Category: Called To Serve

Don’t Be Lawful Stupid – Wesley’s Rules for Life

May 5, 2024 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 0 Comments

It was Jesus that called upon all Christians to “be innocent as doves and wise as serpents.” Those in games and stories who equate the good guys with being “lawful stupid” don’t really understand good, (and having worked in the gaming industry,) they absolutely don’t understand evil. Equally so many Christians, who have fallen for the heresy of what I call “the Barney Gospel” (the idea that everything is about love and principles and violence is always wrong,) this is totally not Biblical, but the lies are regularly told from pulpits throughout Europe and America. [We will discuss Good and Evil and what I mean by those things in a future article.]

Despite the complete Biblical testimony which is balanced and designed for real life, ideologues from all sides have tried to make the Bible into something it is not. Humans like to follow rules and they want life simple. However, life is not simple, and neither is God. Jesus also said that “laws were made for man, man was not made for the law.” By this he was talking about his disciples being hungry and actually gathering food on the Sabbath when the Holy People said there was to be NO work done. Jesus acknowledged the law but said my disciples are hungry and they need to eat. The rules that the human church had made to interpret what the Bible said as “observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy” were not what God intended. He wanted people to take a break one day a week off from all their work (a radical idea in a world that had no days off except on the New and the Full moon.) God did not want people to go hungry when they were doing God’s work on the Sabbath. As a Pastor I regularly worked on the Sabbath, often more than 8 hours. In fact, some pastors have a problem in their 70-hour work weeks in that they don’t take time off for prayer, rest, and study. Burnout is a regular occurrence.

Many Christians have embraced the “innocent as doves” part but fail to be “wise as serpents.” In fact, some use the “innocent as doves” as an excuse to not have to act because it would stir up controversy. Remember, that “if you cannot say anything nice don’t say anything at all” is not a Christian way of life. It is a coward’s way that advises people to “keep your head down, don’t make waves.” Many call these people “sheeple.”

All over the world people attack the Bible for things either taken out of context or because of what Christians they knew have done to them that have nothing to do with authentic Christianity. They mistakenly use actions of Nominal Christians (people who wear a cross or call themselves Christians but do not know the first thing about being an authentic Christian,) as indicating what real Christians believe. Let me know in the comments if you have encountered this anywhere in your experience.

John Wesley was an Anglican Priest in the 18^th Century whose preaching fathered over 185 denominations from the African Methodist Episcopal to the Nazarene to the Global Methodist. He offered three rules to live a Christian Life – 1^st Do No Harm; 2^nd Do All the Good You Can; and 3^rd Attend to the Ordinances of the Church. Now language was used a bit different in the 18^th Century – the 1700s, even the late 1700s were a long time ago so lets talk about them.

The first two really aren’t very difficult at first glance. At least they aren’t difficult to explain – they require constant vigilance and effort to accomplish.

First, Do No Harm – God made the world and called it good. Then we began mucking it up. People like to blame bad things on God but most bad things can be traced back to people and their actions or inaction. Science is even identifying that cancer, hormonal imbalance, and infertility can often be placed at the door of industrialists in packaging, pharmaceuticals, and food production who use chemical ingredients not found in nature and that have not been fully tested for their effects on humans.

There is more to this rule than simply doing “good deeds” there is also the requirement to stand for what is right. That is what served to build Western Society in the way it grew. Repeatedly, men and women chose to stand for what was right against the general push of society.

As Saint Paul said, “He who knows what is right to do and does not do it, for him it is sin.” That, if we are honest with ourselves, is an indictment against all of us. We have all, at one time or another, remained silent when we should have spoken truth to power, or truth to massed ignorance.

These are not problems faced in most primitive societies. Rather, they seem to be problems that have to do with our ‘modern’ way of life. As corporations take cheaper shortcuts in order to make more money by using chemicals and artificial preservatives to give longer shelf-life to their already overly processed and artificial foods those chemicals, as well as the hormones and drugs they give to food animals, genetic modification of crops, and pesticides that carry through the crops and into our cereal boxes. It is in the ‘modern’ world that we find a proliferation of cancer, numerous digestion difficulties, clogged arteries, obesity, unexplained pain and bloating, and much much more.

If your father or mother has a heart attack or stroke you may well ask God why. However, perhaps you would be more accurate to blame the foods available and stresses of the corporate lifestyle than to set the blame at the foot of God. Imagine the way life would be if corporate leaders followed this first rule of the Christian life and really and truly “did no harm.”

When we were predominantly a Christian Country with Christian values there were numerous cases of businessmen who refused to take actions that would increase their profits because they were morally wrong. It is so bad today that universities have started demanding that business majors take an ethics class because we increasingly live in a world where no one knows right from wrong. They increasingly believe the lie that everything is relative when, amazingly across cultures, rules amazingly similar to the Ten Commandments have regularly cropped up. Either there is a universal idea of good, bad, loyalty, and betrayal, or we are hard-wired through evolution to believe these things because those who rejected them were banished from society and their genes couldn’t reproduce. Despite that, every generation has its narcissists and psychopaths. But America and the Globalists seem to want to make those traits into virtues.

Christianity used to hold capitalism in some degree of check. The government, corporations, and individuals knew that if they flagrantly defied Judeo-Christian principles the public would turn against them. Even those who denied Deity and Religion had ideas of right and wrong that were based on the Judeo-Christian principles. Indeed, without religion, (as we are finding out today in our society.) There is no check on the potential wickedness, selfishness, and greed of humanity.

Moses was drafted by God to be that check and to carry his message to the people as were and are the prophets. Christ was sent to embody that check upon our wickedness. Without religion the only moral imperative is survival of your own tribe and to hell with anyone else. This is how the world outside of the West operates. Western Civilization built on the foundations of Rome, Christendom, and the Norse/Germanic egalitarian society traditions where their philosophers and the Havamal came to conclusions that were very close to what is found in the Proverbs and Wisdom literature of the Bible. There was an understanding that in Christendom you could basically trust your fellow Christians (whether, Catholic, Amish, Protestant, Quaker or any of over a hundred other ways to follow Christ, to obey the rule of law, to not bear false witness, and to conduct themselves with honor and respect for life even in war.

“Do no harm” means to NOT remain silent when lies are being spread and injustice occurs. “Do no harm” is a rule calling us to dare to NOT look the other way when crime, extortion, or government or corporate power does wrong. “Do no harm” means NOT stepping over the one who is beaten and bleeding and NOT crossing over to the other side of the street as happened in the story of the Good Samaritan that Christ told. It was the Samaritan, the outcasts of Jewish society in the first century, who stopped and helped the man to an inn and paid for his room, bored, and medical care – even though he didn’t know him. While the “good” people looked the other way and didn’t want to get involved. “Do no harm” means acting sometimes even when we are scared to and fear ridicule, rejection, or legal consequences (such as hiding Jewish families in Nazi Germany.)

