Realizations

Philosophy in the Middle of the Desert

From where does my hope, trust, and peace come from? October 24, 2025

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 10:26 am
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FROM WHERE DOES MY HOPE, TRUST, AND PEACE COME FROM?

  1. Atonement: covering whatever outstanding shortcomings I have, to protect me from whatever unknowns to come in this life or the next.
  2. Repentance: Doing what God created us to do, feeling personal fulfillment and His pleasure in that. God ultimately wants us to live according to our design and help Creation meet its design. When we do that to the best of our ability we feel fulfilled and connected to God (knowing we’re doing what God created us to do, which pleases Him), which gives us confidence in ourselves and status before God. Living in obedience has inevitable mistakes and shortcomings which requires repentance, so true obedience and being more and more aligned to God’s design is a life of constant, humble repentance. 
  3. Relationship: Feeling God’s smiling face of love toward me, and feeling that love back for Him which comes with a desire to do His will, which is Repentance. 
  4. Revelation: Trust in objective things outside of my own conception. Whatever assurance can come from the more mysterious, debatable things of my own experience of God (Relationship), my own deeds (doing what seems right in my own eyes), the assurance that comes from things outside of myself that are a more objective truth is the greatest assurance. The Bible (Divine Revelation) which records experiences that reflect the nature of God from thousands of people for over a thousand years is something I can put my trust in that isn’t just my own making or isolated experience. And the ultimate assurance of Atonement comes almost exclusively from Divine Revelation. And wherever the Bible is debatable, nature (Natural Revelation) is the least debatable thing in the universe. When I study nature, my own experiences in life, and the timeline of history, in spite of whatever debatable interpretations men have of the Bible, I see a God who is good, who desires us to be here (loves us), created us for a purpose, and has some good plan for our individual lives and the life of Earth as a whole. The testimonies of people who have encountered God in Heaven through Near Death Experiences also confirm this.

AS IN THIS LIFE, SO IN THE NEXT. 

Judged in the next life for how I lived my earthly life. The judgement I already experience in this life is a reflection of the same Judge and judgement I will experience in the next life once my whole life can be judged as a whole. 

  • All men are without excuse because all men have REVELATION to respond to with how they live their lives. 
  • Revelation naturally leads someone down a path of understanding and pursuing God in a RELATIONSHIP, knowing His goodness, His will, and feeling His blessings and love for them. 
  • Relationship leads to loving God with all your heart, which leads to you loving yourself and your neighbor – which is all God’s creation around you, which is the very thing He designed you to take care of. Obedience to Revelation that is empowered by Relationship will always have its mistakes, and so real, lifelong obedience is being in a state of constant humble alignment to God’s design, which is REPENTANCE.
  • Whatever hope, trust, and peace can (and should) come by Revelation or Relationship or Repentance alone, we are still prone to worry about being safe in spite of our mistakes and shortcomings before a perfect, infinite, invisible Judge in this life and the unknown life to come. The ATONEMENT of the Jews (which culminated in the atonement of Christ) is the gift given by God to humanity to assure them of their protection, safety, love, and blessings in this life and the next life in spite of all the unknowns. 

– All of this is the Covenant God gave to humans, into which all men can enter into.

 

What does it really mean to love YHWH with all your heart?  January 5, 2023

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality,Psychology,Science/Atheism/Evolution/Creationism — milesprowers @ 8:23 am
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[Written on David Day 2023, 1/4/23]

First of all, I don’t know that it ever just says “heart” except in conjunction with “mind” and “soul” — and Jesus adds “strength” (as One who only has authority to add something to the greatest commandment), so perhaps really it’s just loving YHWH with ALL of your whole BEING or EXISTENCE. Which is interesting since the very word YHWH means existence — the eternally existent being. 

To understand what YHWH really wanted when He commanded to love Him with all our being is to understand who YHWH is in the first place. For how can we love someone we don’t know or even know about? 

Before there was the Hebrew language with its Hebrew word for existence by which God could give the Hebrews a name for Himself —YHWH— He was just the eternally existent one, and existence itself. The existence of everything that has been or could be, within the entire universe or without the entire universe. 

But the greatest command “to love YHWH” was given by God to Earthlings upon the Earth with an Earthly perspective and an Earthly relationship to Him. So regardless of anything God is or has been through the entire universe in all of existence, who God is (as much as it is relevant to us) is almost exclusively as He pertains to the Earth and who He is in relation to the Earth, from an Earthly perspective. Thus to obey this command to love YHWH is to obey it as an Earthling would, as it pertains to the relationship between God and Earthlings.  (And of the Earthlings, God revealed himself most explicitly to the Hebrews in a Hebrew way using Hebrew language (and surely somehow in accordance with Hebrew culture), so that they could truly know and love Him, in a way that was most natural for them.) 

What is our knowledge and experience of God from an Earthling perspective? He is the Creator of the Earth. We don’t really know anything else about Him except what has been revealed to humans from His Divine Revelation, and that being specifically as He relates to the Earth and its creatures (which He created). 

So YHWH is really a Hebrew name given to the supernatural Deity who created Earth. In His most basic characteristic as it pertains to Earthlings, He is simply the Creator of Earth — all of creation with all its creatures (which includes us). 

So if the most basic characteristic of YHWH is that He is the Creator of all Earthly creation and creatures, then to love YHWH is to love the Creator of Earth. 

What is it to love the Creator of Earth? Somehow loving a cosmic force we can’t see or experience in daily reality? We can really only love Him as much as we can know Him, which is only as much as we can experience Him in our Earthly reality. 

So we love Him for what He is and was before any Divine Revelation was given — The Creator — the certain creative force of Earth and all the universe. We love God because we experience His creation, and to the degree that we love creation for all the ways it makes us feel pleasure, so we love the source of creation which is the source of our pleasure. We are creatures designed to feel pleasure from creation into which we were created and which we were created for. Our response to feeling pleasure is to love the thing which created our pleasure. So we love sunshine, good food, coffee, sex, funny animals, wonder-inspiring imagination, and profound philosophies. They gives us pleasure and so we call them good and we love them. Naturally we wonder where those things came from in the first place, and our love for those things extends to the creator of those things, who is surely as good as the good creation He chose to make which gives us pleasure. 

We ourselves are part of that good creation (which we have called “good” because it gives us pleasure) so likewise we are good because we are pleasure-producing creations. Because it is our very bodies, hearts, and minds which are the actual things producing the hormones which give us pleasure (not the things in creation themselves). So we feel the love of our Creator for us because our bodies produce pleasure hormones, and He created us and our pleasure-producing functions, and so we love Him for it being the ultimate source of our pleasure. Our love bypasses creation to the Creator of creation who created our bodies which feel pleasure and who also created the creation which interacts with our experience to release the pleasure.

It’s hard to love the Creator for who He is in concept alone. It is when the concepts of His infinite power, knowledge, presence, and love are displayed for us experientially through His interactions with our Earthly reality that we come into awe, wonder, marvel, and love. It’s our awe of creation that extends to having awe for the Creator of creation. It’s the love we feel for creation that extends to having love for the Creator of that creation. We are in awe of the Creator’s infinite power, knowledge, presence, and love from what we see in our natural Earthly experience, and also this is magnified through Divine Revelation. 

Whatever love we can have for the Creator from our natural experience alone, it is magnified by Divine Revelation which clearly communicates how the Creator interacts on a supernatural level with His Earthly creation— through providential actions, prophetic words, supernatural dreams and visions, and miracles.  

Whatever nature of the Creator we can ascertain through natural experience and logic, it is through the written record of the Bible that we know more clearly the nature of the Creator through the recorded events and words attributed to Him. 

We read about God’s creation of the world, how He interacts with His Earthling creatures, how He expressly says how much He loves us all and then proves it by His supernatural actions. Now we have glasses by which we can read nature to clearly see what were previously only assumptions. We knew God loved us from the pleasure He created us to experience, but now with Divine Revelation we have Him actually telling us He loves us and showing us in actual history. 

So to love YHWH with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength is to love the Creator of Earth with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. 

What is the Creator’s desire, as it pertains to our Earthly world and us as His Earthlings He created? Obviously His greatest desire, as it pertains to us, is for us to be what He created us for. So to show love to our Creator, we be what He created us to be. 

Therefore, to love YHWH with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength is simply to BE what He created us to be with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. 

God is not some kind of mythological deity sitting on some magical golden throne somewhere up there in space or another dimension. He existed long before any creatures or cultures or languages or religions or rituals. And so His desire for us loving Him isn’t us following some cosmic rule book or magic rituals or religion to please Him. Before He gave Moses the Law, and before He gave him the Hebrew name YHWH, He was what He always had been for Earth’s existence: the Creator of Earth. So the truest way to love the Creator of Earth is to be in alignment with what He created you to be, which is also to be in alignment with all His creation. 

This is Shalom. ALL of creation with all its creatures interacting in harmony. Human beings being what they were each individually created to be by their Creator with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. Loving all creation around them (which they were designed to do) with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength — which is inadvertently loving the Creator who made and loves that creation. And then also our love for creation extending to the source of creation, which is its Creator, to love Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.  

There’s no way around it. Loving YHWH with ALL your heart, mind, soul, and strength is an interdependent love fully involving the love of Creator, creature, and creation with all being (heart, mind, soul, and strength). 

 

The Overflowing Garden of Eden/Shalom November 11, 2022

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 12:50 pm
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[Written on 11-11-22]

The eyes of the LORD go to and fro throughout the whole Earth looking for one whose heart is a tender soil into which He can sow the words of Eternal Life, which is the seed of Agape. If the words sown resonate and are met with a curiosity and openness, the seed takes root, and the residency of God’s Spirit and His Eternal Life and Agape starts to grow inside the person alongside their growing belief, though it starts out just as small as a mustard seed (the smallest of all seeds). As the believer starts to see the world through the Truth, the Spirit confirms his faith and grows it more and more, until finally it becomes a tree so deeply rooted that when the floods come it won’t wash it away, and so large even the birds of the air can rest on its branches. The more the believer abides in the Agape of God, the more he experiences the life of God, aka Eternal Life, aka God’s own Spirit, making him so deeply rooted he is unshakeable and his actions are the same actions that God’s Spirit and Life (which is now coming out of the believer) would do. 

The Agape seed grows an Agape tree which, like a wellspring of living waters welling up into Eternal Life, eventually overflows and bears Agape fruit. The Agape fruit itself has many more Agape seeds within it, which, when consumed and sown into new tender hearts/soils, have the potential of planting new Agape seeds, growing new Agape trees, and bearing new Agape fruit, just as the living waters well up and spill over, and the mustard seed spreads through the garden like a weed, and the yeast spreads through the dough. After all, the world will know we are His disciples by our Agape for one another. 

But the Creator in His love, desires His creation to be the maximum He created it to be, and so, like any gardner, He prunes the branches (He disciplines those whom He loves) so they bear more fruit. And so we will be grown to our maximum design, bearing a hundredfold of fruit, and then we shall all be one: others having Eternal Life through abiding in our Agape, we who have Eternal Life through abiding in Jesus’s Agape, just as Jesus had Eternal Life given to Him from God through abiding in God’s Agape (John 5:26: “For as the Father has life in Himself, so also He has granted the Son to have life in Himself”).

And so God’s Spirit will overflow and take root in more and more people’s hearts, growing to bear more and more fruit, until finally He (His Spirit with its Agape and Eternal Life) will reside in the whole Earth in our hearts. Then the world will be as He created it to be: Shalom.

 

God is a greater reward than what would come from anything else we could pursue October 26, 2022

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality,Psychology — milesprowers @ 9:52 pm
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[Written 102622]

Why do you keep saying you want to be with Me? Stop telling Me that and just be with me. I’m always just one thought away. 

If you really want to be with me so bad, then why aren’t you?  Because of all the stuff you have to do? So then, all those things you need to do are what you REALLY want, and then you also want to be with Me, but just when it’s convenient and fills in the cracks in your schedule, as the leftovers. 

You want to be with Me, but what you really want are the things that doing the things you’re doing will get you: the reward of all these things you’re doing. But don’t you think that I’m a greater reward than whatever reward you’ll ever get from those things? 

