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TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH
MCLEODS, New Brunswick, April 14, 2024 – There are two kinds of people: those who use words to convey meaning, and those who hide behind words, using them as a weapon or a strategy.
The first kind of people are truthtellers and the second kind are liars.
The funny thing about truthtellers and liars is that they don’t always identify as such, even to themselves. I have met truthtellers who speak the truth because they can’t conceive of not speaking the truth. The alternative doesn’t even occur to them. I have also met liars who lie as a matter of course, without thinking twice about it. They don’t consider words as strategies or weapons; they just lie because that’s who they are.
For the most part, the world is full of liars. Better said, the world is peopled by liars. Liars by far form the vast majority of the population no matter where you go. Some (surprisingly few) lie knowingly and with intent, but most do it without even realizing they’re doing it (or thinking that what they’re doing is in any way wrong), since lying is the currency they trade in, and they’re good at it. It comes naturally to them. The world is conceived, built, greased, and rolls on lies.
Me, I had learn this the hard way, about the way things are. I’m a born truthteller and a terrible liar, though I occasionally tried lying on for size as a child as a way to wiggle out of tight spots. I wasn’t very good at lying, though some still believed me, or at least feigned believing me. I found it was all in how you stare them steadily in the eyes while you stumble for the right words or what you think are the right words, daring them not to believe you. Now, in hindsight, I understand that people accepted my lies not because they actually believed me but because taking what I said at face value was easier than trying to get to the bottom of things.
Liars are lazy. Truth requires constant self-adjustment, like a tuning, every day, several times a day. It takes effort. Lying simply adjusts around you so that you can stay exactly as you are, looking past truth as if it doesn’t exist or has no more merit than lies. Most people go through life lying not because they have a character flaw but because they’re born that way. You’re either born a liar or you’re born a truthteller. You don’t become one or the other through circumstances: You remain the same from birth to death and beyond.
Liars surround themselves with liars the way that birds of a feather flock together. Truthtellers tend to be individualistic, wandering from one flock to next in search of – what? Another truthteller? You might as well pan for gold in a septic tank. Your chances of success will be greater.
Surely it can’t be that bad. Surely I’m just making this up as a way to explain away the hurt. I have seen smile after smile of sympathy, the feigning of empathy, when the mind is a million miles away, planning supper. You can only say so much to most people, and that I had to learn. The hard way.
Let us talk about the weather (but not about weather modification). Let us talk about beliefs (but not about God). Let us talk about the future (but not about death, never about death and certainly never about what comes after death). Steer toward the middle of the liar freeway and you’ll be OK. You’ll be fine. Just, whatever you do, don’t mention (the unmentionables).
I have found it is better to live alone than to live with liars. This, too, I had to learn the hard way.
I’m still learning.
THE AMBITION OF JESUS
CHARLO, New Brunswick, April 14, 2024 – A topic that’s rarely discussed in polite religious circles is Jesus and his ambition. It’s as if ascribing something as “human” as ambition to one such as Jesus is somehow off-limits, but Jesus was ambitious. There’s no doubt about that. And he wants you to know he was ambitious because he wants you to be ambitious, too, but ambitious in the way he was, not in the way the world is.
The difference between Jesus’ ambition and worldly ambition is that Jesus wanted to go as high as he could in the Kingdom, in service to God, while worldly people want to go as high as they can in the world, in service to themselves, their families, their nation, etc. So, instead of aiming for the same old tired trinity of worldly fame, worldly fortune, and worldly power (yawn…), we born-again believers need to be ambitious like Jesus was. We, too, need to want to go as high as we can in God’s Kingdom so we can gain spiritual fame, spiritual fortune, and spiritual power, all of which comes from God and is both free of charge and priceless.
But how do we get there? How do we achieve the same or similar level of spiritual fame, fortune, and power as Jesus? In other words, if we’re not yet there, how can we become ambitious like Jesus?
To answer these questions, we need to look at how Jesus achieved his ambitions, because everything we do should reflect what Jesus did, not only in the choices he made, but how he went about making them.
As his first order of business, Jesus waited for God’s signal to let him know it was time to start his ministry. This is an absolute must, to wait for God’s signal. You cannot achieve anything of spiritual value if God isn’t in it, helping you do it in his time. You might desperately want to do something – you might even think it’s a good thing to do, an honorable thing to do – but if God hasn’t inspired you to do it and hasn’t given you the go-ahead to do it, you’re wasting your time on a pride project.
