Light up the darkness.
Do we not see that we are in the dark? That God, Elah, is unseen? Truly, I believe the light is in our hearts, for it is as much unseen as Elah, the greatest!
For the light has the purpose to light all darkness, that is the purpose in life. From the beginning, and until the end, that is the purpose we are here. It can be said, and done, in so many ways.
Who does not want to admit that they had not seen Elah, the greatest and unseen? Some liars will say they had seen God, and more liars will attest that they are lying when they do not know even the truth in it? Neither honor the truth, nor know it. Can they not see the darkness?
Do not be enslaved by The Books, nor attest to their truth or untruth. But, truly, I give all your trust to Elah, in that which is unseen. May your embarrassment free you. Do we not see the darkness we are in?
And, who can not sin? And who will lie and say a person exists, when they do not know. The liar is the most common sinner, the lie the most common sin, and the one in most need of forgiveness. Who cannot lie? Who cannot sin? God created darkness, so that we may shed light!
Have you not heard it said, “Love covers a multitude of sin?” If you have, then know the light destroys the darkness! Sin we will, so love we must! The sinner who loves is the one who shines greatest in the darkness, the sinner who does not love becomes lost in the darkness.
Know the light in your heart, and you will know forgiveness. Know the truth, and you will obtain it.
But whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.
“Take care about what you hear. The measure you use will be the measure you receive, and more will be added to you. For whoever has will be given more, but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.” – Jesus, Mark 4
I am always trying to absorb the Tanakh and the Gospels, even while I work. I’ll turn on my mp3′s and listen, especially to Mark since it is the most authentic of the Gospels. I like to listen, just listen, and wait for a meaning or something to jump out at me (instead of just struggle trying to figure it out). It hasn’t happened in a while, it has been months actually. But, today I finally think something jumped out at me about the saying above, a saying I have always wanted to know its meaning, and I’m excited.
Most comments on the verse follow:
“The meaning is that the one who accepts Jesus’ teaching concerning his person and the kingdom will receive a share in the kingdom now and even more in the future, but for the one who rejects Jesus’ words, the opportunity that that person presently possesses with respect to the kingdom will someday be taken away forever.” – Net Bible Commentary
I personally think nobody is required to “believe” or be “convinced” of anything in order to obtain salvation, salvation actually comes through our humility: from our lack of knowledge, and our faith in Elah/God and good doing. Jesus himself said all will be forgiven, except those who blaspheme against that faith (the very Spirit of Holiness). So, I generally haven’t really followed what most comment on the passage, like the comment above.
Isn’t it interesting how twisted with meaning the parables are? I think it’s immensely interesting how he spoke. Anyways, Jesus says this directly after talking about how the truth is designed to be relieved, and the dark of things to be brought to light.
I think the saying says to take care of how you judge what you hear, or what you think you know is true (i.e. judging the sins of others, judging the situation, judging others based on what you think is true about Elah/God). The judgment you use will be the judgment you receive (from Elah/God), and even more will be judged of you for doing so (“Judge not, for fear of being judged.”) Whoever has more judgment themselves will be given even more of it (from Elah/God).
…But, the one who does not judge (and remains humble), even the sins he is being judged for will be taken from him.
Judgement, Truth & Understanding
I have come to understand something important about truth, that truth is often not available or accurate outside of our personal truths. People also often think they know “the truth”, something I personally view as a sickness in the world. The only truth we really know is the truth about ourselves, our inner truths, and even those are shaky at best. The sickness is caused by our excersize of judgment of “the truth” over understanding someone. Personally I think we cannot really ever know the truth. Here is an example to think about:
A man is visiting a woman, she makes blankets as a hobby and sells them out of her house to make money on the side. He is buying a blanket for their coming child, his wife is pregnant. He has made several visits, he has been discussing a custom blanket and has been gone throughout the day. The same day his wife and her brother are walking among the markets in the street, and as they both walk by a house they both notice her husband with another woman. When the man got home, his wife’s brother comes up to him and asks what he was doing at another woman’s house. He replies saying he cannot tell him (his wife is also in the room, he does not want to ruin the surprise). The brother looks at the situation and is convinced he has committed adultery…
What the brother in the story does not realize is that the truth is both unavailable to him and his sister. The truth is always out-of-sync with our judgment, especially our judgment of others. In most situations, even minor ones, the truth usually is not available- yet we judge mostly based a truth that is not able to be fully understood. Finishing the example:
…But the mans wife knows she does not know the truth, and therefore cannot judge it. Instead she asks him if she will know tomorrow why he was at the woman’s house. The man tells her yes with a smile. The very next day, he gives her a gift and her brother is ashamed.
