Greg Proffit Writing

Category: Spiritual

You Are The Salt of The Earth… Not The MSG

Shutterstock Image licensed to Author

Some Christians believe there is a biblical mandate to be involved in politics because they are to be the salt of the earth. They have not well considered the meaning of the verse or the phrase as used historically.

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”
~ Jesus Christ, Matt. 5:13

Poor fishermen and village folk comprised Jesus’ audience. His words affirmed their worth based upon their virtue. Itself based on the fact they were in the audience faithfully listening to him as a Prophet of God.

Salt wasn’t always a seasoning

Salt, in olden days, was a valuable commodity. Sometimes it was currency. It was far too valuable to be used as a mere seasoning to add taste to food. Perhaps you are familiar with the adage which speaks of a hard worker being “worth their salt.”

Salt was also a preservative in pre-refrigeration days. The verse does not imply that Christians are to “season” the world, its culture, or its politics. Christianity doesn’t transfer effects by mere presence or proximity. Nor is the aim of a Christian to “preserve” the world’s culture, or politics. For what, to a true Christian, is worth preservation of either worldly culture or worldly politics? Neither impress God.

Rather, Christians derive value—to God, to one another, and to the world by virtue of their faith.

“Saltiness” comes as the result of a life lived by faith in the power of an indwelling Christ. It doesn’t come from infiltrating, influencing, and subverting politics for so-called Christian purposes. As if that could ever be a thing…

Photo by Francesco Alberti on Unsplash

Which of your laws can impart life and righteousness?

It is unfortunate that Christians engaged in the effort to drag Jesus into politics forget the admonition of Galatians 3:21.

“For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.”

What policy, ideology, or law will instill spiritual life and righteousness when the 613 commandments enshrined in the Old Testament failed to do so?

What do Christians (whether preachers, politicians, or parishioners) propose to enact (or strike down) that will grant eternal life or right standing with God?

When a greater than Moses appears once more, it will be on the last day. He won’t come seeking political office, or permission from a majority to act. He will not be carrying a party flag, nor running for any office. The King of Kings will bring his title (and His reward) with Him.

Christians entangle and embroil themselves in politics to the detriment of both politics, and the true understanding of Christianity—which concerns another Kingdom, entirely. They are more like another ubiquitous modern seasoning.

They are MSG perhaps—artificial, cheap and worthless, with the capacity to poison all it touches. But they aren’t salt.

July 31, 2021
There Is A Grand Canyon Between You and Jesus

Photo by Christine Roy on Unsplash

# 35 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: There is a Grand Canyon between you on your best day and Jesus on his worst. Being “Christlike” is a fallacy. Genuine Christianity has never been about imitation or method acting.

A Grand Canyon of Difference

Take honest inventory of your spiritual life, and you’ll realize there is a Grand Canyon between you and Jesus. Even on your best day, when you’ve dressed up, said your prayers, had a devotional time, listened to Christian music, and meditated on God—you cannot produce the Spiritual resource needed to live the Christian life. That resource is Christ Himself, through the person and power of the Holy Spirit.

Yes, dear friend, even dear brethren, there is a Grand Canyon between you and Jesus, the gulf formed by the differing sources of power relied upon for life.

Allow me to introduce Watchman Nee (cover your toes)

Watchman Nee, a Chinese National and Christian author, in his book Not I, but Christ, stirred controversy when he wrote this:

“If you can teach a dog to be a Christian, then you can teach a man to be a Christian. There is none who can live the Christian life but Christ.”

This quote, also from Nee, is like it:

God is not seeking a display of my Christ-likeness, but a manifestation of His Christ.
~ Watchman Nee

and finally this:

We think of the Christian life as a ‘changed life’ but it is not that. What God offers us is an ‘exchanged life,’ a ‘substituted life,’ and Christ is our Substitute within.
~ Watchman Nee

Follow the links provided to learn more. His writing will change your view of the Christian life.

Christianity as strength training

In my 35 years as a believer, I’ve seen many good-hearted people and many well-meaning preachers speak and act as if being a good Christian is like going to the gym. Through your disciplined efforts; you get stronger and stronger. Soon, you can do more and more reps. Gradually, you get fit; you lose weight. You keep working at it, persevering to put in the effort to get the results, feeling the smile of God, and being congratulated by your fellow-believers for all your dedicated, inspiring work. Work hard enough and your life gets better. But, it’s hard, relentless work. Friend, I’ve been you.

The gym for Christians is church attendance and prayer and bible study and meetings and maybe tithing or doing some good works. It’s stopping drinking and smoking and cussing and listening to bad music and hanging out with bad people (any non-Christians). It is voting the right way and saying the right things and replacing the magnets on your refrigerator with bible verses.

Is this as good as it gets until we die and go to Heaven

But it is also mingled with failure and discouragement. It is struggling with habitual sin, and backsliding and repenting, and keeping up appearances and attending services—but still being defeated. So you grit your teeth and say, “God is Good.” But you can’t escape the gnawing, empty feeling that there has to be more to the Christian life than what you’re experiencing. And all the while, you blame yourself for your lack of “progress”, and feel guilty for letting God down. But you hang in there knowing that Heaven will be worth all the hard work and effort.

The typical idea suggests that one can become a “strong Christian”. In some circles, you’ll actually hear that term applied to particularly zealous and serious examples. The truth is—when we are weak, then we are strong, for then Christ’s power can rest upon us. God will let us be as strong as we want to be, but God is attracted to weakness.

