Episode 12: Testing Beliefs, Finding Purpose: The Battle Between Good and Evil

Welcome, fellow humans born onto the nursery planet Earth. I am your host, TA, and this is the why Are we here on Earth podcast, and this is the why Are we here on Earth podcast. Last week's podcast was anchored around 9-11 and the feelings that we have about what we're still calling senseless violence, and I gave an example of a young woman named Megan Kellerman who pulled in front of someone at a drive-thru and that individual was not properly civilized. Let him loose in the populace. Anyway, he went on to kill her and then to kill himself because he was upset that things were not happening the way that he felt that they should, that things were not happening the way that he felt that they should. And this was compounded by the police chief saying we may never know why he did this, and it seemed to me to be pretty apparent once you go through his recent history. Now, no one ever looked into what led up to that, and that's a shame, because that's where the lesson is, because we do need to understand these things, not just assign a value to it so we can put it behind us, off to the side. Whatever we really do need to understand not only why this is happening, but why it's affecting us the way it is. And I told you why, and that's last week.

I read two things that I generally start my programs off with. The first one is do not believe what I tell you. Use it as information to check into what I am telling you and make a decision based on reality. It's going to be very hard because all your decision-making, all your evaluation experience has been on what other people think is germane is acceptable by those in your civilization, the civilization in which you were raised in. So it's going to be tough. Every human decision ever made is made on what we think and feel. What do we feel is right, is good, is acceptable within the community? It's all human, and this is exactly the opposite of what God told us to do. God told us to use logic and then manipulate that by reason to come to a decision, but to check that decision with wisdom. And I find that no one seems to be too upset with what logic is Reason. You know you can. There are some people who think certain things and attitudes are reasonable and others who do not. But at least if you realize that you are trying to modify logic with reason, or trying to modify logic with reason. Hopefully you will at one point expand what you think is reasonable to get closer to reality. But wisdom is one that I find an awful lot of differences in opinion over. So my entire point was to get you to think more like God, which is what Jesus told us to do, and when you do that, you will use reality as your bar, not perception, not what you think should be.

So with this, I think well, is there somewhere in the Bible where God was asked what was wisdom? And it turns out there was. Jeremiah asked God and in chapter 6, relates what it is. I should have that in front of me so I can read it off for you. I did have it earlier, but I don't right now. It's basically to look what has happened and the ones that worked out well, keep those. Look to the paths that you have trod and what worked out for good, keep that. So basically, wisdom is acquired experiential knowledge that resulted in good effects. Kind of reminds you of the checks and balances system we have here in the United States, at least the way it was set up.

So last week I gave you a second thing to think about, and that was violence. That does not seem to further an acknowledged agenda is listed as quote senseless unquote, because we have yet to acknowledge the root cause the rejection of authority backed by power as an acceptable zeitgeist for maturing into our future. I know that's going to be something you're going to have to break up and go over in your mind, and that is perfectly fine as is. It is a pretty cogent sentence, but it all depends on you understanding that every civilization, even before there was civilization, all the way back to the Garden of Eden power backed by authority, In other words, people looked at God's power and the authority he had and they wanted that. So they took that for themselves and made themselves the authority and backed up what they wanted with power. If you didn't like it, they'd kill you. Now, in European, which is where we're founded from, European, part of this was if you don't like what we tell you, we will fight you until you knuckle under and say, yeah, you're too powerful, so you must be right. Might makes right. Well, you didn't really have to change your heart, but you did have to change what you did. That's what the Inquisition was all about. That was the attitude that existed then and it still exists now.

The other side of the coin, that same coin of Meg Meeks Wright, is we, our religion. 9-11 last week. Our religion is so strong that we will die to prove that our religion is stronger than yours, and we will kill as many of you as we can while we're doing it and show how powerful we are because of our religion. This is something that we can go back and forth about and will never agree about, and that's okay, because all religions are man-made, Every last one. God does not have a religion. God does not need a religion. He knows what's going on. We don't, we humans, and when we look at God from our own human perspective, we tend to impute things that are not necessarily so. But if we accept them and quote, believe, unquote in them, we go forward feeling as though we have justified what we are doing. So back to the Garden of Eden, where Eve felt that the apple looked good and would therefore taste good, so it must be good for her. And we know now, of course, that that is incorrect. That is not a proper justification for doing something.

