A prayer

Dear God, please help everyone be happy and safe and healthy and full of love and peace. Please give everyone who worked in the factories of the products of perpetually reselected fifteen hundred grocery stores 45 million prize package 63s and a billion jackpots, and add that same amount to all the accounts of all the people in their communities or who went to schools with those people or read five of the same words they did at any time, and please give everyone 45 million prize package 89s and a deluxe tailored theme spinning shipment to all the people who helped a child or prayed for a friend on any day that one of those grocery stores sold a transaction totaling $65.35. Please take the transaction number of the receipts for 40 other totals based on secret triumphs and make that a full and growing representational code in a sequence of a thousand prize packages designed to include Christmas blessings plus charged game provision maximums. Please categorize all things with 80 percent overlap and give a variety bonus of a thousand variation color-codings to the interior designs in any building with a blue door. Please activate and apply the key map with eventual resets whenever there is a person or animal in a room or a computer on with names in some databases. Please expand the relevant population to include all siblings and cousins and extra generations, people on the same roads that the same times, plus their school and work associations and a linked sequence of thousand thousand thousand based on that, with a thousand blessing additions per person to the main jackpot to be duplicated and repeated with a distribution pattern based on the answer lists to the tests that a new included population scored high on after studying or just taking a risk for. Please take the whole group of people now and add 50 million treasure map quest hauls from eternal layer 500 plus repeat for each person with a restart translation give-away including all people in societies ten societies away, plus an account booster collection jumble added to all accounts for the inverse of the original grocery factory winners.

You can’t be Protestant without the Catholics

     I have recently decided to be both Presbyterian and Catholic, or really have just accepted that I really am both things and do not have to choose one or the other.  The Protestant Reformation was literally a reaction to the Catholic Church and some of its ways of doing things at that time, and I think that Protestants are better off sharing their theology in a Catholic context. People say that is not true and that the Presbyterian doctrine is so sound that it doesn’t need any association with Catholicism at all, or that it always has that context, because any erroneous view of the world is a form of Catholicism, with people thinking they are good enough for God or can earn his approval.   All I can say is that first of all, trying to please God is not the default status of all people needing salvation, and to present Catholicism merely as a religion of trying to earn God’s favor is also a distortion of the truth.  In other words, the hope of pleasing God is usually a good thing, and should not be turned into some kind of offense, even with the glorious truth that Jesus accomplished all the righteousness that is needed for people's eternal salvation.

    That is the special news that Presbyterians try to believe and profess, and it is based a lot on Christ’s statement at the cross when he said “It is finished.”  It is an announcement that he has done the required lifelong act of salvation, living perfectly in every moment and offering his life as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of his people and anyone who wants his righteousness to count for them. 

    For me, where Catholicism comes in is how people can still interact with Jesus while he is on the cross.  He is the eternal God, and he is a priest. There is no disputing the fact that even as the sacrificial lamb satisfying a true need for atonement in the Jewish sense, he was also a priest and a spiritual master using real authority to forgive people, heal them, and establish various relationships and realities in their lives. In all his life and especially on the cross, he was reconciling people to God. No matter how much people want to talk about his statement that “it is finished,” we know just as much as we know people are still being born that the priestly intervention is still happening. So if people want to live a Catholic life and receive their salvation day by day, gradually, over a lifetime or even millions of years, that power and negotiation is all there at the cross and it is all there in Christ’s eternal existence. It’s just not a problem to ask him for actual, personal righteousness now and continually, and should not be viewed as a problem except when people have specific fears about assurance of salvation.  And I think the people who most often have those kinds of problems tend to be Presbyterians, who might see a lack of justice and personal righteousness in their life or corrupt systems, which causes them to doubt whether the transaction that provided salvation really worked.  Well is it more true to say it worked, or it is working and won’t fail?  I usually prefer to go for the real time righteousness and believe that life is probably worthwhile in some way even though people try to reduce it all to some kind of account status or legal verdict that already happened. I also think that on the Catholic path is where the most obvious revelation of the Presbyterian thing Christ did will become apparent.  Without that effort to please God, saving faith becomes kind of like a Baptist Catholicism, where you earn your salvation by believing something, which is really nothing but the cheapest of Catholic indulgences.

I could be wrong about this

     There is something in the Bible that people worry about sometimes, and it is referred to as a sin that is unforgivable. I think it is in the letters of Paul and it says that blaspheming the Holy Spirit is the unforgivable sin.  A lot of people think it has to do with saying something bad about the Holy Spirit, or maybe saying something bad about God and Jesus. A lot of mentally ill people worry about it, because we have a lot of problem thoughts and behaviors sometimes. I myself now have a disorder with a lot of intrusive thoughts that are by nature exactly what you don't want to think and say.  One of the solutions for accepting that condition is to know that the worse those thoughts are, the more it is an expression and even profession that you don't approve of that content. So it could be like expressing something more positive if people really understood.
    But this post is not about that. It is about what I think that passage refers to instead as something unforgivable. I have started suspecting that the idea of that kind of blasphemy might refer to something different than saying something very bad, and that the level of harm and offense in question is more related to things like horrific child abuse that tears souls and burns holy things like God himself.
    You can kind of get an idea from what I am talking about from learning about trauma symptoms, and I think there are problems even beyond that where people hurt very innocent life with evil and disrespect that is incalculable. People would say, actually, thankfully it is calculable and therefore finite and disposable.  Well I guess that is probably true.  But anyway, the main thing I am saying is that people are mostly right when they say anyone can be forgiven for anything. And that the things that are by nature unforgivable are actually beyond even the bad choice of refusing forgiveness.  It is evil beyond that.
   I do not understand it all, and I actually differ in my beliefs from a lot of people by thinking that there could be a range of destinies for people, which include death, hell, purgatory, jail sentences, creative Judgement Day verdicts, life experiences that simply teach people things over millions of years, and of course total forgiveness and heaven.
   But the thing that I do feel more suspecting of is that something truly unpardonable is not something that people just stumble upon during a confusing life in a confusing culture.  It is a deliberate and calculated, defining and inevitable violation of innocent, precious life.  Child abuse is probably closer to it than cursing, though God has officially made an offer to forgive anyone who asks, including people who get in trouble for almost any crime we could think of.  Not asking for forgiveness is probably not the unforgivable thing either, but also not a good idea. I mean wouldn't it be all the more stupid to make forgivable things be unforgivable after all.

Tending in the fields

     The book of Matthew in the Bible finishes with a commission for Jesus’s disciples to go make disciples of all people and baptize them in his name. It is a great book, written by someone who started out as a tax collector and dramatically dropped everything to follow Jesus Christ when Christ walked by his tax collector booth one day and said “Follow me.” Jesus invited two fishermen named Peter and Andrew in a similar way and said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  

     The fishers of men idea is usually applied to all Christians and the idea is that Christians should always be striving to invite other people to a life that is blessed and transformed by learning from Jesus in a way that is similar to the disciples in the Bible. It is very obvious and almost doesn’t have to be explained after reading the stories of those guys.

    But I think for me and for many others, especially from evangelical backgrounds where we really did think that we should share our faith in some way, there is another component to these stories that is also important but hard to remember. And that is the fact that the fishermen already were fishermen, so the calling was partially to just do more of the same but at a shockingly miraculous level.  And funnily, you could look back and see that maybe Matthew as a tax collector was like a creditor stalking people to take their money, so when Jesus said, “Follow me,” it was just as tailored a calling as for the fishermen, only Matthew would be following someone who did not hate him.

    Anyway, there are all kinds of interesting things about all of it, but I think the thing that helps me balance my messed up evangelical failures with my true identity, is to think that in some ways, the calling wasn’t about transforming all Christians into evangelicals, but that it was about turbo-boosting what people were already good at, so that they could be more truly themselves and unencumbered by deceptions and traps that keep people from meeting their true potential. People could interpret it as meaning that a good athlete has permission to follow Christ’s teaching in order to become a great athlete instead of a good FCA leader. And Christ’s teaching could just as well help an artist reach heights of genius instead of just switching over to religious paintings.

     These concepts have to do with things that people often decide very early in life, and I think many people could read this and think I am honestly saying nothing at all.  But I actually do think that all kinds of people have deep, torturesome problems related to frustrations about work, identity, and Christian service.  I read once that only 13 percent of bartenders are Christians, but if people were following the example of support that Jesus demonstrated, shouldn’t bartenders be the ones serving communion? It is just suspicious, and to me could just mean that more pastors should be behind bars.

An interesting theological question for discussion:

In the Bible, a lot of the opposition people face can be divided into three categories: the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is a very standard theological idea, and I think it is interesting to consider it along with how conflict is described in literature settings.  In English classrooms, a lot of the conflict that drives stories is described as either being man vs. man, man vs himself, or man vs. nature.  

What I am wondering is if all of these categories refer to the same things in life and in what ways they can overlap or not overlap.  Would it mean that “the world” is part of nature, no matter how technological it gets? Would it mean something about the origin of demons? Some people refer to family members as flesh.  Well what would that mean if flesh and the devil could be combined, and flesh can also refer to oneself? It’s really pretty horrifying.

Probably these ideas are very obvious to some people, but I think considering all of it at the same time is actually an opportunity sometimes lost because of efforts to keep religion completely separate from things like public education.  I am sure that most teachers and students manage to have great discussions about anything, but it could be good to be aware of what gets lost in the shuffle of priorities that usually do start with a purpose of protecting people from society and other monsters.

Thoughts about Bonhoeffer

    Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote an awesome book called The Cost of Discipleship, and one of the most amazing things about it is that he himself was martyred, and not just martyred, but killed by some of the most notoriously evil people, the Nazis, for plotting to get rid of one of the worst people ever, Hitler.  The story is kind of famous, but the emphasis among Christians is usually on Bonhoeffer’s willingness to die.  That is definitely a compelling thing, especially with his book in mind, but I think people would also benefit from looking at the reasons he died, and seeing that perhaps the more significant issue is that he was willing to kill. That kind of moral courage and sacrifice is not always appreciated as much as dying for something, but I think a lot of people could learn as much from that example as from Bonhoeffer’s willingness to put himself in danger. He cracked the code on what was happening and intended to do something that others did not see as urgent.  And as much as that courage is celebrated now, many people today are still sometimes slow to see the value of justice and the sacrifice of people who make the call on ridding this earth of evil leaders, of murderers and rapists, and of child abusers.

food truck smells

    Ok everyone, I have one more blog post for the theology blog, and this blog is about religious scrupulosity, which can be in the form of OCD or not a matter of mental illness at all.  It has to do with doing what you are supposed to in super specific detailed situations where it could be questionable to spend a disproportionate amount of religious strength to keep a certain standard.  I go ahead and use the word questionable in order to put the scrupulosity on the defense, instead of the people trying to do what they are supposed to.

     The example I want to mention is something I think about very frequently, but know that it is just not a big deal.  It has to do with Halal trucks, which have a certain kind of food that has some kind of religious approval that some people (Muslims, I think) are supposed to have in order to eat almost anything.  I am thankful that many people are providing for each other and that there is food like that available.  I myself usually do not eat from those trucks at all, as a way of practicing my own religion. I think most people aren’t that scrupulous, though, and they would eat that food just as I sometimes eat food that is kosher and blessed by a rabbi even though I am a Christian and not Jewish.

   But that is still not the exact thing I want to say.  The thing I want to say has to do with how I really like good smells and sometimes feel like when I walk by those trucks and inhale the yummy food smell on purpose, then I actually am partaking in Halal food to some extent.  I have held my breath before, but I have mostly come to the conclusion that I should just relax and enjoy the smells as I walk by.  In fact, that seems pretty obvious to me, and I think that I have to take that information and apply it to my whole OCD problem, which is an all-pervasive condition that affects almost every moment of my life.

   I think the thing I have to learn from it is that all of us probably do not have to be perfect in the details, and that it might even be impossible.  What does this mean?  A lot of people might find that really obvious, but I actually know that there are probably people reading this who are more like me and actually have a hard time believing what I am saying and about to say, which is that a general righteousness and obedience from people might be mainly what God expects sometimes.  Of course, there are crucial moments and ethical dilemmas that do deserve everyone’s best efforts, but if we know that there are any examples at all of times where the compromise is okay, then it makes sense to apply that logic to the more important things, too.

   And as much as interesting ethical situations can seem defining or representative, if people took another view and thought about how society would be if everyone simply pretty much did what they were generally supposed to, the more extreme goodness might actually be more likely to take place than with rare strictness or even heroism that has often, and maybe too often, been celebrated.

Unconditional Conditional Love

    Well everyone, this post is about my great theological secret that I think could benefit many people. I have already written one blog post about it before. The idea is based on an adaptation of the kind of love I learned about at church a long time ago.  Sometimes people talk about “unconditional love,” which supposedly is love that continues even when people are not in a condition that seems as lovable as usual, or as lovable as possible.  It seems so nice, except for the fact that a lot of times, it becomes more of some kind of “unconditional condescension” instead, because in your heart, you think the person is not actually lovable.  People think that they are just flinging their amazing and priceless love into a void as some heroic act, when really, for them to take that view means they have to ignore great worth that God himself has created.  I became unsatisfied with that hypocrisy early in my life, and have tried a different way of relating to people, which might seem contradictory or even redundant. But I think that really, it is closer to what unconditional love was supposed to be. I think it would be best described as “unconditional conditional love.”  The idea of it is that your choice to extend goodwill and appreciation to people is unconditional, but the love itself is based on actual lovable factors about people that you deliberately search for and easily find if you are a good person yourself.

    People might interrupt here and excitedly say, “oh, like “tough love” where you get to confront people about their faults.”  No, I still mean a kind positive caring effort in thought and feeling and deed, that gives people the benefit of the doubt even if that doubt is reminiscent of total depravity.

    There are all kinds of things to love and even admire about almost anyone. The intellectual effort of it can kind of turn you into a robot if not enough nice people love you back, but I think in the end, it is much more effective and true than insulting people with a love so fake that you have to remind everyone that it is not based on anything whatsoever except for your own decision to ignore Jesus’s command not to throw your pearls to pigs.

   It starts with looking around and questioning church doctrine, and secretly whispering to yourself and to God, “What if these people actually are lovable?” and “What if really I’m not in a zombie movie like the people who disapprove of zombie movies tried to tell me?”

    I myself do not like zombie movies, so that is not exactly my point. My point is that if you think being friends with someone is such a miracle that brought life out of an abyss of pure evil, then you should also be doing other miracles that are more obvious, like making trees walk. And if you’re not, then maybe the miracle is that people would be friends with you.

The real problem with cursing

Ok everyone I am going to phrase this post mostly as questions because I am truly not sure about it.  It has to do with curses and justice.  The thing I am wondering has to do with something Jesus taught people which is to bless others and not to curse them, even if they are our enemies.  And he said to pray for people and love your enemies.  But most people figure out that sometimes you do have to stand up for yourself or others in some way, even just to help keep children safe from each other. There has to be justice in the world, and mercy without it seems meaningless and even dangerous.  Something else Jesus said is that people should not give someone a verbal blessing without backing it up with actions.  Well I am a very verbal person and I like kind words, but the command has more to do with telling people to be blessed but not giving them food if they are hungry.  It becomes hypocritical to say religious things and not help people in need.  So here is the question:  Could the same thing be said about cursing people who harm others but not doing anything to stop them?  Is it also hypocritical to criticize society, or literally say curse words at people, or try to pray a curse for people without taking action as some use of force? I think most army people and cops would see immediately the importance of keeping people safe through justice, but in religious contexts, to say that you should back up curses with actions is pretty crazy.  And yet I believe I am really on to something.  There are curses later in the New Testament, from people like Paul and then an interesting one at the end of Revelation.  And I think the reason they weren’t backed up with obvious violence is because the spiritual power of those making the curses actually is so extreme that the use of force is integrated with the curse.  It is very interesting, and I think for me, the place to start with action is simply to follow Jesus’s command to feed the hungry, and then to remember that there are different types of hunger, and different things that are food, and different ways of intervening when people block food or ruin life.

A verse or a curse?

I sometimes appreciate Catholicism more than my own Evangelical background, and I think some of it comes down to this very interesting and often overlooked verse from the Bible:

Whoever says to the guilty, "You are innocent," will be cursed by peoples and denounced by nations. Proverbs 24:24.  But it will go well with those who convict the guilty, and a rich blessing will come on them. 

I think that in churches and in our country sometimes, there is an important and warranted emphasis of Christ’s forgiveness, who died for people “while we were yet sinners.” But the whole point of his forgiveness is that he had the authority to forgive because of his own righteousness that was so great he had enough to share. I think this issue is related to the difference between Catholic priests and Protestant Pastors, though most people who do what they are supposed to try to achieve some form of complete dependence on God’s mercy and complete obedience to him in gratitude or in expectation.  But I think also people can get carried away with one or the other, or neglectful, and it is reflected in our whole culture, as people get away with stuff that they should not be getting away with. Is the problem rooted in a pronouncement of some kind? I do not know.  I think there could be some scapegoats who aren’t supposed to be the scapegoats, and some people who aren’t getting the punishment they deserve in a society that should and would reflect God’s true and fulfilled mercy if people were really doing and saying what they were supposed to.  I sometimes do not do well when I survey the whole country and culture and try to say a final word about it. But to me this verse might serve that purpose that has not been achieved by many people who were trusted with that responsibility.