That’s why He likes me so much. 😉

(And will be attracted to you the same way; as soon as you embrace your weakness as I have my own.)

The Canyon separates Jesus from self-empowered fiasco

I say, there’s a Grand Canyon between us and Jesus if that’s the extent of it.

It is either Christ manifesting Himself in and through us, or it is a human fiasco dressed up in church clothes saying churchy things. Many of the things we try to do for God are performed, not by the Spirit, but by self conjured effort, relying on our own “wisdom” and willpower, not on the power of God. Perhaps that’s why we see little of it in our day.

What God wants done by us, He will do in and through us. Let’s not confuse that into thinking that anything we say or do in the Name of Jesus is done by Jesus. It’s just not.

Please don’t take offense. If you understand me correctly, and accept my motivation for writing this, you’ll embrace the living Christ to manifest Himself in and through you. The true Christian life has always been about who Jesus is and what He is in us, not about you or me. He’s the only one who can live the life He’s called us to live, let’s trust Him to do just that, shall we? Because there is a Grand Canyon between you and Jesus.

July 21, 2021
Don’t Let The Love Of God Hit You In The Back

Photo by Eleni Bellou on Unsplash

# 34 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: The love of God is like light from the Sun. If you turn your back on the Sun, the light will hit you in the back.

I’m writing so you don’t let the Love of God hit you in the back. In the Bible, or Christian scriptures, there are many references to the love of God. Here is a listing of some of the more well know of them. Leaving aside very thorny, legitimate questions about the existence of evil and pain in the world for now, I will focus on one verse:

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
~ 1 John 4:8, NKJV

This verse, pregnant with meaning, tells the reader all they need to know about the essential nature of God. God is love. Love is not an attribute, feature, or property God has or sometimes flexes. Love is God’s essence.

Does the Sun HAVE light and heat or IS it light and heat?

We could say, speaking about the star at the center of our solar system, the sun has light, or the sun has heat. But when we think about the sun, it is most accurate to think about what the sun IS than what it has or what it does. For us, the sun is light and heat, therefore energy and life. It is the energy source of all living things on the planet. Every calorie consumed (a measure of thermal units) is stored, portable energy from the sun.

Now we may imagine a person living in isolation, closed off in a room with heavy light blocking shades drawn, pulled closed against the intrusion of all sunlight. We may imagine duct tape at the edges to create an atmosphere devoid of even the leakage of light. But we know that all those efforts to avoid sunlight won’t make the sun itself stop shining. It will shine on the exterior of that building. It will shine on the back of those shades. Yes, those inside can ignore that and shut themselves off from it, but the sun will shine on undeterred.

The Love of God is the same

I see the God who is Love the same way. Since God is Love, there is nothing any of us can do to create love in God. And since God is Love, there is nothing any can do to shut it off, either. For God to stop loving would be to cease being God. The ode to Love and the God who is Love in the fourth chapter of 1 John in the New Testament is so compelling, one might almost invert the words to Love is God and still be just as true.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God;
and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
~ 1 John 4:7, NKJV

Love needs a recipient

I decided a long time ago. If God is love, then the one thing an essential Love of that magnitude needs is a recipient, a “beloved” if you will. I decided God doesn’t have to look past me. I will absorb all the Love God wants to shine my way. For over 35 years, I have kept my face turned in the posture of recipient, the beloved. You can do the same. Turn towards that love. Don’t let the love of God hit you in the back. If you wake each day to the simple truth that God is Love, and you are still here, therefore you are loved, it will change your life.

I recognize that I’m not loved for my perfections, nor unloved for my sins. Nor am I loved for anything other than existence. I’m loved in spite of myself. I am loved because I’m here, and just like light from the sun, God’s love is shining upon me whether I face it or turn my back on it. Best to throw my arms and heart wide and give that God who is Love, what that Love is after… a home.

“And we have known and believed the love that God has for us.
God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”
~ 1 John 4:16, NKJV

Yes, perplexing questions remain. They are above my pay-grade. Most are beyond my capacity to understand at all. Doubtless you and I both have unanswered, bothersome, and painful questions, but they don’t negate the answers I have. And the single greatest answer is God is Love… not has, or shows, or gives Love, but IS Love. Don’t let the Love of God hit you in the back.

July 21, 2021
Your Neighbor Is Commanded To Love You—Do You Want Their Love?
Photo by Derick McKinney on Unsplash

# 91 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: You are commanded to love your neighbor, not to trust him.

Do you want your neighbor’s love?

We will look first at love, then at trust, which is only natural since trust is born of love. The commandment to love your neighbor comes from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Jesus called it one of 2 great commandments. The other great commandment is to love God with all one’s heart. The 2nd, Jesus said, is “like it”, that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. If you could have it, do you want your neighbor’s love?

Some questions for you to consider:
- Is it possible to love God and not love your neighbor?
- Does “as” mean “like”? Or does it mean that I am to think of and treat my neighbor “as if” they are myself? (If you thought of your neighbor as a “next door” version of yourself, but in a different body, would that change your treatment of them? Presumably for the better?)
- Do you want your neighbor’s love? (Since they are to see themselves in you, too.)
- Do you expect your neighbor’s love? And do they have the moral right to expect yours?
An radical imaginary world

A further consideration is to think just how radical the results would be if this most radical commandment in human history was universally obeyed.