Secondly, when he got God’s message loud and clear that it was time to start his ministry, Jesus immediately cleared the slate of his former (pre-ministry) life. He gave up everything he’d accumulated in Nazareth, including his role as the eldest son, his job as a carpenter, his home, his possessions, even his good reputation. When he’d finished clearing his slate, he was no longer welcome in his hometown (on pain of death) and even had to sneak in undercover to visit his family. Yet he considered his new-found infamy of no consequence and didn’t try to back-track to recover lost ground. He simply moved on.
Next, he threw himself entirely on God’s mercy and good graces. He did this initially by relying on God for basic survival during his 40 days and nights in the wilderness fasting. When he emerged from this ordeal and started his ministry proper, Jesus had plenty of work, but no “gainful employ”, meaning that he relied on others to provide for his needs. Being an itinerant preacher and teacher meant he was always on the road and had no need to maintain a house, anyway, but still, that’s a lot of unknowns to deal with every morning when you wake up – Where am I going to sleep tonight? What am I going to eat today? Where am I going to go and how am I going to get there? Most people wouldn’t last a week living like that, let alone three years, especially when paired with working 18-hour days. Jesus was able to do it because he relied on God to provide for him either directly (like the gold coin in the fish’s mouth) or indirectly (through donations).
Fourth, once his course was set and he was on his way, Jesus refused to be sidetracked or compromised. The devil famously tried to knock him off-course right out of the gate by plying him with his usual “deal you can’t refuse” schtick, but Jesus easily brushed him aside and kept going. He just as easily brushed aside the religious powers-that-be in Jerusalem and elsewhere, as well as his family when they showed up in Capernaum, intending to take him back to Nazareth for his own safety. We can only imagine the number of alluring women the devil strewed in his path, trying to tempt him, or the number of shady deals he was pitched during his pub visits or even at the homes of the religious elite. What we don’t have to imagine is that he turned them all down, because that he clearly did, ultimately emerging a sinless and worthy sacrifice.
Fifth and finally, Jesus refused to give up. He knew what his mission was and he knew what his reward was, and he wasn’t going to falter, no matter how hopeless things looked at any given time. This strategy of “never give up, no matter what” is actually the secret superpower of every successful person, whether you’re aiming for worldly success or spiritual success. You cannot be ambitious without it. And Jesus certainly was ambitious. He was driven, focused, single-purposed, and tireless and he gave everything he had in every conceivable way to achieve his goal. Even the looming threat of crucifixion didn’t stop him – he simply doubled-down on his prayers and was immediately rewarded with a contingent of angels, strengthening him.
We must never downplay the ambition of Jesus during his ministry years or dismiss ambition as being unworthy of him, because ambition was beyond a doubt one of Jesus’ core traits. I’d even go so far as to state that without ambition, Jesus might not have been the Messiah. Faith, of course, is necessary and certainly gets us farther than mere desire, but ambition gives us that extra boost, making us crafty, adaptable, resourceful, and relentless, all of which are formidable characteristics when directed – with God’s inspiration – to the service of God’s Kingdom.
COMPLAINING YOUR WAY TO CONDEMNATION: A TIMELY REMINDER ABOUT GRATITUDE
CHARLO, New Brunswick, April 12, 2024 – Let’s play a little game, shall we? Let’s see how long we can go without complaining about something. How long do you think you’ll last before being disqualified? If you’re like most people, you won’t last an hour, because complaining, unfortunately, has become the default mode for conversations these days. In other words, complaining has been normalized and even trivialized in modern society. But the normalizing of complaining is the normalizing of ingratitude, which is an expression of pride… all of which means that we born-again believers need to work extra hard at winning the “no complaining” game every day of our lives until God takes us Home.
We know that God hates when his children complain. In fact, he hates it so much, he condemned nearly the entire generation of Israelites that were of age at the time of the exodus. Their sentence was to die in the wilderness before reaching the Promised Land because they chose to complain about their freedom under God and long instead for slavery under demons.
What about you? Do you complain? Do you think that your life was better before you were reborn? I in no way believe my life was better before my rebirth, but I still have to bite my tongue umpteen times a day to keep little whines from spilling out. I don’t mean any harm by them and frankly I’m usually just shooting the breeze with someone, griping good-naturedly about the weather or the traffic. These are just careless, casual remarks, but are they hurting me anyway?
