I've seen this riddle or challenge to the reality of God's power a number of times over the years, including a mention somewhere today, so I figured I'd answer it since apparently a lot of people take it seriously. The riddle is "If God is all powerful, can he create something so heavy that he can't lift it up?"
The answer is "Yes he could, but it would not be real, it would be an illusion or lie. And since God is never untrue to his nature, he obviously would not do it as the creation would be bogus and not real, so it would be pointless and against his nature."
Let's break it down using logic. The question is bogus in the first place because it relies on a simple assumption that's just wrong. The question assumes, which most people don't realize, that God could ever be subject to the force of gravity. Um, duh. The reason something is heavy is that it has mass (it is an object made out of some material) and gravity is pulling on it. That's why something is heavy on earth (lots of gravity) yet on the International Space Station where there is very little gravity, astronauts can move huge "heavy" things with barely a finger tip.
So when you ask the question about God, it's a bogus set of assumptions since God is not comprised of any matter or energy, God does not reside in the 4 dimensional (3 dimensions plus time) world, and thus there is no part of God that is subject to gravity. God lives totally outside of the question.
So if he wanted to make you happy he'd have to create a robot or some other object made out of mass, put it in a gravity field, then give it something too heavy to lift AND, here's the problem, lie to you that this robot "is" Him. So obviously God can create any "test" scenario that a human comes up with, but he have to "humor you" to do so, and that means creating an illusion, to be polite, or lie to you. The Bible warns about testing God, that it's a really bad idea and not well received. But I know that many people ask this with genuine thoughtfulness, not realizing that the question itself is bogus.
It is human nature that humans always try to picture God as a living being that lives in a material/energy/time frame, and then can be "tested." Um, sorry, but God created the material universe by "standing" outside of it and obviously before the material world ever existed, since He created it! Any "ability" that people question about God is based on abilities that utilize matter, energy and time, all of which God created and exists totally outside of.
So it is not like God is "powerless" to create an illusion that you request, in other words, that a living body in the universe called "God" stands in a gravity field and can't lift something heavy. But obviously that is not really God because God lives outside of His creation and is pure spirit, no matter, no energy, no time sequence. With only a thought, a moment of His Will, God can do absolutely anything with his creation (the universe) or those he created in the pure spirit place of heaven (the angels) or outside of heaven (hell). He could make this universe disappear in a second, if he wanted to. He could make and label any human or animal "God" and then make it stand in gravity and be unable to lift something. But there IS no matter or energy, and thus no gravity or other forces, or ticking of a clock of sequence of actions, in heaven where God is God.
People who ask this question to erode faith and mock God demonstrate that they don't even have a sixth grade knowledge of either science or God. However, I understand that many folks, especially young people (Hi!) ask this riddle sincerely, because you've not received the how-to about using logic to answer questions and identify fallacious assumptions (bogus premises).
Hope this helps!
Showing posts with label spirit and matter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spirit and matter. Show all posts
Monday, September 20, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
Understanding God: creation & control
The whole idea that God existed before anything else (he is outside of and indeed the creator of space, time, energy and matter) and that he has always existed (there is no "before God") and will always exist is difficult enough for humans to understand. Closely related to this reality about God is the difficulty in understanding how exactly God is the Creator and also how he is always in control. I've thought of a simple typical experience that everyone has seen, which can help to understand by putting one in the right mindset.
Think back to a time when you have opened the window on a warm day, and a breeze blows into the window, stirring and moving the curtains. Well, the first step to understanding God is realizing that God is not standing there waving the curtains back and forth for you.
LOL! I know you are saying, well, I never thought that he was! Yes, but the misdirected human understanding of God is not too far from thinking that. The idea that "everything" has a message (from God or "someone else," like a deceased loved one or a "spirit") is only one step away from thinking that God is standing there and it is his "control" that makes the curtains move back and forth in the breeze.
Why is there this confusion? People get confused with three aspects of God's power: 1) his being the Creator 2) his being "in control" and 3) everything that happens is "God's will." This is why I realized this simple analogy will help you to understand each of these three aspects of God's power.
God created the universe, including everything in it, such as the sun which provides the warm day, the earth and the humans upon it, the weather, and thus the wind that moves the curtains. During God's creation God maintains total control over all that is created, and being All Knowing, God perfects his creation so that it continues to develop and function the way he intended. Thus God is in control because he shaped the material of his creation so that it has natural law and forces that support ongoing existence (such as atomic structures, the movement of light, the existence of mass and gravity, the effects of rotation and so forth). This is why the curtains move and God does not have to stand there and invisibly make them flap back and forth for you, ha. The curtains move because God created the materials and the forces (nature laws) of the structure of the universe and then he let them go. It's not like God has to "try it out," because remember, he is All Knowing. When God declared in the Bible that his creation is "good," that is what he meant, that he created all that the universe (and life within it) needed for it to now run on its own.
So when you heat a pot of water over an open fire, God is not having to rub the water molecules together for you so that the water becomes warm and then hot, any more than God is having to combust each of the molecules of the wood so that it would burn. Water heats over a flame because God created the infrastructure and the natural forces that would be "good," as in effective and self sustaining. Another example, gravity works not because God has to put his hand over each object and person and hold them down onto the earth, ha.
Back to our example, God created and controls the waving of the curtain in the breeze because God created time, matter and energy, and thus the forces that align and motivate them in predictable behavior of physics and science. So God created the "raw materials" for the waving of the curtain (the sun, the earth, fibers and wood, people smart enough to build houses with windows and curtains, weather including the development of wind when the temperature and pressure gradients are right, etc). When we say that God is in control, what we should mean is that everything he put into place is functioning authentically and predictably, just as it should. I've written about this before in the blog but just to remind you, an unforeseen and tragic automobile accident where there is a loss of life is in God's control not because God reaches out and pushes one car into another, but because God created a universe where if two heavy objects collide the materials within react according to physics in a predictable way.
Now that you understand, at least on a gut level, through these simple examples, how God 1) creates and 2) controls (to put it simply, he creates the raw materials and the "rules" by which creation continues onward and interacts within itself) you can better understand the levels at which something is God's will. Let's start with returning to the open window with the warm breeze that waves the curtains.
It was God's will that he decided to create a universe in the first place. It is God's will that he created in the way that he did, that it is stable and consistent, but with growth, change and movement. It is God's will that living beings will find what they need to sustain life (such as light, warmth and air). It is God's will that some beings, humans mostly but some animals too, are smart enough to shape their own dwellings. It is God's will that humans benefit from wise decisions (seeking shelter in their dwellings when weather is harsh), but it is also God's will that the power of bad weather, for example, does not suddenly halt and become benign whenever someone makes a bad decision (such as taking a boat out into the stormy seas, and remember, Jesus had to miraculously intervene when the Apostles were set upon by a storm at sea). So it is God's will that all in all, he very very VERY rarely upends and overturns the laws by which the universe of time, energy and matter operates in order to miraculously sustain someone in a bad situation, of their making or not (such as a natural disaster). It is further God's will that humans (and animals) feel pleasure, including aesthetics, in life. Thus it is God's will that the warm breeze feels good, the sun uplifts one's spirit, and the waving of the curtain in the breeze feels homey and aesthetically pleasing. Likewise, if one misjudges and makes an error (such as putting a fragile vase in front of an open window with a strong breeze, and it is knocked down), it is God's will that oops, natural forces continue to work as expected. God neither knocks down the vase nor "makes you feel bad," but that is the natural outcome of the small actions in life as time, energy, matter and human free choice interact.
So when someone devout says, usually after a sad event or loss, that it is "God's will," that is actually not a simplistic observation. It is, rather, the wise summation of the creative, by God, the controlling, by God, and free choice, by humans or by happenstance, outcome for all of the above to exist at all as a result of God's will. Yes, then, when a person dies, his or her "time had come" and it is "God's will," but the slippery slope is that one must not imagine that God is pushing some baby into a swimming pool, or cramming one car into another, or "giving" a person cancer, etc. God created all those materials, energies and potentialities (according to free choice and situations) and it is his will that with very rare exceptions, the rewards or the consequences naturally result. What do I mean by potentialities? Well, I blogged about one example before, which is being around potentially cancer causing smoke. It's not like God has to, nor is it in his nature, to reach inside someone and "give" them "cancer." Further, God does not make a person crave smoking cigarettes. All those potentialities are a matter of chemistry, physics, human genetics and human free choice. It is God's will that life has limitations and dangers, but it is also God's will that humans can seek ways to maximize the benefits of well being. Water is great, and swimming is great, but lack of a fence and a watchful parent over a baby near water is unwise. Likewise tobacco might be pleasurable to smoke in a cigarette but the problem develops when it is done to excess and becomes a habit that stimulates potential cancer in one's self or second hand in others.
So when a person mourns that the loss of a loved one is "God's will," that person is being pious and correct if they realize, as most have done so before these past few generations, that the life that one is given is unpredictable, that life is robust and forgiving while at the same time fragile and subject to defect, and that it is indeed the person's "time" because God will not intervene (except in those rare miraculous circumstances) when the known factors of a person's potential demise intersect. An example of an intersection is 1) smoking to excess 2) being of weak health or prone to easy damage 3) unable or unwilling to receive treatment. God does not 1) make the person smoke to excess 2) "give" him or her bad genes or 3) deprive them of treatment or give them a negative and bad attitude about available treatment. You see what I mean?
Moderns have become, for reasons I've discussed before 1) paranoid 2) narcissistic 3) excessively "magical" thinking and 4) disbelieving in the ultimate goodness of God and God alone. Thus there has been (and I pray that this is changing) an increasing obsession that somehow long life and wonderfulness has been guaranteed to everyone (and some of that is the "deeds" over grace error of thought) and that when an intersection of natural law and situations/human choices occurs that God (or "alien" or "other" forces) have "singled out" a person or group for hardship. That's not only wrong but it's dangerous because one then discards not only authentic belief in God but one also discards common sense and proper survival instincts and thinking.
Imagine if someone actually thought that when he opened the window and the sun shone and the breeze blew and the curtains waved that God was just standing there, waving that big peacock feather fan at him, turning on the tanning lamp and just giving him his own personal spa treatment. You'd think that person was crazy, right? Well, as I said, unfortunately many people have gotten on that slippery slope as they should have known better and worse, raised their children or taught their students that entire warped mindset. Thus many young people are paranoid and narcissistic because they feel so manipulated and at the behest of an arbitrary world filled with "unfairness" and "forces" that must be appeased/controlled! By the way, when I say "unfairness" I mean "not fair" by some human standard; I don't mean unjust because then I'd be in total agreement: the world is filled with human injustice and unrighteousness. But the word "fair" in popular thought (separate from political or legal thought) has come to mean that one's life seems disproportionate to one's expectations, and thus subject to some mysterious dispensation of favor or punishment. That kind of thinking results in attitudes such as, just for an easy example, that the life providing process by which a human body makes and stores fat is somehow bad and must be tamed. Um, no one would be alive if the body could not make and store fat, duh. But this paranoid separation from reality (both faith reality and secular reality) results in some messed up thinking.
