A place of possibilities

One among many others in this life stood this one day on a cliff.  Below him the cragged rocks were pointy and went jutting unevenly outward as the cliff dropped downward in front of his feet. At the bottom of the cliff, there below him, large boulders were presently being bashed almost ruthlessly now by the ocean surf. Beyond the shore miles of blue waters went outstretching out into the great ocean.

 

Here was where this man, who happened to be a bagpiper, liked to come and play his pipes just before dusk during  the summer on nights like these in Nova Scotia. He currently felt a gentle wind hit him. It was a wind that felt delicate, warm, as it came with a taste of salt water air meeting his nostrils.

 

Eons of time, centuries, had proceeded him, and that enormity of unfolding time lay mysteriously hidden behind his present existence he often returned to considering. The many millenniums and centuries of orbits of this earth and its rotations happened here around him where beyond here, outside of this area in the galaxy, was where the other wilder places and unknowns were. There the unfathomable alternative distances and their mysterious unknowns held strange beings, he strongly suspected this, unknown anomalies, spheres, dimensions, platforms, perhaps an end of space, time, and atmosphere as he thought he knew it. Out there was where stars ceased to move and where even wilder and wackier unknowns appeared.

 

Breathing in the air while watching the waves crest white tipped and frothy and then tumbling inland with a surge and a crash on the shore he looked to the clouds hovering above him skyward. They were peculiar clouds that appeared there now as he looked upward. The clouds were in unusual patterns in the summer sky and he was left in awe of them after admiring their beautiful configuration.

 

 Looking at the clouds now He thought to himself that he thought he knew that Heaven existed. He wondered what the great achievements towering skyward in Heaven were and what might they really entail if seen. What it was like in the Heavenly realm he didn’t really have any way of adequately knowing but somehow he knew it was a real place. Thinking there now about people he loves dead and buried he finds himself reflecting how often his thoughts return to the hope of seeing those loved ones again. 

 

Thinking about this he recalls that he had a vision once where an elaborate city appeared in the sky that he admits was likely a delusion but maybe it wasn’t. The Heavenly city resembled closely that of ancient Rome's coliseums and Europe's towering gothic churches. The vision had appeared above him in the daytime sky like on a day like today. The incredible buildings he saw in the vision had been many times larger in scale then the remains of what were now presently remaining of the former Roman Empire.

 

He kicked some loose rocks now as he watched two gulls that descended from the sky landing in the rolling waves. Thinking that he heard some noise he looked back behind him and saw three large spruce trees and a clay colored dirt walking path winding through dried marsh with cattails and tiny birds darting and singing about the ground.

 

Yes there would be awe inspiring vistas beyond the beautiful cities of Heaven too he imagined. Like natural beauty on earth Gods creative nature would unleash creativity a billion fold. There new but interesting experiences like excursions, adventures, hikes, sailing trips, unheard of challenges, or something new of considerable appreciation to encounter, would be a part of  enjoying what deserves to be called paradise.  These new forms of phenomenon exist like those on earth with our plants, land formations, rivers, streams, lakes, oceans, mountain vistas, the peculiar marine life we have, setting suns, only there these experiences are newer, even grandeur, not yet seen, and the greater varieties of created experiences exist very differently he strongly suspected. These experiences come like our own yet they have not yet been heard of or even fathomed in their ingenious design and possibility.

 

There also would be our newly improved hearts with us having greater and fairer minds. A mankind where finally we become informed, enlightened, and awakened to what true compassion and spiritual maturity looks like for us by God in His plan and in His love for us.

 

So he thought, looking up the coast to green undeveloped pastureland jutting out unto a peninsula, with our eyes open, our hearts unhardened, this kind of enlightenment would be more then just pleasant. A harmonious mind and spirit would lead to a greater mindset in all of us that would finally know the kind of love that secretly, although now not always understood by the people alive in a full awareness, is something we all really long for. There would come a recognition of peace in the absence of the irrational. There would be no more of those influences unfair, unkind, and indifferent to us and our wellbeing. No longer would the state of man be one where we roamed the earth confused, misguided, deceived, angry, hateful, greedy, while always overlooking the interests of others.

 

God, the bagpiper reflectively considered with a sigh, could replicate all kinds of happiness too and improve it dramatically because it is in His power to do so and He will do it. For instance the high of narcotics was nothing compared to what would be a truly beautiful state of joy. God gave glimpses of this joy, of this kind of peace and happiness too, the bagpiper thought, but these glimpses he suspected were only foretastes, though real and not to be dismissed. These were foretastes of a further genius not yet revealed. There would come this kind of joy beyond the joy we now get tastes of here and now he was convinced so.

