Certainty

There is one thing about which I hold myself certain. One thing I consider inviolable truth. It is that certainty is poison to the human spirit. The more certain you are of something the less human you become. Witness fundamentalism everywhere.

If you are certain of something then that is something that you must do your utmost to inject doubt into. Examine under the light of many worlds, consider it as the ancient Persian would both drunk and sober, include as many more altered states as your lifestyle allows, consider whether you would believe the same if your moral basis were built upon something else. Perform experiments, physical or social as necessary, to test your understanding and the veracity of your certainty and keep notes. Make it impossible for yourself to ignore the edges of your certainty where logic or fact tells you otherwise. Because once you refuse to allow yourself to see one small facet of reality you begin to blind yourself to all of it. And thence, by all measures of psychiatry, lies madness.

I have yet to find evidence that certainty in any thing does more good than harm. However while there are truths that lack contrary evidence there are no truths that merit certainty. I accept even my initial statement in this post as a poison, it poisons my ability to make statements unambiguously and it poisons my ability to trust in the things that people say. Frankly, that may be a good thing in some cases. I accept that one poison regardless but no further. No other certainty will I knowingly accept into my self.

Random dissociated thoughts on theology

Literalism is the Pharisee's Crime. Or perhaps just their first mistake. Confusing the forms of religion with the soul of it.

Some people feel there are mistakes that can't be redeemed. Various addictions, 'selling your soul,' &etc. I ask in response "Is there some act sin that God cannot cleanse?" Keeping in mind (insert verse reference to thought crimes), are you any better? Is there a repentant sinner that God cannot save even from the very hand of Satan? Can evil spit in God's eye with impunity even in the most extreme of cases? Is God really powerless to save His people when they accept Him?
I have to answer myself in the negative.

Lest we descend into worry over our progeny or our fellows we must remember that God doesn't lead us into temptation that we cannot resist.

The more I go to church...

The more I attend church the less I seem to be willing to accept the idiocy.
Is this what the phrase 'losing religion' means? It's not the inverse of 'gaining' it so far as I can tell. It's a consistent, progressive chafing at the inherent flaws that others ignore. Gaining, if that's what really occurred to me some 5 or 6 years ago, felt different. Not a steady numbness or increasing indifference to flaws. Though to be fair life wasn't exactly nice at the time and perhaps it's more that I was retreating from life in general and thus not paying attention to what I was doing.
Hm.

Anyway. Since I never manage to remember thing like this later...
How is it that God is supposed to be as expressed (unchanging, love, perfect, never mistaken, etc) yet in the famous passages where Moses receives the commandments and Aaron builds a golden cow (EXO 32) God as much as says "Oh forget it. I'm just going to kill all those people and make you, Moses, a 'great nation.'" Wait, this is our benevolent god? Serious echoes of Noah here (which He said He'd never do again... that's a different argument).

Then over a couple of verses later Moses convinces Him to change His mind? Wait, I though God's opinions were immutable? How does He go from destroying these sinful people (oh yes, those that love their children are willing to slay them at the slightest insult?) to, well, we're not told hoe He felt after Moses reminded Him of His oaths... wait. Why did God, of all beings, need to be reminded of His oaths to Abraham? Hm again.

On justice and Christian morality

Because all people must be free to choose. What value to force a man to speak words he does not believe and what cost to force a woman to live a life that defiles her with its injustice to soothe your own guilt.

A person cannot be reached before you honor them and their decision must not be made before we reach them. If God chooses to convict then He has that privilege but the violent power of your governance has no place in my religion.

I fell like a statement should be made about individual opinions and their affect on other people but the words aren't here. Perhaps another day.

Soon

What does soon mean?
'Jesus is coming back soon.' (Need to find the relevant verse address here)
Really? Who's definition of 'soon' is He using there? His own? Why would He use a godly definition of 'soon' when speaking to a people that don't even understand what time is? Then He turns around and speaks of things most mundane for the time period and culture He's embedded in and uses them to address deep(ish) philosophy (the prodigal child, the lost sheep, Bring Your Own Parable). He couldn't have done that to describe 'soon' in a way that would be more accurate? WTF. Was Jesus the original idiot savant?