What are you really doing these things for? 

Significance?  What could be more significant than being known intimately by the Creator of the world? Certainly not being best friends with the President or Paul McCartney or Tim Keller or Tony Robbins or whoever. 

Love and connection? What human being could ever love you unconditionally? And yet I love you unconditionally, because I know and understand why you’ve done everything you’ve ever done, and see your shortcomings based on your limited knowledge and strength and love you for who you are, in spite of all your shortcomings. No one else could ever love you that much, because no one could ever know why you do what you do like I do. And further more I’m the one that created you! So I love you greater than a parent loves their child, which is the strongest natural love on the planet. A parent doesn’t design and plan the DNA of their child, and yet I do. I love you more than any conditional lover or any passive child-bearer. 

Certainty? All resources of money, jobs, assets, real estate, and possessions can all be taken from you in a moment in this life by conscious and unconscious acts of nature, and even your very life with all its resources. You need a certainty that can take care of all your needs by manifesting resources from nothing, inspiring the hearts and minds of humans to give you the things you need, and a certainty of security and safety for your very soul when your Earthly life is through and you can’t touch any resources and are completely at the mercy of the spiritual realm… this is the kind of certainty only I can give you, and no other can. 

Variety? Who inspired the men of history with whatever strokes of genius, creativity, and artistry they manifested? They were seeking My mind for ideas to be given to them from the infinite ether of new possibilities beyond their own normal scope of thought. The world has never even seen a fraction of a percent of all the ideas in My mind, that is infinitely advanced beyond whatever greatest ideas have come through man so far. The greatest things on Earth, the greatest music, stories, films, foods, adventures — the highest possible variety that this Earth can offer — all came from My mind and I have even greater ideas than all of that. I already know what it will look like and I can tell you the best is surely to come. Pursue Me and My mind, which is THE SOURCE of variety, and all the best ideas and adventures will be given to you. For what adventure could be greater than one that is the most fulfilling for how you were designed, and only I know how you were designed and what circumstances in life will bring out the best in you, and also only I know what mission in life will make you feel the best, be the most fulfilling, and the most impactful, as tailored to your design and plan. 

 

Our Existence Proves God Loves Us October 22, 2022

Filed under: Uncategorized — milesprowers @ 11:50 am
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[Written on 102322]

People can say that certain things are not planned by God, such as extreme evil and violence in the world, and that’s reasonable since it seems inconsistent with God’s nature, desire for the world, and plan. 

But at least one thing is impossible to say that God wasn’t behind it, and that’s the creation of the universe. It’s one thing that clearly is impossible to have made itself or come about naturally, and so God HAD to have done it. God doesn’t need anything, is completely content in Himself, and yet He made the universe. He didn’t have to, but He chose to, because obviously it was something He desired to do that brought Him pleasure. And so He is pleased by the universe, because it exists and must have been chosen to be made because it brought Him pleasure. He desired it, and since it’s still here He STILL desires it, because it brings Him pleasure and delight, and His desire for it is also love for it. And so because the universe is here, it proves he loves the universe.

Likewise, YOU being part of His Creation were made by Him, though He didn’t have to, but He chose to, because YOU bring Him pleasure too! He had a desire to make the universe, and then desired to keep building on that universe until He used it to make you. He wants you here, has desire for you to be here, because you’re here. If he didn’t want you here then He wouldn’t have chosen for you to be here. And that desire for your existence is also His delight, which is also love.

And especially as intricate as human beings are, and seemingly impossible to have evolved by random chance, perhaps more than any other creature, humans have clearly come into existence because God chose for them to be here. He laboriously worked to bring them here, spent all that design and work to bring them here because He REALLY wanted them to be here, had a STRONG desire for their existence, because they bring Him GREAT delight— He LOVES them: the idea of them, the design of them, the experience of them, the relationship with them. And YOU are one of them! So by you — the most elaborate piece of all Creation — simply being here (as impossible as it seems) it proves how much God wants you here, and obviously delights in you and loves you. 

