Why I Am Not Going to Church Right Now

      This may surprise some folks, but my family and I aren’t going to a church right now. In point of fact, I haven’t been inside a church in just about three years. The closest church to our farm, Cedar Grove Church (a Baptist/Evangelical community church), is about five miles down the road. We attended a few Sundays when we first moved to Kentucky, but dropped off after a while. The pastor was friendly, as were a few of the folks, but after a while it just became hard to take or feel a part of, especially after a very politically minded sermon by a guest speaker one Sunday. There was also a group of women that had taken my wife’s testimony poorly and began giving her the cold shoulder. In addition, there was a rumor spread around that we had later heard about that we were growing cannabis in the house because of some grow lights in the window my wife had been using to grow some potted herbs inside (for the record, we weren’t). After that, and with my own personal past experiences, attending a church and just being a part of a local congregation is a difficult and exhausting proposition.

      I’ve always had a complicated relationship with church. Not a complicated relationship with God, mind you, but a complicated relationship with church. As someone who has ASD, I have always been easily overwhelmed by people. Church is inherently a social experience, and for someone who simply can’t process all of that social information at once in real time, it can cause major sensory issues. I’ll admit, while my neurofeedback treatments did improve this for me immensely, too many people are still overwhelming and exhausting for me to navigate, especially when I don’t know them very well. This alone made the calling on my life to pastoral things even more of something that could only have been from God, and it is only when it is clearly the Spirit of Christ acting and speaking through me that it even goes well. You’d be surprised how many churches don’t want pastors who are honest about their neurodivergence.

     In some ways, paradoxically, it is this calling that also keeps me away for now. I’m going to be a bit more vulnerable here. It hurts to attend church for me right now, and it hurts in a way that I think very few people can understand. I first felt that I wanted to enter some kind of ministry as either a missionary or a pastor when I was sixteen and attending the church I more or less grew up in, Bethany Bible Fellowship, but I first really “felt” my place in ministry when I first gave the Eucharist as a Catholic to those in a nursing home in Three Hills as a eucharistic minister. I remember that first time clear as a bell, and even now it starts to make my eyes tear up in so remembering. I began leading the eucharistic liturgy (of course without the consecration as they were already consecrated and I was only a layperson) and something else, the Spirit, took over. I wish I could adequately describe to you that experience. It was the first time that I really felt like, “Yes, this is what I’m supposed to be doing.” and then the, at the time, subversive feeling also came, “but I’m supposed to be saying the whole liturgy and consecrating it.” It was in that moment that my genuine role and calling was revealed to me, married though I was. I am drawn to serve sacramentally at the altar as both purpose and calling, and for various reasons at this point, I am not able to. This hurts, and is a wound that is more painful than I think most people would understand. It hurts to see others able to fulfill that role that I cannot. It hurts more to see them not understand the privilege that it really is, and especially when they’re abusing it or make it all about themselves when it is about stepping away from yourself and “channeling” Jesus Christ for others. I have had to walk out of a church service more than once to hide my near emotional breakdown over this.

      But what about just attending a Bible Study or church group? This is a difficult proposition at best. First, it is difficult because, again, it is a social gathering and I still don’t always do well in social gatherings. Second, such gatherings are nearly always along theological lines that I no longer adhere to or feel comfortable with. I really don’t want to get into pointless arguments in the middle of a group of people. That serves no purpose and is detrimental to encouraging either the discipleship of others or my own. The third reason may sound arrogant, and I hope it doesn’t once I explain. Over the years, I’ve accumulated something like 236 undergraduate credits, most of which are in Bible and Theology. In addition, I’ve got 23 Master’s level courses in theology under my belt. I’ve studied and used the Biblical languages for almost thirty-five years. I continue to study, delving into anything and everything relevant to these topics that I can, and have done so for decades, writing about it prolifically. Put simply, because of my education (formal and informal) I usually know more than the teacher or group leader, and because of this I can all too easily say too much and dominate the group, possibly making the teacher look bad or like he or she doesn’t know what they’re doing. If I’m not exceptionally careful, I can undermine the group leader or pastor all too easily without even intending to, and that is not acceptable. For this reason, I generally need to remain mostly silent, and most of the time the teacher or leader is either not saying anything new to me, or at times is saying something I know to be erroneous in some way and it would be rude of me and embarrassing for them to correct them. I know this because I’ve made those mistakes before. Without being able to contribute much, and being exhausted by all of the social information and interactions, such groups can become more of a torture for me, especially with a new group of people that don’t know me and whom I don’t know. People have no idea how much I want to say and explain and can’t because of this. It is painful to be in those situations, especially having to take the position of a learner when the teacher simply doesn’t know enough about what he’s teaching, and this has happened all too often. To use an analogy, how would a person who’s studied calculus feel if they were forced to sit in a remedial math class learning “2+2” over again, especially when the teacher ignorantly insists the answer is “5”? Is it possible for them to say something I don’t already know? Of course, but it has been rare for a long time.

