Circles of Pain ...

 “This won’t hurt a bit” is a common expression that instinctively brings up in my mind the thought, “then why do you need to tell me that”?  Perhaps “hurt” is in the eye of the beholder.  A pin prick for example, does not hurt nearly as much as breaking a bone.  And the pain from a pin prick does not linger and have nearly as many adverse effects as breaking a bone.  So when compared against that pain, a pin prick may very well “not hurt a bit”.  But compare the sensation of a pin prick with eating an ice cream cone, and suddenly the pin prick hurts.  In fact, next to that, the pin prick is devastating.  Of course part of the pain of shot at the doctor’s office, comes in the form of the anticipation that it is going to happen.  Sometimes, worse yet, you are allowed to see the needle and syringe get prepared.  A several inch long needle makes one squirm even more.  Knowing it is coming, can multiply the actual pain, by the anticipated pain in my imagination (which is highly developed and over achieves even in this instance).

Lucifer has done a masterful job at separating the consequences of evil from the actions of evil.  He delays consequences as long as he can, in order to propagate the evil activities until they reach habit stage.  But the effect of delaying consequences seems only to multiply their pain when they finally do ensue; and they ALWAYS follow our behavior.  We may evade them for a while, but eventually everything we do catches up with us.  It is not so much Karma as if we spread evil in the ether and it somehow materializes in our lives later; it is more like the laws of gravity – cause and effect.  Evil tries to hide its nature from us, mask the pain from the actions that will surely come, and blame everyone and everything else for its existence; but in the end it fails.  Evil is the opposite of God, therefore by nature, nothing we would ever desire.

Sometimes in our quest to measure evil, and separate some actions into “less harmful” than others, we develop a belief that certain “sins” or evil actions, are personal, just between you and God.  Personal sins, or private sins then, need only be discussed between you and God, and so are thought to be “less harmful” to others than say assault and battery might be.  But this belief is incorrect.  It is yet another deception created by the master deceiver of souls.  It is the equivalent of dropping a 3 pound rock in a bathtub full of water, and expecting only the original splash will be the result.  In addition to the splash, are generated waves of displaced water that traverse the tub from end to end – only constricted by the boundaries of the size of the tub.  If the tub were 12 feet across, the waves would travel 12 feet.  But because most tubs are only a couple feet across, and 4 or 5 feet in length, the waves simply double back on themselves making quite a havoc.  This is similar to how “private” sins disturb your own life, and the lives of those you encounter.

Take for example, the personal sin of pride.  Pride is something held only in the heart.  It does not appear at first glance to affect anyone else directly and therefore would seem to be only between you and God.  But examine it closer for a minute.  I can allow my pride to overtake my humility, as such, I become unwilling to learn from another believing no-one knows more than I.  I can become unwilling to help those less fortunate believing that “helping” is a job for those who are not as smart or as capable, or as rich as I am.  I can begin to treat others by cast, category, and classification – all of which are governed strictly by my pride.  In so doing, I tear down the image of Christ who loved all without condition, and instead erect an idol of me to worship instead.  My ill treatment of others may lead to direct evil against them, but even if that is restrained, by attitudes will definitively be affected.

Another common misperception about personal sin is that of sexual self-gratification.  This one is worse, because it is looked at as the “lesser” of a great many evils that we are capable of performing related to our sexual expression.  It sounds good at first glance.  But examine it a bit closer; the very words “self-gratification” define the basic problem at its core – pleasing one’s self.  Our entire legal system is built to keep my propensity to serve self, from interfering with yours.  Limitations and punishments are outlined to try to keep us from causing serious harm to each other while pursuing the happiness of pleasing number one.  In a sexual sense, we replace intimacy, and the concept of pleasing our partner/spouse FIRST, with searching for the bio-chemical “high” of orgasm.  Self-gratification begins by focusing solely on what pleases me, with complete and total disregard for what makes my spouse happy, as there is no spouse to even consider in the scenario.  Over time, habits form, and when my spouse does enter the scenario, I could be disappointed that it does not coincide with my mental picture of what “should” happen.

There are those who believe self-gratification hurts no-one; that it is a victimless crime.  But this is untrue.  Those who engage in this behavior are almost always unable to stop.  They extinguish the value of intimacy and vulnerability with someone else, and turn people into objects, objects without meaning or consequence.  The kind of mental imagery associated with self-gratification is usually degenerative.  Comedians joke about being children and looking at the underwear sections of the Sears catalog, or at the National Geographic magazines with naked natives.  But this soon turns to the “art” of Playboy, then to the eroticism of Penthouse, and finally to the pure hardcore smut found in an infinite number of specific Internet sites, or former print publications.  The imagery degenerates further into sub cultures like S&M, Bondage, Baby-Play, Anal fetishes, etc..  But it is not limited to these, further degeneration leads to the infliction of severe or permanent pain, child molestation, animal molestation, and finally the association of death and sex together.  A downward spiral, no-one believes themselves capable of, until they find themselves in it.  Yet still the belief, that we remain unharmed by our actions.

For those who believe they only hurt themselves, yet another revelation.  The industry that provides the materials for your mental imagery could care less who it hurts in the manufacture of these materials.  Countless daughters, sisters, mothers, even elderly – both women and men – put into positions where self-esteem is destroyed, where the danger of disease is rampant, where intimacy loses all value.  And for the person unable to control their baser passions, often this behavior does not end when marriage begins.  It continues into the marriage, depriving the spouse of true intimacy.  It is bringing baggage and expectations into our sexual expression that should have never been in the first place.  Men must unlearn almost everything they think they know, before they will ever be capable of sharing true beauty and intimacy in giving to their wives.

Lucifer, under the guise of social norms, propagates these ideas that a women or wife should be a gentle lady out of the house, and a “freak” in the bedroom.  Countless women’s magazines offer advice on how to please and keep a man through sexual proficiency when the reality is far from these ideals.  Honesty, vulnerability, clear communication, intimacy, even spiritual dependency on Christ will do more to keep a man, than will tricks dreamed up in a magazine.  There is nothing wrong with creativity or invention in the bedroom, it is only a problem when biology replaces intimacy as the primary objective.  Orgasm is not the ultimate goal, a union of mind, body, and soul, - is.

So our thought to be personal sin, hurts us, hurts those we claim to love most, hurts our families as it affects our attitudes in what we teach our children, our community in how we treat others, and finally God as He must bear witness to the pain we cause in our “personal” acts of evil.  In the end, sin, or evil actions always cause ripples of pain, that grow as they reach others.  Our 3 pound rock in the pond may be a veritable Tsunami by the time its full effects are cataloged by unseen hands.  This is the nature of evil.  This is the nature of poo.  Poo smells.  You can hardly conceal it when it is physically nearby.  Even its after effects will be known for a while after it has left the area.  So it is with evil.  Evil is nothing more than poo, wrapped in a shiny wrapper.  The shiny wrapper is at best a momentary distraction until the clear evil of poo is revealed.  But by then sometimes it is already too late.  Behaviors are formed, habits ensue, slavery is initiated, and thus the need for Savior.  Thus the need for a “creator” God who can re-create IN me what must be completely redone.

It is not enough to want only some of the poo, out of my life.  It can only be enough when ALL of the poo is out of my life.  No more habits, no more chains, no more bad choices, no more regrets – just the freedom that comes from giving the problem to the only God who wants to take it over and remove it FROM us.  It does no good to clean half of the cesspool of our lives.  We must let Him clean it all.  I know the work is hard, and atrocious, and was made so by us in our persistence at spreading our feces from wall to wall.  But this is the work Christ is willing to do in our lives.  He sees evil as this level of abhorrent, and wishes only to see it completely removed from your day to day.  Let go the shiny wrappers, and embrace the freedom of Christ.  Let us stop making ripples of pain in the oceans of our lives, and replace it with wave after wave of His love for ALL who we encounter.

