A Ramble About Mentally Ill Environments

     When your baseline of behavior is mental illness, the psychologically healthy person appears mentally ill. When you grow up in a family where mental illness, abuse, dysfunctional relationships, and abnormal behavior are all that you see, normal, healthy behavior appears like mental illness, abnormal, or like there's something wrong. Anyone who has grown up in such households and families, and then has tried to transition to functioning outside of them, will know exactly what I'm talking about.
     In a dysfunctional, mentally ill environment, we're taught to ridicule normal, healthy function as dumb, insane, or just plain naive. "There's something wrong with those people. They're just not right." when someone's life appears to be going well, and they have a strong family support system. We don't understand it, how it works, or even why it's there. Meanwhile, we and our families are self-destructing around us, or at best, just trying to get through each day broken without being completely shattered.
     Secretly, we want what those relationships that healthy families and people have. We fantasize about it, but we would never tell anyone in our immediate circle about it for fear of ridicule. Secretly, we want things to be "better," even if we don't know what that really should look like, or how to accomplish it.
     This is true of nuclear families, church and religious group families, and, honestly, the human race as a whole. Our human family, Adam's family, is mentally ill, dysfunctional, abusive towards one another, and broken. the biggest problem is that none of us really grow up knowing any differently. We don't see the problem, because we haven't experienced a normal, healthy baseline of comparison among our own kind. We can look to other animals that are psychologically healthy, and have healthy, normal relationships and behaviors, but we believe ourselves so much superior to them, that we would ridicule any notion that they might be the healthy baseline, and we the unhealthy.
     Jesus Christ was a normal, healthy human being. As a result, we see Him as abnormal, either positively or negatively depending on who did the viewing. The early Christians who chose to follow His path were on the road to normal, healthy function. Their behavior went from broken to whole. As a result they were branded as strange at best, and dangerous radicals at worst.
     In order to reach normal, healthy behavior and function, we have to first identify what that looks like in practice, and accept it as both positive and something we want to do and be. Further, we have to accept it as an achievable goal by some means. By relegating this normal, healthy behavior to only a select, special few we close ourselves out of it. By saying that it's only for the Saints, or the most holy, then we keep ourselves from embracing it. By believing that only a special few (not us) can succeed at treatment and therapy, we make sure that is the case.
     The first step to being delivered from an unhealthy state is believing that it can be done.

A Ramble About Losing Everything

     When my family and I first moved back to Southern California just after Aidan was born in the fall of 2002, we could only bring what we could carry in our four door Ford Tempo. An entire apartment's worth of our possessions which we had returned from Alberta, Canada with had to be left behind in Idaho. At first, we had thought we would only be there for a visit temporarily, but our stay became more permanent than we had anticipated. Our belongings were put into storage in an old grain silo on my in-laws ranch. The next time I saw them in 2005 and then actually tried to retrieve them in 2010, they were dusty, some were molding, some just weren't usable at all.
     When we moved out to Tennessee from California in the summer of 2009, we had to reduce all of our earthly possessions to only what we could fit in our minivan. Again, an entire apartment's worth of furniture, books, toys, clothes, mementos of our lives, and other things. We gave away as much as we could. Sold some of it. A lot of it had to end up in the dumpster behind the apartment building. We had lived in Tennessee for almost a year, had gotten into a three bedroom apartment in Erin. Again, we had acquired more furniture, more stuff. And then the thouand year storm hit, flooding the Mississipi, and turning much of the county where we lived into lakes and ponds where none should have existed. Another storm was moving in, and we made the choice to leave to protect our family from what looked like another disaster. Again, we packed up only what we could fit in our van, and had to offload the rest and leave it behind.
     From Idaho in 2013, it was a similar story as we tried to move down to Arizona to be closer to my dad who had recently come to live there with my sister. And again a few months later when we had to pack up and move all of our earthly belongings into a broken down R.V. and set off on a trip even we didn't know where it would end up. God knew. It was God who arranged all of it. Finally, we had landed in Arkansas where we broke down on my uncle's property in the fall of 2013. We spent until the next July praying about what to do until the only option which was presented to us was to leave behind only what we couldn't carry in suitcases on a bus back to California. This included beloved pets that had been with us for years.
     Why do I go into all of this? My family and I have "lost everything" many times. In every case, we believed we were going in the direction God wanted us to go, and trying to do what we understood Him wanting us to do. It was always painful. Our lives have never revolved around "stuff," but to say that it never impacted us would be a lie.
     But one thing I have learned the hard way through all of it, is that we don't actually get to keep the "stuff" we collect. All of it, eventually, is temporary and can be lost in the blink of an eye. We are given use of these things for a period of time, and then they are gone. The same is true of relationships, ideas, things by which we identify who we are even. When we speak of those things that "belong" to us, in reality, we are only allowed to hold them for a while until we have to let them go, because nothing, not even our bodies or our "egos" actually belong to us. We're allowed to use them for our own personal growth, provision, maturity, and so on. But we cannot be said to truly possess them, and when the time comes where they can no longer serve a beneficial purpose, if needed, they will be taken from us, pruned from us, so that we can continue to make positive progress and growth.
     Clinging to anything which is temporary as though it weren't is a lost cause. It may bring you comfort and security in the short term, but the very same thing can impede your growth and progress in the long game once you reach a certain point. And, fundamentally, none of it actually belongs to any one human being individually, but it all belongs to God who lends freely as we need it to function. And because everything belongs to God who, like a father with his children, lends freely, everything also belongs to those who belong to Him, and we have no need to cling to anything.

