A Ramble about Dogs, Goats, and the Love of God

    God showed me something today, and really over the last little while, but it really just drove home to me this morning. It's about how He feels about both attacker and the one being attacked.
I love every animal on this farm. I don't really have any favorites. We've raised every one of them from infants, and I've hugged, played with, and cuddled every one of them: dogs, cats, rabbits, goats, and chickens alike. Every one of them I consider my "babies," and they know it and come to me when I approach wanting attention and affection.
    Over the last several months, our German Shepherd Yasi developed a bad "habit" of attacking Raina, our Scotch Collie, at night before bed, and doing so pretty viciously. I love both dogs, and seeing Raina being hurt, and then having to do what I have to to train and discipline Yasi including putting her on the ground and using the shock setting on her collar just breaks my heart because I know both are scared and in pain, even if for different reasons. I hate the situation and Yasi's hormonal problems which are causing it, even as I absolutely love both animals.
    Another situation is with our female goats. Again, all of them are my "babies." We've even bottle fed three of the females. They know me, trust me, and come to me for affection and attention. But two of the goats, Tauriel and Galadriel, pick on their "sister" (really their cousin), Arwen, mercilessly, especially if she gets her horns caught in something. They'll ram her sides continuously until we can get to her and free her. It breaks my heart to see, especially since Arwen is the most gentle of them all. I know they're being goats and establishing dominance, but it just gets vicious at times, and this morning we found Arwen caught in a fence with blood on her ear and walking with a limp because of it. I hate seeing what they're doing to her, and I have a feeling part of it is their age and hormones too, but I love and care for Tauri and Galad just as much as I do for Arwen. The actions make me angry even as I know it's a part of their nature as she-goats.
    I love all of the animals, but I hate seeing them hurt one another regardless of the reason. I can't always separate them without having worse consequences, and I know they have to settle it in their own way or else I will constantly be refereeing and won't be getting anything done. They won't really mature if I do that any more than if I was constantly refereeing for my own children into their adulthood. Eventually, they have to learn to work it out on their terms.
    And this is the analogy God showed me this morning about us. He hates when we harm one another, but loves each one of us dearly. He hates what we do to each other because He loves each one of us, and each one of us are His "babies." He hates what causes us to harm one another, but doesn't hate any one of us. He just wants us to stop hurting each other just like I just want our animals to stop going after each other. And it hurts Him every time one of us is hurt by another, just like it hurts me every time one of the animals is hurt by another. I care for, feed, provide for, and watch every single one of them. So does He with us. I am invested with every one of them. So is He with us.

A Ramble about the Threat of Punishment

 

    I have seen now a couple of times on Facebook a meme which declares, "If you need the threat of eternal punishment in order to be a good person, than you were never a good person to begin with." Or something to this effect.

    While there's a number of issues to be explored with this statement, the one which strikes me most is the assumption that some human beings are just "good." Human beings in general are, as I have said many times before, malfunctioning. We as a species are deranged and unstable. One needs look no farther than the morning news to confirm this, and a more prolonged observation of human behavior over long stretches of time will drive the nail into the coffin as to any notion of human beings being anything other than a neurologically ill species.

    The threat of punishment is used to coerce positive behavior from deranged subjects. If human beings were without a malfunction, there would be no need for rules to follow or consequences if those rules are broken. We would all just be willing to look out for everyone else's best interests as much as our own. But we're not, are we? If we were, there would be no need for penal codes or a justice system. We have these things because we recognize that human beings will act selfishly and in a deranged fashion if left to their own devices.

    This is why part of the New Covenant as written in Jeremiah explicitly states "I will write My laws on their hearts and minds..." The inherent and inherited malfunction of human beings has to be bypassed in order to produce right behaviors. We cannot rely on our own brains to tell us what right and wrong is. The human brain will always screw it up because of a malfunctioning and over sensitive threat/survival system which hoards whatever it deems "good" and tries to destroy whatever it deems "bad."

For this reason, Jesus Christ came to join us to Himself so that we would have another mechanism or source of behaviors and decision making, that is, His own Spirit, life, or energy as long as we disengage from our own responses and behaviors and enslave ourselves to His. This is His laws being written on our hearts, and Jesus Christ acting and speaking through us because we can't trust our own brains to not screw it up and hurt ourselves or others.

