Code Name God: Part 2

One big part, for me anyway, in understanding my position with God is the Father aspect. I think people overlook that sometimes, and take a prideful I know it better stance when contemplating God. 

It can be hard to grasp if you're not a parent, but if you can remember when you were a kid there was a time to just trust your parents. We didn’t have the wisdom to fully understand the sitch yet. With age comes wisdom, right? Here I sit at 39 still working on grasping this natural world...how long would it take to grasp the supernatural? Again taking the perspective that God is real, I’m still just a baby at 39. Look at it like this. We were created to live for eternity. For discussion sake stretch out your arms all the way, and we’ll call that eternity. Now take the smallest speck on your pinky nail and that is still not as small as 39 years. Our wisdom level in that perspective is of an infant, we just can’t grasp it yet.

Bad things happening is not God’s intention. He created us to live for ever, to never be sick, sad, or feel the sting of death. So He created our kind, our nature, He created man, Adam and Eve. In the garden we had it all, we loved God and He walked with us. God created us with free will, because He wanted us to love Him by choice, our love would be pure. We would be different from the angels, not conscripted to service. 

Now in the garden was a few different trees bearing fruit, a couple in particular where, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God told us just don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. One rule man, just one, and we kept it until tempted. Now here is where some will differ, who tempted us? Wether the fall of Satan happened before or after this is unknown and irrelevant. The big thing is how the temptation was presented, “You can be just like God”. 

When Satan split from God his battle cry was to big like God or better. That is the temptation that struck a cord with our pride, so yum yum. Now we knew evil, we knew fleshly desires, and they sure were appealing. Our free will was turned on it’s head. God as any parent had to act. He had to act because if we ate from the tree of life we would live forever. We would have no consequences for any of our actions because we would never die. We would have no reason to come back to God, He would be useless to us, and we would be permanently lost. So we were banished from the garden, given a world that would be overgrown with thorns (hard times), and our bodies would be subject to disease and death. It must not have been easy for God, but in a round about way He did it to save us. The whole, this is going to hurt me more than you. I hate disciplining my kids, but I know they need it. Now when God comes to the Earth as Jesus this gets resolved, another story completely.   

Our bad actions are, just that, ours. How can we hold God accountable for what we did? He gave us everything and just one simple rule to follow and we couldn’t follow it. In fact  we were so arrogant we went after the tree to make us like God not the tree giving everlasting life. Now is it fair? I would assume most people think it’s not. I remember thinking a lot of punishments as unfair when I was a kid. We may ask why are we all punished for one persons actions. Can’t we find many examples of that in the world? Don’t some of our laws take away from many innocents because of the actions of a few guilty? But perspectively, we are all guilty, we all fall short. Adam is us, he is a representation of our core. 

Death, disease, violence, and suffering it’s all our fault. Our original sin set this all in motion. God doesn’t let it happen. In our prideful nature we are so much smarter than him and we chose to do it.

Later Jesus will come to pay the price and provide a road back to God. So God doles out the curse, but came to pay the price for the road back. We are all prodigals.

If God is real, why does He let bad things happen?.....it’s all on us.

Code Name God: Part 1

So I thought I’d start series on God. Fun topic to me. In light of recent events seems like the God topic is popular again. I’ve seen a fair amount of people using some common questions to challenge the existence of God. What I find interesting is the strategy of the questioning. Reasons being used to prove God does no exists are failed expectations that God never guaranteed. In fact, the Bible tells the exact argument being used was going to happen.

Question: If God was real, why would He let bad things happen?

The hard part is people expect a secular answer in a short sentence to rebut this argument. Also most making these arguments will not except an answer they don’t like. They look at them as excuses. Any answer given is going to be from the perspective that God exists, because that is the context of the question. So logically the staunch non believer will reject any answer.

No answer on this is short or easy. My best recommendation is if you really want to know about God, get yourself to a Biblical church, that teaches the Bible verse by verse from Genesis to Revelation. Go for a year, yes a year. It’s going to take time to expose yourself to a big portion of the Bible. After every Bible study go to the pastors let them know you don’t believe in God and have serious questions. Challenge them, take your challenge straight to the, lack of a better word, source. I recommend Calvary Chapel. It has been a Bible based church to me. Sundays have been like going to class, I find no other agenda there, other than teaching the Bible.

Now you may be set in your opinion, that’s fine then let it be. Why ask questions if you’ll never accept an answer.

I hope to write more parts on this, but I just wanted to get started. To take a short stab at the answer to the above question. It all has to do with the original sin, the fall of Adam. More on that in part 2. 

