "on hold" on the phone line.

Many miracles by saints have nothing to do with cures or charitable kindness at all. For example, the sanctity of some bodies of saints is not a "cure for cancer," but something to marvel at how several dozen saints maintain pure bodies even centuries after their death. While they lived many saints demonstrated miracles by living only on sacred bread, in either its physical form or angelically delivered. So they did not miraculously stock a food pantry at the local community center (good deeds and alms by humans are expected to do that). They glorified God by turning their very bodily sustenance over to him. The same is true of the stigmata. The stigmata are not "signs of power" like some sort of tattoo. They are miracles that correspond to the saint's sanctity and spiritual vocation in God himself.

When you really read the lives of the saints and even jot down on a tablet what kinds of miracles they performed, you start to cleanse yourself of the modern confusion that miracles are like "super good deeds" or "happy endings in bad situations." That is why in old English people use words more like "wondrous" or "marvels" to describe super good deed or happy endings in bad situations, rather than "miracles." The only exception is on the battlefield, back in the times when combatants invoked God (and remember, President Lincoln commented how he knows that both the Union and the Confederacy with sincere hearts invoked God). So even then those who believed, such as Lincoln, were sound and good thinkers about the reality of providence and God's will, but also hesitant to prematurely ascribe miraculous intervention. This is why people used the softer and more accurate word, providence, which leaves open grace, goodness, and protection by God without specifically and inaccurately calling it a miracle.

Much of what is good in the world comes about through God's providence, not God's miracles. God is like the farmer who gives the crops everything they could want and need to grow. That is providence. A miracle would be to make, for example, manna fall from the sky to feed the Israelites during their Exodus. Providence gives a people water, rich soil, sunshine and shade, all in the proportions whereby the crop can grow in abundance. These are gifts from God that can almost be thought of as the pre-existing goodness of the situation. The Founding Fathers felt that very much as the United States of America came into being, and they mention providence by name. They would never have confused providence with a miracle, though, except, as I said, in the dire circumstances on battlefield where one is more easily discerned if it truly exists. God can and does turn the weather, but again, remember that is extraordinary and rare. The Founding Fathers, even with their diversity of faith, had keen hearts to understand that God was with them in terms of providence, and to be alert to the opportunities, on the battlefield, though often it was in hindsight, to miracles. I like this analogy because it demonstrates how an agrarian people, as were the Founding Fathers, have by virtue of that pulse of life understanding, a sensitivity to God's presence, just as the Israelites (at least when they were not being stiff necked numb skulls) had as agrarian and pastoral people. Modern industry and worse the electronic media has broken that sense of God's genuine presence and the ability to discern providence from miracles, or even to savor providence at all.

I can guarantee you that few of the American Presidents, regardless of the level of their faith, went very many days without having a thought or two about the feeling of providence. They more than anyone appreciate the especial protection and grace from God that America has benefited from. They too, in modern times, should be among the first to be alert to the squandering and abuse of providence, and the grave risk that this entails. People need to worry less about "miracles" and being "touched by an angel" and more about regaining the fullness of providence from God that has been to a large degree thrown away in the trash and abused as if it were a curse instead of a blessing.

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Understanding ESP and "psychic" "ability"

While surfing the net looking for attractive images of the saints, flora and fauna to add to my scrapbook of “favorite things,” I came across a very sad, and all too alarming, memorial site. Thus I realize I need to repeat, with even more clarity of explanation, what I have said before. This should help those who are new to my site, or who are actually paying attention and respect to what I am saying for the first time. Also, as I’ve explained before, I will revisit subjects over and over because I realize humans tend to believe crap the first time, and the truth and quality they only believe after repeated explanation and signs.

The memorial site was constructed by parents and a sibling of a young man who had died suddenly of some heart ailment. That they loved him and are grief stricken is obvious. They are a believing Catholic family (which is how I found their site, by searching for images of a certain saint) and they have wonderful trust in God, commending their son to his care. Well, except for one thing. As I read further through the memorial site, I saw that they believe they have “contacted their son” through “psychics.” Sigh.

I am going to explain now step by step why it does absolutely no good to work with “psychics,” particularly those who claim to communicate with the dead. They most assuredly do not communicate with the dead, not at all, not a single time, ever. So I am going to give you the science and the theology of what is really going on so that you can understand with no excuses. You will have greater faith and comfort once you lose the succubus of belief that psychics “communicate” with the dead.

First of all, it is a scientific fact that humans have to varying degrees ESP, which stands for extra-sensory perception. What that means is that people have the ability, to various degrees, to obtain information using “extra” (which means additional or other than) senses (ones that are not the five senses of vision, hearing, touch, etc) by which they have perception. Perception is a tricky concept. Notice it is not called extra-sensory fact finding, ESFF? Nor is it called extra-sensory intelligence gathering, ESIG? It is called perception because it means that one has the impression of gaining insight or experiencing some stimulation, and that may or may not be valid, or it may or may not lead to genuine additional information. For example, when you meet a person for the first time and he is gruff, you may perceive that you have met someone who does not like you. You may be correct, or you may be wrong, and that the gruff exterior masks a very affectionate interior. That is the problem of perception: one receives an impression of information and it may or may not be true.

So I am here to assure you that ESP does exist and there are some people who have only marginal talent in that regard, and some who are formidable in the extent to which they have use of ESP. There are lots of fakers too, who pretend to be psychics but obtain in advance information about you from stalking and spying. They are around in abundance and I can assure you that many “psychics” know your social security number and blood type before you even contact them, and I can assure you that they did not receive that information as “validation” that they are “communicating” with your dead Aunt Nellie. But I will limit myself to discussing those few with truly genuine ESP capability.

What you must realize is that ESP events take place one hundred percent in the material world of matter, energy and time. They do not and never actually access God’s realm (or Satan’s) of life after death. Thus a person who using ESP legitimately believes he or she is communicating with your dead relative is not actually communicating with them or anyone else at all; that person is not in contact with their soul, nor are they granted access to heaven, purgatory or hell. That honest, though misguided, person is in contact with the spiritual and electromagnetic “residue” that remains on earth of your loved one’s life.

While people do not understand the mechanics of ESP, let me describe it to you this way. Thoughts and actions are electromagnetic, and thus there is a continual and to varying degrees cumulative effect of a person’s life left like fingerprints on earth. Thus not only the consequences of deeds live on after the person but an electromagnetic residue. This is not a living or self aware spiritual entity or force, anymore than one’s fingerprints left on a crime scene is “the fingerprint spirit” LOL. So to make it easiest for your self in understanding ESP in this application, think of this fingerprint analogy.

The only difference is that the fingerprint is not necessarily left in one location, but it can be thought of as floating fingerprints. Thus some few genuine talented people can, using their ESP ability, detect one or more ESP “fingerprints” of your dead relative, loved one or friend. Not to be too blunt, but what that means is that the “psychic” can pick up “happy camper” “messages” from your deceased loved one, even though your loved one’s soul in actuality is not in that happy camper place in heaven, if you know what I mean. They are taking your money or at the very least your self respect and telling you that your loved one is in that “better place,” while they actually have no way of knowing that is true. In fact, I have read books by such people and watched them on TV and have known for a fact that certain people they have claimed to have “contact” with and who are “watching over you from heaven” are, actually, doing no such thing and are burning in hellfire.

Here is where the error comes in (again, I am referring only to those few who legitimately have some ESP ability and who are not willfully scamming). In order to have a dialogue with, well, “fingerprints,” they use a mental device which is to “bring the fingerprints ‘to life.’” Think about the leaving of physical fingerprints to better understand this. If you are a child with small hands you leave correspondingly small fingerprints, if you are a woman with long finger nails, your fingerprints may be demarked accordingly, if you have scars or a “working man’s hands,” your fingerprints may be rough and leave those distinctive marks. CSI people can therefore sometimes form a “mental picture” of a suspect just by looking at their fingerprints. Those few who genuinely use some sort of ESP likewise form a “mental picture” that is in actuality quite limited based on their contact with the loved one’s ESP “fingerprint.” They think they are totally accurate because they think their contact is “heaven sent,” but it is not. Thus they do not understand the boundaries and ultimately the total lack of usefulness of their “service.” It would be as if the CSI people issued an all points bulletin with a description of an entire person, down to their red hair and love of animals, based on one fingerprint left behind. It is one thing to have a mental image based on factual work, such as examining a physical fingerprint. It is another thing to think that one knows what that person was really like AND what they are “doing” “after they are dead” based on an ESP fingerprint that was made and left while they were still alive.

