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Y’AIN’T NUTHIN’ IF Y’AIN’T GOT SOUL
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 15, 2025 – Years ago, I used to fly back and forth between New York City and Amsterdam on People’s Airline ($99 one way; byob, baby!). Every now and then when I arrived back in New York, I would pass groups of men sitting on the floor in the arrivals area. The first few times I saw them, I didn’t really think twice about it; New York being New York, there was never a shortage of oddities to behold. But one time my curiosity got the better of me, so I asked a passing flight attendant why the men were sitting there. What he told me has stuck with me all these years: He said they were waiting for their souls to arrive.
Being an atheist at the time, I didn’t believe in souls, so I laughed it off as ridiculous. The attendant explained further that sometimes they’d sit there for days until they were certain their souls had caught up with them. What I didn’t realize, in glancing at these men in passing, is that they would become one of those scenes that would haunt me for the rest of my life: I can still see them sitting motionless on the cold hard floor, not talking or eating, their heads bowed, waiting.
Just waiting.
As a born-again believer, I do now unquestioningly believe in souls, and I think about those men and what their days-long silent protest at the airport hoped to accomplish. I hesitate to say they didn’t achieve their goal. I understand how jet lag can disorient you well beyond normal fatigue, but they must have understood jet lag, too, and could distinguish between it and a tardy soul. Surely it wasn’t just jet lag that drove them to do what they did?
I’ve tried researching this phenomenon online and have come up empty. Nothing’s been uploaded to the internet about people who wait at the airport for their souls to arrive. Could the flight attendant have been pulling my leg? Or was this an Olde Worlde tradition that has since passed into oblivion? It reminds me of the stories of North American natives who, back in the day, would refuse to have their pictures taken, as they equated picture-taking with soul-stealing.
Somewhat related in spirit if not in mode is a guy I know in Germany who knows a guy who won’t travel farther in a day than he can comfortably walk (~20 miles). If he goes on a 60-mile journey by car or train, he does it over three days, stopping every 20 miles to spend the night at a local hotel. He’s quite religious about this. I used to laugh at him, but now I think he might be onto something.
What about you? Does any of this resonate with you? Do you think we’re moving around too much and too fast, lured by cheap travel options and the pressure to do more and go farther in less time? How is this affecting your soul? As the Bible attests, we used to measure distance by how far people could walk in a day, but now we peg distance to car travel time. “Just five minutes to the mall!” really means a two-hour walk, and usually along a busy highway. When we frame travel distance by car rather than by foot, what affect does it have on our perception of time? Does it bias us against taking the more leisurely travel options or against taking the scenic route? And if it does bias our decisions, what are we missing out on? How are we hurting our souls in the process?
Did those “crazy” guys sitting on the floor at the airport actually have it right?
A soul is a terrible thing to abuse. If we’re discombobulating our souls by our travel modes, we need to radically consider slowing things down.
WHEN GOD BLINDS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 13, 2025 – We’ve all been blinded by God on occasion. He blinded me for the first 36 years of my life, when I suffered the same deserved blindness that Isaiah describes and Jesus quotes:
“By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive:
For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.” (Matthew 13:14-15)
If you’re genuinely born-again, you were also once blind. If you’re not genuinely born-again, you’re still blind.
God famously blinded Pharoah just before the exodus from Egypt. Scripture calls it a hardening of the heart, but it’s the same as spiritual blindness. The result is the same.
Sometimes God physically blinds people, like he blinded Paul on the road to Damascus or he blinded the men who were trying to sexually assault the angels at Lot’s house. And sometimes he unblinds people, like the ones Jesus healed.
So, God can make you spiritually or physically blind, and he can make you spiritually or physically see. Nothing is impossible for God.
Sometimes God will blind you spiritually as a form of protection, following the adage “what you don’t know, can’t hurt you”. Sometimes he’ll blind you as a form of punishment, and sometimes he’ll blind you because he needs you blind for his plans to proceed. This is the form of blindness that affected the disciples just before Jesus’ crucifixion, so they wouldn’t stop Judas Iscariot from betraying Jesus.
Even Jesus was blind to a certain measure and for a certain time. For instance, he knew what his mission was and he knew the intended outcome, but he didn’t know when it would start or end until God let him know. Jesus also said that no-one but God knows the timing of his second coming and of the end of the world. These things are hidden from us to thwart our spiritual enemies and to test us. If we knew the end was a long way off, we might slack off doing God’s will. Conversely, if we knew the end was coming soon, we might focus solely on that event and ignore everything else that God’s asking us to do.
I see this in the “Jesus is coming back soon!” cult that currently infests the worldly church. Nothing matters to these people except the presumption that they’ll soon escape all their troubles by being raptured to Heaven. Their whole witness is based on Jesus whisking them away to safety, but Jesus himself told us that he’ll come when he’s least expected. In other words, we’ll be spiritually blinded just before his second coming so that we won’t be expecting it. Because Jesus told us point-blank that he’ll come when no-one expects him to come, the “Jesus is coming back soon!” cult is clearly false.
God allows us to be blind if our life choices lead us to that state, and he also purposely blinds us whether as a form of punishment or protection or so that we won’t disrupt his plans. But he never maliciously blinds us. If he, for a time, physically or spiritually blinds us to further his agenda (like he did to the man who’d been blind from birth and who Jesus later healed in the temple to show God’s glory), he repays us multiple times over whatever we “lost” in being blinded.
Although we can see, we born-again believers still don’t have perfect spiritual vision. We have the measure of vision that God permits us, according to the measure of God’s Spirit that’s in us, which means that a certain measure of spiritual myopia is our unavoidable lot here on Earth. Paul likens it to seeing through a glass darkly, but he promises that we’ll all see clearly if and when we get to Heaven.
This is what I’m holding out for – perfection in Heaven. In the meantime, I don’t fight the blindness or curse the blindness or try to see more than God allows me to see, because I know that whatever God wills or permits, it ultimately works in my favor as long as I remain his child.
HOLY NIGHT
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 12, 2025 – If we follow God’s directive for the timing of the Passover (which we need to do as born-again believers), it starts tonight. That means the act of remembrance that Jesus directed us to do in remembrance of him should be done tonight, without fail. When Constantine corralled a group of elites into creating a religion called “Roman Catholicism” in the early 300s AD, he purposely changed the timing of the Passover so that it wouldn’t coincide with the timing of the real Passover, or what he snidely referred to as “the Jews’ Passover”. He didn’t want Catholicism to reflect anything done by the Jews. And so Constantine purposely changed the timing that Jesus asked us to perform the act of remembrance, and it is this changed timing – fake timing – that most Christians adhere to today.
As born-again believers, we need to do exactly what Jesus directed us to do, and what he directed us to do was to keep the Passover as God directed, not as Constantine directed. We need to keep the so-called Jews’ Passover, and that starts tonight.
We keep the Passover because Jesus directed us to keep it, but he also directed us to keep it in a very specific way. We’re to offer up unleavened bread as a token of Jesus’ sacrificial body and wine as a token of Jesus’ atoning blood. How we choose to keep the Passover beyond that is up to us, but it must, by a directive straight from Jesus (who got it straight from God), include the act of remembrance that Jesus showed us. And it must happen on the first night of the Jews’ Passover.
As born-again believers, we’re holy by virtue of the presence of God’s Holy Spirit with us, a Spirit given to us by God at our rebirth that signifies our spiritual adoption by God. When God gave us his Spirit, we became his children. The abiding presence of God’s Holy Spirit with us separates us from everyone else, the way it separated the children of Israel from the heathens around them during their final days in Egypt and their 40 years of wandering in the desert.
We are holy by the presence of God’s Holy Spirit with us, but tonight is the holiest of holies as far as nights go, because tonight we do as Jesus directed: we do it exactly at the time he directed, and we do it exactly in the way he directed. Nowhere else in the gospels does Jesus give us a directive that is so specific in its timing and content. And because the directive is time- and content-specific, it needs to be done exactly as written.
We need to keep the Passover tonight in remembrance of Jesus, as he directed us to do, and we also need to keep it in remembrance of the first Passover, when God, as he’d promised, “passed over” the children of Israel, leaving them unharmed while killing the first-born of every other human and beast in Egypt, sparing none.
This is a profoundly holy night, by directive of both God and Jesus, and it must be kept as such.
PASSOVER 2025: THE FEAST OF UNLEAVENED BREAD AND A CALL TO FASTING
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 10, 2025 – Here’s your annual heads-up that Passover is coming soon (it starts at sundown on Saturday, April 12th), followed by the weeklong Feast of Unleavened Bread. So if you haven’t yet thought about what you’re going to eat as a bread substitute next week (anything with a leavening agent is a no-no), now’s the time to brainstorm.
You can even make your own unleavened bread with just flour, water, and salt:
How you choose to commemorate the Passover ritual on Saturday night is up to you, but commemorating it how Jesus showed us to commemorate it in the gospels is a good start.
And for those of you who feel called to do it, fasting to mark the time that Jesus was taken away from us (this year, commemorated from mid-afternoon Sunday to early morning Tuesday) will be greatly blessed by God. When the scribes and Pharisees ask Jesus:
“Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; but thine eat and drink?”
Jesus tells them:
“Can ye make the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?
But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.” (Luke 5:33-35)
This is a 40-hour fast over three days to commemorate “those days” that Jesus was taken away from us, from the time of his death mid-afternoon on the first day of the Passover (this year, it falls on Sunday, April 13th) to the time he was seen resurrected by Mary early in the morning on the third day (this year, it falls on Tuesday, April 15th). This is not a reenactment of the crucifixion and resurrection; it’s a commemoration. How deep you want to go for your fast (zero food/water; water only; unleavened bread and water; soup, juice, and water; etc.) is up to you.
Forty hours is not a long fast, but again, this call to fasting is meant only for those who feel called to do it. There’s no obligation, keeping in mind that any fasting not done free-willingly has no spiritual value, whereas fasting done free-willingly is mightily blessed by God.
May your Passover be mightily blessed!
THE EVENTUALLY
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 9, 2025 – We’d been emergency evacuated from our train, and I found myself on a station platform surrounded by a press of noise and people in heavy winter clothing. The stench of diesel was nauseating. This wasn’t my stop. I was frantically trying to see if I had all my belongings with me, but the light was so dim, I couldn’t tell my luggage from other people’s luggage, and there were so many passengers thronging past me that I got caught up in their motion and had no choice but to hurry along with them. If I’d stood still, I would have been trampled.
Two men closed in on me to my left. One of them gestured that he wanted to help me with my suitcase, but I could tell that he just wanted to steal it. He leered at me and muttered something in a language I didn’t understand. I held onto my suitcase all the tighter.
As we hurried along, the platform turned into a narrow, paved pathway with high thick bushes on either side. Suddenly, the twilight plunged into darkness. It wasn’t a normal nightfall of gradually dimming light, but more like an eclipse. I could see nothing but a thin beam of light illuminating the path directly in front of me. I must have fallen far behind the other passengers because I couldn’t see them anymore, as if they’d disappeared. I couldn’t even see the bushes. All I could see was a thin strip of paved path.
The next thing I knew, it was morning and I was at another station, but this one was deserted. It was an old-style wood-framed building with gingerbread trim and a long portico supported by thin wooden pillars. The tracks in front of the station were covered in flowering weeds and obviously hadn’t been used for a while. As I stood in the cool of the morning under the portico’s shade, it occurred to me that I no longer had my suitcase with me, the one the man had tried to steal. It was gone. I looked up at the pathway behind the station, but I couldn’t see the suitcase. I thought maybe I should go back and look for it, but then I thought there was no guarantee I’d find it (or had even lost it there). Someone might already have nabbed it or someone might have taken it the next station. And if I did go back looking for it, I’d never catch up with my fellow passengers who were heading (or so I suspected) to the connecting train that we were all supposed to take after being evacuated from the earlier one.
As I stood there chasing ideas back and forth in my head, the trill of a bird cut through my thoughts. It so startled me, I felt like I’d just woken up. What a beautiful day! The air was fresh the way it only is after an early morning shower and everything sparkled with the last of the raindrops. I reckoned it was around 9:30 or 10:00. I had no idea where I was, but I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to backtrack and frantically search for my suitcase, and I didn’t want to rush forward to try to catch the next train. I just wanted to stand there in the quiet of the coolness and the sparkling of the beauty, hearing the bird sing. This is where I needed to be.
It wasn’t until later that I realized that the road leading to the next train station also led to the view I have from my house in Heaven, and that the missing suitcase was full of moldy old Bibles I hadn’t read in years.