I yearn for the time when people understood this, as they all did, prior to the last fifty years or so (with a few lunatic exceptions, of course, none of whom I need to name here).
Anyway, rather than get into that whole mess (again) in discussion, I'd rather leave you with this hopefully helpful simple analogy for understanding how God does indeed create, control and exert his will.
Think back to a time when you have opened the window on a warm day, and a breeze blows into the window, stirring and moving the curtains. Well, the first step to understanding God is realizing that God is not standing there waving the curtains back and forth for you.
LOL! I know you are saying, well, I never thought that he was! Yes, but the misdirected human understanding of God is not too far from thinking that. The idea that "everything" has a message (from God or "someone else," like a deceased loved one or a "spirit") is only one step away from thinking that God is standing there and it is his "control" that makes the curtains move back and forth in the breeze.
Why is there this confusion? People get confused with three aspects of God's power: 1) his being the Creator 2) his being "in control" and 3) everything that happens is "God's will." This is why I realized this simple analogy will help you to understand each of these three aspects of God's power.
God created the universe, including everything in it, such as the sun which provides the warm day, the earth and the humans upon it, the weather, and thus the wind that moves the curtains. During God's creation God maintains total control over all that is created, and being All Knowing, God perfects his creation so that it continues to develop and function the way he intended. Thus God is in control because he shaped the material of his creation so that it has natural law and forces that support ongoing existence (such as atomic structures, the movement of light, the existence of mass and gravity, the effects of rotation and so forth). This is why the curtains move and God does not have to stand there and invisibly make them flap back and forth for you, ha. The curtains move because God created the materials and the forces (nature laws) of the structure of the universe and then he let them go. It's not like God has to "try it out," because remember, he is All Knowing. When God declared in the Bible that his creation is "good," that is what he meant, that he created all that the universe (and life within it) needed for it to now run on its own.
So when you heat a pot of water over an open fire, God is not having to rub the water molecules together for you so that the water becomes warm and then hot, any more than God is having to combust each of the molecules of the wood so that it would burn. Water heats over a flame because God created the infrastructure and the natural forces that would be "good," as in effective and self sustaining. Another example, gravity works not because God has to put his hand over each object and person and hold them down onto the earth, ha.
Back to our example, God created and controls the waving of the curtain in the breeze because God created time, matter and energy, and thus the forces that align and motivate them in predictable behavior of physics and science. So God created the "raw materials" for the waving of the curtain (the sun, the earth, fibers and wood, people smart enough to build houses with windows and curtains, weather including the development of wind when the temperature and pressure gradients are right, etc). When we say that God is in control, what we should mean is that everything he put into place is functioning authentically and predictably, just as it should. I've written about this before in the blog but just to remind you, an unforeseen and tragic automobile accident where there is a loss of life is in God's control not because God reaches out and pushes one car into another, but because God created a universe where if two heavy objects collide the materials within react according to physics in a predictable way.
Now that you understand, at least on a gut level, through these simple examples, how God 1) creates and 2) controls (to put it simply, he creates the raw materials and the "rules" by which creation continues onward and interacts within itself) you can better understand the levels at which something is God's will. Let's start with returning to the open window with the warm breeze that waves the curtains.
It was God's will that he decided to create a universe in the first place. It is God's will that he created in the way that he did, that it is stable and consistent, but with growth, change and movement. It is God's will that living beings will find what they need to sustain life (such as light, warmth and air). It is God's will that some beings, humans mostly but some animals too, are smart enough to shape their own dwellings. It is God's will that humans benefit from wise decisions (seeking shelter in their dwellings when weather is harsh), but it is also God's will that the power of bad weather, for example, does not suddenly halt and become benign whenever someone makes a bad decision (such as taking a boat out into the stormy seas, and remember, Jesus had to miraculously intervene when the Apostles were set upon by a storm at sea). So it is God's will that all in all, he very very VERY rarely upends and overturns the laws by which the universe of time, energy and matter operates in order to miraculously sustain someone in a bad situation, of their making or not (such as a natural disaster). It is further God's will that humans (and animals) feel pleasure, including aesthetics, in life. Thus it is God's will that the warm breeze feels good, the sun uplifts one's spirit, and the waving of the curtain in the breeze feels homey and aesthetically pleasing. Likewise, if one misjudges and makes an error (such as putting a fragile vase in front of an open window with a strong breeze, and it is knocked down), it is God's will that oops, natural forces continue to work as expected. God neither knocks down the vase nor "makes you feel bad," but that is the natural outcome of the small actions in life as time, energy, matter and human free choice interact.
So when someone devout says, usually after a sad event or loss, that it is "God's will," that is actually not a simplistic observation. It is, rather, the wise summation of the creative, by God, the controlling, by God, and free choice, by humans or by happenstance, outcome for all of the above to exist at all as a result of God's will. Yes, then, when a person dies, his or her "time had come" and it is "God's will," but the slippery slope is that one must not imagine that God is pushing some baby into a swimming pool, or cramming one car into another, or "giving" a person cancer, etc. God created all those materials, energies and potentialities (according to free choice and situations) and it is his will that with very rare exceptions, the rewards or the consequences naturally result. What do I mean by potentialities? Well, I blogged about one example before, which is being around potentially cancer causing smoke. It's not like God has to, nor is it in his nature, to reach inside someone and "give" them "cancer." Further, God does not make a person crave smoking cigarettes. All those potentialities are a matter of chemistry, physics, human genetics and human free choice. It is God's will that life has limitations and dangers, but it is also God's will that humans can seek ways to maximize the benefits of well being. Water is great, and swimming is great, but lack of a fence and a watchful parent over a baby near water is unwise. Likewise tobacco might be pleasurable to smoke in a cigarette but the problem develops when it is done to excess and becomes a habit that stimulates potential cancer in one's self or second hand in others.
So when a person mourns that the loss of a loved one is "God's will," that person is being pious and correct if they realize, as most have done so before these past few generations, that the life that one is given is unpredictable, that life is robust and forgiving while at the same time fragile and subject to defect, and that it is indeed the person's "time" because God will not intervene (except in those rare miraculous circumstances) when the known factors of a person's potential demise intersect. An example of an intersection is 1) smoking to excess 2) being of weak health or prone to easy damage 3) unable or unwilling to receive treatment. God does not 1) make the person smoke to excess 2) "give" him or her bad genes or 3) deprive them of treatment or give them a negative and bad attitude about available treatment. You see what I mean?
Moderns have become, for reasons I've discussed before 1) paranoid 2) narcissistic 3) excessively "magical" thinking and 4) disbelieving in the ultimate goodness of God and God alone. Thus there has been (and I pray that this is changing) an increasing obsession that somehow long life and wonderfulness has been guaranteed to everyone (and some of that is the "deeds" over grace error of thought) and that when an intersection of natural law and situations/human choices occurs that God (or "alien" or "other" forces) have "singled out" a person or group for hardship. That's not only wrong but it's dangerous because one then discards not only authentic belief in God but one also discards common sense and proper survival instincts and thinking.
Imagine if someone actually thought that when he opened the window and the sun shone and the breeze blew and the curtains waved that God was just standing there, waving that big peacock feather fan at him, turning on the tanning lamp and just giving him his own personal spa treatment. You'd think that person was crazy, right? Well, as I said, unfortunately many people have gotten on that slippery slope as they should have known better and worse, raised their children or taught their students that entire warped mindset. Thus many young people are paranoid and narcissistic because they feel so manipulated and at the behest of an arbitrary world filled with "unfairness" and "forces" that must be appeased/controlled! By the way, when I say "unfairness" I mean "not fair" by some human standard; I don't mean unjust because then I'd be in total agreement: the world is filled with human injustice and unrighteousness. But the word "fair" in popular thought (separate from political or legal thought) has come to mean that one's life seems disproportionate to one's expectations, and thus subject to some mysterious dispensation of favor or punishment. That kind of thinking results in attitudes such as, just for an easy example, that the life providing process by which a human body makes and stores fat is somehow bad and must be tamed. Um, no one would be alive if the body could not make and store fat, duh. But this paranoid separation from reality (both faith reality and secular reality) results in some messed up thinking.
I yearn for the time when people understood this, as they all did, prior to the last fifty years or so (with a few lunatic exceptions, of course, none of whom I need to name here).
Anyway, rather than get into that whole mess (again) in discussion, I'd rather leave you with this hopefully helpful simple analogy for understanding how God does indeed create, control and exert his will.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
A few gentle thoughts re: heaven/the universe
I've had an image that is somewhat gentle and sweet that I want to share with you as yet another way of understanding the explanations I've given you about what heaven's like. This also ties in with my recent discussion of genuine awe being reserved for God, but legitimate awe can also include marveling at the natural wonders, such as earth, space, the universe, of God's creation.
God created the universe, and it is exactly as it appears. The more that humans develop telescopes and other scientific equipment, the more can be seen about the universe, marveled at and measured, studied and better understood. I have noticed that those who study the universe as a profession tend to have a strong sense of aesthetics too, for they really enjoy and marvel at photos of outer space, or of earth as seen from space, and want to look farther outward and thus backwards in age. So the wonder of space is genuinely felt by the workers in that profession.
There's a slight temptation associated with studying anything, whether it is a small device or a large natural feature. Familiarity breeds contempt as the saying goes, and I'm not saying it is that strong, but the temptation is that the more one thinks one has collected information, the more one is tempted to feel that the topic (and unconsciously, the thing itself) is "understood" by you and hence somewhat "under your control." Let me give an example. The more one is able to photograph a remote and dim region of the universe, the more the person tends to forget that no one will ever go there. Scientists and other space fans can look at a million photographs of a galaxy that is 200 light years away, for a example, and start to feel that the galaxy itself is "at hand" as much as the photographs are in their actual hands. That is something of a flaw or, rather, an affectation (not affection, but affectation, a presumption) of human thinking. They lose their appropriate awe because familiarity has bred contempt. They now start thinking they can imagine "what it would be like" in that galaxy, just because they have collected some data. They confuse scientific speculation with familiarity. They forget that no human will ever visit distant parts of space, and likely not even venture outside of the solar system itself. Why? Because of the inherent limitations of human physical ability combined with the simple physics and lack of time that humanity can expect per generation. See all my previous lifespan discussion. The universe, indeed the solar system, is simply too vast to ever be explored by humans. Imagining otherwise and taking photographs and making plans simply does not "make it so."