Thus the honest psychics (those few) think they are having conversations and communication from the dead, but they are actually having a conversation with the person’s fingerprint, left while that person was alive, and ‘bringing them to life’ in their mind, supplementing the information with their own living ESP abilities. It’s like putting a doll together where the only accurate part is that you have one fingerprint, and you pick the rest of the information about what the doll would look like by just making stuff up in your own head, and using some legitimate ESP based gathering of information yourself… but all of it confined to the residue on earth. None of this information is at all from the soul of the person who is deceased, nor is the information from any part of heaven, purgatory or hell.

I have continually cited the passage in Luke where Jesus Christ most clearly explains that there is absolutely no communication between the dead and the living, in the story of the rich man in hell.

When the Bible and other sources mention “raising people from the dead” or communicating with the dead, they are referring to exactly what I have explained above, except of course the authors at that time did not understand much about the brain, neurology and so forth. So let us spend some time showing that three types of perceived “communication with the dead.”

God will on very rare occasions send prophets back to earth for a brief message. An example of this is when Jesus is Transfigured, and in the presence of Moses and Elias. Matthew 17:3: And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elias talking together with him. Jesus did not “raise Moses and Elias from the dead” nor did some psychic “get in touch with them in heaven.” God sent them to earth for that particular purpose of his, for the Apostles to witness Jesus Transfigured in their presence. So the first example of communicating with the dead is extremely rare and totally initiated by God, since God sends an image of the dead to earth for a given purpose. Another example of this is when Jesus dies on the cross, as his spirit leaves this opens the door and many of the dead are briefly seen to walk the earth again.

Matthew 27:51-54
And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were rent, and the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep arose; and coming forth out of the tombs after his resurrection, they came into the holy city and appeared to many. Now when the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, they were very much afraid, and they said, “Truly he was the Son of God.”

Thus on rare occasions and entirely at God’s will and behest the dead who are at rest in heaven will appear in some form when God requires a message or a sign to be given. These are not events that are “summoned” or initiated by human beings.

The second example of “raising from the dead” or communicating with the dead is when a genuine prophet of God restores to life a person who has recently died. The most well known examples are of Jesus raising Lazarus and others from the dead, not in communicating with them as they remain dead, but to give life back to them.

Mark 5:38-42
And they came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue and he saw a tumult, people weeping and wailing greatly. And going in he said to them, “Why do you make this din, and weep? The girl is asleep, not dead.” And they laughed him to scorn. But he, putting them all out, took the father and mother of the girl and those who were with him, and entered in where the girl was lying. And taking the girl by the hand, he said to her, “Talitah cumi,” which is interpreted, “Girl, I say to thee, arise.” And the girl rose up immediately and began to walk; she was twelve years old. And they were utterly amazed.

The Jews were very aware that on extremely rare occasions God will give a prophet the power to raise from the dead and one of the great miracles of Eliseus is recalled:

4 Kings 4:32-37
Eliseus therefore went into the house, and behold the child lay dead on his bed. And going in he shut the door upon him, and upon the child, and prayed to the Lord. And he went up, and lay upon the child; and he put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands; and he bowed himself upon him, and the child’s flesh grew warm. Then he returned and walked in the house, once to and fro; and he went up, and lay upon him, and the child gaped seven times, and opened his eyes. And he called Giezi, and said to him: Call this Sunamitess. And she being called, went in to him, and he said: take up they son. She came and fell at his feet, and worshipped upon the ground, and took up her son, and went out.

Thus all who witnessed the great miracles of Jesus, especially when he raised some from the dead, instantly knew that this was an extraordinarily rare grace that can only come from God himself. This is why the Bible will refer to the ability to “raise from the dead,” but by no means is there the suggestion that humans can do this, for only God can do it and wills it only on the rarest of occasions through the hands of his prophets.

The third example is that which I have already explained in the bulk of this posting, which is the perception that one is in communication with the dead. This is why the Bible is very blunt about such acts which, if they are not of the rare examples given above, considered a work of sorcery. Exodus 22:18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Yes, the Bible states that there is the death penalty for sorcery. Here is why.

As I have cited above, genuine contact with the dead is rare and only initiated by God. In other words, God alone allows a genuine and rare contact with the dead and he sent that ability at the time it occurs to the prophets of old. In other words, it’s not like people walked around with the “talent,” “gift” or “ability” to raise or communicate with the dead. God sends the power, ability and grace to do it at the time of the God willed action by a prophet. Moderns have fallen into the trap, which is why the Law as given by God is so harsh about sorcerers, of believing that communicating with the dead is a legitimate “gift” or “talent,” that can be invoked at will by a human being at his or her behest. That is absolutely and simply not true. Even Jesus did not walk around in a continual “on” state of being able to communicate with the dead and raise people from the dead and restore them to life. Each time that Jesus performed a miracle he was given that ability on the spot from God. We know this because we can read in the Gospel Jesus explain to the disciples that for certain miracles he makes certain preparations of prayer and fasting.

Likewise after Jesus died, resurrected and ascended to heaven, the Holy Spirit descended and gave certain Apostles the ability to perform certain miracles at certain times. It’s not like Peter, for example, was “always” in possession of the “gift” that he has now “developed.” Lord, no. Again, the Bible is clear throughout the centuries that only certain prophets are given on certain occasions the ability to cross the boundary between life and death, and that God and only God is the one who is actually bringing forth that miracle.

So, sorcerers and fortune tellers and others of their ilk have all made the same mistake, which is to believe that it is a “talent” or a “gift” to do certain extrasensory things, one that they possess and can invoke. In actuality what sorcerers do, or perceive that they are doing, is to, as I explained above, use certain earth bound extrasensory perceptions to perform acts that they think span the gap between the living and the dead, but they do not. As I’ve said, many are greedy and power hungry charlatans, while a few are genuinely talented in ESP based activities, and just misunderstand their own abilities, both where it comes from (not God) and what are its limitations (they are projecting their own inner information onto very small remnants of a person’s lingering or active mental and spiritual fingerprints). This is why the Law is so harsh and required the death penalty, since sorcerers promote their ability as a God given gift, which is blasphemous and in error. As I pointed out, even Jesus Christ himself did not walk around “promoting” his “ongoing” “gift” to raise the dead, for example, since that simply would not have been true. Jesus Christ is careful to point out that each and every miracle is at the behest of God and is a singular granting of that gift by God through Jesus, neither a sorcerous “talent” nor an ongoing “divine gift.”

Thus modern psychics, those few who are genuine, imply and often believe that they are in possession of an ongoing “gift” that is divinely approved, and it most assuredly is not. What they have is the same as if they had really good eyesight, or perfect pitch, or really keen hearing. Suppose that a person was born with the extremely subtle ability to smell odors like a bloodhound, or to hear outside of the human range, like all dogs do? Is that channeling a “gift from God” of “direction from heaven?” Um, no; it would be an example of someone through their earth bound genes having particularly keen sensory ability. People with ESP have no reason to thank God for it any more than someone with great vision thanks God for their super eyesight every day. ESP is a biological and electromagnetic capability; it is not miraculous, it is not “spiritual” in the sense of holy, justified or approved, and it does not span the real world of the living and the soul based world of the dead. It is like having really great hearing, really great eyesight, or a really great nose.

In general I dislike all psychics for that reason, since they have an uneducated and invalid vanity regarding the loftiness of their “gift.” The more that they parrot about God the less humility they are actually showing, since they are still linking their ESP ability to divine matters, and that simply is not true. What would be appropriate prayer? Again, think of the CSI example, of the fingerprint specialist, or of the person born with some incredible and bizarre ability to use his or her sense of smell like a bloodhound. They should pray that they are as responsible in the use of their talent and capability as they can be, just as all normal people should pray to God that he guide all that they do in life and that they only perform his will and do only honest good, not self serving “good.” However, it would be a vanity for a CSI fingerprint expert, for example, to think that his talent is miraculous, and that his dead uncle Freddy is “guiding” him from “up above.”

