who is really in jail, on death row, enslaved?

Many people in this world who walk around thinking they are free, yes, even empowered, are actually the ones who are sitting in jail, the ones who are on death row, the ones who are enslaved. It is very easy to identify those who are really imprisoned from those who are not.

The more that one does not believe the truth, whether in religious or secular matters, the more one is actually in jail, on death row and enslaved.

There are those who tell lies and bear false witness, and those who believe and/or obey the lies and false witness. They are equally in jail, on death row and enslaved. Equally, there are those who don't lie but refuse to believe the truth. Unfortunately they too are equally in jail, on death row and enslaved. This applies to both God's truth and day to day worldly matters. I will give you simple examples so that you understand.

Suppose that there is a well known food toxin, something like salmonella, and there are three categories of people who react to that knowledge. Those who tell lies say it is not harmful, and thus no safe food handling measures must be taken. Those who believe and obey the lies therefore pass on the effect of that lie by not handling food safely and cleanly that others consume. Those who know salmonella is dangerous but refuse to think that it can happen to them allow this to continue and thus put themselves and others at risk.

All three of those types of people are in "jail" because they are imprisoned by erroneous actions (or refusals to do good) and thus limit their options for dealing with the situation. It is an apt criminal parallel because their refusals, whichever of the three types, endanger not only themselves but others, via their distortion of truth, denial of truth, or refusal to serve the truth! They are on "death row" because, just to stick with the example, there is a risk to life and health that they are refusing to deal with and thus it will eventually catch up with them, and in the case of a pandemic (just to use the example let's pretend a salmonella pandemic is possible), they and everyone else sit on death row, awaiting that pandemic. They are also enslaved because they are in service to the lie, rather than freed by the truth. The truth expands legitimate options and actions, while lies only cut one down to the chains of the lie's one option, which is inaction on behalf of one's self or others and, if one is part of the lying and enabling, "spreading the chains" for others to wear.

Here is the problem. I had given you just one example, an analogy, (since most do not actually dispute the problem of salmonella in theory, but MANY willfully do not follow hygiene and other protective practices on behalf of others). Put aside the analogy, now, and think of how MANY LIES every single person on earth is now subjected to collectively, in total, on a daily basis. One cannot even tell the originating liar from the enabling liar or the victim of lying because the entire fabric of truth in society and individual honor, morality and conduct has broken down and become in service to power, ego and money drivers. Children are on the third generation of being raised by more fiction than truth, in the home, in schools, on the street and via media "entertainment." Remember, it's not just an outright lie that is the problem, but withholding of actual quality education of truth and discernment that is the almost larger problem.

Back to the salmonella example. How can a child believe or not believe the risk and also the safety precautions if they have not the background education? Think of the list of things that a child must understand in order to do something like wash their hands and be careful not to eat tainted food. They have to understand what "dirt" (germs) is, they have to understand how dirt gets on or in them, they have to understand what being sick or well is, they have to understand that it is not something to immobilize them with fear about but that they can be safe, they have to understand how to clean with soap and water, and they have to understand timing (washing before one gets dirty is not helpful, for example).

So imagine a child that is told, and believes, that salmonella is dangerous and they need to avoid bad food plus wash their hands and for the sake of making a silly extreme point to illuminate what I mean, assume the child's been raised in isolation, not having any education nor have parents raised them with the list of necessary knowledge given above. What is a child to do with hearing "salmonella is dangerous?" Think someone named "Sally Nelly" is dangerous? Think that the salmon fish is dangerous? If the child does not understand you are speaking of dirt/germs, what they are, where it comes from, how it gets to them, how to solve the problem, and when/how to wash, they cannot do anything meaningful with a truth spoken to them at all!

That, friends, is the problem. We have a world that starts children out with cartoons and video games, and nothing about reality of life, and by reality I don't mean code words for the bad parts of life, but I mean all the goodness of how life actually exists. When you do not raise your children, and when you gain money or power through lack of service to truth, you not only enslave yourself and others, especially children, but you are all in jail and you are all on death row.

Even if you do not promote all that is so misleading in our culture, by taking up airspace with crap you are crowding out the opportunities and the motivation for people, especially young people, to learn what is really important and to be liberated by the genuine freedom of truth.

Here's another example. Suppose that a certain local political seat is always filled by people who meet in secret and decide who that candidate will be and fix the election so their person always win. Do those hypocrites go home and tell their children that they can "dream big" and maybe be President one day? They smirk as teachers, both enablers and well meaning ones, teach kids in school about the political process and try to "inspire" the kids, yet they know full well if one of those kids grows up and tries to run for office they are not on the preordained predetermined "win" list. The same with being famous, being made a "star," of "making a difference in the world." If young people don't even know the facts of the world, and how it operates, and how to choose from truthful options and choices in action, how can they "dream big" when they don't really understand the choices and the realities? Society pushes the predetermined winners, pretending it can happen to "anyone." Then for the one it happens to, fine, (except when they find out they now have obligations to the rainmakers), but what about the ninety-nine others out of a hundred who wasted their time, talents, their heart, and their love, to pursuing a dream that was never actually an option to them? If they knew the truth they could have actually done something else, far more satisfying.

Many people in society push "follow your dreams" and "give it your all," knowing that they will "award" that prize to one or two of their predetermined chosen, while letting those who believe this at large wither on the vine. Meanwhile people could have been doing what they have always done, which is to grow up in a truthful and well educated (though not of course pure or unblemished) society where they can always be aiming themselves at valid and authentic targets, instead of manipulated illusionary crap. Crap that enriches the bank accounts and egos of those who are on top of the total life lie pyramids.

Friends, and I call you that, even toward those who have persecuted me, stop thinking that I'm the one being controlled, limited, manipulated and in "jail." It is you all who are in that place, you all who are in jail, on death row, and enslaved. The more you believe the lying crap that is out there everywhere, the more you will lose your pursuit of genuine happiness in life, the more your life is likely to be foreshortened (and those you care about) and the more you have to consider that you may be on the path to eternal death, first as the living social slaves that you are, and after death, to the place where disbelievers and those who did not honestly serve God, in eternal exile from goodness and in torment. I really don't wish that on anyone, but I'm cheering both Darwin and God onward on this one, if you keep asking for it, that's what you are going to keep getting in life and in death.

Understanding salvation via Paul, Revelation

And, more to the point, understanding salvation through this sports analogy that I will explain here. The scriptural basis for the analogy are the writings of Paul, and the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse).

Entire churches of faithful, believing and presumably, but not assured, "saved," are chastised as a whole by Paul, with loving charity and concern, but very strong language. Likewise in the Apocalypse John hears the chastisement of entire faithful, believing and presumably, but not assured, churches, "saved bodies of the faithful," before the revelation of the final days commences.

Notice that in no place is a single Christian isolated for correction within an otherwise correct church. Paul criticizes the entire church when SOME of them receive the sacrament of the bread with unworthiness, or worthily but with lack of respect.

If people are "saved," as some Evangelical Protestants attest, while being surrounded by those who commit wrong (yet consider themselves saved too), then Paul, in the abundance of his guidance, would have included at least one example of chastising a hypocrite or one in error within an otherwise worthy church body.

The same is of course true when the Angel of God, through Christ, evaluates and chastises entire faithful churches, at the end.

This is why you must understand salvation as it actually is, as the Bible states in Truth, not in your "auditing," "good deed" and "fire insurance" mindset. The sports analogy will demonstrate this for you.

American baseball is characterized by a dual purpose. It is of course a team sport with the objective of winning. But it is also equally an individual sport where each player accrues statistics of his performance (each and every game) that are his lasting legacy and that travel with him from team to team.

Thus you can have a great player with a great heritage of statistics and honor, even if he never played on a winning team. You can also have winning teams without great individual players. Most avid baseball fans follow individuals and their statistics, often separate from a local team that they actually support.

Salvation is like that, but here we need to fulfill the analogy by describing the disastrous effect that use of steroid and other performance or other addictive drugs have had on the entire sport.

We can and do have an entire era of "high performing individuals" who received their statistics while using immoral and illegal drugs. We also have teams that have won games due to these unethically enhanced individual players.

Suppose you are a great player, but you are on a team that is winning (and thus adds to your statistics) because other people, your team mates, are using performance enhancing drugs. You accumulate valid statistics and play straight (since you do not "use") but you know your team mates "use" and in return your statistics are enhanced because the "users" pull in more win and run and other opportunities for you with their presumably enhanced performance aids.

Salvation, and the possibility of losing your salvation, is exactly like that. If you are a "saved" person among other "saved" persons, but you deviate in any way from the ethics of God, no matter what the reason, the entire body of the "saved," including your own "salvation," is in question.

Don't ask me: read the Bible.

The entire Old Testament demonstrates God addressing and rewarding/punishing the hoard of Israelites as a whole. Presumably not every single person, man woman and child, danced in front of the gold calf while Moses was with God. Yet all are chastised. God does not document in the Bible "except for Moishe, Sarah and Fred, who sat the profane dance out and just watched on the sidelines while silently disapproving." The entire Old Testament validates what I am explaining to you, which is that God does not single out people among the wicked, (or those who are "good" but in error) and give them a salvation "pass" card, even as they eat, live, love and worship with the body that is IN ERROR.

