Episode 1: Quest for Meaning Beyond the Cosmos and Commandments

TA:

Welcome, fellow humans born onto the nursery planet Earth. This is the Why Are You Here on Earth? Podcast, and I am your host, TA. We will study the Bible. Why Are You Here on Earth is the last of the three great questions. Why are they the great questions? They were the questions that God gave us to work on and gave us a day off to consider.

3400 or 3500 years ago, Moses was told that six days shall you labor for yourself. The seventh day you shall not labor, but instead consider these things. Labor, but instead consider these things. Now the Israelites, who were to become the Jews decided you know what? We don't need a question. We'll just break it down and weave it into our civilization. Whether you realize it or not, the Ten Commandments are the underpinnings of civilization. Everybody needs to do that in order to have a civilization that works, certainly theirs. So the first question is who are you? There's a lot that goes into that. The second question what are you? The third question, of course, is why are you here on earth? And that's the only question that came through Moses' teachings in Deuteronomy. The other two were subsumed into the community structure that they developed and tied to their religion.

Now, religion is important to many people. The Jewish religion and the Christian religion patterned after it were designed to quote, honor, unquote God, not to obey him, not to follow his instructions and directions or use the models and examples that he gave us, but only to honor the fact that he had chosen to speak to humanity and that he had done so to a people that he collected together and ordained. The Jews should have asked why were we chosen? But they didn't. They just said we are chosen, and everybody else seemed to just kind of go with that. But the reason they were chosen was to be the historians of the discussion, the dissembling of information between God and man, and they did their job. Of course, they didn't do it in a way that makes it easy for the rest of us. It makes it easy for them to hide the information, which was not God's intent. He told them very plainly you are chosen. You can obediently follow and be basically the kings on earth, or you can choose not to, but you are responsible. So religion is something that has spread throughout the world, whether they were aware of the Israelites' interaction with God or not, and it has become world-embracing. I'm not going to go into religion, because religion is, in the Texas parlance, a dry hole. The only thing you'll get out of it is the ability to dig a deeper hole. It is the ability to dig a deeper hole. But this past Sunday was Easter Sunday and looking up for stuff to let people know.

This being the inaugural podcast, there are at least four things that I wanted to cover, but since everything was religiously motivated on that particular day, at least as far as YouTube was concerned, I decided to note two different episodes. Episodes One is one of Joe Rogan, episodes 1769, with Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson is a professor who got into trouble with the woke establishment in Canada, actually came to the defense of someone else who got in trouble and basically would not stand down, wouldn't sit down and shut up and let the woke establishment be, and because of this he has been chased, inundated and he has garnered for himself a bit of renown. And a little over two years ago, previous to this, he considered himself an atheist. He had a revelation that allowed him to consider the Bible and Christianity and, from what I understand now, for the past two years he has been going through the Christian religion and weighing it and weighing it, and I think that is a great opportunity for people who enjoy religion or think that it has some sort of bearing on what we should or should not be doing. So I'm going to recommend to you the Joe Rogan Experience no 1769, the Joe Rogan Experience number 1769, part of which is in Evolve your Mind, which is another channel, and the book that changed my life by Professor Peterson. I would say, look those both up. Do the Evolve your Mind, the book that changed my life first. It's less than 20 minutes long and towards the end of it he goes through things that we are going to have to go through, but he didn't really focus on them, and that's our job to focus on them.

So I wanted to relate to you that the Bible has at least four protocols. What I call protocols. A protocol is, by definition, a system of rules that explain the correct conduct and procedure that's expected to be followed in formal situations, and it's generally only used in politics or medicine, where people have to answer to someone looking over their shoulder. By the same token, the Bible has what I consider four protocols, and they are attitude and perception. They're both so intertwined that I consider that just the first protocol Language. You're probably aware the Bible was not written in English, even though there are at least 60 translations.

The third protocol is context. Even if you understand the language, the way it was used and how it was used and what it was meant to display is the context. And I consider that the third protocol. But the fourth protocol is content. What did God want us to get out of this? Why was this arranged this way? So what I call reading for content is something that I will go through. That's the next one. I actually did a podcast before this, but I didn't like it so I withdrew it. This is the official first. So if you have religious leanings or feel that religion is important, then I would suggest that you look up Professor Peterson and walk with him as he goes through his exploration from a one-time atheist point of view, and hopefully that will be interesting for you or awakening for you.

But the problem is the problem is that all this that we do, all that we think we are, all that we have built up over the past 6,000 years, is going down the wrong path. Now, what's the right path? I'm glad you asked that question. The right path is God's path. All right, if you realize that what you're doing is wrong. You are supposed to change what you are doing. We call that repent, that old term. Repent means change. Also tied into that is hey, say you're sorry, you made a mistake, repent, go back, change, do what you should be doing.