So one can and one must have appropriate awe about the universe, and enjoy it, study it, and even explore the parts that one is able to, in safe, logical and proportionate ways. But the bottom line of reality that everyone must always maintain is awareness that 1) no matter how much you collect "data" it's not the same as assuming you have any genuine insight and 2) it is simply too vast to ever be traveled.
Having said that, follow this analogy with me. As wonderful as the universe is, it is still a created thing, a thing that was created by God. Heaven too is a created thing, but there is a huge difference. Heaven was created by God to be inhabited by his companions, the angels, and the souls of humans who are brought there upon their death if they are believers and they are just and righteous, and heaven does not have matter, energy or the passing of time. The universe was created to be the framing, the infrastructure for life, and human life is all that any human has to really think about, and thus it was created in order to support a system made of matter, energy and time. So on the one hand you have the heavenly realm that was created to support matter-less, energy-less and time-less beings (and is God's natural abode, though he is of course everywhere too), while on the other hand you have the universe that was created to support matter-based, energy-based and time-based beings and objects (people and rocks, e.g.)
So here is my analogy and image. Imagine in one hand a really cool and beautiful piece of plastic. Let's say that it's a pretty, super lightweight and durable object, very high tech and fun to look at and to use. Now, picture the same object in your other hand but made out of solid gold. Here is the bottom line:
Even the most awesome sight that one sees in the universe, peering out into space using the Hubble telescope or whatever, is like seeing really impressive plastic. Ultimately even the largest supernova, the biggest galaxy, the oldest stars, the most mystical appearing nebula or clouds of gas, they are all like marvelous and very useful plastic, plastic that was created by God to be useful and to support existence that is based on matter, energy and time.
One can marvel at how well God created something so good that it is perfect for its niche, its niche being the place where objects and life that rely on having matter, energy and time can and do exist.
But heaven, ah heaven, is so far beyond even the most wonderful sights of the universe that it must be compared to being made of gold, but gold that is not even of matter or light. That is what St. John tried to describe seeing in the Book of Revelation, but here I'm just using it as an analogy to help you imagine the distance between appropriate awe of the universe and appropriate awe of heaven. Not only is heaven of, in this analogy, a much finer material, wrought by God of gold while the universe is wrought by God of really cool plastic, but the beings that exist in heaven exist totally on God's presence: they do not have matter, they do not have energy, they do not exist within any structure of time itself.
So heaven is like a sheet of gold yet it's gold that has no atomic structure, and thus no matter or material existence, no energy, and thus it is not "mental" or "light" or "spirit beams" based, and there is no thread or sequence of time (that is the most difficult for humans to understand), so things do not come into being, or arrive in heaven, and then experience elapsed time. Heaven's eternity is not endless time, it is the absence of time in total and at all. Time will only become relevant again when at the Second Coming bodies are raised and a new place that does have something akin to matter, energy and time is created for those who are saved and who live in the Lord's presence. Regular heaven, however, has no matter, energy or experience of time, not because people are so happy that they are oblivious to time, but because time does not exist as a concept or a reality in heaven.
So no matter how marvelous anything is that one observes in the universe, from the subatomic to the intergalactic, remember that it is still a place that was created to be utilitarian, to provide a use, which is to support in a good way (as all of God's creation is good) objects and living creatures (humans, animals and plants) that are composed of matter, energy and time. Thus it is appropriate to be awed at God's creation and the complexity of life and matter and energy that it supports, all of which have limits to their existence. That's why a really cool plastic item explains it well, since it has a purpose, even if it is only visual or supportive.
However, one can't start thinking one can imagine what heaven is like by looking into outer space, or by smashing atomic particles and looking at the bits. That's because heaven simply does not exist in either matter, energy or time format at all. God, the angels and those who are the dearly departed who are saved and find themselves in God's presence after death are not to be found within structures, no matter how large or small, that are material, energy and/or time based. There is no "God particle" and there are no "angels" in stars. There are no "hidden" dimensions or "multiple universes" (sorry scientists and science fiction writers!) God created and natural laws put into place by God rule all that is needed to support matter, energy and time on the one hand, the one universe, and all that is need to support non-matter, non-energy and non-time, subsisting only on God's actual presence, on the other hand.
That, by the way, is why hell is so terrible. Those who are cast into hell still experience the effects of time, matter and energy, even though they are no longer in the universe. Those in heaven do not experience time, matter or energy; they only experience the complete fulfillment of God.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
(hi young people! just a quick shout out...)
God created the universe, and it is exactly as it appears. The more that humans develop telescopes and other scientific equipment, the more can be seen about the universe, marveled at and measured, studied and better understood. I have noticed that those who study the universe as a profession tend to have a strong sense of aesthetics too, for they really enjoy and marvel at photos of outer space, or of earth as seen from space, and want to look farther outward and thus backwards in age. So the wonder of space is genuinely felt by the workers in that profession.
There's a slight temptation associated with studying anything, whether it is a small device or a large natural feature. Familiarity breeds contempt as the saying goes, and I'm not saying it is that strong, but the temptation is that the more one thinks one has collected information, the more one is tempted to feel that the topic (and unconsciously, the thing itself) is "understood" by you and hence somewhat "under your control." Let me give an example. The more one is able to photograph a remote and dim region of the universe, the more the person tends to forget that no one will ever go there. Scientists and other space fans can look at a million photographs of a galaxy that is 200 light years away, for a example, and start to feel that the galaxy itself is "at hand" as much as the photographs are in their actual hands. That is something of a flaw or, rather, an affectation (not affection, but affectation, a presumption) of human thinking. They lose their appropriate awe because familiarity has bred contempt. They now start thinking they can imagine "what it would be like" in that galaxy, just because they have collected some data. They confuse scientific speculation with familiarity. They forget that no human will ever visit distant parts of space, and likely not even venture outside of the solar system itself. Why? Because of the inherent limitations of human physical ability combined with the simple physics and lack of time that humanity can expect per generation. See all my previous lifespan discussion. The universe, indeed the solar system, is simply too vast to ever be explored by humans. Imagining otherwise and taking photographs and making plans simply does not "make it so."
So one can and one must have appropriate awe about the universe, and enjoy it, study it, and even explore the parts that one is able to, in safe, logical and proportionate ways. But the bottom line of reality that everyone must always maintain is awareness that 1) no matter how much you collect "data" it's not the same as assuming you have any genuine insight and 2) it is simply too vast to ever be traveled.
Having said that, follow this analogy with me. As wonderful as the universe is, it is still a created thing, a thing that was created by God. Heaven too is a created thing, but there is a huge difference. Heaven was created by God to be inhabited by his companions, the angels, and the souls of humans who are brought there upon their death if they are believers and they are just and righteous, and heaven does not have matter, energy or the passing of time. The universe was created to be the framing, the infrastructure for life, and human life is all that any human has to really think about, and thus it was created in order to support a system made of matter, energy and time. So on the one hand you have the heavenly realm that was created to support matter-less, energy-less and time-less beings (and is God's natural abode, though he is of course everywhere too), while on the other hand you have the universe that was created to support matter-based, energy-based and time-based beings and objects (people and rocks, e.g.)
So here is my analogy and image. Imagine in one hand a really cool and beautiful piece of plastic. Let's say that it's a pretty, super lightweight and durable object, very high tech and fun to look at and to use. Now, picture the same object in your other hand but made out of solid gold. Here is the bottom line:
Even the most awesome sight that one sees in the universe, peering out into space using the Hubble telescope or whatever, is like seeing really impressive plastic. Ultimately even the largest supernova, the biggest galaxy, the oldest stars, the most mystical appearing nebula or clouds of gas, they are all like marvelous and very useful plastic, plastic that was created by God to be useful and to support existence that is based on matter, energy and time.
One can marvel at how well God created something so good that it is perfect for its niche, its niche being the place where objects and life that rely on having matter, energy and time can and do exist.
But heaven, ah heaven, is so far beyond even the most wonderful sights of the universe that it must be compared to being made of gold, but gold that is not even of matter or light. That is what St. John tried to describe seeing in the Book of Revelation, but here I'm just using it as an analogy to help you imagine the distance between appropriate awe of the universe and appropriate awe of heaven. Not only is heaven of, in this analogy, a much finer material, wrought by God of gold while the universe is wrought by God of really cool plastic, but the beings that exist in heaven exist totally on God's presence: they do not have matter, they do not have energy, they do not exist within any structure of time itself.
So heaven is like a sheet of gold yet it's gold that has no atomic structure, and thus no matter or material existence, no energy, and thus it is not "mental" or "light" or "spirit beams" based, and there is no thread or sequence of time (that is the most difficult for humans to understand), so things do not come into being, or arrive in heaven, and then experience elapsed time. Heaven's eternity is not endless time, it is the absence of time in total and at all. Time will only become relevant again when at the Second Coming bodies are raised and a new place that does have something akin to matter, energy and time is created for those who are saved and who live in the Lord's presence. Regular heaven, however, has no matter, energy or experience of time, not because people are so happy that they are oblivious to time, but because time does not exist as a concept or a reality in heaven.
So no matter how marvelous anything is that one observes in the universe, from the subatomic to the intergalactic, remember that it is still a place that was created to be utilitarian, to provide a use, which is to support in a good way (as all of God's creation is good) objects and living creatures (humans, animals and plants) that are composed of matter, energy and time. Thus it is appropriate to be awed at God's creation and the complexity of life and matter and energy that it supports, all of which have limits to their existence. That's why a really cool plastic item explains it well, since it has a purpose, even if it is only visual or supportive.
However, one can't start thinking one can imagine what heaven is like by looking into outer space, or by smashing atomic particles and looking at the bits. That's because heaven simply does not exist in either matter, energy or time format at all. God, the angels and those who are the dearly departed who are saved and find themselves in God's presence after death are not to be found within structures, no matter how large or small, that are material, energy and/or time based. There is no "God particle" and there are no "angels" in stars. There are no "hidden" dimensions or "multiple universes" (sorry scientists and science fiction writers!) God created and natural laws put into place by God rule all that is needed to support matter, energy and time on the one hand, the one universe, and all that is need to support non-matter, non-energy and non-time, subsisting only on God's actual presence, on the other hand.
