Theological Explorations & Opinions part 1

This all began because of, but not limited to, Matthew 6...and thus, let my "spaghetti" like thoughts entangle, capture, and inspire you...

Passage address three things in my opinion. It talks about:

1. appearance
2. money
3. worry

But when you really stop to think about it...it's all really about appearance right?

I asked myself these questions, ask them of yourself:

• Do you worry about money because of what you're doing/because of your appearance(s)?
• Where is your reward, where is your treasure, where is your priority? (same things?)
• Does God really care about our happiness?
• Does caring=giving? Or "always" giving?
• Does knowledge (in this case the knowing of what is needed other than what is wanted) trump caring?-Thus put, does what  God know what is best for you or His knowledge of the situation trump His caring about what you want?
• Does God know what will make me happy but doesn't always give it to me because it is not what I need?
• What do I need? (I personally believe now days that the answer is not "just God", for we also need community: "For it is not good for man to be alone...")
• Can you know something without feeling it?
• What do I need: more knowledge or more emotion?

Contemplating this concept of God or if God has qualities that trump others like knowledge trumping caring, this is what I came up with:

I don't believe God has qualities that trumps the other. His revealing of specific qualities over another at one time is based off upon who He is and what He is not. He is God; He is not man. Or what if there is never such a thing as one quality of His shown at one time? No, because that would be diminishing somebody's experience of Him. One may need Him to be gracious, while the other merciful. One might Him to be Father, while the other Lover. So there is no trumping of qualities and there is no such thing as Him showing/ being just one quality at a time. He is all, all at once; because all is needed and all is needed at once-for He is God and He is not man. But what if we focused on one person's interaction with the Divine and step aside from the whole population's experience? Is God still all those things at once to one man regardless if he needs/wants it or not? I think this is where the comprehension of the Infinite God becomes fathomless. For thing is, we do need Him to be all who He is, for He is everything good, at every given moment. Ever hear the question from the Devil's advocate: "Would God ever create a rock heavier than Himself?" Well, the obvious answer is "no". For if God were to create a rock or anything for that matter, heavier than Himself He would cease to be God. For to be God is to be Ultimate, Author & Finisher, Strength, Alpha & Omega, Jehovah, El Shaddai, Abba, Cornerstone, Anchor of our souls and on and on and on. He is God; He is not man. You may persist that you can label this god under one specific philosophy, note a wisdom created by man, and you may say: "Well, man can also experience two qualities/emotions at once." First, we would have to separate qualities and emotions however. Qualities bring about predictable emotions based off of the surrounding or protruding situation. Emotions are for example: happy, sad, upset, angry. Qualities are for example: joyful, depressing, giving. One outlasts the other longer because of an engraved logic or "un-erasable" experience. So can man have more than one quality at once? Does no matter what I'm doing change who I am? I think it is about choice and decisions that make me who I am or who I think I am or who I think others perceive me to be. So to answer that question is yes. But then as you can see, I bring up another point-our qualities or nature can change. Based on the definition I gave for qualities anyway,-"one outlasts the other longer because of an engraved logic or "un-erasable" experience. So a quality is not eternal...? One could argue: "But isn't the qualities of who I am the essence or soul of who I am?" To that I ask, "is it?" What is your soul? For now we've gotten a tad more insight on who God is, for He is not man, but what is man and what isn't man? I am reminded of the Valley of Dry Bones in Ezekiel where God blows into the bodies to finally give them life. This was not the Holy Spirit, for it did not note spiritual gifts/talents bestowed on them nor did they perform any. No, this was to give them their own lives. So breathe. We are made alive through breathe; not only just breathe but God's breathe. It's like...it's like...putting batteries into that new device you got for Christmas. All the gadgets and gismos are already assembled (in our case God fashioned us) and then all was needed was that spark of encased energy (in our case: God in us). But you say, "Sam, how can God be in us but not us?" I ask, "Is the new device named/labeled as/or is the power source put into it? No. An Apple laptop or Sony television is not named after the power source but it is named after/labeled/is based off it's owner or designer." This is where the limited human becomes fathomless. Who can fully know God? And who can fully know what makes a human? So is it the qualities that make the soul? Are qualities changeable thus making the soul also changeable? Or are our souls like our DNA-series of patterns that produce highly predictable qualities & nature? That brings about the debate over nature vs. nurture. I do not think our souls can change. Nor do I believe they can be taken...they can only be given. Our souls were given from God-for that's what makes us alive (note the difference between "alive" & "awake"; His Holy Spirit and just His breathe) and now we have the choice where to give it back. Well, actually we must remember that in this case, that not choosing to give it is choosing to give it-just not to the Lover of it. So we could instead say, our qualities are our nature, for our nature does change based off of what circumstances we allow to be attached to our core. This is what needs to be perfected; for we because of Adam and Eve have a sin nature. But the theologians would argue: "Are you saying that Jesus died only for a part of who we are and not a whole?" Yes..and no. Remember the wineskin illustration Jesus once used (Luke 5:37)? It is like that. Because of sin, our qualities are flawed/our nature broken or in error like old wineskins. When we are given life, that second in the womb when our hearts beat for the first time and chemical reactions we can not fathom happen, this instant God breathed in us & said, "YOU ARE ALIVE!" is when the wine in our illustration is poured in. Pretty soon the wine will spoil since it is not contained properly. That "spoiling" is what sin does left uncontained. Left uncontained is not accepting what Jesus has done for you and not living your life in concordance to Him. All in all, we need God to be God every single part, quality, and aspect of Him in every moment to every individual. For He is God and we are man.   



