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.

Upsides of Dark sides

This post might seem risky or controversial, but I am just listing three benefits to our most horrible sins. I am not talking about playing cards. I am talking about the stuff that people really do feel horrible about, and habits we would really avoid if we could.  I am not even going to list examples because of the grief I know some people have.  But I wanted to say three things that I think can be extreme benefits of all our weaknesses that we would give anything not to have, but for some reason, haven't chosen to give that "anything."

Sin as a reminder of what has been overcome:  I think our failures can be a reminder of just what kind of obstacles and character weaknesses we have defeated already in our lives. Failing sometimes can help us and others see the big picture that all the good stuff did come at a great risk and cost.  The success and even survival that we do have was never guaranteed, and we might have always been right on the brink of the worst case scenario.  This view gives all righteousness credit for being the miracle that it is.

Sin as a healing consolation for other people who could be jealous or ashamed:

In the long run, for most people who have asked God for mercy and help in this life, it will be very apparent that we are his people and have tried to be good. And it will be so apparent that anyone who tried to thwart that mission will be utterly humiliated.  It is a tragedy, but some of our truly terrible sins might be a comfort for anyone who took the wrong side and whose own weaknesses happened to involve good people as their target.

Sin as the inevitable shadow of a lifestyle that actually is heroic:

People will disagree with me, but I think some sins and even sin habits happen as kind of a flip side for certain ways of life that actually are mostly righteous and might be part of people most being their true self. An example I can think of would be someone like a boss of a pizza business who curses a lot.  Well some people don't curse at all, and that is great, but what I am saying is that if you provide pizza for hundreds of people every day and are making an honest living like that, but you can't manage to do it without cursing, then people should see that cursing as kind of the collateral damage of a life being very well spent and has a lot of other self control.

I could say more about some of this, but the main thing is that good people don't like being sinners, and we are sinners.  It is part of life and it is not fun.  But even the worst of it can sometimes be seen as a work-related injury in the difficult mission of being a good person.

On the right tract

I love this tract and I wanted to share it.  It is great, and hopefully it is true, though I may not be certain until I have actually gone a million years without burning.  The final remainder of my faith will be like a party favor for God at my millionth birthday party in a moment of suspense as he takes out some matches, strikes up a flame as if to ignite a yawning chasm, but then lights the candles on my cake.

A little surprise for God

Well everyone, I have a few blog topics in mind for this blog and I do think of a lot of stuff very often for it.  But all I will say now is that I am thinking about starting to call God "Gosh" when I pray, like to say "Dear Gosh, please help me with such and such." Like it could just be a little nickname for him kind of like he has a new name for each person written on a white rock that will be revealed someday during the book of Revelation.

Church Bulletin

Ok everyone, I have been posting and unposting things on some of my blogs lately, but I think this is a nice safe post.  It is simply a thing I have been wondering as a person who is mostly a Protestant and worries about other people's salvation and sometimes thinks like a Catholic.  It actually has to do with the new testament section where the believers get called "A Royal Priesthood." So here is my question:  If all believers are priests, and I do think that is the idea, then who are the parishoners?  People can say that it means we are priests for each other, but I actually think people do not usually use the term "priest" that loosely in the Old or the New Testament.  David was told he could not be a priest because he killed people, and the whole book of Hebrews is about how qualified for priesthood Christ is.  So I think the concept of the "priesthood of the believer" is a big deal and a very exciting thing, but I also am wondering if it means that there could be another exciting role for people who haven't latched onto Christianity in the ways that make me not worry about them. Sometimes everything hinges on the "laypeople," of churches, and I am wondering if all the people who have signed up for church are getting trained to administer grace in more substantial ways than we realize for anyone in our world, including people who might be participating in God's kingdom more than we are allowed to believe after putting so much stock in official sinner's prayers for salvation. There seem to be a lot of verses that have to get ignored for people's mechanical systematic theology to take shape from a survey of the Bible, and I personally think that this Royal Priesthood idea is one of them.

Not All Talk

Sometimes people will say stuff about other people "talking a good game," and sometimes people are concerned about their own ability to deliver on promises and their professed ideals.  And avoiding hypocrisy can actually become a tormenting obsession for people who are trying to live up to high standards.  But I have thought sometimes that maybe some of the people who seem to be all talk might actually have some kind of communication gift and for them to actually do what they believe in would mean being a speaker of some kind and focusing their energy and strength on talking or writing and being the people to say all the stuff that might be hard to do.  Maybe for some people talking the talk is also the walk that is expected of them.  And maybe that is why preachers get blamed for hypocrisy so often.  Maybe their job really is to tell everyone else what to do and people should be more understanding that for them, speaking is action.