Likewise the Gospel and the other New Testament books demonstrate that even with loving concern, Jesus, Paul, and the other Apostles, chastise entire towns, entire church bodies, entire groups of the "faithful," without once singling out the "good guy" whose rear end is just warming the pews but "is not going along with the error of the rest."

The Bible demonstrates over and over that it is God's will that people are saved, or not, as a GROUP in addition to individually. You all have taken that truth and turned it into the error of competing denominations (destroying Jesus' instructions on unity) rather than understanding that the saved individual must not only strive for continual obedience and purity but also, like a plant, survive or fall with the purity of the presumably "saved" fellow members and community. You can deny it all you want but the Bible is the Bible and God's word is final. You cannot say that God's word is perfect, but then make up scenarios that God did not choose to endorse in the Bible, and instead, God condemns.

Understanding hell

As a follow up to the previous post, about recognizing the consequences of disbelief and sin.

You can lead someone to hell.
You can be followed by someone to hell.
You can walk side by side with others to hell.
Whatever your companionship or "excuse," the result is always the same.

There is not a single person in hell who thinks that he or she "can handle it" and it's "not so bad."

It is the painful unbearable reality forever.

understanding Bible: sin definition case study

I started out planning to blog about something else (which I will), but I came across this historical information that will help you in your faith & reasoning development. In the past few postings I've mentioned how the Bible states that even foolish thoughts, and then of course obviously mean and unrighteous thoughts, are sins, even if no one takes action on them. I explained that and gave the scripture references in previous posts some time ago.

Well, I know that one of the things you need to think about is: how has accurate and complete understanding of the Bible diminished so much over the two thousand years of Christianity that my explaining the Bible has this information has become a news flash? Something that very, very, VERY few pastors and other moral leaders know about or if they do, even mention? Why does no one warn their flock that even foolish thoughts are considered by God to be sins?

Before you, or anyone, can answer that question, you need to "fact find." Young people (yes, hi there, I think of you fondly as always), the scientific method and the use of problem solving logic means that like a detective, you trace how far in history from the time of the Bible writings to the present that awareness of this particular admonishment in the Bible exists in both the religious and secular consciousness.

Thus I want to give you an example of how, while leafing through my prayerbook, I came across written evidence that just over three hundred years after Jesus Christ lived that people still knew full well and embraced the Bible teaching that foolish and sinful thoughts are actual sins. So while I'm not planning to spend time studying this for you, I thought, hey! What a perfect example to show you how to reconstruct how modern thought has gone so wrong. So the first step is to trace since the time of Jesus, using impeccable written factual sources (not imaginings of false prophets and 'psychics') what people actually thought and did regarding the topic that you are studying, in this case how the Bible states that foolish and sinful thoughts are sins, even if no actions follow.

Here is some background of the person I am going to quote. Ambrose was born around the year 320 AD (and thus was born nearly three hundred years after Jesus Christ was crucified and resurrected) into a upper class family in the Roman Empire. Ambrose's family had been Christian for several generations. Ambrose had in his family tree, in fact, a Christian martyr, St. Soteris. Ambrose and his family received classic legal education, so they were well educated and prepared for high civil office, so Ambrose became a lawyer and a governor. When a local bishop died, Ambrose was sent to help sort out arguments among the people about who should be appointed bishop in the place of the deceased. As he addressed the crowd on this subject a child in the crowd called out that Ambrose himself should become bishop! The crowd agreed and the two arguing sides with their respective candidates fell into agreement about Ambrose (who was shocked and did not want to be the bishop). He was well on his way up the lawyer and government "career ladder," and was still studying and deepening his own individual faith. But because the people wanted him so badly and basically drafted him, he was baptized, received the holy orders of priesthood, and was consecrated Bishop of Milan (Italy) all within a month of time! He was very obviously a pious and sanctifying man from the start (the people's instinct was correct!) He gave to the Church and the poor his considerable personal wealth, he sorted through the problem of the genuinely poor from those who were shams, he studied scripture and doctrine for twenty three years, was a prolific author and being a priest, as all bishops are, Ambrose celebrated Mass (the Holy Eucharist) every day. He even raised the three grandchildren of a friend.

With that as background, seeing this was a holy man who didn't even in fact seek out fame or a livelihood due to his sanctity, here is what he wrote, with his opinion of his own sinfulness! This is a long prayer he wrote that he recited before celebrating the Holy Eucharist (the "Lord's Supper") in daily Mass and I include here the opening of the prayer and the places where you see evidence of the realization of those times that all people are considered prone to sin, including of mere thoughts that are foolish or unworthy:

O Gracious Lord Jesus Christ, I, a sinner, presuming not on my own merits, but trusting to Thy mercy and goodness, fear and tremble in drawing near to the Table on which is spread Thy Banquet of all delights. For I have defiled both my heart and body with many sins, and have not kept a strict guard over my mind and my tongue....

...To Thee, O Lord, I show my wounds, to Thee I lay bare my shame. I know that my sins are many and great, on account of which I am filled with fear. But I trust in Thy mercy, for it is unbounded...

...Hearken unto me, for my hope is in Thee; have mercy on me, who am full of misery and sin, Thou who wilt never cease to let flow the fountain of mercy. Hail, Thou saving Victim, offered for me and for all mankind on the tree of the cross...

Remember, O Lord, Thy creature, whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy Blood. I am grieved because I have sinned, I desire to make amends for what I have done. Take away from me therefore, O most merciful Father, all my iniquities and offences, that, being purified both in soul and body, I may worthily partake in the Holy of Holies...

...I purpose to partake, may be to me the full remission of my sins, the perfect cleansing of my offences, the means of driving away all evil thoughts and of renewing all holy desires, and the advancement of works pleasing to Thee...

Do you see how often this obviously holy man (remember, the crowd proclaimed him when he had no clue of wanting to leave a high career for the sanctified priesthood) emphasizes and repeatedly confesses and asks for help for his sins of thoughts????

If you ever wonder what holy people confess to God, that is what it is. Truly holy and sanctified people continue to "renew all holy desires" by acknowledging that all humans have foolish, evil and sinful thoughts. This is the genuine humility before God that ALL believers should have, which is the acknowledgment that even the holiest of people have, due to being broken vessel human beings, regardless of their level of faith, have to mindfully struggle against having even silly and mean or vain thoughts, say nothing of how profound a sin that thinking, even idly and fleetingly, thoughts about sinful matters are.

So, young people, and others, this is how you can see that no, we don't "lack evidence" of "what the church was like" and "what people believed" "back then" in "Biblical times." This lawyer/governor who became priest/bishop only a few hundred years after Christ left plenty of written evidence of his thoughts and what the people believed, and what they retained of their understanding of the Bible, both Old and New Testament. The notion that even idle, foolish and sinful thoughts are actual sins (as the Bible states) was a hot forefront belief several hundred years after Christ.

Thus, young people, and others, you now have a piece of your investigation, if you were doing so, that for certain in the four century that the knowledge that bad and foolish thoughts are sin was well known and frequently meditated about and prayed regarding, including DAILY by this Bishop of Milan, Ambrose.

Those of you new to studying the saints, let me explain that they were not tucked away in a corner. Ambrose, while he was living, was studied by many who would become great saints themselves. Further, while there was no email, ha, or post office, there was indeed snail mail and these people were all in correspondence. So if you continue your investigations you will see that a writing by a priest or bishop was never a "personal" so called "interpretation of scripture." This was the prevailing belief, kept intact from Old Testament times and the times of Jesus, that foolish and bad thoughts are indeed sins.

I hope that you have found this helpful both in further understanding what I have been reminding people about what the scriptures actually say, but also as you can see that you don't have to imagine and make stuff up, but you can look at written agenda-free evidence to deduce what people knew and believed, and how the word of God is preserved, and when parts of it started to fall out of public consciousness. Here we have filled in the blanks of several hundred years, knowing that the early Christians were keenly aware of what the Israelites knew and what those who followed Jesus knew, which is that God states that foolish, bad, mean and/or sinful thoughts are indeed actual sins, whether actual action follows or not.

Faith case study: importance of intentions

Hi and especially to young people (!) I have you in mind most particularly and affectionately as I thought of this idea for a blog this morning. I'm going to concentrate on this case study with you because I think it is more important that you understand than my listening on radio, twitter, news to the verbal and mental diarrhea that spews unabated, it seems. *sigh* So I continue to listen but with only one ear (because listening to the crap helps me to understand how urgently I must explain sanitation over and over again, ha).

Here is the case study I want to present to you today. The purpose is to help you try out through faith and logic (reasoning) why two basic truths exist. One is that God knows the intention of a person's heart and soul in everything that person thinks, feels and does, and that intention makes a difference to God. For example, a person can present themselves as the most lovely and spiritual person on the outside, but if they are full of mean crap on the inside, all the "good deeds" and "popularity" and "spirituality" of the person on the outside is pointless because God knows that the person is insincere and even malevolent on the inside, and that person will be judged accordingly. Thus some really "sweet" and "popular" people on the outside do indeed end up in hell, since God knows the motivations of their heart and soul.

The second truth, then, is related to and indeed derivative from the first truth. As a result the Bible clearly states that having an evil heart is sinful (by evil I mean not only flat out evil but also a begrudging, mean, lying, hypocritical and bullying heart, say nothing of being idolatrous) but the Bible also states that all bad thoughts, including ones that are simply foolish, are sins. I blogged about this a while ago, citing the scripture, and commented on it, check and see if you can find those postings under the label "sins," in case you've not read it before, or need to take another look. I'm sticking to doing a logic case study so I'm not going to cite previously cited scripture in this particular post.