    The threat of punishment for the violation of a rule is a training tool meant to keep the immature or deranged from hurting themselves or others. Is it inefficient? Yes, but it can be effective at least in the short term. The training tool is no longer necessary however if the person has come to maturity and no longer commits the actions which are harmful. All those who voluntarily submit (and He will not force this submission) to the Spirit of Christ with whom they are joined are those who have been brought to this maturity, because the Spirit of Christ within them will not produce those behaviors which will harm themselves or others.

    This is the biggest issue I have at times with some forms of "progressive" Christianity, because some of these systems seem to ignore or forget the evidence of their own eyes that human beings are not getting any better left to their own devices, but are destroying themselves, each other, other species, and this planet as a whole.

Walking the Middle Road

I had a conversation with someone here on Facebook last night and this morning, and its conclusion left me very sad. It's hard to express the way I'm feeling right now.

The conversation was over the existence of hell and its nature, having begun as a comment on a post which had been shared by a friend which declared that hell couldn't exist because a God who is love wouldn't torture people. I had responded to the effect that Torment (not being comfortable with the word "Hell" as this is more of a medieval concept and not a first century New Testament Greek concept) is not about God tormenting or torturing souls, but about those souls who refuse to come to Him finding themselves in the dark, lost and alone as a natural consequence of refusing to accept the God who is light, love, and completely omnipresent. If you shut your eyes and stop up your ears to what's surrounding you, of course you're going to be alone, blind, deaf, and suffering with your own internal demons.

The person who responded, who had, unknown to me until later, suffered a tragic loss repeatedly accused both me and my theology of being horrible and monstrous, and try as I might to clarify, insisted that I was teaching a God who tortures people, even though I was not nor would I. When the conversation ended this morning, I felt empty, misunderstood, and just very sad that this person had already made up their mind about both me and what I believe before we even began to discourse because I defended the existence of a state of Torment, regardless of the nature of that state, or its causes, or its outcomes.

This conversation reminded a lot of the theology arguments I would have in the theology group I was a part of, except then I would be getting hit from the other side of the spectrum, being called a liberal, a new ager, and other unsavory appellations. There I was frequently running up against Calvinists, traditionalists, people obsessed with Judaism and keeping the Mosaic Law, and so on.

The Scripture I am reminded of is when Jesus called the Pharisees "children in the agora calling out 'I played the lute and you didn't dance,' and 'I played a funeral dirge and you didn't weep.'"

Another thing this brings to mind is a line from the Analyst in Matrix: Resurrections where he says, "You people don't give a **** about facts! It's all about feelings!" And this was how the Analyst kept people under control in the new Matrix, by giving them just enough to fear losing while giving them just enough to hope for more.

What I have been in pursuit of for many years now are explanations which fit the datasets in question. No more and no less. Frequently though, these explanations either fly in the face of more conservative traditional theology, or, as in the case of the more left leaning person who was so vehement that my explanation was monstrous. It is an uncomfortable and very narrow middle road that sees attacks, insults, and rejection from both sides of the spectrum. One plays a joyful tune, one a funeral dirge, and both are upset that I am not joining either in rejection of the opposing side.

Do I believe God is love? Absolutely. Do I believe Torment exists? Absolutely. Can I honestly reconcile that? Yes, I can. Do I believe said Torment is forever? I think that's up to the individual tormenting themselves by rejecting Him. I don't think it has to be, and I think the timeless God whom I know is patient enough to wait for them to come around even if it takes what feels like forever.

My pursuit is for the reality of what is, not for what incites the emotions of either side.

 

From a Discussion about the Vulnerability of Jesus Christ

 

    It is difficult to empathize with or have compassion for someone with no vulnerabilities that we can see. We might respect them, idolize them, worship them even, but empathy and compassion never cross our minds with regards to them.

     There is an image which comes to our minds with the name "Jesus Christ" which implies total invulnerability and perfection, as a result, it can sometimes be difficult to imagine being able to empathize with Him, or for that matter Him being able to empathize with us.

    Jesus, Yeshua, was like everyone's big or little brother, and he had some health issues related to the circumstances of his birth, most notably a congenital heart condition. He engendered trust through not only His teaching, but also His own physical weakness. He had the appearance and "energy" of someone who was generally harmless. There were moments that "energy" from Him shifted into something of great power, but that had nothing to do with His physical disposition or condition. His disciples, who all became family to Him and to each other, sought to protect Him for a reason even as He sought to shield them. He taught them to love each other as well as Him, and they did, everyone seeking to care for one another because of each other's weaknesses, not in spite of them.

