Against the Hollow Words about Religion

At first I get angry; then I start having pity. I become pitiful to those who talk about religion and faith without having knowledge about either of these. Not to mention that Jesus is not a factor in their lives.
I have been thinking that if someone is talking about his or her faith in God without knowing Him, this is equivalent to a situation when someone is talking about love without ever being in love. This situation resembles a person who preaches to people who already have children on how to bring them up without ever having raised children himself or herself.
Something becomes too obvious in the thinking of ugodly – namely that religion is for the weak. In those people’s minds, religion is like a crutch and is only necessary until the moment when man can walk on his own again. Religion is not for the strong people. Such believe in themselves and this belief drives them forward.
I asked myself the question why Jesus was so hated by the Pharisees, and not only by them but also by the majority of people nowadays? The truth is Jesus was telling those people believing in themselves as well as the strong, the powerful ones, the ones who can see, that they are not gods, that they are weak and blind. In fact, the claim that religion (mainly Christianity) is for the weak is absolutely true. The weak need strength, the blind need to be able to see again and the sick need to be healed. That main paradox however is that in actual fact the weak are those who are truly strong, the blind can see and the sick are the healthy ones. To be objective and to be able to acknowledge the truth are great strengths. The truth, in actual fact, is that the world we live in is gravely sick. People’s souls hurt so much. We annihilate and hate each other and the worm of evil destroys everything. But only the strong person, who in this case turns up to be the weak one, can admit that!
I am asking myself how someone who is not even capable of wining the victory over his own self can have such a strong belief in himself? Such a person is a slave of his own self. He or she cannot stop ageing or avoid death, does not possess the ultimate knowledge, does not know what the future holds…What exactly within his own self can he or she believe in? Maybe that he will not lose someone close to him, that he will never be hurt or that he can live forever or that he can control the processes in his body, which he had been given for granted? Or, perhaps he can believe in himself because he possesses certain skills and talents? The latter sounds even more naïve. The terms describing the skills and talents prompt that they originate from outside ourselves in a sense that we have not created them but we are simply using them. This cannot be a good justification of the belief in our own selves. The Pharisees strongly believed in themselves. They were not atheists. On the contrary, they were ultra-religious. But they were gritting their teeth in anger when Jesus was throwing them off the throne on which they were elevated. Their self-belief had chased the faith in God away and God had become their servant. They were unable to see this. They were accusing Jesus of gathering together with whores and sinners; His answer to their accusations was very simple and succinct: “Only the sick need a doctor, not the ones who are healthy; my mission is not to summon the righteous but the sinners and to bring penitence upon them”. His simple words subjected to irony their self-praise of being healthy people. He showed them that they are the sickest because they do not see their misery.
I get agitated by the pride of those Bulgarians who are non-believers or, more precisely, of the pseudo-believers who believe in themselves and look down upon their “religious” fellow citizens and despise them. I get agitated because they are blind and do not see their misery and enormous need for vision and healing. But at the same time I become very pitiful towards them because despite putting themselves on pedestal, they are miserable and unhappy sinners, thirsty for love and recognition.
The state of our nation reminds me of the adolescence period in human life. At this age, one knows everything! The world looks simple and they (the youngsters) are ready to solve the problems of mankind in a single stroke. However, this does not last for a long time. After a few bruises, head bumps and stumbles, the reality starts getting inside the child’s mind. I hope the faith in God will follow a similar development path. God will gradually be rising and we will be diminishing as soon as we start becoming aware of our own insignificance and His greatness.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorrainemd/18177429/sizes/o/