Scripture says yes, they are. Any kind of an expressed complaint is signifying that you don’t like the way things are in your life. But the way things are in your life is what you’ve brought on yourself by your words and your thoughts and your deeds. Jesus says the measure we mete (dish out) is the measure we get in return, so if we feel we’re getting less than we deserve, the problem lies in us, not in other people or in “bad luck” or in God.
Even worse, at the root of our impulse to gripe is ingratitude. When we complain that things are not as good as they used to be or not as good as they could be, we show ingratitude for all the good gifts God has given us and continues to give us on a daily basis. We honestly have no clue how many blessings God showers us with day in and day out, as we tend to take nearly everything we have for granted or we mistakenly believe we have ourselves and our own efforts to thank for our abundance (all you Nebuchadnezzars out there – I’m talking to you!).
Reasonably good weather and living conditions? Check. Comfy roof over our heads? Check. More than sufficient food in the fridge and cupboards? Check. Amiable companionship? Check. Stimulating leisure activities? Check. Purposeful work and adequate income? Check. Good health? Check. All these blessings didn’t just happen; God arranged them for us and presented them to us as gifts. He doesn’t want us to faun and grovel over his gifts, but he does at least expect us not to complain about them.
If the root of complaining is ingratitude, what is the root of ingratitude? When we reject what we have and demand something bigger and better, or newer and shinier, or faster and more impressive, we’re essentially saying that we deserve more than what we have, which defies what Jesus taught us about the measure we get being the measure we’ve earned. And what is the core motivator for believing you deserve more and better?
Pride.
The same pride that consumed Satan and his followers and ultimately got them perma-banned from Heaven.
When we praise God, we’re thanking him. When we thank God, we’re showing our gratitude for his gifts. And when we show God our gratitude for his gifts, we’re standing humbly before him as his loving and beloved children. There is no better place in all of creation than standing before God, loving him and humbly receiving his love. Humility, as we know, is the opposite of pride: “A humble and contrite heart you will not despise.”
So the next time you almost let slip a complaint, remember the Israelites in the wilderness and what happened to them when they complained. If it hasn’t yet happened to you, it doesn’t mean it won’t happen; it just means that God is generous, merciful, and longsuffering towards you, giving you yet another chance after yet another chance after yet another chance, which you should also be grateful for.
I certainly am.
INTO THE FIERY FURNACE
CHARLO, New Brunswick, April 11, 2024 – Our trials, when they come (and come they will), don’t always announce themselves in advance. Sometimes our trials are meant to blindside us because our raw response is part of the test.
Daniel’s good friends and colleagues, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (hereafter “SM&A”), weren’t entirely blindsided by their trial, but they also didn’t have months to prepare for the furnace. In the book of Daniel, we read that Nebuchadnezzar, the then king of Babylon, had a 60-foot-high golden idol set up. He was so proud of his idol, he decreed that everyone – regardless of cultural background – must fall down and worship it whenever they heard the sounds of certain instruments playing, kind of like Pavlov’s dogs responding to ringing bells. The punishment for failing to prostrate before the abomination was death by fiery furnace.
From the get-go, SM&A wanted nothing to do with the decree. Note that they didn’t lobby against it or protest it or start a petition to protect their minority religious rights. No, they didn’t engage in any kind of public protest or encourage others to do so. Instead, they just didn’t go along with it and remained quietly and resolutely standing when everyone else around them fell down.
Their decision to remain standing marked them for trouble. Soon enough, trouble came in the form of a gaggle of envious Chaldeans who gleefully snitched on them to the king. Furious, the king hauled SM&A before him and offered them a calculated deal: He promised them that if they would fall down on cue from that point onward, they’d be off the hook for their previous failings and free to go. But if they chose not to fall down, they’d be thrown into the furnace and burned alive. The king then addended his offer with: “and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?”
Who, indeed.
SM&A, knowing their God and choosing to stand firm in his promises rather than those of the king, quickly but respectfully schooled Nebuchadnezzar, stating:
If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. (Daniel 3:16-18)
Their refusal to submit to him sent Nebuchadnezzar into a blind rage, and he ordered the furnace to be heated seven times hotter than usual and that the men be thrown into it fully dressed and bound, and without further ado.
We can only imagine what was going through the minds and hearts of SM&A while they were being hauled off to their fiery end by the king’s brutes. Whatever it was, it caught God’s attention, and he immediately sent his angel to protect the faithful trio, who ultimately emerged unscathed, unsinged, and even fresh-smelling from their trial. Humbled by what he’d witnessed, the king then decreed that anyone who spoke anything amiss against God should be dealt with accordingly.
All’s well that ends well, certainly, but I believe there’s a deeper lesson to be learned here than simply that God comes to the rescue of those who are faithful to him or that God gives you exactly what you’re asking for in prayer. In their statement to Nebuchadnezzar, SM&A not only pointed out that God was indeed able to save them from the furnace, if he so chose, but that even if God chose not to save them from the furnace, they would still remain loyal to him. In stating this, SM&A were showing that they were not putting any conditions on God or making assumptions about what he would or would not do: they were only stating what he was capable of and affirming that their loyalty and submission would remain to God and to God only, regardless of how their trial played out.
My dear fellow born-again believers – this is the crux of our faith: that we stand on the witness of our heart, not our eyes, and that we put no conditions on God or make assumptions about what he will or will not do for us. We love God and are loyal to him because we love him and are loyal to him. Full stop. We don’t stop loving him (that is, give up on him and turn from him to worship other gods) if he doesn’t deliver us from our trials in the way we think we should be delivered, or if he doesn’t deliver our loved ones from their trials.
We put no conditions on God. That, I believe, is the deeper lesson taught to us by the fiery trial of SM&A. Yes, they were delivered by God who showed he was well and easily able to do so, but even if he hadn’t delivered them (like he didn’t deliver Isaiah from being sawn in half or he didn’t deliver Jesus from being crucified), their faith (I believe) would have remained sure.
We stand on the witness of our heart, not our eyes. We love God with everything we have and everything we are and submit fully to him and to him only not because of what he can do for us, but because he is. That’s the first and what Jesus called the greatest Commandment.
If you’re not there yet in your faith, you need to get there, and the sooner the better.
A HEADS-UP FROM “MISS HALIFAX”
CHARLO, New Brunswick, April 10, 2024 – I’ve had this blog now for nearly 10 years. During that time, I’ve corresponded privately with a lot of people who contacted me because of something they read here. Most of the correspondence has been amiable, some of it has been odd, a fraction of it has bordered on abusive, and a few of the correspondents eventually did turn abusive and/or aggressive and I had to block them.
As a female raised in the late 20th century in a first-world English-speaking country, I was taught to be polite and pleasant to everyone. I always had a smile on my face, even before I was born-again. Some people used to snidely call me “Miss Halifax” behind my back, in reference, I guess, to my hair & make-up routine and ever-present smile. But I learned the hard way that you don’t have to smile at everyone, certainly not all the time. Sometimes you don’t even have to acknowledge them.
Jesus didn’t heal everyone who called out to him to be healed as he walked through this village or that. He didn’t even heal all those who made the effort to come to his house in Capernaum. He healed only those God showed him were ready to receive his healing; the rest he let be.
When I say: “ready to receive his healing”, I don’t mean they were pure when they came to Jesus for healing. Not at all. I mean they were ready in their heart to do whatever it took to get healed. That’s not the case with everyone who cries out to God for help today any more than it was the case in Jesus’ day. Some people cry out to God in anger; some people cry out with a list of conditions; some people assume a demanding stance, with heavy expectations; and some people just want to test God to see whether or not he exists.
For those of you who’ve contacted me over the years because something on the blog has resonated with you – God bless you for reaching out! Your kind words encourage me, and I appreciate them. But for those of you (and you know who you are) who just want to lock horns or bait me – God has taught me that I’m under no obligation to respond to you. Jesus received Nicodemus because he came to him with a sincere yearning to understand what Jesus was teaching. On the other hand, Jesus all but ignored the scribes and Pharisees, because as much as they feigned interest in the Kingdom and would show up at his teaching sessions on occasion, their baited questions revealed their true intent.
I will continue with this blog as long as God gives me the green light to do so. In the meantime, anyone who wants to reach out in sincerity has my full attention. But those who reach out with other motivations might not get the response they expect, if any at all. Yes, I’m polite and pleasant (and still smiling!) as a born-again believer, but I don’t take the crap I used to.
Just a heads-up! 😀
I THINK, THEREFORE I AM…OPEN TO TEMPTATION
CHARLO, New Brunswick, April 8, 2024
How are your thoughts?
Are you thinking things maybe you shouldn’t?
Are you as charitable about people in your thoughts as you are in your spoken words?
Or are you a holier-than-thou fraud (like the hypocrites Jesus regularly upbraided), walking the walk and talking the talk while your mind oozes venom….
Scripture tells us that Jesus knew the hearts of the people around him. That is, he knew what they were thinking; he knew their thoughts. The reason he knew their thoughts is that God was reading their minds and giving Jesus a summary of the contents.
God reads our minds, too. All the time. Not just some of the time – all of the time. At no point in time can we hide even the slightest inkling of a thought from God. Remember that he knows what we’re going to think even before we think it, so don’t waste your time trying to outpace God. You’ll lose that battle before you get your armour on.
I love that God can read my mind. I love that he knows every thought I think – he doesn’t direct my thoughts, he just monitors and records them. To me, this is a great comfort, because knowing he’s constantly listening to my thoughts makes me more aware of what I choose to think about, what I choose to dwell on, and what I choose to entertain.
Jesus taught us that for a man even to look at (that is, to think of) a woman in lust is already to have committed adultery with her (unless, of course the woman is the man’s wife). To clarify, Jesus obviously wasn’t referring to the drive-by thoughts that the devil sideswipes us with on occasion, to test us. We’re not responsible for the thoughts that come at us from our blind spot. We are, however, responsible for the thoughts that we choose to entertain, that we mull over and massage, that we hold up to the light (to better see through the skirt…). Those thoughts are what Jesus was referring to – the ones that you knead and worry, not the ones that plop into your mind and you dismiss.
I mention this today because I think even some born-again believers don’t take Jesus at his word regarding the danger we put our souls in by entertaining sinful and uncharitable thoughts. I think most of us are careful about our spoken words, careful about our written words, careful in what we do when we’re in public (and also, for the most part, in private), but we sometimes forget to be just as careful about what’s going on in our mind and what we’re entertaining as thoughts. We forget that what’s in our head is actually more important than our expressed words and deeds combined, because what’s in our head – what we entertain and roll with – is the truest reflection of the state of our soul.
Did you know that your thoughts can make or break your eternal reward?
As I said, I love that God can read my thoughts at all times, because knowing I’m being monitored keeps me honest not just in my spoken and written words, but also and more importantly in my head. I know, too, that if the devil does one of his drive-by’s, I can immediately ask God to remove the tempting thought, and he will. In the same way, I can ask God to help me remove thoughts that are starting to become a nuisance, either because they’re overly negative or veering in the direction of something I know I shouldn’t be thinking. All I have to do is ask.
It’s important to stress that God will not automatically remove thoughts on his own volition, like an anti-virus removes malware. It’s up to me to let him know that I want a specific train of thought gone, and then he’ll derail it immediately. He’ll never override my free will, but he might on occasion remind me that, for instance, something I’m thinking is uncharitable or a little bit too spicy and doesn’t (as my grandmother would say) “become me”. It’s God’s way of letting me know I can do better.
I hope these words bless you today. Most born-again believers are very careful about the thoughts they choose to entertain, but some of us (I’m staring right into a mirror here lol) – some of us need a little gentle reminder every now and then, to push us back into the very center of the strait-and-narrow before we wander off toward the edge. May these words be a little gentle push for those who need it.
ON THE DAY
CHARLO, New Brunswick, April 8, 2024 – On the day they lead the sacred cow to slaughter, who receives their sacrifice when, knowing that Jesus is the Messiah, they still reject him?
When the great silence reaches from the heavens to the earth because there’s no more joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents, who receives their prayers when, knowing that Jesus is the Messiah, they still reject him?
Who responds to their cries of “Help me!”, “Save me!”, “Give me!”, “Give me more!”?
Who comforts them with illusions of love?
Who promises them the world, only upon delivery to snap open a trapdoor beneath them?
It is he whose hand guides the sacrifice and taunts the prayerful, he who cannot love because he cannot receive Love, though he comes to them as their champion and provider, their smooth-talking Angel of Light.
Love is not love if it doesn’t come from God. God does not bless sin; he exposes sin and gives the sinner time to repent, until time’s up.
Not everything that is called love is love.
Not everyone who claims to worship God is worshiping God.
When Jesus said that he and God are one, he meant that he was fully aligned and united with God’s will, which is what it means to be one with another. He did not mean that he was God. Jesus is not God: He is God’s Messiah. You cannot worship God without accepting Jesus as your Messiah. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot have God without Jesus.