Wait wait. Would you prefer to believe He meant 'soon' by His own timeframe in order to lead people to believe He meant 'soon' by their timeframe so they'd act like He wanted them too?

If, Then God is a manipulative bastard. End If.

More on the Question of Evil

In The debatable nature of God I considered the nature of the 3 'omnis' as applied to God. Going back and re-reading it the logic doesn't hold up very well. How could an omnigood God predispose His creation to failure and evil? How could the concept of evil even possibly exist in the creation of an omnigood entity? If, as I understand God, He is constitutionally incapable of condoning, experiencing, or contemplating evil?



However God exists at a different scale from humanity. Perhaps, for Him, the short term existence of evil in Creation isn't a paradox against His nature since, as discussed in the linked post, He has balanced it all against Jesus, against Himself. Then there's promise of the cleansing at the end of things. So you could balance it against metaphysical scales or time scales. In either case you have a net 0 change in the 'quantity' of evil in existence. I'm falling back on quantitative verbiage but who can really measure these things? I merely record a refinement to the aforementioned theory.

---

Semi-Random tangent: I'm also led to wonder, just how does God interact with evil? Does He see evil? Presumably, or else most of Creation would be blank to Him. (I almost used the verb 'witness' instead of 'see' but that verb has other very serious connotations) Which doesn't really make sense. But seeing evil is, in part, experiencing it or having contact with it. Perhaps it is Jesus that sees evil. But all of that consideration will have to go into another post. This one is on another topic.

Psalm 111

This psalm begins with a call to praise God and a declaration of intent to praise God by the psalmist. What follows after is the very praise already discussed.

The debatable nature of God

Slightly misleading title. One thing that I keep coming back to is the problem of evil. Now, here we have a logic puzzle that seems to invalidate the Christian perception of God using its own terminology. How can God be omnipotent, omniscient, and completely good (omnigood?) at the same time and yet still create and allow to exist a world as flawed and full of evil as this. An all good God would eradicate the evil, given the ability and knowledge of it. So taking the omnis as given, poof there goes God in, as Douglas Adams says, a puff of logic.

Except, consider the following. Perhaps God set us up to fall. The world certainly seems rigged against us. Let's say he did, he set up the world in such a way as to deliberately predispose man to fall into evil and sin. And then, He took that fall for us. We still sin, we are still evil, but we are required to pay none of the long term consequences of that. Changes the equation a bit. Here I was thinking I'd never have even a hint of a crack of a solution to this thorny little chestnut, and I expect the average atheist will brush that off as so much religion (which I suppose it is), but I haven't been one of those for some time now and pop this little thought appears in my brain. God is good.

Edit: Oh that's hardly a complete solution, nor by any means airtight I'm sure. But, it's a start. It's a crack in the wall. And one that I'd never have found alone.

Edit 2: Coming back to this some time later, I think a little clarification is necessary. He paid our sins, and by that act cleansed the world of evil. Evil is still in the world doing it's best to wreak havoc, but every evil act was paid before it even gets commited, it is no longer evil; God doesn't permit evil in His world, He only permits humanity to suffer trials in order to give Himself a chance to help us. Interesting ramifications.

Matthew 5

Yeah, so, I could blame the delay in writing this on the fact that it's a very meaty chapter and my brain kept glazing over and reading on without stopping to think about it. But that would only be part of the truth. The rest is that I'm just a recovering world-addict with a serious relapse problem. Obviously. Moving on to the important part.

5
Ahh, the sermon on the mount. Starting with The Beatitudes, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." I think it reads more clearly as blessed in spirit are the poor. Surely those that are poor in spirit, or spiritually weak, aren't particularly blessed? Unless I'm reading something wrong. So, the poor are blessed (or happy) in the spirit. Simple enough, and more true than your average American is willing to admit. Logically, their kingdom is heaven, they are less attached to this world by their belongings and can look forward more clearly to the day the Lord comes. Or perhaps, can see more clearly because they aren't hiding behind a pile of stuff, which is wonderful imagery that I'm going to have to try to remember for later use.

