You are taught by your parents, your teachers, your friends, and society as a whole. Yet despite all the education that surrounds you, there is less truth being spoken than ever in human history. Young people (yes, this is mostly for you, as the older generations have a lot of zombie and metal robot mind that is now ingrown and a barrier), I have discussed the search for truth in the faith context, here is now secular guidance.
I'm stimulated to blog this because I just heard a talk show host whine about how much of a weird martyr he is, blah blah blah, as he tries to be the "educator" of truth. Now, understand this: I'm annoyed by that attitude even if I do agree with a particular statement. Here is why:
You cannot be taught by someone who serves two masters: the truth and commercial enterprise.
No one, no matter how well intentioned or well informed can be the "guru" or the "teacher" of the truth if they are partly zombie due to their being paid for their "truth giving."
This is the downfall of every false prophet, every paid teacher, every parent who has an agenda other than parenthood, and of course politics, media and the school systems in general.
All of them are being paid not to tell the truth, but to enact a role.
Before I continue to explain the problem, let me veer into the faith side of faith and reasoning (which is what I am teaching to you) to help you understand, now, more clearly God. Now you can understand that not only is God the truth in all matters, God is the gold standard by which you must measure truth because... God cannot be paid. God is everything and created everything, and is all Knowing and is everything that ever was or ever will be. God is the only existence that is not only all truth, but is not and cannot be reimbursed in any way for the truth. God gives his truth to the poorest person who gives him nothing; God even gives only the truth to people who spit on him and do not believe him.
So how do you determine who is a truthful teacher? Well, here's a big ring on the clue phone. How much are they paid, depend on having a paying job, write books and charge money for seminars, have perks and position, have prestige lavished on them, or, at the innocent end of the same spectrum though, are enslaved by people who hold their livelihood in their hands, and thus must toe the line in what they teach?
Friends, in the old days, many teachers were unpaid monks and nuns. The elders of villages that had no education system at all told the truth of their culture's beliefs unchanged by agenda to their children generation after generation. This is in contrast to salaries, prestige, offices, titles, retirement plans, second homes and other gains that drive just about every person who "teaches" in this society. How much can you believe the truth? You better understand that you are not getting the truth (intentionally or unintentionally) by anyone who is gaining lots of lucre, swag and ass kissing as a part of their job.
People in the talk show circuit of course are big shots and also peddle their wares and those of others. Don't bother telling me how they have to make a living and support their family; I get that more than anyone else. (By the way, if you've not read my capitalism series, or are ready to do so again, check it out under that label). But the problem is that in the old days people could survive without a salary (they could grow their own food, build their own houses, marry someone with a job, etc). So there was no monetary motivation to tell a particular "truth" or "truthiness." Parents genuinely wanted their kids to get life, to not stumble over the same stuff they did. But now parents teach their kids stuff that is commercial agenda driven, whether they know it or not. It may be innocent (you need to learn this in order to get a high paying job) or agenda driven (they want to justify their own bad behavior and lifestyle by teaching you stuff that is plain bogus... and if you wonder what I mean think of the worst example which is a household where parents justify drugs and alcohol). You are not going to get truth and you are not going to get even facts that you can string together using reasoning because it is not in the agenda and economic interest of just about everyone to teach: 1) faith 2) reasoning 3) facts about human history 4) discernment. Schools now teach none of the above.
In some kindness to your parents, they were the first guinea pigs to come out of the "nu" educational systems, the ones that don't teach 1-4, so they could not, in general, do better with you, even if they were aware and wanted to. I hope as they read my blog they want to change too, but my focus is on you, young people. This is because as I said here, the previous two generations are maimed in their ability to self critique. I have never seen people resist honest self assessment as these. They don't want to change a THING about themselves, but they want to go to seminars to be super heroes.
Young people, use the check list I have given to you here and be aware that no one can receive any sort of prestige or compensation and then be a totally truthful agenda free teacher to you or to anyone. Money, rather than truth and your welfare, drives everyone who opens their mouth, uses a pen, inputs to a computer or media device. God drives the truth.
If you connect with God, directly, in your own personal humble relationship with him, as you get to know him you understand that he is never compensated for being the truth, and he is not "paid" or "honored" in return for caring for every human being, believer or non believer. Once you have your gold standard for truth telling, which is God, you can now discern the motivations and infrastructures of learning that human beings offer to you. You will start to better understand teachers with a political or monetary axe to grind, versus those who are yes, stuck in the system, but who still do the best they are able to convey unvarnished truth and the tools by which to learn (1-4). Still, hear me and believe me: you cannot rely on anyone because everyone is stuck in the tar pit. You must supplement your honest learning from even the best of sources with your own study and powers of observation. Unfortunately it is a chain reaction whereby even well meaning teachers today rely on the bull crap that was taught to them.