 

The Journey To Happiness September 29, 2022

Filed under: Psychology — milesprowers @ 1:05 am
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[Written on 92822]

The journey to living in happiness is many steps, but the good thing is that once you’re there, it’s many steps away from happiness. When you’ve finally entered your destination of happiness, then from there the journey to anger is many steps. And if you take a step away from happiness into the direction of anger or sadness it’s only one step back. If you take three steps away from happiness, then it’s only three steps back to it. In this way, you can be living in anger or sadness, and you may get a sudden, surprise surge of happiness and feel great, but you’re still living in anger or sadness, and soon you’re back to anger or sadness. But if you take the necessary steps, sometimes a long, arduous journey required to reach a state or life of happiness, then you may have sudden, surprise surges of sadness or anger, but it’s just one step back to happiness. Once you’re there, then it would be a long, arduous journey back to living in anger or sadness, and at that point, that is a journey TOO long and TOO arduous. 

The human brain and mind and heart are malleable, one step at a time being conditioned in one direction or the other. The more conscious choices we make and steps we take toward a desired state of being the harder it is to move away from it. The neural pathways in the brain are constantly being paved to make what we feel more of what we feel. If the neural pathways to happiness are constantly a rough, gravel or dirt road, then it’s more difficult to experience those feelings, but the more we make choices that pave that rough gravel road, eventually it becomes a fast highway, where happiness is our default mode of feeling, coming to us without trying.  It’s all in how we condition our minds and hearts and brains to interpret the data around us to have a certain meaning: a meaning of happiness or a meaning of sadness, anger, fear, etc. 

 

The Peculiar Tree September 21, 2022

Filed under: Uncategorized — milesprowers @ 1:00 am

[Written on 91922]

In the forest were many trees, constantly in the process of evolution: growing, procreating, mutating, adapting, diversifying with small, gradual changes over time in a way that the forest could healthily feed and grow and cultivate. 

But one day in the midst of the young trees, there was a tree that was extremely different than the others, a mutant that was far beyond normal mutation and evolution. As the tree entered its adolescence its mutation became more pronounced so that it became an oddity that started attracted curiosity and attention from the rest of the forest. As creatures and plants were attracted to the adolescent tree it benefited from the extra nutrients that came with the other life that was attracted to it, getting extra water, nutrients, warmth, care, help and love. With the extra life that was absorbed from life being attracted to this spectacle in the forest, the adolescent tree had an abnormal growth spurt and within only 2 years it became one of the biggest trees in the forest. Now it was even more of a spectacle, an oddity, and an attraction. The rest of the forest was mesmerized by it and its life was attracted to the young, huge tree giving it even more life and growth.

But the problem is that the tree, while growing higher and higher so that it resembled a mature, adult tree above ground, was actually still just an adolescent tree on the inside, and didn’t have a firm, solid core inside that only comes from years of seasons of sap gradually growing the bark season after season, cycle after cycle, year after year. What’s more, is this gigantic tree, while one of the biggest in the forest and getting so much life from the forest, was actually struggling to stand up, for its roots hadn’t had time to grow down in the same proportion that it was shooting up. Like the bark and core of the tree, this adult looking tree was being supported by adolescent roots. 

What’s worse than all that, is that the forest which was giving so much life to the peculiar tree inadvertently, now that it appeared to be huge, and healthy, and abundant and rich from its outward appearance, the forest that was so mesmerized by this spectacle now was going to it not just to admire it and give it nurturing, but now to syphon off bits of its life, as they saw it as a great source of life. And after all, the one thing all life is designed to be attracted to more than anything else is the increase of life: survival and abundance. 

Within two years of becoming one of the biggest trees in the forest, the peculiar, adolescent tree had not become the BIGGEST tree in the forest, but ironically it was now struggling to survive and showing signs of dying, not just plateau, or being stunted, but it was actually decaying from the inside out. The outside which looked so full of life, was now being seen for what it actually was on the inside all along, as the decay from the inside spread to the outer bark causing the bark to decay and the sickness inside split open the weak skin to expose itself. The forest who had been so attracted to the oddity and then the abundance of the peculiar tree now was terrified of it like a plague, fearing its contagion and left it, except for those who saw the signs of its decay and imminent demise and greedily wanted to get whatever abundant life it still had to give them before it was completely dead and gone. 