Obsessed with Control

Do you believe in fate?  How about destiny?  Predetermination anyone?  Most folks I know do not like the idea of our future being beyond our control.  We make decisions.  We make choices.  So why is our fate up to debate?  If I choose to go left at the stop sign instead of right, won’t the final outcome be different, surely the short term results should be measurable.  Yet despite our ability to decide to go left at the cross roads, there are many other factors that remain out of our direct control.  Large items like the weather and gravity come to mind; but many other smaller items are equally impossible to mandate such as the behavior of others and unforeseen events.

We are faced with the unpredictable all around us, and so rather than allows ourselves the truth of the uncertainty of our continued existence, we decide to cling to an illusion of control.  The idea that despite what we are unable to control, there are still many things we can control, has greater appeal to us, than the truth of how limited our ability is to even influence an outcome, let alone control it.  Those fortunate few who have developed a strong will in their lifetimes by being able to exert a measure of control over their actions, have an even firmer grasp on the illusion of control, than those less fortunate few who realize their own behavior looks more like addiction than self-control.  But what remains in us all is a shared belief that we have at least “some measure” of control in our lives.

This thinking however, infects our spiritual desires as well.  The ideas that we somehow control our lives, invades the ideas that we should equally be able to influence our spiritual lives.  “Obedience” becomes the spiritual mantra for our conservative brothers and sisters.  Not obedience found in the converted heart, but rather obedience for the sake of obedience; sometimes presented as a prerequisite of God’s approval, or even worse, as a prerequisite of coming to God.  Indeed, scriptures are full of texts outlining why obedience is so important to us and God.  But it is our illusions of control, that lead us to believe we are simply capable of obeying or not.  Similar to the alcoholic who believes they can quit drinking anytime, but just never seem to get around to making that decision – so Christians seem to believe that they can stop sinning anytime just by choosing to do so.  And like the alcoholic, they just never seem to finally get around to making the sin-stopping decision.

Evil is like cancer, in that it spreads when it left unchecked.  Note that the identification of cancer does nothing to cure it, that would require treatment, perhaps surgery.  But just saying to the patient, “Yes, you sure have a nasty case of cancer” does nothing to actually help the patient.  Condemning cancer also does nothing to cure it.  Telling a patient … “if you had made better choices, lived a healthier life, and essentially gotten my approval, you might not have this terrible disease” does nothing to cure cancer, and may even make an enemy of the cancer patient.  Telling the patient about how “bad” the pain is, seems a bit redundant, and again does nothing at all to help the patient get better.  Ever even met a cancer patient whose first thought was not about getting better?

Yet we treat fellow Christians who are found in error, the same way.  We judge them according to our own standards of Biblical morality.  We ridicule their life choices, and blame them for the conditions they find themselves in, taking no personal accountability for their conditions.  Then instead of focusing on a cure for our erring brothers, we instead focus on the disease, all the pain they should be feeling, all the desperation, none of the hope.  The best Christians have been able to offer the world, is forgiveness after the fact, but seldom a cure to eliminate the need for forgiveness, and to live a healthier life in the first place.

But if we know this about the nature of evil, and cancer, and how they both spread – then why are they still spreading?  The answer is painful.  It is because we have chosen our illusions of control, over the truth of total dependence found in the word of our God.  In the Garden of Eden, Adam bit the forbidden fruit, and in so doing, he ceded control to Satan over this world, and over himself, and all of mankind.  It is not just the dirt, Satan gets to rule over.  It is the hearts, minds, and inclination of the people God created in this world.  From that moment on, Adam put all of mankind into slavery.  We are NOT free.  We are BOUND to the will of our own carnal natures.  If left to ourselves, we will choose to act in our own self-interest even when that conflicts with the needs of another.  What are the famous slogans we see around us – “who is looking out for number one”, “do unto others, then split”, “God helps those who help themselves”.  All designed around the idea that man must be self-focused before he can be externally focused, even in the case of spiritual concepts.

The illusion of control is a form a self-worship.  It is a form of exalting our decisions, our choices, and our supposed capabilities above even Satan or God.  We somehow think we free of our own accord to choose to follow God or not.  Even this is untrue.  Adam entered us into slavery.  Our chains prevent us from making a truly free decision.  So even in this, our God must elevate our minds, and balance the scales of our lives in order for us to get even enough to make the decision to choose Him.  Otherwise we would every one of us default to our evil natures and choose what is natural over what is not.  The idea that we control our world is as silly as believing we can cure cancer in ourselves, simply by deciding it will be so, no matter what chemistry says.

In order to treat our disease of evil, we must as Yoda says, “unlearn what you have learned”.  We must begin by embracing the truth of our existence, that we have NO control over it, we have at best the ability to influence it slightly.  Our greatest abilities to influence our existence come only in regards to how much worse we can make it, seldom in how much better.  We can elect to kill ourselves, but we cannot decide to make ourselves 100% cured over every medical ailment we suffer from.  We can elect to cut ourselves, but cannot decide to simply undo the damage to our bodies we inflict while making such a deranged and negative decision.  It is easier for me to destroy your sandcastle on the beach, than to spend the hours it takes creating one with you.

We must continue by rejecting the connections we have formed between God and patriotism.  The American Dream as most define it, is a lie.  Owning your own home, 2 cars, a spouse, 2.1 kids and a white picket fence does not define the ideals of our success, nor does it measure the contributions we are capable of making as citizens of this or any other country.  The idea that through hard work, anyone can succeed is simply false.  It takes more than just hard work.  And the ideas of self-reliance we have been taught must be rejected.  We are rather, and in fact, fully dependent on our God for our lives, our sustenance, and our success.  And by allowing our God to mold our characters into His image, we will be better prepared to sacrifice for the sake of others, including our fellow citizens in this, or any other nation.  The truth would make us better citizens and patriots of our native lands, than the lies we embrace today.  Our nation, and our world, needs those who would by example serve others and enrich the lives of others; than merely another generation out to find only the maximum fun they can derive before dying.

And finally we must reject the god of self we have allowed to creep into our Christian philosophy, and realize we are slaves bound to self, that self is the enemy of our God.  We must begin to see that “I” truly am my own worst enemy in the spiritual realm.  We must embrace the words of Paul when he writes … “I die daily”.  This is not a rerun of an old SouthPark episode where they kill Kenny every week.  This is rather the mantra of Christians who understand that self is the enemy of the entirety of God’s government, and “service to others” is the only real heroic aspiration.  We must submit our will to our God each day.  We must give back to God the life we wake up to each morning, and ask that He alone be in charge over it.  To do with our lives as He alone wishes.  To make any changes He sees fit.  To use us in His own good service as He would envision, but not merely as it is convenient to us.  We must ask to “want” what He “wants”.  We must ask that He teach us how to “love” like He “loves”.  In this our earliest morning prayer, we are able to echo the words of Paul and join him in dying daily.

To witness true obedience in our lives, these are the “choices” we must make.  It begins with the abandonment of lies and illusions of control, it ends with promised work of the Messiah in our hearts and minds.  This is the cure of cancer and evil we have sought and has so long eluded us.  This is the promise we can cling to without reserve.  This is the way that Christianity can once again return to the prominence it experienced in the Apostolic days.  For in those times, as in this age, we must focus completely on Christ as the ONLY solution to our lives.  For it is He alone who can rid us of the evil we embrace, and He alone who can further eliminate the natural inclinations that drive us.  It is Christ who can finally and fully set us free.

Preferences, Habits & Addiction ...

Can you tell the difference between a “need” and a “want”? Before you answer, consider the level of variations than could be proposed in any question regarding the two. For example, we all “need” to eat in order to live, however, do we “need” the food we are holding in our hands right now, or do we simply “want” this particular piece? Could it be that even more than our actions, our preferences are what defines us, makes us who we are? Is mankind simply a random collection of likes and dislikes, an amalgamation of what we want, translated into the lifelong pursuit of those goals? Perhaps. But that thinking is limited by the blinders of evil; there is a freedom beyond what we have imagined.

