Tax is to paid soon in many countries
(or has already been paid in some)!

Yeuch! How we despise having to take our well earned money to pay it to officials who often squander it on what we consider to be inappropriate activities!

How are we to deal with money we owe? Those debts and bills that seem to suck the very joy from our lives.

One of the things the bible says is, "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.”- Romans 13:8 "

Wow! Let no debts remain. . ., what does this mean? It sounds a real tough instruction. Today we are encouraged to live on credit and to take on debts! Credit cards are pushed as us we are encouraged to spend what we do not yet own.

Think about it, why would you give your money to someone to use freely? Is it normally a charitable action?  Not likely! There is the hidden agenda of getting that unsuspecting person to run up debts. Then they have to pay it back with interest!   It's one way of enslaving another person to work for us! What is more in these days where slavery is outlawed it is perhaps the only legal form of slavery! People willingly make themselves the slaves of banks and money institutions!

Have you thought about how they do this? For example, they give us $100 and then let us know that failure to pay back results in interest of up to 29% APG (Annual Percentage rate) which if compounded daily actually results in a 34.96% when compunded daily.

So if you dont pay the first year, you owe $134.96 at the end, by the next year it is at $184.14, and in the third year you owe $245.81.  more than double what you borrowed initially! Nice cash for the person lending the money! That's why they want us to have a continual outstanding balance! They want to enslave us!

Do you see why Jesus wanted us to be a debt free as we could possibly be? He wants us to gain the money so that we can use it to do good for others!

If we didn't borrow the money from others, then in the first year we would suffer a bit, but if we work as hard as we would have to pay it back to a lender, then next year we would have $184.14 in our pockets. i.e. we gain from our labour and we are not slaves to paying others!

It makes sense not to use our credit unless it gets paid off before it gains interest!

Now not all of us can manage this! (I have morgage payements so I know the pain), but we should attempt to get clear of our debts as soon as possible! 

The good book gives good advice, let us "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.”- Romans 13:8 "

My objective is to get out of all debt as soon as I can! What is yours?

...

 

Have you heard the story of the GOOD SAMARITAN?

 

It was written in the first century A.D. and goes as follows:

 Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Robbers attacked him. They stripped off his clothes and beat him. Then they went away, leaving him almost dead. A priest happened to be going down that same road. When he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. A Levite also came by. When he saw the man, he passed by on the other side too.    But a Samaritan came to the place where the man was. When he saw the man, he felt sorry for him. He went to him, poured olive oil and wine on his wounds and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey. He took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins. He gave them to the owner of the inn. 'Take care of him,' he said. 'When I return, I will pay you back for any extra expense you may have.'[1]
 

The interesting part of this is the difference in meaning that we as modern people put on this story when compared to the people who originally heard it.

To try and give us a flavour of what the original folk would have felt and thought I am going to change it to modern events and times and see how we feel about the story heard in this way.

 “A Jewish man was going down from Jerusalem to the West Bank town of Jericho in Palestine. A group of terrorists attacked him. They stripped him naked and beat him senseless! Then they went away leaving him in the hot sun, badly injured and almost dead!
 A rabbi happened to be going by on the same road. When he drove up and saw the man in the road, he swerved, accelerated and drove by on the other side of the road. A Christian pastor also came by. He also accelerated and drove by on the other side of the road.
 

But a Palestine Liberation Army soldier came by in a jeep. He saw the man and felt compassion. He stopped, pulled out his small emergency first aid kit and using antibiotics and his bandages, fixed the man’s wounds as well as he could. Then he put him into his Jeep and drove him to the nearest Jewish first aid post. He gave them all the medical supplies he had with him and promised to bring more if it was needed. “Please take care of him”, he asked. “I will come back an bring more supplies to cover all those you use and will pay for your time and his food!”

 

This is a different story to the one above to those of us that are modern people, but would have been very much the same story as the one Jesus told when asked “Who is my neighbour?”

 

Jesus today would ask after the story, “Which of the three that came along the road was the neighbour to the man who was attacked?”

 

I think you will agree it is the one who felt sorry for him! Which of the three would we have been like? In a war zone, where our life is at risk, where there is polarised emotions that could result in our death for identifying with the wrong side, would we have been the one who helped?

 

Why do we call the Samaritan “Good”? Surely this is what a Christian is expected to do? It is plain common sense and loving! Holy Spirit would prompt us to do this every time. It should be a response of love, not done from a sense of duty. Only then would it be "Good"!

 How good will we be to others today I wonder?
I’ll do my best, what about you?

Creation of Modern Man

 

Now what is the opinion of science regarding when modern man was created?

 So far they have been doing DNA tests on people worldwide and trace all people back to an initial small group that came from Africa about 200 000 years ago (according to the scientists!). The Genographic Project even give the original name to that original man as Adam, and the women as Eve! Whether they are correct is perhaps dubious but remains to be seen.

 

This original group of individuals(Haplogroup L3)[1] left Africa around 80 000years ago.

These “mitichondrial” Eve, and the Adam, according to the Genographic project arose in today’s Ethiopia or Sudan. These descendants have been tracked by DNA from people around the world to have migrated up through the Middle East into the rest of the world.

 

This is cool information!

Why is it so cool? Well it really seems that modern man came from a distinct set of parents! Now, how come we didn’t just “evolve” from different groups around the world at the same time? We don’t know, but what we do know is that modern science says we came from a single source that seems to have appeared at a specific time.

 

That’s what the bible calls creation! That excites me because it is what God had Moses write it into our sacred writings about 3500 years ago. How long have we known about DNA sequencing? Well, its now 2010 and it started in about 1970, so we have known about 40 years of this technology. We have only found out what God said 3500 years ago!

Cool!

 

So am I bashing those people who say man evolved? Not really! Let’s be careful of doing that! Some strong Christians actually think this may have been how man was planned and established by God. I don’t know but I know there are pieces of our bible that agree with that argument!

 I know that our bible says “When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens- and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground-  the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”[2]

 

How God did it is not explained! The fact is however that God started this man before shrubs and field plants had started. i.e. in science times, it was probably around 3.8 billion years ago that the process started.

 

Was this when the first DNA appeared on our earth? Probably! Science would not disagree!

 

Was man being created from the dust of the earth.? Totally! We were built from stuff that is around us still!

 

How was it done? I don’t have the faintest idea! Neither do the scientists! Nobody yet knows how life originated, but it did originate, that we do know! Hey, we are here aren’t we?

 

Notice the bible is “apparently” contradicting itself here! In Genesis chapter one, man is created on the sixth day AFTER the plants! In this Genesis chapter two, man is created BEFORE plants. Are the writings screwed up?

 

That’s a real interesting question and one we SHOULD ask!  

 

If Man was completely formed at this point, then the writings are wrong. If however, the creation of man started before plants and ended on the sixth day (Maybe around about 200 000years ago give or take science estimation errors), then I would think that these two agree with each other, and actually this timeframe allows for an “evolutionary” process, if that’s what God decided to use. Notice I don’t say this is what happened, only that there is nothing biblically against it happening this way!

 

There is nothing to say God didn’t use such a process, but then, there is nothing other than the apparent contradiction that says it did happen either!

 

Also the word for “formed” is the original Word: יָצַר or the transliterated word “yatsar” which according to Strongs[3] means the following

 Creator (1), devises (1), earthenware* (1), fashion (1), fashioned (1), fashioning (2), fashions (1), formed (20), forming (2), forms (2), made (1), Maker (2), maker (4), ordained (1), planned (4), potter (9), potter's (7), potters (1).

 

Taking the cumulative meaning here, God like a potter, plans and fashions or creates man! This also has an ongoing sense to it. One of “forming”. So, maybe it wasn’t a single instant event activity but an ongoing one?

 

Now that phrase the “breath of life” is also interesting! Why mention it this way? Is it perhaps a different life that was being given, different  to that mentioned in the previous chapter where he created male and female. They had life, but did they have the “breath of life”?

 

This brings to mind another statement in Job 33:4 where it says “The Spirit of God has made me. The breath of the Mighty One gives me life.” Could this “breath of life” be referring to man receiving his spirit from God’s Holy Spirit?

  Then it says man became a “living being”, but the Hebrew word is  נָ֫פֶשׁ transliteratied “nephesh” and this has a possible meaning that is “a soul”.
 

Is this the point that mankind achieved understanding that they had a soul? That they were different to the animals? Is this the point that they suddenly became aware of themselves and perhaps where they became spiritual beings? This is an interesting thought but an unprovable one! No more unprovable than evolution itself however!

 

We must also respect that evolution (at least macro evolution) cannot be proved because nobody has lived long enough to see a species change into another. (In fact, species become endangered and extinct but we never see the opposite in our lifetimes [or even in the known lifetime of mankind]).

 

Now also notice that only AFTER man was created, God created Eden! NOT BEFORE!

 

This ties in with modern man originating in Africa (the science explanation) and then migrating. God creates Eden and then once he has Eden “There he put the man he had formed.”

  Wow! God MOVED man into the garden! Man wasn’t there  to begin with according to the BIBLE!

   Also the size and location of the garden is indicated but not clearly defined. We cannot today say exactly where it was, but we know it was somewhere around the Middle East. We also know that modern man migrated through this area as they populated the world according to science!
 

Isn’t all this a rather amazing co-incidence? Or can we say it’s a God-incident?

 What other 3500 year old book describes this so accurately?
I really find the sacred writings rather amazing!
How about you?