 

Of all the things that he mentioned to himself the biggest joy of all for the bagpiper would be to know God the Father, Jesus the Son and further know The Holy Spirit and to no longer feel distant, separated, or in anyway removed from Gods presence.

 

As he thought all this in reflection now he stepped back a step and grabbed his pipes resting on some rocks behind him. Once holding them in his arms he stood facing the east, overlooking the tides below him, and he started to play. He played the bagpipes loudly now in a shrill that sang melodies on the shore and went sounding over the sea. He was standing alone but on the great stage of life. It was a stage where he was looking outward into an expanse of questionable distance while here alive among this seismic mystery. It was a life full of great curiosity, a place filled with fright, and also filled with possibilities.

The unknowable

In the hidden gulf, far out, where clouds overshadow rolling seas, intimate almost, a seagull, flashes of lightening far to the east; no rain but the ominous sign of showers; a darkening sea going from blue to grey; a wind invisibly moving along the waters surface.

 

If ghosts or phantoms lived, if spirits and spectrums and omnipotent forces prowl, which they might, here on the inhospitable far offshore sea with a horizon in all directions of water and sky; here this omnipresent, all knowing, non fearing, absolute wonders the surface and then submerges through the waters deep to the crustacean on the ocean floor.

 

Here genius doddles in the surf, admires it's handiwork, drifts with the gull to the smells of seaweed. The unknowable by us humans drifts west after some time crossing the shoreline, travailing over the marshes, passing the highways, moving over the towns and villages, moving upward and away through the stratosphere, beyond the moon, out of the galaxy, beyond the universe where the great unknowable source winks back at me.

How I choose to see God

I believe that God encompasses ideas like truth, charity, fairness, mercy, gentleness and forgiveness. His love surpasses all estimations that we have of what the possibility of His ways really are. His creativity therefore is incalculable and also infinite in it’s potential realization which means wherever it leads, however far it really goes, His ways are larger then our largest guesses.  

God too for me is the voice that instructs peace, that try’s to teach mankind to forgive his/her neighbor, and that tells us to go beyond and to love our enemy. God is the voice of hope in a world where our emotions, mental states, lived experiences, thoughts we hold individually and collectively, are up against and struggling against physical and ideological processes effecting our lives. We are therefore in this way struggling with interconnected with each other through the communicating of our mind to other minds which are minds in various ways damaged and misdirected by error and the degenerative and immoral states we find ourselves in.  

God I believe is the voice that teaches and brings about compassion that is taught to humanity when the message is not misunderstood. For whatever reason God is also distant and mysteriously hidden choosing to reveal Himself mystically only to us in glimpses but people really do experience Him make no mistake about that.  

Does God love all people of this world? When we look at other parts of humanity do people often respond with coldness of heart and decide that the others “ignorance of the truth” sets up real buriers to them really being loved eternally by God. Through our resulting reasoning then does our reason restrict us, after accepting tradition, from having a total acceptance of all the other communities of the earth. Must we, by necessity of our ideas, abandon holding unto a view that decides that there is hope for all of humanity?

The resulting calculation we commonly arrive at reasons who is really favored by God and who isn’t. We judge who He understands and therefore who He loves and then judge who He will ignore and eventually reject.

But is our calculation accurate or fair? The views we have in this way compete for claims of who really does Gods true will, and therefore who He favors, and who He finds no eternal good for at all. Because of the way ideas appear to us as impressionable experiential dabblers in these truth claims different multitudes of us are herded about in this way in this world. Therefore innocently enough we are compelled into conformity to the varies kinds of perspective of what the truth is.  

Circles of like thinkers in the world in tribes of communities exist where fellow thinking is structured on accumulated ideological arguments. Everyone alive makes certain claims that support feeling justified by something argued which realistically and practically means error is inherently real to all of us everywhere in some ways. To be alive and to think is to err. 

If God were really known fully to us in how He really feels would he step over our buriers and feel for us with heartache and love everywhere. Would His compassion feel the pain of everyone alive. Would God really have an intimate awareness of other cultures and their lived experience. Would His all knowing ability search out such lives and be able to relate to the answers people everywhere arrive at.

We are In a search for meaning where ideas challenge and compete for legitimacy winning acceptance in the vulnerable minds of the world. We experience the persuasiveness that then results in forms of various understandings within earths different societies in the different consensus formed of the truth. Would God understand the nature of the spread of ideas like this and understand how ideas are hard to interpret by simplistic people. Or would God instead judge us by very arbitrary standards.

