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WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LOVE GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, SOUL, MIND, AND STRENGTH? (PART 1 OF 2)
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, October 17, 2024 – What does it mean to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?
As born-again believers, we need to know exactly what it means, because Jesus said it’s the first and greatest Commandment. As such, it should be our lived experience, day in and day out. If we don’t know what it means to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength – if we can’t articulate what it means if someone asks us – we won’t be able to do it because we won’t really know what it looks like. We’ll know the expression, but not the meaning.
I went to a church service yesterday. I’ve been to the same service for the past few weeks, and each time I’ve attended, the minister reminds the parishioners that they’re to love God with all their heart, soul, and mind. It’s a recitation that he reads, not something that he says off the cuff. It’s baked into The Book of Common Prayer, so I’m guessing it’s recited during all the services in that church, or at least during most of them. Yet I wonder, for all the recitations, how many of the parishioners who hear this Commandment actually put it into practice.
But back to us born-again believers – how are we to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength? Because love him we must, and precisely in that way. If we know that we should love God with everything we have and everything we are and yet choose not to, we could lose our grace, and there’s no getting that back. Without grace, we can’t get into God’s Kingdom on Earth or God’s Kingdom in Heaven, which means that whatever time we have left here will be more or less Hell on Earth and our only possible final destination the lake of fire.
Considering how critically important the first and greatest of all Commandments is, maybe we should take a moment to think about what it means for us in our own lives. Holy scripture is deeply one-on-one and personalized, not “one size fits all”. What the first Commandment means to you may not be what it means to me or even what it meant to Jesus during his time on Earth.
So, what does is mean to you to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? How does your obedience to that Commandment play out in real time in your life?
Please think about these questions, and we’ll continue our discussion tomorrow.
YEARNING FOR WILL-FREE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, October 8, 2024 – Who we are as a person is measured by what we do when we think no-one sees us. As born-again believers, we have an advantage in this measuring process because we know that God sees us all the time and that nothing – including our thoughts – can be hid from him. Knowing that God sees us always and under every circumstance, we’re careful in what we do and say and think, even and especially when no one (except God) is around.
I was at a church service a few days ago, sitting at the back, and was startled to see one of the young men tasked with collecting cash “offerings” slip some of those offerings into his pants pocket. I glanced at the minister, but he didn’t appear to see what I saw. I left the matter in God’s hands.
We’re surrounded, it seems, by Judas Iscariots. In the world, we expect to be lied to, cheated, and stolen from, but not in a church. Judas fooled all of Jesus’ disciples and followers into thinking he was just like them, but Jesus knew from the start who and what Judas was and what he would do when it was time. At some point in his three-year discipleship, Judas started stealing from the group’s money bag and plotting to betray Jesus, and no-one appeared to notice except Jesus. Did Judas arrive in the group already fully formed as a consummate liar, thief, and backstabber, or did he become those things over time?
A soul is a miraculous creation. For us humans, our souls are made by God in Heaven and then placed in earthly bodies. The precise instant of that soul transfer from the eternal realm to time-and-space is still open to conjecture, but that it does occur is without a doubt. Just as certain is the soul’s vacating of the earthly body at death and its instantaneous return to the eternal realm.
Does our soul come desirous of all things good? I believe it does. God made our souls in his image, which means he made us desirous of him. If that is in fact a fact, then how do we get Judases? Where do they come from?
Free will. The ability to choose not only the good but also the bad has been our undoing. God knew it likely would be, and yet he still “gifted” us with the right to choose him or not to choose him. Why would he do that?
Knowing God as I do now, I know that he doesn’t want automatons as children. He doesn’t want lip-servers or people who feel obligated to serve him rather than who are sincerely desirous to serve him. He, our living and loving Father, wants living and loving children, and so he gives souls the choice to willingly serve him or not, to willingly choose the good or not, to willingly love him or not. And even those souls who willingly choose him he further tests to make sure their decision is sincere and not just a momentary whim. Those who choose against him he leaves the door open to, for a time, in case they change their mind.
What we do when we think no-one sees us is the true measure of our soul. And it’s our soul that’s judged on Judgement Day, not our bodies or our bank accounts or our credit rating. It’s our soul that persists into eternity and never ceases to exist. Our soul had a beginning, but it will have no end. Knowing this, and knowing how relatively short our human journey is and how everything we do impacts the state of our soul, how can we not be careful – even excruciatingly so – of our every word, thought, and deed?
I am terrified of the power God has to condemn my soul. I’m not afraid of the devil or his demons, I’m not afraid of hurricanes and earthquakes, I’m not afraid of war or of those who want me dead so they can plunder my body and seize my inheritance – I only fear God, as Jesus said we should. And fearing God, I am mindful, ever so mindful, to choose the good, even and especially in my thoughts.
