Hidden motives...

Hidden motives. Do each of us have motives that even we aren’t completely aware of and don’t grasp? Does our ‘base nature’ have it’s own agenda, and does it work underneath of our conscious thoughts? What would make up our base nature? Selfishness? Dominance? Survival? Pride? If these are some of the traits of this base nature….just how ugly is it? Yikes! Do we have a monster within? Is our job here on planet earth to attempt to contain it? Surely we fight against it each day. Can we ever win, or is this base nature just a sparring partner…one through which we can exercise our conscious will and possibly become stronger? Does this base nature ever die while we are in this body? Is this base nature integral with the body and are we the soul that cohabitates with it? What do you think the ultimate purpose of such a plan might be?

The slings and the arrows...

Well, it’s another day in this fantastic universe and it’s almost time to head out the door to work. Soon, the challenges will begin! Am I up to it? I just never know. Some days I seem like Superman, and the slings and the arrows just bounce off. Other days, they make it through and find their mark and leave wounds. Sometimes the pain of those wounds cause me to throw an arrow or two. It’s the arrows that I throw that seem to hurt me more, though.

It's all good?

In our day and age, you hear people say “it’s all good”. But it’s not all good. Hate isn’t good. Murder isn’t good. Suicide isn’t good. Incest isn’t good. Heroin addiction isn’t good. Car accidents aren’t good. There are too many things to list that aren’t good. So, in that, we have determined that everything that happens to us, or around us…isn’t necessarily good.

Sometimes how we handle the things that happen to us or around us isn’t good either. We can become bitter, we can seek vengeance, we can hate, we can become apathetic, we can lose hope, we can lose faith, etc. There are too many things to list here as well.

So, how are we to view and understand life?

On the one hand, we aren’t in complete control of our destiny. Someone could crash into our car and it be totally their fault. We could end up maimed for life, and be totally innocent. Or, we could be born into a family that has lousy genes…and suffer with a disease that we had absolutely no choice about. We could be born handicapped, etc. Again the list could go on and on.

Though we don’t have complete control over what we go through in life, we do have choices in how we respond to our experiences. As noted above, we can do so negatively…by becoming bitter, etc. Or, we can do our best to choose a positive perspective. What a challenge!

We can speculate about things until the cows come home. For instance, we could say that by being maimed in a car accident that left us paralyzed, we were given an opportunity to trust God more…since we could no longer care for ourselves. After all, God is in the business of shaping souls…and what in the world do we know about that? Maybe in heaven we will find we made great progress in some soul developmental department because of that challenge here? Maybe those people that suffer the most here, and do so gracefully, will be higher up the ladder in heaven? That makes some sense to me. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily make it true….or false.

Something else that makes sense is that in this world, love feels better than hate and joy feels better than bitterness. So, from a logical perspective, choosing a positive attitude makes better sense for our own well being. Bitterness is ugly and hurts the person that is bitter. Hate does the same thing. Who wants that? That’s like punishing ourselves. We may already feel like we are being punished, why take over the job?

Hopefully, though, we don’t feel like we are being punished because I really don’t think that’s it. Though life is not ‘all good’, it can be an exciting and challenging adventure. After all, we get to be awake and alive…in a fantastic universe.

Was Jesus GOD?

  Here is what scripture says:   1Co 8:6 But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord...