42 What Matters?

Just follow me closely here, dear tour companion.

Attentive reader, we do not have a Star Trek/Mr. Spock situation going on in the Godhead. Nor do we have a James Kirk situation here.

God did not fear and suppress all emotion like Mr. Spock and the Vulcans.

God did not wrestle inexpertly with his feelings like Captain Kirk and his crew.

God, before creation, was a purely spiritual being; with a carefully edited set of emotions; seamlessly infused into His consciousness, soul, mind, thinking, reasoning, memory, intellect and choice; all ruled by the virtue of pure goodness. And He had a solid comprehension of all the ramifications of evil and its companion emotions, and He was in charge of it all. Don’t blame Him for loosing evil.

The creation of a cosmos, a universe, a shining world, an earthly paradise, a perfect place populated by amazing, living and conscious beings, reigning over living creatures great and small and in glorious relationship with the excellent, loving and attentive Creator—that. . . that, gentle reader, is the Great Idea God had. That was God’s brilliant idea of what a Great Creation should look like. And it is a sublime and worthy concept. That is a Creation full of Great Glory, indeed! Grant Him that!

Yes, I know that when the Godhead committed to this Great Glory of a choice-based Creation, it was full-knowing that its Great Glory would be corrupted, things would get messy, and that there would be extreme and difficult times ahead.

Yes, I know that He moved on with Creation even in the face of this dreadful knowledge.

Yes, if it had been up to me, I probably would have cringed away from the whole thing in cowardly discomfort. But that’s little-ole-me. In the face of it all, our noble Godhead was still resolved to bring forth the Creation.

And after the creation, yes, God had to wrestle with evil and emotion in a way never before His problem; but that does not diminish His cause. His cause was righteous, gentle reader. This truth matters. His cause was just.

Creation has always been and is, gentle reader, a roller coaster ride, yes indeed. And I agree that we need go no further than a World History book or the USA Today to have that readily confirmed for us. And, yes, God also agrees that the Creation is in ruins and He speaks in scripture of his shock and horror that humanity can routinely have nothing but evil on its mind; that humanity, again and again, has it in it to ruthlessly betray, reject, attack and destroy goodness; that humanity can and does callously inflict pain, defame and wrong and destroy others with no sense of shame.

And more.

But remember, always remember, gentle reader, His cause is just! The dedication of our God, a being of infinite resource and rich mind-emotion bonds, to a concept of a Great Creation was, and is, and always will be sublime and worthy. And, for that reason, and if only for that reason, we should always remember: His cause is just.

And that matters.

To be continued . . .

41 Consolation

I assure you, sturdy tour companion, that if you bear with me on this, you will arrive at the conclusion of the section on emotion stunned by the heart for Creation set ablaze in the Godhead all-in-a-moment before Creation began.

There is yet another form of goodness-as-antidote-for-evil in God’s pre-Creation provision plan that I would be remiss to leave out at this particular time, patient reader. After all, without some ultimate promise of pure goodness eliminating foreseen evil, I think that you might agree with me that God being who He is could not have embarked upon the Creation at all. There had to be some certain reward available for all the trouble of the Creation to justify the perilous act of Creation. And that reward, this time, would take the form of a simple emotion: consolation (a comfort to somebody who is upset or disappointed).

You see, it would have been of great comfort to God to always be able to look forward to the certain coming of real consolation. Consolation once unnecessary to the Godhead now becomes an all-consuming emotional need.

What agent could deliver such consolation? you must be wondering.

Gentle reader, God could not look forward to human beings offering that consolation.

Human beings would resist His goodness throughout Creation.

Human beings would even spurn His goodness.

Human beings would never want to even entertain any possibility that human choice is a critical issue in addressing evil, or that Creation is a joint venture between God and man, much less that they might serve as instruments of inspiration and consolation to the Godhead in this deadly duel between good and unleashed evil. No, instead, over all of time, human beings will consistently and noisily choose the position of critic of God and object when God does not arbitrarily “control” evil, somehow thinking it’s a one-sided thing—all up to Him--even though He got NO cooperation from human beings! A perverse lot, aren’t we? No consolation there.

