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). 

 

These Elaborate Machines November 6, 2012

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality,Science/Atheism/Evolution/Creationism,Terremoto — milesprowers @ 5:14 pm
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[as written 81311 – 31712, with additions on 11612]

 
On 81011 during our Bible Study prayer time, when it came time for my prayer requests, my small group leader prayed over me and lifted up my requests from the night, and I just started praying for the requests myself as if I wasn’t me.  As if from my universal, eternal soul that is not confined to a body or circumstances or personality, but the universal spirit that we all have before being shaped by our lives.  As I (the spirit, of God Himself perhaps, which is universally the same but individually molded depending on each person’s nature and nurture) was praying for Miles Prowers, who he is and has become, all that makes Miles Prowers Miles Prowers, that particular character in God’s story of Earth History.

And it produced in me a bizarre sympathy for me, as if I was praying for a dear friend who I knew more intimately than anyone else.  I prayed for his job, knowing just how stressful it was and how it conflicted with his extreme desires to be an artist.  I prayed for his brother, whom he’d always known and loved since youth.  It was a surreal experience that had no reason for happening, it just happened.  Since then I’ve never attempted to recreate that perspective, because it was kind of weird, and I’m not sure it was God-honoring, though I have no reason to believe it isn’t either; it’s just that I’d never thought or heard about something like that, so I don’t know what to think.

 

Hebrews 4:12: “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

 
But what are we really?  I can’t figure out how to distinguish between soul and spirit and mind and heart and body.  All I know is that in the beginning God created Adam from the dust and then breathed life into him, as if breathing in His own Spirit into him.  As if he constructed all these little organic machines and then turned them on by breathing His electricity into them.  So then do animals have spirits?  Do they have the spirit of God in them, keeping them alive?  Or was it just His Spirit that sparked them into motion and got fate in motion to carry itself out?  Obviously there is a stark contrast between the most sophisticated animal and the dumbest human, in that the dumbest human is still a human being.  Is the contrast because man has a spirit and animal does not?  As if when you took away the spirit in man he became an animal?  Or do they both have the breath of God’s Spirit in them both keeping them alive and man’s body is just that much more elaborate than the animal’s to allow for consciousness?  The electricity through these elaborate machines of ours.

 

Or do man and animal still have spirit at all after the initial God breathe?  If man is cloned will it be an animal version of man, with no consciousness?  I used to think so, but I doubt it now.  He’ll still have all the functions for consciousness that the physical brain allows.  He may be mentally retarded, as a copy is never as good as the original, but that doesn’t make him unconscious.  We are truly unique, self-conscious beings, but are we only machines made to resemble the one true Being?

 

[11612- An interesting note, made by an old, pot-smoking hippie I randomly met in The Parthenon while writing “Fade To White”: The Bible doesn’t say God breathed animals into being, only humans.  So there is a spiritual difference between us and animals, whatever that may be exactly.]

 

Humans are in a class of their own, caught between the animals and the angels, but the choice is ours as to which end of the spectrum we fall on.

 

And yet there is something supernatural in us that allows us to transcend nature and have intuition, feelings and other supernatural capabilities.  So do we each have individual spirits of our personalities, and that’s who we are?  Or are we anything at all?  Isn’t our individuality just the unique combination of our two parents’ previously-existing traits, mixed together and shaped through our surroundings in life?  If we do have individual spirits, where do these spirits and personalities come from?  The only logical conclusion is that they must have been directly assigned to us by God Himself who put certain spirits in certain bodies to have certain outcomes to make History go according to His great plan.  So it all comes around to the fact that we have nothing God has not given to us and we are nothing that God has not made us.

 

But there is no evidence of individual spirits that give us our personality aside from our nature/nurture make up.  I think perhaps more logical is that there is only one Spirit, that is, God Himself, who, according to His will, moves in us individually to give us those supernatural capabilities in certain times.  He periodically manifests His spirit in our hearts and minds and the natural realm to intervene and guide us away from the natural path of fate so that by divine inspiration we change our natural course, that we would naturally go down aside from His intervention.  Of course if there is only one Spirit, then what are we when our bodies die physically (the breath of life leaves) and yet we live on separately?

 
Ecclesiastes 12:7: “then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.“

 
In Heaven what are our souls if we no longer have the body that created our personality?  Without our bodies what’s left?  If we do each have souls are they all the same generic soul/spirit that manifests differently given a different body to come out of, a different-shaped outlet?  It’s a mystery no mortal can solve.  So then, when those bodies die, wouldn’t the Spirit of God return to its source (God)?  This is the equivalent of Nirvana, where we exist in the afterlife, conscious, but not as our individual personality.  Rather we all exist as The Personality of God Himself.  And yet, there’s no mention of that concept in the Bible (our only sure-fire source of truth on the subject).

Isn’t it interesting that the Apocalyptic Bible passages all refer to us having bodies in Heaven.  Almost implying at times that we have no consciousness until our bodies are resurrected/glorified.  So, “we” are nothing without our bodies, but in Heaven our bodies are there, therefore our bodily-induced personalities live on through the bodies that make them.  Still, it’s entirely possible that at some point in the future of eternity even our glorified bodies will fade away, leaving behind the One Spirit in all of us, and “we” return to experience the euphoria of existence in oneness with The Spirit.

 

John 17:22: “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me.”

 
Our bodies are simply our parents’ bodies combined.  God breathes spirit into us, giving us life, but it’s just the natural mysterious energy as it naturally flows through that machine of our parent-combination bodies.  However, when we’re born again, God’s Holy Spirit indwells us, which is not just the spirit of life, but actually God’s own personal Spirit living in us, actually Christ Himself.  So it’s not just our natural bodies at work, but Christ living and working with that physical body.

Which is why you actually witness people change to become different people after they’re Christians.  Non-believers can try to change and do self-help formulas and show signs of change, but they’re still the same people they’ve always been with the same tendencies they give into.  Only when another being comes into your body, living through you and changing you (not of your own energy and will-power), then can a person actually change into a real different person.  Because it really isn’t them anymore. It’s the perfect spirit of someone else, His mind living in our bodies, making choices and offering an alternative to our natural bent.  I am now partially Miles Prowers and partially Jesus Christ, but gradually becoming more of Jesus Christ and less of Miles Prowers, to the point where Jesus Christ is me, just with the looks, personality and memories of Miles Prowers.

 

Who am I? What am I? What even is “I”?  I don’t know.  Something between a random combination of atoms and God Himself.

 

[The mysteries expressed in this essay were condensed into a song entitled “Fade To White”.  You can hear it at soundcloud.com/terremotoothers.  Enjoy!]

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Knights of Cydonia: An Atheist Anthem? September 13, 2012

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality,Science/Atheism/Evolution/Creationism — milesprowers @ 12:27 am
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[as written on 81512]

 

When asked what my favorite Muse song is, I’d have to say it’s New Born, though Knights of Cydonia rivals it. However, while the song’s music as a whole perhaps is a little better than New Born’s music as a whole song in all it’s parts, for me in rating each song I’m biased against KOC for the lyrics. Matt Bellamy was at least at one point a seeming atheist in real life, though that perspective rarely comes out in his songs (and often you’d get the opposite reaction from his lyrics), but this is one of the few songs where it does come out. Which is unfortunate because it’s possibly their best song musically. The one time he bashes God is in the one song that’s best musically! Why pick that song to offend people?

 

Connecting the Lyrics with the Art:
The more I thought about the lyrics, the more it appears to be not only a random, weird nod to Atheism, but in fact an atheist anthem of sorts. The song itself has no mention or reference to either knights or Cydonia, except for the sound of horse galloping in the beginning referencing the knights riding on horses, and the sound of laser guns indicating that these are science fiction/future/space knights. What is Cydonia? It’s the area on Mars in which the “Face on Mars” was found in old photographs taken of the Martian surface, thus “Knights of Cydonia” apparently refers to Martian knights, or knights from the supposed Martian civilization in Cydonia (by whom the Face on Mars was constructed, perhaps in their humanoid likeness). The cover of the album “Black Holes and Revelations” shows 4 men sitting at a table in the red Cydonian desert (it’s not Earth because planet Earth is seen at a distance in the background) with horses on the table, linking them to the Knights of Cydonia (in which the song opens up with horse sounds). Why four knights? It’s an obvious link to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the biblical Book of Revelation (perhaps why Muse chose “Revelations” in the album name).
So how does this connect with lyrics? The lyrics in the song are minimal for a Muse song, but they suggest alot: “Come ride with me through the veins of history. I’ll show you a god who falls asleep on the job. How can we win when fools can be kings? Don’t waste time or time will waste you.”

