Whose Fault Is It Anyway ...

We have discussed in prior posts the concept of blaming God for things that happen to us rather than accepting personal responsibility.  We came to the conclusion that “bad” things happening to “good” people is a myth.  Most “things” that happen to us are a natural consequence of our own actions and as for being “good”, none of us really are.  Being a Christian is not a guarantee against pain and trauma in our lives, it is rather a method for dealing with pain and trauma.  However the concept of blaming God is not limited to our physical lives, it is sometimes put forward in our spiritual lives as well.

The argument goes along these lines … “if God created me with the capability to sin, then he bears responsibility for it when I do”.  A further even more refined argument is … “if God is responsible for my faith, and my salvation, and my attainment of perfection, then isn’t he at fault when I do not reach those things”.  Both of these arguments are powerful.  In point of fact we did not invent them, Lucifer did.  And he used them to attempt to persuade the entire universe that God was in fact a tyrant ultimately responsible for everything Lucifer would do, and cause us to do.  The remainder of the universe may not have chosen to side with Lucifer, but the power of this argument was enough to keep them listening … until the cross.

These arguments are further exacerbated by the idea that we MUST become as little children, fully dependant on God to perform the changes we need on our behalf.  The anti-evil teaching of humility and dependence seems to itself bolster the idea that if we have not already reached a state of perfection, God must be to blame.  It seems logical.  How can we have complete dependence on God, and still assign Him no responsibility for our continued condition in sin?  So if I have fully surrendered my will to God and I sin, then isn’t it God who allowed me to sin?

The primary problem with this line of thinking is not only its logical conclusion, but its motivation in the first place.  Logically this idea leads us to believe that if we sin, God must know about it as He is in charge of us, and therefore somehow our sin must have God’s OK.  Consequently we are OK just as we are, on the process of becoming pure and holy.  As if God somehow could “wink” at our cute little sins we commit.  Like a parent who finds the temper tantrum of his two-year-old just “so adorable”.  It’s not.  Most outside observers think the two-year-old situation needs to be addressed.  The things we do that supposedly God would be “winking” at do not consist of just stamping our feed and screaming, we hurt each other, badly.  All sin is insidious.  All sin brings pain – to us, to others, and to God.  All sin is destructive on many levels and intended for our ultimate demise.  There is NO tolerance for any sin in the eyes of God.

As mentioned, it is the motivation of this entire line of thinking that is of greater concern.  The idea of trying to excuse sin rather than exterminate sin is the HUGE problem.  We should be seeking to eliminate sin entirely.  Looking for loopholes in our concept of salvation is the first sign we are looking for the wrong things.  It is the freedom FROM sin we seek, not the excuse to remain BOUND to it.  We treat sin like it is the “good” or the “fun” thing we cannot imagine giving up, when in fact, it is candy made of sugar and cyanide.  Sin is contagious cancer without remission, it looks to infect us and everyone around us, trying to kill us all, painfully.  Running towards this outcome rather than away from it is what the scripture calls the “mystery of iniquity”.

But even when we do seek to eliminate sin from our lives, is there still any truth to the idea of holding God responsible?  Morris Vendon once gave an analogy of our spiritual lives as being in car on a highway.  God asks if He can drive.  Over time we learn to let Him, since every time we do it we crash and burn.  He fixes us up and puts us back on the road and asks to drive again.  But letting Him drive is not the end of the road.  As we being to head out what seems like a brick wall is something God appears to be heading straight for.  We grab the wheel and turn the car into the ditch.  God remains patient and fixes us up, puts us back on the road, and asks to drive again.  Over time we might just learn to let him drive in spite of the wall, when we do, the wall explodes just prior to us making contact with it and we travel on the road completely unharmed.  This is the nature of God overcoming sin on our behalf.  He can really only be effective, when we let Him.