Pain For A Moment/My Calypso

My hate is embedded in a never said promise
You never made that promise
You never said a word.
I now see I wanted what you could have never provided,
you could never provide.
Never provided for me.
I'm sinking and you do not see,
you do not see me,
not the real me anyway.
Anyways, we'll move on
move on in this hate.
Pounding the life out of the door
remember that crack you bore...
why's it have to come to this?
Eyes brightest blue,
empty grey and through.
You'd think these harmonies could escalate
swell up the being, the beast
that should be dead.
But you kept yelling ,"No.
Not Now."
Not ever is what I heard.
You locked yourself up in a fortress prison
and to think I polished the metal.
Your words were daggers,
my feet ran faster,
to a place you couldn't hold me.
You can't me,
can't hold me,
hold me.
Why did it have to be like this?
My eyes are blackened,
the faults are pointed fingers
and sorrowed souls.
So much time wasted,
we can never have back.
I weep the dead,
what is dead,
we are dead.
What future?!
What hope springs?
Little laughs and murmurs,
little side-steps and humors,
fade with me.
fade with me.
Why you love so openly?
So much more room to be destroyed.
I feel nothing.
Words lose their meaning,
and luster.
This new news has gotten you all
flustered.
Someone lend a helping hand,
lend what I can't.
I'm so broken,
so broken,
and broken.
Remember those nights you punched and screamed?
Remember me,
watching from the screen, from the stairs, from down the street.
Sorrys don't fix this,
you can never fix this...
and neither can I.
I'm lost inside, father.
You long to know me,
search me,
find me.
I wish I could have shown you,
what a little girl I was.
what a little girl I am.
But I am a closed book.
What's the point of reading?
When you can just see...
arms dropped to the side,
head bent,
there's knots in the back.
Does this joy
overcome the pain?
Does this new finding
cover up the sentence I've kept hidden away?
Show me the way,
show me the Light.
I know,
or at least one day I'll know,
 there isn't a reason to fight...
anymore.

 

click&listen to Deadron "Nothing"

I Am Not God....

...And Neither Are You...

I'm not much one for politics, but human studies is an interest of mine that can sometimes intermingle with such. Have you ever heard it said or perhaps experienced this notion that the more West you travel the more "open minded" people become? What's up with that? Well, I've come across A LOT of "open mindedness" since I moved more West. And some might say it is my "mid-west influence" but I do not necessarily see the positiveness that is to come about with being "open minded".

