UNCHANGING AND NON-NEGOTIABLE: ON ADULTERY
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 30, 2025 – Let me ask you a question. It’s not going to be an easy one for some of you to answer, any more than it would have been easy for some of Jesus’ followers to answer 2000 years ago when Jesus first taught on marriage and divorce. The teaching hasn’t changed over the years and is just as relevant and valid today as it was back then.
Here’s the question: If you’re living in an adulterous marriage, which by Jesus’ definition is a marriage where one or both of the spouses is/are divorced from someone who is still alive and the grounds for ending the marriage was something other than fornication – if you’re living in an adulterous union that is in violation of the Commandment not to commit adultery, would you end it because Jesus says it’s sinful?
The teaching is very clear and unequivocal. Even more convincing (or in some cases, even more damning) is that Jesus based this teaching on the book of Genesis, which describes marriage as a lifelong union of a man and a woman that God sanctions by making them “one flesh” and therefore inseparable until death parts them. In other words, Jesus based his teaching on God’s teaching, giving it an authority that cannot be denied.
Many Christians are extremely uncomfortable with God’s and Jesus’ teaching on adultery, and in some cases are even hostile to it. Perhaps they’re uncomfortable because the teaching convicts them, which in turn creates an inner conflict between knowing what’s right and yet choosing what’s wrong, with most people continuing to choose to live in an adulterous union rather than ending it.
What about you? If you’re genuinely born-again, you know about Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce, and you also know that Jesus based his teaching on God’s teaching in Genesis, making it the ultimate and final authority. If you’re genuinely born-again, the question I posed at the outset of this article wouldn’t apply to you because you wouldn’t be living in an adulterous union – you wouldn’t be able to. God’s Holy Spirit would be convicting you so strongly night and day, you’d either have to end the union cold turkey or you’d have to turn from God, and if you’d turned from God after being genuinely born-again, I doubt you’d be reading this because you’d either be dead and on your way to the lake of fire or you’d be too busy serving the devil after signing on with him in a last-ditch attempt to avoid the lake of fire (sadly, you were misinformed about using the sell-your-soul card to avoid that final unavoidable destination). What I’m saying here is that no genuine born-again believer can persist in an adulterous union – enter into one, yes, possibly (we all make mistakes, some of them real humdingers), but persist in it after realizing it’s wrong? No. A genuinely born-again believer would not do that.
And yet we all know many self-styled Christians who are living in adulterous marriages and other forms of adulterous unions. Some are even leaders and pastors within their congregations, and some are rich, famous, and powerful. Why does God permit these people to openly persist in and flaunt their sin? Is it his way of saying it doesn’t matter, that “love is love” and love trumps everything, including his teachings?
Of course not. God permits sin, he doesn’t will it. He’s not giving his stamp of approval to adultery any more than he’s giving his stamp of approval to any other sin. God and his laws are the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. If adulterous unions, as defined by Jesus and God, were sinful thousands of years ago, they’re still sinful today, because God’s Truth never changes.
In all the years I attended denominational church services, not once did a minister preach on marriage and divorce. It’s as if, to the worldly church, that pivotal Gospel message doesn’t exist. It’s obvious to me why the worldly church avoids preaching on adulterous unions – so many of their paying customers are neck-deep in adultery that if they offend (i.e., convict) them, they might lose half their congregation. And so it’s safer from a financial point of view to avoid the contentious topic than to potentially shrink the church’s income. Jesus described this as either serving God or serving mammon, seeing that you cannot serve both. It’s clear who the worldly church serves.
I sincerely hope that this article has no relevance to you because you’re not living in adultery, as defined by Jesus in the Gospel. I sincerely hope that this is the case. But if you are entangled in an adulterous marriage or some other adulterous union, remember how the disciples left their wives and children solely because Jesus told them that was a condition of their becoming his disciples. Remember, too, how the remnant who returned to Jerusalem after the exile in Babylon left their “strange” (i.e., non-Jewish) wives and children behind when told that was a condition of their return. Neither the disciples nor the returnees questioned these terms, and both groups unhesitatingly did as they were advised. They are our examples.
You cannot serve God and mammon.