What doesn’t sit right with God can have no place with me. I don’t want what doesn’t sit right with God to have any place with me, and yet choosing the good has made me many enemies over the years, some even masquerading as friends.
There is no free will in Heaven. I know for a fact there isn’t, but only complete and utter and willing submission to God. This is what I yearn for.
I’ll be glad when my free will is over.
DOGS AND SMALL CHILDREN
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, October 8, 2024 – Why is that people whose heritage is God, when they turn from God, become worse than the heathens around them? What drives them not only to wallow in the spiritual ditch but to purposely crawl into the pit below it and to drag others down with them? When the children of Israel had filled up the full measure of their sin and everything in Jerusalem was being destroyed – including Solomon’s temple – God placed the small remnant of believers into the hands of the destroyers for safe keeping. He couldn’t even trust his own people to look after his own people anymore. They had become completely unsalvageable.
This pattern repeats over and over in the Bible, just as it does in unrecorded history at street level. My hometown of Halifax used to be a conservative “Christian” city with a church on every corner and all stores and businesses firmly shut on Sundays. Throughout the weekdays, the main downtown thoroughfare was alive with shoppers streaming in and out of bakeries, butchers, hardware stores, record stores, clothing stores, stationery stores, toy stores, cinemas, and department stores. The only places serving alcohol were licensed restaurants, and those had heavy government-imposed restrictions on them regarding serving hours and terms of service for alcoholic beverages: You couldn’t order a drink unless you also ordered a full sit-down meal. The bars were few and far between and relegated to the side-streets and alleyways in the sleazy part of town down by the harbour, where only the drunkards and the sailors on shore leave (and the scantily clad ladies who entertained them) dared to venture after dark. Loitering and vagrancy were illegal, as was littering. This is the Halifax I grew up in.
Fast-forward to today, and more than half the shopfronts along the garbage-strewn main thoroughfare are covered in faded “For Lease” signs. Of the few businesses still doing business, most are bars that are closed during the day. The street’s primary retail offerings are a sex store and a witch paraphernalia supply store, open seven days a week. The panhandlers outnumber the shoppers, while the homeless sleeping on the sidewalk outnumber the panhandlers. The charge of vagrancy was declared unconstitutional in the 1990s and struck from the lawbooks. Loitering in public places is also now allowed.
The churches are still here, though, at least the ones that haven’t been turned into condos yet. You can spot them by the rainbow flags draped over the entrances and windows. But unlike in the “old days”, when churches were open to the public 24/7, the doors are now locked and bolted except during services, and even then they’re guarded by watchful men in dark suits. I’ve gotten the stink-eye from those men more than once for being a “stranger” amidst the sparse and frail congregations.
What happened to change the Halifax of my childhood into the Halifax of my adulthood? The same thing that happened to all cities and towns in former Christendom over the past two or three generations, which is the same thing that happened to all cities and towns in the former promised land millennia ago. Turning away from God and the consequences that follow always look the same, regardless of the time or place.
I can only wonder when our Babylonian moment will finally come, because come it will. When we’ve filled up the full measure of our sin in what Jesus called the fulfilling of the times of the gentiles, total destruction can be the only reward. Like the vast majority of the children of Israel, the vast majority of the children of Christendom are stiff-necked and unsalvageable. They will never turn back to God.
And of our many heathen enemies around us, which will God appoint to harbour the tiny remnant of remaining believers? Which of our enemies will God have us submit to so that we can live to fight another day? Jeremiah willingly went with the Chaldeans. Daniel willingly went with the Babylonians. Paul willingly went with the Romans. Will we be directed to go with the atheist Chinese? Or maybe the Sikhs? Or the Muslims?
As a born-again believer, I feel I have more in common with my heathen enemies than with my own people. Is this how Elijah felt around Ahab and Jezebel? Or how Jeremiah felt around the false prophets? Or how Jesus felt when he dined with the Pharisees? I am a stranger in my own land and perceived as a stranger even in Christian churches. To use modern parlance, I am “othered” wherever I go. I fit in nowhere and am welcome nowhere. I am eyed suspiciously and questioned, and as soon as my back is turned, I am whispered about.
A born-again believer is a strange and terrible thing in today’s Canada.
But at least dogs and small children like me.
OUR ISRAEL
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, October 7, 2024 – The current geopolitical state of Israel is a nation that through treaties, landgrabs, strong-arming, bloodshed, collusion, deception, backroom deals, and sheer chutzpah has willed itself into being. I have no problem with this. Most nations on Earth have been established in more or less the same way, though usually over longer periods of time and mainly as spoils of war. Nation-building can be a thoroughly nasty and unequitable business.