A Ramble About Valhalla Calling

It is perhaps strange that one of my new favorite songs is "Valhalla Calling." This is the title song to Assassin's Creed: Valhalla. Needless to say, it's not a "Christian" song in the slightest in terms of its lyrics, but it's a great song for getting work done like hand grinding the feed for the chicks.
     While the song celebrates the life and culture of the Vikings portrayed in the A.C. game, what it is ultimately describing is the pull towards the eternal as the driving force behind a person. The chorus of the song, sung joyfully and triumphantly goes, "The echoes of Eternity, Valhalla calling me. To pluck the strings of destiny, Valhalla calling me." And just to reinforce the point, the final verse sings, "Fires are rising and the bells are ringing, Glory take us into Odin's halls, Golden glimmer and the sound of singing
Asgard's call."
     The whole point of the "heroic" culture here presented is just this, to achieve glory and die as a warrior to be received into Asgard's hall with your warrior brothers. There is a pull towards that eternity which drives them to achieve more and more heroic (though not necessarily "good") feats for this end.
     While Valhalla may be an ancient fiction from a warrior/pirate culture, eternity is not, and neither is the pull towards it. The Scriptures say that we, as human beings, are made in the image of God. There is a fundamental part of us as human beings which originated with the Eternal, and feels the pull, the draw back towards unity with the Eternal. There is an echo always in our subconscious that calls us. For some it is very subtle, for others it is loud, clear, and strong as we unconsciously hear the singing of the call from the hall of our Father who fashioned us from His own.
     Our Father calls His children home with Him, to make our home with and in Him where we belong, no matter if we are here in the body or out of it. The echoes of eternity resonate and pound within our very beings as they call us to turn towards our Father, and do those things which reflect Him, His nature and His very Being.
     Pay attention to those echoes. Pay attention to the Eternal crying out within you to be rejoined with its Source. Eternity is calling you to the glory of its own hall.

No One Comes to the Father Except Through Love

"I am Road, Truth, and Life; no one comes to the Father except through Me. If you people knew Me, you knew My Father too. And from this point on you know Him and have seen Him."
     There is so much more to what Jesus says here than how this is commonly interpreted. Frequently, like many verses, John 14:6 is ripped from the rest of its context as though it was meant to stand alone. It was not. Jesus Came from the Father, and He was going to the Father. He came from Source and was going to Source. But more than this, He was Source incarnate. He was the human incarnation of Source, and as such He was the human incarnation of the person and personality of Source, which is love. He was the embodiment of love, made visible, made manifest for every human being to see, hear, and handle. Everything He embodied was how to get to Source, everything He embodied was the Truth, everything He embodied was Life and the Source of Life. He wasn't talking about believing a particular dogma about Him, He was talking about Himself as He was.
     Jesus Christ is God. God is love. Jesus Christ is God incarnate. Therefore Jesus Christ is love incarnate. And it is this love, this love which God is, which is the means by which we come to the Father, we come to Source. It is this love which is Truth in the absolute. It is this love which is life, and the Source of all Life.
"For as much time as I am with you and you didn't know Me, Philip? The guy who's seen Me has seen the Father ... Don't you trust that it is I within the Father and the Father within Me?"
     Jesus Christ had been displaying the Father, Source, since day one. As the "avatar" of Source, without realizing it, people were getting to know who the Father is as they got to know Him, and what He is like. He explained, revealed, and manifested the Father just by being who He was.
     No one comes to the Father except through love, the Road He taught and embodied. As Paul wrote also, "without love I have nothing ... without love I am nothing." There is no other way to the Father except through that love which Jesus Christ embodied, manifested, and taught.

Truth Will Out

It was William Shakespeare who first coined the phrase, "Truth will out." That is, no matter how hard someone tries to hide it, the truth will always be eventually revealed. The analogy I use is that of paper mache. You take a balloon and cover it with strips of newspaper soaked in a solution. No matter how many strips of newspaper you cover it with, it will always take the shape of the balloon inside. That shape may be distorted, but it is still roughly the same shape. This is a lot like trying to cover the truth with falsehoods. You can never fully erase the shape of the truth. Jesus said something similar when He said, "you will know a tree by its fruit. A healthy tree doesn't produce rotten fruit, and a rotten tree doesn't produce healthy fruit." In another place He says, "A grape vine doesn't produce thistles, nor does a thistle plant produce grapes." You know the plant by what it produces.
     You know a disciple of Jesus Christ by the fruit he or she produces. You also know someone who isn't by the fruit that person produces as well. There are the works of the flesh, and there is the fruit of the Spirit. We will always wrestle with our own malfunctioning flesh, but the disciple of Jesus Christ is obligated to live as He taught and walk as He walked, or else he or she is not being a disciple at least in that moment, no matter what they profess to believe or teach. There is the flesh and there is the Spirit and you can only enslave yourself to one of them, and make no mistake, you will enslave yourself to one of them at any given moment. There is self and there is truth. Where self is, truth is not. Where truth is, self is not.
     The mark of a disciple is the manifestation of the life of Jesus Christ within and through that person. If those people at a church, or those Christians around you do not behave as Jesus taught and lived, then they are not being disciples. They may call themselves Christians (though the first Christians would not have called them such), but they are not disciples of Jesus Christ. If their first concern is their own ego, their own self or self based concerns, protecting themselves or getting what they can for themselves, then they are not disciples of Jesus Christ. It does not matter if they are church members, church leaders, pastors, priests, bishops, or prophets. If they do not display Jesus Christ, who is love and kindness incarnate, and if they do not display the self sacrificing life which He lived, the forgiveness He preached and practiced, the non-condemnation and non judgment, then they are not disciples of Jesus Christ. And if they are not disciples of Jesus Christ, how can they possibly teach others to be disciples? That is, as Jesus taught, the blind leading the blind.
     Our behavior displays for the world whether we have enslaved ourselves to the flesh or to the Spirit of Christ. The only way this can be mistaken is if someone doesn't know what a disciple is supposed to look like, that is, if they've never seen one before. There is no real covering up the fruit we produce. There's no disguising rotten fruit as healthy unless you don't know what healthy fruit is supposed to look like, but once you've see it, you immediately know the rotten.
     I am as guilty of enslaving myself to my flesh as anyone else. And I see the rotten fruit it produces, and experience the pain it causes both myself and others. Every time, it hurts someone. It costs someone some kind of pain, and my self based behavior encourages the other person to react in the same way. And the harm continues to be carried from one person to the next person, and then the next person, and then the next person.
     But the fruit produced by enslaving myself to the Spirit of Christ always produces first love as the foundation. It always promotes healing, and not harm. The energy it puts out creates joy, peace, patience, faith, self control. And this too can be passed from person to person. It may cause me temporary pain or inconvenience, but the peace, stability, and goodness it creates are far longer lasting.
     The truth will always reveal itself to be the truth. You will always know a tree by the fruit it produces.