I would take this analogy a bit further.  The reason we so often grab the wheel when we see the approaching brick wall of sin on our road, is that we are too focused on the “road” and not on “the driver”.  We get so obsessed with sin by looking intently at it, that we fall into it through our own weakness and inherent nature.  Instead of looking so hard at the road, and the brick wall on it, we should just stare at Jesus.  It is hard to fall in the presence of the Lord.  It is hard to remember why we liked something as destructive as sin, when spending time with the source of all LOVE, or all truly good things.  Were we to ignore the road, and the wall, and focus only on Him, our trip would have less grabbing the wheel, and more making time down the road itself.

Our basic problem in the process of salvation is that we remain capable of exerting our control over it.  Every time we do, we crash and burn.  Our supreme effort, our horribly difficult task, our “work” if you wish to see it that way is to surrender to God and focus only on Him.  We are not the first humans to have to do this.  Remember that when Christ was on this earth, He remained God in man.  He could have used His divine power to solve any problem, avoid any conflict, save Himself any pain.  He did not.  He surrendered His will to that of His Father.  He surrendered His divine power and did nothing for Himself only for others.  He surrendered to Dad.  So must we.

Another analogy of God working with us is that of the clay pot maker.,  God molds us, sculpts us, puts us through the fires to make us stronger, and changes us from mere dirt to something beautiful and something to be used in service to others.  What does the clay do for its part?  Get molded.  Get cooked.  Get decorated.  What happens if the clay decides to “change” this thing or that thing?  You get some bumps in the design, and what is supposed to be a vessel that holds water is too crooked to sit on a shelf or keep the water in the pot.  In short, the clay cannot do anything to improve the work of the Master, but it can do plenty to mess it up.  So like we.  We are incapable of making ourselves into something of use, but we are MORE than capable of messing up all the work God does for us and in us.  This is where the “work” of surrender comes in.

And before you get all crazy happy thinking you finally have a work to do in the process of saving yourself, Nope.  What you have, is the identification of the first thing you need for God to help you change about yourself in order that other things can fall like dominos.  God help us to learn how to surrender our will to You – Nope.  God take over our will completely, change us in our core, make us Yours and not of this world.  This is the prayer we must pray and such a DANGEROUD prayer it is.  Because it is a real one, with real results.  We may not rise from our knees a perfect being, for our inclination to grab the wheel is a strong one.  But this is prayer that allows God to finally begin molding the clay of our lives.  Surrender to the will of God each day, each hour, in each trying circumstance is the way to let Him drive, let Him sculpt the outcome, and allows us to rest in our focus on Him.

Finally, God is not to blame for our downfall, He is to be given praise for our salvation.  For God is the author and the FINISHER of our salvation.  He does not takes us part way there and leave us on the side of road, He completed the journey FOR us.  This is the depth of the love of the God we serve, and why He alone is so WORTHY…

Broken Trust ...

So why are we not in a state of perfection, what happened to us that we find ourselves in these surroundings, instead of a world without evil?  The simple answer is broken trust, but we will examine that a bit further.  To set the scene you must remember that we were created in perfection.  Adam and Eve walked daily with our Creator God who communed with them in the evenings.  He setup a weekly day off from their normal duties to focus even more on the relationship with Him.  They were surrounded by a huge variety of plants and animals (in perfect harmony), none of which ever got old, decayed or died.  They were a happy couple, united in purpose, and truly enjoying the intimacy of their relationship without argument, or any other problems.  It was literally Heaven on earth.

But prior to our creation, a dichotomy had arisen in the Universe.  Lucifer (now Satan) had challenged the character of God – accused Him of being a tyrant who forced His own rules or killed the opposition.  One by one, Satan presented his case to all the other intelligent beings throughout the Universe, but none chose to break their trust in their Creator.  All other worlds kept faith with God, leaving our world as the last hope for him to gain supporters.  We were the newest creations, the least experienced.  Comparatively we would not be able to stand one-on-one with Satan and defeat him.  So one of the first counsels we received from God was to stay together – Adam and Eve should remain in each other’s presence.  They should not separate and find themselves alone in the garden.  Together they would strengthen each other, but alone they may not be able to withstand what was coming.