There is a reason why our enemy does not simply bribe everyone he wishes to turn from God with untold wealth and riches. It is not the attainment of these things that brings us any peace, or real happiness. So instead, he keeps us focused on attaining them, always in the journey towards the illusion, rather than arriving and determining how big an illusion it really is. We dream of wealth. We dream of riches. We fantasize about what it must be like to have money without end, fame around the globe, perhaps power from our vast resources. And in so doing, we idolize the material things of the world, and make ourselves slave to their acquisition. Never realizing, we will not attain them, we will die in the financial condition we were born to, and our chances of truly being different are only as good as those chances of winning the lottery – slim to none. But like the lottery, our enemy trots out a weekly “winner” making the argument that someone has to win, why not you. He masks the pain and emptiness of the rich, burying it in a flurry of activity, so that the poor see only what they wish to see, not the reality of life with the burden of wealth.

Though most of us will live lives denied the burden of the reality of wealth, we nevertheless seem to place a great deal of trust in our desires. While I may not acquire the mansion on the hill, perhaps I can still find a way to own my own home. While I may not drive the Maserati, perhaps I can find a used sports car within my price range. When disappointed in achieving our more modest goals, we attribute the loss to a lack of real spending money for the original purchase. The used sports car that does not drive how we would have liked, we blame on not having the cash to afford a better one. But what if the issue is not with our car, but with our thinking? What if the reality is … that there actually is NO better sports car out there. Perhaps every other one has even more mechanical failures, cosmetic issues, and engineering design flaws than the one we drive today. Worse yet, perhaps it is a flaw of ALL sports cars that ruins the lives of those who thought to crave them. The long and short of it is, we have been taught to want things that are likely not the best things for us.

So if I cannot trust me, who can I trust? Listening to advertisers is what will have gotten most of us in the condition we find ourselves in. And the theme of modern media makes the whole problems worse. How many times have you turned on your television set only to have the programming you watch be a life affirming drama who’s moral is … you can only rely on yourself? American culture and American media are equally grounded on the idea of self-reliance. The “American Dream” is a variation on a story about how through hard work, innovation, and perseverance anyone can achieve anything. Of course few people personally know someone who has truly achieved the American Dream, absent parental help, or a boost from others. But nonetheless the myth remains, and our culture deifies it.

But the best we have ever been able to say about achieving the desires of our heart, is that the fulfilling effects were temporary. We may want nothing more than to eat a piece of chocolate cake at the moment, but upon eating it, our appetite will grow again. Men put tremendous time, effort, and energy in attempting to make love to a particular woman; but having achieved the goal, they rarely spend as much effort to do it again. Most married men are tempted by the allure of something new, rather than wholly satisfied with what they have at home. Some of the blame can be placed on an incessant marketing media blitz that glorifies the myth, and trashes the truth. But rarely is there any thorough self-examination to see why the achievement of this kind of goal is rarely as permanently satisfying as the quest to achieve it would have indicated.

Perhaps it is collective insanity to believe the outcome will be different next time, when all the factors leading up to achieving our desires are identical to the times before. Perhaps our desires are nothing more than verbal admissions of our more deep seated addictions. Perhaps we believe ourselves to be in more control over our behavior than in fact we are. For if we know what we want will lead us to harm, and we choose to pursue it anyway, have we not lost all rationality? Helpless pursuit of behavior that will lead us only to harming ourselves is the very definition of addiction is it not. And yet we go through our lives, day in, and day out, doing exactly the same things.

So what do we do about it? Give up? Yes actually. But instead of just giving in to our desires and running hog wild until we invariably die from them, perhaps we should simply give our weakness to a Savior who has asked for nothing more than this “gift” from us. For us to escape the pain that is coming in our future, we must change what we want now. In order for the addict to fundamentally change his addiction, he must find outside help. This is our situation. We need our Savior not just to forgive what we do wrong, we need Him to stop us from doing it, and even more importantly to help us to not WANT to do wrong in the first place. Changing what it is we want, is the beginning of our Salvation. Nothing can force us to do what we do not WANT to do (short torture). Our problem is that when all is said and done, we still “want” to sin, and so we do. The only remedy for this is to change what we “want” to do, and the only hope to implement that change is from Christ.

Some hold to our analogy of comparing evil with poo. They would say that like poo, we will commit evil again simply because we do not have a choice in the matter as long as we are alive. As long as we live, we poo, and we commit evil. This is true, from a human perspective. In our own strength, we are as powerless to stop committing evil as we are to stop going to the bathroom. However, Christ is not bound by human limitations. He did not create us with the intention of having a waste disposal system, rather He enabled this when it became necessary for our survival in a world of evil. So too, now that we realize our condition, and come surrendered at the foot of the cross, we give Him our entire lives including our desires, and He changes them. It is a miracle in our lives that He performs. And while it is humanly impossible to stop going poo, with God all things are possible. We can cease to do evil, not because there is something special about us, but because there is something special about what Christ does in our lives when we let Him.

It is our pride that keeps us from experiencing these kinds of victories in our lives. We do not surrender fully to Christ because we believe we can do it on our own. After all, few of us will admit to being an addict of any kind. We cherish our cultural ideas of self-reliance and believe whatever short comings we have can be managed and worked out over time. Many believe they are in partnership with God, as if God needed our help in any way. He does not need our help, but does need our permission. If we have to rely on our own “faithfulness” to see us saved, we are surely doomed. Rather we can trust in His “faithfulness”, He has yet to break a promise. Everything He says is truth.

It is time for us to know the rest in coming to our Lord. It is time for us to know the peace only He can restore in us. It is time to enjoy a level of freedom we have not even begun to imagine. And it is time for us to allow Christ to do His work in us fully, trusting in Him to save us completely …

Fart Jokes ...

George Carlin once did a hilarious routine centered around one of the oldest sources of humor known to man, the fart joke. George had a unique ability to take human weakness or uncomfortable situations and by meticulously examining the strange behavior humans do, he could make humor from it. It is not so much that expelling gas is funny (though infants seem to find this the height of humor), it is the commonality all humans share when it comes to uncomfortable situations. What to do in a crowded office party when the urge suddenly strikes and there is no bathroom available. George postulated the idea of omitting what he called “a test fart”, just a small sample of what was to come, you know, to see how bad it might be, and judge whether allowing more would be acceptable or would melt the wall paper and cause permanent chemical damage to the folks standing nearby.

One of the chief ploys of our enemy is another tactic he likes called desensitizing the effects of evil. By making light of evil, we can sometimes gloss over the pain it causes. We can treat it less, like the chemical warfare agent it is, and more like simply an understandable social faux-paux [sp]. Much like finding the humor in something that is otherwise disgusting, we can elect to change our reactions to evil and begin to treat it on more a scaled system. Murder would top the evil severity list, Rape just under it, theft under that, perhaps gossip or lieing under that, and at the bottom of the list – George’s test fart; after all the impact of evil on us personally is scaled in this way. Our justice system treats offenses in this way, and is supposed to meter out punishments – to fit the crime. This is our sense of fair play at work. This is our sense of eye-for-an-eye that leads us to believe punishments should fit the severity of the crime. Only in backwards, third world countries, do they mete out the most severe punishments for least offensive crimes, right?

So why does our God see every evil on the same scale? Why is His punishment for evil always death, no matter what the severity of the crime committed? How can we call Him a fair and loving God, when only the slightest sin results in the penalty of death – even one – even something seemingly innocuous – if test farts were a sin, they would merit the death penalty the same as genocide does. How can this be?

