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07 Oct 2011

The Word was Love

I have always wondered what the most important thing is. The key to humanity or universality or everything.  What ties it all together.  Is it Love? Humility? Charity? Sacrifice? Perseverance, Forgiveness, Faith?  What makes us who we are, rests deep inside our souls.  What is the link to forever?

Mark 12:28 “One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ 29Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” 31The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’ 32Then the scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”;33and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ 34When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ After that no one dared to ask him any question.”

All of the commandments have a structure that emphasize this.  Putting your heart in a position where God and others come first and you will automatically respect the commandments.  Putting God first means putting no other gods before Him, or not letting anything be more important that he is.  It means respecting His Creation, not distorting truth and misrepresenting things as He created them.  If truth is respected we will not lie, if His creation is respected we will respect everything in it, our neighbor, his property and family, we will not steal from him or envy what he has.  We will understand love and cherish our families. We will understand promises so we will stick out our troubles and honor our parents and elders.  We will respect the life God has given, we will not kill.  If we love God with all our hearts we will not be afraid, we will trust Him.  We will know that He loves us and will provide our needs so we can rest on the Sabbath, and we will not covet because we will rejoice in what He has given us.

So  you may say the most important thing is love. But there is no love without God, our version of love will always be a finite version of Gods love, so we must first trust him.  It is always humility that you must start with.  We cannot find love or charity or faith without first finding Him.  His love will cast away our fear so we are able to understand love, and that love teaches us to sacrifice, to forgive, to give, persevere, and believe.  It is humility that makes all  things work together.  We have to understand we have nothing without Him and we must first receive before we are able to give.

This is the truth that ties the Trinity together.   How three persons can also be One, that humility that unites three individual persons into one God.  It is the sacrifice that creates the perfect Harmony.

I think this is the nature of being.  This is the lost question that has always plagued philosophers.  This is how we understand the metaphysics of existence.  This is the link that unites realism and idealism, unity and singularity, the one and the many.  There are not 10 separate categories or even 12 but really just one, and it is God.

Everything that we can conceive of is an extension of that category.  Derived from Him.  Our understanding of time is a finite version of his eternality, space is His omnipresence, knowledge is His omniscience.  Light and color are emanated from the rainbow around His throne.  Language  is a system of classification.  Logic and reason are how we conceptualize it.  Both are finite versions of God’s attributes. Numbers are fragments of His plurality.  Nothing you can say or think cannot be broken down to the essence of God.  Truth is not a concept that we measure God by, it simply does not exist outside of Him.  The Trinity of God combines all these attributes into a self-contained entity that is manifested in all space and time and in our very humanity.  Mind, body and soul.  Matter has the three stages, gas, liquid and solid.  We have three dimensions in space and time has past present and future.   All of these attributes are always present, it is not as if God is part love, part mercy, part holiness and so forth.  He is pure and total love, totally merciful, completely holy, sovereign, omniscient…  They all exist together eternally.  So all are categories that make up the whole but all maintain full individuality and importance.  Maybe this is what God means to a certain extent when he refers to himself as “I am”.

Or in John 1″ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome[a] it. ”

In the Greek the word for “word” was Logos, which also means reason.

“And the Word was made flesh.”

So you may ask what does that make evil, or the opposites of these categories?  Do they also come from God?  All evil can be broken down into distortions of these categories.  Something pure that is corrupted, or rather it is apart from God or not of Him.  When something is away from God, it is outside of truth, mixing up the categories into different forms.  Darkness is the absence of light.  Evil is an attempt to take away the harmony that things are meant to have.  An emphasis of one attribute over another therefore displacing balance and unity.  Of course things outside of God can contain fragments of these qualities, these qualities after all make up all of existence, but without the balance of unity the truth is not complete and therefore untrue and a lie.

1 John 1:5 “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

1 John 2:3 “Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. 4 He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5 But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. 6 He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.
7 Brethren,[a] I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard from the beginning.[b] 8 Again, a new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.
9 He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now. 10 He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. 11 But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”

We all fail to walk in the light every day.  We all break the commandments, get scared, lose faith.  Our pride causes us to put ourselves first.  Without humility we are lost, we cannot find truth or love or harmony because we cannot find God.  This is why the entire universe is broken.  When man first sinned, it displaced the nature of omniscience and sovereignty, and caused a ripple effect that spanned the molecular structure of the universe.  If all things come from God and all things at one time were in complete harmony, then the entire creation would be at the mercy of a single arbitrary act.   The balance of God’s character was the only thing that could save it because it was the only thing not broken.  God is outside the universe not a part of it so only he could  bridge the gap between Heaven and Earth.  That is what made it possible for a single act of complete humility to fix it.

Posted in articles, Index, October 2011 | Leave a comment
05 Oct 2011

Inside the Matrix

Movies like to capture the essence of self-determination in overcoming tremendous odds.  Characters surmount the impossible by finding courage and strength within themselves and with the help of their friends.  There is often a sacrifice in some way to make the achievement possible.

This is the basis that we use to find encouragement and determination to live our lives. The problem is that is not how God wants us to see things.  We can try to relate these movies and stories as analogies to the Christian perspective, using the sacrifice to compare to Christ and the value of unity and the ability for the “good” to defeat the great “evil”.  However that leaves out the most important element, it leaves out God.  We do it all ourselves and the idea of God is either pushed farther away into abstraction or brought down to a level of corruption.  The Man, or big brother, the system, the matrix, the force…  A cold, alien controller that tries to oppress the valiant spirit.  The hero has to find a way to break free of the oppression and in doing so will free everyone else.

Overall the story is a contradiction.  For example, In the Matrix, the Matrix was the reality.  The characters had to borrow from the same reality they were trying to destroy.  How can you step into a programmed reality and rewrite it without access or authority?  We do the same thing in our own lives, lets say it is God that controls the Matrix, and you cannot unplug, or find a door out, or a glitch in the system.  He writes the program for all reality and controls everything within.  There are no tools, skills, no amount of knowledge, no special training that can increase our odds.  We cannot sacrifice ourselves to free everyone else, that would be pointless, we have no real power in ourselves.  So everyone pretends that they are in control, that maybe they will find the secret that will give them the freedom from the programming that is within them and all around them.  Perhaps if we imagine a different reality, make up our own authority we can live in freedom.  We always know the truth though, when the end comes and our version of reality is about to be unplugged, we know our control is about to end and it never belonged to us to begin with.

Some people realize this is reality.  The futility of their existence.  That they have no control and real freedom is subject to the boundaries that contain them.  Then comes the question, what is the point of freedom or control anyway.  What good would it do?  How do we know who is the “good” and “evil” anyway?  It is all futility.  They realize that the individuality we have has no relevancy,  we are blowing in the wind being defined by the places we land along the way.  Some find this place in reality and lose all hope and purpose, and many just never look.  There are others that keep looking, groping in the dark trying to find a purpose.  That is when our eyes can be opened and we can see like the patterns in the code on the Matrix.  Only we see that what controls the boundaries around us is not what oppresses us, it is our struggle to be free that binds us and tangles us in our own bonds.  We have redefined reality for our own purpose and we have changed truth to fit.  We use borrowed logic to try to cheat the inevitable.  We say that we will choose the truths we want to believe,  we will pick our own morality, virtues, purposes and our own gods.  The world around us will be subject to our viewpoint and our own authority.  Then we call that free will, spirit, and determination.  It is really defiance, audacity and lies.  The ultimate deception is our own.  This is sin, this is the place our heart is in when we decide to put ourselves first.  Redefine a little truth here or there to make it OK to lie, or rationalize a bit to steal, if we change enough around, we can even justify taking someones life.  Without a universal authority who can say it isn’t?

So once we see that we have been busy deceiving ourselves into believing we our own authority, God helps us to see that he is the one is charge.  He created us, he knows everything, sees everything, controls everything.  He is always good,  he is truth.  He frees us from the chains of our own deception, he opens our eyes to the world as it was really meant to be, where we have a much greater purpose than just for ourselves, but at the same time we finally find real freedom, and we find our true selves.

To illustrate this in the movies, Neo would have to realize his futility, change his version of reality, and submit to the will of the Matrix. The Matrix would not be the great “evil” but really the great “good” that was not cold and oppressive and the Matrix would be the one to sacrifice and free everyone because it was the only one that had the capability.  Something tells me people would be less likely to watch that.  A powerless hero subject to the will of the system.  We like our own version of reality reinforced not shaken or disturbed.  Of course we want to believe that we have the power to overcome, that we can get stronger, dive deeper, beat the odds, but the truth is, we can only do what God allows us to do. If we listen to that truth, step out of the made up world around us, God promises us strength and courage and the power to overcome any odds.