What I, as a born-again believer, do have a problem with is the equating of the current geopolitical state of Israel with the Israel prophesied in the Bible, because the two are not the same. Saying that today’s geopolitical state of Israel unquestioningly deserves to exist because God promised a certain people the inalienable right to occupy a certain landmass in perpetuity is a misinterpretation of scripture. Yes, originally the promised land was indeed a specified landmass “flowing with milk and honey” that the children of Israel were to take by force as a spoil of war, with God himself fighting their battles. This occurred just after the exodus from Egypt over 3000 years ago, but a lot has happened since then, the main happening being Jesus.
Once Jesus had conquered death through his resurrection and was crowned King of Israel, a whole new realm emerged – spiritual Zion, otherwise known as the Kingdom of God. This was supernatural nation-building, but without the usual backroom deals and collusions. None were needed, as the prophesied promised land is entirely God-driven, God-sanctioned, and God-protected. It is the Israel foretold in scripture that will have no end and will be inhabited solely by God’s people. It is a spiritual realm, not a geopolitical one, and it exists here and now. I know, because as a born-again believer I live in it. I am a citizen of the prophesied Israel, as are you, if you’re genuinely born-again.
The misinterpretation of scripture by those who use scripture as a reason to justify the establishment of the geopolitical state of Israel is, I believe, unintentional for most people. That is, most people misinterpret scripture out of ignorance, not malice. They don’t purposely conflate spiritual Zion with geopolitical Zion. They simply don’t know the difference and/or don’t make the effort to learn the difference. As such, they become the so-called useful idiots of the bad players.
And there are bad players lurking in the background. Many of them. Multiple entities purposely conflate the two Israels and use emotional manipulation to garner support for the geopolitical one. But why do they do this? What’s in it for them, and what’s their end game?
Jesus told us that the world is under Satan, and we have no reason not to believe Jesus. Worldly powers and authorities (including those in the worldly Christian church) get their marching orders from Satan, to whom they’ve sworn an oath. Satan is their god, and they must do whatever Satan commands them to do. If they don’t, they (and their families) suffer his wrath.
This army of satanically driven powers and authorities, both worldly and supernatural, steers the ignorant masses towards adopting certain beliefs, using earthly and supernatural means. God permits Satan to operate within tightly restricted bounds and only upon his approval (as exemplified in Job), all leading to a certain end. This end, of course, is the unveiling of the false messiah and the establishment of the false messiah’s world-wide kingdom, as prophesied in the book of Daniel and warned by Jesus.
What does the geopolitical state of Israel have to do with the establishment of the false messiah’s kingdom? Basically everything. Scripture tells us that the false messiah will sit on a throne in the temple, having full control of the world and demanding to be worshiped as God, and that the temple is in Jerusalem. The building of the so-called third temple must come first, and this can only happen if the preferred site for the temple (the alleged site of the previous two temples) is entirely under the authority of the geopolitical state of Israel.
As of today, this site is not under Israeli authority. The Jordanian-controlled Al-Aqsa Mosque sits on top it and the Muslims refuse to budge. The only way they and their mosque can be dislodged is through all-out war that gifts the site to the geopolitical state of Israel as a spoil of war. Just before the false messiah is ready to take his seat in the temple, such a war will erupt.
Based on this interpretation of scripture, the resurrection of the geopolitical state of Israel has been done for the sole purpose of paving the way for the coming of the false messiah and his global domination. Ironically (or perhaps not), the biggest supporter and enabler of this paving project is the worldly Christian church, which sees in the revival of Israel not only the fulfilling of (misinterpreted) scripture, but the return of Jesus after the removal of the false messiah. This purposeful manipulation of the worldly church by bad players both within and without the church has been the prime mover not only in establishing “Israel” in 1948, but in financing it, supporting it, arming it, and defending it. Without the ongoing support of the worldly church through political and other machinations, the geopolitical state of Israel would struggle to exist.
I am no fan of the current geopolitical state of Israel. For that matter, I’m no fan of the current geopolitical state of Canada, either (even though I’m a Canadian), any more than I’m a fan of any other geopolitical state on Earth. I think they’re all satanic, every last one, and I support none of them. Still, I have no intention of getting in the way of “Israel”, as what has been decreed by God through his prophets will come to pass. “Israel” will successfully take by force the historical promised land, and the prophesied false messiah will sit on the throne of the third temple. Trying to stop or hinder what has been prophesied is a fool’s errand. Jesus warned us about the false messiah not so that we’d fight against him or his enablers, but so that we’d be aware of them and not fall under their spell.