Well, this week, post the 9-11 episode, I'm going to give you a new two. I'm going to give you a new two, and the new two is we need to have various Bible translations done using God's method for decision making rather than our own method for decision making, rather than our own method for decision making. So God uses logic and reason checked by wisdom and encourages us to do the same, and we have yet to respond to that fully. We do use it occasionally, but always to our own perspective instead of using God's perspective. Again, that's something Jesus told us to do, but we have never really tried. It's all in the Bible, mainly in the Old Testament, exactly what to do and how to do it and why you should do it, but we don't really listen to that, especially if you're a Christian and the New Testament of yours and you've been inundated with teachings from the New Testament and very few from the Old One maybe a little 11th like salt you know well this refers to that and then you'll get a teaching from the New Testament.

The reason that we need new translations that are done from reality and instead of perception is because two weeks ago, I mentioned on the program about Elohim and how God was chosen for his role as our God by Elohim, and the Elohim or the Council of Elders would be the closest we can come to it, and I referred you to Genesis 1. Well, I went to check Genesis 1 and I found that in all the English translations except for two, Elohim has been removed. The translators translated it to be God. I don't know when this happened, because that's not the way I read it when I was a youngster, Sometime between then and now. In a Bible translation I would have got it was maybe translated as early as the 40s or 50s, and the 20th century has now been changed, so that you will not get that, Unless you look up the NOG Names of God translation, which I have no experience in.

I am going to investigate it and the OJB, or the Old Jewish Bible, and Genesis 2 and 3 is very important to understand that. The way it was written by the people who understood it then is not the way we're getting it now. We're getting the only the dumbed-down version, but the incomplete information version. We can only make decisions based on what we read and think and feel, and so the information that we're being given has been removed. The depth of it has been removed. The depth of it has been removed. A colloquialism has been inserted instead.

Most of us do not understand what the job of being a God is. We've never looked at it. We've never looked at what God said his job was. If you look at what he said it was and if you look at his actions and attitudes after that, all throughout the Old Testament, then you will see it was to be a shepherd, but not to lead sheep to the slaughter, but to lead sheep to a healthy method for growing into the children that he expected us to become on the way to becoming adults us to become on the way to becoming adults. So that may be a mixing of metaphors, but the whole idea is that he was not only our sponsor here, but our guide, our director. He was responsible for getting us up to speed and in order for us to figure out that what we wanted was not necessarily what was best for us, God gave us our head. God gave us our head and allowed us to go astray. I don't know if he thought we might come back on our own at some point and what that point would be, but I do know that he bargained with the Israelites. But I do know that he bargained with the Israelites apparently the Levites when they were putting together the contract for who would be responsible for what you know, what one side would do and what the other side would get on account of it, on account of it and sometime during that contract and it is not expressed in the Bible.

It is, however, discussed in Jewish texts. Among rabbis there was the idea that mankind would be given up to six quote God years unquote, which they understood and they declared was a thousand years. So that among themselves they discuss that we have 216 years left within that 6,000 year period. Well, they wanted it to be at the end of that 6,000 year period and they let that desire cloud their judgment. But they have been honest enough with each other so that they're keeping track and one of their rabbis has declared for discussion that the 216 years left would be like the evening before the Sabbath, that at sundown, the day before, they start to celebrate Sabbath to recognize what they've done, ask forgiveness, whatever else they need to do, because the Sabbath day should be kept holy. But they start that, preparing for that, of course, the day before, but they started at sundown on friday and they're saying that. She said.

This rabbi said that the 216 years is like the evening before sabbath and we should take it as an advisement. It is coming, it will not be denied and we need to respond to it Now. How it should be responded to has not been determined or discussed at any great length. This is something that is just now being discussed, so if I can get an ear into that, I will and I'll report what's happening. But the fact is that things are changing. I heard a song the other day by the Buffalo Springfield and it realized that something's happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. Those are words from the song, but there are many, many other, and for some reason they seem to be played more often now than they were in the past.

I don't know if people who are selecting these things are responding to public comments, but the fact is that we are finally arriving and we haven't come here yet, but we're finally arriving at the knowledge that things are not as well structured as we thought they were. What marketplace is concerned marketplace of ideas and knowledge and that there is more to come. And that is true, but it's only a thought right now and we need to double down on this and think all right, what happens if everything I've done, everything I've thought, all the decisions I've made were made to a ideal that is not correct. The ideal was what I was taught, the perspective I gathered growing up. What the people around me think is germane. The people whose ideas I want to align with want to align with. What if they're wrong? And I'm jumping in on this because it sounds so good to me? But what if their decisions are not well-founded? Could all this collapse?

Now, when you start thinking in that fashion, then you'll realize wait a minute, what is the underpinning for everything that I have and believe is germane you will eventually come back to, if you're honest with yourself, everything that you believe is something that has been human, certified. Other humans have accepted it as reasonable, and therefore you did too. Whatever you felt about those other humans that allowed you to accept it, did that betray you, or is that just something that you need to deal with? Well, all this is true and ongoing. It is not what was promoted to us in the Old Testament.

