Either the mind rules the body
Or the body rules the mind
I do not think it possible to persuade anyone of anything they were not already persuaded of in their spirit or in some other status of, hopefully, their mind directing their body. This means, if true, they alone are responsible for what they believe. This, no matter how dense the crowd they gave their surrounding will to while in the crowd.
Does this make sense?
I do not care how articulate anyone is, it baffles me how anyone can debate whether there is a God or not, all the while never once identifying what their definition of who God is. If this does make sense to anyone then they are merely not convinced who God is, in my view. There are some others who are certain that there not only is no God, but we are all organisms. I first encountered this position in college. This view likes to think everything is a science, so they reduce everything to a formula equaling everyone is the same. But it turns out some are not so identical as others. These will tell the same people what to do, apparently so they will be useful, useful to those who are not so identical. Our key word is same. But if one does not believe in God out of the box, then how can you have a definition?
The Hour has Come
The night before going to the Cross Jesus prayed what is called the high priestly prayer. Of all the books in the Bible the most central chapter is the red-letter chapter John 17. It is on the same par as John 3:16 is the most central verse.
We are One
The theme that God is in Jesus and Jesus is in God, and God is in us, and we are in God is stressed over and over. I'd like to count how often sometime. My mother read this chapter every morning. John 17 is the first thing you read looking at her cenotaph.
Life is like a butterfly
Time is fooling us all even as I speak. Wasting time, my more grievous sin, is also the theme of the prison movie Papillon. This life is often characterized as a prison. Sartre, for instance, titled one of his books No Exit.
Life and prison are alike in some respects. Quite a few of us do not want to be released when our time is up, maybe because the longer one lives, the more likely we become institutionalized, comfortable where we are. 😉
Gaining hope
However, I am coming out of this cloud reading the Bible regularly (see Manna) and my feeling is, I am going to crash out soon. As a reminder to myself, next is looking this moment like... "a case of stolen identity".
If one is concerned with the current generation's appearance to be largely led around by their sniffling intellectual noses, have no concern. I'll always remember one of my BU professors commenting that approximately every 25 years (considered a generation) that each one overthrows the previous generation to go off on a different tangent of their own altogether. So, there is always hope for renewal... for everybody eventually.... for a while at least. How quickly will everything pass. Time is always moving toward something new and if one does not like it, we have to remember that to go up the steps we have to put one foot down to get to the next step up.
Was Jesus incarnate?
All words, just like people who exchange them, have a history. Incarnate is a word from Latin.
The root of the word is carnal, which we know as flesh. It is a great word I've found in comprehending how Jesus, dramatically, became a man in the seen changing world of the flesh.
Mary was herself not at the beginning of Jesus, as God. It did not start with Mary, because Jesus was at the beginning as the Son of God. As an aside, her cousin was the mother of John the Baptist. of which John, the author of John, speaks of "as the Baptist," in the Gospels as the heralder of Jesus.
Alpha and Omega
Mary is referred to by those knowledgeable in the discussion as the virgin God bearer. Jesus however was with God, as the begotten son of God, in the beginning. God did not have only a beginning, but is both beginning and ending. Maybe a mobius strip might serve as an illustration here. This would make God both the beginning and the ending, meaning to me, forever.
Mary then, remains in her time. But by emphasizing her as the mother of God, she is easily thought, by association, to be before the beginning of the Son, or at least, in the beginning. This beginning would suggest the only beginning, even before God Himself, which of course is untenable.
The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us
As a child, it was presented to my understanding by association that Jesus began born of His mother Mary. This would be true, but because Jesus was God from the beginning, it was only true when Jesus became a man, from which He would return as God in the beginning. Always the emphasis was on the seen rather than on the unseen spirit.
There, I've said enough for this entry. I'll chew on this for a time, which takes me back to the beginning of this effort beginning with the introduction of the word incarnate.
Reincarnate carries the image of us living our lives over and over in an effort to get it right, without grace. This sounds to me like someone in a prison locked in a bubble of time that is self repeating from which no one is ever free at last.
Incarnate rather is a single individual event in which God becomes Man for time. A time when He suffers stripes for our healing and dies for our sins as the last sacrifice, totally deserted by God. He then, after dying on the Cross, while still dead for three days, goes down into hell to preach to those lost in the flood, from which He returns, is seen by hundreds, and ascends to heaven. I know of no story anywhere or at any time to even come close to match anything like it.
Between the subject and the verb
I will continue comprehending it. How does one believe it? A belief is a doctrine, inert and still, but believing, is as action, bringing it into existence just like God, who believing spoke everything into existence. That exhilarating task is my never-ending hope, all the while praising God for His Existence and the existence He has given me.
It was the word incarnate that brought me to a sharper understanding. It is an example of how we put the emphasis on the flesh rather than the spirit in pulpits, at least it was in my experience. In this entry I am setting up for tomorrow I shift my emphasis. It was by forcing myself to concretely express my view that I personally came to a clearer, more precise, understanding.
The first reason I am urged to forgive anyone who hurts me, is because it does further damage to me to hold resentment, which is damaging to my mind and body.
The second reason is that if revenge belongs to God, it belongs there for a reason. The reason is very likely because if I hold resentment I am acting in the place of God. So, if that is true then I am acting as if I myself am God, and not the Holy Spirit of Existence, the great I am.
The third reason is the word itself. Resentment, as the word itself suggests, means to send back to myself the very hurt sent me by the one I should forgive. Looks to me one more indication God is simple while we are complex. Sometimes I think the truth cannot be told by those who know.
Maybe that is the fourth reason. I should forgive whether I understand it or not. Now my thoughts have taken me right into the very core of faith.
There is a tendency to think one knows it all when one only knows everything...everything that is known so far.
Just knowing everything so far is quite a feat. But what is known so far is so far from the full facts story it would make anyone's head spin no matter how loosely it could be screwed on.
Just recently heard a man claim he is not a believer in God because he, himself, is a physical scientist and only believes in the facts. Apparently he thinks all the facts are already in, and are known already. He is assuming he is the only one who knows them. Probably just me jumping to conclusions again.
It amuses me when someone tells me I am smart because they never tell me what I am smart in. I often respond, You are so right! I am so smart I've outsmarted myself, just yesterday alone, millions of times.
My grandmother used to say, I am told, that one had to work out their own salvation. I am working out here my own salvation. Everyone works out their own salivation, one way or the other, according to their own diligence in the matter.
All readers here are working out their own salvation. I am working out my own salvation, no one else's. No one can be persuaded by anyone else, even if they are just go alongers.
We all persuade ourselves, just as I am doing here for myself. If anyone says anything that is to me in any way persuasive, I still am the only decision maker in the equation. No matter who it is, I am the lone decider and I take all the credit or any discredit.
I am the only one responsible for whatever happens to me, even if it may have been my decision to go along with, for instance, a doctor. One can say the doctor was to blame if they want, and that my be true enough, but his life does not respond to the consequences.
Only mine does. I am the responder and I am the only one responsible who will really suffer or rejoice in the consequences. I am convinced we will all work out our own salvation, whether we wanted to or not.