You cannot persist in sin and be a child of God.
You cannot live in adultery and make it to Heaven.
These are the terms, and they are unchanging and non-negotiable.
COME UP HIGHER
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 29, 2025 – You don’t have to do any of it – none of it. God hasn’t ordered you to serve him. He hasn’t forced you or coerced you, any more than he forced or coerced Jesus do give himself as a sacrifice for many. God made Jesus an offer, he invited Jesus, he gave Jesus the opportunity to come up higher, just like he gives us the same opportunity. No guns are pressed against temples, no arms twisted behind backs. It’s an invitation that no-one but God can extend – the chance to come up higher for all eternity.
Jesus was insistent, particularly during his final days among us in mortal form – Jesus was insistent that we understand that the trial he agreed to endure was his choice and his choice only. God had not forced him into it. Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus was begging his Father to find another way to get done what needed to be done, God would have let him off the hook if he’d said he wanted off, only the terms could not be changed because prophecy had to be fulfilled. The sacrifice had to proceed as laid out in scripture or God would have to extend the offer to someone else. Yet even so, God mitigated the suffering that Jesus agreed to go through, allowing him to die so soon in the proceedings, it caught the guards by surprise. God softened each blow against Jesus as much as he could (even arranging for someone to carry the cross the final distance) while still keeping up his end of the bargain.
And it was a bargain, what happened that day, a bet made by the devil that Jesus wouldn’t make it all the way through. It was the devil who set the terms that God agreed to. It wasn’t God’s will that Jesus suffer; God permitted it, all the while betting that Jesus would indeed make it all the way through, which he did, and in so doing came up as high as he or anyone possibly could.
We, too, are in the process of coming up higher. With each test and each round of suffering that we don’t solicit but agree to endure, we inch up higher on the heavenly rewards scale. We come up higher. Sometimes it’s by a little bit and sometimes it’s by leaps and bounds. But just as we can come up higher, we can also slide down lower. God does everything in his power to prevent that from happening (the alarms ring loud and clear; trust me, you cannot not hear those alarms when you’re in danger of sliding), but it’s still up to us whether we want to go up or down, to say “yay” or “nay” to God. Heavenly rewards are not a guarantee until our time here is done. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over, and until it’s over, the upward trajectory can just as easily go downward.
Being born-again doesn’t prevent that slide. We still have free will. We can still say “no” to God. We can still go our own way or even the devil’s way. We’re fine now reading this, comfortable in our seats and with a full belly, but some day when the pain gets too extreme, some of us may choose to do or say whatever it takes to make the pain stop, including denying and betraying the Very Ones we now claim we’d die for. It’s happened before to others and will happen again, maybe to us. We need to pray and pray hard that it doesn’t.
This is a depressing article for me to write, knowing that some of you reading this have already made the deal that cannot be undone and that you’re only here to find a chink in my armour that you can use against me. It’s depressing knowing that some of you who haven’t sold your souls still resolutely refuse to accept any of God’s offers and that you’re only reading this because it amuses you and you look forward to mocking me afterwards. It was depressing for Jesus to dine with the hypocrites and to argue with them and endure their insults, but he did it because it was part of his duties, depressing or not. To get through these and similarly distasteful chores, Jesus always kept his eyes on the prize of his heavenly reward, knowing that with each sling he deflected and every arrow he endured, he moved up higher and therefore closer to God.
You have no idea how close Jesus was to God on that cross. No mortal being has ever been closer to God than Jesus was during his time of suffering. That’s how he got through it – putting himself entirely into God’s hands and letting God guide him, step by step, breath by breath.
You cannot endure what you have coming unless you do the same.
ISRAEL 2.0
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 28, 2025 – According to the results of several recent DNA studies, a large and increasing percentage of people today who identify as Jewish are not descended from Biblical Hebrews but from a mish-mash of other peoples, including Eastern Europeans, Iranians, and even Russians. If these results are accurate, it at the very least raises some compelling questions about the validity of claims regarding Jews’ Biblical right, based primarily on genetics, to the so-called Promised Land.
