I left the hollow under the moonlight there beyond the big hill on a walk a
few years ago. Then I returned again on another night some time afterwards and
walking there I came out under the stars in that same hollow perhaps drawn there
for an unknown reason. I beheld standing there that the canopy of Heaven was
still there like before.
I began to murmur to myself appreciatively and then decided to pray there
in the valley beneath Heaven and the unknown universe which might even have
exploded in singing and weeping there surrounded by the morning dew around me.
I thought then that nothing surpasses the greatness or the dignity of a
human person. Human life was not just an idea or an abstraction. Human life is
the concrete reality of a being that is capable of love, and this truth endures,
this truth will not go away. Ultimate truth I knew too will not pass or
change.
I was then reassured having no fear of moving into that unknown. I felt
that God was with me and I understood I could step out into uncertainty without
fear knowing that no harm can befall me, all is very, very well.
I thought of this experience as I stood tonight on the beck deck in early
spring under the April stars. The distance beyond me in the sky was out there to
be encountered I thought standing there alone. What was there definitely held
something real of that fact I was thoroughly convinced. Yet because human
thought cannot see into those depths, with us having no way of traversing the
buriers to those unknowns, I think we’ve began to doubt the infinite sky’s
potential to contain real answers within it. This hollowed unknown around us now
masked in a dark canopy of endless space dotted with a few specs of light.
I felt inspired to say authoritatively that this unknown holds more value
and more mystery then we can begin to estimate or predict. Secrets, I thought I
recognized, are out there in space and of an immense size and endless scope
offering continues clues and further answers to the origins and mysteries of
life. Along with such wisdom is the magnificent unending scenery far superior to
what we know in immense outlying beauty. Beyond us too is superior intelligence
that is vastly superior to what we now know.
These ageless truths don’t ever instantly become intelligible, I felt
inspired to write, but instead discovering them will send us on further on a far
reaching journey transforming our understanding and only gradually giving us new
glimpses of what ultimate meaning really is that will never totally exhaust
itself. Real knowledge, I believe, exceeds our ability to remotely comprehend it
now as it is unfathomable to our full understanding as human.
What if a clue came to us of our meaning, all meaning, including what was
perhaps out there in the unknown oddly surrounding us in deep space in the
cosmos. What if we found a way to traverse those buriers with this discovery.
Could we then grow intoxicated by the holy fumes of a grandeur we before
underestimated were there to be found. Could we get a glimpse of a previous
mystery now greatly expanding our tiny understanding and appreciations. What if
our eyes suddenly were opened and we gazed into the stars at those awesome
sights within them we had no way of predicting to be out there.
We might learn that life is not absurd or nonsensical at all but is part of
an orchestra, something like a symphony, as a musical like master performance,
like something with a brilliance that’s profound, intrinsic, non disappointing,
and of unlimited complexity. What if life does have a meaning with a much
further scope and so also a truth waiting to reveal itself as we sit on this
flying rock moving amid the celestial sky amid Heavens shadow.
If there were no large explanations for us being here then we wouldn't be
here to begin with. There would be no orbiting rock in space with this earth in
an unusual gravitational orbit moving in precision around a fiery sun. Instead
of objects in motion, like there are, there would simply be the natural
alternative which would be absolutely nothing but a changeless void, nihilism,
simply a nothingness, no objects in motion, as existence as it is would be
simply an impossibility without an objective or cause for it’s meaning at all.
Us being here, in a place a part of the infinite sky, among the deep
shadows and recesses of unknown space, needs be taken seriously for the size of
this mystery and not glossed over naively by us saying in error definitively
that life does not having a meaning. To say there aren’t any answers beyond our
present knowledge into this phenomenon, as we stand perplexingly amid this grand
picture, is premature and naïvely cynical. The honesty of our predicament is
that life’s real testimony to the truth could very likely mean that there exists
something profoundly mysterious in existence and there is no good reason to
think it should end with humanities consciousness asking questions about reality
for no good reason. There is existing in truth an existing mind, thought, and
further ability far superior to our own.
The possibilities of bigger ideas have not been exhausted. No one can say
authoritatively, with any real certainty, at least to say it authoritatively
with unquestionable wisdom, that there is no God to this mystery we are a part
of.
The only thing certain in this life is we don't get the full picture, not
any of the mystery with any adequacy, including none of life’s full reasons for
itself; none of the answers as to the potential of endless outstretching
distances around us and what radical changes such exploration would offer; or of
underlying intelligent purposes; of why this that we know is all here; of what
power and full brilliance might have made this possible sparking our life into
origination as existence.
If we think we get all of this life in this unknown place among the
celestial sky enough to simplify it we delude ourselves with a presumptuousness
that is common to our human reasoning. We do this in error with our absurd
convictions and exaggerated knowledge claims. We, the human condition, have a
common habit in our thought to say life has no meaning other then what we give
it by our knowledge. Yet how far do we delude ourselves with such assertions
while we are here existent, somewhere where we know not anything about our
neighbors, or practically anything at all about real reality. We suggest and
partially assume life is only here but reality really is everywhere including
out there beyond us extending out into the infinity around us leading to who
knows what unknowns.
As we struggle for the truth of our existence here how can God, If God
exists, not know how susceptible human beings are to error in life in this
world. He after all intricately devised our bodily systems. He constructed the
blue print of everything existent including us and how our minds work. God then
has had to have bore witness to every imperfect thought we know across history.
After God brought us out of nothingness He would of not only known our
hidden thoughts but well in advance God would have known that these thoughts
would come long before we as humanity knew of them. So it only stands to reason
that He then as God knows of all our vulnerabilities and of our continues,
common, and deeply flawed and unavoidable reasoning's leading to the many errors
of our ideas and organizational efforts that is common to the human condition we
know.
He then as God must know every ideology there is. By seeing clearly into
our vulnerability of thought we pursue He knows how we misunderstand those
thoughts. He can hardly be surprised by how common we err. In succumbing to
those misleading ideas He as God must relate to our mistakes too. If God knows
the mysteries of the cosmos, which I suggest He does, then He knows every
struggle that humanity is intricately caught up in.
Why then when He see's us in our darkest and most misguided moments can’t
He be understanding to what He must recognize as common error to human nature.
When we fear God looking at us don’t we occasionally fear in our uncertainty Him
as an unreasonable, unmerciful, condemning, judgmental, unfair and ferocious
natured power.
God as good no doubt sees what influences our reasoning and weak human
imaginations experience and that we are being effected frequently in life by
many challenges to us knowing how to be compassionate, fair, peaceful,
nonviolent, or forgiving. Is this state of error, through the uncertainty that
we face, with us not always knowing what to do on our journey in life is this
error entirely our fault alone to face and feel shameful about or is it not at
least partially true that influences beyond our momentary awareness effects us.
In our often confused grasp into nature, into knowing really what is right,
would our confusion really reveal that there are hidden influences we can’t see
that exist all around us, often outside of our ability to understand them, that
make our ability to use our will or judgment effectively powerless to act fairly
in many circumstances.
The thing about life too is that we don’t all have a compass fairly
navigating us toward a Bible. The statistics are really statistics of people who
never go near the Holy scriptures maybe, even probably, because the way toward
opening a Bible is a difficult walk for many many people even if one lays nearby
in a dresser drawer or on a table which for billions it doesn’t. The fault can
hardly belong unto those billions of people in history who don’t naturally get
steered even close to Christianity, which is my belief, but I love people of all
religions.
Even for those people who do pick up a Bible how can an imperfect,
continuously challenged, emotional person, a sexual minded being; a person among
people often effected temperamentally creating conflict with each other,
susceptible to all the many errors of thought in this life, navigate this world
free of the many challenges persuading us continually in error.