So, who is it that you’re worshiping when you lead the sacred cow to slaughter? Who receives your sacrifice? Whose hand guides you? Who drinks the blood and rolls in the ashes? Who builds the temple and sits on the throne? It is not God, it is not his Messiah, though he may claim to be both.
On the day of the great slaughter, when the silence reaches from Heaven to Earth, you will know.
THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE BOOK OF REVELATION
MCLEODS, New Brunswick, April 6, 2024 – A few years ago, I met a guy who’d all but memorized the book of Revelation. Every time I saw him, he would immediately start quoting verses, such as those pertaining to the mark of the beast or the four horses of the apocalypse and asking me if I thought what was in the verses was happening now. We had some interesting conversations, but it wasn’t until much later that I learned the guy wasn’t a Christian. I knew he wasn’t born again, but I’d just assumed he was a Christian, since he’d mentioned attending a church in New York City and he listened to Christian pastors and Christian music while driving. As it turns out, he told me he didn’t really believe in anything, he just found the book of Revelation fascinating.
Many people, Christian and otherwise, find Revelation fascinating. Some find it so fascinating they’re using it as a script. But for us, as born-again believers, the book of Revelation should be like every other book in the Bible – we’re meant to learn from it, not speculate over it, keeping in mind that speculating over scripture is a form of adding to it or taking away from it, which is a big no-no we’ve been warned against doing at the end of Revelation. If you want to know what something in scripture means, ask God, not Google.
I find it very telling that the more marginal the believer, the greater the focus on the dark side of the book’s prophecies. Because the book of Revelation definitely has two sides – a dark side and a light side, and those who are attracted to the dark are not surprisingly also drawn to the prophecies in the book depicting the dark.
The main message in the book of Revelation is not the ravaging of Earth and its people during the tribulation period or the rise of the anti-Christ or the installation of the beast system. No; those visions are not central to the book of Revelation and so they shouldn’t absorb us like they absorb the guy I mentioned above who’s not a Christian. The main message in Revelation is written in red font at the start of the book. Those words come directly from God through Jesus, and so deserve our utmost attention and focus.
That the book of Revelation begins with God’s words is also very telling. Certainly, the rest of the book is informative though highly symbolic in sections, as prophecy is wont to be. God’s words, on the other hand, are plain-spoken and don’t require any interpretation. They just require us to read them and pay close attention to what they’re saying.
If you, a born-again believer, haven’t read – I mean, really read – God’s words at the beginning of the book of Revelation, you should do so ASAP, because God’s talking to you in those words. The rest of the book is basically a lot of images shown to John that could be falsely applied to any number of scenarios, but God’s words are definitive and clear: They’re not meant to confuse or even fascinate; they’re meant to edify, comfort, and warn.
You’ll find yourself depicted somewhere in God’s red-letter words to his Church. One part of you might be in one city and another part of you might be in another, but if you’re born-again, you’re definitely being spoken to in one or more of the seven cities, and it’s worth your time to find out exactly which one(s). I hope and pray you don’t locate yourself in Laodicea, but if you do, consider it fair warning that it’s high time to shift your gaze away from the dark side of Revelation and focus on the light.
THE UNHEAVEN YEARS
MCLEODS, New Brunswick, April 5, 2024
There are no phones in Heaven.
No computers, either. (Not even quantum ones.)
There are also no TVs or video games or stereos or combustion engine vehicles. Now, there may well be vehicles in Heaven that sound and feel like they have combustion engines, but if you don’t like those, they’re not in your part of Heaven.
There’s no Internet in Heaven or any of the technology that supports the Internet. There’s no need for any of those things because we’ll communicate entirely differently in Heaven than we do on Earth, and we’ll get around entirely differently. Clumsy, clunky, dangerous, loud, intrusive, poisonous, addictive, obsessive, and landscape-blighting technology has no place in Heaven, though sadly it’s taken over most of Earth.
Here are a few more things that aren’t in Heaven: Sickness, pain, death, depression, good-byes, regret, mourning, theft, jealousy, rage, screaming, wrinkles, hatred, spandex, phoniness, lies, deceit, dirtiness, fatigue, bad smells, rent, jail, leaky roofs and flooded basements, toilet paper, police, medical interventions, mortgage, money, debt, credit, tape, glue, Bibles, pews, drugs, bugs that bite and sting, toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap, plastic anything, food laced with chemicals, cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos, locks of any kind, bad hair days, windowpanes, and mirrors.