Gentle reader, Christ Jesus was always the ultimate solution to evil conceived in that instant before Creation that we have been pondering.

It can be no surprise to you or me that in the blaze of righteous indignation, pity and anguish kindled in that moment of pre-Creation by God’s revulsion to evil, His Son arose in the consensus of the Godhead community as the Great Consolation—the figure of pure goodness and self-sacrifice and the Victor-to-be over all evil. No preamble or discussion is needed here (in my mind) to declare this truth. When all else failed, and that time would come, Jesus Christ would become the living and eternal embodiment of Consolation. He would step forward into Creation as the shining agent of Consolation. He and only He would become the Great Consolation.

You see, pre-Creation, the Godhead understood that with the Creation and fall, a new energy level of emotion would run high in the Godhead, require greater effort of control and ultimately exact a brutal price from the Godhead. With the Creation and fall, an opposing entity would walk the earth, opposing ideology would spread like weeds and sin-infected flesh would torture and disable mankind. And it was then in the pre-Creation moment, that God knew that only at great personal sacrifice could all ever be brought right again.

I think we can agree, gentle reader, that once unleashed, evil always had only one possible opponent—God. God became the only truly viable candidate to rein-in evil and its bitterly troublesome emotions (hatred, condemnation, revenge, murder and so on) and to then establish love, compassion, mercy and forgiveness over them all. It’s not a man-sized undertaking.

It was a dear price to pay—to sacrifice Himself— gentle reader, but willing He was, from the very beginning. It is fair to say that this sacrifice of God in the flesh became excruciatingly painful for both the persons of the Godhead—painful for Father and Holy Spirit who remained absent from the flesh, painful for Jesus Christ, the person of the Godhead who entered the flesh.

You know the old saying, if you want something done right then do it yourself.

In a flash of knowing the Godhead realized pre-Creation that it would have to be the Son who would overcome evil. And when the pure goodness of the Son victoriously surmounted the terrible pain requisite to more than conquer unleashed evil, then simultaneously all evil insult to the Godhead would be satisfied and God’s choice to venture into the Creation . . . vindicated.

And so He came— Christ Jesus came to take the punishment for evil, all because pure goodness demanded nothing less and it was upon pure goodness that the Godhead would always stand.

Consolation: a gift of God’s self to Himself . . . and to all Creation.

Jesus Christ—the Great Consolation.

To be continued . . .

40 Righteous Indignation

Righteous indignation plays a great role in God’s solution-making.

Scripture demonstrates that there is progression involved in every emotion in the Godhead, faithful tour companion.

A sample of such progressions in the Godhead (among many possible) includes the following (God sanctioned and endorsed) emotional dynamics:

Sympathy can proceed to compassion. ( Matthew 9:36)

Respect can proceed to tender affection. (1 John 4:19)

Anger (a strong feeling of grievance and displeasure) can proceed to righteous indignation (justifiable anger because something is unfair or unreasonable). (John 2:14-16)

And righteous indignation can proceed to . . . wrath. (Romans 1:18)

As I deduce from scripture’s portrait of God’s state of mind at and during creation (God endorses reasonable, respectful thinking), neither anger, nor righteous indignation, nor wrath was active in the Godhead before the aha-moment of creation. The emotional thermostat of the Godhead community was set at peace.

With the advent of the Creation aha-moment and the dangers latent in it, the emotional gauge spikes. The emotions of anger, righteous indignation and wrath (which I label stress reactions) shoot off the charts as they return in force. Precipitants of the stress reaction abound, including disappointment, hurt, pain, loss and a sense of betrayal. These and more chaotic emotions mingle for a fraction of a second with His thinking and reasoning but under the influence of His commitment to pure goodness, are quickly modulated by His established emotional pattern, a pattern based on respect for others, the tender affection shared within the Godhead and the compassionate climate of the Godhead community (Father, Son and Holy Spirit).