Ranting About Dispensationalism

Dispensational theology, or dispensationalism, formed the foundation of the Scriptural interpretation and understanding which I was taught at the first Bible School I graduated from. For those who don't know, dispensationalism is the teaching that all of Biblical history can be neatly arranged into seven "dispensations," "economies," or "administrations" of how God administered the world. Starting with Innocence, then Conscience, Government, Promise, Law, the Church (or Grace), and finally the Kingdom (referring to the thousand year reign of Christ on earth). It is taught and held by mostly Evangelical, Baptist, Brethren, Pentecostal, and independent churches, and is the predominant view among these. It was born in the mid to late 1800s, and popularized by Darby, Scofield, Moody, and so on.
     On its surface, it is a fairly innocuous and benign outline of the Scriptures. But the trouble comes in when it is actually applied, because it teaches that while God worked one way with human beings during one dispensation, He changes the rules and the way He works during another. Thus, anything which is said during one dispensation can be ignored entirely because it doesn't apply to those living in another.
      Where it comes to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, it becomes devilish. Because dispensationalism teaches that we in the present day are in the dispensation of the church, or grace, and that began at Pentecost. While the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, as well as His death, burial, and resurrection, occurred during the previous dispensation, and thus can be safely ignored or cherry picked. Thus, only the Epistles of the New Testament really have anything meaningful to say to the Church, and everything else should be interpreted in the light of these writings, or at least the interpretation of these writings which was born from the Protestant Reformation.
     I hope those reading this can understand the problem I now have with dispensationalism. How can you profess to be a follower of Jesus Christ, yet feel free to ignore those things He said that you disagree with? How can one be a disciple if you have no need to actually imitate or learn from the Master? Why call yourself a Christian at all if living how Jesus taught doesn't factor into your thinking at all? It is climbing out on a limb and sawing off the tree!
     The truth is that Paul's writings, James' writings, Peter's, and John's writings can only genuinely be understood from the standpoint of what Jesus taught, because they didn't teach anything different than He did. They went into some further explanation and some details, but it wasn't anything different, and it was always grounded on what Jesus Christ Himself said. They taught what they heard, and saw, and learned from Him; what their ears heard, what their eyes saw, and what their hands held and touched. They were His disciples, and followed the Way He taught the best way they knew how.
     To ignore what Jesus taught is to ignore the salvation and deliverance which He taught in favor of "some other Gospel" as Paul wrote. To say that Paul's writings are more important than the words of Jesus Himself is something that Paul himself would abhor and rebuke. As Paul said, "Who is Paul? Who is Apollos? Who is Kefa?" Paul would have rather never written another word if he had known that people would be saying what He wrote is more important than what Jesus Christ said. He would have attempted to disappear entirely if someone had put his words on a pedestal above Christ's.
     There is nothing more important in the life and discipleship of a Christian than what Jesus taught, and any attempts to negate or minimize His words and instruction in order to justify some interpretation or tradition of human beings is the worst kind of false teaching, because it teaches people to ignore and even disobey Him in His own name.

To God Alone Have I Been Cruel or Kind

"Against You, You alone, have I sinned."

     I was using Psalm 51 this morning for my confessional prayer. At the top of the page in my English Bible (a NABRE, my Hebrew is atrocious), I have these words written in their original Hebrew. "L'kha L'vadkha hkata'tiy." It is a deep and profound truth that all harm we do, whether we intend it or not, is harm against God. When we hurt someone else, we hurt God. When we injure another human being, when we're cruel to an animal, when we act with aggression, fear, or selfishness we're causing injury to God Himself, and as David said, to God alone. What is also profound is the word here used is "hkata'," to miss one's target, to err, or to make a mistake. All such mistakes are errors which negatively impact God, no matter how well intentioned it was to begin with. This is why also that to love one's neighbor as oneself is also to love God, and in loving God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind we will love the person next to us as ourselves. What injury or kindness we do to others, what injury or kindness we do to ourselves even, God takes as being done to Him.
     Another related thought, in every case where a Life Review is recalled from a near death experience, it is always viewed through the eyes and experiences of those being affected by you, either kindly or unkindly. Before I learned this, I came to understand that God could and did experience everything which we experience through our own eyes, ears, and senses as He forms the very foundation of our existence, as the air forms the medium through which the sound is able to exist and move.
     Treat every person you interact with, including yourself, as if it were God Himself, because in the end, that's exactly who will be on the receiving end of your kindness or cruelty. The only interaction, the only relationship which fundamentally matters is our interaction and relationship with God. It could literally be seen as just God and I, and how I treat the other person is really how I'm treating God. Were we to keep this mindset, this understanding, that there is only God and I (and removing the ego, just God with whom we interact internally), then either we would show our true colors by plunging ourselves into the darkness of rejection, or we would be fulfilling the greatest commandments to Love God, love one another, love our neighbors, and love our enemies instinctively as we choose to be either cruel or kind to God Himself.
     The mistake which many make when engaging with the idea that God is the underlying foundation, the medium through which all creation vibrates and moves, is when they then call themselves God. This is the important point of understanding which people, either for or against this idea, miss entirely. My very existence relies on God's existence in order to be, but "I," that is, my ego or "self," is not God. "I," am the aggregate or amalgam of my experiences, biology, and choices. "I" am essentially code, like computer code. "I" am an idea brought to life by patterns of vibrations and wavelengths. "I" am constantly changing, moving, evolving from one person to the next with each moment and am never the same "I" twice. Does this "ego" exist? Only as an idea, lines of code which are constantly being written and rewritten. Smoke dancing on the wind. This "ego," this "self" is not God, nor ever will be. The sound is not the air through which it moves, yet the sound must have the air in order to be heard. When I speak of there only really being God and I, and once the ego is removed, only God, it is to this understanding that I am referring.
     Once this concept is grasped, it does not engender pride, egomania, or any other such thing. The person who truly grasps this understanding will find himself or herself thoroughly humbled when they realize that they genuinely own nothing, are merely an idea at best, and owe their very ongoing existence, form, and substance to God's own existence. Pride cannot thrive in such a person. The person who understands this would not dare say "I" am God, because they would understand the ludicrous nature of the statement. Yet the person who understands the concept would understand that the very foundation of their being is God, and thus the very foundation of their being is also love, because God is love. Pride cannot survive this infinite ocean, but dissolves in it.

What God Believes to Be "Major Doctrine"

     Most of the time, the things churches and denominations argue, fight over, and defend to the point of "dying on that hill" are things that God doesn't even seem to consider important in the Scriptures. Things like the Doctrine of the Trinity, for example. This is one of the most important doctrines in Orthodox Christian faith, literally what defines Orthodox Christian faith, and yet it's not something God ever really puts a priority on laying out or explaining in the Scriptures. Not in the Prophets, the Writings, the Torah, or the writings of the New Testament. Are the hints and makings of it there in these writings? Of course. Could these hints and writings be interpreted other ways? You bet. The same is true of the other "major" doctrine of Orthodox Christianity, the hypostatic union. Do I disagree with that doctrine? No, not at all. But like other "major" doctrines, or doctrines which the churches consider worth going to war and schism over, the Scriptures don't lay it out like a systematic theology. There are hints. There are the makings of it. But like the doctrine of the Trinity, the Scriptures can be interpreted differently than what the Great Ecumenical Councils laid down as Orthodox Christian Doctrine.
     Want to know what God does consider major enough to continuously harp on in the Scriptures, and lay out in no uncertain terms? Loving others and being kind. According to the Prophets of the Old Testament, including David in the Psalms, God could care less about all the religious ritual, sacrifices, and religious observances in the world, but if someone wasn't being kind, was abusing the defenseless (especially widows and orphans), was profiting off the harm of others, was proud, and in general wasn't being merciful, showing loving kindness and compassion or just basic decency... Oh, empires would fall, whole nations would be sold into slavery, and the Angel of Death would be overwhelmed with his caseload that week.
     Really, about the only bit of theology God was interested in hammering home in the Prophets was that "I, and I alone, am Yahweh. I and I alone am God. There is no other like Me. I own everything that exists. I work, and who can reverse it? I brought everything into existence and ordered it. No, there's nowhere you can go where I am not. I have no beginning and no end. There's no way you can represent Me with a carving, so don't even try." The second bit of theology He hammered home was that all other "gods" were carved rocks and wood, and bowing down to them was certifiable lunacy.
     Outside of these things, God wasn't really concerned with how human beings understood Him, because He knew there was no way they really could understand Him. When He first begins His relationship with Abraham, Abraham pretty much understands Him as one God among many, and calls Him "El-Shaddai," which was actually not too far removed conceptually from a Greek calling Him "Zeus Pantokrater," as "El" was actually the name of the king of the Canaanite Pantheon. Every other name given to Him up until He gives the name He chooses for Himself to Moses is some kind of combination of "El." And God doesn't argue about it. He takes these people where they're at in their understanding and just goes with it. And so He is called "El Shaddai," "El Rapha," "El Gibbor," "El Olam," and so on until no one can remember who "El" originally referred to. In the New Testament, John writes about the Logos incarnating as a human being. The Logos was clearly an important Stoic concept referring to the ordering principle of the cosmos, more powerful even than the Olympian gods in the Greek thought of the first century. John wrote about Jesus Christ being this Logos incarnate, and God didn't bother to correct it in what He knew would be taken as Holy Scripture. Why? Because that was as good of a way of explaining it in that time period as any other.
     The concept of the Holy Trinity wasn't formulated until the fourth and fifth centuries by the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople, but even this was based on an older Egyptian concept of their deities. It is no coincidence in my opinion that its chief proponent against Arianism was an Egyptian Christian named Athanasius:

“The Hymn to Amun decreed that ‘No god came into being before him (Amun)’ and that ‘All gods are three: Amun, Re and Ptah, and there is no second to them. Hidden is his name as Amon, he is Re in face, and his body is Ptah.’ . . . This is a statement of trinity, the three chief gods of Egypt subsumed into one of them, Amon. Clearly, the concept of organic unity within plurality got an extraordinary boost with this formulation. Theologically, in a crude form it came strikingly close to the later Christian form of plural Trinitarian monotheism”(Simson Najovits, Egypt, Trunk of the Tree, Vol. 2, 2004, pp. 83-84.)

     Instead of arguing, defending, and fighting over the things about which God Himself just "went with the flow," it is the things which God Himself said were the most important that we ought to be focusing our energies on: loving Him, loving one another, being kind, empathizing with one another, being compassionate, forgiving, merciful, and letting go of condemning others for the same things which we ourselves are inclined to do. Whether or not someone believes God to be Trinity, whether or not someone believes God to be all there is, whether or not someone's theology is Orthodox, heterodox, or just plain "mistaken" really, in the long run, doesn't matter as much to Him as the things He repeats Himself about over and over and over again in the Holy Scriptures. It is not one's personal theology which they will have to account for at the Bema Seat, or Life Review. It is how they treated others.

"TEACHER!!!"

 There are few words, or even whole paragraphs which could describe how the disciples were feeling that Sunday evening. They couldn't make up their mind if Mary the Magdalene had snapped or not. Peter, John, His mother, and one other besides her had seen the empty tomb. They had brought back the empty grave cloth with the strange ghostly image on it. They had wanted to hope, but so far,
     Mary had been the only one to have seen Him. And to be honest, she had burst into the house looking like she had lost her mind completely when she had told them. Her face, and her undone veil were soaked and streaked with tears. Her eyes were wild, but animated and so full of joy... No, that's not quite the right word. Excitement, shock, looking as though she could take on the entire Roman legion by herself and didn't care if she shouted it from Mt. Tzyon itself; these are what filled her eyes and her face as her whole body shouted at us before she did, "He's alive!" She left almost as quickly to find the others who hadn't returned to the house after His arrest and to tell them. Her whole demeanor and disposition had changed from when she had left that morning. She hadn't cared whether she was caught by the Roman soldiers. She hadn't cared if she had gotten them executed with her plan. She hadn't cared if she herself died, because in a way, she already had when He did. It was not the same woman who went out with the proper embalming spices that Sunday morning who returned. This woman would have shouted that she had seen the Teacher alive in the face of the High Priests, the Prefect, and even Caesar himself.
     The whole household of disciples was disturbed and unmoored since she had come in. They remembered what He had said, that He would rise after He was murdered. But they were too scared to hope. They hadn't seen Him themselves. It was just too painful, and they didn't want to be given that hope only to have it ripped away from them again. Yet there was His empty burial shroud, fighting to do just that. There was Mary the Magdalene, screaming it at them. Literally.
     And then there He was. Just as they were hearing from Cleopas about how the two of them had just walked and talked with Him for miles. They had left early that morning for Cleopas' house in Emmaus-Nicopolis, easily a half day's journey on foot from Jerusalem. The rest of the disciples hadn't expected to see them again that day. They had to have set out to return to Jerusalem less than an hour after arriving in Emmaus. They too had that same animated, excited, awestruck look in their eyes that they had seen in Mary's.
     "Epistata!" (Teacher!) Someone screamed in her native Greek even as they were debating, arguing past their fear of hope. And then all eyes turned to see what she was seeing, what her eyes, in shock, were registering and she didn't know or even care that she was holding her breath. She couldn't speak another word. She was frozen where she was. She couldn't even blink as that same easy smile and eyes the color of the sea returned her gaze lovingly as only He could.
     "Sh'lama Allawkhoun." He greeted them in Aramaic, His hands up in in a gentle gesture meant to calm them all down.
     Time just seemed to stop. There was no sensing it in that moment. There was no sensing anything else as some, like her, remained frozen to where they stood. Others rushed towards Him. Kefa, Peter, had been one of those latter. John had been one of the former, tears streaming down his face as he saw his best friend since childhood, whom he had watched bleed out and die two days before, and whom he had helped place on a cold stone slab in a tomb, standing whole and alive in front of him.
     "Sh'lama Allawkoun, my brothers." He repeated Himself in Aramaic. "It's Me, don't be afraid."
     And it was, from the absolute kindness and love in His eyes, to the good humored smile on his lips, from His chestnut colored hair, to His still somewhat thin frame. The marks from His torture and execution were still there on His head, and in the wrists of His outstretched hands. She hadn't seen it, but she had been told by those who had what had transpired.
     Here He was. Yeshua, her Teacher who meant everything to her, was alive right in front of her, His apostles, His other disciples, their children, and... his own mother.
     "Bari?" She asked as her hands clapped to her mouth and the sobbing began. She too had watched Him die, and had helped bury Him. She couldn't say any more.
     "Yes, Emi. It's Me."
     Slowly, and then quickly, she rushed towards her son and gripped Him so fiercely one might have thought He would break. But there was a strength to Him now, an energy surrounding Him that she doubted anything in the skies or on the ground or under it could break. It was an energy that had defeated Hades himself, and led him as a prisoner of war in triumph. It was an energy even the Olympian gods couldn't overpower or defeat. They were powerless to the Being who now stood among them trying to calm them all down in the face of something that shook heaven and earth.
     Yeshua had risen from the dead. The Teacher was alive!
     There are no real words to describe what was felt. And those feelings wouldn't be forgotten into the ages of ages. How does a soul forget this? The Teacher is alive!

A Ramble About Ahsoka Tano

     I watched the trailer for the new "Ahsoka" show announced the other day. It looks like it will be fun, and a good addition to the growing "Mandoverse" which Disney+ and Lucasfilm has been building. For those who haven't seen anything more of Star Wars than the movies, Ahsoka Tano was introduced as Anakin Skywalker's padawan learner in the "Clone Wars" animated series. She was a major character throughout the series, and eventually was included in the "Rebels" animated series as well. After this she appeared in live action in "The Mandolorian" and "The Book of Boba Fett."
     Ahsoka grew up in the Jedi Temple, having been brought there when she was just a toddler. She was very much a part of the old Jedi Order, and believed in it and its goodness for a large part of her early life. This extended and continued through her apprenticeship with Anakin Skywalker until an incident which happened when she was about seventeen or eighteen. At that time, she was framed for a crime which she didn't commit. Instead of believing her, and supporting her, the Jedi Council, including her master, Anakin, turned on her. After a lengthy and successful quest to prove her innocence and find the real perpetrator, the Council had apologetically not only offered to welcome her back, but had decided that the ordeal would count as her Jedi Trial, and they would grant her the rank of Knight.
     Ahsoka declined both. The experienced had disillusioned her against the Jedi Order so badly, that she didn't want to be a part of it any more. She had been a faithful believer in the Jedi Code, the Light side of the Force, and the rightness of the Jedi way. But when everything went sideways, the Order abandoned her out of hand. The Order did, but not the Force.
     Ahsoka went through a very difficult period of trying to figure out who she was without the Jedi, and what path she would follow now that she was on her own for the first time in her life. Circumstances brought her back into the orbit of the Jedi and her old master, and just as it appeared she might be reconciled with them, Order 66 happened, and her master didn't just walk away from the Jedi, he actively went to war against them. And once more, Ahsoka found herself on her own, her adopted family completely gone.
     Ahsoka is a fascinating character, because through her trials and struggles, and even because of her disillusionment and letting go of the Jedi order, she took the opposite path of her master, Anakin. While he became virtually the embodiment of the Dark Side of the Force as Darth Vader, she became virtually the embodiment of the Light Side. She came to be the ideal for what a Jedi should have been, even as she proclaimed in no uncertain terms, "I am no Jedi," still wanting nothing to do with the organization and religious order that, from her point of view, had betrayed and abandoned her. In rejecting the Jedi, but pursuing and understanding the Force apart from its rigid ideology, structures, and the politics which had infested it, she became more a Jedi than virtually any other before her.
     And this is what makes her a fascinating subject because of the example she might pose for Christians who find themselves feeling abandoned or betrayed by their churches, church leaders, and denominations. As Luke Skywalker declared in "The Last Jedi," "The Force doesn't belong to either the Jedi or the Sith." This was a truth which the Jedi Order had forgotten, believing that they were the sole legitimate arbiters or gatekeepers to what the Force was all about. In the same way, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and even God the Father don't belong to any one denomination or church, or even to any of them at all. God remains God whether one is a part of a church congregation or not. The Holy Spirit remains who He is whether you are in a church or Sundays or not. Jesus Christ remains Jesus Christ, and it is still true that He died and rose again for the whole world whether you are a church member or not. The churches only have the earthly power to excommunicate you from their services and sacraments. They don't have the power to deny you the Holy Spirit if you so seek Him, any more than rejecting the Jedi Order cut Ahsoka off from the Force. As it is written, "He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him."
      The only person who can and will deny the Holy Spirit to you, is you. The only person who can keep you from following Jesus Christ, and submitting to the control of the Spirit of Christ, is you. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to keep you under the control of the church systems in place. And frequently, those church systems are terrified of what someone actually fully submitted to the Spirit of Christ can and will do, and will say and do what they need to in order to suppress them. The greatest opponents of the Saints of old were frequently the religious leadership itself. St. Patrick was a great example of this.
      If, for whatever reason, you have found yourself on the outside of the church's doors and walls, if you have found yourself ostracized from the church for whatever reason, remember Ahsoka Tano, Saint Patrick, and many of the others who found themselves on the receiving end of their religious order's hostility, and remember that religious order doesn't own God. God owns them, you, me, and every created thing which exists. He is not at their beck and call. He doesn't have to do what they say. And He loves you beyond all reason, thought, and senses.

The Worst 60 Hours of the Disciples' Lives

      From the time Jesus was arrested, to the time He appeared to them in the house after the resurrection were the most terrifying 60 hours, give or take, in His disciples lives. Most of them did not even see the crucifixion itself because they were too scared and devastated to be there. Imagine the trauma they were going through of having their Teacher arrested, and then sentenced to crucifixion.
     Now imagine the trauma John, His best friend and cousin, Mary His mother, and Mary the Magdalene who insisted on caring for Him personally were going through watching all of it unfold. They didn't know in that moment that the resurrection was coming. He had told them, yes. But it's clear that in all the pain this bit of information was forgotten, or disbelieved in the face of bloody wood and nails. It's hard to believe in resurrection when a lifeless, blooded corpse is staring at you, and you have to remove it from its mounts, embalm it and get it into the tomb with the sun setting in less than an hour.
     Thomas was nowhere to be found for days afterwards, he was so devastated. And when he was found and brought home after the resurrection, he couldn't bring himself to believe it. He was too scared to hope, because hope died for him that past Thursday night when his Teacher was arrested.
     Understand the brokenness of the disciples once Jesus was arrested.
     It's important to not try to sugarcoat or to whitewash what happened on April 3rd, 0033 C.E. We're so used to seeing depictions of the crucifixion that we're desensitized to it. It was traumatizing for those who loved Him who stood by and watched it unfold. It was a rollercoaster from bad to worse as the back and forth played out between Pilate and the High Priests. It literally shook the ground and damaged the largest and most important building in the city. It felt like the world had ended and nothing else mattered when the news was delivered to those hiding in the house that He had been crucified, and then that He had died. "Where do we go now?" "What do we do?" These were questions that, though appropriate couldn't even form in their minds. They had been a found family for three years, and were closer to each other than to their own blood relations. They had given up jobs, family members, property, and their entire former lives and had little if anything left of the world to return to. And the entire reason for this had just died on a cross.
     "Devastated" doesn't quite cover it.
     They had seen Him do the impossible. It had been terrifying and awesome to see Him walking on the water during a raging storm, in total command of it. They had seen Him literally call the dead from the tomb. They had seen Him face down a mob of pharisees armed with stones and turn them all away with just His words.
     And He was dead.
     How was He dead? How was that even possible? They knew He wasn't physically strong. They had even worried about it. It was a contradiction to what they had seen Him do, but it was the reality that had lived with and accepted.
     He was dead.
     The news didn't seem real until His mother, John, Mary the Magdalene and the two others had returned from quickly getting Him into the tomb. The looks on their faces confirmed their worst possible fears. That it was true.
     He was dead.
     And in a way, so were they. Everything they had become had died with Him, and there was nothing left for them but to sit, hide, and do nothing as Shabbat fell upon them like a heavy stone sealing them into a tomb as well.