It is not, however, the role of this blog to get involved in geopolitics. Jesus never got involved beyond the odd comment now and then, and so I don’t get involved, either. But he did advise us to watch, and that I do, and what I see in the ebb and flow of the fortunes and misfortunes of the past and present state of Israel is fascinating. The drama never seems to end (although we know it will some day), with Israel perpetually painting itself as the victim perpetually owed special status and reparations of one sort or another. And woe betide anyone who comes against that resurrected state, not because God is fighting its battles, but because the devil is. You don’t want to go up against the devil, because whatever he does, he’s gotten prior permission from God to do, which means that if you fight against the devil you’re essentially fighting against God.
Not a smart move. Not gonna win that war.
Which is why Jesus steered clear of geopolitics. Let the fallen and the worldly duke it out among themselves. We in the spiritual Kingdom of Israel have better things to do.
And we are the spiritual Kingdom of Israel. We are the prophesied remnant whose pedigree is unquestionable. Israel 2.0 is not a geopolitical realm but a spiritual one, and the entrance to that realm is by rebirth, not natural birth. In the Kingdom, our natural genetics are all over the place, which is fine (and scriptural) because genetics don’t matter here. All that matters if that we’re genuinely born-again. Rebirth – and rebirth alone – constitutes the basis for citizenship in Israel 2.0.
Despite being the valid inheritors of God’s Biblical promises, we claim no right to any land or worldly wealth here. In Heaven, literally endless land and wealth await us, but here on Earth we’re promised only that our daily needs will be met and that we’ll have access to the appropriate resources when required. We are the prophesied poor and afflicted remnant, so we should expect to be poor and afflicted, though never destitute, never without hope, and always blessed. You would think that being poor and afflicted would negate the being blessed part, but miraculously it doesn’t. There’s joy solely in the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, and if you’re genuinely reborn, God’s Spirit is always with you to a certain measure, sometimes more and sometimes less. The greater the measure of God’s Spirit, the closer you are to God and the greater your abiding joy.
In the end, then, it wouldn’t really matter even if 100% of modern Jews were found to be genetically identical to the Hebrews of Old Testament times. Your genetics don’t grant you entrance to the prophesied Israel 2.0; the presence of God’s Holy Spirit does.
GOD’S WILL AND GOD’S PERMISSION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 24, 2025 – There’s a difference between what God wills and what God permits.
This is important, so listen up here.
Jesus always did that which pleases the Father. We know that Jesus always did that which pleases the Father because he told us he did: “I always do that which pleases the Father.” When he said he always did that which pleases the Father, Jesus meant he always did God’s will. Again, this is important, so listen up here. It’s important because God’s will is not the same as what God permits, and we need to know the difference.
GOD’S WILL
God’s will is that everyone should do what pleases him. God states multiple times in scripture that if we only do that which pleases him, life will be good for us, because then he can give us all the blessings he wants to give us during our time here. Doing God’s will and doing what pleases the Father is the same thing.
And what is God’s will as it plays out in our everyday lives? Keep the Commandments. Choose the good. Follow Jesus’ example in everything you do, say, and think. Keep your eyes on the prize of your eternal reward, not the earthly ones. Suffer what you need to suffer, whether as an earned reward or a test. Suffer patiently and in silence. Give what God commands you to give, speak what God commands you to speak, be silent when God commands you to be silent. Do whatever God advises you to do one-on-one. Help those he explicitly directs you to help. And remember that not everything God tells you needs to be told to others. Most of what God told Jesus he kept to himself.
GOD’S PERMISSION
God’s permission is not God’s will: God’s permission is our free will intersecting with God’s justice. Doing what God permits is not the same as doing God’s will. Jesus didn’t say he always did that which the Father permits; he said he always did that which pleases the Father; he always did God’s will.
Satan does what God permits. Once upon a time (actually, once upon an eternity), Satan did God’s will, but that all ended with the rebellion in Heaven. Now Satan can only do what God permits: that’s his one and only job description. Satan and all those who follow him can only do what God permits. They cannot do more than what God permits, and you can bet the bank they won’t do less. They hate us and want only for us to suffer during our time here and then lose the reward of Heaven. No matter what they tell their human recruits when they’re enticing them into their ranks, Satan and his horde want only for us to suffer to the most extreme degree, ending with our eternal damnation. God wants the best for us and Satan wants the worst, which is why God strictly limits what Satan is permitted to do, as we see in Job.
God permits suffering as a reward for bad choices, but he also permits suffering as a test. He doesn’t will that we suffer; he permits us to suffer, but always with the proviso that our suffering, if we handle it righteously, will be to our benefit.
When God permits you to suffer, don’t try to avoid it. Don’t revel in it, either (it’s not God’s will that you revel in suffering; reveling in suffering is not a godly response: nor is boasting about it). Endure your suffering. Get through it. Come out the other side. Be silent in the face of God’s tests and negative rewards. If you have them coming, you have no right to complain; if you’re undergoing a test, you have no reason to complain, because “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called.”
God created evil and permits it to thrive only when and where it’s been earned. He doesn’t will evil; he permits it. He uses the forces of evil as a reward for bad choices and as temptations and tests, all of whose end goal is to bring us up higher. Even babies can be on the receiving end of evil, bearing in mind that souls come into the world already sin-stained. The only one who arrived here sin-free was Jesus.
TL;DR
God’s will is that we do what pleases him, like Jesus did, so that everything will be good for us. Jesus is our best and greatest example of how to do God’s will. But because not everyone chooses to do his will, God permits an earned and precise measure of evil to exist in the form of temptations, tests, and suffering, with the aim of bringing us up higher. God wills that we not only to come to knowledge of him – the ultimate good – but form a close and loving bond with him, like he has with Jesus. This can only happen if we do God’s will.
GUARANTEED BUZZKILL?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 22, 2025 – The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is not convincing the world he doesn’t exist but convincing the world that sin doesn’t exist. In convincing the world that sin doesn’t exist, the devil created a disconnect between cause and effect, action and reaction, sin and suffering, crime and punishment. In so doing, he birthed the Age of Victimhood, whose motto is Thou Shalt Do Whatever You Want and whose symbol is an accusatory finger pointing at everyone and everything except back at itself.
When you take away the fundamental truth that the pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned, you’re left only with lies, and you can’t make sense of your pain if you’re basing your explanation for it on lies. You also can’t find a solution for it if you’re blind to its cause. There is no pain and no suffering that can’t be explained by the pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned, including pain that comes from tests and temptations, because tests and temptations are themselves a form of paying forward for the promised reward of a future pain-free existence, if you deal with the tests and temptations righteously, like Job did.
The most unpopular truth that will instantaneously lose you the most friends, listeners, readers, upvotes, etc., is the pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned. It’s such a guaranteed buzzkill for anyone who’s not ready to receive it, Jesus didn’t teach it directly but instead used phrases like “the measure you mete is the measure you get in return”. Even in softened form, this truth irks and in some cases outrages people who aren’t ready receive it.
As I mentioned, the devil has been very successful in making us believe we’re all innocent victims. If we’re innocent, then there’s no sin. If there’s no sin, there’s no cause for guilt; if there’s no guilt, there’s no repentance; if there’s no repentance, there’s no turning back to God. And this ultimately is what the devil is aiming for – keeping souls alienated from God for as long as possible, until they reach the point of no more return.
I know that if you’re genuinely born-again, you eagerly embrace the truth that the pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned. You don’t shun it; you don’t question it; and it doesn’t anger you. Instead (and perhaps strangely) it comforts you because it serves as a guide, like rumble strips along the side of the highway that jolt you into straightening your course back onto the road. You accept the unpleasant jolt as earned and so you willingly – even automatically – submit to it not because you’re masochistic but because you understand that God’s rod and staff are meant to comfort you through correction. They’re meant to comfort you.
They’re there to comfort you.
God corrects us by allowing us to suffer the consequences of our actions, and he does this because he loves us and wants us to come home. We can’t go home if we let sin separate us from God. And so he lets us know that the pain we feel is the pain we’ve earned, and he asks us to accept the pain, and submit to it, and get it over with, and learn whatever lesson we need to learn so that we don’t have to go through it ever again.
And he does all this for one purpose and one purpose only: to prepare our souls for Heaven.
