These are funny times we live in, we have people who will believe in pretty much anything really, for almost any claim that someone might come up with, there will always be someone to believe it. For the first time in human history we have knowledge at the tips of our fingers, and for the first time we have the freedom to express ourselves and what we think, and the power to do that in a global scale, these are fantastic times that we're living in, I love it sometimes, but sometimes, I hate it.
I hate it because sometimes people are not informed enough to really have an opinion about a certain subject, that becomes a real problem once these people, totally uninformed of the reality of the issue, start acting fanatical about it and trying to impose their beliefs into others. We've seen it happen many times and it is not exclusive to any race or belief, it is everywhere.
Even though I was born in an emerging post-modern world, I still have a lot in me of that old scientific view of the world where everything happens for a reason and every action has a reaction, and everything can be predicted with a precision directly proportional to the amount of variables you know for a given system. I, at the end of the day, believe in things I can understand, that I can reason about, and if I cannot understand it, I try to because that's how I learned it was, everything has an explanation and if something really doesn't fit in my accepted view of the world I tend to discard or if plausible, keep it in a shelf until I'm ready to go back to it again.
I was born and raised in a world torn apart by different beliefs, everybody believes in something, christians who believe that the universe was created have no more faith than skeptics who believe that the world simply exists, christians become skeptics of science and science becomes skeptic of God, since nothing is final in this discussion, we all have to accept whatever we choose to by... faith!
I was raised to believe though that the world was created, and that there was a plan and a purpose in everything that exists. I myself, am the result of a God who not only created me, but loves me enough to keep me alive everyday, I was taught that the world is not meant to be the way it is, that it was corrupted from its original perfect state by the choice of our fathers who chose to be separated from God, and the result of this separation is what we see today. But is it really? If there is a God, that implies loads of things and loads of questions like, why is there evil in the world after all, and why doesn't God show up and then everybody will believe him, I asked myself those very questions and they sent me on a journey, I cannot say it was a pleasant one at the beginning, but I can tell you it was worth it. It has broadened my view of the world in ways you cannot imagine and I want to share a little bit of it with you.
I want to start by telling you why I believe in God, and given my background you'll probably guess that it is based on logical conclusions, and you're right, I believe in God because, after thinking and studying a lot, I found that even though I don't know almost anything about Him (if God exists He must be B I G), what I know is enough to make sense of Him and of the world in which I live, it fits in my world view, it fits into my reality better than any other model, let me show you how.
It is no news that the bible is a very historically accurate book, in spite of what some misinformed people might say. The bible was methodically copied by jewish masters for thousands of years and they had methods to ensure that every single copy was equal to the original. They would copy it line by line, checking at the end of every line if the copied line was accurate, if it wasn't then the whole page was discarded. After a whole page was copied then another check was made of the whole page to ensure that the copy was accurate, character by character, if it was not, the whole page was discarded and the process would start all over again. Besides that, the jewish masters knew the scriptures by heart, word by word, so if one of them tried to change anything or quote something that was not in there, they would know, this system is actually similar to the one muslims have today with the qur'an, which they inherited from their cousins, the jews. This same tradition was passed on when the first christians came and started copying the manuscripts that now compose the new testament. Besides all that, in 1947 an important discovery was made, scrolls were found near the dead sea that dated from 150 BC till 70 AD, these scrolls, when compared to the currently known scriptures proved an unbelievable level of accuracy, eliminating the doubt that the bible could not be accurate after so many years.
So the bible is the oldest history book we know, and it tells us a lot about what was going on back in the days. But to understand it fully we must also know about the time in which it was written, it was written by men who were inspired by God but still were, men. Against what the most fanatical christians would believe, and that's why they misunderstand it so much, the bible didn't fall from heaven nor was it dictated by God word by word, it was essentially written by men and it tells the stories of those men and how they experienced God, it tells you those stories as an invitation so that you experience God too, the whole point is the experience, there's nothing magical os mystical about the bible. The bible holds the key to unlock the mysteries of our existence and purpose but it is not the explanation in itself, you see, we humans are intelligent creatures, and if there's a God He knows that very well, so the bible is a book that needs no be understood and interpreted taking into consideration it's historical context.
One of the first questions you might come across when you start reading the bible and I heard that a lot even from christians is, why did God elect or chose the Jews to be His chosen nation, why did He make them special, that doesn't make sense if He loves everyone. Indeed, it doesn't make sense at first but to understand it, first you need to understand something about truth, and I'm talking about scientific truth. In science, something is only considered to be a scientific truth or scientific fact after it's been tested and proven in the real world through experiments (at least that's how it should be), that is because truth is truth, it is there, it's always been, it just needs to be discovered. Did Newton invent gravity? No, he just discovered it. Truth doesn't need to be defended either, if it's true it will stand the test, if it's true it will work, if it isn't it will fail, and this is where I need to say something to my fellow church folk. Stop defending God, he doesn't need to be defended, just live your life to the fullest of your belief, if God is truth, then He will stand the test, I mean He will scientifically stand the test. Same with the bible, if the bible is true, it will stand the test, and it has so far if you ask me. The whole point of the bible is never convincing others of the truth, it is living the truth so that it is so evident through you that others will inevitably follow it.
So the Jews were a chosen nation, why? Well back in those days, people had several different gods as you might know, they worshipped all kinds of things, from the Sun and the Moon to mythical creatures that they believed in, they also had statues that they worshipped and gave offerings to so that the gods would be pleased with them and give them rain and food, etc... It also happens that every nation pretty much had their own gods, religion was very much connected into the political system, the Kings would not go to war before consulting their gods first. Now remember that we are talking about truth right, so let's assume that God exists for a moment, even if you don't believe He does. God being a reality means that we must have been separated from him somehow cause I can't see him right now. Now imagine a child who's separated from their parents before they can learn all they need to about reality. Imagine that God had created this whole world, full of life and amazing things, inside of a massive universe with billions of galaxies and stars, but He didn't really have time to teach his children all they needed to know about reality. They are all of a sudden separated form their father and teacher and now they kinda have to figure most of it by themselves. So they obviously come up with theories and ideas to explain their reality, they project their necessity to turn to someone higher than themselves to the sun and starts and they fantasize about gods and goddesses that, are much like us humans in shape or like the animals they can see, only with superpowers. They try to create gods that they can understand, that they can touch and see.
Imagine that these nations, now all with their different gods start to grow and spread throughout the earth, and as they spread, so do their beliefs, remember that religion and state are essentially together. Then God, trying to get back to his children who were separated from him, looks down on them, and knowing all the reality, knowing how it all really is, he looks down on them and says, I'm gonna show to the whole world a little bit of what the reality is like. I'm gonna make a nation, I'm gonna make a covenant with them, they will have me as their God, and the other nations will look at them and will see how successful their God has made them and then they will learn about me, they will learn about reality, about truth.
Now, it was not about God trying to separate them and make them special because they deserved it or anything, it was about showing to the whole world what a nation with a true God really looked like. Remember we're talking about truth, now imagine this, imagine that the whole world believes that the earth is flat, now, with this scientific model, can you build a house? Can you build a house believing that the world is flat? Does this scientific model work on this scenario? In fact it does, it makes no difference at all. But now, can you put a satellite in orbit believing that the earth is flat? No you can't, you probably wouldn't even conceive the idea of a satellite if you believed that the earth is flat, you wouldn't even know about gravity to be honest. Do you see where I'm going with this. The more we expand our frontiers, the more we come closer to truth, and in this process, truth changes, truth grows.