 

Paraphrased it says this: “Look at the same history I’m looking at. With all the wars, natural disasters, and plagues in history, there’s no way there could really be a loving God involved with Earth. Therefore we’re on our own, and there’s no fate involved in who becomes a ruler; we’re at the mercy of these tyrants who are elected by chance and happenstance. We must not waste any time, but make things right before it’s too late. It’s only a matter of time before they ruin the Earth.”

 

How in the world does this statement at all relate to 4 Martian Knights? Because there’s no God, so life on Earth must have originated from a superior alien civilization on Mars, aka, “Panspermia”, another interest of Matt Bellamy’s lyrics (as seen in such songs as “Exegenesis: Cross-Pollination”). This is a serious proposition suggested by such leading atheists as Richard Dawkins, so it’s not that radical.
[But this is where it gets radical (maybe too radical for Muse): perhaps the lyrics and cover art are suggesting that these Knights of Cydonia, after planting life on Earth, are now in fact running all the politics of the world, establishing rulers as their puppets, from behind the scenes. So electing rulers is really out of our control and we must rise up and take the power back before it’s too late. Also if there’s no God, then the Book of Revelation isn’t supernatural and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that St. John saw are more realistically 4 aliens (a common theory among skeptics, who say the same thing regarding the 4 angels in wheels in Ezekiel’s prophecy).]

 

Atheist Anthem:
Therefore, after establishing an Atheistic worldview, the songs ends with a chorus of people chanting this anthem:
“No one’s gonna take me alive. The time has come to make things right. You and I must fight for our rights. You and I must fight to survive.”

 

Paraphrased, this is essentially saying: “There’s no God, so it’s all up to us. We must take everything into our own hands. We must resist these authorities, to the point of death. We will take control and make the world the place it’s supposed to be.” And then it closes the song with an evolutionary reference to “Survival of the Fittest”: “You and I must fight to survive.”

Sounds a little to me like, “I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” (Isaiah 14:14). It’s an Atheist Anthem.

 

It’s Influence on my Song-writing:
Even though this song seems to have an evil message (if you believe Christianity is the truth, and songs like this steer people away from God’s truth and towards Atheism), it’s so tempting to listen to because the music is absolutely incredible. So people like me end up listening to it and enjoying it, even though we know it is displeasing to God and it advances Atheism (aka, one of Satan’s most successful attacks on Christianity). And what better way for Satan to keep people from going to Heaven, than softening the heart of the average person to the ridiculous, impossible worldview of Atheism, indeed making it look cool and suddenly popular. And softening the Christian’s disgust towards atheism. All through the vehicle of the most amazing, catchy music the world has to offer today. “Though I don’t agree with an atheist, I’ll listen to him speak over and over again because his speech is so attractive and amazing.”

 

It just goes to show once again how powerful music is, even to the supernatural level. And what Satan uses for evil, God can use for good. I don’t know if Muse is actively trying to make people into atheists, agnostics, or deists, but they are. Even if their motives aren’t mission-minded, Satan’s sure are. And so Muse inspires me to likewise make the best music the world has to offer, but to include in the vehicle of irresistible songs a God-glorifying message of truth that wages war against Satan’s army of songs. For if I, as a devout Christian who’s aware of how the supernatural works, am even willing to keep listening to this Atheist Anthem (which I can acknowledge firsthand has caused me for a moment to question God’s existence in a world of pain and suffering), how much more will the average person (with no conviction) be likely to listen to it and be persuaded away from God (being undeducated in apologetics)?

 

And on the opposite side of the spectrum, if I, as a devout Christian following a universal moral standard, go against my convictions of pleasing God to listen to a song for the sake of the flesh’s entertainment, than how much more would an audience with no moral standard, numbed to convictions, be willing to listen to an incredible song, even though it throws in a random, weird nod to Christianity, or even a Christian anthem?

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