The truth is, our justice system and God have very different ideas and agenda’s when it comes to “crime prevention”. Our justice system looks to insure compliance with the laws by widely publishing the punishments that will occur if the laws are broken. Yet despite the threat of these punishments, men and women still break the laws with regularity. Some believe they will not be caught. Some are not. Some believe that even if caught, they may get off on a technicality, or through the mercy of a judge, or through the overcrowding of our prison system. Some do. But some get punished anyway, they “do the time”, serve their sentence, return home – and many fall right back into criminal activity once again. How effective is a penal system in reforming the nature of a person? At best, the threat of punishment, is enough to deter the timid, and the satisfied.

Once could argue that God’s death penalty for every crime might do better at deterring crime. But states with death penalty laws seem to have per capita as many murders as those without them. In fact, in order to insure the guilt of those condemned to die, we often spend more money on death row inmates than on those sentenced to life in prison without parole; so even the threat of death does not seem to stop the determined murderer. Although one could argue, it might put a real dent in say shoplifting. And let’s be honest, having an executioner standing at the door of the Walmart, might give even the bravest and most skilled thief a reason to stay honest.

But there is a problem with looking at the penalty of sin as being something God instigated. God Himself is life. He is love. He is the source of all that is good. To deviate away from that can only lead to what is opposite of God. It is more like this, imagine sticking your tongue into the place you would normally put a light bulb inside a lamp, with the lamp turned on, and power cord plugged in. You would be electrocuted would you not? Is that the “punishment” for putting your tongue in a socket, or is that merely “the result.” When your toddler reaches for the hot stove burner, and you remind him that he will hurt himself if he continues on his present course, are you threatening him with punishment, or revealing to him the impending nature of his actions, and the results that will occur if he continues?

So in essence does every sin result in death? Yes. But the process must be understood a little better first. Take something we might call merely annoying on our scale of sin, say “pride” for example. A proud or arrogant person is at worst obnoxious right. We tend to avoid them if we can, put up with them if we have to. But they are generally not well liked, and have few true friends, as no-one really wants to spend time with someone who always reminds them how much better he is than them. How does pride result in death? Look deeper. In an effort to maintain the illusion of superiority over others, the proud person must take steps to prove his point. Ever been usurped at work for a promotion by that guy that only thinks he works harder than you? Ever been targeted by the “cool kids” in school and put down for being “less” than they were in some way? Ever been discriminated against because you belong to minority group, or hold a minority opinion? Wonder why? Because superiority or pride is only an illusion at best, so to be proven, actions that hurt others ensue. Sometimes those actions make enemies of those who are belittled, or robbed of their due. Sometimes the proud are the enemies, say Hitler for instance.

It does not take long for sin to escalate. It does not take long for the innocuous sins in our scale to move up to the next steps, all of them eventually leading to murder, and ironically enough eventually to suicide. Ever wonder why after a life of getting away with it, some serial murders are finally brought to justice? Most cops will tell you that they “wanted” to get caught. At some point they realize the monsters they have become and with that realization know they need outside help to be stopped. So while they will not surrender, they begin to make subconscious “mistakes”. And to reinforce the point of where pride can lead – Satan’s first sin was pride – it led him all the way to the cross of Christ putting our God on a tree of torture and death. That could not have been the first thought Satan had, when he turned from serving others and began to serve himself. But it is where those thoughts eventually led him to commit a murder of God Himself.

The biggest problem with poo, is that we are never really done producing it. The problem with sin, is that once we embark on it, no matter how seemingly small, it leads us down the scale of escalation until murder itself seems reasonable, and suicide as our only hope to end the pain. When tortured enough, every human will begin to crave death over pain. Most rational people never believe they would ask someone else to kill them, let alone beg for death. But those people have not endured torture without mercy, or without end. When hope leaves, the goal of death itself becomes plausible. And how funny is that? Where is the humor in our desire to cease to exist? The only one laughing is Satan himself, who alone finds joy in our demise.

This is the truth he wishes to cover up. He does not want you to know, that ALL sin results in death. He does not want you to see, that ALL sin is addictive and destructive and is only a mile marker on the way to the grave. He does not want you to believe that death is a RESULT but rather only a punishment by an angry God. So he lies about everything. He makes what seems disgusting look funny. He covers up the effects of our evil, and tries to mask the pain we cause, so we will feel freer to spread even more of it. The nature of evil is pain and death – having deviated away from God it had nowhere else to go but that.

This is why our hope is based on a Savior God who does the work of saving us from the monsters we have become. This is why allowing Christ to change our nature is so important. It is not just our deeds that need alteration – it is our thinking, our motives, and our desires that must be reformed. We must become new creations, of a creator God. We must die to what we are, and be reborn to what He intends. In order for this to happen, we must let go the illusions of superiority, and self-control. We must abandon the idea that we are capable of helping. We must learn to be still, and KNOW that He is our God, and our Savior. That His will alone can live in us, and that our will must die, if we are truly to be saved from slavery of evil. Our hope and our salvation rest in our Savior Jesus Christ. This is why only our religion and our God offer a plausible way of escaping pain and death. It is not a threat, but a singular ray of hope, that anyone is free to grasp and realize.

What is Evil ...

And then there was poo.  In all the universe, for all time, there had never been anything before like poo.  No being could have ever imagined it.  How could something exist that could indeed be so utterly offensive.  Yes, poo may well be the most offensive substance in existence.  It smells bad.  It looks horrible.  It’s texture is repulsive.  One can only speculate at how horrible its taste must be, and even that thought is enough for some to throw-up (ironically producing possibly the second most offensive substance).  So why does poo exist at all?

Imagine for a minute your most favorite food, imagine it cooked to perfection, prepared by gourmet chef’s using only the freshest and highest quality ingredients – now imagine eating this delicacy until your heart, head, and stomach are completely content.  You are not overfull, you are not hungry.  You are completely satisfied and cannot even imagine eating again for at least a few hours from now.  This was normal life in heaven, before evil existed.  The food you would have consumed would have been converted into pure energy.  There simply was no waste.  There was nothing your body needed to separate and excrete.  100% of what you consumed was used and processed in your body, and provided exactly the nourishment you needed.  This was life in Eden.  This was the norm for Adam and Eve.  Poo, and waste byproducts, were a concept unknown.  No need to study something so offensive, when it was also completely irrelevant.

But with evil’s entrance to our world, came the inevitable entrance of poo.  The knowledge God would have Adam and Eve blissfully ignorant of, was on the topic of waste byproducts such as the entire digestive cycle including poo.  As the human body lost its perfection, it would now produce a number of toxins derived from its surroundings and diet.  No longer would perfect food from the tree of life be our daily supplement.  Instead we would have to “toil” or work to contribute towards our survival.  Our efforts would not yield perfect results, and the imperfect results would be what we subsist on.  All of this pain, heartache, and its link to evil – was the knowledge of Good and of Evil, that God would have kept our parents ignorant of.  It made no sense to compare perfection with what was not perfect.  They would have no basis to understand the comparison while they remained true to God.  But the devil knew, that experience would open their eyes to the addictive and destructive nature of evil.  He knew that a single bite of that forbidden fruit would immediately allow them to fully understand the concept of poo.  He did not lie when He said this was a knowledge only God had previously understood, and that like God, they would gain it too.  He simply omitted the fact that understanding poo is a level of information most people would choose to avoid.

There are those who say God created poo, just like God created evil.  He did not.  God created a method of dealing with both.  Poo, or waste byproducts, was a result of evil, it had no origin before that.  As disgusting as that substance is, it makes an excellent comparator for the nature of evil itself.  Evil is not just repugnant to God, it is naturally on its own – ugly, painful, smelly, disgusting, and something all of us should wish not to ever encounter.  Evil is the result of deviation away from all that is perfect.  Evil, as a logical matter has no place to wind up, but to become poo.  If God is the embodiment of fulfillment, love, and joy that brings life – evil by contrast will embody insatiable emptiness, hate and contempt, and pain that leads to death.