Moses speaks with God and when he asks God what his name was God says something like "I am who I am", and here I am, reading this for the first time and thinking, what is that supposed to mean? You see, back in those days a name carried a meaning of who the person was, so when Moses asks God what's his name he is asking, which God are you, what do you do? Are you the God of rain or the God of war (not trying to promote the game here guys, awesome game though) or, wait, I know, you must be the God sun because you showed up as a burning bush. And God is like, Moses, I just am who I am, I am the God of everything, there is no one else, just me. Now you have to understand how revolutionary this was at that time, everybody had a different God for everything, and then all of a sudden there's only one God, for everything, no wonder the Jews had such a hard time believing it and ended up going back to worshipping the cow in the desert, you have to admit that the cow was a god that was much easier to understand. But what can you do, even when you don't understand the truth sometimes, it is still the truth. It wasn't easy for Neo, and it won't be easy for you when you come across those things you always thought to be true and all of a sudden you found to be completely different from what you knew.
With this we come to my second point about truth, the first one is that it stands to the test, and the second one is that truth is progressive, it grows and it changes. Of course that is just the impression we have because we do not know ultimate truth, and as we grow in the knowledge of truth it appears that it changes from our point of view, but for someone who knows it all it doesn't ever change at all. As we explore more of the world and the universe in which we live, the closer we get to truth, and the closer we get to it, some strange things start to happen, some questions get answered, other questions get invalidated and become ridiculous, and other new questions arise. In this scenario I'd say we are getting to the point where the question "Science or Religion?" is becoming ridiculous and invalidated, and here is where you might think, "OK, you're saying that they are becoming one thing, a religion that accepts science". No, not at all. I think this question is invalid because the answer is neither, not science and not religion. Religion is the process of getting truth and freezing it so that it does not change, but the problem is that we are humans, and as our understanding of truth grows, truth changes, it is still truth, but now we understand more about it. And science as we know it tends to discard anything it cannot explain and that is very pretentious because it assumes that we know it all or almost all when in fact we have only just begun to discover.
One of the great problems I have with most religions is that they assume that you need to understand something and believe in a particular set of beliefs to achieve whatever is promised by the religion, that being generally salvation from our human condition. I'd say salvation is highly misunderstood, salvation is more like restoration. As I read the history contained in the bible and as I look to the known history of mankind it is my understanding that if there is a God, He is trying to communicate with us, but much more than that, he is trying to rescue us. But rescue us from who or what you might ask. The answer is, He is trying to save us from ourselves. He is trying to rescue us from our own corrupted condition.
There was a man named Jesus who lived about 2000 years ago, there were several prophecies written thousands of years before he came announcing that a savior would come for all mankind. This man lived a remarkable life, he divided history in two. His teachings inspired many, but most christians don't even begin to grasp the depth of what he taught and lived. I believe that he was part of a major plan of rescue and restoration of mankind, I believe that his teachings and way of life represent the closest to the truth and reality of God that we have ever been, I believe they represent the best possible way to live and I believe they are the key to true happiness.
Jesus talked about something he called the Kingdom Of God, he tried to describe what this Kingdom Of God is like, he said that the Kingdom Of God is within us and that though it is small at the beginning it grows, this Kingdom Of God is everything that God is and I believe that all the problems of the world are the result of mankind being far from this kingdom or reality of God. This Kingdom transcends all religion, race and nationality, it is global, it is everywhere. You can choose to allow it to grow or you can choose not to, it is your choice. Every time you see greed, hatred, violence, selfishness, that is all that the Kingdom Of God is not, but when you see love, compassion, forgiveness, selflessness, those are signs of the Kingdom Of God.
I start this blog with the purpose of bringing to light one of Christianity's best kept secrets, that is that the Kingdom Of God is here, right now, that the restoration of mankind is happening as you read this, that living by the teachings of Jesus are the key to true happiness and that the reward starts right here, right now. That you shouldn't love God because you're afraid of being punished but because if only you knew the truth about Him you wouldn't wanna do anything else. That what people call divine punishment is really consequence, the very consequence that God wants to keep you away from because of His incomprehensible love for you.
You think you heard it all, you think you know what christianity is all about, think again, cause I'm about to challenge all that! Welcome to the beginning of a journey, a journey to find the ultimate truth.