I have more thoughts but want to get this essential message out because from this understanding all else derives. All the best and thinking of you.
Showing posts with label teaching children about God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching children about God. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Thursday, August 27, 2009
About heaven: attention parents/young people
While watching Mass this morning an analogy to help understand heaven occurred to me, one that is based on obvious scriptural statements as made by Jesus, but with a modern context so that even the very young can understand it.
This analogy will help everyone understand heaven, faith and the issue of sins better, but it will most especially help young people, particularly little children, thus I want to teach this to parents. Young people, especially as you go into the world (school, college, etc.) this understanding will be an enormous help to you too.
Heaven is like your home that you leave before going on a long journey. It can only be opened with one key and you carefully guard that key, which you must take with you, as you travel from place to place. At the end of your journey you put the key in the lock, open the door and return home forever.
Now, here is why this analogy is so scriptural and illuminating. First of all, the key is your soul, given to you when you are conceived, as your soul is made by God in heaven. So God makes every person their individual "key" to "return home," after death, to heaven.
You can explain this to very young children very easily, as soon as they are able to understand that they are watching mommy or daddy use a key to open the family house or apartment. You can explain that God has given to you an individual, but invisible, key that allows you to open the door to your place in heaven when it's time for you to go there.
As children grow older and they begin to be exposed to other children of unbelieving parents, and are put in increasingly unbelieving places, such as school, you can explain it as this. If mommy or daddy allowed the key to be lost or bent, it will no longer allow the family home to be opened (don't traumatize your kids about actual lost keys, LOL). Explain that just like if the parents were irresponsible about the house key, a child who is tempted to do bad things by other kids is risking making their key dirty, bent or lost. So they need to feel sorry for kids who don't understand that they have God given keys, and who put their keys at risk, but do not be tempted to do the same. That is how you can start to explain sin (in addition to the traditional way of it being a bad thing), by putting it in an absolute God context, but one that is lovingly oriented rather than punishment oriented.
Young people, as you become preteens and teenagers, college students, drop outs or new to your first jobs, (Hi again, always happy to know that many of you read my blogging! ;-) you can now really relate to how I am describing the key. This key is not a computer generated key, easily duplicated, like keys to dorms or many hotels. There's not a locksmith who can duplicate based on the shape or number of your God given key another key if you lose it. This is an individual eternal key, only for you and irreplaceable.
So when you are tempted to sin by your posse or by the many opportunities around you, understand that you are giving your key a whack, or getting some serious dirt on it, that may rust or bend it, especially over time. That's the risk of lots of "little sins," as Neil Young said, "rust never sleeps." It's not just the big one time sin that one must worry about, but continued abuse of your key resulting in it being so abused it no longer fits in the lock, or it is lost, in the sense of only opening a door to hell, rather than opening the door that has been prepared for you and is your birthright in heaven.
No one who is human is perfect, but Jesus Christ, even as he was incarnated in human flesh, he alone was both perfect and perfected by God. Jesus was perfect and sinless from the moment of his conception, but he was also perfected in a process by God in order to be the Messiah and Savior. The analogy is that if perfection is gold, Jesus was born as pure gold, and then shaped into a form that all human beings can wear. That's how something that is already perfect, and in this case only Jesus was perfect, can be "perfected" by God. That's what the scripture means when it says Jesus "learned." It's not like he didn't "know" everything that was God's will, but he was being shaped in his perfection to be accessible in his public ministry and also ultimately as fulfilled Savior to be accessable to all who seek him and believe.
Thus there is a continual balancing act of knowing that one is not perfect and is increasingly surrounded by an increasingly sinful and imperfect people with recognizing that God is forgiving and merciful. If you understand the key analogy you understand how you can sin and be forgiven, but you can also have a bad surprise that you have pushed it too far and your key is lost or ruined when you die. This will help you to better discern what temptations are "worth" taking, such as they are. Little children who hit other children, for example, in addition to getting traditional parental discipline and behavior formation by their parents can also have it explained to them that when they hurt someone like that, it is as if mommy or daddy used the key to their house to hit someone. Not only is it wrong and it hurts but it also risks damaging the key.