If You Don't Get Anything Else About Following Jesus Christ, Get This

“Yet we know that the Torah is good, if someone uses it legitimately, knowing this, that the Torah isn’t laid down for a right person, yet for the lawless and unrestrained, the irreligious and erring, unholy and commonly profane, patricidals and matricidals, homicidals, male whores, men who violate boys, slavers, liars, those who take false oaths, and if anything different which lies against healthy teaching in line with the Gospel of the glory of the happy God, which I am entrusted with.” - 1 Timothy 1:8-11

“Yet if you are led with the Spirit [of Christ], you are not subject to the Torah. … Yet the fruit of the Spirit [of Christ] is love, joy, peace, endurance, loving kindness, goodness, trust, courtesy, self-control; there isn’t a Torah against such things as these.” - Galatians 5:18, 22-23

“Don’t be obligated to anyone at all if not to love one another; because the person loving the other different person has fulfilled the Torah. Because the ‘Don’t cheat on your spouse, don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t crave,’ and if any other different command, it is summed up with this message, ‘You will love the person next to you like yourself.’ The love for the person next to you doesn’t cause harm; love then is the total fulfillment of the Torah.” - Romans 13:8-10

The Torah, or any law for that matter, was and is meant to restrain behavior, but it cannot change behavior. It can only prescribe punishment for harmful behavior, it cannot produce beneficial or loving behavior. It can tell you what is expected, it cannot make it happen.
     If a person is led by or controlled by the Spirit of Christ, his or her behavior will be governed first by love, because this is the very core of who God is. If that person’s behavior is governed by love, then all rules, regulations, and laws are suddenly rendered a moot point because there is no harmful behavior to restrain. The governance of the Torah, or any law for that matter, ends when it is the love of God being manifested and practiced through the person’s behaviors and words.
     This is why those who demand that Christians keep the Torah, rules, codes, creeds, or even just the Ten Commandments in order to be “holy” in addition to (an often minimized) love are in such ridiculous and dangerous error. If a person remains squarely manifesting the love of God within and through himself or herself, then they will do no harm to another. They will neither kill, nor steal, nor lie, nor cheat on their spouses, nor break their oaths, nor any other harmful behavior. Those who claim that God is holy above all, even love, do not understand what “holy” means, because to be love is also to be holy. To be and practice love, the core nature of God, is to also be just, merciful, compassionate, and to practice the highest righteousness possible. If a person is manifesting love, manifesting the very nature and presence of God, then no law, no rule, and no Torah can apply to him or her. They simply have no authority over love.
     If you are struggling with a particular “sin,” a particular violation of a moral or religious rule, then quit focusing on trying not to break that rule (because, honestly, that only makes it worse) and focus instead on love. Focus on loving God, loving the person next to you, and loving those who hate you. Focus on surrendering to the Spirit of Christ and allowing and encouraging His love and presence to flow through you. Forget about rules, commandments, laws, or codes, and just focus on loving the other person, caring about them, being compassionate and kind towards them. The “sin” you keep struggling with will likely resolve itself, without the rule against it.
     If you don’t learn or get anything else about what it means to follow Jesus Christ, get this: love God, and love the other person like you love yourself. In loving God, we love the other person, and in loving the other person, we love God.

"I Have Not Loved"

 "I confess to you Almighty God, and to you my brothers and sisters, that... I have not loved you with my whole heart. I have not loved my neighbor as myself. I am truly sorry, and I humbly repent."
     I was just reflecting on these words from the confessional prayer/liturgy I recite in the mornings. This is what our mistakes, our errors, and our offenses boil down to, "I have not loved..." This is where we must recognize our flaw, our error, and turn around from it, "I have not loved." Not in any one specific moment of anger, fear, or selfishness, but this thing only, this thing which violates the greatest commandments and teachings of Jesus Christ, and the very heart and nature of the God who is Love, "I have not loved."
     There is no fear with love, and love completes and fulfills every law, rule, and regulation. Rather than focusing on any one particular failing, and one particular struggle, it is this one simple thing which must be focused on, nurtured, and protected at all costs within our lives, that we love God, that we love one another, that we love the person next to us, and that we love those who hate us. Rather than focusing on one's own struggle with anger, focus on loving the object of that anger. Rather than focusing on one's struggle with pornography, imagine the model as your sister or daughter, and love that person for who she is. Rather than focusing on one's struggle with addiction, focus on loving just one other person next to you no matter who it is. Start with one person, and then bring one more person into your focus of love. And then another.
     "I have not loved," is really the source and root of all of our human evils and problems, and it is this, first and foremost, which is what must be turned around from.