That, by the way, is why hell is so terrible. Those who are cast into hell still experience the effects of time, matter and energy, even though they are no longer in the universe. Those in heaven do not experience time, matter or energy; they only experience the complete fulfillment of God.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
(hi young people! just a quick shout out...)
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Understanding prayer via faith and reasoning
In the news one reads that people ask for prayers in time of hardship, for themselves and for others, such as loved ones. Some if not many of those requests are sincere and justified. Some are sincere but not justified, and others are insincere. The great worry is who exactly are they recommending praying to? Here is where I want to use an analogy to help you to better discern what is really going on and to understand genuine, effective prayer.
Genuine, effective, justified prayer is directed to God alone. Now, some of you may ask, wait a minute, what about traditional cultural prayers that are directed to presumed divine entities other than God? Remember, as I have always stated, I am not critiquing traditional faiths that are not monotheistic. However, many, if not most, modern people, particularly those who have access to the media, are hypocrites who try to artificially cement together some sort of New Age "belief" where they believe in God when it is convenient, but they subordinate God's reality and primacy to pieces of crazy quilt chunks of "other faiths," resulting in pure idolatry that they punctuate with supposed belief in God. In essence while they state God on occasion with their mouths, they venerate the works and beliefs of their own hands and thus are idolaters. This is particularly true of those who claim (in Star Wars kind of voices) that the "force" is with them. That is a thinly disguised idolatry where they feel they can manipulate power that is "available" to them. So I thought of this analogy to help you, especially young people, who have been raised on a diet of believing in theoretical cartoon super heroes but not the real God.
When one prays to God, one can put in front of God your wishes for resolution of a matter, but you realize that God may or may not respond to your hopes as you may wish. So in this sincere and justified prayer, you know that God is in control, and that he will do what he will, and that even disappointing results will yield at some point that you cannot see good fruit and grace. Grace is given to those who pray in this way, with a sincere heart, to God, not as a "reward" for obeying, but because that IS the way it "works."
When one prays to some sort of "forces" in the "universe," and worse, actually perform deeds and works to try to invoke the powers of those forces, one is, of course, treading on the ground of witchcraft, sorcery, idolatry, fraud, self deception and danger. Here is the analogy to help you. Most defenders of such beliefs use the expression that they are "tapping into" this or that "force" or "gift." The English language idiom "tapping into" means to insert a device by which one can siphon off a flowing product. Thus people who harvest tree sap for making syrup "tap into" the tree. People who steal TV cable service "tap into" the legitimate cable with their own connection leading to their own TV. People who listen in on phone conversations "tap into" the telecommunications signal. New Age believers and other idolaters most closely envision themselves "tapping into" electricity, just like plugging an appliance into the electrical wall outlet.
So here are the two problems with that imagery. One is the obvious that they are all "tapping into" not divine "universal" forces but simply strongly concentrated manmade or otherwise created "forces," and by no means are they tapping into anything divine or of God, not even his smallest fingernail's worth. When one plugs an electric fan into the wall, one is using a manmade plug to insert into a manmade socket in a manmade wall to access manmade wiring that carries man generated electricity (that you receive manmade bills for and pay with manmade money) all generated by a manmade power plant. So their understanding of how the universe is bogus from the get go because they are mixing apples and oranges in their own verbiage and understanding. The "forces" of the "universe" are not "just like" "tapping into" "something." When one prays to "forces" and attempts to invoke them through works, deeds and thoughts, you are, by definition, working only with manmade devices. You are not surrendering to God your problems, your hopes, and your faith, and "allowing" God to respond as he will. You are simply juggling, fruitlessly, manmade concepts, devices and efforts.
So that is the faith part of the faith and reasoning balance. Faith is understanding and believing that there is God alone, God who is in control and who will respond, even if you cannot see, cannot fully believe yet, and cannot comprehend his reasoning. As the man said to Jesus, "Lord I believe, help my unbelief." Faith is being at that starting point of genuine belief, even though one needs assistance, from God himself, and from others in the genuine faith community (which is why the pathway of the genuine saints is often studied by those seeking to develop and strengthen their own faith). "Tapping into forces" is not faith. It is idolatry, which is to attempt to give godly powers to devices and imaginings of one's own making. There is an entire industry and self delusion about "tapping into" "one's own" "inner" whatevers, including presuming one has one's own "godliness." I think not, and I have yet to meet a single person alive today who has had a genuine godly thought in him or her. Godliness comes only from God himself, I mean, duh. "Tapping into" forces or one's self leads away from God, not toward him.
Therefore, let's give the person who is "tapping into universal forces" some credit in this next part of the analogy. Let us suppose he or she (I use expressions like 'manmade' for brevity and also for ease of reading by those who do not have English as their first language) responds to my criticism of the plugging an appliance into the manmade electrical power generator and he or she says, "Fair enough, what you say is accurate. But what do you say if I change my thinking so that I'm not tapping into a manmade electrical outlet, but tell you that my imagery is tapping into the power of natural electrical forces in the universe, such as lightning, or the electric field of the planets, etc." You see, there is the problem. Even a sincere minded person such as this imaginary dialog partner continues to try to "tap into" something that is mindless. Do you really want to try to wield supposed power from a lightning bolt? Or imagine that you are gathering in your hands the electrical force field that is in theory emitted from Pluto or whatever? First of all, this person is assuming that like maple syrup that such fields truly exist and they exist in a divisible and usable way. How does a person using reasoning and logic respond to this preposition? Reply, "OK, all powerful one, hand me some gravity. Just break off a piece for me to carry around and use."
Quickly the logical person perceives that no power in the universe can be "tapped" or "utilized" without a manmade device. The only way someone can "hand you some gravity" is to build devices that allow you to experience forces of gravity, or punch you in the face and abuse you until your battered body hits the floor due to gravity. Neither is very godly. You see, using logic and reasoning you are able to not get swept away in a bogus analogy but say, "Well, hang on, how exactly would that work?" And you remember that the "forces" in the universe are emitted due to natural activities, and any "tapping" of them is not divine, but good old machinery if done in reality, and good old idolatry if done in one's mind.
Again, giving the person credit for being sincere, although totally lacking in genuine faith and understanding, imagine that he or she says, "Well, alright then. You've got me there. But that does not explain ESP." (What self puffed up people call being "psychic" nowadays). Erm, um, sorry, but oh yes it does. What do you "tap" into your supposed ESP or "psychic" power with? A human brain. And we all know the human brain is far from all powerful or divine. I mean, you can't even explain migraines but you think that because some ESP power is a reality that this is somehow evidence that you wield divine ability or "tap into" "universal forces?" I think not. Again, just like tapping the maple tree to get the sap to make the syrup, the human body and all of its parts are a created thing, not divine. Those of you who have been reading my God the All Knowing series understand how a human brain (no matter how presumably "smart" the person is) cannot be compared to God's All Knowing. See, a person cannot "tap into God consciousness" because the human brain is limited by not only its obvious size and other flaws but its structure as, like the tree, a created object. God exists outside of time, outside of matter, and outside of energy (aka "forces") and thus cannot be understood nor can he be "accessed" by any created object, such as a brain in a body, since those are totally in the world of matter, energy and time.
Just to go a little further with this, again, anticipating what the person might respond to this, consider angels, genuine angels. They were created by God and abide in his realm, where there is no matter, energy or time. That is why they are able to receive and share in God's beatific vision. But just suppose for argument's sake, in order to help you to understand this crucial point, for some reason, to show this to you, God took an angel from heaven and put him into a human body on earth. That angel would no longer be able to receive or share in God's inner being since the angel is now within "incompatible with God hardware," to use a computer term. Any created object, particularly the human body, is incompatible with "tapping into" God. Totally. Those of you who are geeks and wonks can probably best appreciate this understanding. God is outside of time, matter and energy, and humans would be an input/output device that is entirely bound by time, matter and energy. Angels are entirely outside of human and universe constraint in that they are created, but they are created by God outside of time, energy and matter.
So no, not even genuine powers of ESP demonstrates any "tapping into" of supposed "universal forces," since it is simply an evolved trait of animals too, akin to what we call animal instinct. It's a survival trait and what is a survival trait? An ability that helps a biological being (created not divine) to survive (its matter and energy continues to exist for a period of time). Voila!
The scales certainly should be falling from some eyes now. It is so abundantly clear that prayer is directed toward God and God alone, and can not and should not be confused with even impressive attempts, all of which are manmade or man controlled, to "tap into" natural energy in the universe (energy being created by God but not of God or angels at all) or to vaunt their own biological survival traits, such as ESP, which again are survival traits because they assist in achieving a measure of time (time) of life (matter and energy), again which is totally not of God. Created by God, yes, "of God," no. Prayer is the only I/O "device" that bridges the totally incompatible hardware of humans (time, matter, energy) and God (eternity, always being, no matter or energy, those being only some of his creations but not what he "dwells" within.) And prayer only "works" because you are not attempting to manage God's reply, his "output."
I hope you have found this to be helpful.
Genuine, effective, justified prayer is directed to God alone. Now, some of you may ask, wait a minute, what about traditional cultural prayers that are directed to presumed divine entities other than God? Remember, as I have always stated, I am not critiquing traditional faiths that are not monotheistic. However, many, if not most, modern people, particularly those who have access to the media, are hypocrites who try to artificially cement together some sort of New Age "belief" where they believe in God when it is convenient, but they subordinate God's reality and primacy to pieces of crazy quilt chunks of "other faiths," resulting in pure idolatry that they punctuate with supposed belief in God. In essence while they state God on occasion with their mouths, they venerate the works and beliefs of their own hands and thus are idolaters. This is particularly true of those who claim (in Star Wars kind of voices) that the "force" is with them. That is a thinly disguised idolatry where they feel they can manipulate power that is "available" to them. So I thought of this analogy to help you, especially young people, who have been raised on a diet of believing in theoretical cartoon super heroes but not the real God.
When one prays to God, one can put in front of God your wishes for resolution of a matter, but you realize that God may or may not respond to your hopes as you may wish. So in this sincere and justified prayer, you know that God is in control, and that he will do what he will, and that even disappointing results will yield at some point that you cannot see good fruit and grace. Grace is given to those who pray in this way, with a sincere heart, to God, not as a "reward" for obeying, but because that IS the way it "works."