God would have been guilty of Satan’s charge if He would not permit evil any access to our world.  In order for our love for God to be real, it must be a truly free choice.  If we chose it, God would allow us to choose to break trust with Him.  He would not ‘control’ our free will or our destiny.  God never forces anyone to serve Him.  It is sad how many times, religious fanatics use the name of God to take the lives of those who disagree with them – when this is the farthest idea from the character of God.  So Satan was permitted to establish a tree – aptly titled ‘the tree of knowledge of good and of evil’.  Given that no-one in the Universe had ever experienced evil before, no-one really knew what evil was like.  Every being had naturally chosen only good, therefore only really God understood the consequences of where evil would lead.  This ‘evil’ tree would bear fruit.  How highly symbolic that evil always bears fruit, or has consequences from embracing it.  I’m sure, given how well Satan markets death to us, and sells it as if it were the greatest thing we could ever obtain – this tree was likely stunningly beautiful.  I’m sure the fruit was easily accessible at eye-level, no work at all on getting it.  And so Satan established his foothold on our world, and waited for a moment of our vulnerability.

And one day it occurred.  Eve found herself both alone and near the forbidden tree.  God had counseled our first parents to stay together, and away from this tree altogether.  The eating of the ‘forbidden’ fruit would symbolize the breaking of our trust with God, and be an act of subservience to Satan.  And here stood Eve.  Upon realization that she was alone, she should have immediately attempted to locate Adam, had she done this, we would be living in Paradise.  She did not.  Instead she studied the forbidden tree.  Studying evil never yields a positive result; avoiding evil is FAR more productive.  She was drawn closer to the tree by a phenomenon she did not understand.  She looked in the tree and noticed a snake.  The original design of snakes included wings allowing them flight.  They were considered one of the most beautiful creatures in the garden.  But this snake began speaking to Eve.  This was unheard of.  The only creatures capable of thoughts, and speech in the garden till now, had been Adam and Eve.  This was no ordinary snake.  It was either a snake who had been taken over, or possessed by Satan – or it was simply Satan in the guise of a snake.  A superior intellect, that existed long before we did, might have knowledge of how to manipulate atoms to reshape an object, or perhaps learn how to control a willing subject altogether.  In short, a talking snake was in the realm of the ‘supernatural’.  There was no logical explanation for Eve, and she was curious how this could occur.

Eve fell into a trap.  You see, our enemy studies us relentlessly to determine our weaknesses.  He flattered Eve with her beauty, then appealed to her reason, by offering her an easy way to achieve wisdom equal to that of God Himself.  He used his deception to ease her fears.  After all He was not dead.  He was talking, a talking snake.  It must be true what he was saying, as what else could explain it.  Seems reasonable.  How often does the argument to do evil seem reasonable?  How often do we accept the premise; a lesser of two evils, rather than rejecting either choice and only doing good?  How often does ‘evil’ present itself as the only ‘logical’ explanation, therefore declaring evil as truth when it is not?  Satan was in fact calling God a liar.  It may be that he implied God was not being straight with us for our own good, that He did not trust us with this information.  Or it may be, that Satan implied God was jealous about His understanding of evil and did not want to share it with anyone for fear they would be as wise as He was.  Both accusations were false.  In fact, everything Satan has ever accused God with, he was guilty of himself.  But Eve, alone and relying on her own wisdom, chose to break trust with God, and put her trust in what she could see, hear, and speak with.  And sin entered our world.  But it’s position of dominance was not yet completed.

Upon eating the fruit, Eve brought some to Adam, and relayed what had happened.  Eve did not intend harm to herself or Adam.  Like most insidious evil plots, the consequences may not be immediately seen or felt, but they come.  Her motives were unimportant; her intentions did not outweigh her actions.  And effectively Eve would be the delivery system of evil to the very one she loved the most.  Eve was stained with the ‘AIDS’ of sin, and was now eager to give it to her husband, without even knowing.  Eve was deceived.  Adam was not. 

Adam saw through the flimsy arguments the ‘serpent’ had made and recognized the fallacy of evil.  He knew the real score.  Now he was faced with a decision.  Eve was destined to die.  His wife, the love of his life, his soul-mate, the perfect woman he had grown to have the perfect marriage with was now destined to die.  He could not imagine a way out of this situation.  He knew God only spoke truth.  If God had said not to do this, or you would die, He was telling the truth.  Eve must die.  Adam could not save her.  And Adam too, for completely different reasons, some might consider them even noble reasons, chose to break trust with God.  Had he chosen not to do this, we might still be living in paradise.  God’s plan would have been put into effect to save Eve, and we would never have been subjected to Satan’s strong influence in our world.  But Adam chose to love his wife, more than He loved or trusted his God.  How often do we do the same?  How often do we sacrifice what we know to be true for the sake of ‘love’ of a mate who does not share our convictions of truth?  This is an age old problem, who has been claiming victims for evil ever since the start of our world.  Better to trust God, more even than our spouse.

Upon eating this fruit, both began to decay morally almost immediately.  They realized they were naked, and became ashamed.  Instead of craving the company of God, they had put distance between them and now feared God’s presence.  When He came calling in the evening, they were vainly attempting to hide themselves from Him.  When asked for an explanation of what happened, they began by placing blame on other creations of God, effectively saying “it’s Your fault for creating this stuff.”  That noble love Adam chose over his God went right out the window, immediately selling-out Eve as the reason for his choice.  Eve blames the snake.  And the snake has got nothing to say.  The consequences were swift and immediate.  The snake was cursed to crawl on his belly, his wings were removed, and he would be hated by almost every other creature in nature.  The ground was cursed.  Thorns, pests, and difficulty tending the soil would now be experienced.  Death entered in the world.  Animals would now begin feeding on each other.  Our parents would be forced to leave the garden paradise, and wear the skins God gave them for clothing.  God would no longer walk directly with man, as our evil could not tolerate the presence of perfection.  A new method of worship and communion would be established (we’ll talk about this later).  Having children would now be done in much pain.  A woman would not be subservient to her husband, no longer equals.  We would no longer have access to the ‘tree of life’, and with this separation, would grow old and as God had stated, we would die.  What a horrific burden to bear.  Imagine the guilt they would carry as they witnessed the results of these choices.

But all hope was not lost.  God revealed his plan to man for the first time.  God revealed to man that He loved us so much, he would lay down his life for us, pay our penalty, and restore us to Himself.  Our world, and our sense of morality would decay.  We would be subject to the influence of Satan in our surroundings.  But we could choose to put our trust back in God, and if we listened to Him, we would begin to reconcile again with Him – we would avoid our birthright of pain, and claim His gift of life, joy, and discernment.  Therein lies a key lessen in our journey to discover our God, listening to what He tells us is imperative to our survival.  He will not kill us if we disobey, we will achieve this goal ourselves.  It is our misery He wants us to end and avoid.  Remember He is saving us from pain and self-inflicted misery.  Oh how wonderful we are not destined to misery, but have been reclaimed by Salvation…

Root of All Evil ...

This week a favorite comedian of mine Lewis Black launched the premier of his new show entitled “The Root of all Evil” on Comedy Central’s network.  The premise is simple.  A mock debate is held examining 2 things from our culture (this week it was the Catholic Church vs. Oprah Winfrey), to determine which one better represents the “root of all evil”.  At the show’s conclusion, Lewis makes the decision of who wins … or loses as your perspective might be inclined.  The show is OK but does not present itself to be a runaway hit (too little Lewis Black, too much debate).  But it did get me thinking about where evil stems from in our world.  Is it all internal to us?  Is it truly our nature?  Are we to blame?  Does blame even matter?

Where does evil come from within us?  Lewis might have you believe it comes from worshipping Oprah too much.  Some say the easy catch phrase, “the devil made me do it”.  Some do not believe that a devil truly exists.  So where does evil come from?  We recognize evil when we see it; usually of course, in others, not in ourselves.  We ‘know’ it is evil because it causes ‘us’ pain.  Nothing ‘good’ would cause ‘us’ pain, therefore it must be evil.  Then comes the question, why would this evil be perpetrated on us?  What did we ever do to deserve this evil treatment?  For those that subscribe to the idea that there is no devil at all, I wonder what conclusion they reach regarding this phenomenon.

