Realizations

Philosophy in the Middle of the Desert

What does it really mean to love YHWH with all your heart?  January 5, 2023

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality,Psychology,Science/Atheism/Evolution/Creationism — milesprowers @ 8:23 am
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[Written on David Day 2023, 1/4/23]

First of all, I don’t know that it ever just says “heart” except in conjunction with “mind” and “soul” — and Jesus adds “strength” (as One who only has authority to add something to the greatest commandment), so perhaps really it’s just loving YHWH with ALL of your whole BEING or EXISTENCE. Which is interesting since the very word YHWH means existence — the eternally existent being. 

To understand what YHWH really wanted when He commanded to love Him with all our being is to understand who YHWH is in the first place. For how can we love someone we don’t know or even know about? 

Before there was the Hebrew language with its Hebrew word for existence by which God could give the Hebrews a name for Himself —YHWH— He was just the eternally existent one, and existence itself. The existence of everything that has been or could be, within the entire universe or without the entire universe. 

But the greatest command “to love YHWH” was given by God to Earthlings upon the Earth with an Earthly perspective and an Earthly relationship to Him. So regardless of anything God is or has been through the entire universe in all of existence, who God is (as much as it is relevant to us) is almost exclusively as He pertains to the Earth and who He is in relation to the Earth, from an Earthly perspective. Thus to obey this command to love YHWH is to obey it as an Earthling would, as it pertains to the relationship between God and Earthlings.  (And of the Earthlings, God revealed himself most explicitly to the Hebrews in a Hebrew way using Hebrew language (and surely somehow in accordance with Hebrew culture), so that they could truly know and love Him, in a way that was most natural for them.) 

What is our knowledge and experience of God from an Earthling perspective? He is the Creator of the Earth. We don’t really know anything else about Him except what has been revealed to humans from His Divine Revelation, and that being specifically as He relates to the Earth and its creatures (which He created). 

So YHWH is really a Hebrew name given to the supernatural Deity who created Earth. In His most basic characteristic as it pertains to Earthlings, He is simply the Creator of Earth — all of creation with all its creatures (which includes us). 

So if the most basic characteristic of YHWH is that He is the Creator of all Earthly creation and creatures, then to love YHWH is to love the Creator of Earth. 

What is it to love the Creator of Earth? Somehow loving a cosmic force we can’t see or experience in daily reality? We can really only love Him as much as we can know Him, which is only as much as we can experience Him in our Earthly reality. 

So we love Him for what He is and was before any Divine Revelation was given — The Creator — the certain creative force of Earth and all the universe. We love God because we experience His creation, and to the degree that we love creation for all the ways it makes us feel pleasure, so we love the source of creation which is the source of our pleasure. We are creatures designed to feel pleasure from creation into which we were created and which we were created for. Our response to feeling pleasure is to love the thing which created our pleasure. So we love sunshine, good food, coffee, sex, funny animals, wonder-inspiring imagination, and profound philosophies. They gives us pleasure and so we call them good and we love them. Naturally we wonder where those things came from in the first place, and our love for those things extends to the creator of those things, who is surely as good as the good creation He chose to make which gives us pleasure. 

We ourselves are part of that good creation (which we have called “good” because it gives us pleasure) so likewise we are good because we are pleasure-producing creations. Because it is our very bodies, hearts, and minds which are the actual things producing the hormones which give us pleasure (not the things in creation themselves). So we feel the love of our Creator for us because our bodies produce pleasure hormones, and He created us and our pleasure-producing functions, and so we love Him for it being the ultimate source of our pleasure. Our love bypasses creation to the Creator of creation who created our bodies which feel pleasure and who also created the creation which interacts with our experience to release the pleasure.

It’s hard to love the Creator for who He is in concept alone. It is when the concepts of His infinite power, knowledge, presence, and love are displayed for us experientially through His interactions with our Earthly reality that we come into awe, wonder, marvel, and love. It’s our awe of creation that extends to having awe for the Creator of creation. It’s the love we feel for creation that extends to having love for the Creator of that creation. We are in awe of the Creator’s infinite power, knowledge, presence, and love from what we see in our natural Earthly experience, and also this is magnified through Divine Revelation. 

Whatever love we can have for the Creator from our natural experience alone, it is magnified by Divine Revelation which clearly communicates how the Creator interacts on a supernatural level with His Earthly creation— through providential actions, prophetic words, supernatural dreams and visions, and miracles.  

Whatever nature of the Creator we can ascertain through natural experience and logic, it is through the written record of the Bible that we know more clearly the nature of the Creator through the recorded events and words attributed to Him. 

We read about God’s creation of the world, how He interacts with His Earthling creatures, how He expressly says how much He loves us all and then proves it by His supernatural actions. Now we have glasses by which we can read nature to clearly see what were previously only assumptions. We knew God loved us from the pleasure He created us to experience, but now with Divine Revelation we have Him actually telling us He loves us and showing us in actual history. 

So to love YHWH with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength is to love the Creator of Earth with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. 

What is the Creator’s desire, as it pertains to our Earthly world and us as His Earthlings He created? Obviously His greatest desire, as it pertains to us, is for us to be what He created us for. So to show love to our Creator, we be what He created us to be. 

Therefore, to love YHWH with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength is simply to BE what He created us to be with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. 

God is not some kind of mythological deity sitting on some magical golden throne somewhere up there in space or another dimension. He existed long before any creatures or cultures or languages or religions or rituals. And so His desire for us loving Him isn’t us following some cosmic rule book or magic rituals or religion to please Him. Before He gave Moses the Law, and before He gave him the Hebrew name YHWH, He was what He always had been for Earth’s existence: the Creator of Earth. So the truest way to love the Creator of Earth is to be in alignment with what He created you to be, which is also to be in alignment with all His creation. 

This is Shalom. ALL of creation with all its creatures interacting in harmony. Human beings being what they were each individually created to be by their Creator with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. Loving all creation around them (which they were designed to do) with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength — which is inadvertently loving the Creator who made and loves that creation. And then also our love for creation extending to the source of creation, which is its Creator, to love Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.  

There’s no way around it. Loving YHWH with ALL your heart, mind, soul, and strength is an interdependent love fully involving the love of Creator, creature, and creation with all being (heart, mind, soul, and strength). 

 

The Overflowing Garden of Eden/Shalom November 11, 2022

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 12:50 pm
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[Written on 11-11-22]

The eyes of the LORD go to and fro throughout the whole Earth looking for one whose heart is a tender soil into which He can sow the words of Eternal Life, which is the seed of Agape. If the words sown resonate and are met with a curiosity and openness, the seed takes root, and the residency of God’s Spirit and His Eternal Life and Agape starts to grow inside the person alongside their growing belief, though it starts out just as small as a mustard seed (the smallest of all seeds). As the believer starts to see the world through the Truth, the Spirit confirms his faith and grows it more and more, until finally it becomes a tree so deeply rooted that when the floods come it won’t wash it away, and so large even the birds of the air can rest on its branches. The more the believer abides in the Agape of God, the more he experiences the life of God, aka Eternal Life, aka God’s own Spirit, making him so deeply rooted he is unshakeable and his actions are the same actions that God’s Spirit and Life (which is now coming out of the believer) would do. 

The Agape seed grows an Agape tree which, like a wellspring of living waters welling up into Eternal Life, eventually overflows and bears Agape fruit. The Agape fruit itself has many more Agape seeds within it, which, when consumed and sown into new tender hearts/soils, have the potential of planting new Agape seeds, growing new Agape trees, and bearing new Agape fruit, just as the living waters well up and spill over, and the mustard seed spreads through the garden like a weed, and the yeast spreads through the dough. After all, the world will know we are His disciples by our Agape for one another. 

But the Creator in His love, desires His creation to be the maximum He created it to be, and so, like any gardner, He prunes the branches (He disciplines those whom He loves) so they bear more fruit. And so we will be grown to our maximum design, bearing a hundredfold of fruit, and then we shall all be one: others having Eternal Life through abiding in our Agape, we who have Eternal Life through abiding in Jesus’s Agape, just as Jesus had Eternal Life given to Him from God through abiding in God’s Agape (John 5:26: “For as the Father has life in Himself, so also He has granted the Son to have life in Himself”).