There are many arguments and many corresponding explanations in life about what the truth is. The God I believe in I believe loves all of the Earth not merely parts of it that align to certain doctrines. That is how I choose to see Jesus death on the cross as sacrificial and compassionate for the whole world.

Sunsets and the unknown

We're all up against the unknown here in this life. We haven't got now truly rational minds in spite of the logicians or the ancient philosophers and the insights of Aristotle and Socrates. We have delicate minds subjected to nature and to the calamity of a confusion formed through the various beliefs we have. The organization of ideas of mind into the various combinations of directives and directions means that we haven't the inherent ability to see our way out of ideas always. We haven’t come yet to a place where we really know ourselves or what is what. 

 Some ideas we face are more diabolical then others in this life too. Some thought pursues the beautiful, the just, by pursuing hope, virtue, morality, and love. Yet mankind hasn't the make up that we can all balance our lives in these pursuits as we continue to go about life by way of often illusion and self deception. We go blindly down roads chasing the opposite way in our ideas.

Evil therefore promotes itself all this time through various intellectual circles with a real persuasion. Soon enough, predictably enough as always, another blood fest then sweeps up generations in an endless but predictable cycle of wars and their utter meaninglessness. These effects haunt us in our sometimes sorry existences.

We don't know where we’re going the whole time in life as we stare into the vacuous unknown of unending space and as we look at the cemeteries along the roads or when we break down at our mothers lifeless body in the cancer ward of the local hospital.

We still gaze at sunsets though sometimes on our journey. Some of us hope for the good and try to be good. Yet we are quick to abandon other societies in the process by denying the validity and the worth of those other experiences, however misguided they may be, instead of understanding that what we’re really all up against the mysterious and finding compassion. We’re all also really worthy of love and hope.

Jesus

Consider this prospect you might like it. “I'm dead!” Whenever that happens to be that I die I don’t know yet the exact date. Unfortunately for the people who might wish me dead now my death won’t be from a suicide unless it’s a Doctor assisted suicide for a terminal illness which I might develop at some point. I do believe strongly that people have the right to receive help dying with a terminal illness. 

 

From the afterlife where “I’m dead” is a place we will all find ourselves in soon enough whenever that is and whatever that ends up being like. Many of us will be dead in the next forty-five years or in far less time. What beyond the grave will look like is a mystery but what follows in coming paragraphs will assert to know and have insights. 

I believe I will regret something once I’m in Heaven. Eventually when It comes time to be there, after seeing everyone on Earth of our generations move beyond the Earth, I will feel a compassion which will be directed toward everyone upon seeing them anew. I think I know this to be true absolutely, not fictionally, in some intuitive way. Once in Heaven beyond the Earth there will come a loving realization that dawns on me, and that also dawns on everyone else, about true reality. With our nature changed and opened to real compassion other people will matter exceedingly more and our deepest regret will be in not having greater compassion, concern, kindness and love for everyone. 

So If I were standing there now in Heaven I know I would have overwhelming regrets for any missed opportunity to show people love or give people hope. I think hope is something real and not something misguided to believe in. For any way that I failed to show people love, which is really what we’re meant to become and be about as people, I will regret everything that ever hurt another person that I have done in my life. If you think that’s gibberish talk you don’t understand God’s true character because that’s what Jesus was about love. 

Once in Heaven I will carry no more attitudes of stubbornness there. I will entertain no selfish ego, justify no resentment towards others, and have no more thoughts and ideas of hostility or revenge that rise up and trouble my mind and billions of other minds across the planet. I will  be freed from the contaminations of sin and free of any of evils attack on the human condition. I’ll therefore feel and know entirely then the good I should have said and didn’t and feel solemn regret for any form of hatred or indifference I felt for others.

I will escape the cemetery in my local community where my corpse or dust will be put to rest when I die. I will easily survive my bodies destruction and survive the rumors of my annihilation. In passing from a lessor order of things where the lowly, hilly, windswept terrain around me is; by moving beyond life’s oceans, rivers, and valley grasses and past the intermittent patches of civilization I will then and there finally be with God. I will go beyond any state of disbelief anyone has now to a better place where conflicts that people pursue blindly in ignorance are left behind. I will have stepped beyond those many beguiling, misleading, hostility driven thoughts and ideas. Whatever the source of such conflict is those darkening and troubling Satanic ideas that trouble this beautiful but often indifferent place will be behind me.

Now, If I reach that place before you do, I will be somewhere your not. I’ll be moving out of a place of fear in the here and now on to an existence of total fearlessness. There I will move beyond this current state of sin where evil has an influence. Here experiencing beauty was conditional while there I will go to where a fulfillment of beauty extends into ever increasingly more complex places where there will be ever newer and far richer discoveries of thought to experience.