About the Canaanites and the Orders for their Destruction

     Today, I felt like I needed to write about something in the Scriptures which is, at best, difficult to understand and reconcile with a God who is love. I am speaking of the invasion of Canaan and the orders by God to totally destroy the Canaanites, that is, for the people of Israel to commit genocide against the Canaanite tribes and nations; as it is written, every man, woman, and child. Why would a God who is pure love order what is, from our perspective, such a horrific thing? To understand this, there are several things someone needs to know about the Canaanites and the world of the middle of the mid second millennium B.C.E.
     The ancient Near East of around 1500 B.C.E. was different than it is today. There were two or three major powers which dominated the region, the Egyptians from North Eastern Africa, the Minoans from Crete and the Aegean, and the Hittites from Asia Minor. But it is the Minoans more than anyone who had the most cultural impact on the coastal territory the Bible calls Canaan.
     In Hebrew, the island of Crete was called Kaftor, and its people, the Kaftorim. In Egyptian, Crete and its civilization were called “Kefchu.” The Kaftorim were a heavily sea faring people, and they established colonies and extended their power through this colonization across the Mediterranean. The Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur reflects Kaftor’s domination over the coastal Greek Mycenaean cities and towns, and its fairly well established that the ancient Philistines, also referred to as Kaftorim in the Hebrew Scriptures, also started as colonies from Kaftor and carrying their culture, civilization, and practices with them. Kaftor’s relationship with Egypt was marked both by trade and by warfare at different periods of time.
     Part of Kaftor’s religious practices, as well as the Canaanites’ religious practices, had to do with child sacrifice. There is good archaeological evidence to support this, as well as mention of it from the record of the Scriptures. What is less well known, is that in the ancient Near East, a sacrifice wasn’t considered complete until it was eaten from. There is evidence from Minoan and Canaanite digs of children’s bones and remains which had been eaten from. Another part of their religious practices had to do with priestesses offering themselves sexually to bulls (though this would be practiced in Egypt as well). Aside from this, the Kaftorim became exceedingly militarily aggressive, and there are records of “sea peoples” raiding coastal towns and cities during the period of their operations. Further, the Canaanites, heavily influenced by Kaftorim culture, were known for molesting and even raping travelers that passed through the lands they controlled by the mid second millenium. They saw themselves as superior and everyone else as cattle.
     It was around 1500 B.C.E. that the sacred Minoan island of Thera (Santorini) exploded as a near supervolcano, effectively destroying Kaftor’s empire from its very head and heart. The effects of this eruption were felt as far away as Egypt on the other side of the Mediterranean, and there is a good argument for its effects being used to create the plagues which fell upon Egypt during the Exodus. Forty years later, around 1540 or 1550 B.C.E. The people of Israel invaded Canaan with orders to destroy every last remnant of the Canaanite culture and civilization, and in so doing, they would be erasing every last living trace of the Minoan civilization in the region as well.
     What does God do when an entire civilization, an entire group of souls, have gone so far from simple love and kindness that they will mistreat themselves, each other, and everyone else as only existing for their abuse and amusement? What does God do when even their young are not spared, and are either burned alive and eaten, or raised to be just as much of a monster as their elders? What does a God who is love do when such a civilization becomes a threat to the well being, both spiritually and physically, to every other people and civilization in the region? He removes their immortal souls from Earth to where they can no longer do any harm or harm others, and begins to work on their rehabilitation if possible. God is love, patience, and mercy. But within the stream of time, there comes a point where action must be taken out of love for the souls of both those causing harm and being harmed. And sometimes, that means removing those souls from the physical world. Not destroying those souls, but just removing them.
     No one said God enjoys doing this, but if there is to be any hope of redeeming and rehabilitating such souls, sometimes they have to be pulled out of the context they are in altogether and the “reset” button hit for them. This answer on this subject may not satisfy everyone or anyone for that matter, but it is in character for the God whom the Holy Scriptures say is love.

You have to Opt Out, not Opt In

 This came up again in a recent conversation I had. It seemed important to go over it again.
You have to opt out, not opt in.
     That is, there is only one thing which Jesus Christ Himself says won't be forgiven, and that's the Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Specifically, deliberately rejecting the testimony of the Holy Spirit, the things clearly performed by the Holy Spirit which demonstrated who Jesus Christ is. Jesus said, "Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven human beings, but the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven..." Every sin... except one. That includes the sin of ignorance. God forgives freely, but if someone knowingly and deliberately rejects Him, knowingly works against Him like the Pharisees were doing, then He's not going to force that person to be where they don't want to be, experiencing His presence. As John wrote, they preferred the darkness to the light, because their actions were deranged.
     No one can let go of something they're not holding onto. In this case, it is the person deliberately rejecting the testimony of the Holy Spirit about Jesus Christ who is holding on to something, not God. They are holding on to their own pride, clinging to what they like or want, and so on. They are clinging to the darkness not wanting to experience His love, mercy, peace, and presence. He can't let go of this because it's not His to let go of. They must let go of it, and turn back to Him. The person who deliberately and knowingly shuts their eyes to the light will remain in the darkness because they voluntarily choose to be there.
     Will they stay there forever? That really depends on that particular soul’s choices. Are some so hardened that they refuse to let go? That they refuse to be forgiven? I don’t know. But I do know that it’s not for lack of God’s love and mercy towards them. It’s not because God refuses to let it go. That’s not who He is.
     Souls are tossed into the outer darkness because they choose to be there, that is, because they choose their own derangement over the pure love and mercy that is Yahweh.