And so God’s Spirit will overflow and take root in more and more people’s hearts, growing to bear more and more fruit, until finally He (His Spirit with its Agape and Eternal Life) will reside in the whole Earth in our hearts. Then the world will be as He created it to be: Shalom.

 

God is a greater reward than what would come from anything else we could pursue October 26, 2022

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality,Psychology — milesprowers @ 9:52 pm
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[Written 102622]

Why do you keep saying you want to be with Me? Stop telling Me that and just be with me. I’m always just one thought away. 

If you really want to be with me so bad, then why aren’t you?  Because of all the stuff you have to do? So then, all those things you need to do are what you REALLY want, and then you also want to be with Me, but just when it’s convenient and fills in the cracks in your schedule, as the leftovers. 

You want to be with Me, but what you really want are the things that doing the things you’re doing will get you: the reward of all these things you’re doing. But don’t you think that I’m a greater reward than whatever reward you’ll ever get from those things? 

What are you really doing these things for? 

Significance?  What could be more significant than being known intimately by the Creator of the world? Certainly not being best friends with the President or Paul McCartney or Tim Keller or Tony Robbins or whoever. 

Love and connection? What human being could ever love you unconditionally? And yet I love you unconditionally, because I know and understand why you’ve done everything you’ve ever done, and see your shortcomings based on your limited knowledge and strength and love you for who you are, in spite of all your shortcomings. No one else could ever love you that much, because no one could ever know why you do what you do like I do. And further more I’m the one that created you! So I love you greater than a parent loves their child, which is the strongest natural love on the planet. A parent doesn’t design and plan the DNA of their child, and yet I do. I love you more than any conditional lover or any passive child-bearer. 

Certainty? All resources of money, jobs, assets, real estate, and possessions can all be taken from you in a moment in this life by conscious and unconscious acts of nature, and even your very life with all its resources. You need a certainty that can take care of all your needs by manifesting resources from nothing, inspiring the hearts and minds of humans to give you the things you need, and a certainty of security and safety for your very soul when your Earthly life is through and you can’t touch any resources and are completely at the mercy of the spiritual realm… this is the kind of certainty only I can give you, and no other can. 

Variety? Who inspired the men of history with whatever strokes of genius, creativity, and artistry they manifested? They were seeking My mind for ideas to be given to them from the infinite ether of new possibilities beyond their own normal scope of thought. The world has never even seen a fraction of a percent of all the ideas in My mind, that is infinitely advanced beyond whatever greatest ideas have come through man so far. The greatest things on Earth, the greatest music, stories, films, foods, adventures — the highest possible variety that this Earth can offer — all came from My mind and I have even greater ideas than all of that. I already know what it will look like and I can tell you the best is surely to come. Pursue Me and My mind, which is THE SOURCE of variety, and all the best ideas and adventures will be given to you. For what adventure could be greater than one that is the most fulfilling for how you were designed, and only I know how you were designed and what circumstances in life will bring out the best in you, and also only I know what mission in life will make you feel the best, be the most fulfilling, and the most impactful, as tailored to your design and plan. 

 

“Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen: Following The Life of David December 9, 2019

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 1:16 am
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If all the known verses of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” were to continue the story of King David as overtly as the first verse, the song could be interpreted as something like the following verses. Compare them with the original lyrics I put at the bottom of this post. Each verse gets closer inside the life of David as it goes from third person to second person to first person narrative.

VERSE 1: King David played his lyre and composed music for the LORD in a way that pleased Him so greatly that, in a mysterious way, his angelic-sounding music moved the supernatural realm and moved God to suppress demons. David tapped into the beautiful, angelic patterns God created within music theory of the fourth, the fifth, and the beauties of major and minor, dark and light, reminiscent of the joyous and sad seasons in life, but God is glorified and can be worshiped in it all (which foreshadows the ups and downs of his life explained in the coming verses). This mysterious, worshipful experience of music transcends David into the spirit realm to connect with God, leaving him in a state of baffled euphoria in His presence.