As born-again believers, we should not join the worldly church in its support of a movement to enthrone the false messiah, regardless of the church’s motivation for doing so. God permits evil to thrive not because he loves evil but because he honors his promise to grant us free will. If we choose evil, God will permit us to have evil. But we shouldn’t choose evil believing it will lead to good (that is, that the fall of the false messiah will usher in the return of Jesus). Evil cannot lead to or beget good. If you choose evil, your reward can only be evil.
As a born-again believer, I encourage other born-again believers to adopt a hands-off approach to the current geopolitical state of Israel. It is not our concern. Our concern, as always, is serving and worshiping God, following Jesus, and helping our fellow believers in the Kingdom. We’re to watch and be aware of what’s going on in the world, but we’re not to get involved in it. Like the geopolitical state of Israel, the world is not our concern. It is under the authority of Satan, and God himself has put it there. To fight against the world is to fight against an authority ordained by God. We must never do that.
In the meantime, though, and for the rest of our time on Earth, we can revel in the knowledge that we live in God’s Kingdom, which is the true prophesied Israel of spiritual Zion, and that we live here thanks to the sacrifice of Jesus the Messiah and the love and grace of our Father, the Almighty God.
GOD WILL NOT HEAR
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, October 5, 2024 – Over and over, I find myself returning to the book of Jeremiah. It draws me – haunts me, even – no matter how many times I read it. If you take out the references to “Judah” and “Israel” and replace them with “Christians” and “Christendom”, Jeremiah is speaking directly to us today. God, through his Spirit, is speaking directly to us today. We need to read Jeremiah this way.
The worldly church hangs its hat on the sound bite John 3:16, neglecting to remind those who delay embracing Truth that at some point it will be too late to do so. The religious fairy tale is that God will save all those who call out to him right up to and including when Jesus comes back, and that we’ll all live happily ever after. But there is such a thing as “too late”. We’ve seen it with Noah. We’ve seen it with Sodom. We’ve seen it with Jeremiah and with the prophecies of Ezekiel.
Are we seeing it again today?
Jeremiah was excoriated by his contemporaries for pointing out that it was too late for the Judeans and Israelites to repent, as God had already decided on their defeat and exile and the destruction of Jerusalem. God even warned the prophet not to offer prayers for his own people, that he “would not hear them”. Not surprisingly, the people who opposed Jeremiah continued to insist that God had their back and would help them defeat their enemies, just like he had done in the past. But things had significantly changed for what had once been “God’s people”. Even while assuming God’s blessings and protection, they’d turned away from God and had adopted lifestyles that were worse than those of the heathens around them.
It’s a tricky situation, to have to inform people that time’s up and their trust in the status quo is in vain. No-one wants to hear that message. Jesus had to deliver the same message to what were formerly his people, warning them that God had left the room already. Not surprisingly, they rejected not only him but his message and continued to delude themselves into believing they were still God’s people, even while they crucified God’s Messiah.
Part of the reason why the “too late” message is so ill-received is that things still seem to be going along fine when the message of doom is being relayed. Jeremiah started preaching 40 years before the destruction of the first temple. Jesus started preaching 40 years before the destruction of the second temple. In both scenarios, people were generally settled on their lees, thinking that God must be OK with the status quo, as he hadn’t really indicated otherwise, had he? I mean, where was the lightning? Where were the thunderbolts? If God were angry with them, wouldn’t he be doing something to make it obvious that he was angry?
But God did do something – he sent prophet after prophet, until finally sending Jeremiah. Then he sent yet more prophets until finally sending Jesus. In between Jeremiah and Jesus, the surviving remnant of God’s people underwent fiery trials, with many of them falling away. There is never a time when God doesn’t let us know exactly where we stand with him, believer or not. It’s not God’s fault that he and his prophets are ignored.
Judaism was already a done deal long before the destruction of Jerusalem by the occupying Roman army in 70 AD. It’s important to note that Judaism didn’t die then; it was already dead 40 years earlier, when Jesus was preaching. I don’t know exactly when it died, but it was already dead then. By the time Jesus showed up, Judaism had become a death cult with no other end for its adherents but death. The worldly Christian church is also a death cult with only death as its end. The precise moment of its fall I don’t know. I just know that it’s dead. You cannot come to God through the worldly church, any more than you can come to God through Judaism. Judaism serves Judaism, just as the worldly church serves the worldly church, and both ultimately serve Satan. You can only come to the living God through the living Word, Jesus Christ, and that only while there’s still time.