Now with the decay combining with the already weak roots, without enough time to grow strong enough to hold the tree up, and with the support of the forest abandoning what life was left of the peculiar tree, it couldn’t hold itself up and it fell.  It fell hard and fast, fell just as abnormally fast as it grew up. And the crash of it resounded through the entire forest, and the forest wept for the tree, and thought of it ever after, its peculiar death making the memory of the tree even that much more an oddity, a spectacle, and a peculiarity. 

And so they say: the bigger they are, the harder they fall, and also the least resistance to falling they have. Let us neither give too much popularity to the peculiar trees (lest they grow too fast for their own lives to catch up), nor greedily assume and prey upon the appearance of their abundance, neither abandon them when the manifestation of their abnormality catches up with them in disease, nor aspire to be those peculiar trees ourselves, which grew faster than they were supposed to, against the normal design of life and growth, and so became a tragic memory of how not to be.

*This is based on the tragic career of Nirvana

 

“Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen: Following The Life of David December 9, 2019

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 1:16 am
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If all the known verses of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” were to continue the story of King David as overtly as the first verse, the song could be interpreted as something like the following verses. Compare them with the original lyrics I put at the bottom of this post. Each verse gets closer inside the life of David as it goes from third person to second person to first person narrative.

VERSE 1: King David played his lyre and composed music for the LORD in a way that pleased Him so greatly that, in a mysterious way, his angelic-sounding music moved the supernatural realm and moved God to suppress demons. David tapped into the beautiful, angelic patterns God created within music theory of the fourth, the fifth, and the beauties of major and minor, dark and light, reminiscent of the joyous and sad seasons in life, but God is glorified and can be worshiped in it all (which foreshadows the ups and downs of his life explained in the coming verses). This mysterious, worshipful experience of music transcends David into the spirit realm to connect with God, leaving him in a state of baffled euphoria in His presence.

VERSE 2: But when God gave him rest on all sides, he started to become complacent and the impenetrable faith of his youth developed holes and he became more casual about his relationship with God and keeping His Law and became prideful, which always comes before a fall. In this state of disconnect from God he wasn’t strong enough to withstand the temptation of moonlight lust on his rooftop which resulted in adultery with Bathsheba,  David’s “great sin.” Because of this great evil, God cursed David so that his royal throne was broken, he lost his power and had to flee for his life from his son Absalom, all for a lustful night of euphoric indulgence. He traded the euphoric “Hallelujah” of worshiping God for a euphoric “Hallelujah” of selfish, carnal indulgence.

VERSE 3: When confronted about it by his first wife Michal, David recounts how their childless marriage had been threatened from the beginning and their love quickly turned cold and distant, and certainly wasn’t any warmer now that they were finally back together in safety, albeit through David’s force. This coldness and lack of love incited David’s lustful eyes to look for something more. And whether leading the triumphant troops home in a victory march under the royal banner of Saul’s house on the marble arch or leading the ark of the covenant triumphantly back home under the scathing eyes of Michal, Saul’s daughter, the joy of those victories was always tainted by the lingering curse of the royal family of Saul overlooking and antagonizing all that David did. Instead of David’s home life being as joyous as his victories, it was cold and broken and marked by the pain of obedience to God to do the right thing toward Saul’s family.

VERSE 4: David is broken in repentance and sings to God in Psalm 51 begging Him to not take away His holy spirit from him and restore their relationship to the way it used to be when God’s spirit was moving in him, showing him what to do, and God was with him in everything he did, glorifying Himself through David.