 In the before, which is the now, I understood the beauty around me but I did not understand it adequately. Here on Earth I failed to properly observe natures passing countryside with eyes that were opened wide enough to reverently see the sights I witnessed correctly, Nor did I listen with ears intently enough to hear the improbable and brilliant sounds around me. I couldn’t properly hear the noises sounding from quiet glens in the countryside, the secluded marshes at night, or to hear the mighty passing waters of streams and rivers.

 Now in Heaven I will set my eyes on those infinite and expanding vistas. The former sights that I experienced I will reflect on with a new appreciation of gratitude. My eyes will be newly opened to the unending and to the eternal.  I am assured by this source of good, a Being of love beyond measurement or limitation, that He loves His creation and I am His creation as is everyone else. I look to this God as a Being of sublimity with a power which satisfies all longings of the heart and more. Greater things then this He will do and you will marvel to see them.

Do we know the inner groaning's of our hearts on Earth. Don’t we feel these longings stir in us intently. We know these guttural, heartfelt cravings after our feelings feel impoverished, when our person gets improperly handled, whenever we’re mistreated in the world. Somehow we didn't, or couldn’t, have our deepest needs met like rightfully we would of had in a better place. We have this sense we feel where we believe in fairness and in it being properly fulfilled or satisfied in this life in our journey but it isn’t. If we could have articulated that inner longing we feel we might see that it was looking for love, understanding, forgiveness, fairness, kindness, an interest from everyone in our well being.

 Life is meant to offer us ultimately more then hope and that is no dream or illusion. I recognize the force half veiled who is responsible as the prime mover of our existence. God is this supreme entity who I search for surrounding me and my often misguided nature that offers us all His forgiveness, love and mercy. I will step forward happily, joyfully, freely into His presence some day where I’ll discover His continual and irremovable friendship. In His perfect love He cares not only about me but equally for all of humanity too. 

You might defiantly want to shout with vulgarity at this post If that's how you respond to how you see life’s terms. If you look at life in a way where you think being realistic about things is being skeptical or doubtful about the future. It’s your right to believe what you believe. I will gladly endure and listen to your curses and debate your arguments. I’ll be here a few years maybe, who really knows or can tell. I am however going to be with God after this life is over. I know that perspective to be a real one whether you understand there is a God or you don’t understand.

I wrest in the assurance I’ve experienced that in God is mercy and an unfailing friendship for us all. I trust that Jesus really did appear in history and that He was more then just a man being the Son of God who died for the sins of the world. 

Deep in a region never witnessed is a Being

Deep in a region never witnessed by us, or before dredged up in mankind's imagination, out there in a lonely uninhabited part of interstellar space, sits a Being older then the known Universe. This Being in fact never did not exist. His ways our human minds cannot begin to adequately understand. 

 We are not built in our human body to think and have brains large enough or to think far enough to register the many experiences beyond us. We can only wrestle now to properly understand even pieces of our world and we have nowhere near reached the reverence for it, nature, and it's processes and phenomena which it should rightfully receive from us. 

 This Being I speak of lives out there forever. He knows no enemy because if anything opposed Him that something would not stand a chance of challenging Him. 

We people think we can judge the world and it's possibilities entirely so as to rule out the possibilities beyond us to which we know nothing of. We are amid uncertainty so being here naturally enough different theories will naturally arise in different ideas entertained by us. Most views therefore deserve to not be put to too much shame. Yet who amongst us really knows enough to dismiss divinity and the possibility of a greater power of the infinite, unending and eternal kind. 

This brilliance of this powers reach that I speak of, if closely examined, would be unspeakable. The door to be opened and then stepped through and entered would reveal there other endless unleashed kinds of inventiveness. There unstoppable creativity would unfold with endless varieties of life far superior to this one. Differing natural laws and ideas there would uproot any estimation of what is possible and it would astound us not by a minutes reflection but across time endlessly marveling. 

These unending discoveries of trying to understand this Beings makeup for us now would render us brain-dead to begin to try and understand it’s unfathomability now. So rich it’s ways would be with them being inexhaustible in their beauty, knowledge and possibility.

  We meanwhile gaze up at a moon hostages to the darkness of star dotted galaxies nearby our own in the Milky Way. Yet we can't vantage beyond the unending eternal reaches, the countless eons of century's unfolding across time, the places outside of here too many to fathom. Those unknowns are too numerous and mysterious in truth to estimate or begin to understand what those mysteries hold.