Now, here is where this analogy can help you to understand the difference-the very dire difference-between a sin that is of the usual sort and a sin that leads others to sin. When you sin you damage, rust, and otherwise put at risk your key's condition, one that, thankfully, can be forgiven and restored by God if confessed and repented sincerely by you, and that path of sin is totally abandoned. However, what if you are a false prophet who leads others to sin and/or to false beliefs about God, including the occult and the denying of Jesus Christ and the one true God? You are damaging other people's keys, and you can never restore them again. People you lead astray from the faith go through their lives with damaged keys, and you cannot ever repair what is done to their keys (only God can do that, but if these people do not believe and repent, and become pure again to God, and not tainted by the false beliefs and sin you have led them to, and they've now adopted, how will they ever avail themselves of God's ability to forgive and "repair" them and their keys).
That is why Jesus warns that it is better to pluck out one's own eye or cut off one's own hand if that is the limb or organ being used to sin. Jesus is warning you that it's better to have only one hand than two if you still have your key intact. (This is not a pagan self mutilation formula by the way, but an ANALOGY by Jesus. Anyone but an ego maniac and/or drug or booze addict would understand that one is not expected to body mutilate in reality, I mean, duh). This is why I think my analogy supports the scriptures in a modern context. Even a blind man can find the lock on his house and insert the key if he (or she) had kept the key safe and intact.
This is why Jesus issues too a most dire warning to those who lead children to sin (saying they might as well put a heavy stone around their necks and throw themselves into the water). Jesus is warning that even worse than leading one's own self to sin (and thus one should symbolically cut off that eye or that hand), one's entire life (and key) is lost when one encourages and leads children to lose their keys to heaven. I tell you, you should shudder, as this is not the imaginary hippy groovy Jesus who thinks smart mouth unbelieving drug taking mean and sexualized children are a product that you should be honing and developing in any way shape or form. Those who not only lose, bend, rust and profane their own keys but also lead other, especially the children, who have no choice, to do so are truly totally doomed. Trust me, hell is packed with both false prophets and also those who lead children to sin (and thus put them on sinful paths that destroy their own keys as adults when they grow up bent).
OK, that's the dark but truthful side, suitable for adult/teenager discussion. Let's go back to the light filled and hopeful side, which is to use this gentle, but totally scriptural, analogy of the key to help your children know, love and serve God better, and preserve their own places in heaven, more easily, in an increasingly poisoned and difficult world.
As an aside, I've mentioned before that young children need to be told about the reality of God, particularly, for Christians, through Jesus Christ, from the earliest age. This is usually done by mentioning God daily (such as saying Good Night to him, particularly as parents do nightly prayers with their kids). I've mentioned that a traditional way is to have a picture of Jesus and have the very young kiss Jesus good night, or at least tell him good night :-)
What I wanted to mention is that, sadly, those of you who are married to military service people, who are away on duty, have much experience with children remembering their parents through pictures, while they are gone. Kids get messages from their on duty parents through the computer, videos, phone messages and calls, and also photographs. Just as that works and is very helpful, you young people can now understand the wisdom of the traditional believers several generations ago, who used to have their kids know and love Jesus through even perhaps only one faded picture in the Bible or on the wall. It's just as if a modern child has the comfort and continuity of a picture of their in service parent. Again, it is crucial that, both new parents and those of you who have neglected this but still have kids you can talk to, you regain these traditional ways of making God part of your child's life from the very beginning.
It's not "up to them" or even is it up to your Church or Sunday school to do that, because if you do not tell them about their key in the home, they have no context for understanding God as a part of their real life, rather than later where God is an abstract set of rules, to be "believed or not." I mean, would you let your kid decide whether his father serving in Afghanistan "is real or not?"
I hope that this has helped.
This analogy will help everyone understand heaven, faith and the issue of sins better, but it will most especially help young people, particularly little children, thus I want to teach this to parents. Young people, especially as you go into the world (school, college, etc.) this understanding will be an enormous help to you too.
Heaven is like your home that you leave before going on a long journey. It can only be opened with one key and you carefully guard that key, which you must take with you, as you travel from place to place. At the end of your journey you put the key in the lock, open the door and return home forever.
Now, here is why this analogy is so scriptural and illuminating. First of all, the key is your soul, given to you when you are conceived, as your soul is made by God in heaven. So God makes every person their individual "key" to "return home," after death, to heaven.
You can explain this to very young children very easily, as soon as they are able to understand that they are watching mommy or daddy use a key to open the family house or apartment. You can explain that God has given to you an individual, but invisible, key that allows you to open the door to your place in heaven when it's time for you to go there.