VERSE 2: But when God gave him rest on all sides, he started to become complacent and the impenetrable faith of his youth developed holes and he became more casual about his relationship with God and keeping His Law and became prideful, which always comes before a fall. In this state of disconnect from God he wasn’t strong enough to withstand the temptation of moonlight lust on his rooftop which resulted in adultery with Bathsheba,  David’s “great sin.” Because of this great evil, God cursed David so that his royal throne was broken, he lost his power and had to flee for his life from his son Absalom, all for a lustful night of euphoric indulgence. He traded the euphoric “Hallelujah” of worshiping God for a euphoric “Hallelujah” of selfish, carnal indulgence.

VERSE 3: When confronted about it by his first wife Michal, David recounts how their childless marriage had been threatened from the beginning and their love quickly turned cold and distant, and certainly wasn’t any warmer now that they were finally back together in safety, albeit through David’s force. This coldness and lack of love incited David’s lustful eyes to look for something more. And whether leading the triumphant troops home in a victory march under the royal banner of Saul’s house on the marble arch or leading the ark of the covenant triumphantly back home under the scathing eyes of Michal, Saul’s daughter, the joy of those victories was always tainted by the lingering curse of the royal family of Saul overlooking and antagonizing all that David did. Instead of David’s home life being as joyous as his victories, it was cold and broken and marked by the pain of obedience to God to do the right thing toward Saul’s family.

VERSE 4: David is broken in repentance and sings to God in Psalm 51 begging Him to not take away His holy spirit from him and restore their relationship to the way it used to be when God’s spirit was moving in him, showing him what to do, and God was with him in everything he did, glorifying Himself through David.

VERSE 5: It’s ironic that the third of the Ten Commandments is to not take the name of the Lord in vain, but it’s a name that isn’t even spoken and modern Jews don’t even know how to pronounce it; perhaps it was so even in David’s time, and they didn’t know exactly what God’s name was that was revealed to Moses.  With David’s pride resulting in his backsliding, he became lax concerning the Law of God (as evidenced in the mishandling of the ark) and perhaps this included the third of the Ten Commandments, to the point that the holiness of God’s name was forgotten, maybe even influenced by the rough-around-the-edges military companions he surrounded himself with (Joab seems to loosely use the LORD’s name in vain in 2 Sam. 19:7), which certainly wasn’t helped by the doubts and disconnect he felt from God in fleeing for his life — unlike his previous fleeing from Saul, this time fleeing because of his great sins. But even in David’s sins, he still had a core, loving relationship and understanding of God’s grace and heart that overshadowed the Law and his sins (as mentioned in Psalm 51). Saul was instantly removed from being king for not following a specific military command of God, while David did far graver sins and God instantly forgave him (notwithstanding consequences) and He continued orchestrating things to establish David’s legacy for centuries, because David was after God’s heart. It’s this understanding of the heart of God and the Law that allowed David to see the bigger picture and get away with breaking other holy laws like lying to eat the holy, consecrated bread. He understood that God wanted more than just specific rules followed, God wants to be in everything we do and are. More than revering specific laws or a specific name for God as holy, God’s blazing light is in every single word, the holy and the broken words, indeed He is not just in the holy sacrifices and rituals, but in everything in life, the happy and sad things. (“For you do not desire sacrifice or I would give it… My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit,” Ps. 51) “I broke a rule, so what? God is bigger than the rules, he wants our hearts.”

VERSE 6: Even after David’s repentance, God fulfills His prophecy by Nathan the prophet of “the sword never departing from David’s house” when Absalom rises against him. David doubts God’s promises to him and even if God is with him or there at all. He laments that all he’s known from his loved ones (family, friends, in-laws, children) is strife and having to watch his back and literally be prepared to defend his life from someone who suddenly rises up against him. But even in the midst of his life’s tragedies, he was still singing his psalms to the Lord, finding a way to praise Him for His providence and trusting Him to fulfill His promises. Albeit, his Hallelujahs are sung from a sorrowful state of humble, faithful obedience, rather than from joyful exultation, in the midst of external pain and somber repentance.