So we do what mankind likes to do when before this open-ended possibility we dull our senses down by providing from our false knowledge false answers. By our false knowing we teach young minds how reality is supposed to work. We answer the mystery which should rightfully begin from a starting point that acknowledges that we offer only weak and fragile guesses about truth. We surround ourselves with false reassurances that we have somewhat of a grasp on this puzzle and the truth is we don’t.

We reproduce skepticism about the possibility of alternative life far beyond what we can grasp by reducing the size of the mystery. We often defiantly eliminate God from the remotest possibility for an answer or explanation for this existence. We often doubt the possibility of extraterrestrial life as well doubting whether conditions for life can exist like they do here elsewhere.

The great minds of man in this way serenade the school children with their antidotes. We are soothsayers, know it all's, standing spellbound before the greatest of all unknown possibilities. The eternal sky and the secrets of it’s abyss in the endlessness of time abide out beyond the places we sit and ask our questions from. Mystery is abounding in our reality now unsolved and entirely open-ended.

A great imagination who is God

If a great imagination exists responsible for all that we know now here, for all of life’s terms, possibilities, and laws. If this form of ultimate imagination is properly named God. If God therefore does exist, which I know He does personally, and He is capable of designing any kind of world within His omnipotent power He wills what does that really mean for us.

 

If God can easily realign the cosmos, by His will, and much more then that if He so chooses. If He can therefore change those limitations that we presently know on earth into something even more far reaching and creative what would that mean. If He could transform  our present human freedom by writing into being and existence new and ever more freeing experiences. God could therefore redesign us, improve His creation, by putting us in unusual places over time or by simply resurrecting us entirely to some new vision that He has for us.

 

That would be within God’s ability and right which is an ability that might seem partially self-evident in our present awareness if we look around us now at the mysterious unknown with the right insight. He has within His master control the knowledge and ability, within and outside of time and space, to do this.

 

For me the God responsible for life as we know it can do all this easily. This world is not His best prototype either as beautiful and awesome as it is. Life’s mysteries, as they can seem to us now, seem fixed and impossible to transcend for us like a better world is wishful thinking. The eternal reaches of a good Deity however can and do expand far past our present appreciations. Worlds, beyond the one we know now, can exceed this one in their reality. Through the many open-ended possibilities of creativity known only by God those possibilities can differ from this imperfect world as we see it now.

 

So too will anger in people recede through this attained wisdom in a plan. Our fears will be diminished and finally be extinguished forever. Hope will go from a dulled holding of it’s future promise, where hope arrived appearing only unpredictably at certain times by glimpses, to finally appearing for us where we are able to see the glory and possibilities of infinity and eternity within creation. We will be able to see that which exceeds beyond our present imaginations grasp.

 

Love will completely envelope us which was seen before only in glimpses.  The ability to know good is now going to be freed to a more total freedom to understand real love as constantly being present with us with no more uncertainties. Where we had been we had reasons to doubt and to be skeptical about hope and faith. We now will finally see truly what we are really a part of in the grand scheme of creation. Our lives, we will soon discover, are in the hands of an eternal Being who’s nature is pure good and if we don’t now desire good one day we will mature to celebrate joyfully what that really means.

The worth of the human person

When we look at the Ideas and accumulated beliefs we face in life we may easily be able to recognize that these beliefs were delivered through various arguments of history. This thought the arguments used produced a system of thought that became accepted and was passed down. It was used by us personally to form our belief story that gives order to our world view whatever our view is and whatever form it’s in.  

This process of belief building across humanity I interpret creates a struggle where ideas and what is accepted as truth and what isn’t is pursued. These ideas are competed over for acceptance. The truth in it’s various and differing claims, in this way, is fought over for what legitimately is the right way of seeing the truth. Everyone in the struggle is asserting what they think and sometimes demand the truth is.  

I wonder about this struggle sometimes from my limited knowledge on the topic. I see this pursuit of truth as mysteriously being part of how the world works. Different ideas are arranged in the effort of pursuing change through that influence. The change comes through speeches delivered in lecture halls, writings written in newspaper story's, teachings argued from the pulpits, etc. with it all effecting Earths cultures and civilizations.

Religion makes claims in this competition for ideas and it uses it’s own ideas to persuade what people’s beliefs are.  We often contemplate how we got here and what the overarching force, power, or influence of this life being here really is.

What ethical influences get pursued or opposed by people is in direct response to what we believe. What people understand to be our eternal fate is all contested by different kinds of beliefs. As we debate about these things a question becomes will people choose to accept the existence of God.