Indeed, the song Amazing Grace was written by a slave trader (obviously someone who prioritized money over what is right,) in celebration of his encounter with Christ and his salvation. When he became a Christian he gave up his life as a slaver and spearheaded the campaign in England to make the international slave trade a thing of the past. Not because of secular values but because of Christian values. [See: An Amazing Story – ofNaturesGod.com ] One man acting on principle made a difference in the world.

Indeed, you can trace most of the rights, benefits, and blessings of twentieth century Western Society can be traced back to Christianity, Western philosophers, Rome, or the Germanic peoples. It was people who took their own principles, refused to compromise and made a nuisance of themselves that changed the world. It starts with one voice raised and speaking the truth. We make a mistake when we tell ourselves the whole world feels as we do. This is the heritage of Western Civilization, Western Philosophy, and Christianity and the value it places on all people and life itself.

John Wesley’s second rule of life is Do All the Good You Can. Yet, we are not all wise. Indeed, for some Do All the Good You Can meant to bring the teachings of Western Civilization to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, they did not always respect local cultures. Over all, however, if you look at the nations that are doing the best economically, and have the highest standards of living, they are the countries that are still part of the British Commonwealth or who were linked to them historically. That is because colonizers not only brought domination, they also brought respect for law and order, libraries, hospitals, sanitation, and schools to places that didn’t have them.

Most people don’t know but one of the goals of communism was to attack colonialism and use guilt to get the West to abandon their colonies before the colony was ready to take on the responsibilities of a modern society. Then, in the resulting chaos, the Communists could step in and re-order the society. Despite Marx’ predictions Communism has only been able to dominate in societies that were per-industrial or behind on the industrial curve from the West. This is not the only thing Marx was wrong on. [See: Are We the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave? Or Did We Lose the Cold War? – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ; and Admitted Goals of Marxists in America – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ]

For some, deluded by the media and government misinformation, “doing good” was acting in ways that browbeat and isolated people who didn’t get vaccinated. The abandoned the principles of Liberty and America (if schools had taught even a modicum of understanding of Western Liberties – or even if they really believed “my body my choice” then they would have rejected these lies). But, as is so often the case, fear over-rode common sense and people acted in ways that were wholly against American Philosophy by marginalizing people who thought differently from them and who sought to exercise their rights over their own body. But even these natural rights are no longer understood in our society. [See also: Denial of Natural Laws and Natural Rights Endangers Our Survival – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ; We Now Live In A Totalitarian State – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ] (those who understood virology and still were thinking critically as opposed to those driven by irrational fear and ignorance.) Such people tell themselves they are good people but they are really self-interested people trying to cover their self-interest in a cloak of virtue. This is not the type of “doing good” that Wesley was speaking of. He was speaking of doing good in a rational and prayerful manner with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

This brings us to Wesley’s Third Rule of Life – attend to the ordinances and disciplines of the Faith. Because you cannot have any knowledge of the outcome of your actions – but God does know and by faithfully attending to the spiritual disciplines you learn those ways (although honestly, many who claim to be Christian don’t – as Father Hoolighan told me once: “Mr. Business went to church. He never missed a Sunday. But Mr. Business went to Hell for what he did on Monday.”

Ordinances and disciplines of the faith include studying the Bible and religious teachings, attend worship services, pray and meditate on the scriptures, seek communion with God, and grow in the faith. [If you want to grow in the Faith I have found the writings of the Benedictine Order to be incredibly helpful in living a godly life. See AUSCULA – Listen With The Ears Of Your Heart – ofNaturesGod.com ] Also, included in this was helping the poor and the destitute as Christ commanded and sharing the good news that we can escape this treadmill and the hell of this world we have made.

Christianity has been dumped on a lot with half-truths and out and out lies a lot in the 20^th and 21^st Centuries.

However, the world was arguably a better place when the West identified as Christendom. As for the Crusades, that deserves its own article but let me make it clear that Europe and Christian countries had been invaded for almost 400 years by Islamic nations before the first Crusade was launched. That is not opinion it is historical fact! And the first crusade was launched not to conquer Islamic countries but it was launched to defend the Christian city of Byzantium that was under attack by Islamic armies. Spain was conquered by Islam as was all of Northern Africa and now they were battling to destroy the Roman Empire whose capital was in Byzantium. Persia/Iran and Afghanistan were not originally Islamic. They were conquered and converted. Charles Martel turned back invaders in France or all of Europe would have been conquered long before now. Rome had been sacked, Christian Russia and balkans were repeatedly invaded, and FINALLY, Christendom rallied to defend Byzantium and the Eastern Roman Empire. Christians rallied again when Vienna was beseiged by the armies of Islam when an army of Germans and Poles led by Jan and the Polish Winged Hussars saved Vienna and saved Europe from the armies of Islam again in the 1600s.

Today we allow those armies across our border without restraint while Islamic Imams preach that after centuries of trying to conquer the West Jihad has a new form. They should now infiltrate the West have more babies than Europeans and Americans and take over their countries from within. This is not my idea. This is what THEY have said in their temples and websites. Why is it that we repeatedly ignore what our enemies themselves say they are going to do to us. Are we that fragile that we cannnot understand there are people in the world that hate us. That didn’t go well with Hitler and ignoring their aggression and stated intent to destroy America and the West won’t go well today. You can hide you head in the sand but it won’t change the result – it just means that you won’t see the sword when it falls. That is not skepticism that is denial and cowardice.

After the Crusades it was Christians that spearheaded the war against slavery and the international slave trade, not Muslims, not Hindus, not Pagans, but Christians. It was not secular society it was Christian society. Secular society didn’t give a damn about anyone but themselves and they have a long history of violating rights not preserving them. The most educated and advanced society in Europe in the 1930s was Germany and we all should know what happened there. While the Left is eager to distance themselves from the Nazis the more I study them the more clearly that they were, indeed, socialists. However, unlike the international socialist/communist movement they were nationalist socialists and after gaining power they broke the power of the right-wing conservative groups that didn’t toe the line of the national socialist worldview.

Oh, witches? Yeah, history has identified a few thousand witches killed by ‘the church’ which was horrible and wrong. But more witches were imprisoned and driven underground by secular doctors who accused them of practicing medicine without a license than were persecuted by the church and we don’t hear about that very much do we?

Its convenient for society not to mention the tens of thousands of Christians killed by pagans and the tens of thousands of Christians and Jews who are today still being killed in Islamic countries. If they mentioned it they may have to do something about it.

Somehow secular society, which has on its hands the 100 millions killed by Communists and the 6 million jews killed by Hitler. As I have said, Jews, like Christians, are still being killed in Islamic countries today. Israel is literally fighting for its right to exist. Palestinians don’t want a 2-state solution. “From the River to the Sea” means there will be no Jews left alive from the river to the sea, they are very clear about that in their own websites.

Selective morality is no morality at all.

Palestinians want to divest Jews of the lands of Israel and Judah that were theirs all the way back to the days of the Pharoah and the Babylonians. The Jews are the indigenous people of the area and the Palestinians the colonizers. They do not allow any Jews in Palestine but Muslims, Arab Bedouins, and more are allowed to serve as judges and in political office in Israel. Israel follows the values of a modern Western State including having one of the largest gay populations in Tel Aviv in the Middle East – one of the few places in the Middle East gays can live and not be killed.