ONE OF A CITY
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 20, 2025 – We born-again believers are the rarest of rare breeds. Even though, as Jesus promises, God will give his Holy Spirit to anyone who asks in sincerity and in truth, most people – including self-identifying Christians – have given God’s offer a hard pass. Sure, they want the peace and the joy that come with being a card-carrying member of the prophesied remnant (who wouldn’t?), but they don’t want the persecutions. They don’t want the afflictions. They don’t want the poverty. They don’t want to give up all the things they would naturally and without effort give up as a believer.
And they don’t want the whispers.
Jesus well knew those whispers, even from his own family. On one occasion, his mother and sisters came to ‘rescue’ him in Capernaum as if he were suffering a mental illness episode, and his brother James goaded him for not publicly revealing himself as a prophet. First-born males at that time were traditionally afforded a position of honor, respect, and privilege within the family, but Jesus, from these two brief glimpses into his home life, appeared to have foregone the familial deference. He had instead become an object of pity and ridicule, foreshadowing what we all experience as born-again believers amidst unbelievers.
Tie me to a stake and burn me, but I would never not want to be born-again, I would never not want God’s Spirit in me, no matter the cost. There is no temptation or threat that would make me turn my back on God and deny Jesus and return to the earthly hell of living without God’s Spirit. I’ve done my time as an atheist, and I’m forever done with it. Offer me all the wealth and power in the world, and that still wouldn’t be enough. Offer me beauty sufficient to launch ships and bring down nations, and even that wouldn’t turn my head. I already have all the wealth and power that has any value, through the abiding presence of God’s Holy Spirit, and I’m holding out for the promised perfected beauty that comes with my place in Heaven and lasts not for a time or a lifetime, but forever.
There is no temptation and no threat that would make me not want to be born-again. And I know I’m not alone in knowing this. I know that you, my brothers and sisters reading this, feel the same. I know that your grounding in God is not skin deep, is not for upvotes and likes, is not just for the time being until (what appears to be) a better offer comes along or the price of being a Jesus follower becomes too high or too inconvenient. I’ve seen the superficial believers fall away to other beliefs as easily as someone picks the pie rather than the pudding in a cafeteria line-up. But we don’t pick God; he picks us. We are the pie in the cafeteria line-up, the apple pie, the apple pie of God’s eye.
You will not know what it means to be truly alive until you’re born-again. We are one of a city, two of a family, as rare as hen’s teeth and for many just as mythical: “Who are these born-again believers that you speak of? Bring them to me! I wish to examine them!” The curious and curiouser approach me cautiously, as you would a rare bird borne by a storm far from its native habitat. They’re afraid to startle me into flight and so weigh their every word. We talk about the weather. We talk about the past. We talk about the weather again while they search my face for clues to a mystery they’re certain I must be hiding. I watch them searching, though I hide nothing. They cannot see what they cannot see.
It’s not my doing. It’s God’s.
**********
There is no threat or temptation that would make me not want to be born-again. I have thrown down this gauntlet. I have stated my position: It will not change.
“Jesus is King!” God is my everything.
I patiently await your response.
EATING SOUP WITH A SCREWDRIVER
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 17, 2025 – All science is theory, so the phrase “the science is settled” is an oxymoron. God gave us science as a tool to make sense of the natural (not the supernatural) realm, but he never meant for us to treat it as a religion and to worship it as infallible. Science by very definition is perpetually in motion, perpetually flawed, and perpetually being upended: Settling something with those characteristics is impossible.
Still, the belief in science has for many people replaced belief in God. In scripture, God talks about those who’ve not only rejected him but have replaced him with “broken cisterns that can hold no water”. He was including science-believers in this group.
The number of people who are embracing broken cisterns in the form of science is growing larger by the day. So are their claims. One claim that recently caught my eye is that there are an estimated 10 quintillion insects in the world, and of these, an estimated 80% have yet to be identified. These kinds of broad, sweeping, and frankly quite silly pronouncements highlight the inherently flawed and profoundly unsettled nature of science. Yes, science is a tool, but tools that are not suited to the task at hand are pretty much useless.