Imagine a science-fiction world wherein every neighbor loves every other neighbor. Imagine what that would mean for economics, politics, international relations, even the need for nations at all.

It would be like some sort of Kingdom of Heaven. Probably just like the one Christians often pray will manifest on earth in accord with the Divine Will (but with fingers crossed behind our backs).

It’s easier to imagine The Martian Chronicles, Star Wars, Dune, and private spacecraft than a world filled with neighborly love isn’t it? It’s one thing to suspend disbelief to imagine Inter-Galactic Confederations and Spice Guilds. We can imagine a Death Star, but it’s quite a leap of imagination to believe in a world practicing universal neighborly love—too wide a leap for most of us. Superman and Catwoman are more believable than that.

It is nice to play “what if” though, is it not?

Is a belief unpracticed really believed?

I mentioned that this command comes from 2 of the 3 Abrahamic religions. (A similar command may exist in the tenets of Islam, I confess my lack of familiarity with its sacred texts).

And yet, Christianity (with a few notable exceptions for all too rare individual cases) seems to have showed a 2100-year propensity for missing the point.

As a believer myself, I’m dismayed that most of us professing belief in Jesus, act as if His day-to-day purpose in our lives is to help us feel better and prosper financially. We comfort ourselves with the belief He will secure our future admission to heaven. We don’t think about His primary daily purpose as empowering us to love our neighbor… the entire world of them.

I’m guilty here, too. My usual prayers focus much more on my needs than on making me better at loving my neighbor.

Sadly, “believers” will give unequivocal assent to the expression “love your neighbor as yourself”, even calling it the “Word of God”, and yet this mere intellectual assent spurs a vastly disproportionate few to become its “practitioners”. The widespread embrace of the idea without widespread accompanying action is a puzzle. As if it only exists to make a nice wall plaque or refrigerator magnet.

A command radical for its practicality

But this command is imminently practical. And it is imminently radical for its practicality. Because if practiced, you will find yourself in direct conflict with the underlying principles of profit-motive capitalism. And it will radically conflict as well with your cherished political views and reverence for the founders. For instance, how are you to love your neighbor as yourself, yet use your liberty in the pursuit of happiness, unless you also pursue the happiness of your neighbor with equal vigor?

It becomes immediately apparent how incompatible the pursuit of happiness is with the 2nd great commandment. Unless, of course, you find happiness in loving your neighbor.

In that case, Augustine’s directive applies: “Love, and do whatever you please…”

But seriously, if I am to fulfill this command, how can I do so and not have a regard for my neighbor’s well-being as much as I regard my own, for issues like health care, or mask-wearing, or vaccinations, or universal basic income? Or am I to love my neighbor unless it intrudes on my pet political dogma?

And moving to economic considerations, does the law of love allow me to make as much money as I can, selling items for the most the market will bear, enriching myself at my neighbor’s expense? Can profit-motive co-exist with the love-motive? Does neighborly love not command me to sell as cheaply as I can afford to sell, with regard both to my neighbor’s need of my products and services, and their interest in securing fair value as inexpensively as possible, while still loving myself enough to make a living that will provide for my legitimate necessities?

Economic considerations of neighborly love

Last I checked, I don’t require a private spaceship, or even a seat on one for a space tour. I don’t need to pay myself 299 times more because I’m the CEO than I pay my average employee. (An average of $12.7 million in 2020—during a pandemic). According to the law of neighborly love, these men are villains to be castigated, not heroes to be lauded.

These are fundamental, practical questions. Loving your neighbor is the most radical economic and political philosophy ever espoused. It is the most radical action anyone can take. Universal adoption would topple every government, everywhere, other than to provide and administer infrastructure, health care and maintenance services.

There can be no trust where there is no love

Imagine a science-fiction world wherein every neighbor loves every other neighbor.

It’s too preposterous to imagine, isn’t it? And that’s why we need not bother with the second part of my tip. For in a world in which we cannot reliably expect love from our neighbor, and in which the command cannot compel us to offer it ourselves, there can be no command to trust them. And thus arises the need for governments, with all their accompanying evils, to police the selfishness of humankind. Because in whatever form, they are less evil than unloving neighbors would be to each other without them.

But just for a moment, pretend. Go ahead, hypothesize with me. If you could have it, do you want your neighbor’s love? Think maybe they’d want yours? Imagine the ramifications. Imagine if it started with you and me.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Right! That’s just way too radical. Crazy, ain’t it?
July 18, 2021
2 Trees—Knowledge, Life, and A Celebration of Dependency

There were 2 trees in the garden. There still are. (Shuttestock Image licensed to Author)

# 87 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: There is nothing more magnificent in creation than a tree in a forest. I learned this way too late.

Here I simply refer you to Richard Powers’ excellent (Pulitzer Award winning) book, The Overstory. Read it. Digest it. Believe it. Embrace it. Practice it. Live it as if your life, your kid’s lives and the planet’s life depends on it. It most likely does. This story is a celebration of dependency, because life is better than knowledge — life is dependency.

2 Trees

The story of creation begins in a garden. In that garden are two named trees. This story tells how the lie’s promise went unfulfilled and how life is better than knowledge.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and The Tree of Life.

The story juxtaposes these, one to one another, making them antagonists. Black hat and white hat. The distinctions between these 2 trees set the stage for a marvellous story and yet they do no combat against one another. There is no arboreal clash of branches. They do not fight and sway. They simply exist. The two trees are saying something to us through the reach of literature if not from the literal nascent moments of our species and our shared race as humans. The battle is within ourselves.

The one tree has gotten all the ink through the years, but there were 2 trees our first parents could have eaten from, only one of which was forbidden. There was also the tree of Life, about which no prohibition had been made.

The Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil story is fundamentally a story about independence. The tempter offered something he could not give to fill something they could not have and did not need. This is the nature of temptation—to overpromise and underdeliver. Always. The temptation to Adam and Eve was to become “like God—knowing good and evil”.

This is a lie of Trumpian proportions, the first Big Lie and mother of all Big Lies. For God is more than knowledge, and God is more than the arbiter of good and evil. God is that Supreme Creator who determines whether a thing, a thought, an act is good or evil in accord with that wisdom and love only God possesses.

Good? Evil?

What man or woman has ever attained to such heights as to know conclusively what good is, independent of God?

Was crucifixion good? Or was it evil? Was the discovery of North and South America by Europeans good? Good for the natives, the aboriginal peoples on those continents? If good, for whom was it good? For God? For all?

Questions of these kinds are indecipherable entanglements. The best and brightest wear themselves out and drive themselves mad, picking at that backlash of knotted contradictions, hoping in vain to answer the very thing promised to our ancestors in that primordial lie. What is good? What is evil? And in our history, have we arrived at any satisfactory, mutually agreed upon, non-controversial decisions about what is good and what is evil? I trust the reader to recognize a rhetorical question when you read one.

Like Begets Like

As fruit contains its seeds within itself, so it is with lies. Like begets like. Apples produce apple trees, not cherries, or pears, or ferns. A lie’s fruit contains no seeds of truth. Accordingly, we see the fruit from that ill-fated tree was a deadly poison in proportion to the worthlessness and uselessness of the knowledge sought. Because that knowledge could not and cannot produce what the lie purported it could, and neither could that lie or the knowledge it claimed accessible to our ancestors, produce—Life.

We may admit that the eating of the fruit gave them knowledge of good—as memory—the sacrifice of their original manner of life killed on the altar of independence. Likewise, it gave the knowledge of evil—as present and future — the now inability to keep and reestablish that level of Life-receiving dependence so foolishly sacrificed. In that, the tempter lied the truth, but so craftily as to make even this outcome veiled and hidden in that initial lie, “your eyes will be opened…”. And what an opening of the eyes that was. The knowledge wasn’t in the fruit! The knowledge was in themselves!

The history of humankind

The history of what happened at that tree is written in blood and pain, and murder, and war, and black charcoal ash scrawled on cave walls, and choking, teeming clouds of black ash smoke caressing skyscrapers, and in striped, torn skin, and in blood-stained bayonets. It is the sky teeming with rockets unleashed by the “good” to exterminate the “evil”. Oh, God! What a damned misery unleashed on the planet and the race from the belief in that Big Lie that by knowing “good and evil” the created would become as the creator.

And here we are, still in the dark. Still not knowing what good is. Still unable to tell what is evil. Still needing to be led by the hand. Still needing to be told. And still too damned proud and stupid to admit our blindness, our need, our destitution and stretch out our hands to Life, for as it says in another place, “knowledge puffeth up” but “love edifies”.

Those 3 words are the most concise history of humankind ever penned — “knowledge puffeth up”.

There is another tree, also fruit-bearing. That 2nd tree remains, because the idea of it remains. Regardless of whether it is a physical, tangible tree, I believe it is the source of all trees, which may be the residual source and the sustenance of all biological life on this spinning ball we ride through Space. It may be a heavenly tree, possibly metaphorical, or hidden in ineffability. But a more magnificent creation, I cannot conceive. This tree of Life exists in the myths of numerous cultures and peoples. Myths this pervasive exist for a reason. There’s usually something real to back them.

Life is better than knowledge — Life is dependency

The fruit of that tree of Life is of 12 different kinds — its leaves have potency to heal the nations. (Is it any wonder we look to trees and forests for medicines?) Fruit is both food and a seed pod. In combination with medicinal leaves, everything the Tree of Life symbolizes implies dependency. Life is a series of dependencies — truth no created thing can capture so fully as a tree, which creates its entire mass, not from itself, but from the very air, exactly in the pattern we are to “in Him, live and move, and have our being.” And nothing gives of itself more fully than a tree, either.

I can find and infer and reasonably patch together knowledge within myself. But I cannot find life within myself. I cannot grow my food from within myself. I cannot, from within myself, create the air I need for my next breath. I cannot manufacture my own medicine from within. For Life, I am dependent. I am in need. And I’d rather acknowledge, even celebrate my dependency—for I would far rather live without knowing, than know without living.

July 16, 2021
What Do You Like & Why Do You Like It?

Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash

# 85 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Know why you like what you like. Learn to identify the feeling of liking something before you have the words to tell yourself you like it. That resonance, that connection, that is your home.

This one has been staring at me for a couple of days. I know what I mean by the tip I offered months ago when I created my list and posted it, but this one captures so much.

What you like defines you

Why do you like that? Why don’t you like this? Can your likes change—become weaker (?), or stronger? If they can change, did the thing formerly liked change? Or did the former “Like-er” change? Important stuff.

We all start in infancy as blank slates. Yes, I know, the argument of nature vs. nurture. Sure, sure. Still… I have no Grateful Dead genes that make me resonate to that frequency, nor any Russian genes I’m aware of that make the slow, deliberated, painstakingly detailed accounts of Dostoevsky so appealing and full of life and truth to me.

So, as for the accumulation of culture—which is really a fancy word for group or social liking of a thing—I’m on the nurture side of that debate. We like what we like because we get exposed to it by someone who convinces us that people like us like stuff like this. There’s a kind of peer pressure to like most of the things we choose.

[That, and the size of the menu in proportion to the size of our appetites, and whether we find good entrements (palate cleansers) between samplings.]

There are also degrees of liking a thing. You may wear the tee-shirt, but not kill bats on stage and drink their blood. (You can look up the old Ozzy Osbourne legend somewhere… Google it.)

So, Greg, you’re 300 words in and haven’t told me a damn thing about why I like some stuff and not other stuff.

True, dear reader, we are halfway down a proper electronic page and I cannot tell you what to like. I can, however, urge this—Don’t let anyone else tell you either!

We all got our first likes because someone pushed sweet mashed pears into our baby mouths before they spooned in disgusting pureed lima beans. Someone played Mozart, or Miles Davis or Metallica before Beethoven, Benny Goodman, or Bad Company.

We first gain likes and tastes from the people around us who expose us to them and usually because they like them too. (Maybe not with babyhood pears, but you catch my drift).

Here’s the rub

At some point, earlier or later, I don’t know, you will want to pay attention to whether or not you’d like Led Zeppelin at all if that delectable girl in the yellow overalls didn’t look so good wearing that logo emblazoned across her beautiful… t-shirt (what did you think I was going to type?)

My mom was a member of the Columbia Records club. This was back when dinosaurs roamed North America and people still had turntables on which to extract sound from round plastic platters. She got several albums a month, and she used to sit dreamily and play one album called Go To Heaven by a band of long-haired men, standing in a cloud on the cover, wearing cheesy looking, white, polyester-velveteen Lawrence Welk suits.

Alabama Getaway and Don’t Ease Me In off that record sounded like countrified crapola to my 13-year-old ears. Hearing it made me gag and flee the premises, long before I got to hear Lost Sailor and Saint of Circumstance.

I couldn’t stand it! Yuck! 13-year-olds ought not be judged too harshly for underdeveloped anything. Puberty makes for a cloudy filter.

But I did like her Fleetwood Mac, and Rickie Lee Jones, and Little Feat albums. I even liked Jimmy Buffett, and I wanted to like Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young because they had the coolest album cover. (You know the antique looking, sepia-toned album where they’re posed with a dog, and Crosby cradles a shotgun, and Neil is draped with bandoleers and a pistol, and a guitar is lying on the ground — Deja Vu—and it looks like Matthew Brady took the photograph right after the battle of Antietam or something).

God, I loved the look of that album cover because I was crazy for all kinds of Civil War stuff. That picture was so cool! Who cared about hippies floating in white John Travolta suits in a cloud!?

But the music, Jeez! My misanthropic mom would get drunk, put on Teach Your Children and slur, “Hunnneee, jusss lishen to theesh wordzz. Thish iss evertheeen I wanna shay to you kidzz.”

OMG!! Please No! — Likes can change

I hated C,S,N,Y then. Association, ya know?

Though, I LOVE their music now. Different association… ya know?

The same reason I now love all things Grateful Dead. I had to grow into it. Then it grew into me.

So, sometimes early exposure doesn’t take root. Germination takes longer. Circumstances change, and then, bam! You hear something, or see something, or taste it, and it’s like tasting and seeing and hearing home. Like gathering up fragments of self that complete you. I know, weird.

But, they say there’s no accounting for taste. And truly there isn’t. If you will put on your Indiana Jones hat and do some personal archeology to dig up the reasons you’ve buried and kept your own personal treasures, you’ll learn a hella lot about yourself.

Fact is, your likes and loves will tell you more about yourself than your dislikes.

Shove over, I’ve invited God in

Probably shouldn’t drag God into a story already crowded with Jimmy Buffett, my drunk mom, Rickie Lee Jones, and bandoleers, but I see [Him] as defined (bad word, I don’t think [He] can be defined adequately, else the whole God idea shrinks, but it’s the best word we’ve got) by what [He] likes, immeasurably more than by what [He] dislikes. Just like you and me are defined more by what we like and allow in than by what we hate and keep out.

It’s the opposite of the way evangelical Christians think of God and themselves. These define themselves by what they oppose, what they’re against, what they resist and are afraid of. They never crack open Song of Songs, the most beautiful ode to physical, sexual love ever written (“kisses sweeter than wine”). It just sits there unread and unappreciated in their bibles. They conveniently forget Noah got drunk (after preserving humanity), David committed adultery—and murder (and was still called a man after God’s own heart), Jesus turned water into about a hundred gallons of wine at a wedding, and Peter denied Jesus (but Jesus restored him again over fish tacos on the beach).

They forget God loved everybody, EVERYBODY so much, [He] paid the ultimate price to win us back. I don’t imagine [He’s] trying to keep anyone out on technicalities like who they love. [He’d] prefer to outfit us all in white suits, invite us to stand in a cloud, and Go To Heaven. Or maybe my God is just bigger and more full of Grace and Mercy than yours. I dunno. Or maybe I’m wrong. But I’d rather be wrong believing in God as revealed Love. Maybe you’re unflawed, and you’re loved for your perfection. That doesn’t apply to me. But because God loves flawed me as much as [He] does, my only response is to trust [Him.] That is what faith is all about, after all. The heart’s response to a God showing and proving [His] Love.