These are all important concepts, but they are overlaid on top of the very first wrong idea, and that's the one back in Genesis 3 that Eve had and shared with Adam, and that is listen to a source other than God, and God is the expression of reality. So if you listen to unreal sources and you pay attention to them and you follow them, you will get an unreal result. Now that does not mean that your brothers and sisters here on earth won't say oh, how wonderful they will, because they're following their own unreality. Again, that will have to be discussed next week when we go back to Genesis 3. Before that time, I want you to understand that we can make two basic choices, and that's to follow God's way or to follow our own way. Now the Israelites made the choice to follow their own way and in doing so they hid from the rest of us that which God had expressed to them. Not entirely. It shows up when you read, for content, what they did.

One of my mother's actually my grandmother's favorite sayings was actions speak louder than words, and they do, but it takes weighing them and making judgments. If you make judgments based on belief rather than reality, then you are compounding unreality. Now, this is not the first time you heard this. If you live in the United States, as I do. The founder said you should not deprive a man of his liberty, but especially of his life, unless you have absolute proof. I think the standard was within the shadow of a doubt. I'll get that exact quote for you next week too, because it's important.

Reality should be the only anvil on which you make decisions, the only threshold. The information you get should be judged on the basis of reality, not on what you feel or think or believe or what a trusted source has told you. Because, as we go back to Genesis 3, eve trusted a source that had an agenda that was not to her benefit. Adam trusted a source Eve that did not have an agenda but still had something that was not for his best interest. Now, we can forgive them because they were children and we are children, but we are children who have been given homework and have failed to follow through. True that homework from us a lot. We didn't get the straight stuff, but our text, our workbook and it is a remedial workbook is the Bible.

Most people don't realize that the Bible is a scientific instrument. Well, how can that be? It's just a book. The Bible contains the words that God spoke to man. In those words are the intentionality that God had for man, and he spoke to that in Jeremiah. If you do not read the Bible, then you are really cutting yourself off from reality, from reality.

I know that a lot of people want you to think that the Bible is somehow a fiction, a work of fiction. I thought that when I was young I set about proving that the Bible was just a work of fiction, that preachers used to keep people in their place. You can tell I was not particularly fond of being kept in my place, and I found out that preachers and religion have it wrong. They may mean well, and this was my mother's favorite. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Meaning well is not enough. You actually have to do something worthwhile, and that's where the Bible comes in. Today I have many Christian friends who tell me no, you shouldn't do anything except try to help your fellow man and tell him about Jesus. You don't need to improve yourself because you've been forgiven. That's not what Paul said, that's not what Jesus said and that's not what the Bible said. But that is what religion says. Don't worry about it, you're forgiven. And that's where the fourth protocol comes in.

Reading for content Look around you. Does this seem like a perfect world? Is this what God would do? No, this is what man has done For 6,000 plus years that we know of. We have done things our own way. We have made decisions based on belief rather than reality, but we have matured to the point where, unlike the Israelites 34, 3500 years ago, we don't have to do all one way or all the other way in order to continue forward, but we do have to reserve some of our decision making for reality. We need to structure our civilization in this case, restructure our civilization based on reality, not public ideals, not political desires, but on reality. Now, if we use the rest of the Bible to guide us, we'd be doing pretty good, but whether we do or not, we have to use our own understanding as much as it is to create reality and then to improve on that understanding.

My favorite verse in the Bible is Proverbs 3.5. I'll give you off the cuff. I'll give you my translation, because the translation that's in the Bible is a little skinny. The translation should read Trust only in the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind and soul, and do not rely on your own understanding. What that means is that there is only one basis for structured life, and that is not religion. That is instead building on what God has given us as a foundation.

You'll read later on in Daniel 5 about the dreams. It comes a little later, but Daniel is translating the dreams to the co-ruler of Babylon and he tells him what's going to happen. He doesn't want to hear it. There's no time left, and he waited until the last minute. And he waited until the last minute. But Daniel's telling them, not for his benefit but for ours, about the civilizations built on the feet of clay. The higher you get, the shinier they get. They're made of precious metals, they gleam, they are worthy of note, but they are all built, all built with feet of clay. Those feet of clay are are the beliefs and expectations that humans have and put out to be fulfilled. We have expectations of one another because we have beliefs. Beliefs engender expectations. It's good that we prod one another forward, but if we do so thinking that we humans are the final arbiter of what is good or bad, or clean or structurally capable, then we are foolish in the extreme. There was a standard before we existed. We need to responsibly affirm that standard and use it. Reality is the only standard that we should adhere to.

A friend asked me why, if I believed in God? And I said no, he said what you don't believe in God, I go. No, belief is way, way, way too shallow a thought to have about God. And he wanted to know what I meant. And I told him how old were you when you had your first belief and your parents, santa Claus, whatever? And he gave me an age earliest he could remember having. I said okay, did you breathe before then? Well, of course. Did you believe in air before then? Well, no, until I got older and had been told I didn't understand what air was, so I couldn't believe in it. I said, okay, that sounds rational. I said, okay, that sounds rational, but the fact of it is that you breathed not only before that time but after that time. So did your belief have anything to do with the reality of air? And he finally, I think, got the point that belief is only a reflection of you, your inadequacy, your childishness. It does not impact God.

Act God. We like to think that God will be sad at our lack of trying, but whether he is or not, it's on us. If we don't go forward and try to understand why God has created us as he did and the purpose for which he created us, then we're not really moving forward. So, who you are, the first question is up to you to determine. But most of us only determine it as reflections from other humans, and there's a whole lot of reality that does not contain humans, and you exist in that reality, whether you're reflected and can ascertain what the reflection is or not. So you don't really know who you are. Also, what you are, you don't know. I'll give you something to help.

Think of yourself from God's point of view. You think of yourself as an individual, and you are. But look at you from God's point of view. You are one of his children. You are a cell in the body of man. Now, as Paul told us, not all cells are the same. Of course he didn't know about cells, but he knew about different body functions. So he said, some are a foot, some are a hand Still all part of the body with different needs and different responsibilities. Well, we know about cells now, and if there are 7 people, billion people, on earth, then there are seven billion cells in the body of man. Now, how many of those cells are obediently following the word zero Because they don't know what it is or why it is?

And that's my job and I'm telling you you don't have to entirely retrain yourself throughout the entirety of your life to respond to God in godly ways, but you do need to start. You do need to set aside a particular portion, not for religious, which is a man-centered thing. Religion was created by men, for men, so that they didn't have to follow God's instructions but could only feel as though they were doing something by honoring God's instructions. And eventually we'll get there. Well, eventually it's here. In case you hadn't noticed it, you're living in biblical times. All the times are biblical times, and the part about wars and rumors of wars and general unrest, yeah, that's so. Now is the time when we need to turn and face what we've been running away from and actually begin to build a knowledge of what God wants for us and why he wanted it wants for us and why he wanted it.

Listening to other members of the human race and believing what they say is not uppermost in this. I do not want you to believe what I tell you. I want you to take what I tell you and do your best to prove it wrong. And if you can't prove it wrong, consider it as a possibility. And when three or four other things show up, you say, hmm, maybe he's a little closer to right than I originally thought. I still don't want you to believe me. I want you to think of it as probability. It's more probable that he had an idea about something that he could relate, that I could do, that I could structure my life and be responsible to God as well as my fellow man, because that's what it all boils down to.

God doesn't want just one of us to cross the finish line. One human, one single cell. He wants us all to cross the finish line. Now there are some who will fall along the way. That's not up to us. Read Matthew 13. That's not up to us. Read Matthew 13. It's not for us to determine who is or who is not on the beam. It is up for us to be responsible to God through what we see as reality and to get with one another and to try and fashion that reality into a structural underpinning, because there is no doubt that God wants us to explore the cosmos. He wants us to eventually come off this planet. The meek will inherit the earth, and that's fine it, the meek, will inherit the earth, and that's fine. But for the rest of us we need to structure a civilization so that we can go out there if for nothing else than to search for God, because he's also said that I will let whoever searches for me wholeheartedly find me.

So this is the basic things that I wanted to get across. Religion is man-made and will only suck up your time, efforts and ingenuity and leave you destitute. We should have figured out that God would put things into the Bible in a way that we would need to work to get it out, because it is a remedial workbook. If we had gotten with the plan 6,000 plus years ago in Eden and followed only what we were asked to do, then we wouldn't be here. If Eve hadn't made that original decision based on her belief that the apple looked good and the kicker was my buddy, the snake here said it would make me smarter. Now there's no indication that she was a blonde and I'm tasing, but it's the same point. Why would you listen to someone you don't know when the people you know, like your parents and friends, will tell you plenty of crap? That is not good, so why import it from outside? So the four protocols attitude, which enables perception, language, context and content.

The final one we have to be smart enough and work hard enough to dig this out and I will give you an example of that next podcast. I will read at least one sentence, one verse, and give you the breakdown. Remember that, especially Genesis, but all the books of the Bible. Really, genesis was word of mouth and God had it written down, instructed Moses to write it down so that it could not be changed and nothing was supposed to be changed if God said it. Well, you may notice that Deuteronomy, which was supposed to be the second book of the Bible, deutero actually comes fifth. Deutero actually comes fifth.

Moses has his own political problems with a bunch of people who turned out to be Jews. So he gave him the story of Exodus, which is important. Gave them the story of Exodus, which is important. But then Numbers and Leviticus, or the people who wanted rules to live by and a religion to adhere to so that they didn't have to worry about stepping their foot wrong. For God, it was somebody else's problem. All we had to do was listen to them and they would take care of it. It was their responsibility.

Wrong, it has always been your responsibility. If you are male, god directly expected you to come up with a solution. If you are female, you are supposed to support that man while he worked to discover what it would take to make things right. And, of course, we know we have not followed any of these instructions. So it's time to go back to the beginning, and I will do that starting next week. Thank you all, we have a great time and I will talk to you starting next week. Thank you all, we have a great time and I will talk to you again next week. © transcript Emily Beynon.

Transcribed by https://podium.page