    Jesus, as "God with us," was also God made vulnerable, because it is weakness and vulnerability that we, as human beings, are more easily able to relate to, care for, and empathize with; and this facilitates the first and greatest commandment, to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your strength, and all of your mind.

* * *

    He, Jesus, was virgin born with only one set of XX chromosomes and DNA to work with. XX males frequently have congenital conditions. Also, there are clues in the Gospels that He had a condition such as tiring easily, haemotidrosis, and dying within hours instead of days on the cross from heart rupture.

    I’m not sure why this concept needs to be so threatening. It doesn't make Him any less who He is, fully God and fully human, and affirms His virgin birth. I can't see why it would be such a problem.

* * *

    I think God has a different idea of what it means to be perfect than we do.

* * *

    You don't have to agree with my conclusions. The whole purpose of this particular research was to provide an answer as to how it could have happened for those who struggle with the idea of a miraculous virgin birth. There was one gal who had a dad who wouldn't accept the Christian faith because he kept getting hung up on the virgin birth. While she disagreed with my reasoning and conclusions, she showed my blog post to her dad. After reading it, he accepted the possibility and had no further objections to the faith. This is the person for whom this was studied and written.

* * *

    As a matter of fact, no. I have not. I have authored several blog posts, books chapters, and a YouTube video on the neurological nature of hamartia, but no, I have not authored anything more about any other miracle. There is no need. As to your objections, they are yours to have.

    In my view, that human parthenogenesis is physically possible, does not negate the sheer astronomical improbability of it occurring, much less producing a viable male offspring. This was a one in a trillion chance of happening. Does that, in and of itself, not qualify as a miracle? Does God have to bring a Y chromosome out of nothing for it to qualify as a miracle? From everything I've seen, God doesn't have to use what is "possible" in nature to accomplish anything, but that fact alone does not forbid Him from doing so when it suits Him.

    As to your other objection regarding physical perfection of a sacrifice, I think we can agree that Jesus was not a literal lamb, the offspring of a Ram and a Dame sheep. Is it not possible that the need for the sacrifice to be without defect also refer to something else other than physical perfection in His case? Such as being born without a "sin nature"? There is so much about Christ's sacrifice which parallels but does not hold verbatim to the prescription in Leviticus or Deuteronomy regarding sacrifices that there is room to interpret His sinlessness as the required "without defect." Just the fact that His sacrifice was a human sacrifice, something which was clearly frowned upon by God (see His disposition towards those who sacrificed their children to Molech), violates the Torah and could have been considered an abomination.

    For the record, I don't go around trying to find natural explanations for the miracles of Scripture (though I do find Simcha Jacobovici's theories connecting the eruption of Santorini and the Exodus plagues very compelling). I stumbled across the research papers undergirding my theory after I got a hunch about something. Regardless of the theological outrage I get for it, I still haven't heard any genuine evidence against what I wrote, and it has a lot of explanatory power regarding what we see in Scripture, at least in my opinion. About the only arguments I get are theological in nature, and not even Biblical, just theological, and militantly emotional at that.

    I don't believe that such a view of Jesus as an XX male with corresponding health issues denigrates or degrades Him at all. It doesn't change who He actually is in the slightest degree, fully God and fully human. To me, it brings His humanity into a richer and more relatable context, and as a consequence, that union between His humanity and the second person of the Trinity at His conception. It speaks to me of the humility of God, and His willingness to be made vulnerable so as to draw us to Himself. It is well nigh impossible for a human being to really relate to omnipotent perfection. God knows this, and took the form of a vulnerable human being in order to accomplish His goals.

* * *

    With regards to His driving the moneychangers out of the Temple, I envision that scene probably the way you do, except with Jesus being a lot more physically tired afterwards. The question then becomes, was it just Jesus doing it with His own physicality or strength, or was it the Holy Spirit empowering Him to do it in spite of His own strength?

    This is the other thing about this. The Way Jesus taught was to be like Him, to do and live as He did, and He lived in constant submission to the Father, not saying or doing anything which the Father didn't say or do through Him. He said this a couple of times in John, and then used similar language when saying that we couldn't do anything without Him either. The things He did, the Holy Spirit did through Him in the same way that we are to submit to the Holy Spirit acting through us.

    As Paul wrote, "you see your calling brothers, not many strong, not many wise, not many of noble birth, but God has chosen the weak things of this world to put to shame the things which are strong, and the foolish things of this world to put to shame the things which are weak..." Why wouldn't this apply to the human nature of Jesus Himself to make it clear that what was empowering Him was not His own physical strength or charisma?