America: Land of Milk, Honey, and Band-Aids

We have a severe problem in this country we fix things with band-aids. We take care of symptoms only, very rarely do we deal with the core cause. Hell, we won’t even acknowledge the core problem. In the great struggle not to offend anyone we place off limits any discussion about the true cause. 

ANALOGY: If you are cut on the arm and bleeding on the road, and I come along, I will put a bandage on it. If it bleeds through I may put another bandage over it, or put on a tourniquet. Now that tourniquet may stop the bleeding but does not fix the problem. Somewhere underneath a vessel bleeds. Now we could just let it go, because it looks like everything is good, the bleeding has stopped, we win! Eventually, the arm will die if action is not taken on the core cause. More work, a deeper look, must be taken to save the arm. In the end some things may have to be sacrificed to save the arm.

RELEVANCE: Just because one symptom is under control, does not mean the core cause will not manifest itself again to destroy what we thought we saved.

Right now, as a nation, we are bearing witness to one of the most horrific events we can conjure in our minds, the slaughter of helpless, innocent children. I have seen more dead kids then I have ever wanted to, I have watched more heart broken parents run into ERs then I have ever wanted to, and I have held lifeless hands of little children then anyone should. I have seen kids that are the victim of violence and neglect. I’ve seen first hand children suffering. With all that said, I know there is a underlying problem, not just and simple symptom to put a band-aid on.

I grew up with violent cartoons, playing guns, questionable video games, horror movies, and the list of dangerous exposer goes on. How am I not jacked up? I own a Glock 23 and S&W M&P 15 Sport 5.56. I was in the Army, I have scary military training. Are you scared of me shooting up a school? Why not? Or why? What makes me different? I had a strong core family. 

DISCLAIMER: I AM IN NO WAY STATING IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO GROW UP WELL ADJUSTED IN A LESS THAN DESIRABLE FAMILY GROUPING. SOME GOOD PEOPLE WILL RISE FROM BAD SETTINGS, AND MONSTERS WILL COME FROM GOOD SETTINGS. THE IDEA IS WHAT GIVES CHILDREN THE BEST CHANCE. 

I did not grow up in a traditional family. I was raised by my grandparents and aunt. What they provided was a parenting team all on the same page. A stable safe place to grow up. I was told no more than yes. I was give unshakable moral values, that were explained and promoted everyday under the same roof. I always had one parent available to me 24/7. I was raised by my family not someone else. Teachers were at school to teach academics, laws were to maintain order, neither were to give me a moral compass. I was taught absolute right and wrong. I was taught about good and evil. I was taught cartoons, movies, and games where just that not reality and not an example of how to live my life.

I was not shuttled back and forth between two or more homes. I did not have to be raised under two sets of rules. I was never used a pawn between two battling parents. I did not spend 6-8 hours a day in dare care. I was not patronized, or told I would always win. I was not taught that life was relevant and my needs out weigh the needs of others. I was not taught to hate or knowingly do bad. 

There is a destructive breakdown of the family unit today. I am not preaching “traditional” family. I’m talking a core unit that raises children together, a parenting team. Straight couples, gay couples, grandparents, aunts, uncles, the possibilities are numerous just create a team focused on raising healthy well adjusted kids. Having money is not key to raising kids. Having things will not make your children successful in life. I stood in line for free cheese and butter. My first brand name clothing item was a pair of Levis in JR high. I grew up with very few material things. Only love and time accomplish the goal of raising well adjusted kids. We are so selfish as a society today, that we make choices for our benefit not even factoring the effects on our kids. We are losing the desire to sacrifice everything for our kids, because it will make things hard on us. We want our unfulfilled needs and desires met. Challenges with video games, social media, guns, insert anything, will always be there. All of this can be overcome, if we build strong core family units.

The world is a bad place period. Monsters do exists and the Boogie Man is out there. Guess what it’s our fault. We have created it. I see fellow humans that we have cast off every day at work, and its sad. We have lost the value of life. The one thing that once made this country great, made us second to none was an overwhelming compassion for others, and a deep conviction to value all life. Today everything is relative there is no more common moral standard. Your individual situation is your reality. That reality has you justifying all you actions. That justification sets your morals. Those morals are your truth. How cant there be more than one truth when it comes to morals? I learned a few things from algebra. One thing was how to solve problems. We start with an equal sign in the middle. Now we must add, subtract, divide, and multiply both sides to make them equal, to get to a real answer. Both sides must give to the other, stop using band-aids.