By exertion of His will emotion settles to manageable levels. And God begins dealing with feelings previously alien to His resolved condition.

The stress reaction (a meaningful dynamic in the creative process) kindles compensation behaviors in the Godhead. Several coping mechanisms come into play, some previously mentioned.

In His thinking and reasoning:

1. All possible emotions are cognitively sorted and emotion inappropriate to God’s value system is eternally banned from the Godhead.
2. In His mind, God commits to a policy of emotional accountability. Emotional territories of expression are defined. Anger will be short-lived. Righteous indignation will be purposeful. Wrath will be cleansing. Justice will be merciful. Love will be reliable. God will have a heart for His people. And so on.
3. Enriched by righteous emotion, the politics of governing emerge: In both the spiritual and physical world, He will balance cleansing and purging, employ protection and provision and combine personal intervention with arguments promoting reasonable behavior and reasonable choice among all beings.
4. The provision of good against evil aligns in His mind.
5. The emotions of anger, righteous indignation and wrath gain new utility against evil. God places forgiveness in the foreground of relationships as the antidotes to anger and righteous indignation, including relenting and restoration as functions of forgiveness. And wrath becomes the last measure against lawlessness. For wrath, there will be no antidote.

In His actions:

A cascade of possibilities blends with His stress emotions and emerges as an action plan. Most possibilities—nurtured by mercy—involve corrective action, or measures to restrict or contain evil throughout Creation, though some measures go farther than that, calling for confrontation, condemnation, judgment and punishment of spiritual or embodied evil. Such punishments may include exile or destruction or other means.

For example, respecting wrath as a justifiable emotion and policy, God resolves to engage evil. As we have seen earlier, in the “heavenlies”, evil foreseen in the coming person of Satan and His minions will be resisted. He foresees the necessity to marshal forces for war. He wills to overcome, judge and sentence evil, establishing Himself as Judge.

In the physical world, an assortment of provision is made for law and order, featuring tiers of resource. Foreseeing the event of failure of the Tree and of Reasonable Choice, God conceives alternative solutions—a Godly nation to be a light to the earthly nations (Israel). 10 Commandments for a behavior model. And a just yet compassionate system of law enforcement is established for protection of the people. A personal approach to relationship between God and human beings (the pinnacle achievement of His Creation) is composed.

To foster domestic tranquility among human beings, courts are planned. They will be convened by governments and presided over by judges, kings, or priests (rank and position will develop among people as a result of the fall) and are conceived to judge with fairness and mercy. Earthly armies are projected as defenders of the good on the national level. Abusers of these good plans are to be seen as culpable (guilty and subject to blame and punishment).

Further, the individual is freed of the personal burden to enforce justice—the burden goes to the state. Detailed evaluations of evil action—murder, theft, violence, perversity, lawlessness and wickedness are envisioned and designated for oversight by lawful representatives of the system, including ultimate resolution of such predicaments by appropriate means, even so far as (in order to defend and protect the public good) claiming life for taking of life.

At every turn, God’s emotion molds and fashion the creation of good government and policy.

As for Himself, God the Father anticipates with pleasure plans to walk the earth. And when Creation falls, in sorrow, plans His own withdrawal from the earthly realm. Moved by compassion, to replace His presence on earth, He will faithfully send messenger angels and prophets and pre-incarnate expeditions of God the Son into the physical world. Simultaneously, selective visitations by Holy Spirit are scheduled.

God’s energy moves on.

His vision lovingly embraces created beings—human beings, animal beings and other living creatures.

Prayer” as a forum-model is approved for communication and the meeting of minds.

He establishes the model of thinking about Him and remembering Him as requisite for relationship of human beings with Him. (John 1:28)

The Plan gathers substance: Loving relationship with human beings becomes paramount in His mind. He will create human beings specifically for relationship with Him (Genesis 1:26). Peace, love, forgiveness, anger, righteous indignation and wrath become emotional pillars of relationship. And stories of the dynamics involved in appropriate and inappropriate progression of emotion by God (appropriate) and man (both appropriate and inappropriate) will one day be found in page after page of the Bible, an enduring guide to relationships formed of the very breath of God for the benefit of any that open its cover.