VERSE 7: Yet at the end of his life, a life of unimaginable conflict, he’s able to say, “As the Lord lives, who has redeemed my life from all distress (1 Kings 1:29)” and in his final words he recounts, “The Spirit of the Lord spoke through me; His word was on my tongue (2 Samuel 23:2).” He dies without feeling regrets, thankful to God for forgiving him of his sins in His grace and for the promise He upheld to establish his throne forever. “Is not my house firm before God? He has made an eternal covenant with me, set forth in detail and secured. Will he not bring to fruition all my salvation and my every desire? (2 Sam. 23:5)”  Again, David is seeing the bigger picture: God is the Lord of Song, creator and sustainer of all music, and so David finally finds himself back in the spiritual state of Verse 1 and uses God’s creation to connect with Him, moving in Him, and once again “Hallelujah” being in every breath he draws. 

 

ORIGINAL LYRICS OF “HALLELUJAH” BY LEONARD COHEN:

[Verse 1]
Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing “Hallelujah”
[Chorus]
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

[Verse 2]
Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
[Chorus] Hallelujah, Hallelujah

[Verse 3]
Baby I’ve been here beforeI know this room, I’ve walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah
[Chorus] Hallelujah, Hallelujah

[Verse 4]
There was a time you let me know
What’s really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
[Chorus] Hallelujah, Hallelujah

[Verse 5]
You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light in every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
[Chorus] Hallelujah, Hallelujah

[Verse 6]
Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
And it’s not a cry that you hear at night
It’s not somebody who’s seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah
[Chorus] Hallelujah, Hallelujah

[Verse 7]
I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
[Chorus] Hallelujah, Hallelujah

 

**Author’s note: I don’t actually think this song is intended to be interpreted as one continuous story about the David narrative (or any other continuous story for that matter), as Leonard Cohen wrote 80 verses for it and whittled it down to the above verses. It’s abstract and he probably just picked the most interesting verses, although I do think that observing the song exclusively from the David context is a very moving perspective and more captivating than the more likely interpretation of a modern relationship struggle that just invokes Biblical metaphors. Regardless of the different interpretations, I’d say this is easily among the top ten most intriguing songs ever written by human beings.

 

Crisis Philosophy October 28, 2014

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality,The American Dream — milesprowers @ 11:24 am
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[as originally typed up on my iphone from 4:30-6am, 101714, after waking from a nightmare, terrified by the disgusting abominations I saw and felt, as if they were really happening]

 

The disgusting, demonic nightmare:
The old, placid doctor talked to his assistant (a pretty, young blonde in a labcoat), as if another routine day on the job:
“Yes, my dear. We’re going to rape you and burn you and chop you up and freeze you.”
The young lady was standing very routinely, but with a sudden look of surprise and confusion. Then two men came up from behind and grabbed her, put her down on the ground, and put a large ice bag on her neck.  She screamed as they started chopping her ankles with a butcher’s knife. But the scene cut right before the blade touched her flesh. And I thought, well that’s a relief the scene was cut, otherwise it would have been inappropriate.
Then I was on a bus and this same scene was playing as a movie on a screen. I was watching it again with the other people on the bus and when it got to the point of chopping her ankles I knew the camera would stop again just in time before the blade cut, otherwise it would have been inappropriate for a public place like that. But there was sitting in front of me a pretty young blonde, similar to the young nurse in the movie, and she turned her head away right before the chop, in horror, unable to watch anymore. Then the movie showed the nurse’s head on the ground next to the opaque freezer box which contained her chopped up body. And that’s when I woke up, full of terror and overcome with disgust at the darkness of that movie. And yet I already said in the dream that “at least it wasn’t inappropriate”, though that same “appropriate” movie caused the girl in front of me to turn in disgust, and was enough for me to wake me up in a terrified panic. What symbolism there is all throughout this dream!

And, as only a dream can do, my mind and heart were suddenly opened, and I could feel the fear and pain that blonde nurse experienced, and all my first world problems vanished. I realized that intense human suffering like that was going on right now in the world; it didn’t end with the Holocaust. And being in that fatal doctor’s office with that nurse, I felt her panicked desperation as she thought “Surely there is someone who can save me! Surely there is someone coming for me, or at least working or fighting to get here and rescue me!”