When mankind under organizational leadership is being persuaded and herded
like sheep to the slaughter doesn't God understand the limitations on all His
children. I purpose that He as God does understand and remains compassionate
above our fears and doubts about the reach of His love.
Jesus died Christians believe because none of us can avoid sin so He came
to die for those sins. That’s why Christ died to pay that price for us of
sin.
Keeping this in mind the chaos for billions of people across history has
been a course toward mayhem and terror as misguided individuals on earth
couldn't in their place in time have stepped free from the course they were set
on. The tribal, feudal, empire, nationalistic, religious, ongoing conflicts lead
the vulnerable as they, as simple innocent people, couldn’t foresee where they
were lead which has often been into deplorable violence and unavoidable error.
I profess to hold the opinion then that to hold the entire earth to the
demand that they either accept Jesus or reject Him in 2020 AD in order for them
to have any hope of a future with God to be arbitrary and unreasonable. This
demand on humanity, in this world of competing ideas now, isn't the same kind of
reasoning or understanding known as prior understanding was known so long ago.
According to how the knowledge of the world was known 2,000 years ago, when the
writers of The New Testament had written it in roughly 120 AD, things then were
different and have now changed significantly. In that time the writers only
understood the margins and limits of the Roman Empire and knew nothing outside
it’s boundaries where barbarians lived.
As much as God might have inspired the writers of the New Testament that
nonetheless does not mean that a human hand was not present too in the
authorship. That human authorship reveals a limited world knowledge in that
writing that the writers of that time could not have understood regarding
anything beyond their time or geography. So in 2020 it is unreasonable to hold a
larger world to a required demand of an ideology or to an only saving path that
has only a limited effect persuasively to compel belief on most of the world
across time and location. To expect people to adhere to that set of ideas,
people who will never get a reasonable chance to learn from them or who simply
can't be persuaded toward them is more then unreasonable it’s unfair.
People live in different parts of the world and live and believe ideas
closer to home. For us to believe billions of people have a desperate fate
awaiting in what God has in store for them, an eternal punishment in the
afterlife, is a perspective on God and His goodness terribly arbitrary and
diabolically cruel if real. If God sees other people’s only real saving hope to
be a demand on their humanity that everyone everywhere must at all times get
things 100 percent right in life this arithmetic is savage. If He sees a foreign
people’s religious claims, the hope of their own ideas, and equates those others
beliefs to warrant a vast and deserving rejection of those multitudes of
humanity in the afterlife then God is most unreasonable. I believe God is
eternally more fair then this.
“God is love and in Him there is no darkness at all!” is what I believe
about God.
The people alternatively who secure for themselves self saving ideas and
then turn and judge humanities hope by serving their own interests in their own
preservation by saving their own skin from ruin act rather desperately in my
opinion. Don’t we really think that instead we should care about the rest of the
human condition. By this doctrinal unbending obedience don’t we show a rather
cold calculated way of seeing the fate of great parcels of humanity across
geography and time.
I believe that God is infinitely fairer then we are. We as humanity have a
track record of total unfairness, like crucifying Jesus, or leaving each other
in malnutrition, or organizing torture, or pursuing dreadful and meaningless
wars. We judge each other by our nature ruthlessly.
I've faced off with evil a few times in my life already to know it’s real.
What I know from those confrontations is that evil exists in this world and it
recruits and persuades through ideas, elaborate ideology, and it confronts us in
life in our private thoughts through our imaginations. Other people's attitudes
and persuaded purposes at times too has them being guided against us in conflict
unknowingly by the ideas appearing in their private thoughts. In the world of
the mind are the instigating sparks of anger, ideas that enrage hostile opinion,
impulsive suspicions reaping confusion, disrupting emotions, ideas compelling
hatred. What murky pool of evil might such impulses emerge out of.
In the mind can grow perversions and dark desires for great cruelty but
opposite such evil is another force that is ultimately good.
