God plans to deliver the gift of paradise to us just as he delivered the gift of paradise to Adam and Eve. God will not be less generous with us than he was with them. Adam and Eve were the first beneficiaries of God’s love for us. They were not the last. God’s philanthropy did not end with Adam and Eve; God’s philanthropy began with them. This is good news of great joy - very good news for us indeed.
The Goal of the Serpent
The goal of the serpent at Calvary was to drain the most sacred heart of Jesus of his love for us. Without God's love, humanity cannot survive on its own. Stop God from loving humanity and humanity ceases to exist. Salvation history is the story of the many failed attempts of the serpent to persuade God to stop loving us. What better way for the serpent to accomplish his goal than by inducing us to baptize the Son of God while he was human, alive, tender, vulnerable and our guest upon the earth in a boiling cauldron of suffering. Surely, the serpent reasoned, this grievous insult to the venerable body of the Son of God would turn God against humanity. It would change God from a friend into an enemy of humanity like the serpent. But, surprisingly, it did not. The serpent failed. The Crucifixion is the pinnacle of the serpent's failure. Buckets of blood spilled from the bloody wounds that we opened in his body. But not a drop of his love for us spilled. His most sacred heart stayed filled to the brim with love for us. Despite the evil we did to him, God refused to stop loving us. To the serpent, God said, "No." Stubborn is His love for us. It is intransigent - indestructible. We tortured and killed him. He suffered and died. Yet, he emerged from the dead still alive and still in love with us. That he emerged from the dead still alive is the proof that Jesus is God. Nothing emerges from the black hole of death. He did. That he emerged from the dead still in love with us, however, is the proof of so much more than "mere" omnipotence. This added detail reveals to us that our simple conception of divinity as omnipotence is not quite accurate. Divinity has another aspect besides omnipotence. That love survived the evil we did to him is the proof that divinity is love. Wow! His love for us is crazy! God is head over heels in love with us!
The Big Picture of Christianity
The Problem and solution
God is a philanthropist (Not a Sadist) (Click Here)
Fumbling the Ball (Click Here)
The Illusion Conjured Up by the Serpent
The Illusion (Click Here)
Godlessness (Click Here)
Shatter the Illusion with the Sledgehammer of Truth
The Sledgehammer of Truth (Click Here)
The Sourness of Godlessness
Harsh but effective Medicine (Click Here)
Why does evil exist in the valley of tears? (Click Here)
Speaking to us in Our Native Tongue (Click Here)
Fill the Earth With the Knowledge of God
The Son of God paid us a Visit
The Purpose of the Visit (Click Here)
The Yeast of Divinity (Click Here)
The Bloody Wounds We Opened in the Body of Christ ARE THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE CRUCIFIXION AND THE RESURRECTION
More and Better Theology (Click Here)
Ending the Confusion (Click Here)
The Telescope (Click Here)
Different Stories Unfolded on the Different Layers of Reality (Click Here)
The Mouth of the Word of God is His Bloody Wounds (Click Here)
Why did God give us two hands? (Click Here)
A One Gallon Tank Cannot Handle Two Gallons of Information (Click Here)
Why Body and Blood? Why not Neck and Nose? (Click Here)
The Mighty God who Defeated the Egyptians versus the "Puny" God whom the Romans Defeated (Click Here)
Articulating a High Fidelity Message (Click Here)
Our Failure to Piss Him Off (Click Here)
The Mission The Father Gave the Son was to Transport Technology from Heaven to Earth and to Demonstrate that the Technology Works by Using It
The Technology Jesus Transported and Demonstrated (Click Here)
The Sweetness of Paradise
He kept not a penny for Himself (Click Here)
What did Jesus Prove? (Click Here)
God Thought it so Important to Persuade us that God Loves us that God made a Great Investment in the Proof (Click Here)
The Dial that Controls his Love for us (Click Here)
Indestructibility (Click Here)
The Treasure of Christianity in Twenty-Three (23) Words (Click Here)
The Freight Train (Click Here)
God's Declaration of Independence (Click Here)
What type of literature is the word of God? (Click Here)
The Escape from Godlessness to Paradise
The Escape Route (Click Here)
The Appeal is to our Rationality (Click Here)
The Holy Places that Define the Escape Route
Prayer
The Mass
Confession
Eucharistic Adoration
Baptism
Confirmation
The Other Sacraments
The Role of the Church in the Escape
The Tour Guide (Click Here)
Safari (Click Here)
With What do you Bait the Hook to Fish for the Children of Adam and Eve (Click here)
The Ban on Women in the Workplace (Click Here)
Instant Coffee (Click Here)
Sin
Shifting the Paradigm from Ptolemy to Copernicus (Click Here)
Suffering
The New Evangelization
The King Who Loves Us
Jesus is our king. His palace is the Mass. His throne is the most Holy Eucharist. His kingdom is at hand. He is not the typical king and his kingdom is not the typical kingdom. He broke the mold for kingship. He is not the king who rules us. He is the king who loves us. In place of rules, regulations, red tape and rigmarole, the means by which he governs us is love. In the kingdom of the king who loves us, the citizens govern themselves. We desire to please him. We trip all over ourselves in our eagerness to please him. Wow! Where do I sign up? How do I enlist? How do I join the kingdom of the King who loves sinners like me
?
Love is the ticket that gains you admittance to paradise. It is the only ticket. The mark of holiness is love . Love is the only characteristic that makes you recognizable to God. Prophesying in God's name doesn't do it. Driving out demons in God's name doesn't do it. Doing mighty deeds in God's name doesn't do it. Only love .
When the gift of paradise is delivered to us, will we keep it? Or will we let it slip through our fingers as it slipped through the fingers of Adam and Eve. God does not want us, the children of Adam and Eve, to repeat our parent's mistake (original sin). God, therefore, devised a plan to prevent the repetition of Adam and Eve's mistake. God tinkered with his gift-giving schedule. God inserted a delay between the delivery of the gift of life and the delivery of the gift of paradise. Adam and Eve received both gifts simultaneously. The children of Adam and Eve do not. During the delay, we get to taste the sourness of godlessness for ourselves. As we pass through the valley of tears, monsters of adversity try to crush us under their weight. They teach us that the valley of tears sucks. We learn that it sucks first-hand through our own experience. The illusion conjured up by the serpent that sugarcoats the sourness of godlessness is shattered. We realize that we do not become gods in godlessness. Falsehood no longer fouls our engine of rationality. Fueled by the fuel of truth, our engine of rationality steers our free will in the right direction. The truth sets us free. The likelihood that we will repeat the mistake of Adam and Eve (original sin) and let the gift of paradise slip through our fingers is reduced to near zero. The prodigal son will never go back to the pig sty after having experienced it. Neither will we. When God delivers to us the gift of paradise, we will keep it. The alternative, the valley of tears, is just too horrible. Our passage through the valley of tears is a dose of harsh but effective medicine. It vaccinates us against abdicating paradise after the gift of paradise is given to us . In possession of the truth about the sourness of godlessness, the serpent is powerless to hijack our free will with an attractive illusion. The truth defangs the serpent - it declaws the cat - it disarms our enemy. The serpent can no longer fuel our engine of rationality with the illusion that we can become gods in godlessness. The serpent cannot deify us; only God can.
"If a person bears great love in himself, this love gives him wings, as it were, and he can face all life’s troubles more easily because he carries in himself this great light; this is faith: being loved by God and letting oneself be loved by God in Jesus Christ. Letting oneself be loved in this way is the light that helps us to bear our daily burden."
The Love Note and its Guarantee of Genuineness
At Bethlehem, God delivered to us a love note. At Calvary, the proof that the love note was genuine was put into our hands. If the love note were counterfeit, his love for us would have faded as we tortured him and died when we killed him. But it did not. it survived. Its survival is the proof that the love note is genuine. Of all the gods that humanity has worshiped, which God sends his creatures a love note? What God sends his creatures a guarantee of it genuineness as well. Our God did. Wow!
The Tug of the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is tugging at our souls. The curious are following the tug back to its source. Along the way, the curious are exploring the mystery, majesty and magnificence of God. The question, therefore, is, 'How do we transform the indifferent and the hostile into the curious?'
The Rule of Survival
Our survival is governed solely by a simple but fundamental principle. Humanity in every place and in every age and of every religion is subject to its command. No exceptions. Only by including God in our lives do we live and only by excluding God from our lives do we die. To include God in our lives in the hereafter, we must include God in our lives now! By excluding God from our lives now, we exclude God from our lives in the hereafter. Take an interest in God and God will take an interest in you. Include God in your life and God will include you in theirs. Ignore your God and your God will ignore you. Absent yourselves from the holy places and the holy places will absent themselves from you.
