Journal of March 15, 2005

Tuesday, March 15, 2005 6:57 PM This idea is an inspiration prompted by my wife in her sickness.

There are two ways of doing things, God’s way or man’s way. God starts off his way and tells man what he may and may not do. Man is sovereign, in the image of God, and like God then he will do things his own way. And thus he resents the imposition of an external will on his own, for he yearns to be free to do all things his way. Man simply decides he will do it his own way, and then does it. Immediately fear grips him and instead of rushing toward God as he was forever doing, he retreats from him and hides in the woods. God sees what has happen and recognizes that, as expected, man would choose to go his own way.

Now the overall moral is to be that when we decide in our own way to go God’s way, then the solution begins. The solution takes time, for we have gotten ourselves in a real pickle with all our rational science and so the solution must now take advantage of the present understanding and where miracles are not looked for nor expected.

The role of the Jews: each generation asserts that the only reason that they still exist at all is because of the work of God as a result of a covenant between him and their ancestor, and our fathers have done their part for our sake in maintaining the covenant or deal and we must now likewise for our part be equally willing and desirous of keeping the deal then for the sake of our own children and our own grandchildren. A very powerful tug and which even has a moral tinge, namely that other people might not suffer (the other people, in this racist context, always means other Jews, in an immediate, vernacular sense, like for most people it is also family first of all).

Now the great horror was that the children were afraid of God. This was the great sin which put a great blot onto creation. People were afraid of God. This is the most fundamental expectation of Islam, that God alone is to be feared.

God’s way was to help his children cooperate with each other and finding it smart to do so because of a sharing experience which possessed creativity, as it was also with God. But now they were afraid of him and so he would not be able to lead them, but now would have to command them in order to get them back into line in order for him then to himself perform a magnificent act of the creation of a perfectly normal man who would show the people that they were not to be afraid of God.

A consideration: if we had done it God’s way much earlier, and certainly at the beginning, we might easily have already reached to degree of sophistication that people could always be warned well in advance of a coming demonstration of the power of nature and so could be found in places such that the demonstration might be enjoyed rather than feared, for so it will always be in the Father’s good kingdom, and I really like Daddy better. Abba/Daddy.

And so God’s way was to let people go their own way and still try to remind them of his own way which they could then take if they wanted to, and which I am sure they would have done if they had not feared to do so, i.e., if fear had not crept into their psyche. It is in the realm of fear that lies crop up, for there is no reason otherwise.

This is Paul thinking: as YAR suggests the law served the Hebrews like the Sea of Japan served the Japanese, in keeping them out of the clutches of alien thought. Now certainly the Messiah could very easily have appeared to the world as a Japanese, there is no reason why not. God can have his way no matter what the state of the world, and he could have easily chosen the Japanese and produced his truth through them. He appeared as a Jew merely because God promised Abraham that if he would believed in him and do everything God’s way that his race would produce the Messiah for all the world. This was the glory with which God crowned Abraham for simply believing in him, even to the extent of believing that God had ordered an immoral act. He was willing to believe all things for the sake of the human race.

And so Jesus appears as a Jew, and this glory shall always crown the children of Israel. But since he could just as easily appeared as a Japanese, it follows that a Japanese can be inspirited by Christ and can serve him just as though he or she were Jesus. Just like a husband can, and a wife and a servant and a master and a governor and a citizen.

And so for Paul the reluctance of the Jews made perfect sense, for they were now being perfected and were no longer to be mutilated in a physical, materialistic sacrifice, for now their very hearts are circumcised and dedicated to going things God’s way.

Now God makes his way very plain: do all things you wish as long as you can do them in faith and thus as consistent with the love of Christ. All else is to be left to God. No longer is there any need to marshal forces by external command a la Mohammed and also the Roman Catholic Church, for now the love of Christ makes us seek to cooperate with others of the same faith, and thus of the same freedom from fear, and to begin the creation process which comes from such cooperation.

It is for this reason that we cooperate with all people in the pursuit of a lawful, orderly just and equitable society, and also an intelligent society.

7:25 PM I wonder if whole societies can be stupid. Kant said that stupidity was not in knowledge but in the application of knowledge, and some people with great knowledge, even to that of a teacher, may fail when it comes to practice and not know really what to do.

7:27 PM And so according to God’s way, when we decide for ourselves, each for himself, to go with God’s way, we are given a new spirit, one just like that of the first person, and we become dedicated to the love of Christ in all conditions as our primary objective, and then we are back on our own in doing things our way, only new we have a new spirit.

And so we are going to do it our way to the very end, only now, by giving us a new spirit and a new nature, doing things our way is one and the same with doing things God’s way, and so we end up at the end with both, doing things our way and God’s way, and marveling at the God who created all this.

This then is the final aim: the perfect man, now in the form of the new man, doing things his way which is the way that God wanted it from the beginning, only we do things our way and discovered fear, and that ruined the stew, and God created a miracle in Jesus whereby the stew was given good savor again and becoming a fit sacrifice to a Holy God.

7:45 PM When we each become Christ in our condition, then by virtue of opportunity for joint effort, we can begin taking back the world for God’s way, for it is now our way, given our new spirit.