My question then is Is it fair to use religious doctrine to justify blaming the individual for his/her resulting opinions, understanding and perspective while that individual life is effected perhaps innocently or ignorantly by alternative thought.

Humanity at large is divided across the earth with different converts to many of the worlds ideas. These ideas, in whatever form they take, effect all of us everywhere. Isn’t it irrational in the way we think of our neighbor for us to judge each other coldly. We try and decide what judgment God will impose on all human beings. Is our ultimate hope and salvation or abandonment to be determined by every vulnerable persons feeble ability to be able to transcend a specific experience and limitation of judgment. Isn’t it ridiculous to expect everyone to attain and know certain ideas perhaps entirely foreign to that persons culture. Those ideas may not reach his/her ears in attractive form if at all.

The person deciding what the truth is may actually be wrong yes. Truth claims are acquired by believing different things formed into argument. The limitations on peoples opinions means that there is a vulnerability in us to be effected and influenced by persuasion. This must be something clearly understand by an all knowing God. If we study history we see in the dark ages the limitations on knowing the Theology then that is now common to our age. Because of human ignorance people did not know much about Jesus but if Bibles had of been widely printed or read it was  to result in the condemnation of Hell for the unsaved. Error more commonly then uncommonly has been the order of existence and is prevalent across the human condition. We are also all vulnerably influenced by authoritative appeals for our minds loyalty that is competing for our conviction mysteriously in life.

Those appeals will affect what we understand in different regions, cultures, and because of different educational opportunities we face etc.. Why should we put blame on any individual or group among the different communities of people who must live with and face an unavoidable discrepancy of error that is natural and unavoidable to the human condition. That kind of common error forms all our incomplete thoughts wherever we are and is the common process that we all face. It’s more then irrational  to condemn others that face this common error to knowing what the real truth is. We exist in a place of much uncertainty to what the truth is so this is most unwise. All people are incapable of thinking and agreeing with you or me in so many ways because our imperfect minds are all effected by various perspectives some healthier then others but all being ideologically compromised somehow.

None of us, I suggest, is so wise to be guaranteed the wisdom to choose right between all the ideas of uncertainty overarching our life. Where one happens to reside living there obviously obstructs ones ability to see truth absolutely. Living there it necessarily effects ones ability to see the truth claim of someone else's. Wherever the individual is to hold him/her to an account of condemnation for the resulting seeds of thought they have arrived at there is bazar and unfair. The fact that misunderstandings, errors, and misbeliefs, will occur to us all in all of our experiences is so common that it is more then strange to condemn people for it. It is especially strange when we suggest that God will judge the world in this way.

Fairly speaking we should be able to see where ideas can commonly go wrong. We should not assume that personally we’re not susceptible to the error of judgment common to all human beings. We shouldn’t worry about our own skin being self-satisfied we have it all right while being suspicious and condemning of others. Ideas have always lead opinionated people by leading them with great conviction down the many ideological roads that compete for the truth of what’s legitimate in life. This happens in different thought form across the planet regardless how insightful the person deciding within these ideas is. Our environment produces these many different believers of all differing ideas.

To give up on anyone who is a part of this existence in life is mistaken. Here in this existence ignorance of what the truth is is the general rule of how things really work in life and not the exception of things. It is odd to be a human on planet Earth and think one knows everything when life has never come with any total guarantees of clarity as to what truth is in completeness.

Why do we equate from this confusion of life that man should be judged severely by God for error. The ideas we acknowledge in error are often born naively into our thoughts from ideological persuasions that win our trust.  We are in a world where propaganda and persuasions of all sorts make for what is the most unfair kind of burden to be put on us. The worth of the human person must be preserved and always defended when we think of what our fate will be gauging our destiny on the guidance of archaic writing.

Will God cast away into Hell the conformists to alternative ideas that seem attractive but are wrong. if the ideas are wrong does that person have any universal commonly held opportunity to recognize it so. When we look at other people of other cultures and beliefs why can’t we see ourselves in them. Why don’t we look at them and see them exactly as we all are which is entirely alike, worth the same amount as we are, and loved the same as us. Existence should be a place where not one of us is any better then any other in the eyes of a Holy God.

Where does evil come from?

We all may know and feel that cruelty is a part of the dynamics of life. We probably know that cruelty is a part of our human history and evidentially that it’s a part of life’s conditions presently throughout the world. One aspect of this cruelty, unfortunately for us of course, is the act of war. This cruelty unfortunately seems unavoidable as a necessity with all of it’s ugly consequences.  