    I think that by envisioning Jesus as a perfect physical specimen of humanity, we can seriously miss the whole point, and substitute "another Jesus" which is more agreeable to us than who He actually was and is. To "blaspheme" is to "speak evil of," and I don't believe that I am speaking evil of Him at all. From a certain point of view, insisting on the statuesque Adonis version of Jesus, metaphorically speaking, is itself a blasphemy, because it calls Jesus' real humanity evil or at the very least, insufficient.

Nakedness and Kindness

 Notice what God didn't do when Adam and Eve were ashamed when they discovered they were naked. He didn't shame them. He didn't say, "well why would you be ashamed of that? Every animal on the planet is naked. What's wrong with you?" He didn't force them to remove the makeshift fig leaf coverings either. He didn't try to convince them of the ridiculousness of being ashamed of being naked, and that they should just continue on as though nothing was wrong. God didn't do any of this. Yes, He told them what the consequences of eating the fruit would be, but this had nothing to do with their delusion about needing to be covered up.

     What did He do? He made them better clothes.

     God took Adam and Eve where they were at, not where they should have been at. They were paranoid and delusional by that point in comparison with the other animals around them. God worked around it, taking their newfound neurological or psychological illness into consideration when dealing with them. He knew there was going to be no way to convince them of the truth, that they had no reason to be covered, short of rearranging their neurons and ending the people they were against their will, and so He didn't even try at that point. He took them where they were at, in the state they were in, and He was kind to them, doing the best thing possible for them by making them better clothes and getting them away from the tree of life so as not to make their new illness worse and cause even more suffering.

     You always have to work with who a person is in that moment. Not who they were or who you think they should be. I know of a person dear to me who can appear mature one moment, a four year old a few minutes later, and a young teenager not long after that. You cannot work with the four year old persona the same way you work with the mature persona, or even the teenage persona. You cannot work with a person you knew ten years ago, or even five years ago and expect them to be the same person you knew. You can't just demand that a person with atypical neurological or psychological behavior act and think as though they are neurotypical. If you do, you will make the issues worse, not better.

     Love demands that you be kind to a person where they're at, and let go of what you think should or shouldn't be done by them or for them. It is the kindness and compassion which makes the difference, not the moral right or wrong which might be enforced on them.

     God didn't enforce the universal nudity on Adam and Eve after their brains malfunctioned. He just made them better clothes than they could make for themselves and worked with them and their descendants from there, taking them where they were at, being kind to them, and minimizing the damage and suffering from their disorder as much as possible without violating their free will.

About Salvation

 There is a distinct difference between what is called "justification" and the salvation taught and preached by Jesus Christ and His Apostles. Justification, theologically, is basically full and total forgiveness of all of a person's wrongdoing and mistakes. But the Lord, in the Scriptures, already says that all a person need do is to turn away from them and turn to Him and He will forgive and wipe clean. He says this in Ezekiel 18 and John says it in 1 John 1:9, and this was true prior to Christ's crucifixion. Even before Christ was crucified, both He and John preached for people to repent, or turn away from one's mistakes and wrongdoings, this repentance being made public by the act of being ritually cleansed in water (something which was  a common practice in 1st century Judaism and was necessary even to just enter the Temple grounds; thus the pools at the entry to the Temple), and people would be forgiven.

     But the salvation which was taught by Jesus Christ and His Apostles was about a total change in behavior. Rather than being concerned with forgiveness for wrong behavior, His salvation was concerned with the behavior itself and its root cause. This salvation was brought about by being joined to Jesus Christ himself in His death and resurrection, and voluntarily coming under the control of His Holy Breath, Energy, or Spirit so that He becomes the source of our behaviors, words, and thoughts, and not the malfunctioning soft tissues of our brains. This salvation is a deliverance from "sin" itself, in cooperation with the Spirit of Jesus Christ, and not just its consequences.

     This is why the Scriptures speak of being saved by faith through grace freely, and not from anything we have done. And yet at the same time speak of needing to endure with Christ, to suffer with Him, to put off the old man and put on the new, and why James speaks of faith without works being dead, and asking if such faith can save you. Christ died for the ungodly, so that the ungodly might be made right, and made to do the things which please God, but these things can only be done by the Spirit of Christ through us, because the malfunctioning soft tissues, the "flesh" which isn't working the way it was supposed to, can't do those things which please God. It was never meant to be a "spiritual righteousness" before God, but a literal one because of Him acting and speaking through us as we "enslave" ourselves and submit to His Spirit rather than our own malfunctioning brains.