Likewise a man who was born with a bloodhound’s nose might pray for guidance about using his talent (and standing the stench of much of what he would smell, LOL) but it would be lunacy and error to think that he’s “channeling” some saint who had a big nose. Really, I’m almost embarrassed on behalf of modern humans when I type this. As usual I marvel that I have to keep explaining this over and over again. But as Jesus explained, Abraham told the dead man in hell that the people had Moses and didn’t listen to him, so why would his living brothers believe even his testimony of the reality of hell? It seems that every generation is worse and worse at ignoring the centuries of wisdom and truth in the Torah, the Bible and the Koran, and making stuff up to self aggrandize and fool the public as they go.

So when those few genuine psychics do an extraordinary thing, such as have an imaginary “conversation” with the residue of your dead loved one, or manipulate cards in a casino (LOL), or use psycho kinesis to make the other team drop the football, or accurately predict your next pregnancy, they are not using a “divine” “gift.” It is not God approved or God provided, any more than someone with particularly good eyesight or perfect pitch. It is simply an extreme capability of an earthly phenomenon and thus like everything else it is up to the person to either understand and use with morality, or misunderstand and abuse, and thus will answer for when the time comes. In animals we marvel and call it “instinct,” and study the biology of things like how a homing pigeon navigates, or a butterfly migrates thousands of miles. But we do not say, “Wow, God made that homing pigeon psychic” or “that butterfly must be channeling the spirit of the saint who was the best map reader.” I mean, use your common sense people.

I hope and pray that you have found this helpful.

Exodus 25:21-22
And thou shalt put the mercy-seat above upon the ark; and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee. And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy-seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.

Miracle on the Hudson

Like everyone else I am fascinated by and thrilled at the near miraculous safe landing of the US Airways plane via water ditching, impeccably done and the very classy contributions of all the passengers in their mutual survival. I'm proud of everyone, especially the hero pilot and his co-pilot, and thank God for his mercy.

If the guardian angels were to comment on this I think they would say of the pilot that "He was very easy to work with."

An event like this is time to remember that as there were one hundred and fifty people on board, there were one hundred and fifty guardian angels too (who would have accompanied each person however it turned out) and of course, the Holy Spirit is everywhere...

Through that they would mean that his great talent and years of experience allowed the best possible grace of assistance to flow. Miracles work with natural law and physics, not against it, so angels appreciate someone who is in command. The only one who regularly worked miraculous wonders to change the operation of natural law was, of course, Jesus Christ.

Well, I enjoyed listening to the interviews today and look forward to much more on this thankfully happy subject!

Miracle by one of my favorite saints, Anthony

St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231) is one of my favorite saints, in reflection of the great fondness that God holds for him. He was graced by visitation by the Infant Jesus and his sanctity, even among saints, was extraordinary.

He is one of the relatively modern saints (having lived one thousand years after the miracles performed by Jesus and the Apostles) who demonstrated throughout his short earthly life in service to God that actual miracles, not "fables" or "symbolic stories" take place when one is favored by God.

There is one miracle, performed by God and revealed by St. Anthony, that is of the most extreme importance for people to believe and to understand. Here is what happened:

Invited to preach at the funeral of a usurer, he took for his text the words of the Gospel: "Where thy treasure is, there also is thy heart."

In the course of the sermon he said: "That rich man is dead and buried in hell; but go to his treasures and there you will find his heart." The relatives and friends of the deceased, led by curiosity, followed this injunction, and found the heart, still warm, among the coins.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01556a.htm

God had actually caused the heart of the sinful usurer to be removed from his dead body and found, still warm, by the curious relatives who looked in the usurer's treasure chest of coins. So this was not a "magic trick" or a "morality fable," but an instance where God performs a miracle in support of the preaching of one of his saints.

Consider also how St. Anthony is so blessed and good that he accepted the request to preach at a funeral (and conduct a Mass for the deceased's soul), even though St. Anthony was graced by the knowledge from God as to the dispensation, regretfully in hell, of the deceased usurer. True followers of God never "give up," they will pray for the worst of the worst, and continue to reach out to every soul who witnesses God's word at work.

So there are many things one must understand from this actual event, this miracle. One is that God affirms the genuine dire peril of those who for greed and avarice exploit others through usury.

If you have a scholarly mind, something should now "click" for you. Prohibition against usury is in the Old Testament, and also in the Qur'an.

Many modern secularists and Christians try to argue that Jesus "canceled out" the law of the Old Testament, which is most assuredly not true. Jesus warned that people should not think that his coming means that nothing from the Old Testament "applies any more" or that they can pick and choose in their liberality of "intepretation" which laws of God "still apply" and which do not. St. Paul and the other Apostles most certainly did not say that just because the Jewish law was not followed by Christians to demark themselves as the original Chosen People, that therefore all else that God allows and prohibits in the previous scripture should now be ignored.

This is one reason why God willed this extraordinary miracle, prophesied on the spot by St. Anthony, at the time and place that he did. Medieval and Renaissance eras were the time of extraordinary greed and avarice that were first breaking forth from the religious prohibitions that most had lived under prior to that time. In other words, it was that time and place that was the root of the economic and morality problems that we see today.

God willed and performed this miracle, so that St. Anthony could proclaim it, and people could see unquestionably themselves the meaning, exactly to warn against that trend that humans were beginning to follow, thinking that the prohibitions of the Old Testament should give way to everyday economic "practicalities" and developments that are rooted in greed, and not God's word.

Imagine how the relatives had a "come to Jesus" moment when they found, after looking with their own curiosity, in their own inherited treasure chest from the deceased usurer, and found his warm heart on top of the pile of coins.

Imagine all the "bank mergers" that have taken place in hell, through the centuries, and most especially in modern times. Hmm. Muslims have another thing to be very thankful for, since their faith has saved them from sinning in this regard, by adhering to moral principles in Islamic banking.

One of the subtle works of Satan was to encourage the Christian children of the Reformation to ignore the study of the saints, and thus isolate God's word, his will and his works to only the time of Jesus. The children of the Reformation have put all of the works of God through his saints "in a freezer," looking only, for the large part, at the parts of the Bible that they cherry pick (St. Paul, St. Paul, St. Paul and then for variety, more St. Paul).

I have never doubted their love of Jesus, and they will have their reward for that. But many of them love Jesus as they love the liberal friend or brother, ignoring that Jesus speaks for God the Father, the one and only God who continues to speak and to will specific actions throughout all time including to the present. Ignoring the specific lessons and events in the lives of the saints and how God manifested himself through miracles is one of the most dire mistakes of modern "enlightened" and "reformed" times.

Addressing the "Why does God allow" question

I am writing this with particular attention and concern for parents and other loved ones who have lost someone, particularly a teenager, to an impaired driving, speeding, or youthful inexperience automobile accident. I know that this is a wound that is very difficult to heal, if it ever does completely. I also know that some people have their faith affirmed, while others have theirs deeply shaken. I know it is not helped when those wishing to comfort you may say that it is God’s will, and so, while I’ve addressed this before, I want to try to ease your sorrow by directly addressing situations of teenage drivers and their passengers who through impairment, speeding or youthful inexperience lose their lives in an automobile accident.

First, to answer the question directly, “Why does God allow this to happen?” Here is what would have to happen if God were to stop these accidents, which he could. Every time that a teenager drinks, speeds or lacks automotive experience and gets in danger, God would have to intervene with a miracle. If they crashed their cars, God would have to “rewind time” just for them, and either raise them from the dead or intervene at every moment that is the “point of no return,” such as forcing the speedometer down so the car cannot go any faster, or having an angel steer the wheel of the car of an inexperienced driver. It would obviously be unmistakable that God is intervening in thousands of lives on a daily basis.

In no time at all teenagers would stop wearing their seat belts, try to put “the pedal to the medal” as hard as they can in order to test how far they can speed, take drugs (to see if God only “fixes it” when they are drinking or if he will “fix” “too much” drug use too). Perhaps an extreme sport would develop where teens would race their cars to see who could get farther before God intervenes and stops the race, or they would even smash into buildings with their cars, to see if God will stop them this time, or raise them from the dead.