The mindset is like "anything that feels or looks good can stick." As if our souls are just a refrigerator door waiting for another, truthfully meaningless, magnet that represents a company we'll never honestly invest in. Just slap it right on! All is good!

Are our souls (the essence of who we really are) really just so meaningless that it can be so easily manipulated? 

Then we come face to face with this open-mindedness thing and before you know a philosophy on "being your own god/goddess" invades your emptiness.

This is what I call: the good, the bad, the ugly. 

"Well, Samantha there is nothing wrong with thinking such positiveness and holiness about ourselves. There is a god in all of us. We all have our own divine light. Unique and brilliant. We have the power and potential energy to change the world! It's all about the mind!....." And on and on and on....

Now, excuse my "mid-west" thinking but if you are someone who believes in this we need to address come issues....because although those statements have some truth, it is not the complete truth....and do you remember what we call "half truths?"

Please grab a Bible or go to biblegateway.com and read with me Matthew 15: 1-20. Then go ahead and highlight verses 8-9

“‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.

9 

They worship me in vain;

    their teachings are merely human rules.’”     

Who is Jesus talking to?

Religious people.

"Oh he/she is very religious." :P

What is religion? Man's attempt to make things right with God.

This philosophy (love of wisdom) and open-mindedness to be a Divine has been distorted. How? Why? All the same, religion goes down the drain: it is about man's attempt

Merely human that's all these teachings are. If you want to be great, why not seek the One who is great? Jesus.

"Oh no no no. You mentioned Jesus. What's so special about Jesus other than what "mere humans" tell you Samantha?! Jesus was human too you know."

Let's go back to the beginning shall we: Genesis 1

And then let's pause shall we on verse 1. 

Yes, the very first verse of scripture that gives so much strive other than John 14:6. 

Like I explained to the nine year old boy I nanny for, "Are you what you create?...No, you are not. For example, you created/made that paper airplane but are you that paper airplane? Nope. Neither is God us nor like us. He is The Creator/Designer and we are His....creation."

But the message doesn't stop there...

You see I think the reason why we've come up with such "empty philosophies" (Colossians 2:8), especially this one concerning a god within ourselves is 1) we don't want to face the sin/corruption/disobedience/brokenness in our own lives  & 2) we believe God to be dead/distant/abandoning 

Please read with me Hebrews 10 and then Jeremiah 31.

I feel like we're over here like...

http://spongebob.nick.com/videos/clip/100great-tea-treedome-clip.html

...Spongbob, a sea critter, worriedly grasping for the toxic air in the squirrel, Sandy's, underwater tree-dome...

You think, you believe, everything under the sun but not the fact that God is here FOR YOU. That He CARES for you...that He's all up in YOUR business... 

You've grasped and searched for Him and He wasn't there, is that it?

Or is it more like this:

 (image taken from Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel Creation of Adam at the Vatican)

You chill'n back, apathetically lifting out a finger to connect with the God who did/does everything for you?

Let me remind you that God, our Great Designer, the Only Perfect One, the Wholly Holy Divine came in flesh and bore the punishment you deserved for the crimes you try to ignore or play off like it's not a big deal. He not only took the fall, but defeated the powerlessness you & I have over death. Then He NOT ONLY did that, but gave us His Spirit to dwell within us. So we're not standing there like Spongbob reaching out for something that's not there-HE'S RIGHT HERE!

Take a closer look at Hebrews 10 verses 15-18

Or as Jeremiah verses 33 first claims it to be as: 

"This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel

    after that time,” declares the Lord.

“I will put my law in their minds

    and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God,

    and they will be my people."

What the writers are referring to is this day church folks label as Pentecost (Acts 2). After Jesus went to be back with His Father, He did not abandon us but instead left us something greater than Himself. That gift is called the Holy Spirit. (We caught a glimpse of Him in Genesis 1:2)

In the Old Testament/Old Promise God made with His people, the Holy Spirit only resided on only a couple men/women at rare occasions. But now, now we have it IN us.