His Purpose becomes clear: He will love human beings and they will love Him.

His Position develops: He will never leave human beings or forsake them.

His Promise forms: He will always delight in again and again providing for and protecting human beings.

All of this and more triggered by righteous indignation.

It is critical, thoughtful companion, in any sort-out to attempt to realize the importance of what we find as we go, in case we might err and too casually dismiss the value of those findings. It matters what pleases or displeases God. It matters how God handles emotion. His methods become a priceless model for us. It matters what God likes or dislikes.

I will always urge one and all to try to understand the character or God—what elements and boundaries of existence He defines and recommends, and the discipline, limitations and restrictions He by His own choice and in His pure goodness places upon Himself.

In the words of a Song of Worship: “Our God is an awesome God! He reigns from heaven above. With wisdom, power and love. Our God is an awesome God. Our God is an awesome God. Our God is an awesome . . . God! (Songs 4 Worship: Shout to the Lord, Disc 2, #3 Awesome God)

To be continued . . .

39 God Offended

The state of reflective consciousness out of which pours the supply of the Creation is an amazing state. Mulling it over a bit can divine many reasonable presumptions (something believed without actual evidence) concerning that time frame. Remember though, dear tour companion, presumption comes from the word presume and can have a bit of an outrageous connotation to it.

I chose the word presumption deliberately because the assumptions I frequently make while blogging may or may not be literally correct, only God knows. Actually, in my desire to be descriptive I formally concede that I may well err in factuality. But since not a one of us knows the literal facts concerning God or pre-Creation, it seems to me that we can allow reasonable presumptions into our discussions of both and not offend God as long as our reason remains submitted to pure goodness.

If this reasoning suits you, then on we go.

Our tour of emotion continues its meandering way.

Today, we will explore, in more depth, how emotion in the Godhead in pre-Creation not only enriches His mind but also influences the function of His mind. Specifically, how emotion influences His choice.

In the time of pre-Creation when God’s active emotional range is first blissful while summering, choice is not active. Choice has put the Godhead into the summering state that I imagine as somewhat like suspended animation.

But after an aha-moment, the Godhead is roused to a state of reflective consciousness, gathers energy and embarks upon an inspired project: Creation. It is here in this state that stand-by emotions come back online automatically. Amidst a sudden storm of possibilities there appears a crowd of newly active emotions. God’s intellect responds gracefully, expanding seamlessly to accommodate the moment, more than able to grasp the challenges inherent in this new moment.

His capacity for all-knowing next presents Him with terrible scenarios lifted from the Creation. I can imagine His thinking flooded with swarms of previously irrelevant emotions, emotions consisting of yearnings, zeal, passions, sorrow, compassion, forgiveness, righteous indignation, revulsion, regret, even searing, raw and ugly emotions are momentarily unleashed. He deals with them all consciously, by instantly identifying and re-evaluating them in a mille-second, instantly choosing among them and instantly re-containing those that offend Him while allowing others. And simultaneously, His conviction that pure goodness is the antidote to evil suddenly coalesces.

Continuing to grapple with the aha-moment, a plan to compensate for malignancy embedded in the Creation arises in the mind of the Godhead. We, dear tour companions, have already been comforted by being allowed to encounter one of the many forms of God’s compensation for evil in the spiritual world (the ejection of Satan and angels who desert with him) and two forms of God’s compensation for evil in the physical world: God offended (caused to feel anger or pain) by the prospect of evil in the physical world conceives The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and Reasonable Choice. But, there are more of God’s solutions to evil—many, many more.

I introduced this section by stating that emotion in the Godhead helps make God’s decisions what they are—molds them, fashions and polishes them. Thus I have just made the reasonable presumption that the prospect of evil pre-Creation instantly offended God, and as a result, His anger is provoked.

Let’s examine now how more of God’s solutions Pre-Creation are impacted by this anger—by His righteous indignation.

To be continued. . .

38 Troublesome Evil & The Big Choice

The promised revelation of God’s approach to handling troublesome evil and the brutal torment, pain and suffering inherent in it has finally arrived!

Dear reader, it is quite gripping to delve into an inclusive description of God’s Pre-Creation Plan to overcome evil as a result of the Creation. But this subject is really loaded and we can only cover it a bit at a time. So, of necessity, we will be discussing it throughout many coming blogs.

Of course, we have seen so far in this tour of soul in the person of the Godhead that God’s being and doing are absolutely ruled by pure goodness. Therefore it is no stretch to say (and I can confidently propose) that any plan God would create for handling troublesome evil would have to be exclusively composed of good and only good measures. In fact, scripture teaches “overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21b)” and that is because pure good is the only approach God in His commitment to pure goodness would ever condone.

Bottom line?

Goodness itself becomes God’s overarching, general solution to handling troublesome evil—so I have not deceived you that answers would be yours in this blog, dear tour companion. You do now know how God handles evil—with good; but note, what makes His Pre-Creation Plan such a loaded subject is that His goodness will be taking many forms throughout the Creation as appropriate to the issue, whether large or small!

Thus the Pre-Creation Plan begins something like this:

The spiritual world of the “heavenlies” will be God’s Kingdom. Here, its newly created population will answer directly to the Godhead and to the Godhead alone.

Knowing war will erupt in this Kingdom, God commits to a policy of exclusion of rebellion (evil) by throwing out all population members that rebel against His rule. This exile will be without recourse. Reconciliation will never be achieved. Those exiled will never regain citizenship in God’s Kingdom, may only on occasion be allowed to petition God, the Father, through one representative (Satan, the Adversary), but will be allowed to roam earth.

The physical world of Creation as conceived and executed by the Godhead will be a polar environment, meaning an environment consisting of opposites, opposites sustained by balance—up and down, black and white, hot and cold and so on.

Therefore, to provide against evil in the physical world, God imitates His setup in the Godhead and in the spiritual realm . . . and physically separates evil from good, off-lines evil so to speak, and sequesters it . . . in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

As long as mankind chooses to rely on God’s rule and reason (in other words, is committed to the rule of pure goodness), God will personally provide for and protect mankind from all evil, since He will see that choice as indicative of their desire for Him to be involved in their lives, to be their solution.

Genesis 2:8-9 “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

In the physical world of polar opposites, good now exists. And evil exists. Though contained, evil exists. And the balance is kept—safely.

But evil stayed contained and harmless only as long as it was left well-enough alone.

Genesis 2:16-17 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

But eat, and things will change, confides God.

In this succinct communication, God gives mankind the big choice, as I term it, concerning troublesome evil. If mankind avoids the tree as instructed, all will be well. If not? Well, God’s counsel concerning the poisonous nature of the fruit of the tree gave mankind good reason to go without the knowledge of evil, of that we can be sure. But we also can be sure that should they not get on-board with God’s reasoning, trouble, big trouble would ensue. And, as we all know, that it did.

Thus the first form and second form of many to come for handling troublesome evil in the physical world became the tree and reason, in that order. In the tree, God overcame evil with good! With persuasive arguments He launched His relationship based on reasonable choice with mankind.

Anyway, leaving this option of choice between knowing and not knowing about good and evil (or having to deal with it) open to mankind must have been very painful to God, considering how superior He knew existing in an exclusive state of pure goodness to be. In the Godhead, thoughts, feelings, and will all existed under control—disciplined, in a state of sublime resolution. God knows emotions well and has selected for the best ones and lives comfortably with them. He wanted the same for us. Mankind was offered the same sublime situation. Mankind did not embrace that situation. Sadly enough, instead, mankind blundered horribly and sin emerged from its restriction to the tree.

Too bad we dropped the ball (er. . . the apple that is) on that whole pure goodness vs. emotion vs. evil thing, isn’t it?

To be continued . . .