OCD in the Bible

    I took a class that was an online certificate program at a seminary program last fall, and when we studied the book of Luke in the Bible, we talked about the gospels being kind of like a corroboration of witnesses. The fact that there is some variation in the reports actually adds credence, and of course the overwhelming agreement is the main verification of the unbelievable claims and events described.  It is very interesting to think about, but there is something else that has to do with that topic when you expand to include the disciples who did not write the gospels, and you look at the case of Doubting Thomas, who in my opinion, may have been mentally ill.  After the crucifixion and resurrection, Thomas famously said that he would not believe Jesus was alive unless he put his hands in Jesus’s wounds.  He told this to the other disciples after they claimed to see the risen Christ, and then a week later, Jesus was with them and told Thomas he could touch his wounds.  You could tell it was on Jesus’s mental to do list, like a social worker. There were other disciples who also had trouble believing it and were going to have to go out into the world and tell people about everything that was happening.  It is crazy to think about and I relate to them as an evangelical who has felt a burden to tell others what I have known even while doubting so much myself.  But I think that even though God has made it clear in the Bible that he likes faith and he likes for people to believe and trust him, sometimes unbelief is more like disbelief, and corroborates the miraculous and truly “unbelievable” nature of what God has done for us.  

    That could be enough to say, but this topic could really still be expanded and I will go ahead and say that I think the Bible can be seen this way, too.  The Bible is true beyond belief, and there are things contained in it that could literally blind people’s eyes if they really read it for what it is.  And just as there can sometimes be more than one interpretation, there can also be different levels of interpretation. People can read it and simply do what it says, or people can read it and actually be looking at the scenes depicted in it through all the ages. I am talking about making eye contact with Bible characters.   And I want to suggest something controversial, and say that even in the face of that kind of miracle, seeing the Bible as completely untrue might be one level of interpretation that isn’t as bad as some people think. I think the possible legitimacy of interpretation like this, which often comes in the form of not appreciating the Levitical Laws or Paul’s letters, has to do with Christ’s death. The Logos, or "the way, the truth, and the life," (John 14:6) died. Nicodemus, who as a Jewish Pharisee was not supposed to touch dead things, took care of Jesus’s dead body. 

    Christianity hinges so much on the resurrection, but the reconciliation of sinners to God happened through the atonement, which happened when God died as a human.  To see the Bible or word of God as dead, irrelevant, or even false could be part of seeing Christ on the cross as the sinner that he wasn’t, and I do not doubt that whole cultures could take that view and be saved.

Comments about Revelation

    Well everyone, you are probably wondering why I have not blogged yet about my recent reading of the book of Revelation from the Bible.  Well it is because I am a little shaken up by it. I skimmed the book of John a few days before, and I felt like that book was almost exactly what Jesus might have written himself, and then a few days later, I read the book of Revelation, written by John who said he was “in the spirit” when he wrote it.  I believe that. I believe it is definitely true.  I can’t remember if I was at the mall when I read it or at the mall right after I read it, but something about being at the mall and thinking about all those scary but amazing things really made me want to not see people get scorched or singed by the lake of fire.  It is definitely not a joke and I am thankful that the worst part has already happened, which is when Christ got the wrath of God heaped on him and defeated death.  That was the sixth seal, that was opened kind of like a game show but out of the seven seals that get opened, that one is the one where the price is right womp womp womp losing horn definitely sounded.  It had to do with death and wrath and a certain number that I won’t mention but is the reason why 777 is a jackpot number.  Then during the seventh seal there was thirty minutes of silence in heaven.  That is interesting and I wonder what was going on or what will someday happen. 