The mans wife knows she does not know the truth. This is a very important thing when it comes to how people judge everyday truth, we judge, like the brother and judge based on a truth we do not have. Even the truth about the mans honesty is not apparent, that is why she asks if she will know tomorrow what he was doing there. It’s all in the approach, the best thing to do is actually not judge, but rather be understanding. Say the man had committed adultery, even then the truth about it is not available to his wife or her brother. She still could not properly make a judgment based on the truth because she does not know the truth. Her reaction would have to be based on her understanding of his character, which in most cases is harder but really is the most accurate way to make a decision. Her next move would have to be based on what she actually knows, and in this she does not decide something in error. In this way I do not think we can do any evil, if we make decisions in our humility instead of the lie that makes us think we know the truth.
A shift in my belief.
Belief is a special word to me, because belief, at least my own human beliefs, are not in control of who our God, Elah, wants me to be. I think humanity has a problem with belief, I’ve always had a problem with belief. My beliefs are always changing, because Elah (our God) from one day to the next shows me something new about my beliefs, my own human convictions: that I am flawed. Sometimes I’m afraid to say that a belief of mine is changing, I’m worried people are going to think I am wrong. Or, that what I am saying has no truth to it. But, my beliefs change over time- that is the truth. What I said yesterday, or a year ago, or just a few hours ago might change. I try not to let my beliefs hide what Elah shows me in life. I am human, purest form, along with everyone else. With all the ingredients to say something right as well say something wrong. I have always felt the second I wrote something down or said something I had truly sinned, but that I had also been forgiven because I was designed to be lesser. But, I truthfully say and write what I truly believed at the moment, what was true for me then. I find it comforting that I can be wrong and still be honest about it.
So, what am I getting at? Well, there are a few elements to my “creed” that might be changing, I don’t know. I feel like in seeking the truth in full faith of Elah (God) that I may have been missing something, something important. My whole life I have always been offended that God (Elah) has been unseen, unheard, invisible and un-defined. Something totally un-natural, supernatural, “out there.” And so I developed a faith, which you can find in what I have said about my beliefs before. A faith in Elah, because simply everything exists and something of some kind or even of no-kind, a nature-less thing out there was awesome enough to sustain it, bring it into existence and make it work. Our God, Elah, is not a God of any-kind that I have ever encountered in any religion. I have a problem with God speaking to prophets, appearing to prophets, or even being experienced directly because of this disconnection from the material world and the non-material world, if there is any. And so, I have faith, not belief- but that seems to be changing.
I spend a lot of time praying. I spend a lot of time being frustrated and confused. I ask time and time again that our God, Elah, tell me something to help that confusion. In full faith that maybe something “out there” or somehow God can help me make right decisions about what I believe and what to do. So, what this is all about is because I think our God, Elah, may actually be something real. Something living, something actually definable by all that was created by it. Yet, it is still invisible, but it’s something that we see the direct result of in creation. Why a tree grows the way it grows, or how the skeleton of a bird is so light, why this small planet is seeming with life, and you’re even able to read these letters. I am not one to worship, in fact I have even had trouble “worshiping” my own God as I know God now, just because there wasn’t anything to worship. But, now there might be.
The nature of the world, the Universe, all of it, seems to have a nature behind it. The nature of everything seems to be bonded and connected to everything else in it. Action and reaction have a nature, a reason to exist. The dirt has a reason to exist, the Universe has a reason (I’m finding it very difficult to define it) to exist. Like the body of the whole is infinite and molds the reason for everything to exist the way that it does. If it was the big bang in the beginning, then the big bang had a nature behind it, guiding it, molding it, moving it. It’s this thing that I have been thinking about, and I have always felt that in some way this is the “living God.” If I were to accept this it would mean a lot more things would make sense. I could understand how people can experience God, how I experience God – through God’s creations. How all of creation is of God and by God, that we are in God and God is within us. How God sustains us and why everything is the way it is. I believe in the infinite God and in infinite creation, but I had never known the living God until I started thinking about God’s true existence, if God had any.
So, this may mean a lot of changes in how I believe, it depends on how well I can learn to describe this nature of our God. Nature isn’t a property in the sense that I am trying to define it, it is the verb in life. The truth that life is moved, life is created, life is molded, shaped, decided, changing, always. It just seems so simple to me that God, Elah, can be so easily defined and yet so incomprehensibly complex. But, it would also seem to me that God would have it that way. It brings me some peace when I really think about it.
Hopefully more to come later on this…
A First Creed
While I was sitting in class, I started writing down some of what I have come to fundamentally believe, the beginning of a first creed.