As children grow older and they begin to be exposed to other children of unbelieving parents, and are put in increasingly unbelieving places, such as school, you can explain it as this. If mommy or daddy allowed the key to be lost or bent, it will no longer allow the family home to be opened (don't traumatize your kids about actual lost keys, LOL). Explain that just like if the parents were irresponsible about the house key, a child who is tempted to do bad things by other kids is risking making their key dirty, bent or lost. So they need to feel sorry for kids who don't understand that they have God given keys, and who put their keys at risk, but do not be tempted to do the same. That is how you can start to explain sin (in addition to the traditional way of it being a bad thing), by putting it in an absolute God context, but one that is lovingly oriented rather than punishment oriented.
Young people, as you become preteens and teenagers, college students, drop outs or new to your first jobs, (Hi again, always happy to know that many of you read my blogging! ;-) you can now really relate to how I am describing the key. This key is not a computer generated key, easily duplicated, like keys to dorms or many hotels. There's not a locksmith who can duplicate based on the shape or number of your God given key another key if you lose it. This is an individual eternal key, only for you and irreplaceable.
So when you are tempted to sin by your posse or by the many opportunities around you, understand that you are giving your key a whack, or getting some serious dirt on it, that may rust or bend it, especially over time. That's the risk of lots of "little sins," as Neil Young said, "rust never sleeps." It's not just the big one time sin that one must worry about, but continued abuse of your key resulting in it being so abused it no longer fits in the lock, or it is lost, in the sense of only opening a door to hell, rather than opening the door that has been prepared for you and is your birthright in heaven.
No one who is human is perfect, but Jesus Christ, even as he was incarnated in human flesh, he alone was both perfect and perfected by God. Jesus was perfect and sinless from the moment of his conception, but he was also perfected in a process by God in order to be the Messiah and Savior. The analogy is that if perfection is gold, Jesus was born as pure gold, and then shaped into a form that all human beings can wear. That's how something that is already perfect, and in this case only Jesus was perfect, can be "perfected" by God. That's what the scripture means when it says Jesus "learned." It's not like he didn't "know" everything that was God's will, but he was being shaped in his perfection to be accessible in his public ministry and also ultimately as fulfilled Savior to be accessable to all who seek him and believe.
Thus there is a continual balancing act of knowing that one is not perfect and is increasingly surrounded by an increasingly sinful and imperfect people with recognizing that God is forgiving and merciful. If you understand the key analogy you understand how you can sin and be forgiven, but you can also have a bad surprise that you have pushed it too far and your key is lost or ruined when you die. This will help you to better discern what temptations are "worth" taking, such as they are. Little children who hit other children, for example, in addition to getting traditional parental discipline and behavior formation by their parents can also have it explained to them that when they hurt someone like that, it is as if mommy or daddy used the key to their house to hit someone. Not only is it wrong and it hurts but it also risks damaging the key.
Now, here is where this analogy can help you to understand the difference-the very dire difference-between a sin that is of the usual sort and a sin that leads others to sin. When you sin you damage, rust, and otherwise put at risk your key's condition, one that, thankfully, can be forgiven and restored by God if confessed and repented sincerely by you, and that path of sin is totally abandoned. However, what if you are a false prophet who leads others to sin and/or to false beliefs about God, including the occult and the denying of Jesus Christ and the one true God? You are damaging other people's keys, and you can never restore them again. People you lead astray from the faith go through their lives with damaged keys, and you cannot ever repair what is done to their keys (only God can do that, but if these people do not believe and repent, and become pure again to God, and not tainted by the false beliefs and sin you have led them to, and they've now adopted, how will they ever avail themselves of God's ability to forgive and "repair" them and their keys).
That is why Jesus warns that it is better to pluck out one's own eye or cut off one's own hand if that is the limb or organ being used to sin. Jesus is warning you that it's better to have only one hand than two if you still have your key intact. (This is not a pagan self mutilation formula by the way, but an ANALOGY by Jesus. Anyone but an ego maniac and/or drug or booze addict would understand that one is not expected to body mutilate in reality, I mean, duh). This is why I think my analogy supports the scriptures in a modern context. Even a blind man can find the lock on his house and insert the key if he (or she) had kept the key safe and intact.