     How can a person profess to believe in Jesus Christ, and yet do nothing which He says? How can a person profess to be a Christian or follow Christ and not reflect Him in any way? Such a person is deceiving himself, talking a good line but having no evidence of the life of Christ manifest within him. Such a person is, as Jesus taught, like a man who builds his house in a place everyone knows is prone to flash floods. Is that person embracing the Salvation which He taught? Or will he be told by a sorrowful and confused Jesus, "I'm sorry, I don't know who you are." no matter what pastoral position, what theological position, or what great things people believe he has done for God. Jesus reiterated this again and again in His teaching that producing the fruit which His salvation brings is the indicator that this salvation has actually taken hold and is functioning. And He was clear and plain that we needed to stay put in Him in order to produce any fruit, and those who didn't dried up and were tossed out.

     We cannot use "salvation by grace through faith" as an excuse for casual or overt disobedience to the Gospel which Jesus Christ preached. We cannot use Christ's cross as insurance against torment when we decide we disagree with or just don't care about anything He said, much less what His Apostles said. That is not believing in Jesus Christ. That is not faith, no matter how you spin it. That is blasphemy.

More Recent Thoughts about the Closeness of God and Reincarnation

 

    Fundamentally, all of creation is information. It is like a program for a computer, except that, rather than being expressed in 1s and 0s, it is written in vibration, spin, and frequency of energy.

    I have written before that "God is Energy." From a first century perspective, this is basically the same statement as "God is Pneuma" or "God is Spirit," as what we attribute to energy today was attributed to Pneuma in the first century by the Stoics.

    All of creation is information written in vibrational patterns across the "surface" of God Himself. I have previously described it as us being sentient NPCs in a one Player game, and this description is not terribly inaccurate. We are patterns whose only existence is derived from vibrations and "disturbances" within Him.

    One consequence of this is that we can never be, physically speaking, any closer to God than we are right now, in this moment. He is the medium through which all of creation is expressed and written, as well as its author. The written word cannot exist except on the page (physical or digital), and so neither can we. That we cannot regularly "experience" this is a fault of our own perception and awareness, not a lack of His presence. A blind man cannot see the sun. This doesn't mean the sun isn't there. A deaf man cannot hear the music, this doesn't mean it isn't playing. The scent of the rose is still just as sweet whether our noses can smell it or not.

    There will always be a distinct divide of existence between God and ourselves, just as there is between the program and the programmer; and just as there is between the sound of music and the air through which it is transmitted. But this fact does not negate the existence of either, nor does it make either any less real.

    Frequently, it is our own internal "stuff" which keeps us from sensing and experiencing God. It is all the distractions which our senses feed us, as well as our own thoughts and perceptions. We are, in a way, blind to Him from birth, and most don't pay enough attention to anything around them to "see" Him trying to flag us down and reveal Himself to us.

    Thus Jesus Christ, someone our senses can register, as God says through Him, "This is what I'm actually like."

* * *

    I was also considering the question of reincarnation again this morning, as I do sometimes. It being a theological topic, if not necessarily a Christian one, makes it of interest to me. My thought this morning is that there is an understanding that either a human being dies once and then the judgment, or a soul is reincarnated, and that these two things appear to be contradictory to one another. But my thought this morning is that if you look deeper, they are not.

    A human being is composed of several different things. The soul is one of them, as is the biological component of the body, the unique, individual experiences of the person, and so forth. Each and every human being is unique to themselves, and when that human being dies, that unique individual is destroyed.

    But this doesn't preclude the soul being transferred to another body, a different biological entity, with different, unique experiences, and so forth. Thus the soul becomes part of a new, unique human being while still remaining the same soul and learning and acquiring all of the experiences from the new human being. And so this new human being in which the soul inhabits is a different one altogether from the previous human being, yet it is still the same soul.

    As I have written before, the judgment involved after the destruction of the individual human being may not necessarily lead to either forever paradise or forever torment (as the word usually used in the Greek New Testament for "eternal" does not have to mean "forever," but is more accurately rendered "indefinite" or "outside of time"), but to another transfer to be a part of another human being so that the soul can continue to learn and grow for its own sake. Whether one accepts reincarnation or not, this to me would be a satisfactory way of resolving the one verse in Hebrews, or the one verse in all of Scripture for that matter, which would seem to argue against it.