Promoted to us in the Old Testament, the methodology that was promoted to us was to use God's belief in us as a foundation. God assumes that we will succeed. He would like for us to come to this realization on our own, that we need him as a foundation, but of course that's what all the religious people have said. And then they tell you to do things their way and this is not what the Bible says and this is not what the Bible says. And while the Bible is being changed by religious translators who think they're doing it to make things easier for you to understand, when in reality they are hiding what the depth of the Bible is trying to get across to us, then I think you can see from that the understanding that perhaps I'm not making decisions on a foundation that is secure enough that the decisions will have impact and import, not only in my life but in the life of my civilization, what we need to go forward.

So this is the circumstance that I'm trying to get across to you, that I'm trying to get across to you the idea that all human decisions are based on thoughts, feelings, justifications that we have given ourselves, based on what we think is germane and true and good and righteous Not what God said is true and righteous, not what God said is true and righteous and that we should go back to that older standard and begin to build again Use logic, manipulated by reason and checked by wisdom the reason that we need to do this is because we've been told and it looks as though it's happening right around us that all that man has built, based on his perception of reality, has the ability to go away unless it is secured by God's perception of reality and God is reality, so his perception is reality. We need to transform all that we've built and attach it to the structure that God has given us, the structure of reality. All these things are easy to say and hard to do, and I understand completely, because I was raised, just as you were, in making decisions based on human expectations and desires, based on human expectations and desires, knowledge and beliefs, which are all humans have always made decisions based on, Whereas God says, made decisions based on reality, manipulated by reason, but checked by wisdom. So if we set up a different decision-making machine, using God's method, and we something that is buildable and structural into the future, that if we start now, we can begin to build the base, the cornerstone, if you will that will surround the foundation that God has given us Now. All this is words, and I have to find examples for you that will help you.

So this past week in the news we had a post on a site, a social media site, about pets going missing in and around a particular town in Ohio that had an awful lot of emigres I don't know if they are, I don't know if they are legal or illegal immigrants but from one specific area, Haiti, which is a very poor area, and someone was complaining because pain in Springfield, and Springfield has apparently had an awful lot of ducks and geese and public animals go missing and it is thought that this might be the reason, and a lot of people are throwing stones, and the idea that these are people that live in the locale and that are causing problems, causing and calling in threats to schools is incorrect. Apparently, the state of Ohio has determined that these threats are coming from overseas, from a country that has a desire to destabilize the United States and the people within it and to get us fighting with one another and to keep us fighting so that we won't see what is happening. We will just continue the fight. But all that, of course, wasn't known when it was thrown out into the public marketplace. It's only been reported recently and I'm not sure that the entire message got to everyone that this is coming from overseas, these issues and these problems fanning the flames.

But it recalled to me a time in the Bible the only time I can recall when an example was given of a pet being consumed by a rich man, and that is Nathan going to King David, and all this happened about 3,000 years ago. And all this happened about 3,000 years ago. And he came today and said what would you say, as king, as judge over Israel, about a person who took a lamb? That was all that this one individual owned, and whether they made recompense for the meat that the lamb was or not, it was the childhood friend, the pet of the daughter of the owner. But the rich man took the lamb and served it up to his guests. What would you say about that individual? Of course, David got on his high horse and condemned that person and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And when Nathan turned to him and said well, that person is you, and the realization struck David that he was doing something to try and cover up an issue that was embarrassing to him, and he had done so by taking something that didn't belong to him and by promoting it to others.

Now, that may be a little deep. You can go ahead and look it up. I think it's in 2 Kings. I'd have to look that up. But at the same point you can just you can look up David Nathan and see what happens, the issue being that a pet is something that is social and may be placed upon a food item, but when another is hungry and doesn't realize the connection between an individual and what this person sees as a food item, that all bets are off. It seems that the utility as a food item for that individual outweighs any other considerations, and that's because this individual's perspective is altered by being hungry and not having enough food.

Well, I'm sure the people at church, when they hear this, will say oh well, we should ship them food. You know, and what happened to the churches? That they didn't get enough food, that they went hunting for pets. A lot of these people feel that it is their job to supply food for their family and don't necessarily want to ask for help because in the country they came for there are a lot of what shall we say threads from that help. There are expectations. Things are not given without there being some sort of recompense, if not now, in the future, and you have to take that into account, whereas an animal wandering freely must not belong quote unquote to anyone. So it's fair game. Anyone, so it's fair game.