VERSE 5: It’s ironic that the third of the Ten Commandments is to not take the name of the Lord in vain, but it’s a name that isn’t even spoken and modern Jews don’t even know how to pronounce it; perhaps it was so even in David’s time, and they didn’t know exactly what God’s name was that was revealed to Moses.  With David’s pride resulting in his backsliding, he became lax concerning the Law of God (as evidenced in the mishandling of the ark) and perhaps this included the third of the Ten Commandments, to the point that the holiness of God’s name was forgotten, maybe even influenced by the rough-around-the-edges military companions he surrounded himself with (Joab seems to loosely use the LORD’s name in vain in 2 Sam. 19:7), which certainly wasn’t helped by the doubts and disconnect he felt from God in fleeing for his life — unlike his previous fleeing from Saul, this time fleeing because of his great sins. But even in David’s sins, he still had a core, loving relationship and understanding of God’s grace and heart that overshadowed the Law and his sins (as mentioned in Psalm 51). Saul was instantly removed from being king for not following a specific military command of God, while David did far graver sins and God instantly forgave him (notwithstanding consequences) and He continued orchestrating things to establish David’s legacy for centuries, because David was after God’s heart. It’s this understanding of the heart of God and the Law that allowed David to see the bigger picture and get away with breaking other holy laws like lying to eat the holy, consecrated bread. He understood that God wanted more than just specific rules followed, God wants to be in everything we do and are. More than revering specific laws or a specific name for God as holy, God’s blazing light is in every single word, the holy and the broken words, indeed He is not just in the holy sacrifices and rituals, but in everything in life, the happy and sad things. (“For you do not desire sacrifice or I would give it… My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit,” Ps. 51) “I broke a rule, so what? God is bigger than the rules, he wants our hearts.”

VERSE 6: Even after David’s repentance, God fulfills His prophecy by Nathan the prophet of “the sword never departing from David’s house” when Absalom rises against him. David doubts God’s promises to him and even if God is with him or there at all. He laments that all he’s known from his loved ones (family, friends, in-laws, children) is strife and having to watch his back and literally be prepared to defend his life from someone who suddenly rises up against him. But even in the midst of his life’s tragedies, he was still singing his psalms to the Lord, finding a way to praise Him for His providence and trusting Him to fulfill His promises. Albeit, his Hallelujahs are sung from a sorrowful state of humble, faithful obedience, rather than from joyful exultation, in the midst of external pain and somber repentance.

VERSE 7: Yet at the end of his life, a life of unimaginable conflict, he’s able to say, “As the Lord lives, who has redeemed my life from all distress (1 Kings 1:29)” and in his final words he recounts, “The Spirit of the Lord spoke through me; His word was on my tongue (2 Samuel 23:2).” He dies without feeling regrets, thankful to God for forgiving him of his sins in His grace and for the promise He upheld to establish his throne forever. “Is not my house firm before God? He has made an eternal covenant with me, set forth in detail and secured. Will he not bring to fruition all my salvation and my every desire? (2 Sam. 23:5)”  Again, David is seeing the bigger picture: God is the Lord of Song, creator and sustainer of all music, and so David finally finds himself back in the spiritual state of Verse 1 and uses God’s creation to connect with Him, moving in Him, and once again “Hallelujah” being in every breath he draws. 

 

ORIGINAL LYRICS OF “HALLELUJAH” BY LEONARD COHEN:

[Verse 1]
Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing “Hallelujah”
[Chorus]
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

[Verse 2]
Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
[Chorus] Hallelujah, Hallelujah

[Verse 3]
Baby I’ve been here beforeI know this room, I’ve walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah
[Chorus] Hallelujah, Hallelujah

[Verse 4]
There was a time you let me know
What’s really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
[Chorus] Hallelujah, Hallelujah

[Verse 5]
You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light in every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
[Chorus] Hallelujah, Hallelujah

[Verse 6]
Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
And it’s not a cry that you hear at night
It’s not somebody who’s seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah
[Chorus] Hallelujah, Hallelujah

[Verse 7]
I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
[Chorus] Hallelujah, Hallelujah

 

**Author’s note: I don’t actually think this song is intended to be interpreted as one continuous story about the David narrative (or any other continuous story for that matter), as Leonard Cohen wrote 80 verses for it and whittled it down to the above verses. It’s abstract and he probably just picked the most interesting verses, although I do think that observing the song exclusively from the David context is a very moving perspective and more captivating than the more likely interpretation of a modern relationship struggle that just invokes Biblical metaphors. Regardless of the different interpretations, I’d say this is easily among the top ten most intriguing songs ever written by human beings.