But it is all too easy, to simply write off evil behavior as devil originated.  That is a cop-out Christians like to use rather than examine the issue any deeper and find evil has origins within them.  It is also a bit egotistical to believe that the supreme master of evil has his full attention directed solely at you so that you … run the red light, break your diet, miss a commitment; you get the idea.  I doubt the devil needs to trouble himself for you to participate in these menial evil tributes.  No, more likely these patterns of shortcut and self indulgence start right within you.  Within the core of who you are.  Not a pleasant prospect I grant you.

Where does this desire to gratify self come from?  When you think about evil in terms of behavior, you begin to see a real pattern emerge.  Most every ‘sin’ you can identify starts with the concept of somehow pleasing one’s self.  Theft, lust, gluttony, adultery, fornication all have to do with immediate gratification without regard to consequences.  Lies, murder, even wars, have to do with covering up bad behavior once it has been committed.  Disregarding God, treating people as objects, greed, apathy to the environment or to others – all have to do with a consistent focus on self at the expense of others.  Self.  Looking inward.  Trying to please #1.  It is all the true root of all evil.  And that root seems to have taken hold in all of us.

Is it pure genetics?  Another way for Christians to rationalize their evil deeds, is by writing them off to inheritance.  My mom did it, and my grandma before her, so if I do it, I am predisposed by my genetic code.  Anyway go back far enough and you can simply blame Adam for dooming our inherent natures.  Or can you?  Is it really your mom’s fault that YOU are so self oriented?  Did your parents teach you to disregard all others in order to gratify self?  For that to truly have happened there had to have been no discipline for you as a child, so sense of right and wrong ever instilled within you by anyone or anything in your environment.  And now, I am talking literally only about people like Charles Manson (apologies to his parents if I am wrong).  Charlie just did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong and it came out in his behavior.  But if you’re able to stay out of prison, and refrain from killing innocents, you must have some sort of moral compass.  Weak as it may be, it can hardly be blamed on your genetics as now you are of the age of reason and accountability.

The blame for this condition is an interesting question as well.  Genetics do predispose you to certain behaviors but do not dictate you perform them.  Once patterns of behavior have become habits, or worse addictions, they can be extraordinarily hard to curtail, but addicts can experience recovery should they choose to begin the process of healing.  So where does blame enter in?  Do we blame the criminally insane for their behavior, or do we excuse it to a certain extent due to their “illness.”  Aren’t we all ‘sick’ with our sinful condition?  Does God look at us and see us as criminally insane.  Who else but a lunatic would choose to inflict pain on themselves and others?  Yet ALL of us do this on a daily basis, sometimes with premeditation, sometimes with absolute malice of forethought, sometimes based on the spur-of-the-moment.  But we do it.  We choose to inflict pain on ourselves and on others.  Why?  Are we in fact criminally insane?  Is there any real difference between us and Charlie Manson short the murders?  And more to the point, does our insanity somehow excuse our behavior.

That is often what people look for, an excuse to misbehave, rather than a way to stop misbehaving.  We all gripe about the length of the red light on the road, and the never ending traffic, and slow pokes in front of us – until when presented with a questionable call we run the ‘yellow’ light and try to get home 5 minutes faster.  An accumulation of excuses, to ‘justify’ our errant behavior.  When placed beside a grieving parent for the loss of the child who dies in a car accident from our running a red light, the entire line of reasoning seems petty at best.  All of the sudden our selfish nature has accidentally inflicted catastrophic calamity on others – all for a mere 5 minutes early arrival at home from work.  Can the grief be reduced by pointing out the tragedy of never-ending traffic?  I doubt it.