Posted in apologetics, articles, Film Commentary, Index, October 2011 | Leave a comment
29 Aug 2011

Programmed to self destruct

It is funny that we are naturally opposed to believe in something that will save us.  We are so clouded by shame and fear that we inherit a belief that we can only rely on ourselves.  Which is rather strange considering we obviously know we are broken, yet somehow we continue to trust that we have the ability to fix ourselves.  I guess then it makes sense to rationalize or downplay our brokenness.   We then rationalize our world around us and recreate our entire reality.  We take everything we know and fit it inside our own little box.  We will stretch and pull and squish and smash until everything fits.  Of course then nothing is real anymore.  We have no idea what real even is.  We know that if anyone tells us different we get angry, we don’t like our box disturbed.  In fact we don’t like anything that threatens to rock the boat at all.  What we rely on most of all are that things will continue as they always have.

We like to go along our lives finding our hope within a general progression of things.  We believe everything evolves slowly.  That life is like the seasons balanced and harmonized.  Death gives birth to life and over time it grows and develops.  That perhaps over time we could even progress into something else.  We could do more good than bad and evolve up the ladder.  We start to rationalize all of those things to fit into the box as well.  Good things become disproportionate to the bad ones.   The bad things are downplayed and become not so bad, or not bad at all.  We like to say it is all part of life, we were born this way.  It is not my fault, it is just nature.  Pretty soon it is a truly neutral zone.  A non threatening environment just circling and cycling through time.

See the funny thing is, the box never answers any of our real questions.  It is just grasping onto thin air.  We still know inside that there are no answers for the inevitability that things have to change at some point.  We know we will one day die.  We know we are floating in darkness, and we don’t know how we got there.  And sometimes, if we get the nerve up, we peek outside the box and the bleakness of space around us swallows us.  It is then that we unwittingly let the questions creep in.  It is then, that we are faced with, “what is the point?  Why I am here?  What is the point of anything?”  It is at this point we either shove it back out into space, and try our best to pretend it was never there, meanwhile maybe trying a little harder to climb the ladder, just in case.  We know though, the darkness and brokenness chases us up every rung.  Or we give into the nothingness, embrace it and turn to poetry, music, drugs, alcohol, anything that helps us escape the pain of knowing, escape the vast nothingness. The loneliness.

It is here that we are our own curse.  Deep down we know there is no hope, that our reality has left us nothing to rely on but ourselves and we know we are broken, we have been trying to hide since the beginning.  Yet we are so afraid of being exposed we condemn ourselves.  And deep down we know we are doing it.  Just like we know that when we do things like lie or steal we eventually will get caught, we make ourselves believe it is possible not to.  Yet we go, like sheep to the slaughter.

If we could only stop and let go of that fear.  That shame that makes us hide.  That makes us deny our Creator and blend all life into a continuous cycle.  Stop meshing everything together into our box and step outside.  Step out and see that there is light.  There is purpose and design.  We are here for a reason and everything around us has a purpose as well.  We were created in God’s image  because he loves us and he values life and creation, and there is a purpose for history!  Our desire to be like Him and be in total control of ourselves broke the entire universe.  So now that everything is broken, there is absolutely nothing we can find to fix it, not within ourselves and not anywhere within the entire universe.  It holds no truth and no answers for us.  It is only vast darkness.  God knows that we cannot fix ourselves, we have no answers.  But God does care for us and He knew that He was the only thing that was outside the universe that could fix it.  So at a great price He gave a piece of Himself to bring us back to Him.  He became the path away from darkness.  We can walk in His light, use His strength, and freely accept His gift.  And we will live.

Posted in articles, August 2011, Index | Leave a comment
08 Aug 2011

We are all Hypocrates

When people think about “Law” they often associate condemnation.  The reason we get a little antsy at the thought of law is because we all realize we are guilty of breaking them and therefore all deserve to be condemned.  However we all still inevitability rely on law because we know it protects us.  
       
      This is even more true when we think about God’s law.  We are even more scared of the condemnation and yet we instinctively use our morality to guide our decisions and color our perspective.  God’s law shows us more than that though.  It shows us we are vulnerable.  The fact that no one can follow the law all of the time, and we have shown throughout history we fail consistently, we demonstrate our need for outside help.  We prove that we cannot rely on ourselves.  It helps us to understand that the most important thing for us to do is to trust in something outside of ourselves.  
    
         It also shows us that law is not redemptive.  One pattern we tend to fall into is to rely on our actions to save us.  We don’t like feeling helpless so we use the law to try to control our lives.  In this way the law also blinds us to see our own depravity.  It deceives us into thinking we are better people, we are following the rules, this moral superiority leads us to judge others.  Then not only do we not see that we need God, but we are oozing with self-righteousness and condemning others.This actually pushes us further away from God.  