 

The Meaning Of Life April 24, 2019

Filed under: Uncategorized — milesprowers @ 12:00 pm
The Meaning of Life. What is the perfect center of God‘s will for our lives?
Well, what did God create human beings for in the first place? He created human beings and all the animals and the very Earth itself for one specific reason: because he wanted to. Just because he got pleasure from creating people and animals and planets. He created people to be people and animals to be animals. Like any artist, he got a block of marble with which to sculpt the ideal form in his head into a physical form. He is fulfilled as a Creator by simply beholding us as his artistic creation.
He created a perfectly harmonious, utopian ecosystem with all of God’s creation feeling maximum pleasure by doing what it was created to do and simultaneously giving God maximum pleasure by His creation doing what it was created to do. And being consistent with the ideal of perfect creation, He created everything to last forever, to have eternal life.
But these self-conscious, autonomous creatures, human beings – being perfectly created with free will beyond just animalistic instincts – eventually chose to do things inconsistent with God‘s ideal blueprint for His ecosystem. By choosing to go about life away from God’s way mankind distanced itself from its very life source and the very thing which would bring it maximum fulfillment. And so their eternal life was cut off and they eventually died in this original utopia.
But the Creator loved the world that He had created and wanted it to be as perfect as it originally was – an eternally-existing, maximally healthy ecosystem. So He promised mankind that He would renew the corrupted world and start over yet again, but this time He would resurrect mankind in spiritual bodies that wouldn’t be subject to physical death. He promised to give this eternal life to anyone who wants to live forever with Him in His perfected creation, as He originally intended.
God then gave us proof that He would follow through with His promise of eternal life when He became a physical man on Earth (who was known as Jesus of Nazareth), died an undeniable, physical death witnessed by many, and then was resurrected in a spiritual body with the very eternal life He promised.
He displayed this spiritual body and the proof of this resurrected, eternal life to many people in the area where He died (Israel about 2000 years ago). But we today have even greater proof of this promise of eternal life than people did in the first century. We can look back through history and see that there was clearly a supernatural power spreading this proclamation of eternal life throughout the modern world, which only confirmed the reality of this good news. The message started in an overlooked city, from an oppressed people group, conflicted with the ruling Empire’s beliefs, was persecuted by the Emperor himself who was trying to erase it, and still the message passively spread through the entire empire (without the use of authority or force) until, against all odds, the Emperor himself believed it within 250 years of the message’s beginning. There’s no explanation for something like that happening.
And so here we are today, with the hope of our own resurrection and eternal life. But this new eternal life is not dependent on us obeying God‘s ideal blueprint for living, it’s a supernatural, free gift extended to anyone who believes and asks God for it. Now we are truly free to give God maximum pleasure by being the human beings that He created us to be, humans that are as healthy physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually as possible, living as close to His ideal design as possible, pursuing our passions and talents all out, but also without the risk and fear of breaking his rules and thus losing his favor, life, and love.
But God isn’t going to force His generous, sacrificial gift of eternal life on anyone. People that don’t want to be resurrected, don’t want to live forever, don’t want to be as healthy and fulfilled as possible, don’t want to be with their source of eternal life – ie, God – don’t have to be, and God won’t give those people eternal life after they die.
This is the meaning of life, the perfect center of God’s will for our lives: being what God originally created us to be, being as human as possible, being as fulfilled and healthy as possible in every area, and having eternal life. This is what gives God the most glory possible.

​(Written Easter 2019, as inspired by an interview with Rich Mullins)

 

The Greatest Bliss In Life: January 20, 2019

Filed under: Uncategorized — milesprowers @ 2:06 pm

The greatest bliss in life: when the plans of man and the purpose of the LORD intersect. (Prov. 19:21)

Not a single soul on planet earth can tell you what this exactly looks like. You’re the only one who knows yourself well enough to know, and you’re the only one who can perceive and feel what God’s revealing to you personally. Maybe it’s impossible to ever know His specific purpose for your life for sure, but you just have to take a risk and dive head first, 100% into what you believe God’s individual mission is for you.  No one on Earth knows your purpose more than you and God, thus no one on Earth can tell you your purpose except you and God. Not one other single person in all of history has ever had exactly the same purpose as you in the same way as you, because there has never, ever been a person in all of history who is exactly the same as you.