I do not have a happy message today. There is a silence in Heaven that precedes the age of God’s final Judgement and wrath. The silence is prophesied to take place during a time when everything seems to be going along fine. John mentions it in Revelation, but a similar silence also took place in the years leading up to the flood (those infamous “days of Noah”) and in the years leading to the destruction of the first and second temples. People misinterpret the silence as God looking past or even downplaying sinful behavior (“surely ‘love’ and ‘belief’ must be enough!”), when in fact God has shut the door and left the rebellious to their own devices. I sat at table this week with men who call themselves Christian and yet who are eager to sign up to slaughter the “enemies of Israel”. I sat at table this week with women who call themselves Christian and yet who brag about having multiple lovers. God is not condoning or looking past these behaviors. He’s left these “Christians” to their own devices.
As difficult as it may be to accept (because the worldly church teaches us otherwise), there’s no point in praying for these people.
God will not hear.
They are turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers… Therefore, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them…. Pray not for this people.
Jeremiah 11:10-14
BEAUTIFUL FATHER
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 29, 2024 – As born-again believers, we’re well-acquainted with the many characteristics attributed to God our Father. We know that he’s perfect, we know that he’s all-knowing, we know that he’s righteous, we know that he’s holy.
But do we know that he’s beautiful?
Because scripture tells us that God is beautiful. In Psalm 27, David says that the one thing he desires more than anything else is to “dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of [his] life, to behold the beauty of the Lord.”
Not much else is written about God’s beauty in scripture, because other than for Jesus and a select few (like Adam and Eve, Moses, Abraham, maybe Noah, and Stephen just before he was martyred), no-one has seen God. Paul says: “now we see through a glass, darkly”, but John says that when we get to Heaven, we’ll see God “as he is”. We’ll see God’s perfect beauty that in its perfection and by very definition of who and what God is exceeds every other form and type of beauty. In other words, no-one and nothing can be more beautiful than God.
I don’t know about you, but I love beauty. I’m drawn to it, not in a vain or lascivious way, but because beautiful things and beautiful people are a pleasure to look at – to “behold”, as David puts it. We know that God’s holy angels – the sons of God – are beautiful, and we know (because Jesus tells us) that if and when we get to Heaven, we (the children of God) will be like the holy angels, which means we, too, will be beautiful like them. God gave us a love and appreciation for beauty not only for our own pleasure during our time on Earth but as a foretaste and promise of Heaven.
Even in this temporal place of imperfection and decay, we can still behold God’s beauty “through the glass, darkly”. David and Paul tell us so. And I know (because God is my Dad and we talk all the time) that God has luxuriantly long silky-soft curly hair that’s so white it glows and shines and smells like nothing you’ve ever smelled on Earth, the scent is so perfectly beautiful.
God doesn’t talk about his own beauty – why would he? We know that when Jesus walked the earth in human form, he wasn’t particularly attractive, but when he was glorified, he became beautiful. Not as beautiful as God, mind you, but second only to God in beauty. God is the most beautiful and Jesus is the second-most beautiful. We know this is true because the Father, as the Gospel teaches us, is greater than Jesus.
We know that God’s beauty is perfect because God is perfect and there is no flaw in him. And if God is perfect, his beauty is perfect. We can draw no other conclusion.
I don’t know about you, but even as I behold God now in my mind’s eye, I can’t wait for that glorious day when I’ll see my beautiful Father as he is.
LET HIM LOVE YOU
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 28, 2024 – The guiding question, for us as born-again believers, shouldn’t so much be “Do you love God?” but “Do you let God love you?”
Yes, of course, we love God. Our love for God goes with the territory of being a born-again believer. We don’t have ask ourselves or question ourselves about that. We love God because we’re born-again.
Still, loving God doesn’t necessarily mean we let him love us to the extent that he wants us to love us. Many of us put limitations on how much we’ll let God love us. How do we do that? By excluding him in our everyday decisions, like when to get up and when to go to bed, or what to eat, or what to wear. Maybe we let him guide us which verses or chapters or books to read in the Bible, thinking that’s his area of expertise and we should always defer to him in those matters, whereas “whole wheat or white?” should rest entirely on our own unguided decision.
But God wants to be there, too. He wants to advise us on our bread choices, noting that white bread toasts up nicer than whole wheat, but whole wheat makes a sturdier sandwich. He wants to show us the benefits of giving into heavy eyelids even when it isn’t our usual bedtime and the rewards of getting up when you wake up, rather than just rolling over and going back to sleep.
Jesus said that he always did that which pleased the Father, but Jesus couldn’t have known what pleased God unless he asked him, unless he invited him into every aspect of his daily rounds, not just Bible-reading or church-going.