I don’t think many of us are simply guaranteed the opportunity of a choice
of the will toward figuring out good however. I think that we can figure out
the path of the good sometimes, some of us, but that not all of us can in this
life know that guiding truth. We can not always choose the narrow road to the
good. I feel we often have no available choice of the will to discover it, no
real decision to purposefully accept or reject that good, that instead it’s just
the confusion many lives know living the way many people do in this world. For
many people I suggest the way toward good just never clarifies itself.
This worlds full terms are yet known incompletely too. I agree with the
saying “How folks get it wrong”. Yet all folks everywhere get many things wrong
and no one has it all sorted out. The struggle we're a part of has been a
journey shaped under many persuasions and powers working in the judgment and
imagination of man. We may wonder why this earth has been such a battlefield in
so much of our histories struggles creating so much of the awfulness we know as
the pursuit to knowing real knowledge of the truth has had so many different
ideas competing for humanities loyalties.
And so I suggest that the terms overarching our lives have never been
presented to us clearly or fairly for every man to have the same hope or even a
resemblance of that hope in this yet to be understood existence. What we can
hold fast to in our hopes is that there is evidence of love in the world and
that is our real hope. We can experience that hope in a relationship of
experiential love with God and each other.
I believe my faith is more then a crutch. By faith I experience hope as my
mind try’s to be open to possibilities, to further horizons, toward the
recognition of an awaiting journey ahead of us beyond all our mortality. I have
the hope of an awaiting trip into Heaven to be taken to places beyond reason,
beyond imagination, to places of total tranquility, exponential and continuously
increasing and changing in beauty, where the pleasant, the joyful and the kind
are found in better perfect love. This mystery in God’s love will open a door up
to a magnificent joy many more times greater then the joy we dare glimpse now at
our freest.
This kind of hope for a future joy may not seem realistic to you. It is in
our nature to be cynical, doubtful, and to dabble in what we consider to be
what’s realistic. Having this realism we think we have our compasses working for
what counts as real but I suggest those compasses are off, operating faultily,
that they don’t work correctly. Our minds are in rebelliousness and resent
ultimate hope reducing our vision to only a short distance ahead of us that is
hardly far enough to see into the real nature of realities potential. According
to how the cosmos and its mysteries beyond really operate we in this defiance
know nothing in certainty of real truth.
God is a superior law giver and maker beyond our despair and skepticism.
God governs everything we’re a part of where nothing good will be withheld or
lacking toward us in His plan. He offers our future a place where we will be
freed to further knowing of the joy of the heights and depths and real potential
possibilities of what it truly means being alive before the endless and
possible.
I profess to know that Jesus is alive and exists and that it is a fact that
I know that He is here with me right now. It is true that He is with all people
who ask Him into their lives. He has been speaking with me through my prayer
life.
Jesus, 2,000 years ago, was beaten severely, mocked foully and ruthlessly,
humiliated terribly, by us, and then nailed by rusted jagged spikes crudely to
wooden posts in an act that was vicious and cruel. He was the Son of God, our
Savior. He was not the “baby Jesus” but Jesus as Gods Son who was hoisted up in
the breeze on a Roman cross in the literal history of this world we now live in.
Jesus my Lord hung there on the Roman torture device suffocating slowly and then
thirsting until the soldiers standing nearby Him drove a spear ruthlessly into
His bowls.
Jesus came into this world to die as a sacrifice for sin and He died as He
was asked to. Once He had died He rose from the dead and appeared unto His
disciples in different places in the countryside. Finally He left this world
with the promise that one day He would return to it in a second coming. God left
us with His Holy Spirit as our comforter until then.
I know that Jesus is the Son of God because I sought assurances of that
reality through faith and the truth is I received the answers I sought by
searching. God is actually sitting here with me right now. I don’t see Him but
He is with me, I can tell, and I sometimes hear Him through my thoughts.
“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: If any man hear my voice, and open
the door, I will come in to him; and will sup with him; and he with me. To him
that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne; even as I also
overcame, and am sat down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear,
let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
Revelation 3:20-3:22
.jpg)