You know I’m not exaggerating, even though that may be your first impulse of response. If God were to answer your pleas, literally, to not allow these things to happen to teenagers, he’d have to directly intervene thousands of times a day on a miraculous basis in a way that could not be mistaken and would obviously become widely known, anticipated, and even demanded. Soon those who die in war would wonder why they are not preserved, when they are serving their country, yet teenagers who drink and drive are saved. Then the cancer and heart patients would wonder why God does not fix them, especially if they lived worthy lives and worked for many years, while God is miraculously saving those who drink and drive and now also those who fight in war. People would stop trying to be safe. It is as simple as that. People would stop trying to do better, to be safer, and to be more caring of each other, to be more childlike as children and more mature as young adults. People would soon think that staying alive no matter what one does (and how one hurts others, such as the passengers in a drunk driver auto) is all that matters, and who cares about leading a good life in order to prepare for the eternal afterlife. That is human nature. Look at people who will do anything for a high, inhaling things that outright kill them. Humans have an adrenaline addiction and an immaturity that providing miraculous cures and preventions for each instance would only encourage, not discourage, that behavior. God, in their minds, would not be “Robo-cop” but “Robo-cure,” where youngsters and eventually everyone thinks they can do whatever they want, and then the button gets pressed and God performs a miracle to cure them.

So when people say that it is God’s will that someone dies in such an automobile accident, they mean that it is God’s will that humans have alcohol, roads, cars, children and physical laws that govern mass and energy during impact. It also means that God has foreseen this event, since God is all knowing, and that he is not going to intervene, for precisely the reasons that I described above. Therefore by not intervening with a miracle it is God’s will. But it is not God’s will that a young person drink, drives and dies. How do we know that? The Bible forbids intoxication. It’s as simple as that. If God ever approved of intoxication it would be in the Bible. So when a youngster drinks, drives and causes an accident, he or she is not performing God’s will. It is God’s will that natural law continues to consistently apply when human behavior dictates.

Having said that, I would understand if at that point you think that God must be a pretty chilly character and does not understand your pain. You’d be wrong. God is all knowing and here is what that means in this context. God not only knows your pain, the pain of your loss, but he knows every iota of it now and at every moment in the future, before you even experience it. So God, obviously, being the all-knowing, knows every bit of pain and the effect it has on you from start to finish, “all at once,” as he knows every iota of the future. For example, God knows every tear you shed and will shed, every stress hormone that you emit, every pang of memory that you have, and every change in your health and behavior that you experience, all in advance, until the day that you pass on. This of course is true of everyone, all of the survivors, all of those who mourn, and the impact even on strangers and the community of each passing.

Further, while you can only imagine, and I know this is painful, all that your loved one would have experienced if he or she lived, God actually knows what would have happened in your loved one’s life. God has “the facts” and knows whether they would have graduated, gone to work, gone to college, served in the armed forces, bummed around Europe as a tourist, fixed cars, married, had children, been a grandparent, retired, and so on. So far from being a chilly character, God knows precisely the full cost and lost potential of every single person and knows the grief of that curtailed life.

God himself does not grieve because God encompasses everything, including the eternal that is outside of the boundaries of life, so God, for lack of a better expression, always puts even the saddest loss of life within the overwhelming context of eternity. But God knows humans better than they know themselves, so God indeed knows the grief of a loss to the fullest measure, more than even the parent can comprehend, since God has “all the facts” including the details of “what would have been.” No one, either God or the angels, is “happy” when someone suffers or dies tragically, but remember they are on the other side of the door seeing that person’s immortal soul. It is hard to grieve the loss of a person when that person is there with you. Thus God and the angels feel particular pity and comforting love for those who on earth, alive, suffer the loss of their loved one, and who must still go on. It is then that if one believes, and continues to believe, one can turn to God and know that as Jesus Christ taught, “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).

I hope that you find this helpful. Truly everyone knows that the only help for a terrible loss is the gradual effect of time. I think, though, that talking through the difficulties of God actually intervening in every case such as this is helpful, as I know that people in their pain do not think it through when they wish that God could have saved their loved one. God could do so, but that is precisely the point where humans say to God, “Well, we can’t manage our own business and live without being micromanaged, so make us robots and life will just become one big game of ‘let’s see when God will save us next.’” Remember too that it is not as if God is silent. The Holy Spirit and the guardian angels are constantly encouraging good and safe, life affirming behavior. As I’ve written previously, if one were to conduct an experiment and the Holy Spirit and the guardian angels were removed of their silent influence, life would suddenly be so dark and unbearable that humans would not even be able to stand up. The guiding encouragement of the Holy Spirit and the guardian angels is like oxygen, it is so natural and taken for granted that one would only notice it if it were totally removed, God forbid. All I can say is that parents and loved ones need to band together to reduce the immaturity and bad influences of society on the young, especially in high risk behavior, which they are all so prone to, as many humans are by nature.

Would YOU recognize a miracle???

Would YOU recognize a miracle?

Most people have been in the situation where someone in their family, or a loved one, is gravely ill. If people are honest, even those who do not believe in God per se would admit that they pray, or at least yearn for, a miracle to save their loved one. This is never more obvious than when it is a helpless baby who is in dire medical condition. The baby may have been born profoundly premature, or with a very serious medical condition that threatens its life before it can even begin. Or the baby may have been harmed in a car accident, or is the victim of violence. Hardly anyone would not pray, or yearn, for a miracle, and when one does occur, that is usually what they say, in blessed relief, that it was a miracle.

Then why do some people refuse to acknowledge a rare and precious miracle, when a baby that is being aborted, somehow survives the process and lives? How can people with any conscience not apply what they would feel if a premature “wanted” baby pulled through, miraculously, a grave condition, yet when a baby that is not “wanted” is graced with a miracle by God, it is murdered like dirty trash?

I honestly wonder how people can be as schizophrenic in their morality on such a fundamental and obvious phenomenon as this. In one room in the hospital people pray for a miracle to save their premature baby. In the other room of a hospital, “health care workers” say “Darn it! This supposed aborted baby was born alive! We blew it!” And then they dismember it, or simply put it in the trash can, or a cold metal tray, to let it feebly suffer and twitch, silently crying, as it dies.

I have never been able to understand people who do not see the evil in such an attitude. I must assure you that God certainly sees, and is filled with wrath. While one can understand how many moderns think that abortion is a “right” or a “choice,” how can even they think that not providing life giving aid to a helpless baby who miraculously survives an abortion is somehow “right” and even more loathsome, being a “health care giver” or “just doing one’s job.” I cannot understand why even the “pro choice” lobby is not in outrage when a baby who miraculously survives is not given basic care so it can live and be adopted, if still not wanted. When God moves his hand to provide a prayed for (in any other circumstance) miracle, how dare people slap his hand away, and allow the baby to suffer to death?

I have always felt this way, and I have always been baffled by the “spiritual” “pro choice” side who do not see a problem with letting a God given miracle die, and worse, think that it was a “mistake in the abortion procedure.” Anyone who would ever have asked me would have had their ears burned off in hearing this stance from me, and thus been giving fair warning at how God perceives this cold heartedness rejection.

But by now I guess you can figure out why I am patiently explaining this to all of you on the blog (wondering why that has to be spelled out, but humans are nothing if not having a strong bias toward doing the wrong and wicked thing even in obvious situations such as this). One of the Presidential candidates has no shame in thinking that it is A-OK to let a baby suffer and die, after that baby had been given a miracle and survived the death of the abortion, and that candidate is, of course, Barrack Obama. He’s not even ashamed and that amazes me (not amazed in a good way, in case I need to spell that out too).

John McCain cannot be accused of being a dishonorable man who imposes his beliefs on others. To the contrary, John McCain has set the judicial and moral good example by recognizing that no human has the right to murder a baby who miraculously survived an abortion. One does not even have to get into the entire “pro choice” versus “pro life” argument to recognize something as screamingly obvious as this problem of “partial birth” abortion and worse, the willful killing of a child who survives an abortion and struggles to live outside the womb. John McCain has demonstrated himself to be a man, a humanitarian, and a protector of those who are given a God given miracle try at life, but who need actual human beings around him or her to actually not treat the baby like trash that missed the garbage disposal. I do not understand how Barrack Obama, regardless of being “pro choice” or not, cannot see the difference. But then again, it is difficult to recognize the God, his works, his mercy and his miracles, as they have been characterized in that charade of exclusionary faith that he seemed to have embraced for so many years. I cannot look at a picture of Barrack Obama without thinking of a miraculously born baby writhing in a cold metal pan until it dies, and him thinking “That’s cool. That’s right.” It has nothing to do with the color of Barrack’s skin, but there is a darkness of the heart in him, and those like him, who cannot see the difference between “pro choice” and putting to death a miracle baby.

Isn’t that enough to make anyone with fundamental decency vote for John McCain???