Have you ever tried eating soup with a screwdriver? Of course not. That would be silly. So is saying there are 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 insects on Earth. Verging on criminal is expecting us not only to believe this nonsense but being forced to regurgitate it as gospel truth on a science quiz or be failed.
So, while God gave us science as a tool, people who blindly place their faith in science (i.e., Trust the Science™) have themselves become tools – useful tools of Satan. The rebranding of scientific inquiry from being a cautious, inconclusive explainer of the natural realm to being a dogmatic writ-in-stone fact (that you dare not question) has the devil’s pawprints all over it. As we well know, “those who believe in nothing will fall for anything”, and science dogmatists have fallen for the devil’s lies in the form of “the science is settled” and similar creeds. Even worse, they’re constantly evangelizing and infiltrating all aspects of human society so that to be (as I am here) an “unbeliever in science” (that is, one who questions scientific dogmatic claims) is akin to being branded a witch or a heretic in the Middle Ages: A burning stake is being prepared for me as we speak.
I am grateful to God for his gift of science as a tool to help explain nature. However, I don’t worship or “believe in” science. I don’t unquestioningly Trust the Science™. To me, scientific theories are just that – theories. They’re not truths and they’re not settled, and by very definition they can never be. They can only ever be flawed and questionable, as God intended them. Still, a flawed and questionable work-in-progress explanation is better than no explanation at all.
As a born-again believer, I don’t reject science; I reject the dogma around it.
FAKE TIME VS REAL TIME
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 15, 2025 – I wrote a few days ago about solar time and how it differs from Daylight Savings Time (DST). I mentioned that our bodies are naturally synched to the sun, not to an artificial construct like DST, and that because DST jumps ahead of solar time (up to two hours in some locations), we have the constant sense that we’re running behind and don’t have enough time to finish what we need to finish. Being significantly ahead of solar time also gives us the sense that we’re never quite ‘in the moment’ – that lunch time is not really lunch time, dinner time not really dinner time, and bedtime not really bedtime. We perpetually feel out of synch with time because we are actually out of synch with time, if we follow DST.
In Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I’m currently stationed, DST is nearly one and half hours ahead of solar time. Ironically, the city has an historic cannon that thunders to life once a day to mark high noon. Except it isn’t really high noon when the cannon booms; under DST, it’s only a little past 10:30 a.m., and the sun is nowhere near its zenith.
Should this concern us as born-again believers? Is there a spiritual impact in following fake time like DST that can be up to two hours ahead of real time? I believe there is a profound spiritual impact and that it’s rooted in the constant stress generated from being forced to schedule daily activities according to a time marker that is patently false. The constant stress affects our patience level, as well as the time we spend with God and Jesus in prayer and the time we spend reading God’s Word. How many times have you cut short or even foregone a Bible reading session because you felt you didn’t have enough time? The truth is – you did have enough time; you were just following the wrong clock
DST is fake time. It forces us to rise before we’re sufficiently rested, eat when we’re not particularly hungry, fast when we are hungry, and go to bed when we’re not yet sleepy. You can’t win if you schedule your daily activities according to DST, as you’ll always feel like you’re running behind or otherwise out of synch with time.
I recently started following solar time, and it constantly amazes me how different time feels to me. When I ignore worldly timekeepers, I experience a deep sense of having plenty of time to do whatever it is I need to do. I don’t feel rushed. I don’t feel like I’m falling behind. If I happen to glance at one of my clocks (all set to local solar time), I don’t experience that unwelcome jolt of feeling that I’m running late, which DST always gives me. I have plenty of time for God. I have plenty of time for his Word. And I have plenty of time for Jesus, though I’m still working on the patience thing (lol).
I heartily recommend switching to local solar time and scheduling your daily rounds according to it.
And if the worldly clock nags you that you’re running late, just ignore it.
CHANGING TIME
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 11, 2025 – Time has a feeling. We associate certain times of the day with certain activities and therefore certain feelings. Mornings are typically for waking up, which means we engage in activities that help us do that. Evenings, on the other hand, have a whole different feeling. Evenings are typically for winding down, and our activities reflect that.