This is why Jesus issues too a most dire warning to those who lead children to sin (saying they might as well put a heavy stone around their necks and throw themselves into the water). Jesus is warning that even worse than leading one's own self to sin (and thus one should symbolically cut off that eye or that hand), one's entire life (and key) is lost when one encourages and leads children to lose their keys to heaven. I tell you, you should shudder, as this is not the imaginary hippy groovy Jesus who thinks smart mouth unbelieving drug taking mean and sexualized children are a product that you should be honing and developing in any way shape or form. Those who not only lose, bend, rust and profane their own keys but also lead other, especially the children, who have no choice, to do so are truly totally doomed. Trust me, hell is packed with both false prophets and also those who lead children to sin (and thus put them on sinful paths that destroy their own keys as adults when they grow up bent).
OK, that's the dark but truthful side, suitable for adult/teenager discussion. Let's go back to the light filled and hopeful side, which is to use this gentle, but totally scriptural, analogy of the key to help your children know, love and serve God better, and preserve their own places in heaven, more easily, in an increasingly poisoned and difficult world.
As an aside, I've mentioned before that young children need to be told about the reality of God, particularly, for Christians, through Jesus Christ, from the earliest age. This is usually done by mentioning God daily (such as saying Good Night to him, particularly as parents do nightly prayers with their kids). I've mentioned that a traditional way is to have a picture of Jesus and have the very young kiss Jesus good night, or at least tell him good night :-)
What I wanted to mention is that, sadly, those of you who are married to military service people, who are away on duty, have much experience with children remembering their parents through pictures, while they are gone. Kids get messages from their on duty parents through the computer, videos, phone messages and calls, and also photographs. Just as that works and is very helpful, you young people can now understand the wisdom of the traditional believers several generations ago, who used to have their kids know and love Jesus through even perhaps only one faded picture in the Bible or on the wall. It's just as if a modern child has the comfort and continuity of a picture of their in service parent. Again, it is crucial that, both new parents and those of you who have neglected this but still have kids you can talk to, you regain these traditional ways of making God part of your child's life from the very beginning.
It's not "up to them" or even is it up to your Church or Sunday school to do that, because if you do not tell them about their key in the home, they have no context for understanding God as a part of their real life, rather than later where God is an abstract set of rules, to be "believed or not." I mean, would you let your kid decide whether his father serving in Afghanistan "is real or not?"
I hope that this has helped.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
More about heaven
Believe me, I'm even more tired than you are of listening to me or reading my posts that are continually fire and brimstone. They must be, unfortunately, the top priority since so many have been unbelievably lax in recognizing the horrible situation that humanity is in, one sinner at a time, one broken social group at a time. However, when I think of things that I can post that are of the glory of God and the love that we all should be focused on, I do so.
So I know a lot of people wonder "what heaven is like" and I've blogged about this before. But there is a very simple visualization that people need to have in order to see heaven correctly right from the start, when they ponder what it must be like. People tend to imagine heaven with angels and adult family members; that is the first image that pops into mind. But by far the overwhelming presence that one has in "mainstream" heaven (the part not directly in front of the throne of God) is that heaven is packed with babies.
Heaven is absolutely filled from "top to bottom" (just to give you human visualization) with babies and children. So one has the impression of far more about millions of infants than one does of adults, per se. Remember that every pre-born baby, born baby, infant and child that dies is in heaven. So just to give you a mental exercise, imagine all the children that are aborted, are born but who die of some illness or tragedy, children who die in illness or accident, children who die of illness or poverty around the world each year, all of them pour into heaven and have done so since the beginning of time. This is why Jesus was being both allegorical and factual when he said that heaven belongs to the children. Notice he did not say "believers," since how can an infant believe? In fact, infants all believe since each is born with a soul and each has a guardian angel. God would hardly give guardian angels to every human if the human was discriminated against at birth as being "future believer" or "future not believer." So Jesus made sure to explain that far from being dismissive toward children, the Apostles and disciples must realize that children are the natural heirs of heaven. If they die as children, they go home to heaven since their angels "constantly face God," as Jesus explained. So when you read in the news an article such as the one I read about several million children dying of poverty in India each year (yikes, when ARE they going to spend some of their prosperity on their own children?) the only consolation we have is knowing that every child throughout the ages has gone to heaven if they die as a pre-born, born baby or young child. This, by the way, does not mean that a parent can kill their child and go, "Ah, I am sending them to heaven." Yes, THEY will go to heaven but YOU most assuredly will not! I'm not making an abortion statement here, but I am talking about those who kill children out of desparation, poverty, etc. It is better to try to give the child to a religious charity than to kill it, and thus doom your own soul. Not to get fire and brimstone in an otherwise lovely topic, but I have learned the hard way that marginal believers and cultists look for weasel words in what I say in order to find "wiggle room" for their bad and sinful behavior and base instincts, and so I must always be precise and cautionary about valid conclusions to draw from what I say to you all.
Therefore, one must imagine heaven as having in it every pre-born, born infant and child within. This is why you see in inspired paintings cherubs as being kind of like winged heads. Notice this with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. So rather than imagining all one's adult relatives standing around among clouds, one must start with the realization that heaven is alive with uncountable angels and many, many, many millions of infants and children who perished as infants, pre-born or born, and as youngsters. So if you are the type to be annoyed being around a crying baby, well, it's not like babies cry in heaven (they are in bliss), but baby haters might have a difficult time getting to heaven, if you get my drift. I'm being a little of the subversive humor, but I am also sharing a "tip for the wise." People might have a better chance of living good lives and becoming sane again if they realize that heaven is the heritage and the home of every baby and child that died as such and think about that a little more. That's why it is in the Gospel. I hope this helps!
So I know a lot of people wonder "what heaven is like" and I've blogged about this before. But there is a very simple visualization that people need to have in order to see heaven correctly right from the start, when they ponder what it must be like. People tend to imagine heaven with angels and adult family members; that is the first image that pops into mind. But by far the overwhelming presence that one has in "mainstream" heaven (the part not directly in front of the throne of God) is that heaven is packed with babies.
Heaven is absolutely filled from "top to bottom" (just to give you human visualization) with babies and children. So one has the impression of far more about millions of infants than one does of adults, per se. Remember that every pre-born baby, born baby, infant and child that dies is in heaven. So just to give you a mental exercise, imagine all the children that are aborted, are born but who die of some illness or tragedy, children who die in illness or accident, children who die of illness or poverty around the world each year, all of them pour into heaven and have done so since the beginning of time. This is why Jesus was being both allegorical and factual when he said that heaven belongs to the children. Notice he did not say "believers," since how can an infant believe? In fact, infants all believe since each is born with a soul and each has a guardian angel. God would hardly give guardian angels to every human if the human was discriminated against at birth as being "future believer" or "future not believer." So Jesus made sure to explain that far from being dismissive toward children, the Apostles and disciples must realize that children are the natural heirs of heaven. If they die as children, they go home to heaven since their angels "constantly face God," as Jesus explained. So when you read in the news an article such as the one I read about several million children dying of poverty in India each year (yikes, when ARE they going to spend some of their prosperity on their own children?) the only consolation we have is knowing that every child throughout the ages has gone to heaven if they die as a pre-born, born baby or young child. This, by the way, does not mean that a parent can kill their child and go, "Ah, I am sending them to heaven." Yes, THEY will go to heaven but YOU most assuredly will not! I'm not making an abortion statement here, but I am talking about those who kill children out of desparation, poverty, etc. It is better to try to give the child to a religious charity than to kill it, and thus doom your own soul. Not to get fire and brimstone in an otherwise lovely topic, but I have learned the hard way that marginal believers and cultists look for weasel words in what I say in order to find "wiggle room" for their bad and sinful behavior and base instincts, and so I must always be precise and cautionary about valid conclusions to draw from what I say to you all.
Therefore, one must imagine heaven as having in it every pre-born, born infant and child within. This is why you see in inspired paintings cherubs as being kind of like winged heads. Notice this with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. So rather than imagining all one's adult relatives standing around among clouds, one must start with the realization that heaven is alive with uncountable angels and many, many, many millions of infants and children who perished as infants, pre-born or born, and as youngsters. So if you are the type to be annoyed being around a crying baby, well, it's not like babies cry in heaven (they are in bliss), but baby haters might have a difficult time getting to heaven, if you get my drift. I'm being a little of the subversive humor, but I am also sharing a "tip for the wise." People might have a better chance of living good lives and becoming sane again if they realize that heaven is the heritage and the home of every baby and child that died as such and think about that a little more. That's why it is in the Gospel. I hope this helps!
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Pondering: message to the youth (5)
This will close my series of posts for tonight! I hope you have found them helpful and even if you have some barriers to agreeing with what I've presented that you at least share my concerns and have a more discerning view of what is really going on.
Another way that I need to explain how the past several "generations" have been ripped off and cheated has to do with God.
Suppose that you were raised as a child in an orphanage, one where all your material needs were met but you were told your parents had died and that you were alone in the world. And then suppose one day you grow up and go to college, and then discover that your mother is alive and had been kept separated from you, through no fault of her own. You are reunited and you love your mom, and perhaps instead of living in a dorm you live with her while you go to college. You talk and do things together, and maybe the local newspaper even does an article about you both as their "feel good" story.