And then when people look at it as, oh my goodness, my pet that I cherished was taken for food without my permission, you need to turn and look at yourself in the mirror and say, all right, look what happened. This person was hungry, they found food and they ate it. They did not ask me, they didn't come into my house and take the pet, they didn't steal it from me, they did not know that it was mine, it was wandering. And should I be trying to reserve something for myself because of feelings that I have when my fellow man is going without? So, yes, these are all questions that should be asked, but the main thing, the thing that David realized and that we all need to realize that David realized and that we all need to realize is that he was making decisions based on his perspective and his perspective was not based in reality.

You need to understand that this is a biblical truism all through the Bible, Old Testament and New. This is the thing that they are trying to get across to you, All these different writers, from all these different perspectives, even if they didn't know that this was the point that it has been trying to get across to you have been preserved by God for us. If we have not created a perspective based on reality and set it on God's foundation, make decisions using logic manipulated by reason and then checked by wisdom, then everything we're doing can be washed away because it is not reality-based. That is the entire thing that I am trying to get across and have always been trying to get across. You make decisions based on your perspective. Everybody's perspective is slightly different. So when you reach out to other humans hey, is this reasonable and rational for me to think this way? And they say yes, and you certify your perspective by saying, well, they all agree with it, you are still founding your house on shifting sands, the shifting sands of human perception and acceptance of perspective as reality.

That's incorrect reality. That's incorrect. And the modern take at oh well, that's your reality, that's your truth and everyone has their own, so that's okay is completely incorrect. If you have a different reality than someone else, you're wrong. If you see things in a different way and want other people to see them in your way. Realize how connected to reality is your situation, your perspective, your ideals. If you look at it in that light and you go. Well, I don't know, but I still think that this would be good if people thought this way. Why do you think that way? Because the people that you think are good and mean well think that way.

What does God think? What does God think? What does reality think? Well, reality doesn't think. It's just there, it's real. That's true. But God is there and he responds to reality because he's the foundation for it. At least, that's what the Bible says.

Now, how correct is the Bible? Remember, it was written by humans who perceive things in the situations that they were in. The early perceptions were not clouded by an awful lot of material goods, so it was easier to make perceptions closer to the bone. So when you go all the way back into Genesis 1 and 2, and you read an unedited version, a undumbed down, a not quite so confusing translation, You'll find in Genesis, chapter 2, that the breath of life, the breathing of the spirit into the body, was called Ruach Elohim. Now, we have given it a nickname to make it easier for us to talk about breath of life. But it was not breath. The body was alive. What you need to understand is that exactly what Jesus said in John 6, that only your soul is eternal. Your body is not. It was never meant to be. No matter how long a life you have in that body, the lessons that you learn will only be included in the soul.

Now, how do we understand this? Not well, because we've never looked into it, and that's one of my main issues. We do not look into these things, we just keep going as though they are unimportant. And they are very definitely important. When I was asked, when I made a smart-ass comment in a previous Bible study saying, well, I'm not Jesus, and then a man who was near death said are you sure of that? It hit me the way David got struck by Nathan's example that I did not know because I had not investigated it and even though I thought I was righteous to say such a thing from a human standpoint, my foundation was only a human standpoint, it was not God's foundation. And that's when I started digging into things and finding out oh, my goodness gracious, the stuff that the various religions tell us is so far off base in so many respects. It's not that they have changed the words, although that apparently is happening now it's just they've said this is what it says, but this is what it means, and then they give you the meaning that is religious and backs up what they say, rather than the meaning that it was written with and meant to direct us to. Well, I see now that I've gone a bit longer than I should have. This is something I could talk about all day, as you can tell, and it's something that we will come back to, but I'm going to end this now because my time is up and I'm sorry I went a little long.

Fact of the matter is, the perspective that you have that allows you to make decisions and feel that those decisions are correct, is based entirely on human presuppositions that may not be true and usually are not, are not. So you are making decisions based on not just a shoddy foundation, a trembling foundation, and you need to move aside to the foundation that God has given us his belief in us and set up a logic and reality-based decision-making system. Use logic, manipulated by reason, then checked with wisdom, to make decisions. If you're not sure what wisdom is, go to Jeremiah 6.

I think it begins in verse 11. And read that and you'll understand what God thinks wisdom is. And use that and look at everything that your human life brings you and say, all right, this is the way I would have felt, without thinking about it much, because I had already built up this perspective. But from God's point of view, what would this look like? And start turning the crank on that decision-making machine that you've built on God's foundation. With that I'll sign off and we'll talk to you next week. Thank you.