So here I am going to give you the case study: Why if, in theory, two people advocate the same action, does it matter if one person is evil (or has evil intention) while the other person is faithful to God and has good intentions? In other words, let's say these two opposite people each agree on some government policy decision... why does it "matter" in the health of their soul, where one will be favored and blessed by God, while the other will not?

As a corollary to this, remember this is a favorite argument of atheists who are "moral" "ethical" and "peaceful." They figure if they advocate the same good things as the believers that they are "the same" in intention and thus in worthiness. Let me tackle this one first as a prelude to the main case study.

Here's the problem with intentions in the atheist example. Bad intentions can hide the truth from you, which affects things in both a specific decision but also one's whole life. Here is the analogy to understand that. Suppose two people, one atheist and one a believer, each rent an apartment from the same landlord. These two people get together on their job (let's say they are peace activists) and they work together on some good project to promote peace. The atheist would argue that because he or she agrees (without the "need for religion") with the believer on a good sound project to promote peace that he or she is as worthy and ethical and moral as the believer work partner. OK, so after work they go back to their own apartments, and the rent bill is due. The believer goes to pay the rent, handing the landlord the cash. The atheist ignores the bill because he or she does not believe the landlord exists. When the atheist is, after repeated bills from the "imaginary" landlord is finally thrown out into the cold, the atheist says, "Hey, how come you aren't throwing out the believer?" The atheist thinks that "equivalent" ethical actions means they are in the same position as the believer, and that of course is not true because the atheist in our analogy thinks that the landlord does not exist and he or she can just ignore bills for their monthly rent. This is an example of how an alliance of actions (the peace project) does not yield equivalent results, because of the intention of each person differs, not only their conscious inner thoughts but of course the entire context of their life and faith philosophy. Interestingly the analogy implies that the atheist renter would continue to not believe in the reality of any landlord, so where would he or she turn to, in our analogy? I guess he or she would find shelter in houses of those who also do not believe in landlords. This is why a person can continue in their whole life without believing in the reality of God, while still doing "equivalent" "good deeds," and only find out there is a landlord indeed when it is too late and he or she had died and is judged unworthy of heaven, and thus ends up in hell. All the "good deeds" and "good intentions" mean naught because the atheist refuses to acknowledge existence of the landlord and pay what is due.

So that is the first part of the case study. Here is the secular part of the case study. I am thinking of this secular case study (as I write it here) so that everyone, regardless of the condition of your faith (or lack of it) or religion/spirituality can understand the practical "bread and butter" secular life reasons that intentions DO matter even in "equivalent" ethics and deeds. To keep this easy to understand I'm going to choose a commodity that is not controversial, such as alcohol, and instead use an imaginary candy, a sweet, a dessert, as the analogy.

Suppose there is a very successful candy, a wrapped single serving sweet, that is found to contain an incredibly high amount of sugar, fat, and thus a HUGE amount of calories with each bite. Let's say that one of these candies had 3000 calories in it, more than most people should have in all their food in a day. So a whole bunch of people with various intentions get together and advocate that this candy be banned. On the surface it seems that everyone is in agreement with a "good cause" to "protect the public" from an "unhealthy" food. They pass a law banning this candy in whatever country or state that they have this influence. Now, let's think about why differing intentions can lead to vastly different results (and worthiness, both in practical life and in spiritual matters) by making a list of people and their intention frameworks and their implications. I'm just going to do a few here to show you how it is done, and you can think of some of your own! :-)

1. A woman is a nutritionist and really, really, really believes that this candy would destroy the health of many people, so she favors the ban.

Here intention is good, but one sided. If it tasted so wonderful and was such a popular sweet, could she not have used her nutrition expertise to help the manufacturer develop a sweet that tastes the same but has less calories? Or suggest to them a way that a person could once in a while have the sweet, but on high activity (like sports or exercise) days? By having a scolding and forbidding orientation, even though there is "good intention" (to preserve some ideal of diet and nutrition), it would never occur to her to have both, by using her expertise to modify the product and avoid a ban of such an innocent and fun sweet.

2. A man is an "expert" in consumer safety, and feels the sweet is just one of a list of things where the public must be protected from "unintended dangerous consequences."

Ahhh.... interesting. The "professional" "consumer safety" guy. Here is it nothing personal, because he's not against the candy and only the candy. He is against anything that the public is "ignorant" of possible "dangerous consequences." Again, many people would think that is a worthy calling. But is it? It sure is when there is a clear and present danger, such as toys that could choke a young child. His "intention is good," most particularly when he is indeed protecting the public from a built in hazard in a toy or product that could harm a child, for example. But he has two blind spots due to his intentions. One is that he stops thinking about each item and rather view them as a continual conveyor belt of "danger" that a continual conveyor belt of "ignorant" public might be harmed by, and thus he is in the taboo business, of looking continually for things to ban. So he has the error of thinking that all items he considers are dangerous deserve the same banning remedy AND he assumes a continual level of public ignorance (none of them are ever smart enough to pick their "dangerous" product). So his intention while certainly "good" on a certain level (dangerous toys for young children, for example) but is very slippery because it has made a factory of demonizing both products and the intelligence of the public.

3. A woman pretends to be a "concerned mother" and "homemaker." She secretly holds stock in a competing candy and sweet company.

Need I say more? That is obvious where the hidden intention is to hurt the successful competitor of a company whereby she holds a hidden financial stake. But let's examine this because my not so hidden intention is to tell people that they are harming themselves when they do not come clean with their own intentions. This woman would justify, I suspect, her advocacy of banning the sweet under consideration because she would say, if confronted, word for word, the following: "Well, even IF I didn't hold stock in the competitor company, as a mother and a homemaker I'd be against that unhealthy and dangerous candy!" Oh my. "Even if." Really? Only God knows how people would have behaved under alternative future scenarios. She is kidding herself, perhaps even honestly fooling herself, actually thinking that she'd be hoisting the banner and flag of advocacy against that product if she didn't have a dog in the fight. Odds are that if she did not have stock in the competitor product that the whole dangerous sweet controversy would have, in that "alternate future," just been a news story that she sees on TV or in the newspaper and like dozens of other stories, leave it to other people to sort out and act upon, as she'd have other interests and concerns. Having the competitive stock makes her more sensitized for both sinister (hurt the competitor company) and innocent (she's paying attention to products of competitors and news about them) reasons. There is no "even if" because humans are not single line entities where everything in their life goes the "same" "even if" "just one thing" were "different."

4. A wealthy woman really believes the product is dangerous and puts her money into the cause of having it banned.

So she is sincere in believing it is dangerous..... and she has the money (and thus influence) to do something about it. Hmm. Sounds good so far, right? A celebrity or an industrialist or media figure "putting good money to the cause!" Maybe so. But here are the different forks in the road of different intentions. 1) She has lots of money and thus bans it for everyone else, but stockpiles the candy for herself, figuring that it's a "dangerous" treat that "she can handle." 2) She really does believe it is dangerous and doesn't want the candy, but her success in this power play goes to her head. She looks for other "causes" that she can provide the money as "fuel" to muscle through people's agendas, both "good" and maybe "bad" ones. She gets hooked on being a power maker. The problem is that she becomes hooked on the power she has rather than the genuine worthiness of the cause, because of her intention to "make a difference." How many times do we hear those words: "I have the money to 'make a difference.'" Automatically that attracts such a person to causes that are able to be purchased, and in all innocence may not see causes that just need a pair of hands and a willing and open heart. Her "good deeds" become skewed and ultimately blinded and invalid because the motivation, the intention, is to use money and power as a lever.

Can you think of others? I could but I'm bummed out enough at always having to point out the faulty spiritual and secular reasoning that so very many people follow, without thinking of even more for you here, ha.

So think of other ones. Here's a hint (think about people who are killjoys because they were deprived in some way in their childhood or whatever....they can and do kid themselves that they are protecting others, while just begrudging what they did not have themselves).

After you've added one or two other examples to my list, now imagine the wrap-up. All these people agreed to a single "good deed" of "consumer protection from a dangerous product."

A. All people engaged in the same activity and got the law passed, banning the sweet.
B. Each person had a totally different motivation and hidden intention.
C. If they were honest about their intentions, many of them would have changed their minds about the law in the first place.
D. Better alternatives than the flat out ban are never even considered.
E. Alternative better actions are totally missed, so there is a high "missed opportunity" cost.
F. When one is not honest about one's inner motivations and intentions, one becomes the willing or unwilling slave to those intentions, continuing to act in that intentions mindless "service."
G. Serving those intentions results in missing other sets of priorities as one seeks out repeated gratification of those intentions in all things.
H. Hypocritical and coveting temptations have a greater and greater hold.

So now by expanding this analogy into faith, it is not at all difficult to see how God at the time of their personal judgment will place in front of each of these people, who agreed on one action (the banning of the sweet), how worthy or not their lives actually were, and how widely divergent all of these people will be. Same action but different intentions yield not just later but in the immediate wildly different results.

Ha ha, I can't resist, so here's another example, if you've not thought of it already.