So how could something so horrific be embraced by so many, and then thought of as a good thing?  After all I have only ever heard of Alice Cooper actually eating poo in one of his concerts and that story could be the substance of urban legend.  If evil is so bad and so repugnant, and so painful, why do so many embrace it?  At least when you see poo on the ground, you take care not to step in it.  Not so with evil, people seem drawn to it, captivated by it, unable to escape its grasp.  The reason is marketing.  The first step in getting logical people to adopt something that is wholly repugnant is to lie about its features and nature.  We must distract people from the truth about evil, and make evil sound and look very good.  The second step in getting people to adopt something so horrific is to separate for as long as possible, the consequences of adopting evil from the actual act of embracing it.

For instance; if I were a salesman attempting to market an evil idea to you I could tell you the following … You sir, can I interest you in a guaranteed way to insure you will never really know the joy of loving someone else with your whole heart?  That woman you once thought to love completely will be so hurt by you, that over time she will seek comfort in the faithful arms of another guy.  I can add to that, you will lose everything of earthly value to you as it will someday be taken away or divided in half?  If you had kids, get prepared to see them only once in a while, while they learn not to trust or rely on you ever again – probably filling the void of your loss with drugs, prison bound behavior, or just loving some other dude more than you.  And the kicker is, enough time with this little evil and you are for certain guaranteed to die old and alone, after a meaningless life of emptiness and regret.  What’s more a trip down this aisle, and you won’t ever be able to say “no” again.  That’s right, your self-control will cease to exist (as if it ever did), and you will be a complete slave to very behavior that insures your doom, and you as the cause of pain to literally everyone you come in contact with for the rest of your life.  Interested?

Instead … the devil is smart.  He attacks you when your weak, after an argument about something meaningless you can hardly remember.  He puts in your path a sympathetic, caring, and attractive individual who’s own loneliness drives them to make bad decisions.  And there you have the makings of an affair.  At first it is considered risky, exciting, the lure of the forbidden and doing what you know you should not.  There is absolutely no pain involved immediately.  But it is coming.  The damage however is immediate.  Trust disintegrates.  The ability to maintain intimacy is destroyed.  The ability to truly love, is warped only into self-love.  All the destructive elements of evil are hard at work, long before the perpetrator is even aware of it.  And then, when evil has done a sufficiently good job at tearing away the fabric of a person, the pain comes.  And the pain ripples out, hurting those you would not expect, did not anticipate, and cannot prevent.  For the truth of pain is a constant for evil.  There is no escape.

Yet despite the facts of the damage done by evil, millions still choose to embrace it.  Part of the reason for this is that even limited exposure to embracing evil robs one of the self-control to cease future participation in it.  It only took a single bite of the forbidden fruit for Adam to degenerate from loving Eve so much he would share her fate, to blaming God for Eve’s existence and her participation in his fall from grace.  Adam lost his nobility, and he lost his power to choose.  When he lost his dominion over the earth, his most important loss, was that of self-control.  He was now slave to evil, bound by its chains.  It would take a savior to save Adam from himself, and us from ourselves.

There are those today, who have discovered the poo-like nature of evil, and desperately dream of relief from it.  They are sorry for their behavior, but unable to stop it.  They long for freedom, but lack the will to find it on their own.  But for those who see evil for what it truly is, they fall into two camps.  One group believes if they just try harder, they can free themselves from this evil, by their own sheer will.  The other group is aware of their addiction and has no answer for it.  Those who trust to removing evil from themselves on their own, or in partnership with Christ, fail.  They fail, and fail, and fail again.  They find themselves only able to seek forgiveness.  They become protective and begin to think the only way they will ever become pure is by controlling their environment including others around them.  They begin to focus on the sins of others, trying desperately to point out the error of other’s rather than face the failure in themselves.  They begin to think themselves better by comparison with other sinners.  And they completely lose sight of their condition, still locked in sin, with no way out.

The group, smart enough to realize they suffer from an addiction and are powerless to stop it face a choice.  They often rationalize that since there is no apparent way out, God will have to forgive them, for how He made them, and save them in heaven despite who they are.  They think themselves free of any religious restrictions or laws, and able through grace to do anything they please.  But what they forget is the poo-like nature of sin and evil.  Thinking yourself free to eat as much poo as you want, is no kind of freedom any rational person would ever want.  The whole point is to find a way of escape from the pain, not a highway to embrace more of it.

When one realizes they can do nothing to remove the sin from themselves, they can choose to allow Christ to do it for them.  In effect, to finally let the Savior of mankind, save them.  This is what it means to be saved, to be MADE free from sin.  12 step programs can manage behavior, but they cannot remove the underlying desire for the sin.  Christ can.  He can change how we think, what we want, what we like, what we enjoy, and what we do.  All we have to do, is let Him.  Our part in this is not to work harder, it is to stop working at all, and let Christ be the savior He is.  Our part is to learn through experience what it means to trust Christ with your own salvation.  This is what we are meant to do.  This is how we avoid poo, and the pain of all evil.  We quit wallowing in it, and allow our Savior, to clean us up, and free us from playing in it again.

Creation Revelation ...

The reason why our origins are recorded in the Book of the Genesis is for far more than a mere historical perspective on where we come from. It is more than an alternate theory to the one posed by evolution and its trillion to one odds of success. And it goes beyond describing the fall of man and a renewed hope for a second chance. The lessons learned from the study of perfection BEFORE the entrance of sin, give us an insight into the motives and intentions of our God. They foretell what He intends to restore unto us. They contrast the beauty of the plans of God, with the inevitable results of deviating away from God’s plans. And finally they predict the eventual reconciliation of our God with His created peoples.

What has happened since our fall, continues to happen today. We have an enemy who seeks our destruction. His entire aim is to distract us away from the source of relief. He lures us with the promise of power or wealth, or he tempts us with the idea of unlimited self-gratification. He injures us, and then reminds us that we alone need to be looking out for number one. And he has a skilled accomplice to help him carry out his mission of evil – it is the image you see in the mirror in front of you. You are not my enemy, but you are your own. It is why I entitled this work … “I am the enemy”. It is a hard revelation to face, but 6000 years of genetics, an environment custom tailored to feed my ‘need’, and a natural inclination to serve self – combine to form an unbeatable combination of originator of sin in my life. When being honest, most of us do not need to be tempted by the devil himself to fall into behavior we know to be wrong. Most of us, hardly need a gentle nudge to do what evil we are already inclined to do.

This was the contrast in Eden. And this will one day be the contrast between who we are now, and who we will one day become. It is our natural instincts to deviate from God and serving others, towards the gratification of self that MUST die in us before we will be a “new” creation. When he first walked this earth Adam had no desire to ingest cocaine and rape a strange woman on his way home. It was not the absence of refined cocaine, or perhaps other women, that restrained his behavior – it was natural for him never to feel these urges. His natural state of being, was to be in harmony with the character and nature of God. It was a conscious choice away from the plans of God, that led to Adam’s fall. Man lost his dominion over the earth, but way more importantly, over himself.

Man is no longer free to love as much as he wants. Instead he is the bound servant of the evil one, held captive to evil instincts despite his freewill, or inclinations to do better. Man is powerless to remove the evil he once invited inside himself, to leave once and for all. This is not the inclination of evil. Evil perpetuates like a cancer causing virus, seeking out as many as possible to hurt and destroy. It is not the questionable random acts we perform today that make us unfit for heaven. It is our natural inclination behind them, the motivation that drives each evil act, that is our real disease.

Alcoholics in society today, have a treatment option of a 12 step plan to help them cope with their disease. But for the remainder of their lives, they remain alcoholics (slave to the potential future drink they may indulge in). Generally when an addict relapses it takes time to restore their sobriety. Often they must repeat each step one at a time, taking each day at a time to regain any sense of composure after a significant failure. This is because the root motivation, and chemical genetics, that make us susceptible to become alcoholics remain in tact. The 12-step programs can do nothing to undo our genetic codes and responses. 12-steps are a wonderful disease management program, but not a cure.