My attitude toward Jefferson's Bible editing

Here's a very good article about Founding Father, President Jefferson, who cut and pasted the Gospels in the Bible to eliminate all miraculous and what he felt were superfluous events and retained only the actual sayings and teachings of Jesus.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-beliefs5-2008jul05,0,7730914.story

***
Now, I would expect that people would think I would be upset over his actions and his attitude. But they would be wrong, and it would be based on the same misunderstanding that caused Jefferson to discard the miraculous events. This is why.

Without the miracles, the Bible would never have been written. From the first five books, written by Moses, who had extensive miraculous personal interactions with God, "face to face" as it were, to the final book, where St. John is miraculously taken to heaven by the angel to witness the Apocalypse, without the miracles there would be no discourse between God and humans, which is what the Bible records.

You see, rational people, especially those who grew up, like the Founding Fathers, in wealthy and privileged settings complete with an education, view the Bible wrongly. They think it is a text, sprinkled with miracles to make it mysterious, believable and awe inspiring. But they forget that plenty of smart and holy people walked around with clever things to say, but none of them were written down and called a Bible. Why? Because people are not foolish. They do not consider something, especially the ancient Israelites, to have come from God unless there is one heck of a lot of miracles to prove it. It is the witnessing of divine actions that "consecrate" a person to be someone who henceforth is authentically hearing God and has something to write down in a book, which then becomes part of the holy scripture.

What you really need to appreciate is that the Old Testament is a series of books by a series of authors who have witnessed to miraculous events in pretty much each book over a period of two thousand years.... and these miraculous events were all encounters with the one and same God. It is the miraculous dialogue with the SAME God by different people over thousands of years, and not waves of "rational discovery" or different gods popping in and out that makes it a literal and actual history that merits being recorded and preserved.

Likewise all the preachers, even St. John the Baptist, of the New Testament would never have gotten into the public consciousness, say nothing of attract Apostles who spread the faith and died for it, if the miracles had not occurred. There were LOTS of worthy preachers, Jewish and otherwise, who talked a good talk of holiness, some orthodox and some not so much. But none of them stood the test of time because they did not deliver on the miracles. It really is as simple, and profound, as that.

God knows humans full well, obviously. So for the four thousand year Judeo-Christian faith history he has produced the miracles with one voice, one God, one belief system, and one family tree consistently to person after person after person, culminating in Jesus Christ, who was actually empowered by him to act miraculously on God's behalf. Incidentally both the Bible and the Qur'an point this out about Jesus (Isa), that he performed miracles using God's first hand will and permission. THAT is what made the Bible even possible, and why those who did not "deliver the miracle goods" found that their teachings and preachings are totally lost in time.

See, rationalists and deists think like modern humans who are writing a text book. They think a bunch of do gooders sat down and decided to write the Bible one day, including all sorts of worthy and moral maxims. It's actually the reverse case. Humans were so awestruck when miraculous dialogue with Gods and events at his behest happened that they recorded the deeds, because as Jesus taught humans "see and then they believe." People just do not go along with even good and moral teachings if that's all they are, especially not in those days of slavery, brutality, and desperate struggle for daily survival. God literally had to burn the bush, talk to Moses, appear in a tent among the Israelites on a daily basis, appear to prophets century after century, guide their hands to anoint kings, instruct them in battles, pound morals and good behavior into their heads, and finally send the Messiah, fully empowered to perform miracles at the behest of God himself. The miracles happen first, time after time, followed by the writing of the morality and teaching. Miracles, get attention, write the book. Miracles, get attention, write the book. Miracles, get attention, write the book.

That is one of the wonders of the Bible, because if you read it you understand that it is thousands of years of individual encounters of a miraculous nature between the same God, time after time, and different individuals in vastly different generations. It is that constancy of dialogue with the one true singular monotheistic God that is what makes it a Bible, not the moral code it contains. The moral codes are given only after a genuine miraculous encounter that authenticates to generation after generation that it is the same God. Remember, even Saul turned to Paul had to prove to the Apostles that it was the risen Christ who had appeared to him and converted him. There is that constancy of miracle/teaching, miracle/teaching, miracle/teaching throughout both the Old and New Testaments.

That's why someone like Jefferson doesn't "get" that the miracles are the literal activities that triggered the attention getting of humans, the authenticity of the God with whom they are in dialogue, and THEN the writing down of the history, the codes, the wisdom, the teaching and the events that transpire as a result, such as the Gospels and Acts.

I hope this helps with the understanding of what the Bible really is, and why it is not just a collection of good things to do.

Just another thought, in fact, wouldn't that be an interesting study guide or book to write. Look at each book of the Bible and chapter by chapter indicate what miracle triggered the belief or the dialogue or the historical events that followed from it. One would have an instant, strong transportation into the actual mindset and development of the Bible because that is indeed how it unfolded in its development.

Clearing up saint relics misunderstanding

Many people are confused about the Catholic Church's veneration of relics. A relic is the bodily remains of a saint or an object that the saint wore or handled regularly, such as clothes. A relic would not be a block of concrete that the saint once stepped on, or samples of his or her garbage.

Here's the specific misunderstanding that I want to address in this blog posting. Veneration means that you treat the relic with respect as having once contained the living presence of someone who is known to have achieved sanctity. So veneration is not worship. When people kiss and venerate a saint's relic they are not worshipping it, even though it looks that way. People are worshipping God, who stands "behind" the relic, not the actual relic itself. God is not "in" the relic and only God is worshipped. Think of it as people who venerate the relic are trying to spiritually reach through the relic to follow the same path to sanctity as the saint did. Not by imitating the saint, since that's the more complicated journey of having a life calling, vocation or sanctified life style. But by venerating a relic people are praying to God using a bodily remain that they know "showed that God is real." A relic of a saint is a reminder that the saint "proved" to the faithful that God exists, and they use the relic to reach into the well of faith that the saint demonstrably had accessed in his or her life.

Now, here is where modern day cultists are really confused. Non-Catholics who are cultists believe that the relic itself contains some holy virtue that performs miracles. They are wrong and that's incredibly stupid of them to believe. They are confused because there are examples in the Bible and in life since then of miracles being achieved through the touching of relics. But it's not the relic itself or the touching of the relic that performs the miracle, dummy! God performs all miracles that he wills to happen. It is the belief, the true and pure belief, that is the "request" to God for the miracle. So when someone touches a relic and that person is pure in their belief (not a cultist) that comprises the "request" to God for the miracle. But the person could have made the same prayer and request without the relic at all. The relic is an assistance to humans in their faith and to strengthen their mindset through referencing the sanctity of example that the saint has set. But all of that can be done (and happens every day) without the relic.

In the Bible we read how St. Peter's shadow could cure people. But it goes without saying that the shadow didn't just willy nilly cure anyone that it fell on. The shadow itself had no power. But the people who the Bible reports crowded the road sides hoping for St. Peter's shadow to fall on them believed. They didn't believe that his shadow had power. They believed that God fulfilled their prayers through the shadow of this man St. Peter's sanctity.

Without belief God is not going to perform miracles through relics or without relics. The belief does not need to be perfect, but it cannot be contaminated by occult belief in the magical power of the relic rather than faith in God's will, from whom all comes that is good or healing in power. You could own the undergarments of Jesus Christ himself and if you do not believe in God, and if you attribute power to the undergarments instead of God, it will do you no good and you might as well buy yourself a fresh pair of Fruit of the Loom.

Suppose someone could tell me that there is an example of someone who is miraculously cured via touching a relic, but that person is not a believer or is even worse, someone profane and a cultist. God knows all and sees all. He will perform miracles for even the worst pagan, infidel, idolater and profane if God knows that by doing so he will shake the error of the person and prepare him or her for genuine conversion. Again, it's not the relic. The person could have got the same result without the relic, but relics help people who have sullied thoughts to focus on the path and goodness of the person whose relic they behold, and thus they can lead their minds more clearly to God, even if that is not their original intention. It is all God's choice whether he delivers a miracle or not, relic or not. And remember, the vast majority of prayers by even the faithful for healing are not granted. When the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in Fatima the three saintly children would give her lists of names they hoped would be cured. Mary would tell them point blank which of those would be cured, and the many that it was not God's will to cure. This included two of the three children who died young of illnesses just a few years after they saw Mary.

Life is meant to be lived. God gave the gift of life to people. If people cannot live in decent ways, do you think that God will intervene? If the generals in Myanmar do not allow the cyclone survivors to receive food, do you think God will have manna fall from the sky to feed them, believers or not? Of course not, because God might as well just take free will and life itself away from people all together (and don't think it has not become more likely now than it was some years ago). People live longer than they ever did yet pray for miracles for illnesses. Life is meant to be lived and not "miracled" out of every difficulty or reality of life itself.