5. A lawmaker is the author of the law banning the candy. He thinks it is unhealthy and dangerous.

OK, sounds like a responsible consumer advocate legislator, right? Yeah, but what if he knows that it will get voted down? He is trying to look good for the voters by banning the "unhealthy candy" but he knows it is "win-win" because if it passes, sure, that "bad candy" got banned, but if he is voted down, "well, he tried to do the right thing" and that ends up in his campaign ads. So at heart he cares neither if the candy really is dangerous (or he'd try hard to get all the votes lined up in favor of his banning law) or if the dangerous candy ban loses, and people keep legally eating it.... he's "won" either way as he looks like either the victorious, or losing, "hero."

Now, think of those intentions in the faith context. Some of the people above are flat out lying, sinful, coveting hypocrites. How will God judge them? It will be quite obvious that they will be harshly judged.

So this case study shows you how 1) even if you omit God from the situation under discussion that the same action can and does result in wildly different outcomes depending on the totally individual conscious or unconscious intentions and 2) since God IS in this and every situation, God knows not only the worthiness of the intentions (their genuine or not benevolence) but God also knows all the subsequent life directions and implications of letting those intentions rule.

I hope that you have found this helpful!

Simple logic about God & human scandal/sin

I'm not sure why everyone misses the point so much these days. I guess it is the increasingly egocentric (and even ego maniacal) focus of even the average person these days. So here is a simple observation to keep in mind.

The more that crime, scandal, sin and bad behavior are exposed in each and every religious organization:

the more it simply proves that humans are broken and imperfect individuals who need awareness and belief in God more than ever.

Have you noticed the lack of logic so many have? Whenever there is a scandal in a church, mosque, synagogue or any other place of faith, the more people say "Ah ha, this is why I question that there is a God."

Yet when the same scandals appear in secular settings (home, places of business) they are called "crimes" or "unethical behavior." Hmm.

So a parent who uses their child in porn, for example, is "sick," "unethical" and "a criminal," while if a religious community member does it, it's somehow "justification" to ''doubt God."

Um, news flash. People have been weak, broken and corrupt since the Garden of Eden. Duh. All humans are unworthy by nature. However, being created in the image of God they have the opportunity to find God and become, again, his child. Whether a person sins/commits crime/is unethical within a religious community or outside a religious community, all it demonstrates is how very far humans remain from God. People need to recognize God and allow him to guide and lead one's life, not jump on falls by religious people or institutions (which will always occur and I promise you, even if you replaced flawed humans with perfect robots, robots will break down and run amok too).

So yes, investigate scandals and hold the faithful accountable for their hypocrisy, but beware, because as you do so, you are excusing the same behavior in those with little or no faith. And you are missing the entire point, which is made clear in the Gospel, which is that humans need to be CONSTANTLY REPENTING AND SEEKING FORGIVENESS OF THEIR ONGOING AND CONTINUAL SINS UNTIL THE MOMENT OF EACH PERSON'S DEATH.

The only perfect person lived two thousand years ago. Everyone else needs continual grace and forgiveness every moment of their life, believer or not, in secular setting or religious.

Age of youth responsibility-a bit more

Without getting into a large theology and religious ritual and sacraments discussion, let me touch on some of the implications of what I wrote about for the seven year olds.

It is ironic that in a modern society filled with a lot of hot air about self examination and self discovery that many applaud the abandonment of the longest living and most justified form of it, which is childhood confession.

Think back to Biblical, and Qur'anic society. If a child sinned or committed an offense, the child was responsible and there was a code of punishment that the parents would have to follow on the child's behalf to atone. For example, beside any legal or civic judgment the Israelite parent would have to perform certain sacrifices at the temple to atone to God. This meant that two things were going on. One is that there is a process by which confession and atonement is followed. The other is that there is an understanding that one must only punish the child when the child has achieved an age of reason. Thus all the faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are founded in an understanding that knowledge of sin and wrong doing is a reality once a child is old enough to achieve an age of reason AND that regardless of secular restitution (let's say the child stole something) there is also a purification process needed before God.

This is why the Catholic Church has taught the sacrament of Confession, (now called Penance and Reconciliation in order to emphasis that confession is not enough but genuine regret and reconciliation is also needed) starting at the age of seven.

Children at that age have been recognized throughout history, both secular and faith history, that they have achieved the age of reason and they should and must know right from wrong. That's why children are well along at being in school by then, I mean, think about it. It is a traditional and vital part of Christian faith that children know how to discern that they have sinned and confess their sins. How do we know "that is in the Bible?" When Jesus warned about those who lead children into sin, implicit in that remark is that people are able to recognize sin when it occurs, and that includes children who have reached the age of reason.

There is no more maturity process than one by which parents and their church teach children not only what is "right from wrong" but "what is a sin" and furthermore, how to avail one's self of confession and cleansing of that sin. Why in the world do some denominations think that children do not need to recognize and confess their sins? It is part of raising a well balanced child, rather than letting society and soft porn TV do it for you.

I remember when I was six years old, approaching seven, of course, and playing around with my Catholic child friends and we'd joke that we only had a few months to go before we were accountable to God for anything we did wrong! Remember, I'm not speaking of raising children to "behave," to be "good" and "play nice." I'm speaking here of children who are raised properly who also are able by the age of seven to discern sin in themselves and others, and to have a God given process by which to repent, confess and atone.

I cannot begin to describe to you what a difference in producing mature youngsters than that, and that is the way it used to be.

This is why the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes this comment in another context, which is regarding preparation for the sacrament of Holy Communion (the "Lord's Supper" as some non-Catholics call it):

1244 The Latin Church, which reserves admission to Holy Communion to those who have attained the age of reason...

In other words, the Catholic Church teaches to seven year olds how to initiate the sacrament of Confession in order to prepare for the sacrament of Holy Communion because no one should partake in Holy Communion (or the "Lord's Supper") who is not able to discern their own sin and repent it. When I was growing up seven year old children who then went to their First Confession and First Communion from that point onward availed themselves of "going to Confession" whenever they felt the need.

Can people today only fantasize about a time when eight, nine, ten, eleven and twelve year old children would on their own initiative self-examine and decide that they needed to go to Confession? That was indeed how it was when I was growing up and indeed as children several of us would go together, not at prompting by parents or priests, when it was time to go.

Can you see what I mean by 1) how misunderstood the Catholic faith is and 2) how infantilized our modern children are? The "Greatest Generation," that Catholic component, was raised like that, for the most part, where children knew very well not only what was a crime, or what was bad behavior, but what was also sin and they took their own responsibility for initiating and carrying out their sacrament of Confession.

Leave aside the argument, the old, tired arguments, about the role of a priest in Confession. Do not even try to pretend that those of you who teach that "confession is between 'myself' and God and 'does not need a so called mediator'" are raising your children-no matter how good they are-to be at that age as introspective and recognizing of sin in themselves and others as was done traditionally. I cannot even compare the seven year old child of Biblical times, the seven year old child of early Islamic times, and the seven year old child of the early, middle and even later Christian times with the seven year old child of today and how blind to sin.... even worse than that, how blind and eager and self excusing for sin that they have become!

Children are eager to be grown up and adults have robbed them of one of the most fundamental gifts of the faith which is at the age of reason to recognize and self examine for sin, to elect to reject sin, and to have sacramental self initiated means to confess and repent sin.

Please do think about that. Children are eager to be all grown up, and instead of the ways they have always learned to be "grown up," which is to recognize, shun and repent sin, that has been taken from them, a vital part of becoming a genuine child of God upon their age of reason.

Like I said, I am not trying to have a theological discussion or debate here. I guess you might think of this as part of the "faith and reasoning" series I am teaching, where I am showing you that far from being hocus-pocus, faith in God makes total sense and has for hundreds, indeed thousands of years been reality paced with factual human development. So think about it and you young people in particular, imagine what it was like to be raised where at seven years old you could not only discern "right from wrong" and being "good from bad," but also examine yourself (and observe others) to discern sin and what displeases God, and to have the religious gift at your own initiation to partake of, as I had when I was growing up. I cannot believe it, many times as I look around, at how children have been robbed of both their childhood and their access to mature religious participation at their own free will.

Further, often children would confess to sins and the priest would counsel them in the privacy of the confessional that perhaps their tentatively confessed feelings of envy or so forth were not actually full out sins, but temptations and normal human weaknesses. Far from being strict, children who worried that perhaps wishing they had something as nice as what the neighbor's child had was not a sin of envy or coveting, but a natural feeling of sadness, wistfulness. The priest would be, and often was back then, a reassuring figure in a child's discernment of sin rather than a harsh taskmaster. I remember my friends would discuss among ourselves "I wonder if that feeling was a sin" and the child who wondered would report after confession what the priest said, and the reassurances he gave, or the gentle warnings he would impart. That is, again, why it's not just a matter of being "between me and God" but confession with that mediator present does not mean the priest is forgiving sins instead of God, but is able to, as was documented to as early as the second century of Christianity, provide context for the one confessing regarding the dimensions and impact of their sin. Catholic kids used to discuss their sins and what the priest said all the time and it was a huge part of the development of their real and active faith. Kids need spiritual feedback that is real and access that is under their control more than even, particularly in these fake times.... especially when at best good godly parents but they are still sway to the temptations of the world, and at worst the the baby momma's drug using and child abusing boyfriend are far from being the ultimate resource in sin discernment!

Why immediate obedience to God necessary

This is especially directed toward young people, those under thirties and most especially young teens (hi there!) because, frankly, I've about given up on your parents' and teachers' generations of understanding these things. They are so infested with "magical" thinking instead of 1) faith and 2) logic and reasoning based on facts. You've been raised that way too, but I have a great hope that you recognize something is very wrong: totally wrong. So this is part of the "faith and reasoning" series where I teach you how to have logical faith based on the truth, accomplished through reasoning and the facts, and also develop your skills in using classic logic to solve problems and form opinions.

Here I am going to first give you an analogy that you can all relate to, and then we will use logic to analyze the analogy.

Suppose that a society, such as the United States, recognizes all at once that cigarette smoking is dangerous for one's health and causes cancer. (I'm not doing a smoking bash here or making an extreme medical statement; I just want to use a genuine topic based on facts for the analogy). So let's suppose that everyone realizes all at once that smoking causes specifically lung cancer and that it is certain to happen for each person eventually. You will have, based on human nature, reactions that divide the population into roughly thirds. One third will quit immediately. One third will want to quit but being pretty heavy smokers or with a big addiction, they have to use various methods to quit, but they have perfect intention to do so as SOON as they can. But then we come to the other third. That third will plan to quit "someday" and use "magical thinking" to manipulate the situation, thinking that they "know better" than the doctors. So that third group will "plan" to quit someday but will continue to smoke and, actually, will work on the members of the first two groups to get them to continue to smoke along with them.

This third group gives this reaction, this very bad reaction, for a combination of reasons, but they all come down to 1) lack of faith and 2) arrogance and self pride overcoming logic. The lack of faith is simple in that they just do not believe either the dire warnings of the doctors or the evidence of their own eyes, which is lots of people getting lung cancer and dropping dead of it, including in their own families. They just refuse to believe and have lack of faith in either the policy or the facts because of reason number two, their arrogance and self pride. That arrogance and pride gets its strength from "magical" thinking. Here are examples of magical thinking:

1. I can keep on smoking longer than anyone else without getting the lung cancer because I'm physically and spiritually better than anyone else.
2. Because I know better than everyone else I can tempt people to also keep smoking, which they enjoy after all, longer, and not have to give up something they enjoy too! So I'm putting to rest their "false fears."
3. Besides, it's not fun being part of a rapidly dwindling group of smokers. I want company and to heck with the consequences, so long as I am partying out and smoking with lots of friends. Hey they know the risk so if they listen to me keep smoking and get cancer, it's their fault ("destiny") anyway.
4. I want to keep doing this wrong and dangerous thing and to rationalize it and keep having a good time with lots of smoking friends, I will tell them they were "born to die of cancer" or that it is "their destiny" if something happens and they get sick. I will make it sound like "the force is with them" or they have "karma" or they will have a better "future life" to make up for their current life being cut short by doing this dangerous smoking.
5. I'm an addict and a weakling and can't quit. But I'm too proud to ask for help, especially because I mocked the very people who did this health study and made the discovery of the danger. So instead of doing what I know I should do and ask for help, I'm too proud and self superior so I'll not ask for help, keep on doing so, and, in fact, sabotage any smoker quitting service I can, since that way I can tell myself that even if I was not proud, none of the smoker quitting services exist or really work anyway.
6. I'm neurotic, obsessive compulsive, depressed, anxious and/or paranoid. I think everyone is pretending that smoking is dangerous and pretending to get sick and die. I also think they are pretending that dead is really dead.
7. I'm all or some of the above in 6 and I think, since I can't think properly, that if people stop smoking and dying of lung cancer that "something worse will happen." Maybe the world is resting on the back of giant turtles who like to breathe cigarette smoke and if we all stop smoking the turtles will get mad and drop the earth and it will break.

I wish I was joking but I am not. I personally, and through second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth degrees of "Kevin Bacon" know people that believe all of the above: a LOT of them. They believe it not only in the actual analogy that I give, but worst of all, they believe it when you apply this analogy about acknowledging the reality of the one true God and of obeying him. They "postpone" or refuse in total to believe in God and to immediately obey him for all those reasons I have listed above.

So we have used logic to list the reactions and reasons of the three groups of people in the smoking analogy. And we have used logic to recognize that just as the analogy cites doctors who document the facts that, in the pretend USA example, that every smoker will get lung cancer and die, this analogy can now be applied to belief in God. God is the doctor who explains that if one smokes that each and every person who smokes will get lung cancer and die. Thus to transfer the work we did on the pretend case study to actuality, God is like the doctor who warns what will one hundred percent will happen, disbelief in God and sins are like the smoking of cigarettes (the thing that is dangerous and wrong to do even if it is "fun"), and hell (not being saved and not having eternal life) is like the inevitable lung cancer in our pretend analogy.

Do you see how powerful logic based on facts can be? Now you can use the logic you developed in the pretend analogy to understand why so many people deny God or worse, even when they understand the risk and reality (the consequences of "cancer") they PUT OFF obeying what they can see and suspect is true and worse, hold their friends, family and society itself back from being believers and immediate obeying of God. You can work down the list of seven I gave to you above and now substitute disbelief/sin/disobeying of God for wherever we list the action of smoking. We can list not being saved, being punished by God in this world, going to hell, and hurting other people by being unjust and/or sinning or spreading unbelief as the substitute for the getting and dying of lung cancer.

Let's work through one example, the first one. The smokers in the first example of pride think they can resist the consequences of smoking longer than anyone so they keep smoking and figure they will quit at the last possible moment. Thus they figure because they are physically and spiritually "better" than anyone else, they can keep smoking until just "before" they actually "get" cancer and then quit in the nick of time. That's the "logic" of pride in the first reasons to keep smoking example.

Now here is how it translates. Yeah, OK, maybe there is a God and maybe he will punish us if we sin. But because I am physically and spiritually "stronger" than anyone else, I will keep doing what I feel like, including sin, because I figure due to my superiority and my good deeds that if I figure out there really is a God, I will by lying around on my death bed after a really fun life and can quickly convert and be forgiven. I know that God will give me a really cool life, including with postponing obedience to him, because he made me so physically strong, good looking, popular, smart and spiritually so "complete" and "evolved" that I can control when I "flip" to believe in God, if he convinces me AND still have postponed obeying him until the last minute.

Here's the problems with this thinking. *sigh* I can't believe I even have to explain this but here goes. If one is disbelieving and disobeying God, no matter what "good deeds" you are doing, you are still 1) sinning 2) encouraging by your life other people to sin and 3) refusing to give God what is due to him on the spot NOW and FOREVER, throughout your life. The people in this category think they are so "blessed" that they can decide if or when to totally surrender to God. They imagine that they are just so wonderful that they can keep making this "personal" decision and that it's theirs to make AND that they will have ample time to "make the switch" if they must. But what happens? Let's go back to our analogy.

1. They keep smoking and get the cancer much faster than anyone else. Hmm.
2. They keep smoking and make money off of it by keeping others smoking through their business and/or their example. Thus their postponed obedience costs other people their lives.
3. They get in a crash and die before they can "make the switch." Ooops.
4. They don't realize that by the time they think they can "make the switch" that they already have the deadly cancer growing undetected. So they stop smoking and then find they have the cancer already because they "postponed" too long.

You can logic through, then, how this maps to disbelieving/postponing obeying God.

1. They disbelieve or postpone obedience and their sin or behaviors kill them even quicker. They go to hell.
2. They know what they are doing is wrong but they make money off of it or at worse by continuing to do so their children do the same neglect of God and thus they make money and tempt others by neglecting God, piling up a lot of unforgiven and some unforgivable sins. They go to hell AND they bring others with them through their delays in obedience.
3. Life happens and they get in a wreck and die or something else happens before they can repent. They go to hell.
4. They wait so long that their hearts are so hardened that even when they "decide" to "make the switch" they just can't do it, because they can't be humble, tender and flexible enough to finally do what they so called "planned" to do all along. So when they are ready to "switch" they find they can't at all, or they do it half hearted, and with a cold heart, like God is a formula to now apply. They go to hell.

I'll leave this with you to work through mapping in your own minds the other "reasons" for disbelief/postponing obeying God, listed 2 through 7, matching the smoking/lung cancer analogy and "reasons" with what that means for disbelieving/postponing obeying God. Pay special attention to the lack of one person converting in their heart to God as a bad example that then leads others back down that path to ruin. This is the heart of why God's judgment is especially stern to those who aren't really making an "individual life style choice," but are actually leading others the same way, often deliberately, as in reasons number 5, 6 and 7 but really all of them, as they want to "party on" with what they are doing, and that requires undermining those who might otherwise have repented and followed God.

*sigh*

Young people, you've been sold a bill of goods (an expression for being stiffed) by the previous generation. Previous generation, wise up.

Understanding God

Reading, as many of you have, about the many problems of suicides, domestic violence, child abuse, murder-suicides and other signs of an increasingly sickening world, I thought of increasing one's understanding of God through the use of an old expression.

In English there is a traditional saying when describing someone who is mentally or emotionally unraveling, saying that he or she is "coming unglued." In that saying there is a tacit recognition that each human is "held together" by something, and that in trouble or illness there is a problem of falling apart.

For you to truly understand God you must recognize that God is the glue that holds individual persons and communities together. Without God (a genuine knowing of God, not idolatry) individual persons and communities as a whole risk coming unglued and falling apart.

Society, particularly relatively affluent Western society, has promoted "coming unglued" because not only is belief in God pushed out of the public square, but more fundamentally, society pushes the fragmentation of the individual and also of the society as a whole.

Let me repeat this. Even if God were still respected in the public square, society would still have tremendous problems because society has taken on a set of highly fragmenting values. Each person is evaluated with a list of scorecard types of attributes, for example, starting in their earliest childhood. Further, families have fragmented (become unglued), forcing even more individual fragmentation as family identity and safety net is lost. The home itself is often a dangerous place, even for the most helpless, the infants. It truly is "dog eat dog" and "every man for himself," even for the very young. With partially occupied residences and frequent moves, plus isolation from the community around a person (not being part of one's community by participation or emotional investment, and trust me, I know that's hard to do as they have become scorecard exclusionary) there is the fragmentation of the community and its social net too. With fragmented denominations even for those who still profess to believe in God, churches no longer have the gravitas to provide their share of glue, of community identity and safety net. Finally, marketers and media only speak to special interest groups, who they identify with, try to get money from by selling their products, and those they advocate and "relate" to, further fragmenting and ungluing individuals, families, communities and faith groups.

When one does not look to God to provide the glue that keeps body and soul together, individually and collectively, that is the wedge for then the lowering and lowest common denominators of society to fulfill the personal and community disintegration. That's why giving an alienated and depressed teenager, for example, information about God is not enough... the social and other environmental factors must also be addressed as a whole. Even a teenager such as this one in our example who values hearing about God, the true God, in their distress is not "cured" of their pain and alienation if the next day they go from their fragmented family to their fragmented school to be judged in the freak show society scorecard meat market.

Every few years or so researchers used to ask what kids want to be when they grow up, and then they'd analyze the results, looking at what occupations or interests raise or lower in popularity. But here is the problem. The past two generations don't want anything except to be "famous" with its twin non-vocation "get rich." That is the scorecard fragmentation I am speaking about. Young people want to be scorecard traits (famous, rich, "hot"), since that's what their parents, teachers, society, media and marketers have taught them, rather than to have occupations or vocations (including professions, clerical, labor, homemaker, parent, clergy, military...) They all want to do something or be something, rather than have an interest or a calling. It is not their fault: it is how society has become unglued, starting in the family and reaching its prime robotic programming in the classroom and the media.

So how does a sad and troubled teen "become famous?" Suicide. How does a teen escape a problem situation, from the most dire to the ones that in hindsight are only painful parts of growing up, when there is no safety net in family and community, and they've never been taught God as the glue? Suicide.

Now we also have the double whammy where a society that is only individual scorecard oriented now deprives individuals of their livelihoods. We no longer are a world where people can survive without a paycheck from somewhere. What do you have when someone lacks God as the glue, there is no church or community cohesion and safety net, and there is an economic desperation? Murder-suicide.

HOW LOW DOES HUMANITY, THAT HAS BEEN SO BLESSED, HAVE TO SINK?

What did anyone think (when they took a break from their hits on the bong) would happen when the glue of God, authentic self esteem, family, community and church was continually removed? What does any idiot think would happen if one removed the glue from any structure that is made up of parts held together by that glue? It all falls down.

Killed for a piece of watermelon

A grandfather who with his wife had custody of their two grandsons shot the six year old dead when the grandfather was angry thinking the little boy had taken a piece of watermelon to eat. Trying to shield the boy the grandmother was gravely wounded. This happened in June. The grandmother died this week.

Anyone else notice the insane perverted violence just keeps escalating? Anyone interested in actually doing something about it instead of making it worse?

And by the way, watermelon jokes in households of the same name qualifies as making it worse. Regular readers know I'm for subversive humor when appropriate, but that kind of "joshing" is just criminal mental voodoo and as I warned YEARS AGO when I was trying to study the insane beliefs of the cultists IT WILL REBOUND ON YOU FOR YEARS AND UNTO THE NEXT GENERATIONS. Clean up your minds and your souls people. You don't fix error and perversion, nor save your souls, with more error and perversion. DUH.

Remember what the Bible says that sinful AND foolish thoughts are SIN. Each time someone either mocks someone else (and when they have the first thought of it), these are individual counts of sins. This is especially true and most certainly not mitigation if one is using the mocking or re-enactment for an occult reason (to "even the balance" or whatever) since that is blasphemy and idolatry. So each idea to do that is a sin, each subsequent thought of planning it is a sin, and each deed that each person does to accomplish the tableau and deeds are sins, and then the actual deed is a sin, and the feeling of the persons who are the object of the tableau and deeds, when they are sad or afraid, is a sin of violence against their spirit. Each time one "techs" or does other voodoo, "evening the balance" of acting out or preparing tableau to "cancel out" supposed "imbalance" seems to have on the average one dozen sins per person newly formed and attached. I have no hope for the vast majority of you as you only make things worse, not better.

For those of you readers who don't know what I'm talking about, be glad. A walk or a talk among the occult of this "New Age" and other "beliefs" is total filth and I don't enjoy a minute of it. Unfortunately true "light workers" seem to have to go to the filth in order to point out the lack of sewers.

DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Understanding sin or "doing something bad"

Hi young people especially. It has been a while... I've not been blogging much (and not much that is cheerful) because I've been sad and upset about a friend of a friend's unnecessary death... and also some continuing really bad behavior I've been seeing and experiencing. So I've thought of a kind of spiritual lesson to think about today that is rooted in these past few days, and also one that I think young people need to better understand (since they've not gotten good data on this in the past!)

Bad behavior is sin; they are not two separate matters. This is a confusion that has crept into the modern mind and you young people get the brunt of the confusion regarding understanding God, and avoiding sin, as a result.

Let's look at an obvious easily agreed upon example and analogy. Suppose that someone murders someone else. That can be easily categorized as: bad behavior, a crime, and a sin. So everyone can easily understand that a murder is both doing something really bad to a person, but also a sin against God.

See, many people think that a "sin" is defined as breaking a list of laws or instructions that God has given you. If the thing is "not on the list" then people think it might be bad behavior, or uncouth, but not a sin. That's wrong and not Biblically accurate. No where does the Bible say that sin is the breaking of a list of specific laws given by God, and the rest falls into kind of optional "good" or "bad" behavior that does not "involve God" since it is person-to-person behavior. In fact, the opposite is true that all bad behavior including even thoughts but not follow up deeds ARE sins against God.

If you missed it, you can go back in my haphazardly organized blog ;-) and read my long commentary that cites scripture indicating that Jews and Christians have well understood from the very beginning that even having a mean thought about another person is a sin against God, not just a mean spirited thing against a fellow human being. I probably labeled that under "sins" so you might find it easily that way. So I won't repeat all that, but I cited much scripture regarding the explicit statement that even having a mean thought about another human, even if you don't actually follow up on it, is not only a mean spirited and unrighteous feeling to have, but also an actual sin and offense against God himself. So yes, every mean thought, say nothing of actual follow up bad behavior, is a sin against God, even though common modern thought assumes that it is "just" poor behavior and lack of self control or "spirituality."

So here is where you get into very tricky territory indeed. If you pick on someone, or scorn them, or otherwise torment them, such as stalking and bullying, even if you are not breaking a "Biblical law" or Commandment or committing a human "crime," you are committing a sin directly against God. There are two Biblically cited ways that one can understand why that is.

The first reason is that avoiding sin is not a matter of do's and don'ts, but the maintenance at all time of a righteous mind. Throughout the Bible there are numerous explanations that all humans are sinners, but it is the righteous who are saved. Righteous is not defined as someone who dodges a list of sins. A righteous person is one who strives ALWAYS to do and to think/feel only what is Godly, pure and correct. When one walks in righteousness one does not "do good deeds" but have a mind and a heart like a sewer. Righteousness is a lot like the old fashioned concept of being "honorable." This is why in Revelation 21 you see, depending on the translation, that God through Jesus Christ at the End of Times states that "dogs" or "the fearful" or other translations of kind of craven sorts will not be in heaven. I blogged about that too, recently, that God does not mean that four footed canines are denied heaven but that "dog" is a widespread ancient cultural concept for humans who act dishonorably or who are dishonorable. Someone who thinks something dirty in their mind about a child he or she sees, for example, is a
"dog" and craven, and even if the person does not follow up that thought with actual molestation, they are guilty of that sin.

So to summarize the first way to understand the enormity of the problem to maintain a state of not sinning against God, remember that sin is not simply refusing to heed a stated prohibition in the Bible but is being un-righteous in any way at all, both in the commission of un-righteousness, but also in the thoughts or feelings of it AND, further, deliberately avoiding chances to be righteous. That is why some translations of Revelation 21 include the word "fearful." Those who are fearful to be righteous will not inherit their place in heaven and will, instead, go to the lake of eternal fire.

The second Biblical way to understand how crucial it is to not sin against God by behaving badly toward other human beings is to understand that God stated that he created men and women "in his image." When one torments another human being through bullying, for example, one is mocking and degrading a person who is created, like everyone else, in God's image, just one step below angels. No matter how ugly or unpleasant that you think the person might be, having that thought falls in the category of un-righteousness, and hence a sin, because you are being 1) uncharitable, which Jesus repeatedly said is a requirement of his saving grace and 2) you are mocking something that God has created. A human being may have a bad hair style, but that human being's body and dignity is created by God. There is a huge difference (and that is called "sin") between thinking that a person has a bad haircut that does not suit them, and is even a bit funny (but humorous through kindness) and having degrading thoughts about that person, which is mocking God's creation and a sin. Skin color, as in racism, ought to be another obvious example, one much more serious than the haircut example (though the cruelty of these times regarding a person's appearance is astonishingly destructive and thus serious). Blacks who hate whites and whites who hate blacks are committing individual sins with each and every thought and deed generated by that un-righteousness, since God is neither black nor white, but all are created in his image.

God will not be mocked, as St Paul warns in the scripture. One mocks God not only directly, by making fun of God or attempting to degrade Him, but one also mocks God by tormenting and mocking one of His creations: a fellow human being. Beware of this because hell is getting packed, yet there is always plenty of room.

Senator Ted Kennedy *sigh*

The *sigh* is because this just isn't a topic I want to blog about. It's the type of thing I'd more like to discuss in person with small groups, perhaps while having tea. But I know that people will wonder what I think, so here it is.

First of all, people are saved by grace (through faith) not works. So you can forget all the fund raising, the caring nice guy, etc regarding whether he achieves heaven or not. Being a good charitable Christian is expected of a Christian, not a check off list for salvation. Faith and God given grace are required for entry to heaven.

For those who do not understand the faith vs. works issue, here's a simple analogy. Millions of believers have achieved heaven who have never had the financial means to perform "good deeds" as people refer to them today. It's only the modern mindset that thinks that donations and legislation for "good causes" issues a "get in heaven easy pass." Millions and millions of people who have lived during the past thousand years by scratching the fields with a stick and keeping their families from starving have achieved heaven without "good deeds" because they had belief and faith in the one God, through Jesus Christ. I hope that helps you to understand that if you really honor the poor, you recognize that entry into heaven is for the poor who believe but who are unable to "perform good deeds," "fund raise" or "lobby for good causes."

Having said that, as I've repeatedly said, God has provided a means for genuine confession and repentance for sins. Only the Senator's confessor knows the status of his completeness in availing himself of that process, instituted and promised by Jesus Christ himself. Denying him a church funeral Mass would be churlish and wrong, assuming a knowledge that one simply does not possess, which is between him and God, and witnessed by his confessor priest.

My far greater worry is that many men and women of influence, in politics, government and law enforcement, have accepted assistance in their office from providers of false idols (money) and those who practice occult beliefs (influence). If Senator Kennedy has tainted his Roman Catholic beliefs with either idolatry or occult beliefs, even if he did "only a little of it," that would, of course, put him in a very precarious position with God. I really hope that he neither did this, but frankly, so many do and are in dire peril of their souls, and thus I also hope that if he did that he genuinely repented and confessed before his passing.

RIP.

Do not false hope that all sins forgiven

The good news is that people seem to increasingly understand that they have committed some terrible sins, and they are seeking information from their ministers and priests about forgiveness. They want to know if God, particularly through Jesus Christ, since it is through him the promise is made, forgives all sins. The bad news is that many who provide this spiritual direction give false information based on their own lack of understanding of the scripture and also the temptation to sugar coat bad news.

The hub of the problem is to distinguish between God’s ability and willingness to forgive all sins, even the worst of them (Yes) and God’s assurance that he will forgive every sin (No). In this blog post I will use “can” to indicate that certainly God is able to and has an infinitely merciful heart to be able to and to be motivated to potentially forgive even the worst of sin. I will use the word “will” to indicate what people are seeking, which is the absolute assurance that God will forgive their particular sin. Why is there a difference? Because there is, to put it in modern terms, an “eligibility requirement” for the forgiveness of sin, one that while it seems like one requirement, it actually has two parts. Far, far, FAR too many ministers and priests urge the first half and gloss over the second half. They thus give false hope to certain people that God has forgiven their particular sin.

Even the best of the best fall into this trap, such as the Rev. Billy Graham, who people know I greatly admire. Here is from a recent column. Title: “If you confess, God has promised to forgive you.” Question: “I’d give anything to know that God has forgiven me for a terrible sin I committed many years ago. But how can I know if he has? Maybe he decided I don’t deserve to be forgiven, and he’s condemned me to carry this burden the rest of my life.” The good news is that I fully support the majority of the Rev. Graham’s assurances that it is exactly for this reason, to demonstrate his love, but his hatred for sin, that God sent Jesus Christ his Son. People need to realize that anything (with one exception) can be forgiven by God. The one exception is that as Jesus states, offense against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. As I have blogged repeatedly, even Judas would have been forgiven if only he had not despaired and taken his own life. Imagine how he could have been one of the greatest witnesses to God’s mercy if he stayed alive and sought the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, who resurrected from the dead and appeared to the Apostles only three days after his crucifixion! So God is obviously, in his own words, but to put in modern terms, “ready, willing and able” to forgive even the worst of the worst. However, there are conditions and this is where I see ministers gloss over the second half of the conditions.

Excerpt from Answer: “What must you do? First, turn to Christ and confess your sins to him. Then trust him alone for your salvation and receive him by faith into your heart and life. The Bible says, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord!” (Romans 6:23).

Sounds good, but here’s the problem. What does it mean that one MUST “receive him by faith into your heart and life?” Too many ministers make it seem as though to be forgiven of a sin one must only confess and trust in Jesus. Yes, sure, but you also must totally convert your sinful ways. It is not a coincidence that Paul uses the analogy of a paycheck “the wages of sin is death.” It’s not a fee for a one time sin. One must not only confess one’s sin but totally remove one’s self from the nesting place of that sin and stop encouraging it and enabling it, even if your hands no longer commit that sin. God will NOT forgive a sin until that is done. THAT is what it means to receive Christ into your heart and life.

Let’s use two modern analogies before getting into the actual scripture. The modern analogies help you to hone your discernment so you read the scriptures more correctly and thus get my point better.

Analogy One:
Jesus Christ went to medical school so that all people will be cured of cancer. Would you agree with this? Obviously you should not agree. Even if Jesus Christ went to medical school, he did not do so in order to eliminate all cancer, since anyone can see that if anything incidents of cancer have increased, not decreased. However, if you want to defeat cancer you emulate Jesus Christ and go to medical school. You do not claim that either Jesus, your yourself, will eliminate cancer.

Analogy Two:
You work for an investment bank and you totally ripped off a client, bankrupting him. You used legal tools and products available at the bank, but used unethical guidance. You ask God to forgive you of destroying that person’s life (and you’ve done nothing to fix his problem, perhaps he died in poverty since that was his retirement account). Yet, putting aside that you can’t fix what you did, here is the heart of the problem: You continue to work for that bank and that place of low ethics. Even though you never bankrupt the innocent again, you continue to work for an institution who can and does do so. Your “hands are clean” but you provide income by working at that bank for people who continue to have dirty hands. Why in the world would you think that God will forgive your sin in that circumstance?

Whoa, you are probably yelling at the screen. How do I know this? THAT’s not in the Bible you shriek or sniffle. Oh, but it is.

As you know in the Bible, Rome controlled the entire empire and collected taxes from all people, including the Jews. The tax collector appointed by Rome has the job title of “publican.” When you read the Bible you will observe that an entire group of all people who performed a single job, tax collector, were condemned not only by the people, but in God’s eyes, as being sinners en masse. When you read the Gospel of Luke (who was a professional himself, a physician), you understand this very clearly since he includes detail on not only the public’s opinion but that of Jesus Christ.

Luke 3:12-13
Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him, Master, what shall we do? And he said unto them, “Exact no more than that which is appointed you.”

We see in the passage when John the Baptist is baptizing and preaching that publicans approached him and asked “what shall we do?” Why would an entire job class of people come to him and ask how to get out of a jam? Because this is evidence of what I am saying that the entire class of publicans, whether an individual was sinful or more just than the others, was viewed as notorious doomed sinners. John does not reply, “Oh, don’t worry, individual sin is between you and God and all will be forgiven.” No, John recognizes and validates the entire class of sin problem immediately by telling them not to exact more taxes than what is assigned to them (taxes were like bonus payments back then, where if the tax collector could get more from a person than Rome expected, he could pocket the rest). See the problem? Even an individual “good” tax collector was part of and supportive of an oppressive sinful system, and this is why they are all viewed as doomed sinners.

Here, Jesus has just finished teaching and preaching, when this occurs:

Luke 5:27-32
And after these things he went forth, and saw a publican named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom [the tax collector’s place of work]: and he said unto him: “Follow me.”
And he left all, rose up, and followed him.
And Levi made him a great feast in his own house; and there was a great company of publicans, and of others that sat down with them.
But their scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying “Why do you eat and drink with publicans and sinners?”
And Jesus, answering, said unto them, “They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Here is what you see as hard evidence in the scriptures:
1. Jesus calls Levi, who will become named Matthew, out of his place of work in total. Unlike the fishermen Apostles who continue to fish to feed their families, Jesus does not let Matthew “stay in the job.”
2. Publicans are throughout the Gospel identified by name as, here, as a group of doomed sinners, despite the behavior of any individual, just or not, within them. Tough luck: that is reality. By distinguishing publicans from the other “sinners” common thought is that they are not only sinners like the other average Joes, but doomed as a group.
3. Jesus does not discourage that attitude. He in fact acknowledges that publicans as a group are on his list of sinners in need of repentance.
4. This is why you can see that Jesus goes a step beyond John the Baptist (which is why Jesus is Jesus and John the Baptist is John the Baptist). He doesn’t just tell Levi to continue working but take no more than what is due to him; Jesus removes Levi in total from the publicans, something he did not do to those who fished among other fishermen for a living.