 

Then this dialog played in my mind while I was recovering from the dream.
Old European gentleman: “Oh come now. Eat. Drink!  Be merry. There is much to do, but there is also a time to enjoy life!”
Neo: “No. You don’t get it. You don’t realize how evil evil is. If you did you wouldn’t be able to put that food down. You would be staying up all night thinking and working to save these innocent people right now. The hand is cancerous and its spreading faster than a venom, but because of the remaining good in it we ignore the bad for a little bit longer, hoping it will get better… Hoping until it’s too late.”
Gentleman: “You can’t just throw away the good with the bad, the baby with the bath water!”
Neo: “But I say, yes!  Throw it out!  Better to enter life with one hand than to burn in hell with both.  The thing that’s keeping this kind of evil active is humanity’s existence. As long as we’re still around there will be immense suffering, because there will always be demons to put evil emotions and ideas in our hearts, and just enough lazy, complacent good people to keep the world good enough, and not altogether bad enough to cut off. Good enough people are the problem. It’s the hardworking man in Iowa who works an honest job and comes back to a wholesome meal with his family and settles in for a night in front of the tv. This is the problem. This is what’s allowing more time for the evil in the world to go on betraying and cheating and lying and piercing and burning. This is what’s keeping the stew just lukewarm enough to not be thrown out.  Oh, you don’t understand the evil that exists!”

God, destroy this Sodom even though there be 10 righteous in it!

 

I think about the horrible, utterly disgusting depravity of this world with its inhuman media, making movies like Human Centipede. Not only are people given opportunities and incentives to let their minds wander to such dark corners, inspired by the dark boundaries surpassed by those before them, but then they invest time and money to not only make their evil imaginations visible, but to put them in other people’s heads, into the minds of people that might not ever think of these evil things otherwise. Such is the cancer of pornography and MTV and Hollywood, who makes inescapable commercials that are literally filled with the same scenes that made movies in the 60’s rates R, and in the 50’s rated X.  And yet most Americans think this is … Wait for it… GOOD!!!  We have been so numbed to the evils of pornography that we have also been numbed to the good of innocence and virginity. Numbed to how good it is seeing a young woman as a soul, created in the image of God, and the beautiful work of art she is within, and thus is our desire to protect her from pain and devaluing numbed. The hardworking family man in Iowa is doing nothing to stop this genocide, but instead embraces it, even if only subtly, and subjects his family to it as acceptable prime time tv!  He is the problem. He is in the way of justice and mercy. He is no better than the passive Germans who kept living everyday life when there was a concentration camp in their backyard. Oh that you were hot or cold, holy or evil, but you are lukewarm, and even though you are not altogether bad you will be thrown out, and cause the rest of us to be thrown out with you.

 

When we were children our eyes were still open to see the gravity of evil and it could make us vomit, but today we have been so numbed to how great this evil is, that instead of vomiting out the poison we laugh at it, ingest it, spread it, and it kills us all. America could very well be the most wicked nation on Earth, for we are a Great Whore seeking out nations to invite to drink our cup of adultery, and so make them guilty also. And as if our rated R movies and pornography and sex slavery wasn’t bad enough, what’s even worse than all of that is that we stamp “In God We Trust” on it. I assure you God doesn’t take that blasphemy lightly.

 

Right now, somewhere in the world, someone is being tortured just as bad as the horrors of the Nazis and their Holocaust.  Like what’s going on in Iraq at the hands of ISIS right now.
If I live a good, comfortable life but someone else is living in Hell as we speak, then may both our lives be snuffed if it stops their suffering; for pain is more tangible than joy. Until then let us fight this horror with whatever time and energy we have left.
I pray God would have mercy on us, as in the days of Noah, and wipe us all out for the sake of the suffering that we have allowed to become this unimaginably horrible. I don’t care about justice, all I care about is ending the pain. With people going through this kind of intense pain right now, how can we do anything but be constantly working to rescue them? I mean, we’re in a state of emergency crisis! Put on hold your job, your marriage, your parenthood! Don’t you dare waste any more time on entertainment and recreation when you could always be doing something to help in the fight against the suffering of the innocent. I know you’d wish people would give up entertainment to fight for you if you were in that kind of pain. If you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem.
Better to err on the side of righteousness and holiness than on the side of blasphemy, apathy, laziness, lust, and violence.