In Eden there was no equivalent thinking that could describe addiction. Prior to sin, there was no basis for understanding truly what it means to be powerless to resist something we know will destroy us. This was non-sensible, it was illogical, and therefore it was highly suspect thinking – and yet every word of it was true. Prior to our fall, man had only the knowledge of Good. God alone, could foresee the horror of evil and where it would lead. This was the knowledge the serpent promised Eve, the knowledge of both sides of the coin – both good and evil. She was lured into thinking that she would have the knowledge without the personal experience but this was not to be. And once bitten, the evil fruit did its work, transforming the noble self-sacrificing daughter of Christ, into the temptress bent on securing her husband’s participation in her own doom. Had Eve been able to reason as she did before, her love would have driven her still farther from Adam’s side, so as not to risk his Salvation for the loss of her own. That is how perfect love thinks. It cares not about itself, only the object of its affection. But evil, cares not for the other individual, only for itself.

The creation story tells us right from the beginning that we lost. We were defeated in the garden, when perfection was our ally. Since then we have NO hope of defeating the evil one in our own characters, or using our own human wisdom and strength. The lost, require a defender, a champion, a hero. Those who are beaten require someone else to do the fighting and the winning, in order to reclaim them. In short, fallen man requires a Savior to be saved from the evil that infects our souls, and warps our nature. What was revealed to Adam and Eve in the garden has yet to sink in to the thoughts of modern Christians. Adam and Eve would be sent a promised Messiah … “to take away the sins of the world.” In short, to remove the sins we carry and commit from our very natures. To lift the burden of our genetic codes. To reroute the passages in our brains undoing the years of chemical neglect. The mission of our Messiah was not simply to perform the awaited sacrifice for our sins in atonement, but to free man from his bondage to those very desires to sin.

This is the Creation Revelation; that Christ can create us over again from the inside out. He does not need to wait till we walk through golden gates in a perfect city of His design. He can do it on the street corners we walk, in drug infested houses where we take refuge, in the gutters in which we live. He can meet us anywhere and begin the process of healing the pain we have so long heaped upon ourselves. The man in the mirror, can be transformed from enemy of the Lord, to humble servant of our King. I do not have to be destined to serve only me, and my desire to please only me. My desires can be rewritten. My wants and “needs” can be re-created anew back into His image. This is the hope that Genesis extended to Adam and Eve, and has seen its fulfillment in the ministry of Christ so long ago. We are not bound to our history of doom, but free to live in His Kingdom right now, changed through the power of His gift, and our submission to His will.

Food, Health & Poison ...

Sensory organs; the ability to experience life in ways that defy explanation for those without a reference, it is how we live, it is what we are. Imagine trying to describe the brilliance of color, texture, and lighting to someone who has been blind from birth. Without any sort of reference to go by, the sensation of sight seems like an impossibility, yet most of us see. Imagine your world in total silence, no more the flowing ambient sounds of a park at sunset, or a chorus of Handel’s Messiah sung by a brilliant choir. To describe sound without a reference is again very difficult. To smell, to taste, and to touch – a life deprived of these sensations seems a poor life indeed. It is said new born babies will literally die if they are denied tactile contact with another person for too long after entering the world. Why would these abilities be such a tangible part of our existence, if we were merely the product of random chance or evolution? And why stop there? Why not evolve the ability to break laws of physics? It makes so much more sense that we were created with abilities that mirror the God of creation who invented them.

Yet for every gift of sensation we have been given from God, His enemy Satan has a way of us misusing them to our detriment. We focus our attention on the things that would harm us, and harm us they do. We choose to seek out images that feed our lust, until we are slave to lust. We listen to rhythms and beats and words that degrade, until we can repeat them from memory and recite them at will. We eat things and drink things that slowly deteriorate our bodies, adding excess weight, tearing down our foundation of health. We seek to touch what we should not, and we become immune to the pleas of a conscience instilled by God. The devil uses our gifts, and turns our focus on excessive usage of each of them, to the point of our doom and self-destruction. These tricks are called “sins of the flesh”. Is it any wonder, the first temptation in the Garden was based on seeing, touching, and eating what we should not? Seems after 6,000 years we wander right back up to the fast-food counter and repeat the process of self-destruction again and again despite our knowledge of the impending results.

Yet despite our misuse of His gifts, the end of our existence will be as the beginning was. For in the Garden of Eden, there was a tree of life. This tree yielded a different fruit every month, and its produce literally extended life in all who ate of it. Because the fruit was so effective, it had to be guarded after the fall of man, so that none would continue to eat of it, and extend the life of sin indefinitely. An angel was sent with a flaming sword, until the garden itself was transplanted to heaven immediately preceding the flood of Noah’s day. When we return to Heaven, John describes seeing the tree of life once again. John also sees a river of life that flows from the throne of God Himself. This fruit and water will once again be our eternally sustaining bond with God. Of course once we enter Heaven, we will never again wish to choose a path of sin, for knowing how bad sin is, we will want no part of it ever again. So we will be free once again to eat of the tree of life.

Thus the practice of eating meals and drinking for sustenance was established in perfection PRIOR to sin. And while sin may have used this vehicle to enter our world, it does not eradicate our created instinct to eat and drink to survive, even after hell itself has passed away. Of course, like Adam and Eve in the Garden, what they ate had no waste byproducts. It was turned completely into the energy their bodies required. Vitamins, Minerals, and energy were the result of digestion. No need for bathrooms, or waste disposal systems to filter poisons from our bodies. There were no poisons to dissipate, or dissolve. Our perfection included the ability to taste, food that God considered “good”, and a conversion process that had no waste at all.

We have lived under the curse of sin for more than 6000 years now, and still we think we imagine, and we try to create. We put new combinations of elements together in new ways, looking for better foods, or fuels, or materials from which to build. We aggregate our knowledge and attempt to expand it despite the limited usage of our brains. Imagine what perfect health and conditions would do to increase these abilities. Imagine just what the lack of pollutants could accomplish in improving our lives and surroundings. Imagine clear air, clean water, and sun filtered through the ozone the way it was intended. I submit the improvement in our conditions alone would enable us to achieve greater accomplishments than we can even imagine today.

Now imagine what using 100% of our brain functionality might enable us to do; perfect recall for instance. Where now, the ability to perfectly recall experiences is more of a curse than a blessing due to the prevalence of evil in our world, in a world where only joy exists, perfect recall will be wonderful. But imagine what an IQ of 2000 might do, where today the higher IQ’s are measure above 150. Where now we deduce based on the best recollection of facts at our disposal, there we could deduce from brain cells without decay, or degradation. It is hard for a junkie to imagine the life of Bill Gates. The junkie has a much different perspective, from living in horror for a long period of time. While Christ can turn around a life like this, He is seldom permitted to do so, and it is why addicts more often than not, die from their condition. Sure, Bill Gates could become an addict, but the salient question would be “why”. He does not need drugs to avoid his problems, and his life affords him better perspective on solving any problem that comes his way. So we too, may not be able to imagine just how good, good will be, but to the best of our imaginations, this is what Heaven will be like.

Adam and Eve knew only this life of perfection prior to sin. They lived in a beautiful world, custom crafted by God to be their home. They had the beauty of marriage, the rest of the Sabbath, the company of God taking walks together in the evenings. They had a bountiful plethora of fruits and foods to eat, animals who sought their affections, clean water and clear air. They had 100% of their new minds to absorb the truths they were taught. They had all of this. And we will have all of these gifts once again restored to us. After time has no more meaning, all these conditions will be restored to us. We will live again as they lived at first, returned to our state of perfection. We know what they did not. We inherited the curse of knowledge of good and of evil. It did not make us like God in any other way than we have come to see how bad, bad can be, played out in our own lives. God knew it would lead to this and tried His best to help us avoid this fate. But we chose not to. It is our choice to throw away perfection that must be examined.