Nearly everything that most people on Earth spend their days using, thinking about, and obsessing over has no place in Heaven. Most people’s thoughts have no place in Heaven. It’s profoundly sad, the degree of unheavenliness that characterizes the lives of most people. As born-again believers, we need to be different than that. We need to be aware of what’s in Heaven (and what’s not in Heaven) and live our lives to reflect heavenly reality, not unheavenly reality. Now, some things we’ll still use, with God’s blessing while we’re still in the unheavenly realm, like windowpanes, soap, and toothbrushes. But the other things that have no place in Heaven – particularly unheavenly emotions and desires – we can weed out and banish from our lives now and in so doing create a little piece of pre-Heaven all our own.
That’s what God’s Kingdom is – a little piece of pre-Heaven made by God for his children who are still going through their trials. God made Zion for us as a shelter and retreat from the unheavenliness of the world. We can expand Zion by furnishing our little part of it with heavenly thoughts and words and deeds and wild blueberries and solid wood furniture.
The computer spellchecker scolds me that there’s no such word as “Unheaven”, but we know there is. Unheaven is the world that surrounds us outside of God’s Kingdom. Unheaven is the realm that we escaped when we were reborn, but we still have to associate with it for the time being, use its tools for our purposes for the time being, but that’s the extent of our involvement with it. It shouldn’t surprise us that a spellchecker doesn’t know Unheaven from Heaven, seeing that spellcheckers are very much a part of Unheaven and there are no spellcheckers in Heaven.
So, yes, Virginia, there is an Unheaven, but there’s oh so very much, much, much more a Heaven.
WHEN YOUR KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOUR IS THE DEVIL IN DISGUISE
CHARLO, New Brunswick, April 2, 2024 – It must’ve hit Peter like a frying pan when Jesus thundered at him: “Get thee behind me, Satan!” Peter had only wanted to assure Jesus that he’d always have his back, come what may, but Jesus wanted none of it. Instead, he told Peter that his offer of protection showed that he had man’s perspective, not God’s, and that he thought as someone who was still in the world, not in the Kingdom, and that Peter was in fact doing the devil’s bidding.
I can imagine that not only Peter but everyone who witnessed Jesus’ tirade would have been thrown for a loop. I mean, the last thing you’d expect when offering someone your undying love, loyalty, and protection is to have it all thrown back into your face, and being called Satan, to boot. But Jesus here, as elsewhere, was precisely on point when it came to dealing with adversity. He had, as he phrased it, a “cup to drink” that was given specifically to him by God. What Peter was doing by offering his protection was wrenching the cup out of Jesus’ hand and preventing him from doing what God had sent him to do.
As born-again believers, we all have a cup to drink that’s been given to each of us by God. In drinking our cup, we’ll almost always have people trying to intervene, thinking they’re doing us a favour by “helping” us, like Peter thought he was helping Jesus. Those in the world can’t help thinking like the world, but we need to think like God, as Jesus reminded us, because once we become Jesus’ followers, the rules of engagement change significantly. In the Old Testament, we annihilated our enemies; in the New Testament, we love them even as they’re killing us.
“Get thee behind me, Satan!” should have been a eureka moment for Peter, but I don’t think it was, considering that he later attacked one of the soldiers who arrested Jesus. In response, Jesus had again to remind him that his heroism was misplaced and that those who live by the sword, die by the sword. In other words, Jesus was again schooling his disciples on the difference between how man thinks and how God thinks.
What about you? Have you resolved to drink the cup that God has given you, or are you happy to accept any and all offers to avoid or delay drinking it? Or maybe you’ve inadvertently interfered with someone else when they were trying to drink their cup? We need to be honest with ourselves in considering the cup that God has given us and others and what we’ve done either to accept our cup or avoid it.
Whole “doctrines of men” have been developed over the centuries pandering to our baser impulse to avoid trials and tests at all costs. One of the more infamous of these doctrines is the pre-tribulation rapture. Jesus had to go through torture and crucifixion, as did Peter; Paul was beheaded, Steven was stoned to death, and thousands of born-again believers throughout the ages have likewise suffered horrendous torture, mutilation, and killing at the hands of the prevailing religious authorities, all in an attempt to have them deny Jesus.
Our cup will not be any less onerous than the ones given to our brethren over the years, and to believe otherwise is delusional. Jesus told us that whatever they do to him, they’ll do to us, too. There’s no easy way out of the cup given to us by God. We either drink it as presented, or we don’t go Home.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 