If you’re curious about my brackets around masculine pronouns in reference to God, it’s because of my uncertainty of how to think of God and gender. I think of God as Father, the only real Father I’ve ever known. But God is called El Shaddai in the Hebrew scriptures, too, which means “the Breasted One”, or nurse. I love that image—of God being the source of life and growth and sustenance, of comfort, and warmth, and security, the way a nursing mother is to her infant child. You are welcome to your own images. I am convinced in my heart that my brackets aren’t offensive to [Him], or Him. End of disclaimer.

Back to the topic at hand—Here’s an unlimited credit card

Learn to identify what you like, on your own terms. Evaluate your preferences to see if you picked them up as the price of admission to some tribe or other, or thinking they’d be the key to some girl’s heart.

What do you like, the real you? Imagine you have an unlimited credit card. Your preferences and tastes are the only ones you need consult. You start with an empty iPod, empty media shelves, and an unfurnished home—no pictures on the walls, nothing in the pantry, fridge, wine cellar, or liquor cabinet. What’s parked in the driveway? What do you get? What do you like? Not—what does your wife, husband, lover like? No. What do you like?

Go ahead, you have my full permission to fill your life with as many of those things you can. On the way, you’ll answer the question: Why do you like that? It may be this simple. You just do! It resonates. And it scratches the persistent itch, uncovers the empty spot, and fills up the void. Because it caresses your heart; and sings you, rocks you, swaddles you, envelops you, whispers you—home.

It may as simple as the idea enshrined by Mick Jagger—

“I know it’s only Rock n’ Roll, but I like it… yes I do!”
~ Rolling Stones: It’s Only Rock n’ Roll

Mick likes Rock n’ Roll, and that like defines Mick. What defines you? What do you like?

One day, I’ll invite you over to my own imaginary bare-floored, yoga-pillowed pad where we can have church listening for the whisper of God, blasting my collection of studio and live Dead performances on my megawatt stereo system, while we drink Napa Valley wine and Russel’’s Reserve and Grok out on all my Van Gogh and Monet and Mondrian paintings. Or maybe we’ll “ooh and aahhh” over my library of thousands of volumes of curated literature, housing everything from Brené Brown to Zane Grey.

You’ll like it. Or at least I will.

What did you ask? Oh, yeah, that Aerosmith you hear coming from the other room? Oh, that’s just my girlfriend rocking out on the sounds she likes. She calls mine alternately “Grandpa” or “Sleepy” music. If you prefer the Demon of Screamin’ to my sleepy tunes, you are welcome to plug in your headphones. To each his own. I can’t tell you what to like, I can only ask you to tell me, why do you like it?

July 15, 2021
The Professional Ministry Killed Jesus In His Day…It Hasn’t Stopped

Preachers endorsing politicians makes for the most unholy of bedfellows, desecrating both. God is neither Republican, Democrat, White, Black, or American. (Adobe Stock image: licensed by author)

As a former minister, and still a Christian, I can’t think of anything more damaging to the model and message of Biblical Christianity than a professional ministry relying on tax breaks from the government. The professional ministry killed Jesus in His day, and it hasn’t stopped, especially when in bed with politics (which it was then, too).

Tax Benefits to Ministry Organizations

Allowing organizations to register as 501(c)(3) non-profits does a few things for them, none of which are essential to promoting their ”message”.

First, they are allowed numerous tax exemptions, including exemptions on real estate holdings.

That’s right. A church in the US can buy prime real estate, erect large buildings on it, conduct business on that land, and pay no property tax, corporate income tax, and usually no state or local sales tax.

Second, they can hire and pay a ”ministry” class granting them FICA tax exemptions on ministerial earnings.

What, you ask? A minister can elect to pay no payroll taxes on ministerial income into the Social Security system. This election also means they cannot draw Social Security Administration benefits at retirement age on income elected for this deferral. But the tax savings in the present puts more money on the minister’s ”bring home” check.

Remember, these FICA payroll taxes are matching funds. The employer and the employee both pay a share of the gross pay towards satisfaction of these amounts all non-minister workers and their employers pay. So the ministry benefits in real money saved from ministers making this election to defer.

Third, ministries can also pay ministers a ”housing allowance” as part of their salary package. Ministers do not have to report this ”allowance” as ”earned income” in tax filings. Yet, if they are purchasing the home for which they receive an ”allowance”, they are allowed to deduct the interest. This is one of a hand-full of ”double-dips” in the IRS tax code.

It is this benefit that allows the Joel Osteen’s of the world to own mansions and pay no taxes on the income earned to pay the payments. And if the church is on the mortgage, no property taxes are paid either.

Jesus had no housing allowance…He had no house

Astute Bible readers will remember that Jesus said of himself,

”Foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
~ Matt. 8:20

The fourth advantage ministries have from the IRS tax code is the ability to grant tax deductions to donors for their gifts of cash and property.

There is no way to know, but I am curious how long ministries could stay open for business if this benefit was rescinded. To be sure, some church goers give for reasons other than a tax deduction, but what about the largest donors? Would they still give so ”charitably” if they couldn’t take a write-off?

The reason I’m writing about this

Ministers who receive these tax benefits from the government are forbidden by law to use their position as ministers to influence the government from whom they are receiving the benefits. Put simply, they are forbidden by the IRS tax code to intermeddle in politics. Neither they, nor their ministry organizations are to support or promote a political candidate or party…as a minister.

Unscrupulous ministers skirt this law by claiming their political pronouncements are their ”personal” views. They expect us to believe they are taking off the collar and ministerial frock when they stump for their favorite politician. Yet, these same ministers would have no platform, no name recognition, and no voice except for their ministry. This is disingenuous, at best.

Please don’t associate Jesus with corrupt politicians, or unscrupulous “ministers”

And the danger of this practice is that a listener will naturally associate Jesus, or God, with the politician being endorsed by the unscrupulous, wannabe politician minister. This is a mistake. It kills the truth about who Jesus is. He endorsed no political leaders during His brief tenure on Earth, and I don’t believe there is a politician in the history of mankind that Jesus would have endorsed.

Once, when asked about paying taxes, Jesus said,

”Give Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give God what belongs to God.”
~Mark 12:17

Does that sound like a politician to you?

I agree with Him, and I believe Congress should take Him at his Word, too, by immediately revoking 501(c)(3) status for all ministries, and/or by immediately prosecuting every so-called minister who steps into the political arena for IRS tax code violations.

Well known, well-funded minsters are alienating half of the national demographic by their politically or financially motivated endorsements. In so doing, they are breaking the laws of God and man. Jesus’ message concerns a different Kingdom entirely. For these reasons, I say professional ministry killed Jesus in his day, and hasn’t stopped.

These political ministers could not be doing the work of satan more effectively if they tried. Even if ol’ Scratch gave them better tax breaks.

June 3, 2021
The Bible Is Not The Sole Repository Of Truth

The letter kills but the Spirit gives life, making the Bible both the most life-giving, and potentially dangerous, book ever. Within its pages is not the only place truth can be found.

# 33 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: The Bible, while true if rightly understood in terms of scope and purpose, is not a science book, nor is it the sole repository of truth.

I believe in God (generally), and I’m a Christian (specifically – with my own non-standard definition). As such, my tips for life and my writing touch on this topic. This is another Bible associated tip. It is related to the one preceding it, which suggests that the reader see the Bible as a spiritual menu. I believe that the Bible is true. However, not in the same way that a scientific research paper, or a mathematics text book is true. And, the main point with this tip is to insist to the reader that it (The Bible), is not the sole repository of truth. It’s ok to find truth outside the box.

God hasn’t gone mute and is still speaking

It is odd that anyone who believes the Bible at all would think that it is the complete record of all truth for all time. There are several verses in both Testaments that make the assertion that God is both a ”speaker” and that He is still speaking. Here is a very small sampling (Psalm 29 (all); Hebrews 1:1,2; Hebrews 12:25 (”speaketh” – Greek present, active, participle signifying continuous and repeated action).

Creators gonna Create…this “extra-biblical” truth is baking intelligent noodles everywhere

If that is not enough, the fact that cosmologists have discovered an ever-expanding universe is enough to bake anyone’s noodle. Talk about a metaphysical and philosophical quagmire. Into what is the universe expanding? What exactly is the previously non-existent space (area) that is being annexed? This fact even poses problems for evolutionists. What is in this frontier space area that is evolving? In response to environmental pressures in an environment that does not exist? Right…

This also poses problems for classical physicists. The first law of thermodynamics states that matter can be neither created nor destroyed. And yet…the universe expands. Something is being created by something to fill something. This premise seems more like an article of faith than empirically verifiable science. Here is an article from Scientific American with some impressive mental gymnastics attempting to explain the contradiction.

Thus endeth the digression

OK, enough of that digression. Back on the road here. Truth isn’t confined to the Bible. You can find it everywhere. I find it in the midst of the most elaborate lies…in great literary works of fiction. I also find it in sunsets, Grateful Dead songs, Quentin Tarantino movies, and in the gliding flight of a hawk in a lazy summer sky. Not that those those other sources have equal authority to be esteemed as on par with the Bible. Truth is not stagnant. It is still being disseminated.

”Sometimes the light’s all shining on me, other times I can barely see…”
~ Grateful Dead: Truckin’

Look, the Bible is ”living literature” as Jordan Peterson says in his book list. I like that. Although not written in the canon of scripture, it rings true to me. As living literature, it speaks to each person differently at different times.

Two important things I’ve learned about reading it. The first is, it is most definitely not a book for me to read to find out how you should live. One passage compares scriptural truth to a mirror. You don’t look at yourself in a mirror to find out how someone else looks. The minute a Bible reader does that, they’ve veered from the purpose of the texts.

The second is: When you hear truth in its pages, be a doer and not a hearer only. (John 7:17, James 1:23,24). Otherwise, reading it is doing you more harm than good.

Suppose God is the Author of all truth, wherever it is found

Here’s an interesting thing to contemplate. What if we agreed that God is the author of all truth wherever you find it? And, that as such, it is impossible for God to lie. Yes, I know. That means there is something an all-powerful God cannot or at least will not do. If we accept that premise, it becomes easy to see that the Bible is not the sole repository of truth. It becomes possible to believe that God can speak to you at any time, from any source. It might even make you open your ears, and pay closer attention, no? After all both of the following are true.

”You ain’t gonna learn what you don’t want to know.”
~ Grateful Dead: Black-Throated Wind

and;

”It is senseless to pay to educate a fool since he has no heart for learning.”
~ Proverbs 17:16, New Living Translation

Reality

In one of the most oft-quoted verses, Jesus states,

”I am The Way, The Truth, and The Life…”
~ NT, John 14:6

That Greek word for Truth is alētheia. This word does not limit itself to doctrinal, logged, codified truth. It is the word for REALITY. If we accept as true what Jesus says about being, Himself, Reality, then, of course we must admit that the Bible is not the last, sole, comprehensive repository of all truth.

”Maybe you’ll find direction around some corner where it’s been waiting to meet you.”
~ Grateful Dead: Box of Rain

May 24, 2021
The Bible Is A Menu Not A Magic Book

An Outback Steakhouse menu even has pictures, but even these won’t feed you…looks good though, doesn’t it?

# 32 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: The Bible is a menu describing a life that is available. Memorizing a menu won’t feed you.

I realize that, to many people, those words will come across as either sacrilegious, anti-Christian, or both. Nevertheless, after 35 years of careful consideration, I am willing to say again, the Bible is a menu. It describes a life that is available. Memorizing a menu won’t feed you. It is not that I don’t care if some are offended. But, I care more that too many have not well considered the matter and thus venerate the menu, mistaking it for the things it describes.

In an interesting synchronous side-trip, this morning, having already decided to write on this subject, I got the following link to Seth Godin’s blog. His post today is called, Code Words. In it, in his characteristic, brief, minimalist way, he makes the argument that all words are code, or rather, that every word is a code. This…this is what I mean by my tip.

It’s probable that I cannot sum up all of language theory in a sentence. A quick Google search, it turns out, isn’t so quick. Major research universities devote entire departments to the study of language. For example, this link to the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University. So, it’s a big discipline to try to summarize. Here goes: Language, whether spoken or written, is representative of actual ideas or things and not the ideas or things themselves. That will suffice, I believe.

You Can Memorize A Menu And Still Leave Hungry

That being the case, I ask each of you how many times you have read the words Bloomin’ Onion and Bone-In Ribeye from the Outback Steakhouse menu and pushed away from the table satisfied? What if you memorized the menu? Would that help?

I understand the silliness of my comparison. But, can we agree the menu is not the point of the restaurant experience? You do not go to a steakhouse to read the menu. The food, the steak, is the point. If you look at a menu, see an item, order it, then eat it, the menu has accomplished its purpose. It led you to the thing itself. To get full, or receive any nutritional effects, you will need to take some additional steps after reading the menu.

That’s how it is with the Bible. It is not a magic book. The Bible is a menu. The words themselves have no power apart from their ability to induce belief. The words are pointing towards the thing itself. They are not the thing. To make the Bible more than that is the equivalent of making the menu the point of going out to eat. But think with me, if all the Bibles in print vanished simultaneously, would the God described disappear too?

May 23, 2021
No Amount of Navel Gazing Will Make You Spiritual

This butterfly has completed metamorphosis. Beautiful, huh?

# 29 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: No amount of navel-gazing, self-reflection, or self-help is Spiritual. That is CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).

Let’s begin with a few simple definitions so we can understand each other. That’s tongue-in-cheek because there is actually little agreement about what constitutes spirituality. I use the term spiritual to refer to those realities that are nonmaterial, bodiless, and having no measurable physical substance. I also use the term to refer to those resources, energies, or powers that do not derive from human sources. This is the key point. Navel gazing in the form of self effort cannot generate spiritual life or spirituality. If one wishes to become spiritual, and derive the benefits, one must look outward, and receive spiritual life from outside oneself.

We humans have a spirit (in the same way we have a mind and a body) and can certainly become spiritual, but the purpose of the spirit is to apprehend the spiritual world, in the same way the purpose of the senses is to apprehend the physical world. Similarly, the purpose of the mind (not to say ”brain”) is to engage in the immaterial, unseen world of reason, emotion, and will.

Like communicates with like

By design, the parts and functions we enjoy and employ communicate and interact within their own respective spheres. Minds communicate with minds. Bodies with bodies, And, likewise, spirit with Spirit. Like always communicates with like. Therefore, one cannot become more spiritual by looking inward, by any physical exercise or activity whatsoever, or by a heightened awareness of mental processes, or emotional states.

If you accept those statements, it becomes evident that one cannot become spiritual by looking within. For one, with what instrument does one look? With the mind of course, not with the eye or the visual interpretive functions of the brain. And second, what is the object of observation? If it is merely mind observing mind, then once again, we’ve aimed at the wrong target and unfortunately, hit it. Where is one to find Spirituality, if not within?

If not within oneself, where is Spirituality to be found?

No, true spirituality is found outside ourselves. One becomes spiritual by contemplation and meditative focus on another Source, another Power, altogether.

Belonging to the Christian tradition, I find the answer in this verse:

”But we all, with unveiled faces, looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”
~2 Cor. 3:18

This verse declares that it is by looking at the glory of the Lord, that one is transformed into that same image by the Spirit of the Lord.

This transformation (which in greek literally means metamorphosis) does not happen by looking at oneself. It does not happen by focusing either on one’s successes or failures. Nor does it come about by self-diagnosis, self-help, or self-effort. No amount of navel gazing will make you spiritual. A spiritual life comes by a persistent gazing upon the perfections and glories of Jesus Christ himself.

And where does one see these glories? Scripture presents a view that is the equivalent of looking in a mirror. The image in a mirror is not the thing itself, but only a replica. But in this case, the replica is sufficient to bring about spiritual change.

I hope this helps.

May 21, 2021