     Finally, and more mundanely, I just don’t have the time. Church tends to occur during times of day when we’re out taking care of the animals in both the mornings and the evenings, and those chores tend to go for hours. There are no days off from them. Wednesday nights, when most church group meetings occur, we’re still doing chores and have to be up at 5am the next morning. Our only open time is in the middle of the day.

      Maybe one day we’ll either find a church or I’ll start one where these things won’t be obstacles, but for now, they are. And so I attempt to teach, encourage, and “pastor” from my computer keyboard anyone whose path I run across. I write and share those things God puts on my heart, whether folks like what I have to say or not. And I attempt to put into practice everything I write about and preach from my keyboard, being the disciple of Jesus Christ I urge everyone else to be. Failing, correcting, and going again.

Of Diseased Trees and Good Fruit

      A few years ago, and not long after Heidi and I arrived in Kentucky, we found ourselves at a Rural King in Owensboro looking for fruit trees to plant on the property. After going through and looking at everything they had left that season, we settled on two nectarine trees and a couple of apple trees. (I think we’ve got a peach or apricot tree as well, but I’m not certain what it is at this point.) The trees we chose were the healthiest looking that we could find. We brought them home and put them into the ground with as much care as we could, making sure to give each one a good dose of rabbit poop mixed into its soil. (For those who don’t know, rabbit poop is sometimes referred to as “brown gold” where plants are concerned. It’s kind of like nature’s Miracle Grow.) We’ve protected them, watered them, and taken the best care of them that we could.

     As it turned out, however, we didn’t know that the trees were diseased when we bought them. We knew that others in their stock were and actively avoided them, but these looked healthy at the time. Over the last couple of years as the trees grew, the disease began to manifest. In particular, it became very apparent in the fruit of the trees. I remember last year, especially with the nectarine trees, we went to almost absurd lengths to protect the blossoms from the late freezes in March so that we could have fruit from them. The blossoms did develop into fruit, but the fruit was all diseased, became blackened and shriveled, and couldn’t be eaten.

     Jesus said that “A good tree can’t produce diseased fruit, and a diseased tree can’t produce good fruit.” That very saying has played itself out in front of our eyes with the fruit trees we bought and planted. Like I said, they looked healthy when we bought them, they even looked healthy with bright green foliage within the first year or so, but the disease made itself known not long after no matter what we did and the fruit bore this out.

     Bu Jesus wasn’t just talking about trees. He was talking about people, doctrines, and ideologies. In particular at the moment, He was talking about Pharisees and Sadducees that looked spiritually healthy on the outside, but whose fruit was born of the flesh and diseased. He was talking about people who rigidly followed the rules regarding tithing and diet, but ignored or contradicted the foundational commands regarding love, mercy, and compassion. And He was talking about the beliefs and ideologies that sanctioned that ignoring and contradiction. Diseased trees can’t produce good fruit because the disease runs throughout the tree, regardless of how healthy it might appear on the outside.

     This is just as true today of religions, churches, denominations, pastors, priests, and anyone who claims to be religious or spiritual. If such a tree is healthy, it will produce good fruit. The kind of fruit which should be seen is the person and personality of Jesus Christ Himself. If the person, belief system, or organization is healthy, we should be seeing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, trust, courtesy, self-control and all such things which reflect the person of Jesus Christ, the Divine Logos, flowing and growing through them. If such a tree is diseased, we will see diseased fruit. We will see pride, ego, fear, anger, sexual infidelity, overconsumption, mercilessness, arguments, and factionalism. We will see abuse; emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and abuse of power. We will see avarice. We will see theft. We will see people ruined, hurt, and destroyed. In the shadows, we will see murders. We will see atrocities. Diseased trees cannot produce good, healthy fruit no matter how much you want them to.

     One’s fruit will betray the state of their spiritual, emotional, and psychological health, no matter how good they look on the outside. If that fruit isn’t the Logos, if it isn’t love, joy, peace, patience and all of the fruit of the Spirit, if it isn’t compassion and loving kindness, then it is diseased and shouldn’t be eaten lest it make the eater themselves sick.

Understanding Why I Wrote the Hero Committing an Atrocity in My Story.

      I have often said that my stories tend to write themselves after a couple of chapters, and it’s true. Once I establish and flesh out the characters, the world, and the situation and circumstances, they always tend to take on a life of their own. Nowhere is that more true than with the crossover fan fiction novel I wrote called “Chronicles of Narnia: The Western Darkness” combining the worlds of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” (with additional material from their respective spin-off games and movie adaptations) and in particular, the eighth chapter of that book. This has always been the most controversial and difficult chapter I've ever written. I didn't like it or understand it myself and considered removing it or changing it somehow except that it's necessary to move the story along and adds another look at the horrors of this kind of war. I would go to work on altering it and then be unable to actually do anything with it, and give up. Something was keeping me from changing it.

     In my Narnia/LOTR fanfic, jusr before the four kings and queens of Narnia return home to England at the end of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” Orcs discover Narnia a few days east of Mordor and begin a kind of invasion to strip it of resouces. The Narnians respond by declaring war after talking animals and dryads are slaughtered. I wrote that Aslan, in a private conversation with High King Peter, ordered the slaughter of every orc the Narnian army came across in a similar vein to the Israelites slaughtering the Canaanites. As the Orcs would show no mercy, as an irredeemable race (in keeping with Tolkien’s views) neither were the Narnians to show any to the Orcs. After learning this lesson the hard way upon their first true battle, the Narnians comply as they march into Mordor from the east. This goes relatively smoothly, if distastefully, until chapter eight.

     In chapter 8 is where this policy of orc genocide results in an atrocity no one expected. The army comes across human women held as sex slaves for Sauron’s Orcs, and among them are half-orc infants. Not wanting to disobey Aslan’s orders, “every Orc,” Peter gives the order to slay them. The Narnians all balk at the very thought, all except the Minotaurs who carry out his orders of infanticide to the letter. No one is unaffected. Everyone hates what happened, and it leaves Peter to wallow in Dwarven ale trying to dull the pain, while others weep openly.

     I hated that chapter when I wrote it. Some of my readers were horrified by it too, wondering if Aslan himself was an evil character in my story. It’s haunted me since that point now for several years, and I never understood why I wrote it in the first place. I could have left the brothels out, but that would have been unrealistic, and even Tolkien wrote about half-orcs in his novel. They had to come from somewhere, and I just can’t see a human woman willingly give herself to an orc. It would have been unrealistic that they wouldn’t have run into it. But I hated it, and didn’t understand it. Not until the other day when it hit me.

     I realized something important about that chapter; a detail that everyone, including me, had overlooked. Aslan never said a word about the half-orc children. He never said anything about half-orcs at all. Peter assumed that his instructions extended to them. That was Peter's interpretation of his orders. 

      And then I realized, that was the point. 

     It had nothing to do with Aslan's orders, and everything to do with how Peter understood them in a situation that wasn't specified. He made what he considered the "right" decision in order to obey, even though it was really an atrocity as both his gut and his heart were screaming at him. Peter was a good and noble man who wouldn’t have even thought of this kind of action under any other circumstances. But because he had been told “every orc,” he assumed that meant “everyone with orc blood,” and had everyone with orc blood put to the sword. No exceptions.

    There is another character from Fallout 4 called “Paladin Danse” who is like this. Paladin Danse is a good, honorable, and noble man who firmly believes in the ideals and values of the Brotherhood of Steel whose objective is to keep dangerous technology out of dangerous hands. But Danse believes in the BoS and their code so strongly, that he has absolutely no trouble with slaughtering “synths,” that is, synthetic humans or androids (in addition to mutated humans whether they’re hostile or not). When it is discovered that he himself is a synth, he not only willingly submits to execution, but if you fail to persuade him otherwise and refuse to do it yourself, he will take his own life.

     Sometimes, in seeking to do the right thing, we can commit horrendous harm. As flawed, malfunctioning human beings, we can identify with and adhere to a belief system (or their interpretation of that belief system) so rigidly that an otherwise good man or woman can commit the most heinous of acts and not even be aware that they’re doing the wrong thing. They may sincerely believe that “it’s for the greater good” even as their victim is pleading with them to stop, or screaming and in tears. We’re just trying to live by the code or morality we believe in or identify with. We’re just trying to do what we think we’re supposed to be doing even if our empathy and compassion is screaming at us that we’re causing atrocious harm and evil.

      Peter paid for his orders with nightmares and PTSD in my story. Depending on which decisions you make in the game, Danse pays for his rigid adherence to what he believes is right with his life. In real life, a person may pay for not listening to their compassion and empathy with guilt that can never be satiated in addition to other consequences.

     Compassion, empathy, and love are the only standards by which an action may be guaranteed to not cause harm. Loving kindness and compassion are never the wrong choice, and are not governed by any moral code or ideology, but by feeling what the other person is feeling, and seeing yourself in that person.

On What Is And What Is Not Up To You

     One of the most basic principles of Stoicism is to let go of everything which is not up to you. To let go of everything outside of your control, and cease to fret about it because there's nothing you can do to change it. What does this include? Almost everything, really. What happens external to yourself in life is not up to you, and whatever originates outside of yourself is outside of your control. The weather? Not up to you. What your friends, family, or enemies do? Not up to you. What happens with your possessions? Not really up to you in the long run. Whether you live, fall ill, or die? Not actually up to you. Whether catastrophe strikes? Not up to you. According to Stoicism, the only thing which has been given to you which is up to you and within your control is how you respond to these things, the actions you decide to take, and the things you decide to say.

      Stemming from this also is another basic principle, that you are a slave of whatever can compel you to act, whether it be an employer, a possession, a friend, a romantic interest, or an idea. If you hold an attachment to someone or something where you fear the consequence of not doing what they want or not protecting it, then you are that person's or that thing's slave.

     Both Jesus and Paul said much the same thing in different ways. Jesus was explicit that no one could have two masters, and that in order to be His disciple, one had to drop or let go of just about everything that person was more attached to than to Him. Paul himself wrote that "you are a slave to whatever you obey, whether to hamartia leading to death, or to God leading to a right state of being."

     What are you trying to control that's not up to you? This is going to be the source of your suffering and frustration. Who or what can compel you to do their bidding? You are a slave to that person or thing. Look deeply at yourself and your life, and be mindful of both of these things. We cannot control who or what makes demands on us, but we can control how we respond to them. There is always a choice. Consequences will come with that choice, and we do not always have control over those consequences, but there is always a choice nonetheless.

The Evolution of My Understanding of Salvation - Addendum, No One Comes to the Father Except Through Me

       One of the most well known and often repeated verses in the Gospels is John 14:6 which is traditionally translated, "Jesus says to him, 'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.'" More often than not, this verse is used to declare that only those who believe in Jesus Christ (and usually in a specific way) will achieve salvation, whether they have heard of Jesus Christ or not. This verse is used to exclude the majority of humanity, and include only a very small group of people who profess a certain set of doctrines about Jesus Christ. Up until relatively recently, I myself struggled with understanding this verse any other way as well.

     The key though to understanding what Jesus was saying here and elsewhere in the Gospel of John is that John starts his Gospel with calling Jesus Christ the Logos incarnate. The Logos in the ancient Roman world was similar in concept to the Tao or even the Hindu Om. It was divine in nature with a relationship to the God, as the ancient Greeks and Romans used the term, which at times seemed distinct and at times overlapped. A standard definition might be the "divine principle which was used to create everything, and which also resides in every human being in some form." The Logos, identified with the God, is the active governing principle of the universe which the God used to create the universe and in which the entire universe consists and is held together, and which every human being holds a share or part. In the first century, the Logos was both the conscious rational mind of the individual, and the conscious rational mind which governed the cosmos, operating in both. Every human soul contained a shred, piece, or fractal of the Logos, and the Logos was the governing Head over them all. John's understanding of Jesus as the Logos Himself is crucial to understanding Jesus' statements about Himself.

     When Jesus speaks of the God as His Father in the Gospel of John, He is speaking as the Logos. It is the Logos which does whatever it sees the God and Father doing. When He says, "Before Abraham came to be, I Am," it is the Logos which is speaking, and not His humanity. When He says, "I and the Father are one," it is the Logos which is one with the Father. And so, when Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life," He was speaking as the Logos. It is no accident that it is John who records Him saying it, and it is John who begins his Gospel by calling Jesus Christ the Logos incarnate. This is an important distinction, because it is the Logos which is the way, the truth, and the life. When He said, "No one comes to the Father except through Me," He was saying that there is no way to experience that unity with God/Source, no way for the human soul to communicate with its Source except through the Logos of which it is a part or member. What He is not talking about here is that no one can come to the Father if they don't believe He died to pay for their sins. What He is not talking about here is that no one can come to the Father if they don't accept the Nicene Creed. What He is not talking about is acceptance of the canon of Biblical Scripture, six day creationism, or any other specific doctrine or teaching. He is talking about being the Logos Himself, firstborn from the God through which and by which everything was created, and of which every human soul holds a part.

      Why is this such an important distinction? Because there are many who appear to have found ways to suppress or disengage from their malfunctioning amygdala and survival responses apart from any Christian faith, or even knowledge of Jesus Christ Himself. There are many Buddhist monks who appear to "operate with the Spirit" producing the "fruit of the Spirit" of love, joy, peace, patience, trust, and so on without adhering to even the basics of strictly Christian belief. As I wrote about previously, those who have had Near Death Experiences suddenly appear to be able to stay in communication with the Logos part of themselves and demonstrate all of these things. None of them may use this language to describe it, but this appears to be what is happening. And so just as Jesus told those Judeans listening that He had sheep who were not a part of that fold, so also these people among others appear to have stumbled into an understanding of engaging with the Logos and disengaging from their egos produced by the malfunctioning flesh regardless of whether they profess to be Christian or not. The mechanics remain the mechanics regardless of what a person might believe about them, or what theological beliefs they might have. As long as the amygdala and survival responses are neutralized in some way, communication with the Head can begin to flow again.

The Evolution of My Teaching on the Neurological Basis of Hamartia - Addendum, Spiritual and Mystical Traditions

      In my previous posts that were a part of the series, "The Evolution of My Teaching on the Neurological Basis of Hamartia," I established that Hamartia, "error, mistake, flaw, or malfunction" in Greek, as Paul described it in the New Testament is both biological and hereditary, that, as biological, because it deals with behavior it is neurological in nature, and that the best and most likely candidate for this distinctly human neurological error is an abnormally formed amygdala as compared with the amygdalas of other primates. I discussed how human morality developed this condition, how the ego or self-identity emerged from this condition, how the death of all current human beings might result from this condition, and the dysregulation of which potential gene might be at least partly at fault for this condition in pre-natal development of the human brain. In a following post, "The Evolution of My Understanding of Salvation," I discussed how the implications of this concept impacted the interpretation of Biblical texts regarding the idea of salvation through Jesus Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection, and how those events produced a method of neutralizing this malfunctioning human amygdala for those who might choose it.

     In this post, I want to explore, as a kind of addendum to these previous posts, how the mystical and spiritual religious traditions also seem to affirm or confirm that it is the amygdala, or the limbic system of the brain in general, which is at fault in the obstruction of "spiritual" communication between the human soul and its Source or "Head" as has been previously described. 

     In most spiritual or mystical traditions, things like overeating and most sexual activity with very few exceptions are either highly regulated or prohibited altogether. Where sexual activity in particular is concerned, most of these traditions (with the exception of certain Hindu practices) will prohibit it outright for their monastics and religious orders, while those that permit it do so only under very strict guidelines, and generally only within the boundaries of a legally recognized marital or at least committed, stable relationship, and frequently with a distinct intention for procreation. Sexual activity for recreational purposes, and in particular sexual activity with multiple partners is strictly discouraged and prohibited. In the same way, though perhaps with less severity, overconsumption and overeating is discouraged and frequently prohibited as well. Who hasn't heard of the "sin of gluttony?" These things are of course in addition to the letting go of one's attachment to possessions, personal relationships, attitudes, ideas, and anything else which one might identify with to the point that fear or anger would be triggered if these things are seen as under threat. While I am thinking in particular of those proscriptions and conditions laid down in the New Testament and Christian religious orders, they are also encountered in the religious and monastic orders of other belief systems as well. The vows of "poverty, chastity, and obedience," or at least the idea of them, are not unique to Christian monastic tradition even though they may be couched in different language.

     The goal of nearly every mystical or spiritual tradition is the experience of one's unity with the Divine. This is true whether one is discussing enlightenment and Nirvana (or cessation) with the Buddhist, or whether one is talking to a Hindu, a New Ager, a Shaman, or Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic monks and mystics. This experience is also reported by fairly ordinary, often non-spiritual or non-religious people who have Near Death Experiences as well. Crucially, in this last point regarding people with no mystical or spiritual practice training, those who experience NDEs have little to no brain activity when they do experience them which means the amygdala in these cases has been neutralized for the duration of their NDE.

     What is important here though is the observation that all of these mystical and spiritual traditions independently developed nearly identical regulations and prohibitions for their practitioners to follow to foster their experience of this oneness with the Divine. With little contact with one another, and frequently very different, competing theologies, mythologies, and dogmas, they all came to the same conclusion that these things needed to be adhered to if one was going to make progress in their goal. What is also important is that all of these prohibitions and regulations directly relate to the survival responses which are regulated by the human amygdala and governed by the human hypothalamus: fight/flight/feeding/sex.

     Consider this observation that, the reason why things like most sexual activity and overeating are routinely regulated and prohibited among nearly every spiritual or mystical tradition (with a few notable exceptions) is because these things, in addition to fear and anger responses to threats, are also governed by the limbic system, the hypothalamus in particular, and thus they activate the abnormal human amygdala. Nearly every spiritual or mystical tradition, whether they realize it or not, operates on the unspoken assumption that anything which activates the amygdala's fight/flight/feeding/sex response will obstruct or block communication with the Head/Logos/God/Source and thus will obstruct the experience of one's union with Him. This is the reason why sex in particular is so tightly regulated among the traditions, whether they know it or not, because that reproductive drive is so powerful, especially among men. It is also the reason why "gluttony" is discouraged and fasting is encouraged. The true objective is to keep from engaging the survival responses in order to not obstruct or break one's continuous communication with the God with whom they are one.

     This might also extend to the overconsumption of alcohol and other intoxicants because they affect the brain and can directly or indirectly activate the amygdala's survival response system. Intoxicants obstruct this communication as well in various ways depending on which parts of the brain they target. Another point which should be noted is that this might also explain the dim view of homosexuality which is recorded in both the Christian Scriptures as well as the Scriptures of other belief systems and traditions. Like with the solicitation of prostitutes, adultery, incest, pederasty, and simple sexual activity outside of a legal marital relationship, it was seen as giving in to one's "animal passions," that is, submitting to or succumbing to the sex response demanded by the abnormal human amygdala which, as discussed, would of course obstruct one's soul's communication with God/Source because it would still be the amygdala which would be engaged rather than neutralized. Marital, heterosexual relationships were seen as approved because it was considered the couple's family duty to produce offspring which couldn't be done without having sex between an unrelated male and a female, regardless of one's sexual preferences. Whether one can pursue the continued and open communication of the human soul with its Source while engaged in a committed, monogamous homosexual relationship may simply depend on the individual in question in the same way having many possessions may or may not obstruct this communication depends on whether the fear or aggression response is triggered by them. In this, I am reminded of St. Augustine who recognized that he had to give up sleeping with his mistress, and sexual activity as a whole including the prospect of a marriage, in order to pursue a spiritual life. Paul himself raised his concerns about any marital relationship and being a disciple of Jesus Christ because those who were married had to be concerned with the needs and desires of their spouses, whereas those who weren't could be concerned with what pleased the Lord alone. But he also recognized that not everyone could maintain that kind of control over their sexual drive and responses. It was more compassionate and pragmatic to encourage a marital relationship for this latter group while encouraging an abandonment of sexuality altogether for those who could handle it. But the rule, whether the reason was understood or not, can be traced back universally to avoiding what may trigger one's fight/flight/feeding/sex responses, and it was recognized by the Apostle that this was different for different people and had to be handled as such.

     All of the prohibitions and proscriptions in the New Testament in particular, and in mystical and spiritual traditions in general, can all be explained by this abnormal, malfunctioning human amygdala which I have described. They all aim to curb and minimize triggering the survival responses of fight/flight/feeding/sex which obstructs the communication of one's soul to its Source which is the God who is love.

Your Professed Beliefs are Worthless Without Love, Because God is Love

      I started translating 1 Corinthians 13 again this morning. It just happens to come next in my on and off morning translation through 1 Corinthians. In a way, it feels kind of redundant because I just did this recently when I do a new edition of "The Path," but here it is again, and I can't help but think it's both one of the most quoted passages in the Scriptures, and one of the most ignored for that, especially the first three verses.

     In the first three verses Paul explicitly says that a person could speak every language, even angelic ones, know everything, see and understand every mystery, have the kind of faith or trust to relocate mountains, give everything they own away and even hand over their own body to be burned, but for all of this he says that if they do not possess love, they have nothing, are nothing, and it helps them nothing at all. Not one thing. According to Paul, it doesn't matter what you say, what you do, or what you know, if you do not possess love, it's all worthless and for nothing, and so are you. 

     There really can be no overstating the profound implications of Paul's statements in these three verses because they coincide with John's explicit statement in his first letter, "The person not loving doesn't know God, because God is love." Why is it all worthless and for nothing without love? Because whatever else it may be, it is worthless without the God who is love. It is good for nothing to anyone if it isn't born from God who is love. This is why the two most important commands in the Gospels are to love God with everything you've got and to love your neighbor as yourself. Add to these His instructions to love your enemies, and just to love one another as He loved us. If it isn't born from love, it isn't born from God, and if it isn't born from God than the action, word, or thought is worth nothing. As John also wrote, the person who makes their home in love, makes their home in God, and God within them.

      What is the mark, the indicator that someone is genuinely operating from God, or the Spirit of God? Love. What is the sign that their religion or beliefs or practices are valid? Love. What is it that God wants most of all from us? Love, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, non-judgment, and these are the things which Jesus Himself explicitly taught. The person who doesn't display love isn't a disciple of Jesus Christ, no matter what they say.

     The foundational nature of Love in one's faith and practice cannot be overstated because if it isn't present, if it can't be seen in that person, then nothing they say or do is originating from God and they should be at best ignored and guided back to it, and at worst actively opposed for the deceiver and liar that they are.

     Virtually everything else can be tossed to the wayside in terms of belief structures as far as God is concerned, but this one point is absolutely mandatory, that what we do, what we say, and who we are is born from love and possesses love, because if it doesn't, then we don't know Him.