- I believe in Elah, an Awesome God.
- I believe Elah is neither one nor many, but un-countable and eternal.
- I believe in Elah in full faith, I can neither prove nor disprove Elah.
- I believe Elah created everything; even existence itself.
- I believe Elah created everything with a left and right condition. For example, we will be right as well as wrong, we will do good and do evil, sin against and forgive others. This is the creation of free will.
- I believe Elah exists and acts alone in a divine, immaterial un-nature (or heaven), from which all material and nature is created. It is not nothing, but is neither nothing or anything.
Please take note to this post (March 22 2010).
The name, Elah.
Elah ( אֵלָה ) is Aramaic for an awesome God, an appropriate name for God, as I view God. It is fundamental to my theology. I have gone through very confusing episodes about what to believe about God. I have put my hands in many religions, I have studied how different religions see God, treat God and treat others-and I was always left confused by the images. The laws, prophets- I have searched and read. I understand why some believe in certain religions, and I understand why some do not, I understand what prophets and messengers are telling everyone. I have read what prophets have said about God. Moses, the Torah. Muhammad, the Quaran. But I have only ever found God and people making the mistake of putting God behind an image of what a man thought God was. I have read what Yehoshua Ha-Notzri (Jesus) said about God. I have taken any view of God into serious heart-felt consideration, and yet I have always felt uncomfortable with the image. Some images have confused me, some not so much, but what should I believe- which image is the true image?
I have hope that God has put God’s own interest inside of me for a reason, and so I always search for what God is showing and creating for me. Since my youth I have been dealing with God, and one day (pretty recently, actually), among one of my many moments of frustration, it began to dawn on me. God would be calling me to understand something difficult, something different, something some people might not like. I saw I was caught up in satisfying the concerns of myself, instead of the concerns of God… I was trying to create my own image of God, an image that pleases everyone, an image that was compatible with everyone else’s- and it was a false God. Now, don’t think I consider this some great sin I was doing. I totally understand why people believe what they believe, why they relate to God in their own way or in a religion- this is not necessarily wrong. But, for me it’s like a river that gets stronger and stronger. As I imagify God, I become less and less concerned with God and more concerned with my own image of God or others’ image of God.
I know religions are against religions, believers are against other believers. One is right over the other, one is cast into fiery hells while others into heaven. I see false peace in tolerance. I see how every religion has been let down, there is still pain and no one follows the laws. No one admits their wrongs and doubt is always present. And, I constantly ask God, why? And the only answer I have ever been given is that the world has created its own image of God, yet in our sight we do not see it.
Elah, for me, says, “God is awesome,” and is a personal technique to keep me from imagifying God. It is not important to say what God is anymore, it is more important to say why. Why must be something real, something true. It seems I will only ever have the means to understand God, and that is God’s creation (which is everything that exists). I have no idea what God is, and I hope the whole world can admit that with me one day. We have volumes of books and sharp tongues that continue to claim what God is yet we really do not know. This element of the truth is a fundamental point to all my theology. All I know about God is what God has done, and for me, that is proof enough of God’s existence; existence itself. It is God’s in-existence that is my faith lay, it’s more about proof for God’s involvement than God’s existence. God created everything, and I hope we can all admit that everything, at the very least, is awesome whether God exists for you or not. For me, it is in faith and hope that I believe in a God that created it all. And so, God’s creation, everything, has a lot to do with how I understand God and why I call God Elah. I have found only that God seemed to create everything to speak for itself and what God is doing with it, in what it is actually doing. I personally do not think God speaks directly to anyone in their own language, and never has- but creates things to speak of God; heart-felt compassion and kindness is by no means in any language.
So, I call God Elah because it is what Elah has done (or created). It tells me everything about God. God is loving because God created love and I experience and know it. It is only because of the existence of love that I know that. Yet, God is not a slave to love, and we are. The name Elah mainly helps keep me from creating my own image of God, rather it says, “God is what God is,” and “God is doing what God is doing, and it is awesome in what I see.” Though, I have been known to call God father, him, and even her- these all begin to create my own image of God, and I do not want to believe in a man-made God. From what I can tell, God is separate from all God created so that we cannot speak anything un-true about God. When I think about this, I think to myself, “Do I really know 100% about anything?” If anything, of all Elah has created, we are both right and wrong about what we say about any given thing. When God is separate (holy), we cannot say anything right or wrong about God, instead we can only love God because of what God created for us.
I hope I at least touched on why I call God Elah, and why it has a fundamental use in understanding, addressing, and thinking about God in a healthier truthful way.
