Qanna: A Jealous God

The jealous God loves, and wants me. He wants me to be well, to succeed, to be happy. Because he loves all of creation, and because he wants me to grow, he might not always let me be happy, but he does want me to be. Through life, he gives me glimpses of good things so that I can come to understand him a little, like a good father, intelligence, a husband, a mother, a home. With this, I can  obtain a kind of relationship with him. Furthermore, with these things that he made to help us understand, upon my requesting it and desiring to put him above all else, he has endowed me with his spirit. Because he loves me and wants me, with this spirit, he strengthens me, and he helps me. He delights in the truth and wants me to speak it. He despises lies that mask his glory, but tolerates them for our sake. We are broken. We cannot see him fully because we are used to the darkness and he is the sun. I see him now in little pieces. Eventually, I will see him fully, face-to-face, and then I will really know him - I will really know the truth. That is what I want, and that is what I will get.

If another should ever want him in that way, then that is exactly what they will get. God embraces me, holds on to me and as long as I don't want him to let go, he won't. I am soundly tucked in his arms, no matter what might try to pry me out of them. I would sacrifice my most prized possession for him, like he did for me. That is my God. He is strong, and fearless, and true, and right, and patient and jealous because he loves his people. He does not act out, and he has mercy, because he knows we are slaves to our own wills and diseased with habits that eat away at our souls. But he hates those habits because they harm us and pull us away from his life-giving love. Yet for his people, who he helps to come closer, we rejoice in suffering, because it produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that he gave us.

Christ died while we were still weak and broken, yearning for idols, and I was still weak and broken when I met him too. But the fact that he died not for perfect people, but for broken ones just shows how much he honestly cares and loves. We could barely comprehend him, and to behold him frightened us, but with that one act of sacrificial love, he was able to pour himself out and dwell among us, inside of us, so that we can become purified, and when this flesh dies, my soul will be wrapped up inside of his and will not die with my body, nor loosed into the wild to be claimed by other beastly spirits, but will be taken to a place of peace with him. And that love he displayed is what I want to know. That is the epitome of truth. I want to love so much that I would sacrifice anything for it, because love looses all chains. The more I exist in love, the more my priorities clear up, the more purpose I exist in, the more good I can do for the world, the more open to the truth I become, the more gracious I can be, the more hope-giving I can be, the more fearless I can be, and the more enriching I can be.

The truth will one day be revealed and so the seeking of it irrelevant. The future will pass and so the pursuing of it is worthless. The world was made to rot and renew and so beauty is a vain pursuit. Worldly rewards are a figment of the imagination. And so, what others want out of life is their business, but this love is what I want out of life, and the only way I can obtain it is through the God who is jealous for my soul, that he made, and longs to complete in him. That is the good of a jealous God, and that is why I long to continue to pursue him with every fiber of my being.

Misconception: Christians "Love" God to Get to Heaven

Actually, you could take that title either way. It isn't entirely a misconception. The real misconception at the base of that is what Heaven is.

Heaven is where God is. Heaven is being with God, surrounded by him. Heaven could be ugly, brown, gray and dusty; but if it has God then it is worth it. That's what Heaven is. It isn't the streets paved with gold. It isn't the promised places that he prepared for us. It isn't the soft green grass or harps or halos or clouds. Heaven is being with God. I'm in heaven when I'm with God.

Now if you aren't Christian, you are wondering why I think Heaven is so great if it isn't about the pretty stuff in the sky. If you've never been in God's presence then you wouldn't know and I can't explain it. The most I can explain to you is why I love God and why I want to be with him forever.

I love God because in the very beginning, when humanity betrayed him, he promised he would rescue us. I love God because when his people were starving in the desert, he provided them food. When their enemies threatened to destroy them, he led them to victories, accomplishing more than they could have dreamed. When they were slaves, he even gave their slave-owners chance after chance to relinquish them. When they did not, he still rescued his people. He protected and rescued the good, and he wiped out the bad so that good could thrive. Although he makes it clear that women should be women and men should be men, he also esteems them equally. There are many strong and powerful women in the Bible, like Esther. He esteems all creation equally, and understands their places.

I love God because he, a shining being of all-powerful royalty, beautiful in every way, dressed in rags and walked among the lowest places of the earth as a hick from Nazarene. Saying Jesus of Nazareth was like saying Albert of the Midwest back then. I love him because he taught us how to survive in the desert and how to survive in our own personal wildernesses. He gave us hope. God allowed himself to be beaten and speared and tossed into the fiery pits of Hell by taking on all of the burdens we've borne. He carried everything I've ever done - the time I told my brother I hated him, the time I screamed and embarrassed my parents. The times I thought mean and rude things about my classmates, the times I've hurt my parents or lied to someone. He carried the weight of that to Hell so I wouldn't have to.

I love God because he has healed me. Again, and again and again. He has brought me through dark places so I could find beautiful ones. The darker the place I've gone through, the more incredible the things on the other side. I love him because he loved me first. He has pursued me, and not only me, but everyone. He is with us at all times. When your parents didn't do a good enough job, when your brother or sister leaves you, when the person you married fails you, and when your friends drift away, he is always there.

So if you wonder, just remember the list. That isn't even a specific list. But if I were specific, it would be a TLDR* situation and that isn't necessary at this point.

Christians don't pretend to love an imaginary being they can't see out of fears that they won't reach the place with golden streets. Maybe people think they are Christians and do that, but a true Christian isn't in it for that kind of material reward. In the Bible it describes God as being with Abraham and Isaac and everyone in the ancient times. It describes God as being in us after Jesus leaves. In that sense, we know he is there and do not have to see him. We know he is there and we love him because of it. We love him because while he is in us, we can understand it when he speaks to us and teaches us. And while he is in us here, we want to be surrounded by him. That is why we love him, and that is why we want to get to Heaven. It is because we want to get to where God is.

*Too Long Didn't Read

Creationism vs. Science

I apologize for not making my last anime blog yet, but I'll get to it when I get to it. But for now, I feel prompting on the topic of Genesis and a few passages near the very, very beginning that used to worry me.

I had been reading Genesis chapter one, and although I had read it before, I noticed something that irritated me. In verse three God creates light and separates it from the dark. At first, you're assuming the stars and the sun and all that, because it says he called the light "day" and the dark "night". Then, in verse fourteen you are suddenly left shocked and confused because it says that God divided the day and night - implying that they weren't before - and says that he created the sun and the moon (of which they correctly accredited the science of the four seasons to by the way). You're left in the dark, right? He created all these things like the planet and its shape and the water and all that, but apparently the sun wasn't there yet.

Before I go about answering this question, there is the matter of time which trips people up quite a bit. It does indicate in the Bible many times that God doesn't care about time. Humans who claim that God actually created the universe in six days don't really seem to get that God doesn't care about our days. Sure, six days I suppose, but they're six days in God's time, and according to 2 Peter 3:8 "With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." That's God's time for you. When he says "soon", it might mean next year. In thirty years, you might agree with him, but at the time it seems quite lengthy and that is because he lives in the past, present and future all at once. This minute isn't even this minute for him. Kind of mind blowing, right? Anyway, I just wanted to point that out because I think science could have taken as long as God wanted it to take for things to happen.

Back to the original question, the difference between the creation of light and dark versus the sun and the night must be made clear. Oddly enough, I was watching an episode of charlieissocoollike, a popular youtuber who I enjoy from time to time. Charlie is actually an atheist (and for those of you who judge, he's a normal and wholesome individual, for lack of a better term). However, he likes doing these short little vlogs about science, where he briefly and simply explains some smaller scientific concepts so they are fun and easy to understand. Perhaps it is childish that I watch them, but I think they're fun and interesting, even though I generally already know the information. This last one was about stars and he mentioned something I hadn't really thought much about, even though I had heard of it. He dipped into the surface of the fact that we are technically made out of stars, just like everything else on the planet.

If God made the light, and we are made from stars, who is to say God did not create the stars first or something like them, and then when they "died", they became the planet, which is where we could have been truly made from the dust? No human in the days of Moses would understand that we were particles from a ball of gas like the sun, but now we do know that information, and we should also be intelligent enough to interpret the words send in the times. It says he made the light, so perhaps he made the stars. After that, he formed the earth and the waters - everything but the living creatures. So after the light is spread out among other stars and celestial things, we have the dust, and rocks of the earth. This is when we joined our solar system as a planet rotating around the sun, creating our four seasons etc. So now we are a blank planet made from a star, rotating around a star, and with a moon.

Wonderfully enough, there is no woeful tale in Genesis about how creation had to survive in the darkness or anything stupid. Instead, a very scientific and straightforward approach is taken, and it says that next came all of the plants, and then all of the animals. If God created man from the dust of the earth, then we are still made of the same star material which we had before. He may have then just created all life from the dust. We were just made special, and after all of the other animals. Because we were some of the latest creatures to have "evolved" into actual homo-sapiens as opposed to older humanoids, I think its quite possible that Adam and Eve were just the first of our real race, or of one of the much closer races. It is possible that older humans were just not capable of possessing a human soul, or the Holy Spirit and so they could not comprehend enough of God to be considered in his image. We do know that Adam and Eve were not the only people on the planet after all, so what exactly made them so special? The only thing I can think of is that although they may have been the first homo-sapiens or something of the like, they were not the only human-type creatures around.

Of course, this entire blog is speculation, but hopefully it brought you some interesting thoughts and answered a few questions. That's my analysis of Genesis versus Science because I usually find that God and Science fit together nicely. He did create it after all. We just have to figure it out.

Here is the link to Charlie's vlog if you would like to see it. Its about five minutes long, and quite enjoyable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pag1NdPKcYM