A Cycle of Remembrance ...

Six days of work for our Creator, six days to put together our home, make it beautiful, make it full of life, make it produce everything we would need or want, in only six days. Then something unusual occurred, God rested. He decided to take a day off from His work and rest, set the time aside to be with us in a special way. God blessed this seventh day, made it Holy, and set it up as a cyclical revolution of days so that we would remember and celebrate His crowning work of achievement, His creation of our world.

The first thing to notice about the Sabbath day is that the Lord created it. Man had almost nothing to do with its inspiration, nor with making the day special. It was the Lord who blessed it. It was the Lord who made it Holy. It was the Lord who rested from His own work. It was the Lord who set aside His own time to be with us in a special way. The Sabbath then, like everything else, was a gift to mankind; a gift of time and attention from the God of the Universe to man; a gift of a day in seven to rest from our work, reflect on the beauty of Lord’s gifts, and enjoy our time with Him. Jesus, our Creator, reminded us of this many years later when He said … “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” This was a gift to us, and so we should receive it as such, value it for what it is, and honor it as we honor its maker.

The second thing to notice about the Sabbath is its key ingredient, the absence of work. Now it is important to remember that prior to sin, “work” was not done as a matter of survival. And particularly in God’s case, He did not “work” to earn money in order to pay for rent and food. The Lord’s work was that of running the universe, of creating things that prior to His imagination, did not exist. This was the work He set aside. Our “work” was that of tending to our garden home. We were assigned the task to caring for it, or trimming it, guiding it, and insuring it grew in a sensible fashion and not just out of control. Considering that seasons did not exist in this early world, neither did death or decay in any way, plants like animals and man, would simply grow continually. Insuring that they grew in harmony with each other was the task assigned to man. This was the “work” we were first asked to set aside, to honor the day of rest God had sanctified.

The third thing to notice about the Sabbath, is that it would have been no different from any other day, had not the Lord MADE it so. There is nothing inherently holy in our world, particularly days on a calendar. But when God sets something aside and makes it holy, it becomes Holy through His actions. Even a space in time, even such a thing as a day itself, can become Holy when God makes it so. In our world, we are far from Holy ourselves. Yet at the end of time are the fateful prophetic words of John the prophet uttered in heaven … “let He who is holy be holy still.” We are no more able to make something holy than a leopard can change his spots, or a donkey could start talking, but with Christ, all things are possible. It is Christ who can and will MAKE us holy, if we but let Him. The same God, who set aside time to make it special, can defeat the sin in us, and make us special. What we so desperately need is a God of creation, for we must ALL be recreated to be saved. As the Sabbath could do nothing to make itself special, so we can do nothing to make ourselves holy, but God can fix us, and MAKE holy, what we could not.

Now we must remember that this institution, like marriage that preceded it, was created for man BEFORE the introduction of sin in our world. If sin had never come to us, we would all be living in a garden paradise, married with families of our own, and taking one day in seven aside to be with God as He made it for us. Marriage and the Sabbath were created without deadlines, without time limits, and without the taint of sin. These two institutions were ordained by God Himself, prior to having to make accommodations for the evil we would inflict on ourselves and the inevitable arrival of death in our world. We were told to … “go and multiply.” This first directive was not set against a numbered criterion; this ability was given to us according to the will and plan of God. We were also told to “rest” and honor our creation. This was not done to remind us of sin in any way, it was done before that. Remembering our creation helps man to understand His place in the universe. When we are finally restored to the perfection we were intended for, the Sabbath will once again be a part of our traditions.

Some argue that it is man by his actions or lack of actions that makes the Sabbath holy or not. But as we have seen the creation of the Sabbath, man had nothing to do with it. This was a gift of God to man. We were not created so that we could “keep” the Sabbath, rather we were created and given the Sabbath as a gift from the Creator of all things. The biggest gift any parent can give their child, time and attention. So it was with our God. Some argue that God is always with us, and therefore the Sabbath is or should be, no different. But this is not so. It is true that God is always with us, but the requirements of life keep us working in order to survive. In the garden, work to trim and keep it, had to take place, thus focusing the attention somewhere besides upon the God who is “always” with us. It is our attention that MUST be refocused. It is WE who need a priorities adjustment.

The Sabbath is a humbling concept to modern man. It reveals that we are not self-evident, nor self-sufficient. It reveals we are a “created” being, sprung into existence by the will of an all-powerful God. The Sabbath stands in direct contradiction to those who believe life evolved to its present state. Survival of the fittest is not the mandate of a loving God, but rather the edict of His enemy. The Sabbath bids us to rest from our labor, not intensify it. The Sabbath bids us to remember the gift to us of the special time with our God. When we realize our dependence, when we realize our utter helplessness, it is only then that we begin to understand why our God is so good. He does not leave us in the conditions we begin to recognize. He does not leave us to our weakness. Rather, He redeems us from the pain of evil and sin. As the Sabbath was MADE holy by God, so the weakness of our characters are MADE perfect in HIS strength and not our own. The Sabbath reminds us of a need for a creator God.

When perfection is restored, the Sabbath will continue not as a reminder of sins past, but as a lasting covenant between God and His people of His commitment of spending time with us. Think of it, centuries and millennia from now, week to week, we will still enjoy the company of our God, set aside from all the other pressing demands of running a universe to be intimate with us. One to one, God and man, conversing, laughing, learning, exploring, eating, drinking, singing, and listening: imagine what this precious gift of time will be like. Some treat Sabbath here on earth as a time-out from their otherwise desired pursuits. We act as if Sabbath prevents us from enjoying our time, rather than enables us to enjoy it. We act as if Sabbath is a deterrent to the things we love, rather than pointing us to them.

This is because our hearts have been turned from the God of love, and have been pointed at the god in the mirror. We love only pleasing ourselves as our carnal nature dictates. We spend every waking moment thinking and working in the interests of ourselves. We sometimes squeeze in time for others, perhaps in our immediate circle of family and friends. But by comparison we spend the majority of our lives in pursuit of things thought to please us. Emptiness. Vanity. And without success, are our efforts. But when considering the gift of the Sabbath in perfection, we are pointed back at the things that maintain real value. We are given cause to pause. We are told to be still for a minute, and think, and consider what perfection and rest really mean. Time with God. Time set aside for us to laugh together, walk together, to learn, to live, to skydive or swim with the sharks. Perfection does not mean that we will go around heaven seeking out new entertainment for only our own enjoyment, but it does mean that we will share our every joy with each other, and WITH God.

Like a father who sets aside time to play with his children after a long work week, so God sets aside time to spend with us on re-creative things. The Sabbath may include singing, worship, and lectures from a pulpit in church; but it may also include riding waves on an ocean created for our delight – WITH our God. It may include walking among the Sequoia trees in a forest of His creation. It may include exploring the lunar surface of our moon hand in hand with God, who compensates for the gravity and air we require, while He teaches us of the history of our rock in space. The Sabbath is time off first and foremost for GOD. It is His choice to take time away just so that He can be free to be with us. How wonderful for US. Like the small children who eagerly crave their father’s attention to look at the drawings they made in school, the crafts they made afterwards, and the mud pies baking in the back yard – so we will eagerly await the God of the universe to visit with us week to week, looking at our “art”, commenting on our “offerings of love”, and perhaps politely avoiding the actual consumption of our mud pies baking in the back yard.