But all of these facts are ignored or twisted by lying “fact-checkers” and other media magnates and their lackeys because they don’t fit the narrative. It’s easier to lie to people when you have stolen their education. [see also: Who Stole Your Education? Were You Indoctrinated in Ignorance? – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ]

The level of ignorance by the Left leaning political organizations of American campuses are disgusting to me. Universities are supposed to be centers of learning and not centers and instigators of anti-semitism. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised with all the Marxist professors because Marx was both of Jewish decent and flagrantly anti-Jewish…in fact Communism opposes all religions. I suppose because religious conflicts didn’t kill enough people to sate the blood-lust endemic to all communist states that have ever existed.

[But as I write this evidence is growing that many of those arrested in college demonstrations may not be students but agents of radical Islam and their sycophants.]

The ignorance of history is endemic in today’s society. As it has been for thousands of years. I guess that is why humans do the same things, and making the same mistakes, over and over again.

Fortunately, one of the ordinances of the church is communion. Communion should be taken only after confession and prayer. You don’t need to go through confession in the Catholic sense but before you become one with Christ through the ritual of Communion you must be sin free. For us humans that means we must repent all that we have done, and all that we have failed to do, that for us was sin. The glory of Communion is that when we repent and decide to turn from our failings that God throws those sins “as far as the East is from the West” and remembers them no more. While humans may nurse affronts and wrongs against us, God is able to completely forget transgressions that we confess and repent to God for.

I love Communion because I am a very imperfect servant of the Living God. I make mistakes regularly. Like King David I am not a paragon of virtue, however, I do love the Living God and my experiences and relationship with that mysterious indefinable but loving entity. Every time I take communion I know (from having read and taught the Bible,) that my sins are forgotten and as I take the elements into my body so Christ re-enters me in a special way and I am made new once again. A fresh start. Clean and new as Christ promised: “Behold, I make all things new.”

That is special and unique in human society. You cannot get that through the legal system. You cannot get it from Universities, and you sure as hell cannot get it from Communism and the Left who cancel, attack with law-fare, and imprison, people “at the drop of a hat,” as they say. But Christianity in each communion service offers a fresh start for all who legitimately repent of their sins. Maybe that is why secular society hates them so, because they know that no matter what they do they will never be free of their own past and Christians get fresh starts regularly.

Attend to the ordinances and disciplines of the Church and seek communion frequently. Especially if you are like me and need to make a fresh start often.

Whether you are Christian or not I suggest you consider at least the first two injunctions of 1^st Do no Harm and 2^nd Do all the good you can, as you journey through life and you will find that, ultimately, it makes a difference in society. Don’t be like those doomed to repeat history due to their own ignorance and stand up for truth wherever you may find yourselves. Don’t run from a “fight” but when truth is called for to oppose evil and falsehood stand in the gap. We don’t put our heads in the sand, or pretend not to see injustice. Draw sabers, ride to the sound of the guns, and cut through the lies to get to the truth, and…

[Edited version, the original was published on Sabersedge.Online another website of SabersEdge Foundation, an educational association that says the quiet parts outloud.]

The Vital Truth of Life

March 3, 2024 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 1 Comment

Today’s Society and Life is a lie. You can tell it is a lie and that nearly everything is in service to The Lie because it makes you feel empty or anxious inside. It doesn’t call to you. Real life stirs something in your soul and makes you feel alive.

Thousands of years ago Herodotus wrote: “All of life is action and passion, and not to be involved in the actions and passions of your time is to risk having not really lived at all.”

About a thousand years later Jesus said, “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly.” Same sentiment.

You see the Truth does not change over time. Humanity is basically the same as he was thousands of years ago and we react and live responding or not responding to life activating or not activating the emotions, passions, and acts that we are called to do. Our best chance at real living comes when Our Truth most closely aligns with The Truth. The idea that there is no truth is part of The Lie.

The lies they feed you change constantly.

A Marxist radical from the SDS once wrote: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” This statement highlights the idea that the apparent cause of a political action—whether it’s civil rights, women’s rights, transgender, or any other issue—is not the true focus. This is what people don’t get as good honest people fight one lie after another and wonder where they all come from. They come from the BIG LIE.

The Big Lie has two radically materialist ways of thinking – both take you farther from the Creator. One Lie is that of Neo-Marxism while the other is Robber Baron Radical Materialist Capitalism that devours everything it touches and crushes the free market under its totalitarian control of the market, crushing all seeds of opposition and competition as its poisons our lives and our environment and defies any hope of Free Enterprise. But, while we are distracted from the Truth by these Lies we see that both lies solely serve the diabolical path of the accumulation of power and resources into the hands of radical materialists underscoring the Machiavellian approach of prioritizing of the means over the end. Flexibility and opportunism is the key to revolutionary agendas and the Lie is that we must choose between the totalitarian Neo-Marxist’s Lies or the totalitarian world-eating consumerism forced on us by Robber Barons and Finance Capitalists.

From one we have a history of over 100 million lives snuffed out in the 20th century on the altar of Marxism and on the other we are handed a marketing triumph by people who are happy to see millions die of complications to a “perfectly safe” vaccine that causes greater instances of myocarditis and blood clots than the disease it was created for had of instances of death. Apparently, all is fine as long as it gives good returns on the balance sheets. And if it kills millions of youth between 18 and 52 – (an age group that was not even at high risk for Covid), apparently that is an idea that the caretakers of Societies Lies don’t feel they need to look into.

I suppose a third lie is the lie of Scientism where Dr. Fauci claimed that even if millions were to die because of a compromise of the security of a lab doing gain of function research the price would be worth it. Well, it did happen, millions did die, and it wasn’t worth it.

The Lie brings Death. God and the true path brings life and vitality.

Neither of these lies are Truth. They are not our only choices. I would call the Truth to be a Vitalist Truth. What I call Vitalism is that very essence which gives society, politics, family, and life itself meaning. The Vital Essence of Life is action and passion; it is fully participating in the life you have been given. Christ did not come and lock himself away in a monastery (although some may be legitimately called to do that, a monastic life if NOT a life of doing nothing but of actively engaging in prayer and the life of the monastery Ora Et Labora – as Saint Benedict would say,) Christ came and lived vitally and fully, The prophets came to call the World back to life; to bring it into accordance with the Vital Essence of Life Itself. As Herodotus said:

Truth does not change with the needs of the Revolution. Truth is Eternal.

There is a Divine Truth embedded in the Creation and science was originally envisioned as a way of learning about the Creator through the study of the Creation. It is only with the assumption that the world makes sense, that it was created with Intelligent Design that the pursuit of Science makes any sense at all. If the creation is random and without purpose then there would be no way to study it and no underlying order to discover. But there is.

By studying the very essence of Creation as a way of getting into the mind of the Creator – just as you can get to the mind of an artist by studying their creations. Now Science has delved deep enough it is leading us back to the Creator as it repeatedly points to an Intelligent Design and the God Hypothesis as the most logical answer to the questions that the cutting-edge scientists are now asking. Of course, that is only the Scientists who are dedicated to finding the underlying truth of the facts and data wherever their science takes them rather than modern science which is enslaved to the monetary donor of the research dollar or simply to the lie of Scientism.

The idea that Science has all the answers is a non-theist religion called Scientism and it is as empty as the Materialistic society that it has co-opted and poisoned against the vital message of Life and the Creator.

America was originally called to be a shining city on the hill, ONE NATION, UNDER GOD! But the lies in our society have warped it away from the vital essence of Life itself. An essence the founders believed in when they said “We hold these things to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Herodotus said it first, but Jefferson and Adams could have just as readily have said: “All of life is action and passion, and not to be involved in the actions and passions of your time is to risk having not really lived at all.” Jefferson, Paul Revere, John Adams, Sam Adams, and Ben Franklin and Washington were all vitally engaged in the actions and passions of their time and as such they are an example to all who have silent in the silent majority.

Do you feel passion in your life? For your life? Do you wake up with a joy to face the sunrise of another day with your children, your dog, and your cats (both of whom are already waiting at the food dish for you!)

Do you feel the joy your dog does at the simple reality of another meal?

Herodotus said all life is action and passion, Jesus said, I come that you might have life and have it abundantly. He wasn’t talking about things that leave you empty inside and fill your house choking your joy of life with clutter or things that keep you too to busy to actually live. He was talking about being filled with the experience of Living! Do you feel it? That is the Vitalist Essence of the message and meaning of life is.

The secret meaning of Life is that you are supposed to LIVE IT;

Tony Campolo said that many of us say the prayer “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my Soul to take.” But, he says, what we should be praying “Is if I wake before I die,” because most of us go through life as if we are half dead already.

Experience it and let it fill you with wonder at the bloom, the wind in the trees, or the toddler taking his or her first step. Interestingly enough Hebrew mystics taught that the orgasm was the moment when we most closely felt the joy that God felt in the moment of Creation the Bible says that the Spirit of Wisdom danced for joy with the Creator at the Creation. Our moment of Creation is a sign of The Creation. Only God didn’t abort it, even in the time of Noah he preserved the seed of new life.

Jesus called us to abundant living. Living each moment to the full! That is so different from the empty and angry existence Radical Materialists like the Capitalist Robber Barons and Neo-Marxist demonstrators that see us only as consumers and the Godless Marxists who see us as tools to bring about the Revolution, and angrily shout down reason and thought.

In Ecclesiastes 9:7-10a we find one of my favorite passages to preach on and which I have never heard anyone else preach on (the lectionary misses it by one verse) – probably because they have a translation that views Ecclesisastes as totally cynical instead of reading it with acceptance for the world God has made.

Now I am not Catholic, but the New Catholic Bible gets the essence of this passage right:

7 Go forth, then. Eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God long ago approved what you do. 8 At all times dress in white garments and always anoint your head with oil.

9 Enjoy life with the wife whom you love throughout all the days of your allotted span of life that have been given to you under the sun, because that is your lot while you live and labor here under the sun. 10a Whatever task your hand finds to do, expend all your efforts on it,

Here is just one example of the lies our society shoves into our lives. Such examples can be repeated by you many times over, pick a search engine. (I won’t say which I used but it is common for both Google, Bing, and some others that the big names have bought up and mutated to serve their anti-life, consumerist, radical materialistic agenda, ignoring what you really want to sell you a cheap substitute even as it offers a materialistic and cheap substitute for life itself. I typed in the search engine “Canva.com official website” (yeah, I should have just used the icon I had saved but I come from a time when Search Engines actually tried to find what you were looking for instead of feeding you more of The Lie. My search came back, and the first page didn’t even have canva as a choice! And, excuse me but I think that “Canva.com official website” is specific enough so that if the search engine actually wanted to serve it could do so.

But, like everything else in this sick society of lies it takes you on it’s own twisting algorithm away from the real life that God is calling you to and into an empty substitute. I got Vistaprint, Ninja Transfers, Lulu.com, RocketLawyer? and Paperculture, but NO CANVA.COM. Apparently, Canva didn’t bribe them sufficiently to be on the first page. NO CANVA.COM when I very clearly asked for it. If you are still using Bing, Google, Yahoo, or any of the conglomerate owned algorithm driven monstrosities you are just asking to be lied to and manipulated. I don’t know. Some people may feel more comfortable in the anti-life because then they never need to address the emptiness that is in them that way they can just stay busy doing nothing all day and not thinking or living. Our society that has been warped and wrenched from the natural world is an aberration and parody of life. It is so antithetical to the one we were created to live in that we don’t even notice there is anything wrong, the lie is too big, repeated too often, and yelled at us daily that we cannot hear the truth.

And too often our churches are empty echo chambers of an empty society that don’t stimulate us to life either. Jesus didn’t come to uphold the institutions and to be an opiate of the masses. He came to call us back to life!

We just lumber on like mindless zombies in a Romero Zombie Movie blindly shuffling back and forth to work or to the mall but understanding no more of what we do in the heartless and mindless shuffle that we never realize that whether we are a zombie or “living” we are existing in an evil construction of the Enemy. We live in An Anti-Life Parody of the true LIFE that God calls us too.

“I come that you might have life and have it abundantly.”

That is what the noise of society is trying to distract you from. Are you living abundantly? Is your life full? Are you living with the wife that you love and among the children of your youth, or old and among your children’s children? Does your job leave you fulfilled and full of life? Do your thoughts? Are your musings something God would welcome?

I had a seminary instructor who said that he liked to call John the Baptist John Hinge because it was like God swung open a door and changed everything with the New Testament. The Old is a God of Judgment and the New a God of Mercy and Grace. BULLSHIT! (He and I didn’t get along very well.) I say the New Testament is the Old Testament for Dummies. It doesn’t change the message it distills it down to the core so everyone who missed it in the original can get it. The Pharisees certainly missed it and, apparently, so have most Christian pastors, since they didn’t notice the continuity between the Old and New. But that’s OK most pastors have never read the Bible all the way through anyway. And if they did they read it with a closed mind thinking they all ready new what was in it rather than in an open mind and spirit guided by the DIVINE.

Have you read about the God who led his people out of Egypt. Before Moses had even received the Ten Commandments and after they had seen the plagues upon Egypt, the Red Sea part for them to cross and swallow up the army that was after them. (They have actually found Egyptian chariots on the bottom of the Red Sea by the way – I don’t think Pharoah put them there just to lend weight to some “Jewish Myth.” Like most things people say they don’t believe in they have never looked at the actual word or evidence themselves.)

They had been led by a Pillar of Cloud by day and a Pillar of Fire by night. THESE people, who had actually SEEN THE PROOF of a GOD who interacts with us. They turned away and built a golden calf and started partying and debauching themselves with one another (no love just sex – like modern society advocates in feminism – “men are horrible creatures who have sex just to satisfy lust” so Feminisms answer to that is to make women equally as contemptable? ) THAT is the way this society of Anti-LIFE works on every level. It is all a lie and calls you to live that lie just as it called the people of Israel to worship a calf of Gold instead of the God of LIFE.