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." The last part suggests to me more than just human symathy. Which is where the blessing comes in, of course, but it further suggests that one should bring one's mourning before God to receive His comfort. Which only makees sense, but it's the sort of thing you forget when you need it most. Which is probably one reason why Jesus makes it the second thing he says in this very important sermon.

"Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth." Pretty straightforward. Though one assumes that 'gentle' is more of a path than a destination, given humanity. At least, I sincerely pray so since gentle isn't exactly what I'm known for. My wife is much better at that.

I think I need to move swiftly through some of these. Any words which Jesus spoke recorded in the Bible are undoubtedly packed down and overflowing with meaning and valuable insight. But if I sit here and write a great long paragraph for each and every sentence... well I know me a little bit. I'll never get out of this chapter and this will never get posted because I'll get discouraged by my own lack of 'progress.' It's silly and incorrect, but true. So, moving past the Beatitudes let me touch breifly on verse 13. "You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men." Wow. So, my study bible has one short line for this. Salt preserves, creates thirst, and cleanses. All true. And if we Christians aren't doing these things then the only thing we're good for is... could that be a reference to martyrdom? Getting ourselves persecuted for the cause? Or is that a simple and straighforward "I will spit you out of My mouth" (REV 3:16) sort of statement? (And I just noticed an interesting numeric coincidence to JNO 3:16.) Hard to say, but based on the 'how can it be made salty again' the throwing out may be an answer to His own question. Suffering has a way of bringing us face to face with God, and that would be sort of a prerequisite to being properly salty. Moving on...

Verse 19 implicitly states that there will be a heirarchy in heaven by comparing those who offer false teachings of the Law ('called least in the kingdom of heaven') with those who keep and teach the commandements ('called great in the kingdom of heaven'). I've thought about this before, simply because we are forgiven doesn't mean that (as an example) not keeping the proper Sabbath isn't a sin. In other words, sin is the same A.D. as it was B.C. So, should we all be keeping the Law as best we can because it is sin to do otherwise? That would require a careful study of Jewish history, culture, tradition, etc to determine how much of that religion is based on God's word and how much is built up from the religious organization and social tradition. In short, how much is God's and how much is man's. But to do that would be mind bogglingly difficult and the mere thought paralyzes me with uncertainty and fear. So, perhaps Jesus will call me sinfully lazy when I stand before Him, but I think he'll understand just the same. I must accept that I will inadvertently (and in some cases knowingly, since the Jewish Sabbath is Saturday as I recall) sin over and over again, but being human and knowing that Jesus counts even the thought as sin it's plain that sin is purely unavoidable anyway and if I can't accept Jesus' absolute forgiveness at face value and get on with it then the whole gift might as well have been in vain for me.

So now that I've pounded out I-don't-know-how-many words on that one verse... I think I'm just going to have to split chapter 5 over 2 posts. I'm about 6 verses short of half way through, but it's after 1AM right now and if I don't post this and go to bed it's liable to languish for another week. I've got to develop a habit here, and not posting simply because I can't absorb the material fast enough is simply not acceptable. So, a-posting I will go, and I've got to try and finish tomorrow.

Psalm 110

Short and to the point. The first verse indicates in no uncertain terms, even for the OT, one member of the Trinity talking to another. That or it presumes that God talks to Himself, which is technically I suppose the same thing, but without the Trinity you'd have a pretty bizarre image of God having a little fireside chat with a hand mirror. Which makes me wonder what the Israelites make of this one, then and now.

Moving on, it's basically the Father telling His Son, very breifly, about the content of Revelation, essentially. Jesus (not named) sits at God's right hand, will have no shortage of warriors in His coming dawn, will rule as priest and king (Melchizedek) and so forth. There's a bit of imagery, but for the most part it seems fairly straighforward.

