Love the Lord your God

 To love the Lord your God is probably the highest and most important commandment. Why?

I remember back in the days when I was an unbeliever, I questioned why God would command us to love Him and worship Him. If a mere human commanded this, we would say he was a very egocentric person. And there have been times in history when mere humans have commanded this, to their damnation.

There are a very few Commandments that are not purely intended for our own good, mostly dating back to the times when the Tabernacle or Temple existed. God is holy and majestic, and if He is going to live among humans in a special place, that special place has to have rules to respect His holiness. He's God, of course we have to respect His spaces. The original sin in Eden was not respecting God's things. Those holy spaces don't exist anymore in the previous material physical sense, though they do exist in the persons of His adopted children.

Otherwise, the Commandment to love God, like the rest, is intended for our good. There are of course very deep discussions possible on why God made humans to begin with, discussions for another time, but God does not need humans or their love in the sense that we need things. You can say God wants them, not needs them, which is probably an oversimplification too, but lets not get bogged down.

Why then is it for our good that we should love God?

Humans are both material and spiritual beings. And your spiritual being can either be aligned with heaven or hell, those are the only two choices. You can say, "I don't want either, I do whatever I want," which is actually hell alignment. The devil wants to do whatever he wants, too. That is rebellion. And if you are rebelling against truth and love and goodness, what are you rebelling TO? Falsity and hate and evil. You are a spiritual being, and in spiritual matters there are only two alignments: obedience and devotion, or rebellion and individualism.

I become more and more convinced that the nature of heaven - if the Lord will mercifully forgive the oversimplification of one flawed human, - that the nature of heaven is unity in love. What did Jesus say? He is in the Father, and we are in him. We become the adopted children of heaven through him. And what does a good parent do? Love his children. What does a good child do? Love his parents. We are united to God in love through Jesus. Jesus says he is in us and we are in him.

See, the default mode of existence for humans in a fallen world is that we are each isolated islands onto ourselves. We can never truly see into another person, nor can they ever truly see into us. They can never truly be in us or we in them, no matter how much you love them. Hence all the selfishness of this world, because the self is all we know in our fallen state. This was my realization when I first started on the path to being a believer: the realization that I was not only an island alone, but also a lost island and all my skill and intellect was not going to result in that lost island being found. I was never going to be saved on my own strength or merits. He who would save his life will lose it.

These solipsistic rules are not the rules of heaven. When Jesus said "All I have is yours, and all you have is mine," he was not talking about his sandals or his hat. We belong to God, and God's kingdom is also our kingdom, if we are God's.

Loving God is drawing near to heaven in practice. It is the act of drawing near to heaven.

Since the nature of heaven is unity in love, God interacts with humans through relationship. The old "works versus grace" disputes (which, that's a confused and deluded debate anyway) have to be resolved in one sense in favor of grace. Merely being good in a human way doesn't get you any closer to heaven by itself. Connection to God does. You don't actually even know how to be good, truly, without that connection. So the humblest wretch who throws himself on God's mercy in absolute sincerity and devotion is way ahead of someone who, while a more worthy person in the eyes of the world, does not.

Why should God be good to you, whatever you have done good or bad? There is only one answer: God is good to you because you are His child.

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
~Matthew 7:11

A good child loves his Father, as his Father loves His child. Heaven is unity in love. We are united to the Father through Jesus, and Jesus is in Him, and we are in Jesus.

Heaven is united in love.

The Heart of the Law

 I found this in a text document on my computer desktop, dated to April of 2024. I thought I would share it here.

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HEART OF THE LAW

It is said that the heart of the Law is to love G-d with all your heart, soul and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.

I have always interpreted that latter one in almost Lockean terms: do not regard your own rights and needs as more privileged than those of other people. That it is not so much that you LOVE your neighbor but that you respect the humanity and rights of your neighbor. It's not that I love the vast majority of humanity; I find the vast majority of humanity to be disappointing and disgusting. But that I don't get to treat myself as more privileged, important and with greater rights than others.

And many of the critics of believers point this out, that we love humanity in the abstract and in terms of individual rights but not so much where the messy rubber of human need meets the road. Where the rubber meets the road we often say "state your business quickly and then get off my lawn, stranger."

And if I try to be honest, I think that while I respect the rights of my neighbor and reject categorically the idea of privileged egoism, that my needs and rights are more important than others; I don't think I love my neighbor. There are scarcely any emotions involved in my regard for my neighbor, and what emotions are involved are usually negative.

And then I ask myself: does my love of G-d act like that? Do I just love G-d because I love truth, honesty, justice and equity? No. I do love truth honesty justice and equity, but I also love G-d Himself. And emotion, insight and reason blend together in that as a whole cloth, without distinctions. He's not just the archetype of goodness. He's my FATHER.

So I ask myself again: do I really NOT love Man? I think I do not love the aspects of him that present themselves the most readily to me: his greed, his selfishness, his callousness, his lies, his slurs and crimes against the value of life, and his hunger for power and domination. In short I do not at all love the demonic in him, and those are the aspects that present themselves the most apparently to me.

Why then am I so passionate about abortion? Sure it's still murder, and sure murder is wrong and I should be against it for that reason, but that does not explain my passion. Fewer babies of liberal parents means fewer bad people, right? And as long as I am not the one doing the murdering, why should I be passionate about it? 99% of those babies, if they were to live, are going to turn out like their godless liberal parents.

EASY LEGAL ABORTION MEANS FEWER LIBERALS. On that basis I should keep my nose out of it and let them murder their own, right?

But I LOVE them, those babies. I don't just love their moral right to exist, I love THEM.

They haven't done a thing good or evil yet. They haven't had that chance to make those decisions and face those trials. And here I think I am getting close to the core of the matter. I DO love Man - as G-d intended him. Man as the image of G-d. And the murdered unborn never get the chance to decide where on that divide they will stand: either on the side of seeking to live out the image of G-d or the image of the other guy. They never got the opportunity.

Not to mention that abortion destroys the standard of motherhood, an important part of that image of G-d in Man. Real mothers don't love their children one day and throw them in the dumpster the next, depending on how they feel. This is what liberals say, that you are only a mother if you choose to be. You only love that child if you choose to love them. Otherwise that child is just unloved tissue and you can freely throw it away (or sell its remains to medical science.)

No no HELL NO. If it's your child, you are a mother (or father.) You are going to be held to that godly standard of motherhood or fatherhood whether you like it or not: that you love and care for your child and seek his good. Why is "Honor thy father and thy mother" a COMMANDMENT, one of the TEN? Because it is an acknowledgement that according to G-d's standards they must love you, too. Even if you annoy the crap out of them, they are obligated to look after your good. This is a critical part of that "image of G-d in Man" thing, and one that the godless are most focused on destroying.

But even a fully grown human reprobate, an incorrigible sinner: are we not obligated to love whatever shadow of the image of G-d still remains in them? And incorrigible sinners sometimes DO repent, though I grant you it is all too rare. It does happen, it happened to me.

So in short, yes I do love my neighbor and not just abstractly. I love whatever part of the image of G-d is in him, just like I love those babies. It's hard to see that sometimes, with the demonic seeming to dominate most humans these days (or at least the loudest humans,) but it's still true.

Loving And Severe

 An important step to spiritual maturity is to see G-d as He is, not as we want Him to be. If you are just engaging in wishful thinking, just seeing what you want to see, that is not real religion. G-d does not exist to fulfill our wishes. We exist to fulfill His. He wants us to come more and more into His image, which is both loving and merciful and at the same time severe and unsentimental. G-d does not spare His children; who G-d loves he prunes and admonishes. Like a wild vine, He prunes off the unproductive branches in us and strengthens the productive ones.

Yes, G-d is loving, more so than we can imagine. Whatever your sins in the past, all you need to do is sincerely repent of them and see that you were wrong and resolve not to repeat them, and your sins will be forgiven. G-d wants to move past your previous shortcomings and embrace your future improvement and reconciliation with Him. G-d is so loving that He sent His own Son to this heck of a planet to die in order to save us. We low-lifes, you and me. In fact if you are His, everything He sends into your life whether it seems good or bad to you, is actually for your improvement. Some of those things are very unpleasant at the time.

And G-d is also severe. He is severe to his own to raise them up right, and he is severe to the unrighteous. One of my favorite passages in the Old Testament is also one of the hardest. In Leviticus 10 two of the sons of Aaron offer "strange fire" before G-d's altar. This might have been unauthorized incense or it might have been because they kindled their own fire rather than using fire from the altar. Whatever was the case, G-d consumed them both with fire. And then He says a very hard thing to Aaron:

"Do not cry."