However, while this is a "happy ending story," you did not step into a time machine and remake your years of being alone. You find your mother and you are happy, but you did not have her when you were a baby, an infant, pre-school, Kindergarten, 1st-6th grade, 7th-12th grade, and she was not there when you graduated, got your first part time job, applied to college, got accepted, and had your first dates. You totally missed the experience of having a mom, and finding her at say the age of 21 does not change the past. It only makes the present and the future much better.
It is the same for children who are raised by their families without knowledge of and love for God. While you can always be raised "in the faith" and then decide to "fall or drift away from the faith" as an adult, you can't go back in time and rewrite history so that God was in your life for all the years you were raised without knowledge and love for God. You can find God, of course, even if God was denied to you by your parents as a child, but you cannot relive those years as a child the way you would have if you had known and loved God from the start. Time machines exist just in fantasy movies.
This is what I call "the lost opportunity" cost. Children are meant to know and love God from the first moments they can comprehend. It is not for God's ego trip; it is for the benefit of fullness and completeness of the human being. Just like having a mom and a dad are essential to a fullness of the human experience and a child's development, so is the knowledge of God. You would not have had to explain this to any generation of people before these past several generations. Knowing and loving God is an essential component to a child's mental, emotional, and spiritual health. In this blog posting I'm not speaking of a specific religion except that it be one that believes in the one true monotheistic God. It is inexcusable to raise a child without him or her knowing that God exists and has a relationship with the child that will last through their life.
Regular readers know that I was married to an agnostic Jew, and how because I was stalked by cults, I had privately resolved never to have a child who could be abused by them as I was. I never shared my reason for not having a child and took extensive precautions to not become physically pregnant. So this meant that it was a topic of general conversation with my husband and with other people in the normal "what if" way that anyone talks about having a child. One of the things that my husband and I totally agreed on was that "if" I had ever had a child, the child would be raised to be a full and devout Christian. My agnostic Jewish husband was the first to say, "You must raise a child to have the faith. He or she can always make their own decisions when they are grown up, but if you never give them the faith you are robbing them of it completely."
Throughout the 1960's and 1970's that was the predominant opinion until the "social revolutionaries" became parents. They then decided to rip off their own children by estranging them from God. They did this to cover up their own bad decisions, because who can teach about God when you deny him in your every action? Further, the temptations of occult beliefs (with again, their "free pass" on behavior and wink toward even horrors like abortion) took over families, and rather than being born into a family that taught love of God, children were raised either "God-less" (though God never abandoned them, even if the children did not know) or worse, directly as fodder for cults. I despise $cientologists and others like them for that reason. Cultists who raise their children without God are instead stuffing pollution into what should have been the clear springs of faith and reason in their children's minds. It is very hard to bring people "back" to God if that "USB port" had garbage flowing into them from the start. There is a "missing piece" in young adults who have been raised in cults and who, while they know the truth and have run from the abuse, feel estranged from God.
I have such pity, sadness and love for people who were robbed of God in their childhood and filled with the trash of cults. Some of them are brash, but many of them cover up skittishness that is like the pony that has been only beaten and spurred by human owners. They feel they cannot then let themselves believe the hand of human kindness when they do encounter it. That is what happens when children are robbed of their knowledge and love of God.
God is patient and if anything good can come from the horrors of these chaotic times, perhaps it is that even the most scarred can find their way back to believing that God wants to know them, and wants to love and guide them. But I appeal to you new parents, even if you think you are suave and cynical, please do not rob your children of love for and knowledge of God, even if you personally cannot provide it, have a godly person mentor them, or send them to Bible or Qur'an schooling. You cannot pop God back into them like a pill later in their life as if your neglect of them regarding God never happened, or is 'all fixed.' Follow the example that those of us who had to suffer through those times since the 1960's and raise the child in the true faith of God, and let them live their lives with both options in front of them, not lobotomizing them of God when they are in the cradle. It is one of the greatest tragedies of our time and many ills will still result from this before it gets better.
I hope this helps, and I hope that I can "help the unbelief" closer to belief for those of you who have been scarred by occults or estrangement from knowledge of God's love and his will and greater plan for all humanity.
Another way that I need to explain how the past several "generations" have been ripped off and cheated has to do with God.