But what if time is changed? What if morning isn’t quite yet morning and evening not quite yet evening? What if the morning is not yet dawn and the evening not yet dusk? Would we still want to do the same activities an hour and half ahead of what our body is telling us is the “real time”? Because our body knows exactly what time it is, even if consciously we don’t.
When I was a kid, my bedtime was 8 p.m. sharp. I remember that, because I always had trouble falling asleep in the summertime. I remember lying in bed and staring out the window at the sunshine. And no matter how hard I tried, I could not get to sleep.
In real time in Halifax, 8 p.m. in the summertime is dark. What I mean by “real time” is solar time. In Daylight Savings Time, it’s not dark until nearly 9:30 p.m., which is almost an hour and a half later. If, as a kid, I’d gone to bed at 9:30 DST instead of 8:00 DST, I would have conked out the minute my head hit the pillow.
As a culture, we have the perpetual feeling that time is getting faster and faster and that our days just fly by. Is it possible instead that the shift from “real time” (solar time) to “fake time” (DST and Standard Time) has robbed us of our true sense of time, and in so doing has made us feel that we’re always falling behind? Our body says it’s one time, while our clock claims it’s much later.
Take now, for instance. My laptop clock tells me it’s nearly 12 noon, but my solar clock says it’s just 10:30 a.m. These two times bring with them entirely different feelings related to the activities attached to them. They also have entirely different qualities of sunlight. So if my body is telling me that it’s mid-morning and maybe time for a snack but the world is telling me it’s high noon and time for a full mid-day meal, how is my body to make sense of this conflict other than to feel that time is getting faster?
But the truth is that time is not getting faster. Time is getting changed into fake time that doesn’t reflect reality. When it’s 5:30 a.m. according to the sun but already 7 a.m. according to DST, should we really be surprised that it’s so difficult to drag ourselves out of bed?
Again – time is not getting faster; time is getting changed, like scripture said it would. But not in my house. In my house, time is set to solar time, so no matter what time the world tells me it is, I’m always pleasantly surprised to find that it’s much earlier than I thought it was, and I still have lots of time to do whatever needs to be done.
Feels good!
EVERYTHING
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 10, 2025 – Every problem in the world today could be solved by turning back to God and following Jesus.
There isn’t one problem that can’t be solved this way.
In turning back to God and following Jesus, you’d realize that what you thought were your problems are actually not your problems, and you’d let them go. The rest of whatever issues are plaguing you, you’d deal with through God’s guidance, in his way and in his time, following the example of Jesus.
Every problem can be solved by turning back to God and following Jesus.
**********
It could have been so simple. God means for it to be simple for us. He means for it to be so simple that even a child can understand.
It could have been so simple if we’d just turned back to him, like he invited us to do, all those years ago. It would have been so simple if we’d just turned back to him like he invited us to do, and then like he urged us to do, and then like he warned us to do.
And now, here we are, well past the warning phase. It’s become a Command now, to turn back to God; it’s do or die.
And it could have been so easy.
**********
I see this countless times, in deals that are offered to me or to someone else. You never get a better deal than the one that’s first offered you, because the one that’s first offered is made from a position of wanting. The people making the offer want you to want what they’re offering. And so they buff it and shine it up and lay it down tenderly at your feet, thinking of you as much as themselves, of what you want as much as what they want. They lavish their love on you and offer their best. The first offer is always the best, from a spiritual standpoint.
But if you decline that first offer, it’s all downhill from there. It might seem to you that you’ll get a better deal if you haggle, if you hold out until you’ve worn them down a bit, and then a bit more. But the deal doesn’t get better. It might seem to you that it gets better, but it doesn’t. The terms may seemingly shift in your favor, but the deal starts to rot from the inside. It changes into something that’s not quite as good, that rankles and sours and turns bitter whatever initial love and goodwill there could have been between you and the one making the offer. There is a palpable cooling of affections. One way or another, you lose if you don’t take that first offer, because the first one is always the best.
**********
I hadn’t realized that in loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, as Jesus taught us was the first and greatest Commandment – I had not realized that to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength means to love him like that, too. Every love song ever written we’re to sing to God, and to God only. We’re to give him everything that he’s given us to give.
Everything, like Jesus did.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 