So how do we kill this ravenous beast that lives within us?  How do we dispel this insatiable need to gratify self at every moment of the day?  Maybe it takes killing us.  Maybe this is why Christ referred to being born-again when counseling Nicodemus late one evening.  To die to self, and be reborn for service to others.  The nature of God is to serve.  The nature of Satan is to gratify self.  These two concepts are mutually exclusive.  They can have no part in each other.  There is no compromise here.  One path leads to misery, and the murder of the creator of all life.  The other leads to bliss, and an eternity of meaningful existence.  Comparatively, it would take an insane person to choose death and misery.

But what about the blind?  What about those who do not believe that a life of self gratification is really such a bad thing?  Honestly any level of introspection would quickly dispel this idea.  But those who wish to live in a state of immediate gratification do not WANT to hear truth.  They reject it, not because they truly disagree with it, but because they do not WANT to hear it.  The Pharisees in the day of Christ, rejected Him, not because they were unconvinced of His true nature.  They rejected Him because He would have forced a complete change in how they thought about service to God and others.  They liked the religion of power, and prowess they had constructed.  They enjoyed the feelings of supremacy that came from looking down on publicans, harlots, and Samaritans.   They studied scripture to gain supremacy of knowledge and of self made righteousness.  They wanted no part in humble service to others.  They did not want to see themselves how they truly were.  Nor do we.  But neither they, nor we, are truly blind – we both pretend to be blind.  We close our ears to truth that requires change because we do not want to know we need it.  We crave to feed the selfish beast inside us, and we must have silence of truth, to keep out beast well fed, and ‘happy’.  Nobody wants a downer.

Therein lays the mystery of iniquity, how self-destructive behavior is passed-off as the better way to go.  It is a mystery to the Universe at large, how we so quickly buy in to this level of crud.  Is it so hard to see truth?  Or do we just work hard to avoid ever coming in contact with it?  And if so, why?  It makes no sense.  We must tear the blinders off of our eyes and seek truth.  We must pull the cotton from our ears and hear truth.  We must not fear to change, but embrace change.  We must not fear surrender to God, but embrace surrender even to the point of our very lives.  For a life of evil is not worth living, but a life of service and meaning is what heaven is all about.  Let us not choose to be blind, nor just habitually wander into evil, rather let us search for our God to heal us, to restore our souls, to hold us in His bosom and bring us peace.  Let us choose to serve rather than be served…

Living in a Box ...

A box is a handy lightweight container we use to put things in to move them from place to place, or perhaps to store them for a while.  The idea of a box was a great one; then it infected our thinking, and now more of us seem to live out our entire lives in boxes of one form or another.  No, I’m not just talking about those of us whose “stuff” exceeds our natural ability to find a place for it, and thus boxes enter our lives and seem to stick around.  Nor am I talking about those less fortunate who seek out old appliance boxes to construct a shelter from the rain on the street.  I am talking about the compartments we setup in our minds in which goes the life we come to know.

Men are famous for their ability to compartmentalize their lives.  It is as if we are able to place all relevant connected things into a container and put it on a shelf in our mind someplace.  While engaging in an activity … say sports of one kind or another, we are completely subsumed in the current actions taking place.  When it is over, we can put away our thoughts and feelings, back into the box, back up on the shelf.  Then it is time to take down the next one and live there for a while, say the “work” box, or the “boyfriend” box.  This idea of segregating one set of activities from another allows men to see each other within different contexts.  A man can view another person as a friend in one context, and as a sports adversary in another (without ruining the friendship). 

Of course this only works if there are a set of general rules we can apply to the related activities.  Sports are a good example, because the rules of the game (both official and unofficial) are widely known and accepted.  But relationships too can be put into a box since the requirements are pretty well known and the behavior is also fairly predictable.  The routines that develop in this kind of thinking appear to be the goal of living this way.  It boils down to predictability and shared contextual experience.

Then there is God.  Man seems to have an overwhelming need to fully understand what God is.  If we could fully understand Him though, it would probably mean He was not God after all.  This logical fallacy aside, we still seem to pursue trying to put God into one of our famous box style containers.  We hurl out 2-5 adjectives to describe God and hope this is enough to cover it.  It’s not.  We use the example of Christ taking on humanity to somehow try to limit God to our context.  But He cannot be limited.  We generalize, summarize, and paraphrase – but all to no avail.  It is when we believe we have succeeded in putting God into a box, that the most heinous lies about His character are developed and cherished in our minds.