Suppose that you were raised as a child in an orphanage, one where all your material needs were met but you were told your parents had died and that you were alone in the world. And then suppose one day you grow up and go to college, and then discover that your mother is alive and had been kept separated from you, through no fault of her own. You are reunited and you love your mom, and perhaps instead of living in a dorm you live with her while you go to college. You talk and do things together, and maybe the local newspaper even does an article about you both as their "feel good" story.
However, while this is a "happy ending story," you did not step into a time machine and remake your years of being alone. You find your mother and you are happy, but you did not have her when you were a baby, an infant, pre-school, Kindergarten, 1st-6th grade, 7th-12th grade, and she was not there when you graduated, got your first part time job, applied to college, got accepted, and had your first dates. You totally missed the experience of having a mom, and finding her at say the age of 21 does not change the past. It only makes the present and the future much better.
It is the same for children who are raised by their families without knowledge of and love for God. While you can always be raised "in the faith" and then decide to "fall or drift away from the faith" as an adult, you can't go back in time and rewrite history so that God was in your life for all the years you were raised without knowledge and love for God. You can find God, of course, even if God was denied to you by your parents as a child, but you cannot relive those years as a child the way you would have if you had known and loved God from the start. Time machines exist just in fantasy movies.
This is what I call "the lost opportunity" cost. Children are meant to know and love God from the first moments they can comprehend. It is not for God's ego trip; it is for the benefit of fullness and completeness of the human being. Just like having a mom and a dad are essential to a fullness of the human experience and a child's development, so is the knowledge of God. You would not have had to explain this to any generation of people before these past several generations. Knowing and loving God is an essential component to a child's mental, emotional, and spiritual health. In this blog posting I'm not speaking of a specific religion except that it be one that believes in the one true monotheistic God. It is inexcusable to raise a child without him or her knowing that God exists and has a relationship with the child that will last through their life.
Regular readers know that I was married to an agnostic Jew, and how because I was stalked by cults, I had privately resolved never to have a child who could be abused by them as I was. I never shared my reason for not having a child and took extensive precautions to not become physically pregnant. So this meant that it was a topic of general conversation with my husband and with other people in the normal "what if" way that anyone talks about having a child. One of the things that my husband and I totally agreed on was that "if" I had ever had a child, the child would be raised to be a full and devout Christian. My agnostic Jewish husband was the first to say, "You must raise a child to have the faith. He or she can always make their own decisions when they are grown up, but if you never give them the faith you are robbing them of it completely."
Throughout the 1960's and 1970's that was the predominant opinion until the "social revolutionaries" became parents. They then decided to rip off their own children by estranging them from God. They did this to cover up their own bad decisions, because who can teach about God when you deny him in your every action? Further, the temptations of occult beliefs (with again, their "free pass" on behavior and wink toward even horrors like abortion) took over families, and rather than being born into a family that taught love of God, children were raised either "God-less" (though God never abandoned them, even if the children did not know) or worse, directly as fodder for cults. I despise $cientologists and others like them for that reason. Cultists who raise their children without God are instead stuffing pollution into what should have been the clear springs of faith and reason in their children's minds. It is very hard to bring people "back" to God if that "USB port" had garbage flowing into them from the start. There is a "missing piece" in young adults who have been raised in cults and who, while they know the truth and have run from the abuse, feel estranged from God.
I have such pity, sadness and love for people who were robbed of God in their childhood and filled with the trash of cults. Some of them are brash, but many of them cover up skittishness that is like the pony that has been only beaten and spurred by human owners. They feel they cannot then let themselves believe the hand of human kindness when they do encounter it. That is what happens when children are robbed of their knowledge and love of God.
God is patient and if anything good can come from the horrors of these chaotic times, perhaps it is that even the most scarred can find their way back to believing that God wants to know them, and wants to love and guide them. But I appeal to you new parents, even if you think you are suave and cynical, please do not rob your children of love for and knowledge of God, even if you personally cannot provide it, have a godly person mentor them, or send them to Bible or Qur'an schooling. You cannot pop God back into them like a pill later in their life as if your neglect of them regarding God never happened, or is 'all fixed.' Follow the example that those of us who had to suffer through those times since the 1960's and raise the child in the true faith of God, and let them live their lives with both options in front of them, not lobotomizing them of God when they are in the cradle. It is one of the greatest tragedies of our time and many ills will still result from this before it gets better.
I hope this helps, and I hope that I can "help the unbelief" closer to belief for those of you who have been scarred by occults or estrangement from knowledge of God's love and his will and greater plan for all humanity.
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