Which will you give your life to? The gold or Life Itself?.

So, THESE people having seen all the proof that you might have asked for in your life, SAW it and STILL turned away. God was pissed. God continued to get pissed at this complaining, whining group, over and over again through the Old Testament. What did he do? He forgave them over and over again, personally I would have lost my temper, crushed them, and started over. So it is good we are not God.

You know a pastor doesn’t understand the Bible if he says that the God who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow is different in the Old Testament and the New. It’s the same message and the same God it is only a superficial reading that makes it seem different. Both the New Wine and the Old are good. Don’t feel bad if you missed it. Jesus came because nearly everyone missed it.

The Shema, “Hear Oh Israel, the Lord Your God is One.”

Nearly everything that Jesus is quoted as saying is a quote from Old Testament Scriptures. I think that the idea that the New and Old Testaments are different is just one more lie that society feeds us and it is just one of many lies that the modern church has swallowed, (along with social justice, and DEI).

Any JUSTICE that has anything else attached to it is a lie. Social Justice is a Lie the American “Justice” system is not only a lie but has been proven in the past few years to be a complete travesty of Justice as people named Clinton can compromise national secrets, and normal people are jailed for taking a tour of the Congressional Building with the guards. Biden can be a senile agent of the CCP bought and paid for and Trump is fined 354 million for non-crime with no victims by a lying New York Court. I am not saying Trump is a Saint by any means but our court system and government has shown its true colors as a totalitarian system leaning toward the Woke Neo-Marxist Agenda repeatedly against Trump because he dares to challenge the BIG LIE that has trapped us all in modern society.

God called us to Be fruitful and multiply, to live life abundantly, to live our lives with joy and enjoy our family and put our whole might into the life that we have while we have it. But our society would rather trap us in a lie as cogs of either a consumer materialistic capitalist wheel or the soul-crushing, life-destroying cog of a lifeless Communist radical materialistic wheel that destroys everything, criticizes everything because EVERYTHING in Marxism exists to serve the REVOLUTION. The current thing is never the thing, it is the revolution.

Feminism is not the issue it is toppling the society to make way for the Revolution, Prayer in schools is not the issue it is toppling the society to make way for Revolution, Transgenderism is not the issue it is toppling the society to make way for Revolution. Trump is not the issue it is the revolution. Justice and bail reform is not the issue it is toppling society to make way for the revolution, queer theory is not the issue it is the revolution, Ukraine is not the issue it is revolution, inflation is not the issue it is revolution, corruption is not the issue it is destroying faith in our institutions to make way for the revolution. As the Marxist said “The thing is never the thing, it is always the revolution.”

So Neo-Marxists are busy destroying our society as well-meaning people try honestly exhaust themselves dealing with the endless issues they raise. Until honest men and women are too exhausted to prevent the revolution from occurring. They don’t realize that none of these issues truly matter to the Marxists they are simply tearing apart our society of the LIE to replace it with the NEW LIE .

Actually, they are the father of the lies in both societies since Neo-Marxists twisted the current society with their agitation since the 1950s. They have been twisting and warping American society for almost 80 years if not more moving it away from God. (Remember Marx was writing before and during the American War Between the States)…of course everything we see feels like a lie. The Lie has corrupted it all. But then Jefferson and our founders foresaw that:

The Constitution is not unable to deal with modern society, that is just another lie. The over-riding and watering down of the safeguards of the constitution and Bill of Rights that we have done over the last 200 years is what has brought us to this point. It is our changing and opposing the Spirit of the Constitution which, in my opinion, was divinely inspired.

Then they raise the LIE again. “You who want to return to the Constitution and want to put blacks back in chains?” The Constitution didn’t make anyone a slave, it just acknowledged the aberration of slavery as a fact marring the free society that was envisioned today there are no legal slaves, and the Constitution doesn’t and didn’t make slaves. That is why Jefferson originally wrote in his draft of the Constitution:

But they didn’t tell you that, did they?

That is because, like everything else they don’t tell you it doesn’t serve the lie.

We live in a hard time. But those who say we shouldn’t bring kids into this world have swallowed another of the Lies and are living according to it. God proclaimed the World to Be GOOD and it is only where we have deviated from the DIVNE PATH that we have sullied it and made it empty of the passion and vital essence of life.

Is this time harder than World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, or when the Mongols swept out of Mongolia to cover a third of the globe, hurling thousands of heads of their slain over the walls of cities to get them to surrender? Is today really harder than that? Every generation has faced the LIE and the ENEMY of their time, but we need to bring forth the vital truth of life with passion and action of our own to live life abundantly and truly; to suppress the Lies with Truth.

To quote a line from G. Michael Hopf’s post-apocalypic novel “Those Who Remain”:

“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”

To this Herodotus answers –

“Adversity has the effect of drawing out strength and qualities of a man that would have laid dormant in its absence.” and “All of life is action and passion, and not to be involved in the actions and passions of your time is to risk having not really lived at all.

CHRIST CAME THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE LIFE AND LIVE IT PASSIONATELY AND VITALLY. and not to simply exist.

What is a Good Bible?

July 29, 2023 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 1 Comment

Grace and Peace to you. May the Living Force, the Ground of All Being, and the Divine Spirit that guides and nurtures all life be with you and guide you into all truth.

In keeping with that wish everyone should have a good Bible. The Bible is the most accessible tool we have to access the ancient scriptures and the Wisdom of the Divine and I keep one by my chair and take one with me wherever I go (if I will be gone for more than a day).

That may surprise many because I often rail against the translations of the Bible that we have in English. I think English is a poor language to translate the Bible into. When it comes to philosophy and theology English is a very imprecise language and the way some political parties manipulate and play with the meaning of words it is making the language even worse. However, the Bible is the most accessible document we have for ancient Wisdom and the most diverse collection of ancient scripture that we can easily access today. I would like you to have the best chance of getting an accurate translation that is not colored by human prejudice.

I firmly believe in the passage: “Every word of the LORD proves true. He is a shield for those who take refuge in Him.” However, because I firmly believe this I want to ensure I know what the Divine One actually said and that I am not getting a poor or “political” translation that has more of some churches DOGMA in it than it does the word of truth from ancient scripture. What did the original actually say and do we actually understand it today?

Too often, what we think it says is colored by what we already believe before we start reading. This is why I go back to see what the passages originally said in the oldest version of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic that we can find. I consider it so important I dig for the buried truths beneath the surface words and invite you to go with me on these digs.

I will have many more posts in the future than I have had in the past as I will begin concentrating more time here.

There are two passages I look for to see how they are translated so that I can avoid church politics and dogma. You see, even John Wesley’s Methodism (which originally employed women preachers – if Wesley and his brother determined that they were “called to preach” by a Divine Call) became a denomination that, in the 1960s, told my sister “Women can’t be preachers.” Like so many religions this isn’t, in my mind, Biblical because the Bible says that “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave or free but all are one in Christ Jesus.”