Aaron was forbidden to weep. Man! He just lost two sons at once, burned to a crisp. But Aaron was no ordinary man. He was the High Priest of the Nation of Israel. He above all had to put G-d's interests first. And the sanctity of G-d's presence had just been violated. This was a very severe thing that nevertheless had to happen.

And you may find G-d removing people from your presence, if you are G-d's. If you are G-d's, you are His temple, His holy place. Profane people do not belong trammeling the courts of G-d. For myself, I became a hermit, among other reasons, to be separate from the profane human world and I find G-d removing the World's people from my life on a repeating basis. If you are His, He will do the same to you. This will be hard, and also necessary.

The benevolence and forgiveness of Jesus in the New Testament is mentioned frequently, sometimes at the expense of the many occasions of Jesus also being severe. In the Old Testament, adultery carries the death penalty. Yet Jesus saved the life of a woman who violated this Commandment and forgave her. Just as he will forgive you if you truly repent, no matter what you have done.

He also said this:

“Go in through the narrow gate, because the gate to hell is wide and the road that leads to it is easy, and there are many who travel it. But the gate to life is narrow and the way that leads to it is hard, and there are few people who find it."
~Matthew 7:13-14

This is a hard saying! He is saying the overwhelming majority of people won't be saved. Which means the odds are that most if not all of your friends and loved ones won't be either. Most of the world and most of its people are headed to the ash heap. Now, people follow a sinful way because they want to and they are free to make that choice. But it is a bit like some fish who lay millions of eggs so that only a few will survive to adulthood. Most people are like those million-minus-a-few who get gobbled up by other fish.

This is a profoundly unsentimental worldview. This is not intended to make us feel good, because it sure doesn't. It is intended to tell us the hard truth about being saved. We are supposed to feel chastened by this statement. Most will not make it. Will I? Better get serious.

This is also the same Jesus who went violent against the money-changers in the Temple. This is the same Jesus who told the Pharisees they will die in their sins. They're doomed. The same Jesus who said that anyone who leads one of his little ones (the context was children, but he means us) to sin would be better off drowning themselves.

G-d will not fit into our categories. He doesn't live to accommodate our wishes. He is more loving than we can know: indeed the nature of Heaven appears to be unity in love since the Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in us; we are united in love. He is also at the same time very unsentimental in a human sense, and severe. Our job is to come to know the only true G-d, not to try to squeeze Him into our wish-fulfillment knapsack.

The Incarnation is Weird, Man

 

Madonna and Child and Two Angels by Filippo Lippi

 

 Okay, so you are an expectant mother. And you have been told that the baby you are about to bear is the Savior of the World. How the heck are you supposed to behave? And according to gospels, she knew this full well before she ever gave birth.

What you hold in your arms is the pre-existent only Son of the Living G-d.

What. The. Heck.

It might be a bit like holding a case of nitroglycerin in your arms, except it is not going to blow you up but totally change the condition of everything. I guess that after you give birth, normal Mom stuff kicks in and you are cooing and burping him and changing nappies and you kind of get amnesia as to the fact that this is the pre-existent only Son of the Only Almighty G-d. I believe I have actually experienced similar amnesia before: times when I think G-d was saying, "I don't want you to realize what is happening yet: you will have to deal with it when it is time but not before, so I am putting a veil over your eyes for now." And certainly Mary was going to have some heavy stuff to deal with 30 years hence. She was going to need to pretend that everything was normal until Jesus was grown.

G-d was saying, "This is My Son. And now, because Mary gave birth to him, this is also a son of Humanity. Jesus often referred to himself as the Son of Man. Our son. And you are going to kill him, and through him I am going to save a remnant of humanity for Myself." Very much like Abraham and Isaac, except this time the humans followed through with the sacrifice. Both the Old and New Testaments often refer to the reconciliation between G-d and Man as a kind of marriage.

You have to assume that Mary's mind was to some degree sheltered from the full realization of who was in her arms. For a bit anyway, until Jesus was an adult, she was a normal mother and he was a normal child. Even though nothing of the sort was actually the case. I think that if Jesus as a toddler went around saying "I am your Lord: I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," that Mary would have eventually freaked right the hell out. But no. Lets make pretend, Momma. Let's pretend you are a normal mother and that I am a normal baby. They would have had to, almost.

Ya, the Incarnation is super weird, man.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Think the best of people that you can

 

From my recent colored pencil artwork entitled "Tigray."

 

I'll admit, I often think the worst of people. It's the Calvinist in me. Total depravity: we are born slaves to sin and death. Against that, there are multiple passages in the New Testament, ones that I can't lay my finger on at the moment, that say we should assume the best in people. In fact there is no reason that both of these things can't be true. We can admit that humans are born slaves of sin, but we can still choose to see the image of G-d in them when we see them, and also not assume their failure before they have committed it.

I have gotten a couple lessons in recent past weeks about not thinking the worst of people. First off was the election. I was almost certain that the morally decrepit American people that has murdered 65 million babies would elect to continue the current regime, or that the regime would find a way to win by hook or crook. Well I was wrong, Americans were better than that, and the minions of the regime appear to have been totally blindsided by the magnitude of the landslide that confronted them. We have found out that the regime has feet of clay and ideological blinders on just like everyone else, and perhaps more so in that they could not bring themselves to believe the truth in this matter (that they were losing badly) like in so many other matters. The American people were better than I thought they were. 

Now, the 65 million babies are still dead, but the US has a population of 335 million so really there are still a whole lot of people who have never been implicated in that sin. Not to mention that many of the abortion prone have had multiple abortions, so again the average American is not as bad a person as I assumed.

Which, being pleasantly surprised is always nice, but with it comes the realization that you were maligning people falsely in your heart, which is not nice.

In another situation in my personal life, I felt that certain people had failed to fulfill their part of a bargain. We had a deal, the other person didn't fulfill their part. It was really a minor matter, but that doesn't mean I was not feeling testy about it. Well in the end, belatedly, they more than fulfilled their obligations. In fact I would up being very pleased with the way they had held up their end of the bargain, albeit two weeks later than they should have. And this person had had significant personal emergencies that explained why they were late. So really, I was being the bad guy to think ill of them when they had good reasons.

Which is another reason why not to think the worst of people: so that it doesn't wind up that you're really being the heel, not them. ;) Even if in six out of ten cases the person you think is being slackward really is, what about the 4 others? You have wronged them in your heart, even if you never say a cross word to them. Don't do that.

And that is a reason for avoiding the cross words part. Again, so that it doesn't wind up that you are in fact the heel. I had mild and indirect cross words for this person, but I still had them, and my goodness they were sick and couldn't help being late.

All of which leads up to the New Testament message that it is better to be transgressed against that to transgress. If you are transgressed against, that is no blemish on your soul. You are innocent. If you transgress, it IS a blemish on your soul. I really need to take in this message much more seriously than I have been in the past. I can be a pretty testy guy sometimes; I can be quick to condemn, quick to put up the verbal dukes, but condemnation is not at all my rightful business in life. Christians should aim to eschew it. That doesn't at all mean that we don't call sin, sin, in the manner of the derelict progressive churches who hold up a Bible with one hand and preach abortion and homosexuality with the other. We can absolutely condemn ideas and practices, but we should stay out of the business of condemning PERSONS. It's not our business in life to do that.

Think the best of people if you can. If you are wrong, you have not sinned. If you are right, you have prevented yourself from sinning.

 

 

 

 

 

Better for Everyone

 

 

 We won. Those we hate, who hate us, have been utterly repudiated and for now, defeated. I did not think it was possible, and no doubt it was only possible due to a providential sequence of events.

·Biden choosing to run for a second term
·The coverup of his senile dementia
·The abrupt revelation of his senile dementia via the debate, proving the "conspiracy theory" at least in his case that the people we think are in charge, aren't.
·The fact that it was by then impossible to re-do the Democratic Primaries, leading to one of the most unpopular Vice Presidents in recent memory essentially being anointed from on high to succeed Biden as the Democratic nominee.
· J. D. Vance accepting the role of Trump's Vice President
·The failed assassination attempt at Butler, PA
·Elon Musk joining Trump, which was of incalculable value.
·The second assassination attempt
· Harris hiding from honest interviews, which is strange since she was widely considered even by neutral parties to have won the debate so one has to presume she could have held her own if she had tried?
·Harris failing to distance herself at all from Biden's record in one of the interviews she did agree to with a friendly media outlet.
·And many more.

If anyone honestly thinks this sequence of events is mere happenstance, you need to check your credulity.

But though we call them enemies, we do not battle against the flesh of the progressives, but against the demonic spirit within them. We want a future that will be better for THEM, TOO, and for their children. Whether they see it as such or not.

Now Trump is far from a perfect man and certainly could make mistakes, but this time around he has a whole posse of helpers who can keep him on a straighter path than last time. Last time he appointed a slew of Establishment figures to his cabinet: he is unlikely to make the same mistake again.

The progressives will hue and cry for a long time. Given their resistance to honest reflection and self-criticism, it may be a long time indeed. In time though we could make a better America. If this revolution becomes at least semi-permanent as versus just another reversal of the tides of American politics, the descendants of the current crop of weak complainers may become strong men and women. Better Americans. The tide of ever increasing odds of warfare could recede. It could be what Reagan hoped for, a new morning for America.

Or it may not, but at least the enemy of the time has been thoroughly trounced and repudiated, and shown as the disreputable and untrustworthy would-be elites and Woke scolds that they are. How we build on that win, is up to us. May G-d help us to that end.

 

 

 

 

TRANSCENDENCE

 

Detail from "Foundation" by Robert Dodd

 

 

"...they will be like the angels in heaven."
~Mark 12:25

 

 The condition of humanity will be transcended. I do not say that it can possibly be transcended, or that it might be transcended. It WILL be.

As if it has already happened.

Jesus said that those who see the next Age will be like angels. And we throw that word around, angel, like we understand what it is like. We do not understand. It is beyond our comprehension. Yet we can touch on that condition in this world too.

The futurists think we will transcend our humanity by merging with silicon, with machines. That is not transcendence. That is death. A machine, however clever seeming it may be, even if it seems greatly superior in capabilities, is ontologically inferior. It is a step into nonbeing, not into greater being.

Mankind is not in charge of its own transcendence, if that transcendence is into Life. It never will be. It can only take charge of its own descent, into death. On the one hand is Life. On the other, is Death. And many there are who choose death, and few who choose Life.

Can we start to see some of the parameters of that transcendence? Of course we can, the Lord means for us to prepare for that Life now. The life of the ones chosen to participate in that Age are given gifts from G-d: not normal human gifts, not gifts which can be calculated or learned by rote or by Man's skill, but only from above.

Insight:
To know what you cannot mechanistically know or know by mere reason. To see by a sense that is not a sense. It is the whisper of the Spirit of G-d in your ear. You know without hearing or seeing it, without reasoning to it, because you trust the guidance of G-d.

Creativity:
G-d created all of this, created a natural world with so much complexity, sophistication and beauty in it that Man's efforts at creation are like children playing with sticks and mud. You think supercomputers or space shuttles are complicated? Try the flower on the humblest weed in your yard. Try a gnat that is almost too small to see, but can navigate itself and fly and find food and reproduce. And yet somehow people believe it happened by accident.

And yet we were intended to create too. The Bible says that G-d delegated the creation of the world to His Son. And we will also create, things which we cannot now imagine, because we will be part of His family and it is His nature to bring things into existence.

Courage:
We might think that courage only pertains to existence in this world, and it is very much relevant to life in this world. Well think on this: Jesus was already in heaven. He had to come here and become weak and small and be tormented and die, in order to save the world. I am not sure we can comprehend that scale of courage.

And those who have a future in the next Age will demonstrate courage too. Not recklessness, not bravado, not underestimating the costs, but courage born of faith. One who will participate in that next Age knows that he is completely in the hand of G-d, and whatever happens is not intended for his harm but ultimately for his good.

Courage might be the most needful quality to have any hope of improvement in this world or in our lives. It is easy enough to lose heart without faith, and sometimes with it a bit. What keeps you from losing heart is to know that you have a purpose, that all of this has a purpose; that He's there, and that He cares. The Lord says that He is an impassioned G-d. That is, He cares.

Fortitude, or endurance:
To endure what might seem unbearable, and to come out better on the other side of it than you were before. Life circumstances that might destroy others, you survive.

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We have to understand that despite all the war and suffering and sin and cruelty and greed and inhumanity in this world and in Mankind, G-d has a PLAN for humans. And nothing in this world or out of it is going to defy G-d's will. Not because Man is so great, but because G-d is, those who are chosen to participate in that age will be like angels in heaven.

And what is that like, that state that we cannot now comprehend? I comprehend this:

Immeasurably innocent, and immeasurably wise.


"Be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves."
~Matthew 10:16