 

———————–

The next morning I knew I had to do something. And while I’m limited at helping to fight the genocide of ISIS (you can support Voice of the Martyrs as they are actively helping those victims), I knew that there were plenty of horrors happening in my own backyard, and so I signed up to volunteer myself (not just my money) with End Slavery TN. Even if all I can help with right now is sorting papers or doing data entry or writing essays, I’m at least part of the solution to bring relief to the suffering. Even if I can do nothing more than menial tasks right now, so that more active people in the organization aren’t tied down doing them, then I will allow more time/energy/attention to be directed to help the suffering.  In whatever we do, we need to live like we’re really in a state of emergency crisis, because we are.

 

The god of Embarrassment October 22, 2014

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 1:48 pm
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I worship the god of Embarrassment.  Not in the same way I worship Jehovah.  For I worship Jehovah in praise and great joy and love and gratitude and rest.  But I burn incense on the altar of Embarrassment in great fear, so as to appease his spirits, to pacify him a little longer that I might have partial relief.  And yet Jesus said, you cannot serve two masters.  For you HAVE TO love one and hate the other.  You cannot serve both God and Mammon.  But I don’t serve Mammon; I serve Embarrassment.  And that HAS to change!  For right now I’m not open to doing ANYTHING God tells me to do, only those things which don’t conflict with my previous commitments to Embarrassment.  And so I bind the hand of God from healing this suffering world.  Just so I can live in an illusory comfort zone, hiding behind my rituals and tradition, trying to worship a man-made idol.

 

On the Tips of our Tongues April 24, 2014

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 3:26 pm
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Father, order my thoughts and make them words.

There is something on the tips of all our tongues.  It’s the look on the face of a dying man, just released from the hospital, sitting with his eyes closed listening to his friends read a book with him, resting in the gift of that moment.  There’s something there. Something so powerful that I’m speechless, and I don’t dare to interrupt the embrace of that bliss. We all felt it but we couldn’t grasp it; we didn’t know what to do except savor it before it was gone. There are no words for that feeling. We just don’t get it. It’s on the tip of our tongues but we can’t say it.   On the tip of our hearts and souls but we cannot comprehend it.

It’s when a random song starts playing and it unexpectedly brings you to your knees, brings tears to your eyes, and all you can think to do is stretch out your hands to praise God, the only one you can think to attribute such euphoria to.  We don’t understand why or how, but it’s there. There’s something there which we just can’t get at.

But very soon all will be complete and we will see it as it truly is. We will become real and experience reality. We will sense with maximum perception.  For we will no longer glimpse the divine with fleeting experiences, but we will live the divine.

When you smell a fragrance you haven’t smelled since childhood and the nostalgia overwhelms all your senses and melts you inside, bringing you close to unconsciousness, it is a taste of what is to come.  Though right now we can only taste it on the tips of our tongues.  There’s something happening in our midst that is deeper than anything we can ever know right now.  Something is about to burst at the seams.  And when it does we will look back and laugh at our finitude.  But until then all we have are snapshots into the Director’s commentary, glimpses of the divine.

photo (2)

 

A Man After God’s Own Heart March 6, 2014

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 6:23 pm
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I think of a child running through the meadows, wide-eyed with wonder, a radiant smile, hands outstretched to Heaven, spinning around, throwing up flowers to the sky, to God.  Taking in the mountains and fields, loving life, rejoicing in it.  Loving God who he can feel there with him, who he knows intimately, talks to and praises openly, with all his heart, thanks God for the beauty of nature, which he knows are God’s gifts to His children, fruit of His love.

And God responds to this innocent boy, perfect in heart, by coming alive around him.  As the boy runs, the flowers around him open up, the clouds part to reveal a beautiful sunset, a breeze blows his hair, light shines down on him, birds fly by, deer appear.  It’s the manifestation of God smiling and hugging the boy, telling him how much He loves him.  And likewise, as if trying to hug back just as hard, the boy shouts at the top of his lungs, “LORD!  I love you with all my heart!!!”