God wants us to let him love us inside and out, upside and down, and every second of every minute of every hour of every day. But he’ll never impose his love on us or presume that we’ll let him love us even as his children; we need, like Jesus, to purposely and willingly open ourselves to God’s love.
And how do we do that?
Through prayer.
Prayer, as we know, is simply talking to God. It’s not a recitation or a script. You don’t have to do it on your knees or on your face or with your hands clasped or raised. You just talk to God the way you talk to anyone else. He’s your Dad, and he’s always with you through his Spirit, waiting for you to acknowledge him and engage him. This is how you open yourself more and more to God’s love, like Jesus did, and how you learn “always to do that which pleases the Father”, like Jesus did. You welcome God into every nook and cranny of your life – you close him off to none of it – and then your floodgates open and his love rushes in. This is the abundant life that Jesus promised us – not abundance of material wealth, not abundance of years, but abundance of spiritual wealth, through the overflowing of God’s Holy Spirit in everything we do and are.
This is how we let God love us the way he wants to love us. Talk to him all the time (“pray without ceasing”) and follow his advice without question. If he says take the white, take the white; if he says take the whole wheat, take the whole wheat. Don’t lean on your own understanding or that of the world. Don’t do something this way or that way simply because you’ve always done it like that: Ask God to guide you each and every time.
Love God, yes, because being born-again you cannot not love him, but even more importantly let him love you.
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“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”
Jeremiah 33:3
IS POVERTY BAD?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 18, 2024 – Institutional Christianity (a.k.a. the worldly church) spends a great deal of time and effort “helping the poor” and “less fortunate”. There seems to be not only a pervasive but unquestioned belief among worldly Christians that poverty is a bad thing that needs to be eradicated or at the very least urgently addressed and appropriate measures taken to mitigate it. But this approach to relieving poverty blatantly overlooks the fact that: 1) Jesus himself purposely chose to be poor during his powerful ministry years, and 2) Jesus taught his followers to divest themselves of their possessions and to follow his lead of living in poverty. Such a contradiction between the teachings of the Gospels and the efforts of the worldly church needs to be further investigated.
First of all – what is poverty? I’m not interested in the United Nations’ definition of the concept but in the lived experience of Jesus, as portrayed in the scriptures. Poverty, for Jesus, wasn’t something he arranged to happen; rather, poverty was the direct result of choosing to serve God and God only. It was life streamlined to the bare minimum of material goods required for day-to-day functioning, under the motto “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”. All the energy that otherwise would be directed to securing daily needs can then be directed to serving God.
As I’ve pointed out before, Jesus was no prepper. He also wasn’t afraid to go hungry or to sleep rough when required. He famously got caught out on several occasions without enough food to feed himself or his followers, but when that happened, he called on God, and God either miraculously supplied the food (as in the miracles of the loaves and fishes) or used the situation as a teaching and prophecy moment (as in the unripened and then withered fig tree). Nowhere in the Gospels is Jesus described as soliciting donations to open a soup kitchen or run a food bank. What we do see is him advising his faithful followers not to worry about what they were to eat, drink, or wear, as God would provide for them.
Poverty, then, for Jesus, was a preferred state of being that was both a result and condition of serving God. It wasn’t a lack that needed to be remedied or a punishment that needed to be endured or even a test; it was simply an outcome of serving God. But being “poor” of material wealth opened up a torrent of spiritual wealth, thanks to Jesus’ total dependence on God. This is what Jesus exemplified and invited his followers to experience for themselves. In fact, the first thing he had his disciples do when they started to follow him was unburden themselves of all their material possessions (houses, lands), quit their jobs, and leave their families behind. He didn’t direct them to go homesteading or plant a Victory Garden. He didn’t advise them to buy gold and bury it for safekeeping. He simply offered them an invitation to follow him and serve God, and the direct consequence of their decision to accept his invitation was radical poverty – that is, radical dependence on God.
It’s important to distinguish between Jesus choosing to serve God and Jesus choosing to live in poverty. He didn’t choose to live in poverty like some kind of economic martyr; he chose to serve God, which necessarily required him to stop serving mammon. If you stop serving mammon, you no longer have the rewards of mammon, which typically involve having excess, though for a price. What you get in serving God is just enough to survive, which frankly should do us born-again believers just fine until we get Home.
One of the devil’s most infamous temptations was to offer Jesus untold wealth and possessions in exchange for serving him, but Jesus bluntly turned him down. Jesus also told a rich religious leader who’d come to him for advice to sell everything he had, but this wasn’t what the religious leader had hoped to hear, and it depressed him. Many worldly Christians throughout the ages have likewise gotten depressed at the thought of having to give up their worldly possessions and walk away from their careers and families to follow Jesus. They counter their aversion by claiming that Jesus’ modeling of radical poverty was specific to the early Church, not something that applies to today’s established Church. All I can say to anyone who believes that lie is that they obviously haven’t read the Gospels and don’t know Jesus.
