“If you alter or obscure Jesus’ portrait of God in order to attract Bible converts, you don’t get converts to Jesus, you get converts to the Bible. This is not evangelism, but deception.” (John Piper)
To be known, he has to be comprehended. He is too great to be fully comprehended by any one person, even if he reveals himself to that person. Even if that person knows God in part, that part has to be communicated through words. Words are a communication system frought with misapprehension of meaning. So all portraits, Biblical or otherwise are portraits of, and conversation to, illusion. The more sure a person is they know God, the worse that illusion is.
Last night I dreamed about a late teen friend who was now an adult, around 40 years old. As a young person, he was a jokester, intelligent and though a lot about himself and his skills in anything he tried (drawing, martial arts, computers, science). In the dream, he was a highway patrol officer, and pulled me over. He listed the things I did that were against the law, most if not all of which I’m pretty sure were made up. I laughed as I thought he was joking around and we would have a good laugh. I discovered he wasn’t and gave him the obeisance he expected. As I did so, and we talked he crossed out some of the infractions.
I had the expectation that we were still close, still young at heart, still able to see past the absurdity of adult concerns, we weren’t. He was filled with things that seemed important to him and very interested in using the law (power, force) against me. As I flattered his ego, he went a little easier. We were strangers, completely unknown, unfeeling.
We become strangers to ourselves, lose connection with our self and in turn with others. Other people’s concerns and plights do not concern us and are not seriously considered. What must always be enforced is our point of view, our conclusions, our “settled science” until that ignorance yields the blackest deeds committed against the most innocent “are enough to make hell itself shudder, and to stand aghast and pale, and the hands of the very Devil to tremble and palsy.”
1. Casual religious adherents. Religious leaders. Judgement of self and others. Strife. The great and spacious building. The rich.
“They who are not chosen have sinned a very grievous sin, in that they are walking in darkness at noon-day.” (D&C 95:6)
2. Those who dig deeper for the truth. Respect for the law. Holding to the rod. Greater judgement, greater strife. Rightness. Knowledge of Good and Evil. The rich.
“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Genesis 2:17)
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” (Matthew 7:1-2)
3. Tribulation, fear and trembling. Eye of the needle. Poverty. Death.
“…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philipians 2:12)
“So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” (Genesis 3:24)
“For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Luke 18:25)
“For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)
4. Perfect love (casts out all fear). Noon-day.
“…just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!” (JSH 1:16-17)
“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18)
5. Expansion of the heart, soul and mind
God is not known by those who profess to know him. Truly knowing God is freedom.
“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” (John 17:3)
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32)
“All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any….All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.” (1 Corinthians 6:10, 10:23)
In Kholberg’s Stages of Moral Development, I would put stages 1-5 as the ever narrowing opening on the left, and stage 6 as the beginning of the widening opening on the right of this graph.
Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth? Ooh heaven is a place on earth They say in heaven love comes first We’ll make heaven a place on earth Ooh heaven is a place on earth
When the night falls down I wait for you And you come around And the world’s alive With the sound of kids On the street outside
When you walk into the room You pull me close and we start to move And we’re spinning with the stars above And you lift me up in a wave of love…
Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth? Ooh heaven is a place on earth They say in heaven love comes first We’ll make heaven a place on earth Ooh heaven is a place on earth
When I feel alone I reach for you And you bring me home When I’m lost at sea I hear your voice And it carries me
In this world we’re just beginning To understand the miracle of living Baby I was afraid before But I’m not afraid anymore
Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth? Ooh heaven is a place on earth They say in heaven love comes first We’ll make heaven a place on earth Ooh heaven is a place on earth
In this world we’re just beginning To understand the miracle of living Baby I was afraid before But I’m not afraid anymore
Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth? Ooh heaven is a place on earth They say in heaven love comes first We’ll make heaven a place on earth Ooh heaven is a place on earth …