And being overwhelmed with this euphoric experience he falls backward into a soft bed of flowers, eyes closed, no longer focusing on the manifestation of God, but rather God Himself, there beyond the senses. He doesn’t know what else to do except whisper over and over, “I love You.  Thank You.  I praise You.”  Then his joy reaches the next level where his smile turns into a frown and tears of supernatural joy freely flow from his face.  The boy doesn’t care who sees or about anything else going on, because all he cares about is loving and worshiping God as much as he can.

[written with my left hand, while my right was sprained, on 1/16/14]

 

My Valentine February 15, 2014

Filed under: Celibacy,Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 10:53 am
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[written on 1/25/14 with my left hand, during 24 hours of silence; posted in honor of Valentine’s Day!]

If you’ve gone through a whole day without loving God, trusting God, or truly focusing in on Him/tuning into His voice… then you failed your top priority of the day.  The day was a failure.  You got an F.  You didn’t pass the test of loyalty.  After all, isn’t this the greatest commandment in the Old and New Testament, and indeed the meaning of life?  “Love the LORD your God with all your heart…”

If you don’t feel love for God in your heart something is wrong.  Stop everything you’re doing; take off from work if you have to.  Until you’re right with God, until you get to the place where you can honestly ask God to give you opportunities to proclaim His name today, to proclaim your Love.  And then go out actually looking for those opportunities.

God wants us to love Him like a lover — like in Song of Songs — consumed with Him as if we have a crush.  God wants me to run out through the fields to find a tree that I can carve a heart with both our initials in it.

We always put God on the shelf, getting Him out when it doesn’t conflict with anything else.  But why not put everything else on the shelf until it doesn’t conflict with God?  Why not love God and trust Him even if it means we die?  [21514- As my friend, Spencer Argow, pointed out to me last week, the last time I saw him before he died:  “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” ~Job 13:15]

[I should note that writing this article is my very act of living out my advice, as this came to me during a time when I have so much stuff people want me to do, and I chose to put it on the shelf until I’m right with God again.  It’s kind of corny, I know, but that’s the point!]

 

Lonely God February 8, 2014

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 6:25 pm
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[1/27/14-  while listening to John Reuben’s I Pictured It]

Lonely god. A phrase I thought of a week ago. How truly sad it is, this creator god who creates children to love him, but instead even the best of us confine him to increments of our time disproportionate to our other affections. What a shame that I truly care more for his children than I do him, the very one by whom I exist. I’m scared to lift my hands in praise to him because I care more about what my brothers and sisters think, than what my father thinks.  He gets excited when an opportunity arises for us to talk about him, to mention him like we would a lover. But when we think he’s not looking we change subjects or imply that we don’t even know him. And his smile becomes a frown as he turns his head and leaves before we see him and realize he overheard us. And I feel this god crying out in the wilderness, saying, Why won’t anyone come live with me?  Why only brief visits?  Is it the way I look?  Or is it because we don’t have anything in common?  Nothing to talk about?  But oh, my child!  Don’t you have more in common with me than anyone else?  Shouldn’t you have more to talk about with me than anyone else?  You are made from my own genes.

What would happen if we went to live with this god?  And got his advice and encouragement all day?  Ran to him when we were injured or rejected, knowing he would only run to us, embrace us in love and cry with us. And there, resting in between his shoulders, we could feel his heartbeat.   [Deuteronomy 33:12]

People are actually dying around us and yet we are still too afraid to just trust God, to just praise Him as much as we know how, and let him come to us and supernaturally change things, for the best of our own lives and ultimately everyone we are connected to.   People are on the verge of dying and will one day not be able anymore to feel the effects of the reckless faith we could have had. And God cries out to us:  Why won’t you just trust me?!  What have I ever done to you that you would doubt me like this?

O Moses!  What did you find out there in the wilderness?
O David!  What did you find out there in the wilderness?
O Jesus!  What did you find out there in the wilderness?