So to repeat, there is no magic or holy virtue at all in the relic itself. All miracles are at the behest of God's goodness and mercy, and only if a miracle fits into God's greater plan. Some miracles fall on even the most unworthy people, unasked for. This is part of realizing that only God sees the entire picture of his plan for humanity as a whole and for each child and adult individually. I know very undeserving people who have benefited from God's miracles. But few of them remain undeserving their entire lives. A true miracle is an encounter with God that will start a transformation that the person either allows or blocks. Compare that to what has happened to many people who just win a lottery and become despondent drug addicts and depressives. A miracle, even to the undeserving, moves the person in the right direction, even if they defy it. Material and man made events of good fortune, such as fame, or the lottery, rarely does exactly that; usually it moves all but the most cautious and prudent in the wrong direction. So it is entirely plausible that God will give a miracle to even the most undeserving. After all, he knocked Saul off of that horse, and who would have thought that Saul, the persecutor of Christians, deserved a miracle? But God, who knows all and sees all, sent the resurrected Jesus Christ to Saul to ask him, point blank, why was he persecuting him? Saul who became Paul is the example of the unsought for miracle falling on the most undeserving, and then becoming a pillar of witness of God's transforming power.

Modern cultists would think that the hair of Saul's horse would "hold" some of the "power" of the miracle, because Saul's fat rear end sat on the horse and the light of Jesus fell on the horse hair. That, of course, is stupid and wrong. But that is how some deluded cultists misunderstand the physical setting of a miracle. I'm just using that as an example of how they misunderstand what is a relic and what is not, plus the fact that legitimate relic or not, the object or remains do not hold any power in and of itself. Like I said, people could own a set of Jesus' undergarments and while they would be relics, they would be no guarantee of miracles or curing, and certainly not indicative or giving of any earthly power. They simply strengthen and focus the faith as the believer venerates a legitimate relic.

Here's an example. I have a wooden rosary. Several years ago I touched it to the reliquary that holds a relic of St. Francis. Now, my intention to do that is to have it in my spiritual "first aid kit" to give to someone who may need it. This would not be because it holds some sort of special power. Rather, if I knew someone seriously ill, or bed ridden, and who could not make a pilgrimage, or was suffering, I could give him or her that rosary and tell them that it has touched the glass pane over a relic of St. Francis. This would be a comfort, and an illumination of faith, not conferring of a magical power. I come from the generation of Catholics who know how to give "civilian" baptisms and last rites to the dying. Old time Catholics are taught how to baptise a road side car accident victim out of rainwater puddles if you are called upon to do so in dire emergency. That doesn't mean that the puddle is holy. It's proof that it is not the relic or device (in this case, holy water or the oils of the last rites) that contains the power, but God himself, only God. All Catholic children of my generation knew how to baptize, even using spit, if no water is at hand, or to give last rites that are valid, even not as a priest and not having the holy orders or sanctified oils. That is the absolute proof of what I am explaining to you in this posting.

Since the relic itself, specifically the remains of the saint, does not contain the power itself, this should also clear up the pagan belief that sanctity is inherited genetically. It is not. I mean, just think about it and put down the drink or the weed if necessary to follow this more clearly. Suppose you knew Judas back when he was an Apostle in good standing. You'd sit there and think, "Hm, holy person." If he had children and you believed this stupidity that it is genetic, you might think, "Hm, his son or daughter are holy by virtue of being his physical offspring." Well, Judas goes and betrays Jesus. Is he still holy? Would his body change in one day from being "relic worthy" to being "very much not relic?" And what about the theoretical kids? How dumb is that? Would the "genetics" of his "offspring" be "holy" just because they were the kids of a genuine Apostle, regardless of their own sanctity of belief and works AND even after Judas the Apostle became Judas the Betrayer? So with this example, how could anyone but a total moron think that just because someone is an offspring or descendant of someone holy, or not, that their faith profile and "magic" powers are transferred to them through genes? That is why popular cult literature about "descendants" of saints is such ridiculous retarded garbage that I did not even bother to reply on message boards regarding this subject, nor take the bait. It's so stupid that I cannot believe anyone would actually think that generation xyz of some supposed saint has anything to do with reality.

And so, not to be indelicate (but cultists force one to discuss vulgar topics), not only would descendants not have any jot of holiness profile in them, but neither would, um, efflua from them, such as sperm, eggs and so forth. God's miracles and power are not transmitted in the human body in any way shape or form, period, end of story. Someone who achieves a miracle using erroneous belief did so at God's pleasure because God saw a chance for genuine transformation of heart in the person, infidel or not, and whether they accept that gift or not. So if someone preserved the snot from the nose of the horse that Saul rode, or traced the generations of asses that Jesus rode on and picked a booger from the nose of the current generation of ass, and then has a miracle occur, it's not the snot or the booger itself, dummy.

I so cannot believe that I am having to explain this. And you wonder why iconoclasts were so angry about icons AND why Muslims are so militant on that subject too. They recognize the temptation inherent in poor faith understanding (or worse, cultist tendencies) that lurk in people to misunderstand and therefore misattribute God's power to physical relics and material representations. They have a point and I think Muslims are correct to maintain their cautious stance in their own faith. In many ways God blesses Muslims as vanguards of maintaining purity of intention only to the one God himself. However, the Catholic understanding of relics is correct and valid, but there is in these cartoon character cultist times a real pressure to believe some of the most disgraceful things about relics.

So you can throw away the crates of "genuine angel poo" and "eggs and sperm from prophets."

God help the people who have become so insane, and return them back to humanity and sanity.

In depth discussion of a Jesus healing event

Matthew 8:28-34

When he came to the other side, to the territory of the Gadarenes, two demoniacs who were coming from the tombs met him. They were so savage that no one could travel by that road. They cried out, “What have you to do with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the appointed time?” Some distance away a herd of many swine was feeding. The demons pleaded with him, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of swine.” And he said to them, “Go then!” They came out and entered the swine, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea where they drowned. The swineherds ran away, and when they came to the town they reported everything, including what had happened to the demoniacs. Thereupon the whole town came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him they begged him to leave their district.

***
This is a very well known miraculous event in the life of Jesus and has been frequently been discussed and sermonized since there is a great amount of information to glean from these just seven sentences of narrative. Homilists often point out how demons recognized Christ’s true identity without him saying a word, and this is true. They also knew they would be driven out of the human sufferers by Christ, again before Christ even said a word. But I want to teach you about two observations you can make that do not receive as much emphasis or understanding in the more common preaching.

The first thing to note is that the demon’s highest priority is to stay inside a living body, and so they beg Jesus to allow them to go into the swine. Sometimes you better understand reality of the physical and spiritual world by noting what the demons did not ask for. They were subservient to Jesus yet they did not ask that they be “cured” of being demons. If God can do anything, why would not the demons ask Jesus to change them into “good spirits” or something other than demons? This is because they could not. A demon is the condition of being contrary to life as determined by God. In other words, think about the colors yellow and green. Green could not ask Jesus to now be yellow because “green is the name given to that condition of color” while “yellow is the name for that condition.” Another example is that a cold virus could not ask to be a flu virus because the name “cold virus” is given to the virus that causes colds, while a flu virus is the name given to the virus that causes flu. Calling a cold virus a flu virus would not make it any less a cold virus. Calling green yellow would not make the wavelength absorption that produces green change to the wavelength absorption that produces yellow. Now Jesus could change the object’s fundamental nature so that it changed color from green to yellow. And Jesus could change a cold virus into a flu virus. But demons are not changeable because they are not a living being that has a set of characteristics that can be changed. Demons are the “state of being demonic” in tendency and priority. Because Jesus, empowered by God, could converse with demons it is natural that humans tend to anthropomorphize demons and think of them as a living being that has a “spirit body.” But this is not true. Demons are like being cold. If a person is shivering in the cold wind and becomes cold the person is cold, but cold is not a living spirit form. Coldness is a state of being, not a living being. Coldness is real, since many people feel it, it can be measured (thermometer) and people die from it frequently. Likewise demons are real, and can be observed, measured and felt, but they are not living beings, not even a “special case” of being spirit beings. Demons are not living beings (nor are they undead beings) because they are not beings at all. They are a state of being. In other words, they are a state that a being can possess, just like being cold. So in this example, if the two homeless people had come running from the tombs (where they lived) begging Jesus to cure them of cold, Jesus could easily, and without miracle, make them warm by giving them shelter, blankets and hot soup. The difference is that the people themselves, their true character, would have been the ones requesting warmth since they would be normal people who happen to be cold. But when a demon possesses a person the demon does the speaking for the person. That does not, I repeat, mean that the demon is a living or undead being. But it is such a powerful state of being that it takes possession of and reorganizes the person’s body, mind and spirit (though not soul). Think about if “cold” was speaking on behalf of a person who was cold. “Cold” would ask Jesus to make it snow, or have the chill wind blow harder, and “cold” would not care about the body that it was killing, since it’s “job” and it’s only state of being and point of reference is to be “cold.” Cold is cold. So this is a valuable insight for you into understanding demons. Demons are not little devils, or the undead returned, or alien spirits (LOL) or mini-fallen angels or any other anthropomorphizing being you could hypothesize. Learn to recognize demons and their influence by thinking of them as being a condition or state of being such as “cold” or “green.”