When one prays to some sort of "forces" in the "universe," and worse, actually perform deeds and works to try to invoke the powers of those forces, one is, of course, treading on the ground of witchcraft, sorcery, idolatry, fraud, self deception and danger. Here is the analogy to help you. Most defenders of such beliefs use the expression that they are "tapping into" this or that "force" or "gift." The English language idiom "tapping into" means to insert a device by which one can siphon off a flowing product. Thus people who harvest tree sap for making syrup "tap into" the tree. People who steal TV cable service "tap into" the legitimate cable with their own connection leading to their own TV. People who listen in on phone conversations "tap into" the telecommunications signal. New Age believers and other idolaters most closely envision themselves "tapping into" electricity, just like plugging an appliance into the electrical wall outlet.
So here are the two problems with that imagery. One is the obvious that they are all "tapping into" not divine "universal" forces but simply strongly concentrated manmade or otherwise created "forces," and by no means are they tapping into anything divine or of God, not even his smallest fingernail's worth. When one plugs an electric fan into the wall, one is using a manmade plug to insert into a manmade socket in a manmade wall to access manmade wiring that carries man generated electricity (that you receive manmade bills for and pay with manmade money) all generated by a manmade power plant. So their understanding of how the universe is bogus from the get go because they are mixing apples and oranges in their own verbiage and understanding. The "forces" of the "universe" are not "just like" "tapping into" "something." When one prays to "forces" and attempts to invoke them through works, deeds and thoughts, you are, by definition, working only with manmade devices. You are not surrendering to God your problems, your hopes, and your faith, and "allowing" God to respond as he will. You are simply juggling, fruitlessly, manmade concepts, devices and efforts.
So that is the faith part of the faith and reasoning balance. Faith is understanding and believing that there is God alone, God who is in control and who will respond, even if you cannot see, cannot fully believe yet, and cannot comprehend his reasoning. As the man said to Jesus, "Lord I believe, help my unbelief." Faith is being at that starting point of genuine belief, even though one needs assistance, from God himself, and from others in the genuine faith community (which is why the pathway of the genuine saints is often studied by those seeking to develop and strengthen their own faith). "Tapping into forces" is not faith. It is idolatry, which is to attempt to give godly powers to devices and imaginings of one's own making. There is an entire industry and self delusion about "tapping into" "one's own" "inner" whatevers, including presuming one has one's own "godliness." I think not, and I have yet to meet a single person alive today who has had a genuine godly thought in him or her. Godliness comes only from God himself, I mean, duh. "Tapping into" forces or one's self leads away from God, not toward him.
Therefore, let's give the person who is "tapping into universal forces" some credit in this next part of the analogy. Let us suppose he or she (I use expressions like 'manmade' for brevity and also for ease of reading by those who do not have English as their first language) responds to my criticism of the plugging an appliance into the manmade electrical power generator and he or she says, "Fair enough, what you say is accurate. But what do you say if I change my thinking so that I'm not tapping into a manmade electrical outlet, but tell you that my imagery is tapping into the power of natural electrical forces in the universe, such as lightning, or the electric field of the planets, etc." You see, there is the problem. Even a sincere minded person such as this imaginary dialog partner continues to try to "tap into" something that is mindless. Do you really want to try to wield supposed power from a lightning bolt? Or imagine that you are gathering in your hands the electrical force field that is in theory emitted from Pluto or whatever? First of all, this person is assuming that like maple syrup that such fields truly exist and they exist in a divisible and usable way. How does a person using reasoning and logic respond to this preposition? Reply, "OK, all powerful one, hand me some gravity. Just break off a piece for me to carry around and use."
Quickly the logical person perceives that no power in the universe can be "tapped" or "utilized" without a manmade device. The only way someone can "hand you some gravity" is to build devices that allow you to experience forces of gravity, or punch you in the face and abuse you until your battered body hits the floor due to gravity. Neither is very godly. You see, using logic and reasoning you are able to not get swept away in a bogus analogy but say, "Well, hang on, how exactly would that work?" And you remember that the "forces" in the universe are emitted due to natural activities, and any "tapping" of them is not divine, but good old machinery if done in reality, and good old idolatry if done in one's mind.
Again, giving the person credit for being sincere, although totally lacking in genuine faith and understanding, imagine that he or she says, "Well, alright then. You've got me there. But that does not explain ESP." (What self puffed up people call being "psychic" nowadays). Erm, um, sorry, but oh yes it does. What do you "tap" into your supposed ESP or "psychic" power with? A human brain. And we all know the human brain is far from all powerful or divine. I mean, you can't even explain migraines but you think that because some ESP power is a reality that this is somehow evidence that you wield divine ability or "tap into" "universal forces?" I think not. Again, just like tapping the maple tree to get the sap to make the syrup, the human body and all of its parts are a created thing, not divine. Those of you who have been reading my God the All Knowing series understand how a human brain (no matter how presumably "smart" the person is) cannot be compared to God's All Knowing. See, a person cannot "tap into God consciousness" because the human brain is limited by not only its obvious size and other flaws but its structure as, like the tree, a created object. God exists outside of time, outside of matter, and outside of energy (aka "forces") and thus cannot be understood nor can he be "accessed" by any created object, such as a brain in a body, since those are totally in the world of matter, energy and time.
Just to go a little further with this, again, anticipating what the person might respond to this, consider angels, genuine angels. They were created by God and abide in his realm, where there is no matter, energy or time. That is why they are able to receive and share in God's beatific vision. But just suppose for argument's sake, in order to help you to understand this crucial point, for some reason, to show this to you, God took an angel from heaven and put him into a human body on earth. That angel would no longer be able to receive or share in God's inner being since the angel is now within "incompatible with God hardware," to use a computer term. Any created object, particularly the human body, is incompatible with "tapping into" God. Totally. Those of you who are geeks and wonks can probably best appreciate this understanding. God is outside of time, matter and energy, and humans would be an input/output device that is entirely bound by time, matter and energy. Angels are entirely outside of human and universe constraint in that they are created, but they are created by God outside of time, energy and matter.
So no, not even genuine powers of ESP demonstrates any "tapping into" of supposed "universal forces," since it is simply an evolved trait of animals too, akin to what we call animal instinct. It's a survival trait and what is a survival trait? An ability that helps a biological being (created not divine) to survive (its matter and energy continues to exist for a period of time). Voila!
The scales certainly should be falling from some eyes now. It is so abundantly clear that prayer is directed toward God and God alone, and can not and should not be confused with even impressive attempts, all of which are manmade or man controlled, to "tap into" natural energy in the universe (energy being created by God but not of God or angels at all) or to vaunt their own biological survival traits, such as ESP, which again are survival traits because they assist in achieving a measure of time (time) of life (matter and energy), again which is totally not of God. Created by God, yes, "of God," no. Prayer is the only I/O "device" that bridges the totally incompatible hardware of humans (time, matter, energy) and God (eternity, always being, no matter or energy, those being only some of his creations but not what he "dwells" within.) And prayer only "works" because you are not attempting to manage God's reply, his "output."
I hope you have found this to be helpful.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Modern "cleanliness" is not so clean
Believe me, I do not enjoy it when I am forced to assume a lecturing and somewhat preachy “school marmish” tone with my blog readers, but there we have it: it is often necessary. For those of you who are young or non-English native language readers, a “school marm” is what the female teacher in a one room school house used to be called back in the prairie and Western settlement days. It is slang for a woman teacher who has to keep a strict rein on her pupils, who are rowdy and undisciplined. So with that as a foreword and forewarning, here is the subject: how modern notions of “cleanliness” have contributed to destroying the planet’s health, has reduced rather than improved human health, and has resulted in unbalanced mental and emotional views about “cleanliness.”
This is mostly going to be a history and social lesson and rumination, but here is the theology link: The often quoted “cleanliness is next to godliness” is not a quotation from the Bible. In fact, the only cleanliness referred to in the Bible was related to 1) religious injunctions and strictures, 2) hospitality and 3) spiritual and soul cleanliness, not the vanity of the body. I’m going to return to this subject later on and describe how “cleanliness” “worked” in Biblical times, but first I need to give my mostly youthful and affluent readership a few rings on the clue phone about recent history of modern “cleanliness.”
Let us start with the primary concern (aka obsession) among westerners, which is “washing” by using water in either a bath or most modernly the shower. Baths have, in general, become passé and are often not even installed in modern structures, with the assumption being everyone either uses the shower or if they want to “soak,” they do so for recreation, social and erotic reasons in hot tubs, Jacuzzis and so forth. So to keep it simple let’s talk about showers in the modern vernacular, but understand that all bodily washing previous to the past several decades was conducted in a bath tub or other container.
Why is this? Well, my young and spoiled audience, until recently having water pumped into a house at all was a luxury, not something that one would squander in a running shower that goes right down the drain. Further, the fuel to heat the water was likewise scarce. For nearly two thousand years since Biblical times until pretty much the 1950’s, water and the fuel to heat it required often backbreaking work to prepare and was expensive for the average impoverished or marginally poor family. Now here’s the rub: just because for two thousand years people did not shower that does not mean they were “dirty,” “unclean” or “smelled bad.” That is one of the great delusions of this post-intellectual society where people have skewed and distorted notions regarding just about everything. So I’m going to tell you “what it was like” as recently as the 1950’s, when I was growing up.
There is an old expression “the Saturday night bath.” This came about from the reality that the average poor family did indeed have a bath only once a week. The water was pumped from outside the house and carried by many trips with the bucket into the central location (usually the kitchen), where a large tub was filled with the water, cold water. However, if this was to be a warm bath, each bucket of water was heated, using precious coal or cut firewood, before being added to the tub. Then each person in the family took turns in the tub, using the same water.
One of the housekeeper’s main chores was to keep the family with a good supply of soap, which was made by hand by each family. What is soap? Soap is a substance that facilitates cleaning. It is not an antiseptic, as so many crazy people think today, though it had a slight element of it. Here is how soap “works.” Soap is made up of a combination of three substances that do the following: one dissolves dirt, one is abrasive to scrub the dirt away, and one is slightly reactive in an astringent way, kind of a slight antiseptic but also to make the dirt bubble up somewhat as it is scraped away. Thus soap is made up of a fat (from either an animal or plant oil), an abrasive such as ashes or sand, and a reactive material such as lye. The fat dissolves the dirt and outer layer of skin, the abrasive sloughs it away, and the reactive material makes it easy to remove and is somewhat antiseptic. Now people did not know about germs and so forth but being farmers and animal hide tanners they knew about rot. That is how people over the years realized to use substances such as lye in soap, without realizing they were also destroying some germs.