Eels and Seals

I recently was thinking about staying out of touch with some people so I would not be grieved by problems that I did not want to know about, and I also have been thinking about how Jesus told his disciples to shake the dust off their feet when they left the houses of people who rejected the faith in Christ that was offered to them.  I wondered if Jesus told them to do that with their feet because there could be demonic snake spirits trying to hurt them and maybe they could be physically flung off.  I really have wondered if there are all kinds of warnings about that stuff in the Bible that is not that obvious so as not to scare everyone.  But anyway, both of these trains of thought made me think about something from when I was a kid, which is my consistent policy of never wearing goggles when I am swimming in the ocean.  I simply do not want to know what is lurking in the waters. And I think it is something to think about when there are all kinds of things we do not understand or do not know.  It might be that one of the purposes behind simple faith and a flashlight in life that only shows part of the path is that we are better off just getting through stuff and then later watching the movie that shows the giant dragons and monsters and leeches that wanted to hurt everyone, or even the kind angels and angel pets whose love would have distracted us from getting to all the goals ahead of us, which sometimes might include calling some kind of pest control.

Patron Atheists of Saints

Well everyone, I am writing this blog post in the middle of the night and I think that it will be kind of condensed compared to what it could have been with a little more thought.  But now is when I feel like writing it.  It is about something that I have known for a long time and only think about occasionally, and it has to do with the frequent greatness of atheists.  Well people might immediately detect some evangelical flattery like here I am trying to butter up the atheists so they will convert.  But that is really not what I am doing, precisely because I have learned that so many atheists truly are so great the way they are and are helpful not just to people in general but to Christians, and especially Christians with religion problems. I could share my testimony about this sometime in a church, which might not really be welcome, but I actually think it would still match the Christian teaching about all humans being made in God's image and therefore all having the potential or maybe even guaranteed destiny of reflecting his greatness.  I used to want to write a book called "The Heathens Declare the Glory of God," but gave up after a google search that did not list that many good deeds by atheists.  But there are a lot of good deeds, and I think that their honest confessions of atheism can be some of the good that they do.  It does provide instant intellectual accountability to all the so called theologians, and it also is an acceptance of responsibility to get stuff done without waiting for prayers to be answered.  That could seem like such a sin, but I am thinking that it often could be less of a sin than leaving stuff undone because of either a belief that it wasn't up to us or a lazy decision to convince people that something was God's responsibility apart from humans.

    I also think that there can be a purity of motives among atheists who are not seeking rewards from heaven from their friendships and who are not deliberately trying to advance an ideology they have limited knowledge of during every single interaction with people.  As much as not having a conscious Christian purpose might really be a waste for a lot of people, it can also free them to fulfill potential in other ways that still benefit humanity, including church people, who might have had to give up some otherwise very worthwhile endeavors to live their whole lives guessing what a fisherman from 2000 years ago wants them to do.

   The fact is that the atheist souls and minds can be such a relief to be around, and for all the times Christians have used "unbelievers" to improve our own stats, so many atheists' forgiveness and service and unyielding promotion of the good news of God's patience and mercy should also be acknowledged as a very uncommon grace and special revelation.

Is glory something different from recognition, and much less stealable?

   Well everyone, I have thought of a little blog post idea that I think actually is theological, and it is about glory, what it is, and what it means to try to glorify yourself and take credit that does not belong to you.  I am actually truly wondering something that might have more to do with the definition of glory, and whether it is some kind of greatness, or instead, some kind of acknowledgement of greatness.

    What I am wondering is whether glory is an objective thing that belongs to God no matter what and "trying to take the glory for yourself" is a matter of trying to take credit for the glory, and possibly deceiving others so that people's perception, and only their perception, is erroneous.  To look at it this way could still mean that whatever is glorious, like a touchdown or a well cooked meal, is still glorious and the glory still belongs to God, but that people's acknowledgement of that reality is what is the problem.

   To me, the other possibility is that the glory is the credit, and when people glorify themselves, they actually have truly taken the glory itself away from where it belongs and have acquired something that was up for grabs in some way.  So they now possess something that was not supposed to be theirs. 

     A third possibility is that there is still some glory outside of the credit and recognition and it is stealable, kind of like the blessing that Jacob in the Bible got so sneakily.  That sounds confusing, but in another story, which is the Mt. Sinai story in the Bible when Moses or someone has to hide in the cleft of the mountain as God walks by, there is some kind of glory that is dangerous to behold, and it seems a little different than the kind of "giving credit where it is due" recognition that so many people talk about today.

    I think there might be Bible verses that support either view, but I lean toward thinking that glory is some aspect of reality that happens because of God's goodness, so it already belongs to him, and the credit is something different that also belongs to him, and any problem that the humans are having with recognition, no matter on what kind of scale it is, is just some weird mind trick that leaves people being fooled but can't take any actual glory away from anyone in reality or in the view that most matters, which is God's continual accurate perception of all that he has created and made great.
    It may be that simple dictionary definitions could clear this up, or that this is something basic that all pastors learn in seminary and have talked about while I have been at Starbucks, but to me it seems like what people usually talk about when they talk about glory has to do with kneeling in football endzones, and I feel like there might be something else that is, thankfully, unstealable, and knowing this could take some pressure off people.  It could also help people focus on doing truly great things instead of doing mediocre things while spending their real concentration on making it all an ad campaign for Christianity.