Psalm 108

So I slipped. Sorry, at least I'm standing back up.

Anyway. I had quite the deep thought on the way home from work last night (this morning, actually). Unfortunately, it drifted away about the same time my head hit the pillow. I was too tired to mark it down so it's gone. That happens often enough to be quite aggravating. Well, if it was important God will bring it back to me. Or to someone else, it hardly matters.

On to the bread.

Psalm 108 makes me think of military marching chants. It starts with a call to sing and play instruments in praise of God. Then it praises a selection of the tribes of Israel (possibly just the tribes in Judah during the separation, but I haven't confirmed that) and denegrates some enemy nations. Finally it calls on God to assist in overcoming those enemies.

So, I see some real parrallels to "Sound off!" etc. I can imagine David's armies chanting this at the top of their lungs on the march to Edom, or wherever. I'm probably wrong, that's just the impression I get.

Now, I think I'll have to make Matthew wait until the kids are napping. I had enough trouble carving some peace out just to consider this small psalm, nevermind something substantial from the NT.

Psalm 107

A litany of horrible circumstances which God releived when man called out to Him. Ending with a call to be mindful of God's mercy and love. Beginning with a call to thank and glorify Him.

"Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
Whom He has redeemed from the hand of the adversary
And gathered from the lands,
From the east and from the west,
From the north and from the south." PSA 107:2-3

Matthew 1-3

1-
Primarily a recount of the genealogy of Jesus. Some of the interesting points:
~Bathsheba figures prominently (David's great sin).
~The way Matthew counts out the generations, 14 from Abraham to David, 14 from David to Babylon, and 14 from Babylon to Messiah. I'd draw a parallel to the Trinity here, but my meager knowledge isn't capable of backing it up.
~Joseph didn't consummate his marriage to Mary until after Jesus' birth.

2-
The visit of the magi, and Herod's conniving. Funny that Herod attempts to use the worship of Jesus against Him and fails. Ending with Joseph settling his family down in Nazareth.

3-
John the Baptist was baptising people to the Lord when, apparently, a pack of Pharisees and Sadducees show up. John seems to tell them that being of Abraham's line (Jewish by birth, in other words) is not enough to save them. That they must "bear fruit in keeping with repentance;" and carrying the fruit analogy further, informs them that "The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." MAT 3:8 & 10. John mentions that "from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham." (9) which I find hard to translate but which may mean:
1 The line of Abaraham numbers greater than the stars in the sky (as promised), if God needs one of that line to do His work there is an abundance of material to choose from.
2 God can/will choose who is worthy of Abraham's inheritance and will raise to that status any who truly repent (the corollary would seem to be that if you don't repent then you won't be raised or perhaps might fall)
3 God can, if he chose, make a child of Abraham from the very stones of the ground, as in Genesis, so what benefit is it to claim that line?

The 3rd seems rather tenuous, and the 2nd seems to contravene some of what I've already been taught. However the first doesn't seem to fit with the context, so I'm at a loss. Carrying on then...

Jesus comes to be baptized by John, who initially refuses, apparently on the grounds that "I am not fit to remove His sandals;" (11) though Jesus insists and John accedes (who wouldn't?). As well as being the opening to the traditional affirmation by God of His Son, my Bible (a Ryrie study Bible) points out in the notes that the baptism of Christ identifies Him with the sinners who were baptized before him (presumably those after as well, though there's the added context of following in the Lord's steps there).


Enough for one day. Hopefully chapter 4 tomorrow. Make that prayerfully.

Psalm 106

The psalmist recounts the history of Israel, from Moses to the Judges(?). In this condensed form it's easy to see how closely the tribe of Israel resembles the life of a man. God has forever shown mercy on Israel, just as he continues to show mercy on me each and every time I've fallen. Some of his reminders have been less than gentle, but I certainly deserve worse.

Then He gave them into the hand of the nations,
And those who hated them ruled over them. PSA 106:41

Nevertheless He looked upon their distress
When He heard their cry;
And He remembered His covenant for their sake,
And relented according to the greatness of His lovingkindness. PSA 106:44-45

Amen

Semi-Random thoughts

Something that popped into my brain during yesterday's AM service. Sin is exceedingly patient. It consistently creeps up on me, and it doesn't mind feeling defeated. It knows it will eventually impose the same sentiments on me if it just waits patiently.

Fortunately Jesus is also patient, always standing by waiting to help. Always, and perhaps more importantly, willing to patiently forgive and suffer on my behalf.

It also struck me just now that support groups, self-help, accountability regimes, and peer groups may, in fact, be counterproductive. Consider, the only help and support we should need is Jesus. The only one to whom we should be accountable (for spiritual things anyway, worldly accountability is an entirely different and complex topic) is Jesus. There is a danger of leaning too much on man and not enough on Him. At the same time, of course, being a member of such a group reinforces the familial bonds and fellowship which is one of the hallmarks (and commands, if I recall) of a healthy church. Life is just too blindingly complicated, isn't it?

Psalm 105

A recounting of God's dealings with Abraham and Israel, beginning with exhortations to thank, praise, seek, and remember Him.

Sin

Something JD just mentioned on KLOVE struck a chord.
Roughly quoted, if you've strayed so far off the path and you're thinking you can't walk all the way back, you don't have to. All you have to do is turn around.

To God, the tiniest little sin is the same as the lifetime of sin of a serial rapist. But Jesus has already paid for it all. You're not racking up a debt; you don't have a sin credit card that you have to pay off. There's no bill due at the end of the day. Jesus has already paid for it all. You just have to trust Him.

God has no shades of grey, it is either a sin or it is God's own truth. Humans introduce shades of grey, and we try to dispense punishments commensurate to the crime. But the difference betwen crime and sin is more than mere semantics. Crime is a human thing, a piece of the world that is a symptom of its brokenness. You can sin and commit no human crime, and vice versa. A judge tallys up your crimes and punishes you with a sentence he or she deems suitable to the transgression. Jesus paid for all your sin, past present and future, 2000 years ago in a single stroke and opened your way to heaven. All you have to do is take His hand and trust Him.

A Plea

I see your hatred
I see your anger
I know who you are
And I know why you hurt

But I cannot help you

I cannot touch you
Without you touching me

Thoughts on the nature of God

Edit: Yeah, apparently this is wrong. But I leave it up so I'll remember later that it's wrong. I should probably give up on this sort of contemplation but I know I won't.

I was considering the nature of God's omniscience, time, human free will, and the idea that God always responds to holy prayers (not selfish ones obviously).

The thought came to mind that perhaps God exists in all times at once. To clarify, instead of viewing the world like a movie He's already seen (which greatly complicates the idea of Him ever acting on the plot of said movie by requiring the ability to see beyond the present as experienced by humans, which is vastly complicated by the assumption of an infinity of possible futures based on present actions; not to mention making the idea of human agency altogether rather dubious) He instead views it entirely at once, as though laid out on the director's storyboard. If He chooses to create a worldwide flood He can watch the entire storyboard change at once see all hte repercussions thereof. If someone prays for healing and it fits His plans or whatever criteria He uses such that He grants the prayer then He can instantly see every change that makes further down the timeline, both the effect on the physical world of that person continuing to live and the effect on human agency in the world as a result of that person getting well.

In short, God exists out of time in this context. He has no need of fast forward and rewind to see the possible outcomes or adjust a decision. Following that idea then, reality would become something rather like a puzzle. Such a viewpoint would say nothing about the consequences and value of 'solving' the puzzle (or obtaining a best case result). And anyway, I've rambled enough about it. I should have put this down days ago when I first thought it out, but my internet's been down at home and I kept forgetting.

Accountability agent emails

Note for accountability agent's email:
Quote 2THS 3:14-15, Paul's comments on idle believers. It lays out a good biblical tone for the agent to set with their reminders.