Yeah. I thought you might not have noticed that.


Luke 5:37-8
And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles, and both are preserved.

You must read the scriptures with your eyes and your fingers, but also in a holistic understanding of the action that is taking place, as it is Jesus role modeling the truth. Jesus does not lecture the crowds that they are being “mean” to publicans and “discriminating” against them. In fact, he demonstrates, by voting with his feet, that he loves Levi as an Apostle, even though he is a publican, but hence removes Levi entirely from the context of sin he was in. We, of course, do not know since the scriptures do not say if Levi was one of the good, moderate, or bad publicans, if he was a huge sinner or a moderate sinner within the context of publicans. All we know is what the scripture demonstrates is that his sins were forgiven and he was made an Apostle only because Jesus removed him in entirety from the group of publicans.

John the Baptist was not incorrect, as he, presumably, baptized the publicans and told them not to gouge the people with extra taxes for their own benefit. But John did not speak for God. Jesus spoke for God, both in his speech and in his actions, which we must emulate in total for any assurances of what God promised is possible.

5. We can now notice the fifth point, which is that Levi throws a dinner for Jesus and invites many publicans.

Levi is no longer of the publicans, but he immediately, through the grace he has already received in just one day from Jesus, upon his calling by Jesus and his acceptance to Jesus, casts a life net for those he has totally left. Levi did not stay within the publicans, since Jesus took him totally from them, but through grace immediately throws the life net to the publicans by inviting many to meet Jesus. Too many ministers focus only on the lesson that Jesus reached out to sinners and miss that other point. Levi and Jesus both underscore through their actions that not gouging people is not enough: people within a group of sinners must have a total conversion of life and heart, symbolized here by their being invited to meet Jesus outside of the sinful workplace, to totally leave their participation therein. They must do their outreach and ministry from the outside, not the inside. That is another way to understand the parable of the new wine being placed in new bottles, and not put into old bottles, where both will be destroyed as they are now incompatible.

When one has committed a dreadful sin, one must not only find God through Jesus and repent, but he or she must also with total and immediate sincerity, as Rev Graham puts it, “receive him by faith into your heart and life.” That’s heart AND life. It’s not enough to love Jesus but still live within the conditions that caused not only your sin, but enables others to continue doing so. To be forgiven in such circumstances, like the publican, you must leave in entirety and belong in your life totally to Jesus. As Paul explains it, you can no longer continue to obtain your wages via sin. If you are still paid by or enabling the people who promote the sin that you committed, you cannot remain among them and be at all assured that God has forgiven you for that sin. No one is being kind or doing you a favor by telling you otherwise. You must follow Jesus and the scriptures for any certainty, and not wishful thinking.


Is it not abundantly better to follow precisely the role model of someone who you know was saved, Levi who became Matthew, as specified in scripture, rather than read into God’s infinite capacity for the forgiveness of sins a free pass that is not truly there? If it was “OK” for Levi to remain a publican but he is now “a good one” and does that work in order to, like the fishermen Apostles, financially support the early Christians, then Jesus would have done so, I mean, duh. Jesus removed Levi from the group that everyone everywhere considered doomed sinners. John the Baptist kind of told them what was wrong with them, that they had to stop gouging extra money from the tax payers who were suffering under the burden, but only Jesus can “fix it.” Yes, Jesus died because of humanity’s sinfulness and also for the forgiveness of sins, but scriptures clearly demonstrate that Jesus did not give a clear pass for continued tacit participation and lack of full repentance from sinful situations.

Ministers and priests must emphasize their own words of spiritual direction so that they and others do not listen with half an ear, hoping for the easy answer. Do not be the one who tells someone that God has forgiven their sin, and then when that person dies they find themselves in hell or at the very least some very tough purgatory. I mention purgatory not to get in a quarrel with those Christians who deny purgatory but, rather, to not totally freak out people in the situation such as the author of the question to Rev Graham. God knows all the circumstances of the terrible sin, since he is, as I constantly remind all people, the All Knowing. It is possible that even a person with an unforgiven sin, that God in his mercy will strip away the sin in purgatory and allow what remains of the soul to enter heaven. But it is also possible, since God knows all the circumstances, that he will cast into hell the person who thinks they were forgiven but are not, since they did not bring Jesus into their life and their heart from that point in their confession onward. If they continue to earn their wages in the place of the sin, that does not look good for forgiveness. But it really is that easy to obtain forgiveness from God, when one follows exactly, not through wishful thinking, what is documented in the Gospel as said and done by Jesus Christ who alone spoke for God with authority. If you remain in the sin factory or the sin wagon where your individual, but genuinely, regretted terrible sin occurred, you are still reaping the wages of sin and have not completely brought Christ into your life and heart, which is required for total forgiveness of sin. Believing that Jesus existed and trusting that he’s a good and merciful guy, and even loving him is not enough if you do not also have him dwell in your heart and your life, peeling away the wages of sin.

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Becoming sanctified or "spiritual"

The objective of every God fearing and God believing person should be to be sanctified. Being sanctified means that your life, whether secular or religious, modest or prominent, puts service to God first and foremost to all else. In other words, your service to God structures and informs all that you do, including routine tasks in your job or chores, your recreation, your relationships, etc. When one is sanctified one does not do things that impede God's will and, instead, you seek to further God's will.

I am including a nod toward the lame objective of the semi-believing or non-believing "New Agers" who claim to be "good" and thus want to be "spiritual." Being "spiritual" without belief in God is a structureless egocentric fraud, but I know many well meaning people fall into that trap, so I invite them to read this blog posting which is a "don't do" checklist for those who seek to be sanctified.

It's easy to write how to become something, but we also know that negative examples are also informative. So I've made a list of "warning signs," where if you do any of the following, you need to be alert that you are working away from sanctification, rather than toward it.

Here are things you might be doing, or traits that you have that you think indicate admirable fortitude (a gift of the Holy Spirit, by the way), but are deceiving and instead should be suspect.

1. If you persist in hanging onto false beliefs.

Some people think this is admirable, because they are "keeping an open mind" "just in case" up until the bitter end. This is a barrier to sanctification. Scripture show that when the scales fall from one's eyes, repentance, change and conversion should be immediate, and false beliefs must be dropped immediately and in total.

2. You are talented in finding reasons or excuses not to drop false beliefs, repent or convert.

In contrast to problem #1, this problem is not rooted in a false sense of "keeping an open mind" or "being loyal to one's beliefs" (even when proven wrong) but instead you have "reasons" to resist the truth. The problem with this, besides the obvious one that you want to get to truth, not resist truth, is that you are creating false links to past errors. It's like tying yourself down to the road using twine, then wire, then rope, then vines, when the objective should be not to tie one's self down to the road at all. You become trapped in thinking of more excuses, more ways, to tie yourself to error, rather than immediately move on to truth.

3. You have an actual, genuine reason for hanging onto false beliefs.

What if you are a minor child and have a parent who is violent, drug abusing, a blaspheming heretic who has horrific beliefs. Of course you have to think of your own well being, and I would not recommend that you "make a break for it" if that would put you or others in actual worse danger. However, what I want to warn you is to believe the truth in your heart and do not use your confinement to believe in falsehood in your heart. You may be trapped for the moment in the reality of the falsehood, but do not resign your mind to believing falsehood. Live openly the truth as soon as you are of age, out of the household, or in a genuinely safe place. But do not give into despair that you have to actually believe the garbage in your private heart, even if you have to live in its midst.

4. That you have to become "sanctified" according to a "schedule."

God is the creator of the universe, not subordinate to space, matter, energy or time. Thus if you attempt to sanctify (put yourself in service to God) according to a schedule, most particularly one based on occult beliefs, obviously you do not understand sanctification and are moving away from that goal, rather than toward it.

5. That you can be sanctified but hang onto a favorite sin.

You cannot partially sanctify. You cannot sanctify yourself in the Lord's eyes but continue to cheat people out of money, for example. Nor can you sanctify yourself in the Lord's eyes and eliminate all wrongdoings, but one, which is, for example, to continue to bear false witness. That is what can be viewed as an attempt to "cohabit" with a sin. Many times when the Bible condemns adultery, it means spiritual adultery (not literal hanky panky). This means you have a "marriage with God" but continue to cheat on the side with your favorite sin.

6. You think you are sanctified but hold yourself back from full worship and service to God because you are practicing "self denial."

This argument goes: I really love God and want to serve him, but because that would give me lots of pleasure I will hold back from being one hundred percent belonging to God, because I'm therefore suffering that loss of joy and that's a mortification and self-denial. What? That's nuts and the underlying reason for thinking this rubbish is reason #5, which is you are still hanging onto a favorite sin, and thus can't give yourself 100 percent to God because you are still "cheating on God" with your favorite sin or "lifestyle choice" (as moderns call sins today).

I hope this helps! Negative examples are very illuminating of how well one is really doing and probing genuine motivations.