**********
God wants us to be patient. It’s supposed to be one of our defining features – “the patience of saints” – but not all of us have quite yet earned that stripe. We’re to be patient the way Isaiah was when he walked barefoot and naked for three years, or patient like Ezekiel when he lay for 390 days on his one side, and another 40 days on his other. We’re to be patient like John the Baptist was when for all those years he lived in the desert and ate nothing but locusts and wild honey, or like Jesus, when he was ready to start his ministry at 12 years of age but had to wait another long 18.
We’re to be patient, and it’s not something we can do on our own. It’s a supernatural ability that comes from God, the same way our sainthood does. We can’t make ourselves patient any more than we can make ourselves saints. We can’t even pray for patience. We need to open ourselves to it and wait for it, and wait for it, and wait for it, and then – eventually – like a dream – it will come.
We have to be patient because God’s timing is perfect, and you can’t rush perfection.
THE SWORD OF OUR MOUTH
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 9, 2025 – Jesus never engages in hand-to-hand combat anywhere in scripture. We don’t see him pull a knife, brandish a sword, hurl stones, or even gently push anyone. Sure, he turned over a few tables in the temple to get the message across to the moneychangers (and whipped a few of them who weren’t paying close enough attention), but the only thing he really hurt was their pride. When push came to shove, it was always other people doing the pushing and shoving. It was never Jesus. He didn’t promote physical violence, and he stood by the motto that those who live by the sword, die by the sword.
Which is why his advice to his followers to arm themselves can be confusing to the casual Christian. Surely if Jesus told us to get weapons, he meant for us to use them? And surely he intended that we should defend ourselves with those weapons, or why else should we get them?
Jesus is nothing if not consistent with his message. When he said that those who live by the sword die by the sword, he wasn’t contradicting his advice for us to arm ourselves. He was explaining why and to what purpose we needed to arm ourselves: for deterrence, and only if we become outcasts from society and so have to live without the protection of law enforcement. Unarmed people are sitting ducks among the lawless, whereas people armed with even one weapon are less attractive targets (which explains why Jesus told his disciples that the one sword they had was enough). When someone openly displays a weapon, it gives the impression that he or she intends to use it. That’s the impression Jesus wants us to convey with our weapon. But at the same time, he doesn’t want us to use the weapon to physically hurt anyone.
How do we know this? Because again, Jesus was consistent with his message. He never contradicted himself. He taught us to keep the Commandments, which includes the Commandment not to kill. Any vengeance we want to exact, we’re to leave in God’s hands: “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay.”
So, we’re to get weapons for deterrence purposes if and when we’re banished from mainstream society and forced to live among the lawless, but we don’t have permission to use those weapons to hurt others. The only slaying we have God’s permission to do is with the sword of our mouth. That’s how Jesus fights his battles, and that’s how we’re to fight ours.
THE ONE WHERE SHE TALKS ABOUT WOMEN IN THE CHURCH
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 4, 2025 – I don’t generally like women. When I say “I don’t generally like women”, I mean I don’t generally like women who are not born-again. On the other hand, I’ve yet to meet a born-again woman I didn’t like. That’s just my personal experience as a born-again woman.
I’m not sure my experience as a born-again woman can be applied to anyone except me and I caution against anyone viewing it as a general statement that reflects every born-again woman’s experience. It’s just mine, my personal experience. And whether ironic or not, my personal experience is also that I generally like men, but that could just be because men generally treat me better than women treat me. It could also be that because I’m a woman, women let their guard down around me, showing me aspects of themselves that are not pretty, whereas most men put on their best face for me simply because I’m a woman. But again, that’s just my personal experience and perception.
When it comes to women in the Church (and here I’m talking about born-again women in God’s Church, not the worldly church), there is no distinction between them and men. Paul notoriously talked about the need for women to remain silent in the church and to be subject to men in matters of authority, but these directives are not applicable to God’s Church, just to the worldly church. I would die on that hill.
In God’s Church, there are no distinctions based on race, age, sex, or any other categorical division that muddles the world. The sole criteria to be in God’s Church are genuine spiritual rebirth and right standing with God. There is also no real authority beyond Jesus and God in the Church. Jesus said to call no-one on Earth “Father”, as God is our Father, and to call no-one on Earth “Rabbi”, as he is our rabbi (teacher and master). So, Jesus and God are our sole authorities in the Church, mediated through God’s Holy Spirit, which we received at our rebirth and signifies by its abiding presence with us that we are genuinely reborn.
If God is our Father and Jesus is our teacher and master, there’s no cause for anyone else assuming any position of authority in God’s Church. Having and speaking an opinion or a revelation, as I do here on this blog? Absolutely. God expects and enables us to do that. But holding authority over other members of the Church? No. I do not believe that God wants any of us to do that, and I believe that Jesus’ teachings support my opinion. Peter’s job, as stipulated by Jesus, was to “strengthen the brethren” and to “feed” them, not hold a position of authority over them. We don’t need any authority in the Church beyond God and Jesus.
If this is the case (and I firmly believe it is), then there should be no question of women in the Church being silent or being subject to men. We are all the same in God’s eyes, all under God’s authority and taught by Jesus. If you don’t want to listen to me because you don’t agree with me or don’t believe me, that’s your prerogative and free will choice, but if you don’t want to listen to me solely because I’m a woman, that shows that you’re not genuinely born-again and so don’t belong here.
I could not care less what the world thinks of women. I only care what Jesus and God think of them, and I know both from personal experience as a born-again woman and from what Jesus showed and taught us in the gospels that God and Jesus make no distinction between women and men in the Church. Their voices are equal.
JESUS UNLEASHED
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 3, 2025 – Up until about a week before his resurrection, Jesus was very quiet about who he was. If he revealed his Messiahship at all, it was very hush-hush and to his disciples only, and that obliquely, never directly. If he knew he was targeted for arrest in one place, he avoided it and went to another. He kept a low profile and was always on the move, always looking over his shoulder and cautious in his words. He cautioned his disciples to keep certain things quiet. He cautioned those he healed not to tell anyone who’d healed them. He commanded the demons to shut the hell up about him. He proceeded steadily through his ministry, steadily, steadily, but at times as if walking on eggshells, not on water, and always keeping within the strict bounds dictated by God.
And then about a week before his glorification, Jesus was unleashed. It started with his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, riding a colt over an impromptu red carpet of strewn palm branches and bystanders’ garments, fit for a king. Because he was a king – JESUS IS KING! – and from that moment, he openly assumed his rightful role.
I used to get depressed about what the Catholics blandly call “Holy Week”, the days leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion. I hated thinking about what was done to Jesus, and the closer the memorial of that event drew near, the more depressed I got. And then one day God showed me another way to think about that week. He showed me not to focus on the crucifixion but on all the events leading up to the resurrection, as relayed in the gospels. From that perspective – God’s perspective – I came to see those days as the most action-packed and exhilarating of Jesus’ entire ministry.
After his triumphal entry, Jesus tore through the temple like a cleansing whirlwind, overturning the tables of the moneychangers and whipping any of them who refused to leave. He also stopped anyone from carrying vessels through the temple proper, commanding them to respect God’s temple as a house of prayer, not a place of commerce. And in that cleansed temple that he now rightfully lorded over, Jesus taught like he’d never taught before. He rebuked the hypocrites for being hypocrites. He directed to give God what is due God and to Caesar what is due Caesar. He told the temple elders and chief priests that by whose authority he did what he did was none of their business and accused them of being like greedy and murderous workers who’d been tasked by their master to maintain his property but instead had destroyed it. He set the Sadducees straight on the resurrection doctrine. He declared himself to be greater than David’s son. He declared the widow’s farthing to be of higher value than everyone else’s contributions to the treasury. And he gave his famed and detailed run-down of what to expect during Earth’s final days.
In short, Jesus owned that week in the same way he owned the temple – fully, unapologetically, and rightfully. The King had ascended his throne – the Highest Priest had entered the Holiest of Holies – and he danced like no-one was watching, like David danced when he brought the Ark of the Covenant into the City of David. And with Jesus’ every word and every movement during that most glorious of all weeks, God was not only fully onboard, he willed it, showing his signature and seal of approval by having his prophets record it in scripture long before it happened.
Jesus unleashed was God’s greatest creation. No-one before or since has come anywhere close to that breathtaking display of power and glory. Still, as Jesus’ followers, we should pray to be unleashed like Jesus was when our hour comes.
So consider this fair warning, all you hypocrites out there: Maybe not today, but one day… we’re coming for you.
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.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 