Exercising the Freedom

I will now continue writing on the topic of predestination and free will.
With regard to the question whether man is spiritually dead and have no spiritual sense and ability to respond to God’s summons, there are different concepts and claims. It is a fact, however, that the written works and the debates on this topic begin to flourish around and after the Reformation. Jesus’ teachings as a whole do not nourish this debate. Only certain parts of the Gospels and especially of John’s and Paul’s Messages had been selected and consequently provided a basis for building, often controversial, claims. When the message of the Bible, however, is taken into consideration in its completeness, the topic in question does not emerge. On the contrary, man is always given a choice and he is being encouraged to turn into the right direction.
The problem with the concept of Calvinism is that it is based on a preliminary conclusion-axiom, namely that God’s summons is irresistible. In other words, if God summons man to return to Him, man cannot refuse. Therefore those who refuse have not been summoned. Another such paradigm is that Christ’s sacrifice is ‘effective’, i.e. it is not possible for Christ to have paid for, and not get anything in return, or cannot have died on the cross without his sacrifice having resulted in an effective salvation. If some people are not saved because of their refusal, the scope of His act of redemption does not stretch over them but only over those who had responded to His summons.
From this point onwards it is evident that the foundations of such a concept have been badly laid. The aim of the discussion that follows is to justify the correctness of the axioms set up before having a real exegetic.
And namely – if man does not to respond to God’s summons, he is assumed to be dead or unable to do it, otherwise the summons is not effective, i.e. of poor quality. The fact that anyone has not responded means that the summons is not strong enough and hence, ineffective. Therefore the next claim of the Calvinists is that God summoned only those who had responded to his summons. This had happened because they were brought back to life and made able to respond by means of the irresistible grace which is given to the summoned.
In actual fact, the story in the Bible, from the very beginning, contradicts the above concepts. Straight after the sinful act of Adam and Eva God finds them and talks to them. It is impossible for a spiritually dead person to talk with God. God even talks to the first murderer – Kain and grants him a special grace – spares his life and brands him to this purpose.
The whole picture of the relationship between God and man is brilliantly illustrated by the life of the prophet Ossiah. God represents, by means of His servant Ossiah, His marriage to the people of Israel and the constant unfaithfulness of His wife. On the other hand, the relationships Israel – YHWH illustrate the relationships between man (mankind) and the Creator.
Despite Ossiah’s wife being unfaithful and leaving him several times to sell herself for money, he finds her, pays the ransom and takes her with him. The pain from the betrayal and humiliation is great, but his love is greater and eventually he wins his wife back.
The relationships between God and man are so much more real and sincere. God could have created a very faithful wife and could have inculcated in her the ability to choose nothing but the predestined. The described mechanism resembles the Calvinist understanding of predestination – when one is relivened, he or she cannot refuse to God. Otherwise one won’t be alive. The state of being dead presumes that one is dead and therefore cannot respond to God. The dead man has no choice. He is doing what dead people do, i.e. nothing. However, how interesting it is that according to the law adopted by us as well as the law quoted by Apostle Paul, dead people cannot be sentenced. The law has no power over the dead as it is concerned only with people who are alive.
Anyway, this discussion will not finish by adding two or three more lines. I will rather leave the reader to make his own conclusions.
Of course more things can be written about what constitutes the “image of God” in us and whether we have completely lost it or not. What is the image of man according to the Old and New Testament thinking? It is also worth noting and mentioning the influence of the Greek thinking upon the New Testament authors regarding what man comprises of.
In Judaism man has never been viewed as made up of three parts – spirit, soul and body (also known as threechotomy) or even two – spirit and body. Man is a complete piece of work and indivisible into parts. Therefore the teaching of resurrection from the dead comes into existence because otherwise the body becomes obsolete. But it actually is an inseparable and indispensable part of the human being. For this reason now Christ represents humankind in the Trinity with His resurrected body. I do not want to to go deeper into the subject and therefore I will jump on to the next issue.
What actually is foreknowledge? The big problem of those who share the opposite view of Calvinism and of many Calvinists themselves is that they perceive foreknowledge as knowledge or vision of events before they have occurred. This to me slightly resembles the abilities of the prophets or clairvoyances or augurs to see in the future. But I would like to be pardoned and excused by those who I would potentially insult by saying that God is not building His plans because He has the gift of seeing what will happen in the future. This is rather limiting to God. Another aspect of foreknowledge is again the personal relationship between God and man. As some of those who read this article would know, the term used to describe a sexual intercourse in the old testament is “to know” which means that much more than a single physical touch and experience is placed into it. This “to know” is merging and achieving a state of completeness of the entire person, deep intimacy. These are things that are almost forever gone in our time… Anyway, in this foreknowledge there is much more of this meaning of unity, not physical but spiritual, rather than advance knowledge about the future.
The truth is that we cannot exist outside of time and to understand how it is possible for something or Someone to exist in timelessness. This means that this Someone is in each point in time unchanged, unchangeable and stays the same, because time has no impact on Him. He knows more neither in the end nor in the beginning of time because there is no beginning or end for Him but only for us. And because we cannot grasp this state of timelessness, we still try to put everything within time frames in order to understand it. However, to reach such an understanding within the limitations of our abilities is impossible. We need to accept the simple fact that God does not take His decisions on the grounds of what He sees in the future, but on the basis of His own will, because His knowledge neither increase nor decrease in time. His knowledge is a constant which does not change in time for He already possesses complete knowledge.
In addition, although already knowing and predestining everything even before the existence of time, He does not deprive man of his free will to choose. On the contrary, God invites man to have mutual relationship with Him.
To conclude, if I have provoked myself and some of the readers and have made them to think, this means that I have achieved my aim. I understand that by sharing these few thoughts I am only scratching the surface but I am genuinely pleased to further explore this subject and will continue to think and seek, and who knows, I may find what I am looking for.
Until soon!