The cold example is the best to use because like I said; if a person is endlessly and severely cold he or she will die of hypothermia. So cold that is unlimited is a dangerous condition.

This is one reason that non-Catholic “exorcisms” are unbelievably dangerous and wrong headed. People who think that demon possession means that a mini bad spirit is “inside” of another person are totally wrong in their perception of the problem. Just because one “drives out” a demon does not mean that it was a “being that is inside” the person, even if a person thinks they are conversing with it. The minds of humans are wonderful and clever, but limited, especially when looking at themselves or each other, because they almost have to anthropomorphize everything they see, especially if it seems to have dialogue or a set of characteristics. So while Catholics themselves, and the rituals also have the sound of, thinking of demons as “beings” they are incorrect, but understandably so because the Bible is not a complete textbook to all the universe’s manifestations and causes. When a person has a “demon” the person is under the control of the state of being demonic. The condition of being demonic does the speaking and thinking for the person, and has only continuation of being demonic as it’s only characteristic. If you get confused keep thinking back to the cold example, which is why I gave this example to you, since it gives great clarity and insight. A demon is like a person being subsumed by the condition of being “cold” so that “being cold” is the past, present and future and only “option” and “priority.” The answer is always “cold” if you tried to dialogue with a person who is possessed by “cold,” if such a thing existed, which it does not. So a demon is a state of being that is being a demon. Therefore the first thing the demons ask of Jesus, who they recognize as the Son of God, is to go on being demons but with the pigs instead of the men. It is like in our example if hypothetical “cold” state requested of Jesus that “cold” goes and makes someone else “cold” since “cold” has no choice or options because cold is the state of being cold.

Jesus agrees that the demons can “Go then!” The demons enter into the swine and the swine immediately hurl themselves over a steep bank into the sea where the pigs drown. I bet you are now recognizing something that you did not before when you’ve read this miracle. People assume that the demons drove the swine into the sea. But this is not true! Demons only care about being demons because they are not beings but the state of being. How do we know this? Let’s use again our “what if instead of this they said that” logic. Notice the demons did not ask to be sent to hell. If they are demonic beings and that is their “true home” and if they take pleasure in pain, why not ask Jesus to send them back to hell rather than expel and/or destroy them? That is because they are not beings who have “places where they live.” Demons are the state of being of the organism they control, just like being cold. So if a demon is here and recognizes that it is going to be expelled by Jesus (Jesus doing so in order to free and save the person afflicted just as warming a person freezing to death but unable to ask for help) the demon is going to “want” to go from here to there since it is simply transferring a state of being. A state of being that is transferred from a person to person, or from person to pig, would not “think” to ask to “go home to hell” or be changed because it is only a singular state of being, like on and off. So the demon would not “want” to “make” the pigs leap into the sea because demons do not desire nor manipulate circumstances other than the inevitable outcome of their being the state of “demon.” As long as a person is cold, that person is cold. The cold is “expelled” when the person is warmed up sufficiently that the person is no longer cold. A demon “exists” so long as the demon exists, and when it is expelled it is gone, just like the state of being cold.

Think about what being “cold” is by definition. Cold is the state of being where molecules of the body slow down in their vibration so much that life can no longer exist. Hot is the condition of very fast vibrating of molecules and like cold, outside of the human body’s level of tolerance, too much of being hot too can destroy, either as fever or as actual burning. There is a range of temperature, that state of being, that humans function with health within. There is no acceptable or healthy “amount” or “level of demon” that a human can contain however. True demon possession is “on” or “off” or to be precise “possessed” or “expelled.” True demon possession can be compared to the state of being deathly cold only, where the coldness is at the non-life sustaining level and that is the only option. Having an actual demon (and not just behaving very wickedly) is the same as being in the state of being so cold that life cannot take place in that body. Again, remembering I am only using an analogy and all analogies are flawed in their use to some extent, although this one is a very good and tight analogy because it leads you along to a completer understanding in its valid parallel of logic. So just as the state of being “demon” equals, in our parallel, the state of being “so cold that it will kill the body” you can now better understand what state of being the demon “measures” in its on/off way. The “state of demon being” is anti-life. I’m not making a political or moral statement; I am still being scientific here.

Just as our hypothetical “man who is possessed by cold” would be under the influence of a force that only “cares” about being too cold to live, the state of being “demon” is a state of pure reflex where all behavior is contrary to the continuation of life. See, these two guys that Jesus encountered were not robbers who had their hideout in the tombs and terrorized the community in order to rob and bully them. That would be two wicked people who perhaps commit unspeakable crimes, but are not demoniac. Demons who possess these two men by definition force them to a state of being that is “anti-life.” They are forced to “live” where only the dead live (the tombs of the town) and they exist in the continuing state of being demonic, which causes all actions to be in a demonic state, with no concern for their own welfare. Robbers sit down and have a good meal with the proceeds of what they took from people. They are wicked but still working within the boundaries of life affirming actions, at least for themselves. True demonic possession is the state of being in a condition of non-affirmation of life.

So the demons request of Jesus that he allow them to go to the pigs and possess them. Think about this. Why would they request of Jesus to go to the pigs, and not just flee from Jesus in terror into the pigs all on their own? Would that not be logical? Why do they have to ask first? The answer is that because demons cannot occupy animals. Animals, either savage or tame, are free from demons. The demons could only enter the pigs if Jesus gave them permission. If they could have entered into animals, they would have fled from Jesus with no word spoken and done so by getting the heck out of Jesus’ way and assuming that it would be OK to be in the pigs. But that is assuming a world where demons could exist in animals and we know that it is not possible or true. First of all demons are the state of being based on a consciousness that does not exist in animals. God created animals without sin or a set of values by which they must live in order to thrive. God created infrastructure (the planet, rocks, and soil), the plants and the animals to live and not to have “choice” about being in favor of their living and thriving or not. All things that God created are good, including humans in the beginning. So to use a psychology expression a demon would not find “a hook” within a plant or animal attach itself to and create that state of being since that state of being is not possible in an animal, plant or rock. Life would never have continued on this planet if demons could possess animals because you can see that a bias toward not life affirming activities in animals would have killed them off even faster than habitat loss, disease, climate change and so forth. The logic of eating, drinking water, finding shelter, mating and raising young would have been repeatedly broken. So there is no reason or ability for a demon to ever possess an animal (despite what you may think of the nasty pit bull down the street!) Seriously, even poor animals bred to be killers or trained to be vicious would on their own revert to life affirming behavior. At the very least they would try to survive. True demonic possession is the state of being in a totally non-life affirming condition. So the demons had to seek permission from Jesus in order to enter into the pigs. Obviously the swineherds were standing nearby to witness this, and you’ll notice the demons did not ask to leave the tomb living guys alone and go into the swineherds for a while instead! The demons recognize Jesus as being their anti-state and therefore know he will not permit their continued possession of the two men or any other humans before any conversation even takes place. Jesus is the opposite condition of the state of being demonic. So the only option for the state of being demonic to continue was to ask Jesus to allow them to go into the swine instead of the humans.