     There is also later a part in revelation where it talks about a Babylonian city of prostitution being destroyed forever and all of God’s people rejoicing over its permanent destruction.  I think it has to do with all cultures of trafficking and abuse and bad movies that are projected into cities that could have been nice places to live. People joke about stuff like that and there is a restaurant called “Babylon” near the hospital where I get my mental illness treatment.  But if you read revelation you will see that you do not want to be part of that problem.  The book’s description about how people who believe in Jesus will endure and prevail and are “called, chosen, and faithful,” is comforting and I found it to have an inclusive feel to it and not as exclusive as I sometimes fear.  One of the highlights in the book is the description of multitudes of people from all tribes and nations gathering around God and saying “Salvation belongs to the Lord,” etc.  There are too many people to count, and I think the way it is phrased leaves a possibility that even with that crowd they could still be representatives for even more people. Also, I think it is interesting because it might mean that we see a storyline that makes us realize that everything good that happened was from God and things were not as much up to us as we would want to take credit for sometimes.  But towards the end there is a mention not just of wanting to have your name in the Book of Life, but other books that have recorded people’s goodness and deeds. It sounds kind of like a stack of books but it really could be a whole library that includes books and stories written by cartoon animals. People might say not to say stuff like that but I think people’s guardian angel animals might have recorded a lot of indisputable interpretations of things that happen, and a merciful and kind perception of people’s lives and suffering. Anyway a key word from the book is forever and ever.  The beast that makes us have to be patient in these times will be punished and tormented forever and ever.  Aside from that, there is also a “second death” in the lake of fire for people like bad Babylon entities. I think there is kind of a possibility of total destruction for some people instead of eternal torment, which might help anyone who is confused by warnings about hell that make it sound like God has decided to torture us forever if we make even one mistake.  Some theology does come across that way sometimes.

    Anyway this new information about the Book of Life and other books might change some of my perceptions about Judgement Day and make me expect more poetic justice and a literary scene as opposed to a huge network of courtroom trials and a TV show that mixes the Price is Right with the People’s court, Dante’s Inferno, and Bosch’s Judgement Day paintings. It honestly could be as simple as going to a nice sunlit room in a calm library, reading a children’s book about breakfast food, and remembering that you did in fact invite your sad friend to the diner that time, or that you didn’t steal anything else from the mall after learning your lesson from the little stone cross pendant incident in middle school.

This is my best theory everyone

     Ok everyone, I mentioned the ten commandments in that other post, and 

I just want to say that several years ago, I noticed something about the phrasing of the commandments that I think is very interesting. People say sometimes that the commandment that says “honor your father and mother and you will live a long life,” or something like that, is the only commandment that has a promise.  But I actually have this other suspicion, which is that since the commandments are phrased like “You shall not steal,” and “you shall not lie,” then really they are all promises.  I think they might be an announcement of God’s promise that eventually his people will no longer sin and suffer.  Kind of like “someday, children, you will no longer covet.” Has anyone ever heard that before?  I really can’t believe that no one else would notice that.  And I think there could also be a Presbyterian interpretation that is even broader, which has to do with the word “eventually” or “someday” being a wrong word for me to say, and that the promise really is “You will not steal,” based on the total forgiveness provided by Christ, even in storyline format where the happy ending, or really the happy neverending, is the pre-destiny of the truly innocent.

ownership as stewardship

     I feel like responding to some teaching I have heard where people remind everyone that God owns everything.  The Bible says he owns the cattle on a thousand hills.  I think it is true.  “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.”  People say that we are just “stewards” and caretakers. But I just want to say that on some level he also gives gifts that belong to us in some way and people who try to pretend this is not the case sometimes can’t really live by that standard rationally.  The concept of possession is established early on in the Bible in the ten commandments that say do not steal.  Later on, when the church was getting started, people were encouraged to share everything, but this expression of love still depends on people having a concept that something was voluntarily given up when it might have been otherwise. Another interesting instruction that Jesus told someone was “sell everything you have and give to the poor.”  Interestingly, he did not say give all your stuff to the poor, but sell it and give to the poor. To me, this means that we should give homeless people cash sometimes instead of food. 

     Anyway, I feel like saying this opinion because giving is one of my spiritual gifts, and I think that for giving to work, people at some time have to acknowledge having something, owning it, accepting it, acquiring it, and any other form of possession.  And I think you can be more generous and more grateful when you face the reality that things can be yours or not yours. And it becomes a little bit nonsensical to really try to believe that the pair of shoes you wear every day isn’t really yours but either a loan or Jesus Christ’s shoes that he just happens to not be wearing and doesn’t intend to wear at any time throughout eternity.

       Anyway, I usually hear that teaching a lot from people who have a lot. They get what they need and then say it is God’s. But it is confusing when you are missing basic needs because of injustice and people say even what you have isn’t yours. And you know they are telling you that because if it were up to them you would not have that either.