Learning Experiences

Why does our knowledge of love’s fullness have to be so painful to obtain? Why doesn’t God completely reveal to us our full nature?

By giving His power, the power of the word, to man, God destroyed His absolute power to reveal Himself and the secrets of creation. But before man appeared on the scene, the secrets had been told in mammon – in the temporal – which reflects them oppositely and truly, as though in a mirror, itself material, a form that is real is seen, albeit its “mirror-image” is not its reality in being. Thus, truth-bearer must make unto himself a friend of mammon, “unrighteous” as mammon is, and he must reveal the working of the flesh, offensive and error-provoking though his words may be.

Being part of the material realm limits us in coming to full knowledge of the reality and fullness of God. If we want LIFE, we must deal with the limitations and consequences thereof. The Apostle Paul says as much in his letter to the Romans:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits in eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Rom. 8:18-21) 

According to Paul here, we were not created by God already perfect, then fell, and now are in the process of regaining paradise. Rather, we have been subjected to futility from the beginning by our creator! Why? In hope that we will come to know the freedom of being children of God (being set free from slavery to mere mammon). It is the only way we can know love for ourselves. In other words, the Eden story isn’t a time-based story; it is rather an eternal happening, goading and guiding us into a better future. The story is a “trap” God sets for us, striving for the “beginning,” which in eternity is also our “completion.”

And here Preston Harold sounds like a modern day Paul:

Mammon is the mirror, and perforce the mirror lies – for it, itself, is not what it reflects in its being or as its being. God, First Cause, love, life itself, is not matter as revealed in mammon; God…is revealed through mammon’s examination to be “spirit,” or a type of “energy” unknown and unknowable in physical terms…. The reality underlying the world of appearances cannot be reduced to physical terms, it is only indirectly knowable as reflected in mammon’s mirror, and as it is intuitively experienced by man…. But in mammon’s mirror, in evil, or in pure matter, or in life’s temporal history with all its evil-doing, the image of good and its working may be beheld. This is to say, there is evidence that life is building into man a factor that will in time deliver him from evil without robbing him of its desirable aspects, and that this factor is in truth the saving grace of life.

Amen! Until next time, peace.

Spirit and the Serpent

The devil is associated always with the “serpent power.” Jesus’ offensive words, “your father, the devil,” indicate that a “serpent power” fathers the flesh of man and its lusts, which is to say, man is involved with a powerful material factor that is resurrected in him generation after generation. (In 1928, scientists learned that a certain “coil” could be resurrected: when a batch of dead “S” bacteria were added to living “R” bacteria, the DNA of the dead “S” type somehow took over the “R” bacteria converting them to the living “S” type.) Jung observed that the devil is seen to be lord of matter. Evil is said to be of Satan’s domain which is represented as eternally burning; in this regard evil coincides with matter’s oxidizing. Satan is somehow a discrete play of energy, and so is matter. God has cast Satan, evil, out of His realm; God, good, remains as spirit only, spirit with dominion over evil, matter.

So there it is: Spirit/God = Good; Matter/Satan = Evil. Nice and tidy, wrapped up with a pretty bow. Isn’t it nice when we can have simple, straight-ahead black and white answers? That way we don’t have to think, challenge ourselves, or wonder about God at all! But hold on. Maybe it’s not so simple. Preston Harold continues:

Although Jesus saw that life itself is spirit, He saw that spirit is wedded to material being…by definition the word good is also deeply if not completely involved in the material realm. Good and evil are so intermingled in creation they appear to be that which the Creator has joined, both necessary to life in manifestation.

Remember the parable of the wheat and the tares?…

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’” -Matt. 13:24-30

And Jesus’ words from the Gospel of John?…

“Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.” -John 5:28-29

Jesus says that God is love. Love does not, apparently will not or cannot, do away with evil. Evil too, is resurrected. Why?

Good question! We’ll look for an answer in our next post. Until then, peace…