 Human Beings could go further then this view about the necessity of cruelty just in war. Next they can go beyond justifying the necessity of just wars to saying that there must be an unavoidable justification for having other positions of cruelty in life. Like the cruelty in war then other violence, or other kinds of retribution, is not only unavoidable but it’s revengeful thinking too then can be excusable and rightly argued to be justifiable. 

 If we look at this in this light and justify cruelty too easily we then can justify our desire for cruel things to happen to the people we know or have opinions of. This desire we can have arises through our pain but yet is inspired mysteriously from somewhere other then ourselves meeting our mind. We reason the positions we have through our pain with our criticism falling on certain others, it happens to us all, as we go about aiming our anger and resentments at others we know or begin to dislike. We target those other people, often enough, who scheme about us, insult us, betray us, or hurt our honor. We then form the desire to even be cruel that is usually directed at those who threaten our wellbeing in some deeply personal way.

Cruelty seems to be an impulse and resulting calculation that rises up in our imaginations while seeming to happen as it does like it came to us from somewhere else other then here.  It’s calculations inspire the worst in us and can come upon us suddenly in anger. The desire for vengeance fills our thoughts while fueling our minds with the conviction that the anger we feel, by our reasoned response to an insult, is entirely justified.

Why do these ugly thoughts, that are aimed at others, materialize and challenge us in this way I often wonder. Where does all this overwhelming and negative persuasion even come from. We all might wonder, how can an often ill-equipped, naive, and vulnerable mind survive there influences and go unscathed through this life. That susceptible person, after all, is often living in a place in the world somewhere where  the arguments and influences on him or her may there lack having a desired alternative influence of good on that life. That person there simply then exists where the dynamics of certain bad ideas are unavoidable and therefore by being there those ideas go about effecting their judgment and perhaps their behavior with unfortunate consequences. 

There are certain people in the world, the right kind of councilors and teachers, that can influence a person away from acting destructively but many don’t hear them. Guiding our thoughts for instance can be Jesus teachings or those people who teach Him and His ways to others.  

And yet hatred, arising up in our thoughts from somewhere, has somewhat mysterious and unknown origins. This hateful desire springs up in us all and is like a destructive fuel that continually gets ignited by human judgment across the human experience. We are challenged by it for peace and love and tolerance for others while this force is continuously inspiring and creating conflict by making enemies between human beings. 

Often a good form council on us and our lives, throughout the history of the world, seems plainly to be simply absent through many personal experiences. Because of historical, geographical, cultural, ideological, political and different forms of religious influences on a person, we all face various degrees of insight, and lacking there of, into these challenges that are all dependent on what we know and witness. Often there is absent in our life a way to avoid hatred and therefore it wins battles on us across the earth.

There is too, in the quiet of our minds, alternatively the best kind of ideas to be recognized too. Hopefully we can find this kind of thinking, this kind of good, and see that there is dignity and worth in all human life in the grand picture of our existence.

In our culture certain forms of entertainment, some I see as good, some not, come flooding into our minds. One persuasion in a way that’s acted out for us is the example of revenge taking on the screen. We witness it daily through acts of sensationalist violence in the portrayal of retribution for entertainment. We witness violence again and again in this way. Vengefully we feel it as subconsciously it directs our imaginations. Naively as children we watch T.V adopting it’s norms as the treating of various enemies on the screen, that’s played out for us repeatedly, determines what we will fantasize about doing to other people we don’t like throughout important moments of our lives. This kind of example is too common and far too embedded in our civilization. Because of these effects it now seems too normal and justifiable for people to relive daily these kind of thoughts. I feel It is an ugly pollution on our minds that’s always negatively shaping us.

  Where do the destructive and punishment desiring thoughts directed negatively toward other people really come from though. I don’t think violent thoughts wishing harm on others come from God. The source of such hatred instead is an enemy of God. We must be confronted by an evil force in this way. The various results of this influence and the impact on our lives is tragic, sad and unfortunate. Everywhere in The New Testament of the Holy Scriptures suggests alternatively the supporting of thought and behavior that loves God and loves one another.  I feel that God has no hatred for anyone regardless of the persons moral or ideological state. 

Just as often we may have a way to defeat evil in our lives. Evil does not win all the battles nor is the world destined to always tolerate it’s ways. Through the use of our will,  if first we can be assisted in our life's thinking, and we can get to the place where we have a chance to have the insight to recognize good and it’s example we can then use our will to pursue good. When we hear Jesus teach as an example to us “Love your enemy and do good to those who hate you and despitefully use you” and we listen to Him or when He says to“Forgive and you will be forgiven” and we recognize something beyond us through His words then we grow spiritually. As we respond to such insights by resisting anger and hatred we grow in this insight.  As we sit quietly in our thoughts and struggle in our mind we all seem to battle this unrelenting challenge for forgiving and letting go of our anger against one another. Can we grow in our ability to do it and grow to understand God’s ways.

There is this struggle is our interaction with other minds who inform and shape us with their persuasion on us that is always effecting us. Through these other people’s own successes or failures at this struggle they too are in the same battle as we are as we both effect each other. By their thoughts and communication they share their influences on us. As we interrelate with them it impacts them in their thoughts in return.

I ask finally then what truly is fair and how should we really see one another in this life. Can we fairly try to love everyone everywhere despite the shape of other people’s minds in the world.  I believe personally that love is the true nature of God. Everyone deserves to be loved. The nature of God does not desire cruelty, hatred, or violence and Jesus teachings support a God who loves everyone across the earth.  God is the one who is merciful and compassionate above all. We all struggle through our thoughts to be peaceful and kind toward one another. I’m not ashamed of sharing this view at all.

Trandscending self the journey

What if I was able to transcend myself and my own life experience. By doing this, by transcending my own experiences, I am supernaturally then able to live in another's shoes and to reorient myself with that other human life elsewhere in the world. There in their shoes I’m able to not merely eat with that other person, or commune in the same village with them, but to more completely really and fully get to know what it is like to be them.  

If I’m able to really have that persons parents, to be of the same race, nationality, and to have the same friendships and same cultural persuasions. If I’m able to come to know what that person is naturally drawn to in the world.  

An evangelist from abroad might ask or demand that person to step out of their own native experiences to receive something alien to them but I’d be refraining from any demands like this to accept ideological correctness. 

I’d instead now have a full awareness of the native persuasions shaping other people. My awareness of those persuasions now are as near to me as the persuasions I’ve experienced here in my country that have shaped me until now. I wonder if that awareness would then allow me to truly empathize with that other person elsewhere. I predict I would then see the fog lift and see another simple mind possessing dignity and vulnerability and confused by the world. Possibly I’d see them in a fairer way with far greater understanding now with empathy. I might abandon any form of judgmental condemnation or religious, racial, ideological, or national suspicion. 

I’ve come to see with schizophrenia that not only am I confused about things but we are all confused in life, all of us, wherever we are. By making this kind of journey I’d desire to shed my selfishness that’s worried me about my future security. I’d temporarily shelf my own “get out of jail” free card or “go to Heaven with God” free card in order to get to better know another human being in our shared human experience. It might take considerable courage to do this of course. I’d not seek to merely find the comfort and reassurances in like thinking circles. I’d not go to that familiar place where I’d be repetitively reminded of being right about the world. Instead I’d willfully venture into a larger earthly struggle facing everyone who lives with an open heart and with an open-mindedness. 

The journey of being uprooted from self and from that interest to truly see another person might mean leaving behind ideological security. It's implications might demand I truly see other people more fairly. The ideology I had held unto had sized up the human drama and secured my place in the minority of all human beings in the order of existence across time sparing only a few from damnation. I had found familiarity through this belief with a community believing in a narrow road to life. By a preachers words I had been taught that I was given survival through eternal life from anything that could befall on me forever.  

Now I might be testing the possibility that I really need for God’s love and mercy to extend far past those boundaries I and people like me have felt reasonable with. I however still trust in the same crucified Jesus dying for the sin of the world. 

So temporarily now I leave my own beliefs for a time behind transplanted thousands of miles away into the midst of another culture. Here I meet that other person and here I become like them in every way. I end up feeling their struggle, knowing their reasoning, dealing with the very same uncertainty that’s universal in all of us.

 

Here too I find are the same teachers and shapers of minds. Here, like everywhere, this other logic is entrenched in understandings following lineages of traditions. These ideas are shared through inherited family beliefs and through that culture. The religions differ here but yet nonetheless I get to know the aspirations of the person in my new familiar home. I find here among other people that they are not only worth finding compassion for but are worthy of an equally shared humanity as well. They are worthy of God’s love as everyone is.   

Love as a force had lead me here I realize. I fought by coming here for the trust that there believably could be hope in this life across the planet for everyone. I desirably asked what if there is a fairer ordering of earth then the different traditions of belief have been able to organize life fully into so far. Can there be a wiser knowledge that transcends even all the good things exceeding them and what we currently now know. Surely God is greater then everything we human beings know. Of course He is greater then how we think about Him.  

Compassion came over me in thought as I listened to the sound of waters. These mighty rivers that make glad the city of God. Here was the Holy place where the most high dwells.