It only makes sense that people get the wrong idea about religion and the Bible.  It is natural to associate the legalism and judgmental attitudes with something you want to stay away from.  It is natural for people to say, The God I believe in is kind and good, I don’t like the idea of a tyrannical God, without empathy.  That is enough to make us stay far away from the Bible.  So it is a shame that our natural reaction to the law is to either run from it, try to hide from it, rationalize it to fit our means, or to lean on it like a crutch using it to judge others and build ourselves up.  So it seems that the law is kind of the death of us all one way or another.  Either condemned by it being unable to follow it, or deceived by it thinking if it doesn’t condemn us it must save us!  And heck we will use it to save others.  We will manipulate it and supplement it until it suits our agenda and then we can both condemn and save people with it in our societies!


The law will never save anyone, first of all there has never been anyone who can really say they were able to follow it.  It always leads to hypocrisy.  So does this mean the law is bad?  Not at all, the law is important, we all are built to follow structure and need the balance and order that laws give us.  Law keeps our societies from falling into chaos and anarchy.  So what are we looking for?  We all seem to see the need for some kind of law in our own way, perhaps just not too much of an infliction on ourselves.  We definitely speak up about justice and the way things ought to be when we feel we are the victim of injustice.  Somehow the lines of right and wrong become more defined when we feel we were the ones mistreated.  In a way we all want law for everyone else but not ourselves.  We want protection and assurance but not consequence.  Deep now we all see the reason and need for law, but because deep down we also know our own depravity we also don’t want to be condemned by it.  So often we struggle between advocacy, pretending we are avid followers of it, and altering it, creating a relative sense of morality, adapting the rules so we can easily follow.  

So we are lost in our struggle to maintain balance as we do with many other things.  How are we supposed to see and use law the way God wants us to?  Well whenever the Bible talks about law, the same idea is always emphasized.  A softening of the heart. The process is always the same, God loved us first, saved us first, and the law came second.  Following the law has to be reactionary. God knows we can believe something in our head all day long but unless it comes from our hearts it is irrelevant.  It will always be false.  The only way for a sincere understanding of the law is through faith in God from the depths of our heart.  So there is always the same idea, God will save us no matter who we are, what we have done, but we have to let Him and trust Him, believe in Him.  So we must first trust and learn to understand God before we can possibly understand the law, otherwise it will be a stumbling block and wedge in our lives forever.  .  


Posted in articles, August 2011, Index | Leave a comment
05 Aug 2011

IF or IS 

 We were all born into the world. The world since we were born 
has always taught us “IF“. 

We learn that the world is our oyster so to speak, full of possibilities. 
That IF we try hard enough we will prevail! We learn to listen to
 our hearts, be true to ourselves, find ourselves. Be whatever we 
want to be. We learn that we determine right or wrong, we choose
 our own paths. We learn perseverance brings perfection. 

Our movies teach us to root for the hero, their courage will 
defeat the villain. That even against great evil, we can find 
strength within ourselves to overcome in the end.

This theme is not just for fictional stories though, it is ingrained in
 everything we are. Most of our religions teach us the same. 
 If you try hard enough, follow the right rules, incorporate the
 proper steps, you can create a path to the afterlife. 

We see things as cyclical, organic. Our schools teach us Naturalism.
That there is no distinction between nature, animals, and mankind. 
We all share the same elements and could just as easily end up
 anywhere in the cycle of time. We take what we see from the
 seasons, that the cycle of death and regeneration is a harmonious
 balance. 

 
 In fact, if you really boil it down, every part of the world teaches
 us relativity. Anything is possible. There is nothing that is 
 real, nothing constant that we can rely on, that will
 never change, or didn’t just happen by chance. Nothing absolute. 
Time is even relative to whatever situation it is being measured by. 
 Without space and matter would it still even exist? 

So truth itself is whatever we make of it. Cycles and naturalism show
 us that behavior is also relative to our nature and circumstance.
And what is the motivation of all these IF's?
 It removes our accountability.   We are able to rationalize our shame, hide behind 
a multitude of excuses. 
 Then somewhere within this denial, we learn
 to find consistency within it. We start to depend on it, and argue it, as 
we would if it were something absolute. Our relative theories become
 fact and our minds settle into a certain path and it gives us peace. 
 This is our understanding of the way things are, according to the 
world of "IF". 

 
 God asks us to look at things in a different way. To say IS and
 not IF. However, this is difficult in the world we live
 in.  We like choices. One right answer is considered intolerant.
Lack of absolutes say, "Who are you to say your way is the right way?".
 
The Bible tells us, that things are not at all random. They were
 designed by a creator, and that history is moving along with a 
purpose. That we all have a destiny and a purpose. That God is in
 control of everything and that everything happens for a reason. 

 It teaches there is only one answer. One path. God is light, 
everything else is darkness, God is truth, everything else is a 
distortion of that truth, so therefore everything else is lies. That the 
world is fallen and broken and we are part of that brokenness and 
the only path to freedom is to trust in God.

 It shows us that no matter how hard we try we can’t control our
 fate. It is impossible for us to find the strength within 
ourselves to prevail in the end. We cannot trust in ourselves,
 that we will always end up in the same place, failure. We are slaves
 to our world, powerless and deceived by it. Unable to see the truth 
because we are part of the corruption. 

 But wait, that doesn’t sound like a good movie. In that movie, the 
Invaders from outer space are the good guys and we are the bad 
guys! That idea just doesn’t sit right with us, we have always been 
taught that WE are the good guys! But what are we
 really trusting in if nothing is real or constant ? Do we really 
want to completely be left to ourselves?
 
 Even so, it is scary, letting go of the natural trust we have in 
ourselves, and trusting in something to take care of us when deep down
 we are so afraid, we know we are full of mistakes, failures, and
 really, darkness. And in order to seek the light we must first face 
our own darkness. 

 
As Alexander Solzhenitsyen said,
“If only it were all so simple, if only there were evil people 
Somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were 
necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy 
them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart 
of every human being, and who is willing to destroy a piece of his 
own heart?”

 
 So we have to be ready to let go of ourselves because that is 
where the true deceit really lies, we must allow for our own hearts to
 be cut back to be able to change the way we see things. 

 And as scary as it is to think of things being predetermined, it 
Can be comforting to know there is a constant. An unmoving, 
unchanging, Presence. Something that knows all things, controls 
all things.
 But what if God doesn’t accept us? After all, we just
 Learned to see ourselves as utter hopeless failures right? I mean 
the world has been trying to convince us we are worthy and good 
at heart forever right? Now something just came along 
and disrupted everything we have come to know. 

 It is only natural for us to think we will be rejected. So what do we do? 
 Well, we can look at the Bible and see that God said that He loves
 us, and God cannot lie. The Bible also says that perfect love will cast out 
fear.  
 
 The Bible is full of God's promises to take care of us. It says he loves 
the whole world and does not want any to perish. And let's think about
it, why would God not care for his creation? What benefit would it be to
 him to condemn us? On the other hand, ask yourself if you were
 already condemned would you have the motivation to convince 
yourself and the rest of the world that there must be another way, 
an IF? perhaps? That it would be beneficial to try and prove God
 unjust or wrong?
 
 And because God is just, He also proved he loved us, enough to
 sacrifice a part of himself, his only Son, to save us.
 That sacrifice was so big that it paid the price for everyone’s sins.
 It paid for every failure and horrible thing that was ever done and
 ever will be done, and all we have to do is believe it. It is our choice.
 
 
 Seems simple, but that means letting go of that belief you have been
 taught your whole life that anything is possible, and you can control 
your own destiny, or that there are several doors to choose from.
 We have to trust God to be in charge and not us. Our hearts cannot
believe both. For one belief contradicts the other, they both 
cannot be true. So we pick, it is never God rejecting us. We will 
always pick a God, and it will either be Him or ourselves.
 
 If we do believe what God said, it is like the vale lifts up from our
 eyes little by little, and the more of Gods words we believe the more 
we can see the world for what it is. Completely temporal, it loses it’s
 power over us, the power to deceive us into thinking we can be in
 control, it’s power to convince us that God doesn’t really love us or
 worse that HE is the one deceiving us. 

 So sooner or later we will have a choice, we can keep the veil 
over our eyes and continue to believe what the things around us tell
 us. The IF’s and possibilities! Convince ourselves we actually can
 choose our own reality. Or we can choose to believe the IS. That 
there is real truth and light and hope for the future. Hope in a 
complete and total victory that we don’t have to do anything to 
achieve but just accept. A gift we did not earn and cannot
 repay, but because of God’s love and promises we can be assured, 
unafraid, and walk with confidence in the path He has given us.
Posted in articles, August 2011, Index | Leave a comment

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