So many Christians are content to take an institution created in the Garden of Eden, before there was sin the world, and completely ruin it. They arbitrarily decide that the actual day does not matter, whether the first day, or the seventh, only that WE set aside time to worship God. The Catholic church admits to changing the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday to avoid being confused with the Jews, and to honor the resurrection of Christ. Protestants refuse to accept this man-made change and so argue that Christ Himself changed the day, although there is not one single scripture to identify where He would have done this. And there are many that show He worshipped on Saturday … “as was His custom”. “How” Christ worshipped was radically different than His contemporaries, but “when” Christ worshipped was from sundown to sundown Friday evening, to Saturday evening. Christ honored His own day of rest, that He created in the Garden of Eden, even in His own death – resting again on the Sabbath day. He could have arisen Sabbath morning, and gone about the “work” of our redemption, but instead He lay asleep in the tomb, choosing rather to rest on His sacred day, and do the work on the first work-day of the week.

Muslims who claim to worship the same Father God, understand the cycle of remembrance but they too have decided to alter the day of worship to Friday rather than Saturday. They like the Catholics believe that man has the power to make these changes as long as one day in seven is set aside to worship God. The problem with this thinking is that it is “man” centric. We decide the time and day. We decide when we and God are supposed to rest and get together. WRONG. The Sabbath itself reminds us, that man makes NOTHING holy by decision or fiat, or inaction. Only God can make anything holy including time, and therefore only God can make a day Holy, as He has with the seventh day Sabbath.

Those who believe the Sabbath was nailed to the cross (despite Christ’s own observance of this “law”), forget that the Sabbath was created long BEFORE Moses or the law. The Sabbath was instituted BEFORE sin, and in the Garden of Eden. To nail the idea of the Sabbath to the cross, would be the same as nailing the idea of Marriage to the cross as well. Both had the same origins, the same creator, and were given at the same time. No, those who war against the observance of Sabbath, usually do so because they wish to be “free” to pursue their own desires, without the imposed “sanctions” of Sabbath rest. But one can no more legislate “rest” as they can legislate “love”. And again, polluted hearts miss the blessing of time spent with a God of infinite love.

Well-meaning Jewish religious leaders in the time after the captivity of Babylon wanted to insure they never broke the laws of God again. To accomplish this, they set about trying to conceive of conditions related to work and rest so as to define “how” to properly “keep” Sabbath. Their lists of do’s and don’ts got so long it became ridiculous. Christ pointed out their folly through refocusing on motives and relationships, and meeting the needs of the hurting. His “work” on Sabbath was constantly and only for the sakes of others, never Himself. His example of helping the hurting remains in place today, as people are more important than rules and regulations. Yet He never arbitrarily discarded Sabbath traditions either. He worshipped in the synagogues on Sabbath, often reading from the Scriptures, and teaching those in attendance about His Father God. He rested with His disciples and spent time with them one-on-one teaching them also what they had need to know of. Christ honored his own created day of rest, and was found to be a perfect sacrifice, blameless in front of the laws of God.

Seventh Day Adventists tend to take pride in their discovery of Sabbath truth. But just like their contemporaries in other faiths, they have found a way to make Sabbath “man” centric, rather than “God” centric. Many SDA’s take up professions in the health care field, as working in this field is considered “acceptable” on Sabbath. Without the guilt of working on Sabbath, they then take the additional step of choosing to work weekend shifts for pay differentials, or reduced hours during the rest of the week. Most of these choices are voluntary. Few choose to donate the pay they receive for work of helping others on Sabbath to those in need, this is not even a consideration for most. Rather, they have come to rationalize that since helping others is “OK” to do, there should be no moral problem with it. But they miss the time out God wishes to spend with them, and their families. The Sabbath loses all significance, and just like their less fortunate contemporaries in the world around them, who live working on this day of rest, they stress themselves out over their day to day activities – leaving no time to unwind and reprioritize their own lives. In this line of thinking, they lose out on a blessing designed for them. Gift rejected.

Other SDA’s who make a stand to avoid working on Sabbath themselves, have no problem being waited on by other forced to work. They are free to go to restaurants, or shopping, or any other place where employees are there to cater to their needs. The logic behind this, is that those employees would “be there anyway”. And so they feel no remorse for taking advantage of a resource that is there anyway. But in this too, they participate in activities that do not lift one up to God, rather they keep the attention focused on the man in the mirror. What am I eating, when, and where. What I am wearing, what are my needs, etc.. The focus is on self, and others who do not know the beauty of Sabbath truth, are forced to help them miss the blessing God would have for ALL. It is the shopper who misses MORE of the blessing from God, than the employee who is forced to serve them, by their mere presence. It is the shopper who knows the truth and ignores it, while the employee craves the truth, but will be left in ignorance, as it is hard to witness about the value of rest to someone you are forcing to serve you at the time. All these self-oriented activities, designed to please one’s self, all make the Sabbath a day of “man’s” idea of rest, rather than God’s.

Still other SDA’s design rigid lists of do’s and don’ts that would rival the Pharisees of old. They have meticulous clocks of worship traditions which must take place on prescribed intervals lest they lose their value in tardiness, or extension. They remove any sort of enjoyment from the Sabbath believing without the “discipline” of keeping God’s day there is no real reverence. These people would never be caught dead at a mall on Sabbath, but then they would not be caught in a park, or the beach, or a pool either. Nature is forbidden to them as much as commercialization. And so Sabbath is a burden, not a rest. Rather than being a time they enjoy with God, as He intended, they make it a time to watch your wristwatch and count down the seconds until Sabbath is over. They secretly yearn for sundown, so that they can resume their “normal” lifestyle. And they dread the coming sundown in six more days that will begin the “time-out” again. They too, miss the blessing God intends.

All of these well-meaning SDA’s and Christians have one thing in common – they have lost sight of the GIFT of the Sabbath to man from God. When one allows work, money, self-interest, legalism, or commercial pursuits to come between them enjoying time with God, they miss the blessing He intended for otherwise worthless endeavors. Those who work, even in health care, should make an effort to get time off on Sabbath – so that they too can actually begin to enjoy its value in rest and relaxation. Those who allow the mundane needs of life like eating and shopping and leisure like organized sports, etc. to dominate their rest time – should forego this for a single day per week, and let God spend some quality time with them, undisturbed by these distractions. Those who follow legal lists of do’s and don’ts should throw caution to the wind and bury themselves in the nature God created, to find the beauty He designed for them in what He has made. Those who think that Sabbath is only about making themselves happy, should take time to serve another, and find the real meaning of “rest unto your souls.”

Do something unusual. Make a home cooked meal from scratch on Sabbath and invite over someone new from church, or a neighbor you hardly know. Barbeque something at the beach. Go swim in a lake. Take a bike ride with the kids. Enjoy your church service for a change. Go there with the intent of singing your lungs out, or making comments in the Sabbath school classes, or saying a hearty AMEN every time the pastor says something you agree with. Treat church like an action oriented sporting event, not like a boring game of golf on TV. Get involved. Get a group together, and go to a homeless shelter and volunteer to help out for an afternoon. Go caroling (in season). Go caroling at a nursing home (when not in season, just sing hymns or worship music or whatever), but smile, and visit the old folks afterwards for just a few minutes. Rather than criticize that single mom whose baby makes noise all throughout the services, go talk to her, get to know her, see if you can help her out instead. Do something unusual. Our “normal” activities are too self-centered. The Sabbath allows us to reprioritize.

“Remember” … God uses this word in only one commandment, the one that began with creation, the one that transcends into perfection. Someday I will be sitting to prepare a barbeque with my God on a beach of His making to enjoy a Sabbath meal for us both. I expect my family to be in attendance. I expect to serve all who are there. I expect to cook, clean, and eat with my God. I expect He would probably not take “no” for an answer as He helps me to serve. You see that is the nature of my God. He who alone is worthy to be served, is constantly serving us. And I expect His offer will once again break my heart and bring me to tears, as once again I can see His love has no bounds. The Sabbath is something I cannot wait to enjoy, here and someday in the perfection it was intended to be …