The big principle

Disclaimer... I am not absolutely convinced of the truth of this post like I am of so many of my other posts... yet. This one is still in the trial stage.

Let's try to explain why things happen the way they do. Tall order, I know, but let's take a stab at it. I mean especially in our faith. Why is it that sometimes things seem to work like they are supposed to and sometimes they don't? Why do some people get healed and some people don't? Why does God seem to bless some people who do all the right things and not bless some other people who also do all the right things? Why do great men and women of the faith, who know God, and have served Him faithfully all of their lives, get Alzheimer's when they get old? And other such seeming contradictions? In other words, why don't things, or why doesn't God, work like He's supposed to? Like the Bible says He's supposed to?????

Well, I think it is because of this. If you read the entire Bible, and read it from God's perspective, then you will see that there is one seriously predominant and overarching principle that seems to govern every other principle in there. And this principle is love.

Love overrides everything else. Whenever there is a conflict between love and some other lesser principle, then the lesser principle will submit to the greater principle. So if you are acting on some principle of God's kingdom, and it is not going to be conducive to you knowing or understanding love, then it will probably be subjected and (in my opinion) held off til later. It will work for you, but there is something else much more important that you must learn first. God is not constrained by the limits of time and space.

Also, God himself is a free, autonomous, loving being. He does not want to be put in a box, just like you and I don't want to be put in a box. And I honestly think (opinion) that He places less value on things that are less valuable so that we will learn to place more value on the things that are of more value... namely, love. In other words, He wants to have a relationship with us, as love and friendship are His highest priorities, and so will bend all the laws of the universe in order to get us to that place with Him.

The minute I get more info on this one, I will let you know. Thank you, and good night.

Why people are afraid of the Bible

I think that people are afraid of the Bible because they are so unused to being loved that they can't see that the Bible is really all about love. In other words, people view the world through a lens given to them through their upbringing in this world. If they were given a lens of fear, then that is how they are going to see the Bible (and everything else). If they were given a lens of love, then they would see the Bible (and everything else) through that lens.

Because so much of the world is not used to being loved, and so can't recognize it when it happens to them or is happening to them, they interpret love as anything else besides love, mainly, through whatever lens they have been given.

So people view love, from God, or from people, as whatever lens that they were given dictates things to be for them. Specifically, when people read the Bible, it will appear to be something that it is not. I know, because this happened to me for years. It wasn't until after years and years and years of God's relentless assault on my fears that I began to believe that He really did love me. And now, after all that time, and all his relentless pounding upon my paradigms, I read the Bible, even the parts that used to scare me so much, and they are magically transforming before my eyes. When I read them now, they affirm God's love astonishingly. Which causes me to fall more and more in love with Him. God's love is feeding itself exponentially in my life. The more I learn about His love, and become convinced of it, the more all other things in life begin to do the same, and these feed the first ones, and vice versa, and they all create more and more of a lens of love through which I am learning to see the world! My lens is being drastically changed, at an exponential pace! I am in a serious upward spiral!

The matrix revisited?

I don't know about the rest of you, but it seems to me that so many thoughts and feelings that I deal with all seem to be geared toward convincing me that God does not really love me. And its all very subtle. Works off of the very real circumstances of my life. Almost seems like some sort of conspiracy!

The narrow path revisited

Must remind everyone (all three of you) that the narrow path that Jesus spoke about in the book of Matthew is being loved... something not a whole lot of humanity seems to know how to do! Some people are good at being strong; some people are good at being kind; some people are good at persevering; some people are good at working hard; some people are good at math; but who is good at being loved??

God will not...

...ever condone what is not of love. I have said this before, but I am becoming absolutely convinced of it. If you are doing any sort of religious activity, (i.e. fasting, praying, studying, etc.), and it is not conducive to love, His love for you and love for others, He's not going to bless it! Why? Because He is love and He cannot violate His law of Himself!! So you are better off stopping the religious activity than trying to push your way through it!

Pain

Was wondering why things can hurt so bad in life. Instead of just hurting a little bit, why do so many things hurt so much?

I think this is why. It is because God made everything so good, that when it is all messed with, and used improperly (anything in creation), it hurts to an equal and opposite degree that it was intended to make us feel good. As good as it was originally, is precisely the degree of how bad it is going to make us feel when we experience it incorrectly.

Now I don't know about you, but this gives me an awful lot of hope. Because this tells me more about the nature of God, and makes me trust Him more, and believe the lies of the matrix less. This tells me that the nature of God is incredibly cool, because if things that He created hurt this bad when handled incorrectly, then He originally made them so they they would make us feel incredibly good when handled correctly!

The best we can hope for (sort of)

Because this is a fallen world, and we are all (to some degree) fallen beings, then the best we can hope for in our relationships is people who have adopted repentance (the willingness to change) as a permanent lifestyle. The humility to admit when we are wrong and be willing to change.

This, in the present age, is kind of the best we can hope for. Because this is the most fruitful and productive m.o. considering the world and the reality that we live in. If someone has this, then all of the correct ways of living are available to them! If someone does not have this, then they will be stuck in their incorrect ways of living.

In a marriage, if you and your spouse are both humble and open to correction, and to repentance (change), then there is hope for your marriage. In your friendships, if both you and your friend are open to being wrong, being rebuked, being challenged, being corrected, and changing, then there is great hope for that friendship. Because this humility opens the door to all of the correct ways of living.

And I say that it is the best we can hope for because to expect perfection, in any relationship, is totally unrealistic. So if you have a marriage wherein you and your wife are experiencing this, and hashing it out together... rejoice! And if you have a friendship, or more than one, in which you and your friend(s) honestly try to admit when you're wrong and be open to change... rejoice! Those friendships (marriages) will have the benefit of allowing the proper ways of relating and living into them, and you will both enjoy them! In other words, if you have these struggles inside of your relationships, rejoice, for this is the path to life! And if you don't... watch out! Because you are probably living in the darkness and it will probably bite you at some point!!

Don't throw away or regard as bad any relationship wherein you are struggling for the right reasons! Rejoice in them, because it is the path to life!!

God using you?

Ask any of your friends if they would use you. If they answer yes, tell them that it is wrong to use people. If they answer no, then this means they already know that using people is wrong.

Then, (if they answered no,) ask them where they got that standard from. Then, when you have gone through the ensuing philosophical discussion, if they haven't gotten the point yet, point out to them that this standard comes from God, and that God can't use people, otherwise He would be violating His own standards.

God doesn't use people. God loves people. And love (God) always values people over what it wants, over beliefs, over things, and over circumstances.