“We’ve put a chemical into our food chain that deletes the ability to build a healthy human body. We’ve put into the food chain a chemical that deletes the medicine out of our food, which we didn’t have time to talk about, but that same shikimate pathway makes the alkaloids which makes the medicinal features of our food, is deleted by glyphosate. So we build a diseased body, we build a food chain that doesn’t have medicine in it, then we take away this most vital thing which is the microcosm/macrocosm phenomenon you just talked about. So far I’ve been describing to you that we are losing the identity between the outside world and our immune system by the breakdown of these membranes, so we get leak. That’s literally taking away self-identity from the immune system, so we get auto-immune disease where we start to react to our own body as if it was foreign. In the same way, at the macro level, I believe we’re losing our self-identity as human beings as we start to leak. We start to become majorly depressed, panic disorder we start to get lost down these rabbit holes of doubt, insecurity, fear, guilt; we have spiritual crisis, we have relationship crisis that’s on an epidemic level, equal to cancer and beyond, the ability to stay in human relationships seems be the most complicated thing we could possibly endure right now–it’s because we are literally losing self-identity at the cell level. Because we are eating a chemical that breaks our self-identity at the cell level.” -Zach Bush, MD
“The humbling journey I’ve been on is to recognize as a doctor, and perhaps as a human, is we are barely human. When it comes down to the sheer number of non-human cells we carry within us–that we are completely dependent on–we are just a fraction human. To give you a sense of the numbers we have somewhere around 50 trillion human cells. That sounds like a massive number, it’s one of the few numbers you’ll hear that are larger than our national debt. It turns out that we have somewhere around one and a half quadrillion bacteria, and probably ten times that in fungi. And so we have fourteen quadrillion microbiome elements within our body.” -Zach Bush, MD
“I’m sure the timing is not a mistake, that [she had a debilitating migraine episode] when I showed up here, because I think a lot of times when we find ourselves in those intractable patterns, one of the things that I’ve seen as a physician now for the last seventeen years is that we can never heal ourselves, no matter how much we know, no matter how much we research, we can’t heal ourselves, we’re called into community through our ailments.” Zach Bush, MD
Your Savior will manifest in physical form after he has risen from the grave within you unto life in your consciousness. You will see him as he is because you will be [like] him. You’ll see his countenance in your image. You’ll be so much like him you’ll be staring at yourself.
Go within and resurrect your innocence from your condemnation of judgment. Partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was part of the plan but caused our innocence to die, to go to sleep, and is awaiting the day when we’ll spit out that fruit and awaken to our innocence and partake of the tree of life- God’s love. We’ll awaken to the realization that we were always innocent and worthy of God’s love.
And when your Christ within you has resurrected to your awareness you will see Christ in everyone. You won’t see problems anymore, you’ll see love and cries for love.
“Stretching ourselves out as it were against nature we measured it.” –Alan Watts, “Just So”
One person we are aquatinted with was describing hornets nests and how their proximity to ground was a predictor to how cold the coming winter would be. Predictably several people sent her private messages telling her variously how ridiculous or unscientific or pagan her ideas were.
If you’ve ever had a chance to really observe group dynamics, the group has a set of beliefs to which they demand compliance. Not overtly, such that they would even admit this to themselves, but it is more subtle and persistent. These beliefs could be about the benefits of natural foods, the best way to car-seat your children, vaccines, public/private schooling, Democracy or religious ideas. Groups also reach out and compare themselves to other groups which are judged and condemned. Individuals wind up adopting the tenets of the group without critical examination of each one.
If the term “satan” (Hebraically defined as “the accuser”) is used to mean the part or propensity in each of us to judge and condemn the world, people and works we observe, then the end result of this satanism is to accuse and condemn until there is perfect uniformity and sameness according to our definition of what is “good.” This need we have for everything to be “good,” or the same, or uniform, are the seeds arguments, anger, wars and destruction. Satan may get a small portion of what it desires for a time, but eventually nature will win out. Breastfeeding advocates, for example, can say “breasts aren’t sexual,” but declaring it, legislating it, or using other means of force will never change nature. The French Revolutionist’s requirement of uniformity to their cause resulted in massive bloodletting until the Paris drains were clogged with it, and disgust and revulsion took its place.
According to one religious tradition the archetype of satan voiced “I will save all, not one will be lost” of course according to its version of good, evil, salvation and damnation.
If God is the opposite of Satan, then one of its aspects is about eternal unending variety which cannot be all comprehended by an individual, and as such it cannot all be effectively controlled.
Breathings 