For example, there are those who believe that the God of the Old Testament had no idea about the plan of salvation.  There was no effort made to save man from his sins, only to punish him for them.  They believe the God of the Old Testament to be a God of war, of anger, and of punishment.  When placed in this context and left there, all the scripture that speaks to love is ignored in favor of all the scripture that outlines the mistakes of man, and the violence that ensues.  This view of God is logically incorrect (evil things self destruct), and a more careful read of OT scripture would prove it out.  But first the context of the reader must be enlightened to see love at every turn, rather than to ignore it in favor of violence.

Another group of believers put God into a box of love.  This would be more accurate if they did not also limit love to having no sense of justice, logic, or long term views.  New Testament believers, who place God in the Love box, throw out the Old Testament as just allegorical stories to inspire morality.  They believe that once you are saved, you are always saved.  And they tend to believe that it does not matter what you do, cause God has forgiven you for it anyway.  These people twist the concept of love, into a free-for-all for evil behavior.  Love does not seek us to harm ourselves and others, only evil does.  Love tries to save us from pain and evil, but this is overlooked as the entire concept is designed only to excuse sin, rather than escape sin.

Both groups would benefit from a quick look at simple truths such as the extinction of evil in the universe.  Those that believe love will tolerate evil forever are wrong.  Evil will be both punished and then exterminated.  Those that believe God is only the God of anger, and killing; will have a hard time explaining why the supposed “author” of these things would get rid of them for all time throughout the universe.  There will come a time when evil is no more, when all sentient beings will only continually choose to do good forever and ever.  This experiment the universe has tolerated will be ended by the eternal choices of all of its participants.

When we put God into a box of any kind, we tend to limit what He can do.  It is the nature of the box to “confine” its contents.  But some things just do not fit well in boxes, love is one of them.  Just when you think you know what love truly is, it grows again.  Have you ever looked at someone or something and told yourself you could never feel anything for that item or person?  Then some time later you find yourself with deeply held genuine feelings of affection for the very thing you used to be so casual about?  It happens.  Love can do this.  You can find love in your teens and rediscover it in your thirties.  You can endure the traumas of evil, heal from the wounds of self inflicted pain, and find love that endures is even stronger than you ever thought possible.  Love can do this.

When you take love and your relationships out of the boxes you create for them, you allow them to grow in new dimensions you never thought possible.  The very act of mentally freeing the objects of your affection from the containers you have tried to define them within is liberating and surprising.  Do you know your spouse or significant other?  How well?  How long?  Even if your answer is years, or decades, guess what – there is more for you to learn.  Just because you think you know someone, does not mean you truly do.  More often, it is a form of self deceit. 

The same is true of God.  There is no way that God can be limited; this is the very nature of the infinite.  We are not meant to get our minds fully wrapped around the nature of God, because since He is infinite, it would require an infinite amount of time to do so.  And good news; He has seen fit to give us this long.  It is not the end of the journey that will be half so important, it is the fact that we travel on it.  We pursue a deeper knowledge of God, knowing that we will never know it all, but that we can know more and more each day.  That knowledge enriches us.  It makes our lives more full.  It helps us understand love better.  And the positive thoughts and feelings we get from the pursuit will be infinite, as our journey will be infinite.

It is time for us to free our minds from the sub-containers we construct within it.  It is time we allow for the power of God to made manifest in our lives in ways we could not even conceive of.  But that is the point; we do not have to conceive of them, to see them accomplished.  We can submit, and rest in the lap of our infinite God, as He works out His will in our lives.  This is the beauty of trusting the source of all that is good, we need have no fear, whatever God brings, even the things we cannot quickly understand, are for our well being, and for the benefit of others.  I praise our infinite God for the wonder I will never fully understand, and for the opportunity He has provided to prove it …