Why is poverty the preferred state of being for Jesus and his followers? Because serving God and being poor go hand-in-hand: You cannot serve God and mammon. You cannot claim to be serving God while at the same time be out running around chasing a buck. If you do that, you’ll be double-minded and serving two masters, which means you’ll really only be serving the devil. Serve God and God only, and you’ll be rewarded by God with whatever you need to survive: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and everything you need will be given to you.” Yes, you may on occasion go hungry or thirsty or end up sleeping rough, but those are not in and of themselves bad things and God will use those situations to your benefit. He will also use them to bless others by giving them the opportunity to help you. There’s no greater blessing for anyone on Earth than to help God’s children with a need, be it with a cup of cold water, or a well-timed meal, or a place for them to lay their head for the night.
Secondly, poverty ‘cleans the slate’ of mental pressures and filters associated with worldly wealth. I have never been wealthy, but I know people who are, and I see how the constant building and management of their wealth consumes them. It’s not something external to them but the core of their identity, so that if their wealth declines, they feel that they themselves have diminished. This is a sad state of affairs. Just as sad is that wealthy people tend to judge others based on their net worth, so that they look down on the poor and fawn over the wealthy. This is also a sad state of affairs.
Thirdly, serving God and choosing to live with only the blessings he provides is a form of lifelong fasting. We know that fasting extends to every aspect of our lives, not just food, and is spiritually beneficial. Making do with the bare minimum and even at times patiently accepting doing without makes us more grateful for what we do have, while also making us that much more reliant on God and therefore bringing us closer to him. God once described money to me as “spiritual cancer”, and he wasn’t wrong (he’s never wrong). The less spiritual cancer God’s children have, the better.
These considerations are just the tip of the iceberg on the benefits of what is known as being poor, as exemplified by Jesus in the Gospels. If Jesus so valued poverty that he willingly agreed to it as a condition of serving God, then why does the worldly church frame poverty as a negative state of being? Certainly, we need to distinguish between people who choose to serve God and so willingly become poor, and those who are poor for reasons not related to serving God. Yet even so, is poverty for whatever reason truly a bad thing? In other words, are people less happy poor than they are rich? I can only speak from my own experience, but by far the happiest people I know are the poorest, and the most miserable and dissatisfied are the wealthiest.
Paul describes in one of his letters how he learned to rejoice whether he’s abased or abounding. I have been both, and I know in hindsight that periods of being abased have always brought me that much closer to God, whereas periods of abounding have tended to draw my attention elsewhere.
So, when all is said and done – is poverty bad? Not according to God and Jesus. By all means, we can “help the poor” whenever we want (as Jesus said we could, to get the expected spiritual rewards), but don’t for a second think that the people receiving the help are any worse off spiritually than those giving the help. We’re no longer in Old Testament times, when material wealth was considered a sign of God’s favor. The New Testament opens up a whole new understanding not only of the value of poverty, but its role and necessity in the life of a true believer. The worldly church might consider giving it a read sometime.
PAPAL BULL*
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 17, 2024 – Sometimes the headlines are so obvious, they write themselves. In this case, the pope fired off his latest shot at God and his Church by claiming that all religions are a pathway to God and that we’re all children of God.
Both of these claims are so obviously and laughingly and sadly false – and so easily verifiable as false by even a casual reading of scripture – we can only assume that what the pope said, he said to elicit a violent response from believers.
I initially didn’t want to respond to his latest provocations, any more than I respond to any of his other drivel. The “all religions lead to God” line is so out to lunch, it’s on the same level as “water isn’t wet”. Would you actually try to argue with someone that water is wet? No, you would ignore whoever said it wasn’t and just assume that person is either pulling your leg or is mentally deficient.
But God put it in my heart today to respond, so here I am.
Jesus said that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no-one comes to the Father except through him. In other words, Jesus and God are a package deal, with Jesus – and Jesus only – being the doorway leading to God. Sikhism leads to God only if you entirely reject Sikhism, just as Buddhism leads to God only if you entirely reject Buddhism and Islam leads to God only if you entirely reject Islam, and so on and so on for every belief system that is not the One True Belief exemplified and taught by Jesus in the Gospels. Zero exceptions.
The pope knows this. Of course he does. But the pope doesn’t answer to God; he answers to the devil and is on the devil’s payroll, so when the devil feeds him the drivel he’s to spew on command, he spews it, no questions asked.
