God is One

Ssss-silence











Today, I'm going to disturb you and quite possibly cause you to rethink everything you thought you knew about the Fall of Creation as recounted in the Book of Genesis. I also run the risk of being declared a heretic by you and possibly everyone you associate with. If you're a regular reader of my blog, you'll find this to be one of my typical, garden-variety postings. Newcomers may be shocked and I should apologize, but I won't because that's just the way I am.

We all (should) know the Fall of Creation story...

God told Adam and Eve that they may eat of any tree in the Garden except for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Just one Commandment, the only rule, the sole edict, the solitary restriction laid upon mankind by their Creator, and they blew it.

God apparently turns His figurative back for a moment, and a crafty serpent slithered up to Eve to ask for clarification on the aforementioned dietary restriction imposed by Yahweh and asks,

"Did God say you could not eat from any tree in the Garden?"

To which Eve replied,

"No, God said that we may eat from any tree in the Garden except for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the middle of the Garden, nor shall we touch it for in that day we shall surely die."

Let's ignore the fact that Eve extended the law to include a specific location (the middle of the Garden) and added merely touching the fruit (nor shall we touch it). Let's just assume that she was allowing for a margin of error. That seems prudent when dealing with Almighty God.

However, the serpent may have seen this as a willingness to fudge the facts, an opportunity to be sure and a weakness to be exploited. Perhaps.

The snake makes his move and plants the seed of doubt in the Word of God, saying,

"Surely, you will not die, but you will become like God, knowing good from evil."

Eve takes the snake bait. Then, Adam does likewise. Mission accomplished, let the war between good and evil begin.

After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, God returned from his peculiar absence (He's Omnipresent) and was taking a stroll in the cool of the day when He realized that Adam and Eve were nowhere to be found.

God found them cowering and hiding from their Maker with fig leaves covering their privates, because the First Couple had become aware of their nakedness.

God asks,

"How do you know you are naked? Did you eat of the tree which I forbade you to eat?" 

Adam and Eve were caught red handed and red faced with forbidden fruit pulp stuck between their teeth, juice running off their chins, and the seeds still sticking to their fig leaves. They were busted.

Adam is the first to answer God's line of inquiry, and ingloriously pins the whole affair not only on Eve, but on God, Himself.

"The woman YOU put here, gave it to me and I ate." 

Chivalry hadn't been born yet, evidently, but blaming the victim was already in full bloom.

When Eve takes the witness stand, she pushes the blame onto the Snake. It's all typical human nature stuff here, even at this primordial point in human history. Not much has changed, has it?

Author's Note: Pay attention now, this is where things get particularity weird...

Adam is questioned.
Eve is questioned.
And the snake never testifies!

God asked both Adam and Eve why they had disobeyed Him, but the Almighty never asked the serpent a single question.

The Ancient of Days curses all parties involved; man gets thorns and thissel whilst trying to produce a meal by the sweat of his brow, woman get painful childbirth and is told to heed the word of her failed farmer of a husband, and the serpent goes crawling on his belly.

All bad stuff, really, and that's just for starters; disease, death, poverty, ponzi schemes, tooth decay, halitosis, war, female circumcision, mortgage backed securities, fiat money, demonic possession, the Yugo, and everything else we know to be evil came with that first curse.

Still, God never bothered to ask the serpent his side of the story. You would think that the Maker of Heaven and Earth would want to inquire,

"Hey, snake, I put a lot of work into all this, why did you screw it up with your mischief?"

Wouldn't you have asked? I certainly would have. I would have grilled that snake on the stand like a hostile witness, and then grilled that snake on a skewer with a little butter and lemon pepper, but that's me.

Maybe it's just my sense of fair play, but it leaves the whole motive of the serpent in an awkward silence. It reads to me like the Warren Commission Report, you're shouting at the biblical text,

"Ask the question! Come on! You've got the viper on the ropes, God! Ask the question!"

But God doesn't toss so much as a raised eyebrow at the apparent ring leader of the Fall of Creation plot. Instead, the Supreme Deity proceeds straight to sentencing (and I am foreseeably vexed!)

Then, it occurs to me that God created everything, including the silent serpent. He made the Garden, Adam, Eve, and the forbidden fruit, no less.

God, in His Omniscience, was also inescapably aware that this whole fruit eating force majeure was all in the immediate future of His Creation, as well.

What a blatant and obvious oversight for the Supreme Being, eh? Come on, Ancient of Days, what are you... new?

So, why was this "design flaw" allowed to happen? It's a product liabliability case, as clear as eternity is long. God could have performed a recall as He did during the life of Noah, but here when everything is at stake God knowingly and willingly does nothing. Is He malevolent? Spiteful? Negligent?

Hold on! Before you start chanting,

"Humans have freewill."

Let's see this for where the evidence leads us.... God's engineering "flaw" is allowed to happen, allowed to stand, and allowed to do harm, all of it... to everything and everyone ... forever, or a really long time.

That is what a cursory reading of the text would imply.

Or perhaps there is another possibility:

It's not a flaw. It's a feature.

The Fall was a necessary part of a Perfect God's Will. I'm not saying God is evil, I'm saying that there is really only one team.

We are speaking about an ALL powerful (that's without exception), ALL knowing (that's also without exception, EVER present (once again without exception) God, and there is no other. So, what gives?

We are left with only two possibilities:
1. The serpent outwitted God.
2. The serpent was an agent provocateur of God.

If you can suggest another option, drop it in the comments below, but try first to think about the implications and ramifications of their being only One team.

I find it very comforting, so should you.

God bless. 

I Am Here

The System

Blame the system...

WCIDTWPJ?

God's Job

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.