Simply put, I summarized these readings and contemplation with this:

it's on me, it's in me. But is it who I am?

Like a tattoo God's Law is embedded on ALL of our hearts regardless if we accept it or not. {That Law is referring to Exodus 20:1-17}

Like a tattoo when freshly inked, the foreign substance sinks slowly into our blood stream...into our core...into our hearts and brains. Like a tattoo, God's Holy Spirit marks or seals us as God's children-Ephesians 4:30

I frankly hate it when people, mainly those who have become so "open-minded that their brain falls out" as my friend calls it, looks at my Hebrew in-scripted tattoo & comments "we are all God's children". Why, yes and no...(but I can't always get in theological debates at work, where it normally happens). True we are all creations of God. But like Woody in Toy Story marked with his owner Andy's name, we are not God's until we are marked with Him. That mark is the Holy Spirit.

This takes me to our issue numero uno:  1) we don't want to face the sin/corruption/disobedience/brokenness in our own lives

For in correspondence to this issue, I came across another issue while drawing into/meditating on the Word:

In Matthew 12:33-37 Jesus makes it clear that it is not what goes into our body but what comes out

Sooo where, how, what do we do with this?

Does it conflict with having the Holy Spirit dwell inside us?

Well, let's see here, once again Jesus is talking to the religious people. Do you know what else Jesus says to religious people? James 1:27

IT'S ABOUT WHAT YOU DO!!!

You deep philosophers are out there like, "so what you're telling me is like God is like a consequentalist or something?" 

(For those not so philosophical, consequentalism basically says "the end justifies the means".) In which, if you read http://samanthareeser.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-end-doesnt-justify-means.html you'd know my stand point.

So if God is not this, is He more deontological? (Which is simply put the opposite of the other view).

To this I personally say both and neither. For I must complete my previous statement:

IT'S ABOUT WHAT YOU DO...ABOUT WHO YOU ARE!!!!!!!

God, your Father DOES CARE about what happens and He ALSO CARES for YOU.

Traveling once again back to the beginning, let's look at Genesis 1:27-31, 2 

The reason why you're craving to be "a god" or "perfect" is because in the beginning you/the human race was perfect. Perfect with ourselves and with God and nature. But because of God's great love for us, in the beginning He also provided us with free will. That enabled us to make our own choices. One of those choices was to be disobedient to what God asked them/us to do. That choice severed our perfection and left us broken. 

It's kinda like when your parents told you not to do something and this something was very very serious, but you ended up doing it anyway. Every choice we make has a consequence....however, we now had/have an identity issue because of sin.

We reached, reached and reached. Grasping to make things right with God, with nature and with ourselves (this is where open-mindedness comes from). All these attempts were/are meaningless...until Jesus came/comes (For He is coming again). He came to live beside us and in us...but He is not us.

I see it like this:

     

Like this beautiful cracked glass mosiac bottle, we were just several pieces left shattered on the ground. Although in the beginning we were perfect, without blemishes, created by the Master, we chose our own downfall. Till the One greater than us came when we needed it the most and put us back together. That process took something we couldn't manage/understand. That process was our Designer humbling himself into our position and barring our weight instead. Jesus held the absolute perfect and Only stabilization we needed. Then He not only recreated our mess into beauty but filled our empty shells with a Living Water-His Holy Spirit.

Today you can have that Holy Spirit that gives peace like no other and marks you as a child of God. Will you humble yourself and admit you can't do this life thing by yourself? Do you honestly believe that all of your good out ways your bad? How bad does bad have to be to have consequences? God loves you. He is waiting for you. You do not complete Him but He completes you. He knows exactly what you need when you need it. He is your beloved Father who has never forsaken you. And you are His beloved son/daughter He chose to die for. He's saying, "come home."