This is where my defense of pigs and all other animals begins, ha. Putting aside the prohibitions about clean or unclean animals, everyone understands that all animals are good because they are created by God in the beginning and all that is created by God is goodness. It is the pigs that under the possession of the two demons that throw themselves into the sea. The demons created the non-life affirming state of being in the pigs and so the pigs did the opposite of what they would naturally do (which is life affirming) and they hurled themselves into the sea. Now I am not saying they turned into conscious pig heroes and sacrificed themselves for the greater good, ha! But I am using kind of a negative hypothesis to show you that animals exist in a constant state of being life affirming, uninfluenced by demons or other spiritual pressures or dilemmas that exist among the conscious “post Garden of Eden” humans. This is another reason that animal worship and idolatry is plain wrong and strongly and consistently rebuked by God throughout both the Bible and the Qur’an. It is actually an “insult to animals” to assign a spirit, either good or demonic, awareness to animals. That is because this implies a “choice” whereby if animals are acting consciously that means they can make choices. That is an insult to them because all animals are created by God to only function in a life affirming way… they would never make a “power” or “spiritual” based choice because they already exist in a perfect state as created by God.

Since, therefore, the swine, as all animals, lack the “hook” to be demonic and continue to live, they immediately perish. As perfect “life affirming” beings, animals would perish immediately upon having a demon. This is why God does not permit it to happen and created them without that capacity to be possessed by demons or otherwise spiritually afflicted. This is why Jesus allowed the demons to go into the swine, knowing that the swine would perish (and so the demonic state would be closed in these two cases and the condition of being demoniac erased) and also so that the Apostles and other bystanders could learn from this what I am telling you about here, plus the other understandings that have traditionally been sermonized. Of course the people whose livelihood depended on the swine were not so interested in the spiritual lesson and they begged Jesus to leave their district!

Jesus is clearly seen here as, to use a popular scientific expression, anti-matter to demons. Jesus is the perfect state of not being demoniac. Demons cannot exist in the presence of true Jesus. They need his permission even to flee. Jesus gives permission during this miracle (more properly called a healing) so that the Apostles can learn and teach what they saw. Notice that Jesus did not have to do anything in this case to expel the demons. If they had not “spoken up” to “ask permission to go to the swine” Jesus would have expelled them right out and they would have been expelled into non-existence. Remember a demon is a state of being, not an entity that would pack its nasty little suitcase and go to another person or float around looking for victims. It feels that way and language in the Bible uses some of that imagery, but that is why Jesus provided examples, such as this one, where people can observe a truth that is too complicated to put into human words (yet remarkably simple to live by in the pious life).
I wrote this in order to convey two points, which I have pretty much completed, which is to teach about the true nature of demonic possession and to illuminate the goodness and “built in” life affirmation of all animals, clean or unclean, predatory or grazer, simple one cell or top of the animal kingdom in complexity. Without going into detail, perhaps to address in future blog postings, I will mention a few other points to consider. One is that there is true demonic possession but it is much rarer than people think. The second is that being insane is not the same as being possessed. Third is that when Jesus expelled demons he was really expelling demons and this was not code word for curing mental illness. When the Gospel relates that Jesus cured many people, in the thousands, this was a mixture of people with physical and mental ailments (even though mental illness was not recognized as such during those times). So Jesus did encounter and cure people with mental illnesses. However the examples related in the Gospel of demon expelling are indeed demons being expelled and not just the out of date and quaint labels put on mentally ill people. Here’s how we know that. Mental illness is not usually the stark raving running around psychotic type. It is the eroding of wellness through what we know today as post traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and so forth. While it was no where near as prevalent then as it is today (since society and survival were much more straightforward then and there was not a survival reward for neurosis) it obviously still was common enough. It was common enough that it did not merit mentioning in the Gospels. Remember Jesus cured blindness and restored walking to “many” and even more dramatic cures that were not enumerated in the Gospel either! So if the Apostles and disciples grouped even dramatic cures such as those together in order to say “many throughout the region” and numbers implying the thousands, obviously they did not mention the many cures by Jesus of the mentally infirm. What they did mention was where Jesus brought their attention to true demonic possession so they would recognize and know its qualities and characteristics. The nearness of Jesus, as you can see in the example of the two demons, is often enough to effect a healing and a cure. Many who listened to Jesus were cured of their emotional and mental afflictions without him having to do a specific miraculous cure. Jesus was totally unique in this because he was born from being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s presence with the permission of God is enough to bring about many healings and cures. We know this because when Jesus designated St. Peter as his rock with the key and the Holy Spirit descended in Pentecost, even the falling of St. Peter’s shadow on someone could bring about a cure (Acts 5:15). So if St. Peter’s shadow falling on someone as he passes by could bring about a cure you know that the very presence of Jesus brought many cures of particularly the mental, emotional and spiritual kind of illnesses. So I want to make clear that there is a difference between true demoniac possession and severe mental illness.

Something else you need to think about is that people can “create demons.” This is actually where demons “come from.” Notice this is very different than saying mentally ill people or their illness cause demons. No, rather, collective wicked behavior does at some point “congeal,” for lack of a better word, into demoniac possession. There is a critical mass of mental and spiritual mindset whereby individual or group sinful, cruel or wicked actions create traction in the world of human’s perception whereby the types of demons encountered by Jesus come into being. This is a whole huge and obviously important topic that needs to be analyzed on its own, perhaps in future blogging. But people often ask, “If God is good where does evil come from?” or “Why does God ‘allow’ Satan and demons ‘into’ the world?” Both questions are totally understandable and deserve answers, but they come from a set of assumptions and understandings that are weak and invalid. Both the Bible and the Qur’an describe demons and their attributes and they know there is connection between the wickedness of man and the actions of demons. This is true, but people need to know that they are not as weak as they think and that they can expel demons and prevent their very creation if they understand how deviation from God by humans brings demons into existence and power in the first place. Remember as I explained, animals cannot be possessed by demons, so there is a billion or so years of life on earth without demon presence. Guess who is the one species of living being that is associated with the existence of demons? I think you know! Demons are not fallen angels who are running around on earth with day passes that lets them out of hell. They are permitted by God to exist because they are an “output” of humans, kind of like smog. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung came very close to understanding this. He was a Christian who hypothesized that Nazi Germany was “possessed by the Nordic god Wotan.” Now of course Jung did not believe in an actual pantheon of gods but he recognized that a national possession of some sort took place and he found the closest “match” of characteristics when comparing Nazi Germany traits to those of the mythological Wotan. Jung has been consistently “demonized” (LOL) by many Jewish psychology professionals for “excusing” or “providing an excuse” for Nazi Germany, but this was not his motivation nor where he could have gotten to if he pursued this question further. Jung came close to recognizing that a separate ruling entity had congealed in Nazi Germany that was not only the numeric total of wicked deeds, wicked “policy” and “group or gang mentality.” He was trying to get to an important and very valid observation about the origin of a collective demonic possession, but he was too distracted by his many other theories and projects to really do justice to this potential discovery. Also it was not a subject that he was rewarded for exploring. However if he had, might he have not described patterns that later one must think about with Cambodia, Rwanda, and now certain parts of Kenya and see if there had not been similar symptomology.

Just to bring the subject to a close, I know many will cite scripture that demons are spirits that are disobedient to God and/or that they exist to punish and torment humans. Yes, those are things that demons “do” as a natural outcome of their state of being. Their state of being, like being cold, can be interpreted as punishing, tormenting, and disobeying. A child who wanders out of the house in the freezing cold and dies could be viewed as meeting those criteria too, but that would be a totally inaccurate reading of the situation. The “cold” in this case would be acting contrary to God’s will and being “disobedient” (freezing and killing a child, all children being loved by God), is being “punished” by the cold (the child having wandered away from home without the parents), and being “tormented” by the cold (what a sad and awful way for a child to die). So one could say that “cold” is disobedient to God, punishes a human child, and torments a human child, yet that would be giving “cold” an agenda that it does not consciously possess and it does not address the origin of “cold.” Likewise, the fact that demons are not fulfilling God’s plan for goodness, torment, and punish humans does not mean that God created demons, nor do they exist for expressly those purposes. Those actions are inevitable outcomes of the state of being of demonic possession. So to eliminate the influence of demons and protect people from their influence in the world one needs to understand their origins and source of reinforcement, just as one needs to examine responsibility in babysitting, provision of heating, and the adverse affects of weather in the example of the cold that killed the child In the above example. The cold is a natural force. But the unheated poor person’s house, the open door and the underdressed, unsupervised child are actions that are under the influence of humans. Demons likewise come into being as a natural force that is congealed into collective dark power by the actions and spiritual attitudes of humans.

I hope you’ve found this discussion and spiritual direction useful.