So having a bath was a huge amount of work, with hauling the water, heating it up, and using preciously made soap, for most people who were until modern times poor and of the lower classes. Even when most homes had hot water bathrooms and bath tubs in the 1950s onward, poor people still maintained a high standard of cleanliness in between infrequent baths. Whoa, wait! Did you read that right or did I make a typo? Did I really mean to say these poor slobs maintained a “high” standard of cleanliness? Didn’t I mean that they were dirty bums? Nope, I meant what I said. How did people “stay clean” when they only had weekly baths? They were EXPECTED TO STAY CLEAN ON A ROUTINE DAILY BASIS. Even men who worked in the coal mines and so forth, or in the field, in dirty jobs, were expected to stay as clean as possible on a daily basis. How did they do that? It’s a wonderful invention called a washcloth and a bar of soap. For several thousand years humans kept themselves clean by using the hand water pump located outdoors or in modern times, brought inside via a sink through modern plumbing, to “wash up” using a bar of soap and a washcloth. Imagine that!
That is exactly how things worked in my household growing up, and that is how I maintain my body, for the most part, to this day. We had a bathtub and a warm water plumbing but my dad being born in 1903 and my mother being a war refugee kept themselves clean on a daily basis, and taught me to do the same, until one had the weekly, or if for reason more frequently, full bath. That’s one reason I have lots of wonderful washcloths, and not because I have psychic solidarity with former POW Senator John McCain who as a POW realized one’s one washcloth was one’s only and most treasured possession. People who were thrifty with resources (water and fuel) either to be thrifty, from necessity, or because to procure them meant back breaking work, learned how to maximize cleanliness while causing a small “footprint” on earth resources over a period of hundreds of years. I have persistently favored a bar of a good soap, washcloths, and a once or twice a week bath, PERIOD.
The exception to what I outlined above was that small children received daily baths (and think about it that usually was in the kitchen sink or in a basin.) I still remember very well the small white galvanized basin that as a baby I was put into and washed: not filling up the tub until I was older. The basin had a red rim and two holes, which fascinated me as a baby (the holes were for hanging the basin if needed). So babies were washed daily, even by the poor, since they were seated in a small basin that was easy to fill with warm water. They didn’t drown too many babies back then while “bathing them” either. Being thrifty is also being safe, in many cases. The other exception in the 1950’s was when more and more kids, even in poor neighborhoods, had sports activities and access to school showers. People today do not realize what a change that was in how things were. So my brother was expected to shower at school, if he could, when he was in sports. Our cheap mother would otherwise argue and begrudge him using the shower or the tub in the house. See, I can share this with you because as I’ve pointed out in previous blog postings, I’m old enough to have personally experienced and can witness to you how the older generations lived, how they thrived, and how they coped and made do.
So let’s look at this wonderfully “clean” generation. We have droughts everywhere and the cost of water is going up, but people think they are filthy and damned if they don’t have a lavish shower, where the water runs down the drain, every day. Do they use regular biodegradable bars of soap? Nope. They use “bath products,” which are filled with chemicals that damage the environment and also the skin. So rather than “keep it clean in between” on a daily basis as my generation did (except for the rich ones of course who always had what they wanted, LOL), these same young people who worry about one’s “carbon footprint” sneer at someone like me who “keeps it clean in between” and who does not take a daily shower.
The same is true of washing one’s hair. NO ONE washed their hair on a daily basis anywhere in the world, EVER, until the last fifty years or so. People understood that washing the hair strips it of its vital oils and makes the scalp unhealthy, rather than “clean.” This is the origin of the old saying “one hundred strokes” came from: women used to brush or comb their hair with one hundred strokes every night to stimulate the scalp and distribute the hair’s natural oil. (That, by the way, is what a bird does when it “preens” its feathers. The bird is grasping each feather in its beak or bill, squeezing until the oil glands exude oil, and then spreads the oil in an even coating over each feather. That is not just beauty treatment; that is survival necessity as birds must be waterproofed using their natural oil in order to survive). Women would wash their hair on the weekly ‘bath day’ and to keep it clean in between they would comb or brush their hair and scalp with one hundred strokes.
The downfall of soap came about through two causes. One is the desire to have beautiful fragrance at a cheap price, so instead of using genuinely natural scented flowers and herbs, modern “bath products” are packed with artificial chemicals and colors that look and smell “like” “natural” substances, but are not. Indeed people are just scratching the surface at realizing how packed with cancer and pollution causing chemical such “cleanliness” products are. The other is the obsession with germs and doing a “thorough” cleaning, which means packing cleansers with nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and other chemical compounds, rather than the good old formula of oil/lye and abrasive. All of this crap, along with the wasted water of daily showers and the heating energy uses, is squandered each and every day by millions of people who think they are somehow better people for it than their grandparents who kept themselves clean as needed, and not according to one’s overheated imagination.
I spoke up about this through my local Audubon society at a city council hearing when I was in high school (1969-1970 as I recall) when modern laundry detergents, packed with nitrogen and phosphorus, were causing the lakes to be destroyed via algae blooms. For forty years I have been warning that the “cleanliness” craze was helping to destroy the planet (while, ironically, no one wants to build latrines for the over one billion people in the world who still crap in the fields and the streets). People would read and drool over science fiction like “Dune,” while then having their daily shower packed with artificial chemicals that harm both the environment and the body’s health, rather than enhance it. People don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom or handling raw food, but boy, they brag about their daily showers and their hair gels. They pay to go to fitness centers but they sneer at me for using a washcloth at the sink, as needed, and scrubbing, rather than standing like a rich moron under a shower and letting the water run down the drain.
For quite a while I have given up. I buy the lotions and bath potions in the dollar store because I like how the pretty bottles look, and artificial fragrance is all that the average person can get these days. I rub the hand creams packed with chemicals into my hands because frankly, my dears, I don’t give a rat’s ass anymore, since no one acts upon my warnings (except to make things worse, apparently) anyway. But that is one reason why I still buy and use Vaseline. No, not because like so many people I dream about anal sex. Vaseline is a natural product (from the petroleum process) that is great for skin care. My stepfather, bless his soul, used it for his aching muscles when he would work as a car mechanic, finding it helped far more than the chemical laden modern products. So people giggle at my washcloth as needed, my bars of soap, my Vaseline, my preference for a bath than a shower, while at the same time they are destroying the planet and making carbon and water “footprints” bigger than the clown shoes of Bozo the Clown.
So that takes us back to Biblical times. Jesus did not shower. Moses did not shower. Mary did not shower. Peter not only did not shower but he worked as a fisherman, and the gutting and cleaning of fish is one smelly job. The Prophet (PBUH) did not shower. Further, in the Qur’an you can read with great clarity what the spiritual philosophy behind the Bible scriptures is but that most moderns seem to miss. Washing was done in Biblical times primarily for 1) honoring God and 2) as hospitality. People washed to maintain their cleanliness before God, not because God was allocating bodily shower times. Thus the Bible contains instructions for the Israelites for RITUAL washing. Further, as everyone walked the “must wash” “bits” were the feet, and as hospitality, a host would provide such water and a basin and towels. This is why Jesus washed the feet of the Apostles, not because you were getting a glimpse of Biblical water hygiene. So here is where the Qur’an makes this clear for Bible readers who somehow miss that point. The Qur’an explains that worshippers are to wash their feet, their arms up to the elbows, and the face before worshipping God. The Qur’an then says that because God is not trying to make it difficult for people that if water cannot be found then sand can be used for the ritual cleaning. Again, it is impossible for the observant reader to miss that when the scriptures allude to washing it is only for ritual (worship of God) and hospitality reasons. The scriptures are not designed to remind a person to “keep it clean in between” since that’s just part of life and common sense is it not?
Further, what does God command when he wants a good odor in front of him? Not to squander the world’s water with prideful daily showers when they are not needed. No, God asks for sacrifice of incense at the incense altar when he wants a “good odor.” God has never sent a worshipper away for not bathing often enough or not smelling good. Sheesh!
I mention this because of the “cleanliness is next to godliness” old adage that has absolutely no Biblical or scriptural basis whatsoever. I mean, the scriptures do not tell people how often to go pee and poop since that is an “as needed” basis that has nothing to do with sanctity, does it not? But speaking of which, here is more scriptural history for you. During Biblical times people peed and pooped wherever it was convenient. It was often done in the fields since fertilizer came from both human and animal waste. People would “go” whenever and wherever they had to go. They did not have community locations or latrines, as logical as that may seem today, for the reason I just mentioned, that the fields were viewed as benefiting from whatever human or animal soil is placed there. But archeologists recently found evidence that one sect, centered in one village actually had a location outside of the village where people trekked to do their business. That was a great rarity and actually gave modern scientists realization that what seems like advancement in “cleanliness” actually caused a problem. Analysis of the soil along the path to the common latrine reveals that there was a higher evidence of harmful bacteria around that village on that path, rather than less. Why? Because people tracked the bacteria on their feet in the same places over a long period of time, allowing concentrations of bad stuff to build up rather than disperse naturally. Sanitation illness may have been HIGHER among the village that had the shared location to void outside of the village than the other Biblical villages where people just went, mostly in the fields, where it was convenient, and did not beat a path of bad germs.
This is another example of how modern people are too quick at thinking they are superior to “the old ways” and so much “cleaner.” I’m all for latrines and toilets (and again, why are over a billion people in the world not having their sewage concentrated and treated, if moderns are so interested in cleanliness). But think about that example, where without understanding the transmission of germs, that one sect’s village might have thought they had a great idea, which is everyone walk one path to a common place to poop, but instead made a germ highway that could not biodegrade, while the more primitive majority system of “going” in the fields when one needed to meant that nature could handle the biodegradation more thoroughly and without spreading and packing down germ pathways.
Before they were conquered by the whites the American Indians of the plains, the Lakota in particular, often had individuals who lived to their nineties in age and even their hundreds. Yet they did so without having daily showers and chemical laden cleansers. How did they do it? There are two keys. One is that the buffalo meat was incredibly healthy for them, along with the other natural foods that they ate. The other was that they remained active. People don’t “live longer” or are “cleaner” by having daily showers with huge carbon footprints laden with artificially scented and colored chemicals that then rush out the drain to pollute the environment, resist biodegrading and possibly cause cancers.
If I ever attend a Steelers game (which I have a lot of trouble imagining) I won’t mind at all waving my “terrible towel” except that, being mostly modest and authentic, it will be one of my “terrible washcloths.” Perhaps I could attach a hard milled bar of soap with a chain to the end of a stick and wave it as a medieval flail as my environmental and cleanliness message. Course a bar of soap, even as a flail, never hurt anyone, but a chemical filled plastic (pollutes and large footprint) pump containing a chemically filled “liquid soap” would probably do much more harm, as it most certainly does in reality. A bar of soap (for those of you who have forgotten what they look like) dissolves after use, is highly biodegradable, and comes in a waxed paper wrapper, which is also mostly harmless and biodegradable. But hey, why go with that when you can mock while using your daily high footprint plastic container and chemical biodegradable resistant goop that is flushed down the drain in order to strain the water purity even further than it already is? Who really “smells bad” in THAT case?
I hope that you have found this “helpful.”
Here's the reading from the Qur'an:
Surah 4:43 O you who believe! do not go near prayer when you are intoxicated until you know (well) what you say
[This is saying to not go to prayer while drunk but wait until one is sober. Alcohol is of course forbidden in general in Islam, but God here is specifically prohibiting approaching him in prayer while 'impaired.']
nor when you are under obligation to perform a bath
[This means that you must first perform any ritual washing]
-unless (you are) traveling on the road
[In which case one can pray as needed along the way and take the measures listed below]
-until you have washed yourselves; and if you are sick, or on a journey, or one of you come from the privy or you have touched the women, and you cannot find water,
betake yourselves to pure earth, then wipe your faces and your hands; surely Allah is Pardoning; Forgiving.
So this is not a list of times, places and methods to wash the body as one would take a modern shower, but rather it indicates the circumstances under which one must ritually wash before approaching God. So if you have ritually washed, but then before you arrive at the prayer place one of the above circumstances occur (such as going to the bathroom) and you are no longer near the water place, you can use pure earth (sand) to wash one's face and hands.
This is mostly going to be a history and social lesson and rumination, but here is the theology link: The often quoted “cleanliness is next to godliness” is not a quotation from the Bible. In fact, the only cleanliness referred to in the Bible was related to 1) religious injunctions and strictures, 2) hospitality and 3) spiritual and soul cleanliness, not the vanity of the body. I’m going to return to this subject later on and describe how “cleanliness” “worked” in Biblical times, but first I need to give my mostly youthful and affluent readership a few rings on the clue phone about recent history of modern “cleanliness.”
Let us start with the primary concern (aka obsession) among westerners, which is “washing” by using water in either a bath or most modernly the shower. Baths have, in general, become passé and are often not even installed in modern structures, with the assumption being everyone either uses the shower or if they want to “soak,” they do so for recreation, social and erotic reasons in hot tubs, Jacuzzis and so forth. So to keep it simple let’s talk about showers in the modern vernacular, but understand that all bodily washing previous to the past several decades was conducted in a bath tub or other container.
Why is this? Well, my young and spoiled audience, until recently having water pumped into a house at all was a luxury, not something that one would squander in a running shower that goes right down the drain. Further, the fuel to heat the water was likewise scarce. For nearly two thousand years since Biblical times until pretty much the 1950’s, water and the fuel to heat it required often backbreaking work to prepare and was expensive for the average impoverished or marginally poor family. Now here’s the rub: just because for two thousand years people did not shower that does not mean they were “dirty,” “unclean” or “smelled bad.” That is one of the great delusions of this post-intellectual society where people have skewed and distorted notions regarding just about everything. So I’m going to tell you “what it was like” as recently as the 1950’s, when I was growing up.
There is an old expression “the Saturday night bath.” This came about from the reality that the average poor family did indeed have a bath only once a week. The water was pumped from outside the house and carried by many trips with the bucket into the central location (usually the kitchen), where a large tub was filled with the water, cold water. However, if this was to be a warm bath, each bucket of water was heated, using precious coal or cut firewood, before being added to the tub. Then each person in the family took turns in the tub, using the same water.
One of the housekeeper’s main chores was to keep the family with a good supply of soap, which was made by hand by each family. What is soap? Soap is a substance that facilitates cleaning. It is not an antiseptic, as so many crazy people think today, though it had a slight element of it. Here is how soap “works.” Soap is made up of a combination of three substances that do the following: one dissolves dirt, one is abrasive to scrub the dirt away, and one is slightly reactive in an astringent way, kind of a slight antiseptic but also to make the dirt bubble up somewhat as it is scraped away. Thus soap is made up of a fat (from either an animal or plant oil), an abrasive such as ashes or sand, and a reactive material such as lye. The fat dissolves the dirt and outer layer of skin, the abrasive sloughs it away, and the reactive material makes it easy to remove and is somewhat antiseptic. Now people did not know about germs and so forth but being farmers and animal hide tanners they knew about rot. That is how people over the years realized to use substances such as lye in soap, without realizing they were also destroying some germs.
So having a bath was a huge amount of work, with hauling the water, heating it up, and using preciously made soap, for most people who were until modern times poor and of the lower classes. Even when most homes had hot water bathrooms and bath tubs in the 1950s onward, poor people still maintained a high standard of cleanliness in between infrequent baths. Whoa, wait! Did you read that right or did I make a typo? Did I really mean to say these poor slobs maintained a “high” standard of cleanliness? Didn’t I mean that they were dirty bums? Nope, I meant what I said. How did people “stay clean” when they only had weekly baths? They were EXPECTED TO STAY CLEAN ON A ROUTINE DAILY BASIS. Even men who worked in the coal mines and so forth, or in the field, in dirty jobs, were expected to stay as clean as possible on a daily basis. How did they do that? It’s a wonderful invention called a washcloth and a bar of soap. For several thousand years humans kept themselves clean by using the hand water pump located outdoors or in modern times, brought inside via a sink through modern plumbing, to “wash up” using a bar of soap and a washcloth. Imagine that!
That is exactly how things worked in my household growing up, and that is how I maintain my body, for the most part, to this day. We had a bathtub and a warm water plumbing but my dad being born in 1903 and my mother being a war refugee kept themselves clean on a daily basis, and taught me to do the same, until one had the weekly, or if for reason more frequently, full bath. That’s one reason I have lots of wonderful washcloths, and not because I have psychic solidarity with former POW Senator John McCain who as a POW realized one’s one washcloth was one’s only and most treasured possession. People who were thrifty with resources (water and fuel) either to be thrifty, from necessity, or because to procure them meant back breaking work, learned how to maximize cleanliness while causing a small “footprint” on earth resources over a period of hundreds of years. I have persistently favored a bar of a good soap, washcloths, and a once or twice a week bath, PERIOD.
The exception to what I outlined above was that small children received daily baths (and think about it that usually was in the kitchen sink or in a basin.) I still remember very well the small white galvanized basin that as a baby I was put into and washed: not filling up the tub until I was older. The basin had a red rim and two holes, which fascinated me as a baby (the holes were for hanging the basin if needed). So babies were washed daily, even by the poor, since they were seated in a small basin that was easy to fill with warm water. They didn’t drown too many babies back then while “bathing them” either. Being thrifty is also being safe, in many cases. The other exception in the 1950’s was when more and more kids, even in poor neighborhoods, had sports activities and access to school showers. People today do not realize what a change that was in how things were. So my brother was expected to shower at school, if he could, when he was in sports. Our cheap mother would otherwise argue and begrudge him using the shower or the tub in the house. See, I can share this with you because as I’ve pointed out in previous blog postings, I’m old enough to have personally experienced and can witness to you how the older generations lived, how they thrived, and how they coped and made do.
So let’s look at this wonderfully “clean” generation. We have droughts everywhere and the cost of water is going up, but people think they are filthy and damned if they don’t have a lavish shower, where the water runs down the drain, every day. Do they use regular biodegradable bars of soap? Nope. They use “bath products,” which are filled with chemicals that damage the environment and also the skin. So rather than “keep it clean in between” on a daily basis as my generation did (except for the rich ones of course who always had what they wanted, LOL), these same young people who worry about one’s “carbon footprint” sneer at someone like me who “keeps it clean in between” and who does not take a daily shower.
The same is true of washing one’s hair. NO ONE washed their hair on a daily basis anywhere in the world, EVER, until the last fifty years or so. People understood that washing the hair strips it of its vital oils and makes the scalp unhealthy, rather than “clean.” This is the origin of the old saying “one hundred strokes” came from: women used to brush or comb their hair with one hundred strokes every night to stimulate the scalp and distribute the hair’s natural oil. (That, by the way, is what a bird does when it “preens” its feathers. The bird is grasping each feather in its beak or bill, squeezing until the oil glands exude oil, and then spreads the oil in an even coating over each feather. That is not just beauty treatment; that is survival necessity as birds must be waterproofed using their natural oil in order to survive). Women would wash their hair on the weekly ‘bath day’ and to keep it clean in between they would comb or brush their hair and scalp with one hundred strokes.
The downfall of soap came about through two causes. One is the desire to have beautiful fragrance at a cheap price, so instead of using genuinely natural scented flowers and herbs, modern “bath products” are packed with artificial chemicals and colors that look and smell “like” “natural” substances, but are not. Indeed people are just scratching the surface at realizing how packed with cancer and pollution causing chemical such “cleanliness” products are. The other is the obsession with germs and doing a “thorough” cleaning, which means packing cleansers with nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and other chemical compounds, rather than the good old formula of oil/lye and abrasive. All of this crap, along with the wasted water of daily showers and the heating energy uses, is squandered each and every day by millions of people who think they are somehow better people for it than their grandparents who kept themselves clean as needed, and not according to one’s overheated imagination.
I spoke up about this through my local Audubon society at a city council hearing when I was in high school (1969-1970 as I recall) when modern laundry detergents, packed with nitrogen and phosphorus, were causing the lakes to be destroyed via algae blooms. For forty years I have been warning that the “cleanliness” craze was helping to destroy the planet (while, ironically, no one wants to build latrines for the over one billion people in the world who still crap in the fields and the streets). People would read and drool over science fiction like “Dune,” while then having their daily shower packed with artificial chemicals that harm both the environment and the body’s health, rather than enhance it. People don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom or handling raw food, but boy, they brag about their daily showers and their hair gels. They pay to go to fitness centers but they sneer at me for using a washcloth at the sink, as needed, and scrubbing, rather than standing like a rich moron under a shower and letting the water run down the drain.
For quite a while I have given up. I buy the lotions and bath potions in the dollar store because I like how the pretty bottles look, and artificial fragrance is all that the average person can get these days. I rub the hand creams packed with chemicals into my hands because frankly, my dears, I don’t give a rat’s ass anymore, since no one acts upon my warnings (except to make things worse, apparently) anyway. But that is one reason why I still buy and use Vaseline. No, not because like so many people I dream about anal sex. Vaseline is a natural product (from the petroleum process) that is great for skin care. My stepfather, bless his soul, used it for his aching muscles when he would work as a car mechanic, finding it helped far more than the chemical laden modern products. So people giggle at my washcloth as needed, my bars of soap, my Vaseline, my preference for a bath than a shower, while at the same time they are destroying the planet and making carbon and water “footprints” bigger than the clown shoes of Bozo the Clown.
So that takes us back to Biblical times. Jesus did not shower. Moses did not shower. Mary did not shower. Peter not only did not shower but he worked as a fisherman, and the gutting and cleaning of fish is one smelly job. The Prophet (PBUH) did not shower. Further, in the Qur’an you can read with great clarity what the spiritual philosophy behind the Bible scriptures is but that most moderns seem to miss. Washing was done in Biblical times primarily for 1) honoring God and 2) as hospitality. People washed to maintain their cleanliness before God, not because God was allocating bodily shower times. Thus the Bible contains instructions for the Israelites for RITUAL washing. Further, as everyone walked the “must wash” “bits” were the feet, and as hospitality, a host would provide such water and a basin and towels. This is why Jesus washed the feet of the Apostles, not because you were getting a glimpse of Biblical water hygiene. So here is where the Qur’an makes this clear for Bible readers who somehow miss that point. The Qur’an explains that worshippers are to wash their feet, their arms up to the elbows, and the face before worshipping God. The Qur’an then says that because God is not trying to make it difficult for people that if water cannot be found then sand can be used for the ritual cleaning. Again, it is impossible for the observant reader to miss that when the scriptures allude to washing it is only for ritual (worship of God) and hospitality reasons. The scriptures are not designed to remind a person to “keep it clean in between” since that’s just part of life and common sense is it not?
Further, what does God command when he wants a good odor in front of him? Not to squander the world’s water with prideful daily showers when they are not needed. No, God asks for sacrifice of incense at the incense altar when he wants a “good odor.” God has never sent a worshipper away for not bathing often enough or not smelling good. Sheesh!
I mention this because of the “cleanliness is next to godliness” old adage that has absolutely no Biblical or scriptural basis whatsoever. I mean, the scriptures do not tell people how often to go pee and poop since that is an “as needed” basis that has nothing to do with sanctity, does it not? But speaking of which, here is more scriptural history for you. During Biblical times people peed and pooped wherever it was convenient. It was often done in the fields since fertilizer came from both human and animal waste. People would “go” whenever and wherever they had to go. They did not have community locations or latrines, as logical as that may seem today, for the reason I just mentioned, that the fields were viewed as benefiting from whatever human or animal soil is placed there. But archeologists recently found evidence that one sect, centered in one village actually had a location outside of the village where people trekked to do their business. That was a great rarity and actually gave modern scientists realization that what seems like advancement in “cleanliness” actually caused a problem. Analysis of the soil along the path to the common latrine reveals that there was a higher evidence of harmful bacteria around that village on that path, rather than less. Why? Because people tracked the bacteria on their feet in the same places over a long period of time, allowing concentrations of bad stuff to build up rather than disperse naturally. Sanitation illness may have been HIGHER among the village that had the shared location to void outside of the village than the other Biblical villages where people just went, mostly in the fields, where it was convenient, and did not beat a path of bad germs.
This is another example of how modern people are too quick at thinking they are superior to “the old ways” and so much “cleaner.” I’m all for latrines and toilets (and again, why are over a billion people in the world not having their sewage concentrated and treated, if moderns are so interested in cleanliness). But think about that example, where without understanding the transmission of germs, that one sect’s village might have thought they had a great idea, which is everyone walk one path to a common place to poop, but instead made a germ highway that could not biodegrade, while the more primitive majority system of “going” in the fields when one needed to meant that nature could handle the biodegradation more thoroughly and without spreading and packing down germ pathways.
Before they were conquered by the whites the American Indians of the plains, the Lakota in particular, often had individuals who lived to their nineties in age and even their hundreds. Yet they did so without having daily showers and chemical laden cleansers. How did they do it? There are two keys. One is that the buffalo meat was incredibly healthy for them, along with the other natural foods that they ate. The other was that they remained active. People don’t “live longer” or are “cleaner” by having daily showers with huge carbon footprints laden with artificially scented and colored chemicals that then rush out the drain to pollute the environment, resist biodegrading and possibly cause cancers.
If I ever attend a Steelers game (which I have a lot of trouble imagining) I won’t mind at all waving my “terrible towel” except that, being mostly modest and authentic, it will be one of my “terrible washcloths.” Perhaps I could attach a hard milled bar of soap with a chain to the end of a stick and wave it as a medieval flail as my environmental and cleanliness message. Course a bar of soap, even as a flail, never hurt anyone, but a chemical filled plastic (pollutes and large footprint) pump containing a chemically filled “liquid soap” would probably do much more harm, as it most certainly does in reality. A bar of soap (for those of you who have forgotten what they look like) dissolves after use, is highly biodegradable, and comes in a waxed paper wrapper, which is also mostly harmless and biodegradable. But hey, why go with that when you can mock while using your daily high footprint plastic container and chemical biodegradable resistant goop that is flushed down the drain in order to strain the water purity even further than it already is? Who really “smells bad” in THAT case?
I hope that you have found this “helpful.”
Here's the reading from the Qur'an:
Surah 4:43 O you who believe! do not go near prayer when you are intoxicated until you know (well) what you say
[This is saying to not go to prayer while drunk but wait until one is sober. Alcohol is of course forbidden in general in Islam, but God here is specifically prohibiting approaching him in prayer while 'impaired.']
nor when you are under obligation to perform a bath
[This means that you must first perform any ritual washing]
-unless (you are) traveling on the road
[In which case one can pray as needed along the way and take the measures listed below]
-until you have washed yourselves; and if you are sick, or on a journey, or one of you come from the privy or you have touched the women, and you cannot find water,
betake yourselves to pure earth, then wipe your faces and your hands; surely Allah is Pardoning; Forgiving.
So this is not a list of times, places and methods to wash the body as one would take a modern shower, but rather it indicates the circumstances under which one must ritually wash before approaching God. So if you have ritually washed, but then before you arrive at the prayer place one of the above circumstances occur (such as going to the bathroom) and you are no longer near the water place, you can use pure earth (sand) to wash one's face and hands.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Very good opinion piece about Middle East
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=112406&d=4&m=8&y=2008
Coexistence of spirit and matter in the Middle EastHassan Bin Youssef Yassin Arab News
The Middle East has played a central role in world affairs since the dawn of human history. Scholars have declared it both the spiritual and the material birthplace of humanity. It was in Mesopotamia that modern civilization was born, with the first organized societies and economies emerging from the agricultural revolution. Some centuries later, the region was to give rise to the world's three monotheistic religions, in the hills of the Holy Land and the deserts of Arabia.
Today it is the spiritual aspect that gets most attention, in both positive and negative ways. The monotheistic order that emerged in the Middle East transformed the world through its unique message, and gave the world its most important connection to the Almighty, in whose guidance and spirit we have lived ever since. Unfortunately the three religions of Islam, Christianity and Judaism have also been used to justify many wars and conflicts in God's name.
The spiritual heritage of the Middle East has brought out the best and the worst in humankind. Generations of human beings have lived better lives through God's guidance and His message.
But too often men have also fought over the belief that they were the true interpreters and servants of God. The call by Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in Madrid to bring people of different faiths together should be viewed as an attempt to defuse such struggles and to allow us to practice unity, respect and tolerance in our interpretations of our common God.
What we tend to forget today is that the Middle East very much remains also a material center of the world, and this aspect is often more entwined with the spiritual aspect than we realize. The region's oil wealth has turned the Middle East into the keystone of world economic stability. This has attracted a great deal of attention to the region, as it has come to symbolize the essential link in the stability and survival of our current economic order.
As the nexus of spiritual and material significance, ignoring one or the other aspects of the Middle East can be extremely damaging to the rest of the world. Should oil be disrupted through further conflicts in the region, the collapse of the world economy is not just a possibility, but a certainty. We must begin looking at the Middle East in its universality, its spiritual and material components, and watch for any factor that can disrupt that balance.
Most importantly, we must give the Middle East the attention it deserves. In the lands where the three monotheistic religions have often been at odds, it is important that we promote stability and understanding, and work at resolving the many conflicts that threaten the region and its vital economic role. The spiritual and the material are nowhere as linked as in the Middle East, and we must all recognize this in order to avert a greater crisis than any the region has witnessed.
- Hassan Bin Youssef Yassin is a political analyst based in Jeddah. He can be contacted at Zyzy30@aol.com
Coexistence of spirit and matter in the Middle EastHassan Bin Youssef Yassin Arab News
The Middle East has played a central role in world affairs since the dawn of human history. Scholars have declared it both the spiritual and the material birthplace of humanity. It was in Mesopotamia that modern civilization was born, with the first organized societies and economies emerging from the agricultural revolution. Some centuries later, the region was to give rise to the world's three monotheistic religions, in the hills of the Holy Land and the deserts of Arabia.
Today it is the spiritual aspect that gets most attention, in both positive and negative ways. The monotheistic order that emerged in the Middle East transformed the world through its unique message, and gave the world its most important connection to the Almighty, in whose guidance and spirit we have lived ever since. Unfortunately the three religions of Islam, Christianity and Judaism have also been used to justify many wars and conflicts in God's name.
The spiritual heritage of the Middle East has brought out the best and the worst in humankind. Generations of human beings have lived better lives through God's guidance and His message.
But too often men have also fought over the belief that they were the true interpreters and servants of God. The call by Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in Madrid to bring people of different faiths together should be viewed as an attempt to defuse such struggles and to allow us to practice unity, respect and tolerance in our interpretations of our common God.
What we tend to forget today is that the Middle East very much remains also a material center of the world, and this aspect is often more entwined with the spiritual aspect than we realize. The region's oil wealth has turned the Middle East into the keystone of world economic stability. This has attracted a great deal of attention to the region, as it has come to symbolize the essential link in the stability and survival of our current economic order.
As the nexus of spiritual and material significance, ignoring one or the other aspects of the Middle East can be extremely damaging to the rest of the world. Should oil be disrupted through further conflicts in the region, the collapse of the world economy is not just a possibility, but a certainty. We must begin looking at the Middle East in its universality, its spiritual and material components, and watch for any factor that can disrupt that balance.
Most importantly, we must give the Middle East the attention it deserves. In the lands where the three monotheistic religions have often been at odds, it is important that we promote stability and understanding, and work at resolving the many conflicts that threaten the region and its vital economic role. The spiritual and the material are nowhere as linked as in the Middle East, and we must all recognize this in order to avert a greater crisis than any the region has witnessed.
- Hassan Bin Youssef Yassin is a political analyst based in Jeddah. He can be contacted at Zyzy30@aol.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