Happily, myself, my wife, and my sister, all became pastors and ministered together in the same district. It was a wonderful experience.

If any “Christian” tells you that race, gender, or social status is important to the Divine they are denying the verse I just quoted because the Bible says that NONE of those things are important to the Eternal One. They may be important in our relationships with one another but they are not important for our union and relationship with the Divine Source.

Unfortunately, they are very important to some churches. I even had a friend who showed me the list of beliefs that her denomination put out and it listed the verse I just quoted near the top of their beliefs. She had circled that one and then circled one farther down that said, “We don’t believe that women can preach or be leaders in the church.” This was especially significant because I thought that she was called to preach by the Holy Spirit and teach but her denomination and family were all opposed to women’s leadership in that way and, if she was called, she never answered because of the social stigma in her denomination and family was too strong.

Paul is often said to have been a misogynist because of the things he wrote to the church at Ephesus. However, we have no clue what questions he was responding to when he wrote what he wrote to Ephesus.

We do know that Ephesus was the home to one of the Ancient Wonders of the World – the Temple of Artemis. More than any other ancient city the priestesses and women of the Temple of Artemis had influence there. People often quote him saying “Women should be silent in church.” But he ONLY wrote this in answer to an unknown question at the church of Ephesus where the Temple of Artemis dominated society.

I love the Pauline letters and much of my theology is drawn from them and the Hebrew Bible. However, my Bible instructor highlighted the problem we have drawing conclusions from Paul’s letters when he said, “We have to remember when we are reading these letters that we are reading someone else’s mail. On top of that, we only have Paul’s answers and we don’t have the questions nor do we know the situation that he is responding to. For that reason, we have to compare and contrast the different letters to see what Paul was actually saying.”

When it comes to women we know that Paul entrusted his most important letter, the Letter to the Romans, to Phoebe a minister at the Church of Cenchreae, to carry for him. As the letter to the Romans is the most complete explanation of Paul’s theology it is considered to be his most important letter and it is definitely his longest. It had to be very important to him he put a lot of time and effort into it. He could have entrusted it to anyone but he sent it with a woman. You can find this in Chapter 16, verses 1 and 2.

I quote from the NRSV (a book I consider one of the better translations for Bible study, however not a very good one if you are looking for comfort – more on this later.)

16: 1-2 “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well.”

OK, we know that Phoebe was a powerful woman. She is described as a deacon and a patroness of the church. In those days Christians had no churches and they had been kicked out of the Jewish Synagogues so they couldn’t worship there either. Early Christians gathered together in the houses of believers. The largest churches met in the houses of the wealthy and they were under their protection. We get a pretty good clue that Phoebe was one of them because she is a “benefactor of many” and the Greek words used pretty clearly identify her as a patron.

Now in many Christian sects (there are well over 350 Christian denominations and sects and many of them will fight tooth and nail over varying beliefs – so when someone says “Christians believe…” they are gas-lighting you. They are either telling you what “they” believe and are pretending that all “real” Christians believe the same or they are hating on Christians and have created this phony boogeyman in their mind. I once spent almost an hour arguing with someone who told me “Christians believe…” and proceeded to tell me things that I have NEVER met ANY Christian of ANY denomination who believed the things this truly ignorant person thought Christians believed. I am a minister. My Master’s Degree is in Religion. I think I have a pretty good understanding of religions and what Christians believe but, like all trolls, he was “right” and not open to learning anything.

Beware of non-Christians who tell you what Christians believe. I have seen way too much gas-lighting on this topic in New Age and Wiccan books as well. Some of these books are well written but they have such a misconception about Christianity that they confuse the worst actions of those who “claimed” in History to be “Christians” and seem to know nothing of what Christ actually said or taught. These people MAY have known a grandma, an aunt, or someone in their life who believed what they say “Christians believe…” but I have an Encyclopedia of Christian Worship and Religion that has studies of hundreds of denominations, how they worship, and what they believe, and far too often I cannot find these supposed “Christian beliefs” in any of them.

Further, anyone who says Christians believe and says anything other than “Christians believe in Christ” is gas-lighting you because that is literally the only thing that all Christian denominations and Messianic Jews agree on. They don’t even all believe that the Christ they worship was a real person (some believe in a Cosmic Christ concept that is present in many religions,) and they definitely don’t all believe that he rose from the dead. Yet Paul, who knew the original disciples said, “If Christ did not rise in body than our preaching is empty and our hope is vain.” So, it seems pretty clear to me that they were being literal in what they claimed because that is a pretty strong statement.

But back to Phoebe. She is a deacon of the church of Cenchrae. A deacon is a minister who is also a servant. Christian ministers are supposed to be “servant-leaders” because they follow a Christ who knelt down and washed the feet of his disciples. This was an act that servants tended to do because it was a dirty job in a world where everyone wore sandals everywhere and didn’t bathe every day. Christ did it as an act of love and to demonstrate to his disciples what leadership really meant. It meant caring for those you lead.

Many churches have the belief that women need to take a back seat. Perhaps there is something to that because nuerological studies tell us that when women talk their body releases ten times as much dopamine as a man’s does. So if you ever got the idea that women like to hear themselves talk this is literally true. I don’t say this to put women down it is just a biological and nuerological fact. It is probably a necessary fact because women provide primary care for young children. They have to do this because they have the breasts to nourish the child. Children grow and develop faster, like plants, if they are spoken to in a loving manner so it makes total sense that they would have evolved mechanisms to encourage them to talk to their children. God would be stupid if he didn’t make it that way. We will never know if it is because of this tendency to talk more, or if it was out of hand in Ephesus, that Paul said “women should be silent in church.”

However we do know for a fact that he entrusted his most important letter to Phoebe a deacon of the church at Cenchrae.

Now here is why I look at this verse.

Some translations of the Bible were written by denominations that believe that women cannot be leaders, even if God calls them to be so, and so whenever women are mentioned as Deacons in Greek they translate women as “servants” and men as “ministers.” Christian Deacons are servant ministers but this betrays their own prejudices and NOT the prejudices of God when they assume that Deacon means “servant” if it is applied to a woman, and “minister” if it is applied to a man. That is an example of human prejudice affecting the translation and not Biblical truth.

I have talked to persons who say things defending their denominations beliefs by saying that “God wouldn’t do that” (such as make women a leader.) I hate it when people say that because right away you know that they think they can determine what God will do or won’t do. In my opinion their God is too small. The Divine One is so much greater and transcendent than us we will never fully understand its ways and we need to be more humble in our searching of scriptures.

So if a Bible calls Phoebe a servant I generally don’t buy it. If they call her a minister I do buy it. This tells me if the translator was reading into their translation their own prejudices and beliefs about women and I don’t want to read their prejudices I want to read the truth; or as close as I can get to it.

A second place I look is verse 16:7 (also in the book of Romans,) where Paul says:

“Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.”

