A Question of Choice

As one reads through the Scripture you may notice that God never forces anyone to believe in Him, His Word, His Works, His prophets, or even His only begotten Son, Jesus. 

He always seems to leave room for doubt. Isn't that odd? Isn't that just like the nature of God? He leave us to choose, that is our gift of freewill in play.

I believe it has everything to do with the Nature of God. He is a God of love, and if you have been paying attention  you know that love requires choice. You must have the ability to make a decision to love, hate, or be indifferent all on your own. Otherwise, we would have obligation, duty, responsibility, or something else that isn't love. A sense of obligation, duty, or responsibility may grow from love but not the inverse. 

In a nation which has a volunteer armed forces, one joins the military because they love their country, and this leads to a feeling of duty to defend it. We don't have an intrinsic desire to join the service, which leads to the love of country. So, we love our country enough to die for it, that's giving up everything for the object of love. 

Our God is a pretty smart God, and He understands human nature far better than we understand His Nature. Love is something that you do for another without any expectation of return, reciprocity, or consideration. What He desires most from us is our love, not sacrifice, not money, not our unblemished attendance at church, but our love. 

This sounds pretty simple, at first, but there's more than just the lip service of love that He's asking for. If you love your mother or father, you want to do the things that make them happy. What good is my claiming to love my mom if I am stealing her cigarettes four times a day. My actions do not exhibit love, do they? 

The Lord says: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.

-Isaiah 29:13

He's looking for the genuine article, not the sales pitch. Even if you are the worst of sinners, He will accept your contrite heart over someone who feels that they are owed Salvation because they followed "the rules",  or operated on grudging obligation. 

If you have love in your heart towards God, how could you not have love for all His Creation? Do you see how the single act of loving God expands exponentially into love for all? 

It's a logic puzzle in a way, 

God is everything 
God is love 
Love is everything 
GOD=LOVE=EVERYTHING 

Everything that He desires from us and for us is Love. What a wonderful, beautiful God! 

Your good works are the product of Salvation, not progress in salvation. You can never earn your way to God, His Grace or eternal Life by your own merit. You don't have the capacity. You don't even know how to be good in the way God is good. We are too selfish and self-centered by vice of the human nature that clouds our judgments and perspectives. What appears right and just is a shadow of God's Right and Just. We can't really do much about it, it's our nature. But God can by applying His corrective lenses tinted with the Blood of Jesus Christ.

Praise God for his correction! 

Praise Him for His Mercy! 

Praise Him for His Love!

The Chosen People

I thought I'd choose a topic of choice, the Chosen People of God. Being chosen specifically by God as "His people" seems like a pretty glorious position to hold. Sure, it does until you look at the track record and earthly fate of these select few.

How few?... Less than 0.2% of the world's population. That means out of 1,000 people there are 2 people of the Jewish faith.

This is who all the antisemitism throughout human history has been directed against. During the 800 year period that we call The Dark Ages, Jews were forbidden from holding public offices, professional positions, or owning land. If they became too prosperous, too visible, or too easy a target a more severe treatment was regularly applied.

One of the few jobs that Jews could hold was money lender, since the lending of money at interest was considered the sin of Usury by the Catholic church. Another legal occupation for Jews at the time was entertainer. Showmanship was considered a lowly and sordid business back then.

Oddly enough, those ignorant of history think the large numbers of Jews in the banking and entertainment industries are evidence of a some grand Jewish conspiracy. In truth, it was a Christian conspiracy against the "Christ killers" being employed that produced the large number of Jews we see in these trades today.

Today banking and entertainment are big businesses largely because of the innovations and contributions of the minuscule 0.2% of the global human population we call "the Jews". It seems to be an insignificant percentage in the scope of the other 99.8% of humanity, doesn't it?

Let's put this number in perspective...

• If we took everyone on the planet and went to war against Belgium, that would be equal to the 0.2% the Jews comprise. 

• How about the world vs. the State of Pennsylvania? That's the numerical equivalent as well.

Jesus was one of those "chosen people", and arguably He still is, since He never required His own blood for Salvation. 

Jesus was the Choicest of the Chosen, and look how that worked out for Him. He was nailed to a tree for telling people that they should be nice to each other and spend more time getting to know God. For this horrific agenda, He was treated like an abomination, like a worm, and despised by His own people, the Chosen People.  

If you recall from the Passion plays of your youth, the only one who offered Jesus the least bit of mercy on the cross was a Gentile, one of the Roman soldiers who had nail Him to it.

"I thirst", Jesus said as His tongue stuck to His jaw like a dried pot shard.

A Roman soldier dipped a sponge in wine mixed with gall (also called "sour wine" or" wine mixed with myrrh"), and raised it to the Savior's mouth, but Jesus refused the bitter painkiller to ease suffering.

He would remain there, in the agony, in thirst, suffocating under His own weight, and nothing would move from that place. 

This was His time, this was His place, and these were His chosen people. He came to pay the ransom, and there was no negotiating the price. This is what He was born to do.

So, do you still want to be "chosen by God" ? 

Well people, you already have been. Before He knit you in the womb, He knew you, and He knew the price He would have to pay in order to redeem you.

How's that for a testimony of the Love of God? Does it move you to tears?  If it doesn't, then you might be a sociopath. Don't worry, because God will fix you too, that's what He loves to do.

Maybe this would be more comprehensible if we brought this concept home...

Imagine you decide to have children, and by some miracle you get to know the children's destinies. You see their birth, their first steps, first words, first day of school, career, and marriages. Life is looking good for the kids and you're a proud parent, but then it all falls apart. They stop speaking to you and take the counsel of a known liar. Everything you taught the kids has been misconstrued and twisted in a bizarre manner that is the polar opposite of your instructions. You become the root and the reason for everything wrong in their lives.

Would you have these children? Well, would you?

I doubt that any of us would. We'd prefer to remain childless and enjoy our married life with our spouse. Well, that is not unlike the vision that God had, but He decided to have the children anyway. Those children are us. We were chosen by God.

We are grafted into the Children of the Promise, which leads one to wonder, "What is the point of a chosen people if we are all chosen in the end?"

The Jews are us in microcosm. We can see their mistakes, their trials, their egregious sins, and their glorious moments as teaching tools for all of us. They play the roles of a accessible, comprehensible, and digestible characters on a spiritual stage. This is why and for what the Jews are chosen.

• When things are going exceptionally well for us, we forget how we got there, or more accurately, "who" got us there. 

• We become enamored with our own greatness. Soon our pride and overconfidence precipitate our demise. After scrambling to keep the pieces together and failing to secure even one, we turn back to God.

• We witness miracles and quickly doubt there credibility, or at least there origin.

• We struggle to achieve our own holiness, only to exclude the Promises of God.

• We fight to protect God, and forget it is He who protects us.

• We make war to defend God, and demonstrate our lack of faith in His protection.

Look at yourself. Understand, for one moment in your life, look at what you have been witness to; this planet teeming with an enormous diversity of life, abundant resources, and an accommodating climate. Your very existence; built from molecules all of which have never been alive, but the sum of these lifeless parts constitute a living you. Is this the result of chemical accidents? The consequence of chance and circumstance?

I say, no. This is a miracle! You are a miracle! We are all wondrous, miraculous chosen children of God!

Now, I leave you to make your own choice. 

The Present

If you have some time, I'd like to teach you something about time. In time we have the Past, the Present, and the Future. Each of these have unique attributes

The Past 
Do you know why we refer to this part of time as" the past"? Because that is what it is, it is past and we can do nothing to change what has already occurred. We can learn from the experience, however we cannot change it. It is past us. But we tend to spend so much of our time dwelling on it,  ruminating over it, and wishing  could go back and do things differently. This is useless, and a waste of our limited lives.

The Future 
The future is what we look forward to, plan for, and too often fear. We need not be anxious about the future because God has it well in hand. There is one thing I can guaranty you about the future is there is a U in the fUture, and then there is a cross fuTure, and then there is another U in futUre. The first u was the old you, the one before the Cross. The new you, the one I typed last is the new you after the Cross.  So, God has got us in the future.

The Present
Do you know why we call it the present? Because it is a gift from God. Use the present!

Where are we?

What was God doing before Creation?  Since God is eternal, He spent an eternity doing other things, didn't He? That's a very long time,  an eternity, isn't it? We know about the Creation and a little before but not much else. There are some exo-biblical books that speak to this question. They speak of the Fall of Lucifer and the third of the Host of Heaven that followed him in the angelic rebellion. However, this still leaves us with an eternity unaccounted as to the thoughts and activities of God.

Odd,  don't you think?

Whilst you ponder that anomaly, here's another vexing thought...

Where did God Create Creation?

We know that God is omnipresent, so if we follow the logic of this understanding, there was only God. He was both omnipresent and only present. There could be nothing outside of God. So, I will posit the question again...

Where did God Create Creation?

There can be only one possible answer, and the answer is equally astounding.

God must have Created Creation within Himself. A bubble of space  within the Creator, which He Created in order that Creation could exist. This seems logical  and comprehensible enough in a cursory examination of the concept, but like quantum physics if you claim to understand the subject,  you haven't been paying attention!

There is another immediate physics correlation that jumps into play, why can't physicist tell us what happened before the Universe came barging (or "Banging" as they may prefer)  into existence? The most respected theoreticians assure us that they can calculate with deafening precision exactly what happened back to 0.000001 seconds after "The Event", but when you push for anything prior, the best answer I've received was, "I'll be beggared if I know!"

This was from a very revered physicist at Fermilab National Laboratory outside Chicago. I'll withhold his name,  but we both know that is exactly what he said.

He's no slouch, this man could probably program Perl code in his head while making lobster bisque and talking Bear's football with you.

So, what's the boggle? Why can't he (the nameless one), you, or anyone else calculate back to "The Event", or even before? Well, the issue is that physicists require constant Laws of the Universe to do their math problems, and prior to that time... they didn't exist.

Yup, there was no speed of light speed limit written in stone. Come to think of it, there was no stone on which it could have been carved. The technological innovations of the Neolithic was billions of years in the future. There was no gravity, no strong or weak forces. Electromagnetism was but a twinkle: in the eye of... there were no eyes either! Drat! Physics is as useful as phrenology without the stuff physicists depend upon to do the stuff they do. Which, may I add, would bore you to tears if you knew the tedium they endure when they're not telling people how fascinating physics is in a ultra graphic enhanced PBS special.

God has remained unperturbed by the vast array of academics bashing their skulls against their desks in the hope of something useful falling out.

The Rabbis of ancient time had pondered the same question that stumps the Stanford PhD, mystified any MIT grad, and confounds Cornell alumnus,

"Where are we?"

Luckily, the Rabbis were not obsessed with the semi-useful tool we call "scientific method", so they weren't stuck on the idea of having to reproduce Creation in a laboratory environment. We have become so shackled to scientific method that we can't be certain if Albert Einstein existed since we cannot reproduce him in a lab.

This is the limitations of falling in love with a rule, ritual, or a law, your mind stagnates and fails to grow into the infinite mind of God.

Our science has become a slave to a single method to the exclusion of all others. This is a handicap to our society, our science,  and ultimately to our spirituality.

Many bright students can't conceive of something that cannot be quantified, analysed, qualified, and isolated in a sample jar. None of which can one do with the Almighty.

So, the rabbis, being sufficiently pragmatic to avail themselves of other methodologies, came to the conclusion that determined where God began Creation.

It was and still is within Himself. He began with a formless void, much in the same way the Earth was when He commenced all the fine detail work that we enjoy in our world that we share with all our brothers and sisters who were more finely crafted than anything else in all of God's Creation.

As we stare out into the night sky misty eyed, slack jawed, and terrified at the expanding vastness of space we forget that all this, all of everything, is but an infinitesimal speck within the bosom of infinitely powerful and infinitely loving God.

That is where we are...

Praise God!

And now for the answer to my initial question, what was God doing before Creation... Being lonely.

The Jesus Administration

UNDER REVISION

Dogs vs. Cats

Warning: This post Contains some strong language. Not much and it's more brawny than strong. But you'll forgive me, because that's what our God does. It's His nature, and it should be ours, as well.






I've always been a dog guy. It's not that I hate cats, they're cool in their oddly retarded way, but I'm a dog guy by nature. There is a photo of me in diapers pushing Mr. Salty pretzels up our dog, Duke's nose. Duke was understanding and entertaining, which is one of the multitasking talents of dogs which put me in their camp. Duke would sit patiently as I pushed the pretzel nearly half its length into his nostril before turning his head and blasting it like an edible projectile from his nose with a snort. This feat was rewarded by my uproarious laughter and a reloading of his nose. This canine awesomeness went on for hours. Although I have no recollection of the event, the one thing I am certain of is no cat would have tolerated my behavior, not for an instant. Most cats can't stomach me as an adult, and surely not as a toddler... which aside from size is still the essence of my being.

In spite of my doggy disposition, I met a kitten that I adopted as a special needs child. Honestly, I had no intention of doing any such foolish thing, but my girlfriend decided that we would, and you understand how this became my decision as well. It wasn't much of a kitten to speak of, more of a pathetic mewing sliver of dark hair. It had the misfortune of being the runt of the litter, and then rejected by it's mother. Tabitha, my girlfriend, had a mothering instinct disproportionate to her available time, hence the furry whelp became my collateral responsibility. Not old enough to have been weaned from its mother, I improvised a feeding teat using surgical gloves. While effective, latex lacks the puncture resistance natural tits enjoy, so the stench of sour Similac became my constant companion and a regular feature of my wardrobe. During those feedings I found myself not totally loathing the little beast.

What seemed years, but now I recognize as weeks, the kitty was on solid food and I was commensurately less smelly to boot. A win-win for me and my increasingly less loathsome feline friend.

Did I say, "friend"? Wow! But... I'm a dog guy. I am ambivalent towards all cat kind. Well, all cat kind less one, our little... uh. He didn't have a name. We, being Tabby, myself, and the kitten, had tried on a few names from time to time; Jen, Ninja, Snooker, Smoker, and a handful of others that stuck to the kitty as well as they have to my memory. None of them fit the furry one. It seemed a lost cause as one moniker after another came with great potential, but lost it's appeal like a bowl of milk swollen cereal neglected for hours.

At night the nameless creature in the furry black pajamas would crawl onto my chest and nuzzle it's tiny head under my chin. As I lay drifting off into another fitful pornographic dream... Out came razor sharp talons digging deeply into the tender flesh of my chest, plowing bloody furrows faster than the larger, more predatory cousins in the cat family. In howling pain I launched the claw bearing demon across the room and into a closet where it disappeared from view into a knee deep pile of clothing mixed with sex toys that Tabby would occasionally disappear into while getting dressed. My scream was punctuated by the explitive, "Lucifurry!" Simultaneously, the cat was named and I was converted once and for all to the dominion of dogs.

Yeah, I'm a dog man because dogs are loyal, trustworthy, and make great pretzel cannons. Cats, none of the above. Dependability, loyalty, and a willingness to" go the road" no matter how rocky, muddy, or misleadingly treacherous that road may be, are exclusively dog qualities which are mutually exclusive to the cat.

I believe that all my friends fall neatly into two classifications; dogs or cats. Although, both my occasionally pee on the carpet, the dog will feel guilt, remorse, and frankly so God damn sorry they will sit in the corner and look pathetic and lonesome until you offer forgiveness in the form of a skritch behind the ears. Then, all is well with the world and everyone in it.

The vile cat giving your carpet a liberal dousing of ammonia laced urine will demonstrate its disdain for the rest of your home decor by shredding it to threads.

You can love a cat, feed it, brush it, buy it all kinds of expensive toys, and gourmet food (as if there are cat gourmet chefs) that a third of the planet's human population would kill for... but without warning, without reason, or maybe just for fun, the cat will claw the shit out of you. That's the permanent asshole nature of the cat. It cannot be removed. 

Oh sure, the cat my offer its regards once in a while by dropping an equally shredded bird carcass at your feet. But the dog, he'll show you he fricken’ loves you by dropping a slobber marinated cat corpse at your feet. The enemy of my enemy is this man’s best friend.

Uhh… Aww... He'll even settle for man's second best friend!

Like I said, most friends can be placed in either Dog or Cat categories, and here's the point of this pointless penning...

Keep your Dogs and Lose your Cats.

Your life will be better for it.

O Mortal You!

As we grow older, we gradually realize that our bodies do not heal as quickly from injury, recover from exercise as rapidly, or return to health after an illness. Like looking in the mirror every day, you don't notice yourself aging until you hold a picture from your youth next to your face. This is the stealth by which age and infirmity creeps up on us all.

One day we are too young and the next we are too old. One day we are sitting in a high chair wearing a bib and being fed strained vegetables by our mother, and the next we are sitting in an a geriatric chair wearing a bib and being fed strained vegetables by our nurses aid. One day we are gazing through bright eyes at the wonders of the world and  trying to pronounce the name of all the new things we love, and the next day we are gazing through darkening eyes and wondering at all the unfamiliar faces of our children and trying to recall their names.

It should give us pause to ask, why do we invest so much time and energy into trying to build wealth and surrounding ourselves with the tokens of success which will all soon be left behind when we step across our mortal threshold? All the while overlooking the most important treasure that we can attain and offer, love. Love for others and love for God sums up the Prophets and the Law. "God is Love", declares the  very essence of the Divinity.

How many hours a week do we dedicate to experiencing a deeper relationship of love with friends, family, God, or even total strangers? I bet you know how many hours you worked last week, but you can't recall the last time you considered loving more.

Relationships are messy, entail risk, and have uncertainties that scare us from investing or accepting Love. We will readily invest our life savings, most of our waking life, and mortgage our children's futures in a futile quest to stockpile more of the stuff we can never take with us. These are transient things; our bodies, this earth, all Creation like the lilies of the field are here today and tossed into the fire tomorrow. Even the very fabric from which all material things are woven, the atom, will fall apart in due time. Yet, these are the very things we believe to be important, pressing, and fulfilling.

We take much for granted, such as our next breath until the moment you can't have it. Then, you would trade everything you thought so important for a single lung full of blessed air. In this inevitable moment, you will understand what truly matters and it won't be your car, your house, your bank account, or your equity portfolio. It won't be your neatly manicured lawn, your seniority, your pension plan, or your villa by the lake.

No, as your life flickers with the dwindling supply of oxygen in your blood stream, you will know regret, but it won't be regret for the things thing you have done, but rather regret for the things you should have done or would do if you only had a few more breaths of sweet, sweet air. If you could gulp just the tiniest pant, you could tell the people you Love how much you Love them. You would spend it all to tell them how important they have been in making this temporary world you share a better, more beautiful place. In this final mortal moment as your throat seizes shut and your chest burns hollow, you will recognize the ones you should have Loved, but didn't because you were busy chasing illusions of wealth and specters of power. In the rapidly growing darkness, as you feel your body being shucked away, you will plead with the Maker; “I will Love everyone and appreciate everything, if I could have but one more breath of air.” He will abstain from action and in that moment you will die.

Someday, not long from now, you will be right here. For one millionth of a second you will understand the futility of the word "mine", you will surrender everything to the overwhelming power of death and you will pass through the great equalizer of all mankind. 

But occasionally, after that moment when life fades to black and we confront our powerlessness, impotence, and frailty, a precious few of us get that one blessed breath reprieve. Then, another and suddenly we feel the heavy weight of our body. We feel the hard labor of breathing again. The gift of this life may not always seem so wonderful if we return to a pain ridden, decrepit body (which all of them are) but the lesson we bring back with us is what really matters.

We may soon neglect how important our next breath may be, but we will not forget what is important, what has true intrinsic value, and what matters in this mortal life and beyond before that darkness comes for us again.