As for everyone being God’s children simply by virtue of existing – John had something to say about that:
“Behold, What manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.” (1 John 3:1)
We are adopted into God’s holy family at genuine spiritual rebirth – adopted out of the world that doesn’t (as John rightly points out) know or understand God and therefore doesn’t know or understand us. We are not born children of God; we are reborn children of God. We are born creatures of God, and should be grateful even for that, but oh – what a privilege and an honor to become God’s children by the inrush of God’s Holy Spirit at rebirth – to be invited into the holy fold with Jesus and his saints and all of God’s holy angels! There is no higher or rarer or more joyous calling.
So, no – we (meaning the general population of the world) are not all God’s children. Unless, of course, when the pope says “God”, he really means “Satan”. That he’s intentionally conflating God and Satan actually makes sense, given the history and purpose of the Catholic church. In which case, yes, all religions (other than the One True Way) are indeed pathways to Satan (a.k.a. the pope’s god), and all who are not of the One True Way are in fact children of Satan (a.k.a. the pope’s god).
Scripture soundly supports this.
That is my response to this latest provocation and attack on God’s Church. As for the pope and anyone who supports his evil institution, I’m beholden (thank you, Jesus) to end with: “Forgive them, Father, they don’t know what they’re doing.”
(* A papal bull is a form of public decree issued by a pope. It’s also more of the same BS from the usual suspects.)
WHEN GOD IS JEALOUS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 16, 2024 – I’ve spent the past 25 years worshiping God. That is, I’ve been born-again for 25 years. But of those 25 years, can I honestly claim that all of them were spent in worship of God?
What about you? Since your rebirth, how many years have you spent worshiping God and God only?
This can be a thorny issue for us born-again believers. We serve a self-proclaimed “jealous” God who wants us to know he’s jealous. He doesn’t hide his jealousy, and he doesn’t consider it to be a bad thing. If he did, he wouldn’t have made loving him with everything we have and everything we are – no compromises, no excuses, and no holding back – his first and foremost Commandment.
But do any of us actually do that?
(Is it even possible to do that?)
Jesus, particularly during his ministry years, likely came the closest to worshiping God the way God invites us to worship him. Because it’s an invitation as much as it’s a Command, to worship God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. It’s not an imposition. It’s not an obligation. It’s not something you have to drag yourself out of bed at 4 a.m. to do, certainly not if you’re genuinely born-again. It’s an invitation to enter into a far better way of being that will benefit you now and into eternity.
I was reminded about God’s jealousy today by none other than God himself. I’m glad he reminded me, because I have a tendency to get, well… diverted. I’m being too kind to myself here, but I think you get my drift. Sometimes the “cares of this world” can become very alluring and very distracting, and in fact they were made to be so, only not for us. We need to be reminded (read: warned) every now and then that the issues constantly absorbing unbelievers, such as family, relationships, career, finances, health, education, politics, etc., are not our issues, not our concerns. We should be aware of what’s going on around us and what’s generally going on in the world, but we shouldn’t be involved in any of it. Aware, but not involved.
The world is not our concern. It’s the devil’s concern. And God has the devil in an iron grip – so, not our concern.
Jesus is our best example of how to keep God from getting jealous. When he started his ministry, Jesus walked away from everything that had previously defined him. He even (and Catholics don’t like to hear this) shunned his birth family – including his mother – in favour of those who do God’s will. He wouldn’t let anyone or anything come between him and his worship of God. This made him a lot of enemies, especially among the people of Nazareth, but that didn’t matter to Jesus. He didn’t compromise his worship of God so that he wouldn’t offend people he knew, and neither should we.
What this means is that if you haven’t by this point accumulated a sizeable number of enemies, bans, blacklistings, etc., among unbelievers, then you’re focusing too much on the cares of this world and not enough on God. If unbelievers don’t cross the street when they see you coming, you’re not doing your job. If unbelievers genuinely want to spend time with you, you’re not doing your job. And no, your job isn’t to bang them over the head with God but to put God first in everything you do, which by definition is going to mean you’ll be at cross-purposes with everyone who doesn’t put God first. I sure as heck didn’t want to be around believers when I was an atheist, and neither should unbelievers want to be around us.
You can’t worship God while at the same time appease those who hate God. These things can’t be. You also can’t care about the cares of this world. Appeasing unbelievers and getting lured into debates over finances or politics is going to get God jealous, and you don’t want him jealous. We have precious little time here as it is, so we need to spend every second of it razor-focused on God and on doing his will.
Considering the above, can any of us honestly say that we’ve spent all the years since our rebirth fully worshiping God?
Probably not. But for whatever time we have left, we can do better.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 