In Greek Junia is written Iounia and is sometimes translated as Julia in some Bibles Origen, who lived 185 to 253 AD, was clear this was Junia the wife of Andronicus as were most ancient commentators and scholars. It wasn’t until the 12th Century AD that commentators began to insist that Junia was a Junias.

Some translations admit that Junia was female but change the translation. Even in Wikipedia, (and no real scholar actually uses Wikipedia as a source,) one passage says that she was “known to the apostles” not that she was one of the apostles. Better translations of the Greek are that she and her husband were “counted among the apostles” and you can even make a case that it should be translated that they were “outstanding among the apostles.”

Here is the ranking (if there is a ranking,) of Christians. Seekers who are looking for the truth. Believers who have found the truth. Followers who are living out the truth. Disciples who are dedicated to following Jesus wherever he leads them, even unto death, and Apostles.

Apostle is the highest praise that a Christian can get. Jesus told his apostles, I no longer call you disciples but friends because now it was up to them to take his teachings out in the world even as he had represented his father to them, now they were to do that for the world.

Junia, in this passage, is called an apostle. Some Bibles were translated from the Latin and when the Roman culture translated this passage they said, “That must be a mistake. Women can’t be apostles. It must be a Greek name and not actually the Roman name of Junia. They, therefore, translated it as Junias putting a Greek male ending on it and making the name male. However, subsequent studies have shown conclusively there is not and never was a Greek name of Junias. If your Bible calls Junia Junias it is doing so because it is pre-empting Paul’s statement that she was a female Apostle because the translation doesn’t believe that women can be leaders (no matter what some upstart who actually knew the disciples of Christ and wrote half of the New Testament might have written, or what the Bible actually says.)

In my mind changing the Bible to fit your prejudice is heinous and these are two easy verses that I check to try to avoid bad translations that are going to give me more of their religious DOGMA from their particular Christian denomination than they are going to give me the truth of scripture.

But we all need to make our own decisions and you need to make yours.

Oh, I almost forgot. I said that the NRSV is not a good translation to read when you are in crisis. That is because we want something sure when we need help not “ifs.”

In the NRSV they had a huge company of scholars argue over every verse before they wrote it down. I happen to know a man whose Father was involved in the process. Like the council of Nicaea where they decided what books were to be put in the Bible, they had a few yelling matches as people defended their positions. Eventually, they wrote a Bible in the NRSV that if it was vague in the Hebrew and Greek and people were not in agreement with what it said they left that vagueness in the English and provided a brief (sometimes all too brief,) explanation in a note. That is why I use the NRSV for Bible Study. I think it is the best English translation that I have read and most free of religious dogma from specific denominations because it had so many different representatives from the different Christian sects present to argue over the translation.

However, if you are up to your tush in alligators you don’t want to know that the instructions you have on how to drain the swamp are vague. You want something clear, concise, and comforting. So, I have other Bibles I read if my life is falling apart but I use the NRSV for study and Lectio Divina.

My family Bible that I kept for family Bible readings when my kids were little was the New International Version. It translated the above verses accurately but it was written so it was easier for kids to understand (and adults too.)

I have other Bibles. I often preach from the New King James, (or the NRSV, New International Version, St. Joseph’s Bible, or others). I have many. I take the translation that, in my study, seems to be the closest translation to the Greek or the Hebrew of the verse that I am preaching on. I have not found any Bible that seems to adhere all the way through. Anyone who knows other languages than English knows that some words just don’t translate very well.

For instance, there are many Greek words for “love” but we only have one. Whether the Bible is speaking of physical love, sibling love, spousal love, or whatever they are all translated into English with that one word.

If you really want to explore the truth of the Bible a handy tool is the multi-volume Bible Dictionary called the New Interpreters Bible. It is not cheap but there is a good chance that your Church pastor may have a set on his bookshelf. If he doesn’t then I would find yourself a new church because it may be that your pastor is taking everything at face value and is not digging for the truth in the scriptures.

Too me truth is too precious to leave to others or to trust to someone else’s opinion. I dig for it.

May the Grace of the Living Force and the Communion of the Holy Spirit be with you, now and forever.

AUSCULA – Listen With The Ears Of Your Heart

October 2, 2022 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 1 Comment

The core of spirituality lies in listening. Saint Benedict said that we need to learn to “Listen with the ears of our heart.” In other words, we need to listen to that inner voice of intuition through which the Divine Presence speaks to all of us. If we will but listen. Perhaps this is why the first word in the Rule of Saint Benedict is Auscula, listen.

The example of Jesus is that he frequently retired from the crowds and withdrew into the wilds to pray. And we know how Jesus prayed because he told his disciples not to pray with a multitude of words. So, for Jesus, as for so many great spiritual teachers, communication with God had more to do with listening than with talking. Yet for so many of us, our own spiritual life is very different.

Too often our prayers are not about listening, learning, and then acting upon what God has told us, rather they look more like a want list. This stripped down to its starkest terms can be viewed as similar to saying, “O.K. Lord, this is what I want you to do. This is your assignment list for the next month. Your “Honey-Do List” from me. I would like you to…” once we have run down our list of what we want God to do we say “Amen.” Then we get up and go on with our life. Rarely, if ever, do we continue to sit in an attitude of prayer and allow the Divine Presence to tell us, “O.K. I understand what you want from me. Now let me tell you what I would like you to change in your life. Also, have you noticed that your neighbor lost their spouse? Have you said anything to them or spent time with them? They are very lonely you know. And, I would like you to reconsider the way you treated that phone solicitor the other day – that is a very hard job you know and they are just trying to survive. And you were a bit short with the grocery checker at the supermarket. You do know that was her first day, right?”

John Wesley had several “methods” for helping him in his spiritual life. One of them was his review of his day in prayer at each day’s end. Before retiring this Anglican priest would ask that the Living God show him where he did well and what opportunities he had to minister to others and represent the Divine Creative Force of the Universe to people that he encountered throughout the day. He encouraged all those who followed him “the Methodists” to do the same. In this way, he would learn from God in his prayer time as to how he could improve in his own life.

Meditation is another way to listen, depending on how you practice it meditation may facilitate listening a great deal or at least a little. Lectio Divina is yet another. I have already talked a little about meditation in my blog and my videos and soon I will talk about Lectio Divina.

But another way I want to discuss listening is to be aware as we go through our life that the Divine Presence is always with us. We don’t have to be in “prayer time” to hear God speaking to us. If you look at the accounts of the prophets in the Bible, and often of prophets in other faiths, they could hear God speaking through what was happening in their life. This is not easy. It takes a great deal of practice and openness to the Divine Presence – an openness that becomes a habit and not just something that we do sometimes.

I placed a Holy Water font at the front and rear exit to the house so that when I leave I can use it, make the sign of the cross, and say a quick prayer asking the Divine to show me, as I am out in the world, show me what I can do for you to make the world and the lives of those around me better. It only takes a couple of seconds. But it reminds me to be aware of the Presence of the Divine and what it might be saying to me.

In the Old Testament, the prophets would say things like, God took me down to the Potter’s wheel and I watched and he told me that God was forming us like this pot. And the pot developed a blemish that started small and became larger until it was deformed and the potter broke down the pot and reformed it. So God can renew us. Or that the potter took the unformed clay from the mud of the earth and turned it into a beautiful finished product. The prophets sometimes had dramatic visions in their meditations and during prayer and other times they simply knew that God was delivering the message through what was happening around them.

I remember a woman whose husband had died. Her family was close to her and helped her through the immediate time of the funeral but when she was left alone she was faced with the dramatic silence of being alone. She went to sit at her husband’s grave side and when she left she was starting to drive out of the cemetery and had to pull over because she could not see through her tears. She cried out to God and said “I cannot do this alone!”

Her deepest desire was to get help and reassurance from God. She looked through the windshield and realized that a beautiful butterfly had come and landed upon the glass. It sat there with her for a while and then flew off. She understood the symbols of Christianity and knew that the butterfly (which had fought its way out of the chrysalis to leave behind its worm-ness and become a beautiful butterfly,) was a symbol of rebirth and the presence of the Holy Spirit. She told me that at that moment she realized God was saying to her that this was a new phase in her life but that God was with her and she didn’t have to do it alone.

Similarly, my mother, after my father died found herself sitting on my Dad’s side of the bed in a similar state of despair. She didn’t know how she could go on. She heard what she described as an audible voice that was so clear that she looked around the room and then perceived it was the voice of God. It said, “Do not be afraid. I am with you.”

My father would walk with me and would often see something that prompted him to quote proverbs. He would show me how squirrels were busy in the summer gathering food so that they could live through the winter months. He would often say, “Listen to the trees, Daniel. Cottonwoods will talk to your more than any other of God’s trees. Hear the wind rustling the leaves? God can speak to us through that if we learn to listen.” I asked him once, as he sat on the bank of the lake with his fishing pole if he was catching any fish. “No,” he answered. “Sometimes, I just put the pole in the water because people leave you alone if they think you’re fishing. There’s no bait on the hook. It gives me time to think and talk to God. Come sit with me awhile and watch the way the light sparkles upon the water.”

If we truly wish to grow as faithful, spiritual beings we must learn to take action and live out our faith truly. To live out our faith we must be formed and study what it means to walk the spiritual path. I feel that the best means of study is Wisdom which has been proven by longevity and some of the oldest spiritual writings that have prevailed in the formation of human beings are the easiest to obtain. For over three thousand years portions of the Bible have guided people in their spiritual life and they are easy to find to guide us.

Faith is nothing if it does not include action in every aspect of our lives. If our faith is not revealed in virtually everything that we do and all of our interactions then it is not real. Instead of being an integral part of us, it is just a jacket that we wear when we desire to be seen as “spiritual.” This is a superficial trap. To truly be spiritual we must, as Saint Benedict said, listen with the ears of our hearts and the more we listen the more we will hear.

Action without meditation and divine guidance, as we are told in the Bible, makes us like a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal. We will always lose our way on our own if we don’t listen to that inner voice. If we don’t spend a substantial amount of our spiritual life reading, listening, and being aware of all that is around us then we will not realize what God is trying to say to us and we will truly be alone. The Divine Presence is always with us. We just need to learn to listen. The beginning of Psalm 19 tells us:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice[b] goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.
Psalm 19: 1-4

This holds true as much with our relationship with the Divine as it does with our relationships with people. My Dad used to say, “God gave you two eyes, two ears, but only one mouth. There is a message in that. You should watch and listen four times as much as you talk.”

Called To Serve

September 15, 2022 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 0 Comments

Today I want to talk about a story that is near and dear to my heart. The story of the Maid or Orleans, Joan of Arc. Her story shows us how one person, in response to God’s call can change the world.

When I was young I saw Joan of Arc on TV (with Ingrid Bergman – 1948; later I saw Leelie Sobieski in the same roll 2001; and one of my favorite actresses Mila Jovovich as The Messenger.) In this story a teenage girl believed she was visited by a Divine visitation and called upon to save France from British domination. For an uneducated teen in the later Middle Ages to come forward (there was also a prophecy of a Maid from Orleans saving France that she seemed to be unaware of,) impress herself on the nobility of the time, and lead the armies of France to break the hold of the British on the Kingdom of France makes me think she really was answering God’s call.

There are many stories of miracles surrounding her story. As expected, scholars who weren’t there, doubt anything that does not match their experience. But in my life, I have experienced miracles and many of the ones surrounding Joan of Arc have the ring of truth. At least in my own experience and study of Divine revelation and experience and relationship with the Divine. I also think the results speak for themselves.

God has a long history of using the weak and the outcast to humble the mighty.

The mighty have a long history of killing (martyring) God’s messengers. Note, they don’t stop God’s plan but they still respond petulantly and violently to being humbled. Some may think that death is a severe price to pay but taken on its whole it is not really. You see, we all will die. However, most of us will not die for a cause that changes history, and the promise of eternal reward in heaven for a death that we all must suffer – whether we serve God or not – is not that high of a price to pay. IMHO. One thing that is true for all of us is that none of us will get out of this life alive. However, it is sad when people die without ever having truly lived.

I think Joan of Arc truly lived a full life – even if it was crammed into a few years. She died at the age of 19 but we still talk about her almost a thousand years later. And, as one of my pastors used to say whenever someone did a good deed, “There is another star for your Crown of Righteousness.” (Perhaps I will talk about the verse that comment comes from some day.)

That is what happened to Saint Joan of Arc. The elite she humbled responded violently and viciously to being humbled. The British captured her and tried her for witchcraft, and if you read accounts of the trial, it seems that these “scholars” of the church at her trial were unable to trick this ignorant girl into incriminating herself. Nevertheless, she was ultimately burned as a relapsed heretic and was accused by the British at the time of being a witch. Later, the Pope declared her a Saint (and being declared a Saint is never something that is done on a whim – despite some popular opinions to the contrary – there is a long detailed process of verification before anyone is declared a Saint.) Anyone who has studied the lives of the Saints will find that nearly all of them are paragons of faith and virtue and we could do worse than to use them as examples for our own lives.

The movies are interesting, and the biographies vary in their quality, but I like studying how things actually were compared to movie presentations. I enjoy movies for their own sake as entertainment even though they all are subject to errors and interpretation.

One thing I have turned to many times in my life is the Prayer of Saint Joan. It reminds me that even when I face trials they are nothing compared to what she faced and yet she remained true to her Divine call and Mission. A mission we all have if we but find it, and that will probably not demand as much from us as it did from the Maid of Orleans.

St. Joan of Arc – In the face of your enemies, in the face of harassment, ridicule, and doubt, you held firm in your faith. Even in your abandonment, alone and without friends, you held firm in your faith. Even as you faced your own mortality, you held firm in your faith. I pray that I may be as bold in my faith as you, St. Joan. I ask that you ride alongside me in my own battles. Help me be mindful that what is worthwhile can be won when I persist. Help me believe in my ability to act well and wisely, Amen.
PraYER TO SAINT JOAN OF ARC

It reminds me of another one who spoke of holding true to a cause, although he was not a Saint, by any means: