Brain Fertilizer

Let's say I provided a fairly long string of numbers to you. I ask you to determine whether it is an actual pattern, and then predict the next few numbers in the series, or if it is random.

You spend 10 hours on it and see no discernable pattern. How much more time do you spend?

15 minutes? An hour? A few minutes a day for a month?

Change the parameters: Let's say it is your job to do this. You are getting paid $40k a year to determine whether or not it is a pattern. You have other strings to check on, as well, but it isn't uncommon to require a month or two to determine beyond reasonable doubt that it is or isn't a pattern. Now how long do you spend? 2 months? 3? 12?

Now let's say I tell you that it definitely is a pattern, without a doubt, and I'm just seeing if you are smart enough to figure it out. It is a direct challenge to your expertise at pattern-finding. Do you spend more than a year?

What if you are the world's foremost leading pattern-finder? Do you give it a cursory glance and dismiss it, or do you work even longer?

Change the parameters again: You are an amateur mathematician, and I have promised $10 million to anyone who figures out the pattern. Your loved one will die within 15 years of a disease that would definitely be cured if you could come up with $8 million dollars. Do you spend every minute of the 15 years?

Now compare that to God and the Bible. If look into the Bible with an open mind but little persistence, are you really going to find the patterns of Truth? Probably not. Even if you've been raised as a Christian, you may eventually give up and stop looking for the patterns of Truth in the Bible. These ex-Christians tend to be very vehement in denying there is any pattern. They claim their experience as a Christian lends them credibility in "debunking" the myth of God. But aren't they really just quitters? That should make them less credible in any listeners' view.

Paradigm does matter.

If you start reading the Bible as if it actually is God, you will be disappointed, because God is not contained in a book. It is a roadmap to finding God, but you have to understand that is all it is. If you try to use Rand-McNally's Road Atlas to sail to Hawaii, you will probably ground on shoals. Is that a reason to blame Rand-McNally? If you use a dictionary as your sole source to write a report on the Viet Nam War, do you blame the dictionary if your information is insufficient to get an A? The Bible is one of the tools of the Christian in finding who God is, but you have to use the tool correctly.

If you start reading the Bible assuming every word was exactly inspired by God and utterly perfect, you will get stuck on some apparent contradictions. You will get stuck on some mulitiple copies with minor spelling or syntax variations. You will get stuck on the idea that some writings of the time were rejected at the time the Bible was put together. But if you understand Who God is, you can read the Bible with the paradigm that God has the power to make sure His Word is clear and correct, and the rest is fluff. This is in the same manner that a scratch on a DVD doesn't render it unviewable or make its data unreadable. Getting caught in the minutiae of the Bible ignores the miraculously high signal-to-noise ratio found there.

If your paradigm is that God is who He says He is, and that He is actually God (not just a superb or super human), and then read the Bible looking to understand His Will, some of the apparent contradictions of the Bible melt away.
For instance, how could a God of Love reject homosexuality, when that is nothing more than two people loving each other who happen to be the same sex? Well, that's confusing true love with earthly desire, isn't it? All loves are not equal, all loves do not come from the same motivation, all loves are not perfectable. Rather than attempting to elevate love between two people to the level of His Perfect Love, if you look at it from the viewpoint that our human love for each other is only a pale reflection of the love we should have for Him, which is an immature and dim reflection of the Love He has for us, then you can see that our love for each other really doesn't determine sin or righteousness. Rather, God is Perfect, and sin is that which is not-God. God didn't sit down and make a list of rules for us based on what He thought was good. Rather, He knows that when we selfishly place our will above His in anything, we are acting in a way that moves us farther from His presence. That hurts us. To help prevent us from being hurt, He gave us a guideline to help us begin to understand how we hurt ourselves and each other. That's all sin is: hurting ourselves and each other. For instance, abortion is a sin, not because a life is snuffed out, but because a person has callously chosen their own convenience above that of another person.** It isn't actually the death that is the sin, it is the selfish choosing of "self" over others.

Want to test that idea? Here ya go:

Consider that God tells us to not be concerned with our physical situation. Don't worry about tomorrow, for it will take care of itself. Don't worry about what you will eat or what you will wear, because God loves you more than the birds and flowers, and aren't they taken care of? Don't worry about whether you are slave, or poor, or whatever, because the important thing is not this earthly life or your enjoyment of it, but the next life andyour immortal soul.
But then He turns around and tells us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. If physical comfort in this life doesn't matter, why should we bother? Because it isn't the physical comfort of the recipient that really matters. It is that you give of yourself, reducing your comfort or security in order to help someone else. You are giving for no other reason because God says so. It is denying yourself to help.

Do you see? It isn't actually the life that matters. It isn't actually the recipient that really matters to you. It is the effect on your heart, soul, and spirit that matters. If you give, you give of yourself, and end up getting more back.

In the same manner, the reason God doesn't want us to sin is that He doesn't want our hearts to grow cold, He doesn't want us to be selfish, He doesn't want us to be self-centered and make Gods of ourselves. He wants us to see the value of aligning our hearts, minds, and wills with His, and how happy, content, and peaceful we become when we do so.

I may have worded some of this clumsily or badly. I'll probably revise it throughout the day to word it more capably. I will certainly take any feedback* in mind if improving parts of this become absolutely necessary.

*According to what I've written, directly/roughly castigating someone (deliberately placing your conceit higher in importance than their self-esteem) is also a sin, isn't it?

**this is why it is probably still acceptable to kill someone to protect an innocent life. It would also mean that an abortion to save the life of the mother is an extremely gray area. But it also means that abortion is no more or less a sin than stealing a penny that doesn't belong to you: the importance of the sin is the damage it does to your soul, not to someone else's well-being. As such, repentence washes you clean of the sin of abortion, just as clean as if you "only" stole a penny. It only remains a sin if it continues to keep you from God's love. That's why Satan will tell you your sin is horrible: because it keeps you from accepting God's freely-given Love and Forgiveness.