...

Nobody is perfect so we all fail sometimes!

 

Perfection is not what is expected from us, fortunately! Right attitude is expected of us!

 The problem is that we even fail at having the right attitude at times don’t we? Life spins into an area where it is apparently out of control, or we dip into activities that switch our minds away from living our lives according to the wise guidelines in our sacred writings, or we just hurt to much to face life with the right attitude and so slide into the muck of life!

 This is not new to our Father in heaven, he has been dealing with this since the beginning of mankind. Remember the Cain Abel story?
 
The problem is that we can accept God’s corrective advice, as difficult as it seems, or we can rebel and make out we know better than God himself. 

 Now the problem with trying to be better than God is that we would need to be perfect to do that and we have already proved to ourselves we aren’t, so we should realize this and not make further mistakes! Unfortunately once on the run from God we often add to the mistakes and just make it worse.

 How does God feel about it? Well let’s remember that guy called Peter who bragged that he would follow Jesus anywhere and then screwed up and made out he didn’t even know Jesus when the circumstances were unfavourable. He dug himself in good and deep by repeating the mistake three times! What changed him? 

 It was a look of love from Jesus and his memory of what Jesus has said, that was enough to turn his attitude around, but he still couldn’t stay around due to his fears. He left the area! Jesus forgave him anyhow!

 Fear is such a terrible disabler! Fear of the unknown is almost worse than fear of the known. Neither build us up! We need to be like Peter! 

 Firstly we must know what God has said and expects from us. Peter was given the heads up of what he would do from Jesus before he did it. That meant he knew Jesus knew his bragging was past the point where he could deliver on his promise. He took it on himself to over commit regarding his own strength. He said. . .

 Matt 26: 33 33 Peter replied, "All the others may turn away because of you. But I never will."  

 and then later in verse 35

  But Peter said, "I may have to die with you. But I will never say I don't know you." And all the other disciples said the same thing.

 SO the first step in recover is acknowledging that while God knows our ability to do things, we often don’t. You see Jesus said to Peter. . .

 What I'm about to tell you is true," Jesus answered. "It will happen this very night. Before the rooster crows, you will say three times that you don't know me."

 So we need humility! We need to see ourselves as God sees us. He loves us but is fully aware of our failings! Despite this he wants us to love him and have a relationship with him. He loves us together with our failings and only wants us to admit them and allow him to help.

Peter understood that from the look Jesus gave him after he had misbehaved just as predicted by Jesus. [AS a sideline, those folk who have a problem with predestination need to look into it from the perspective of this story. You will see Peter had total free will, but God had total knowledge and total control that comes from it! enough on that...]

 Okay! So if we screw up what do we do? We let God know we are sorry, and then we let him help us.

Often it’s what he has already said through his word [today that is mainly tracked in the bible] that can help us recover. We need to remember what God says! To do that we need to have knowledge of his writings which are his guidelines to us!

 Then we can allow his love to recover us! His Holy Spirit will empower us to succeed. Peter came to lead all of God’s church in Jerusalem in the midst of Roman occupation and antagonistic religious politicians! He wrote part of God’s word directed by Holy Spirit.

 

We can recover if we submit to God’s wisdom and love!
Let’s do it today! I’m going to try to, what about you?

     

The Origin of Life!

 

The moment this is mentioned everyone thinks “CHARLES DARWIN”!

 

Well there is a reason they think this! The man was the start of one of the biggest movements of change since the start of the 1800’s.  He proposed a theory that all species of life descended over time from common ancestors in a branching pattern that is called evolution and resulting from what he called natural selection.

 

We see it happening all around us today within species! Called Micro evolution! Dogs interbred with different dogs slowly produce different types of dogs. Horses interbred with other horses produce different strains of horses. Similarly with cows! Now days we have cows that produce excellent quantities of milk, or meat, by use of this technique. So within the species we definitely can see this happening. Strangely enough, Charles Darwin established this idea initially by looking at finches.

 

The theory went further however and suggested that species come from other species. Called Macro evolution! Now this is something we can postulate, but there is actually no way of proving it since nobody has ever seen it happen naturally, and we happen to have bones that look like it could have happened, but we cannot actually prove it happens! This is something that few evolutionists consider worth even discussing. To them it’s obvious that this happens based on the bone structures.

 

Well it turns out the obvious is not actually so obvious! If we go back just twenty years, evolutionists mocked Christians who said modern man didn’t come from Neanderthal man. This was obvious from the bone structures and timing they said!

 

Then we got DNA and by testing the bones of Neanderthals it was shown, by the scientists who didn’t approach science as a religion but as true science, that Modern man could NOT have come from Neanderthals.

Modern mans DNA was not Neanderthal DNA! With that the evolutionary case for modern man coming from Neanderthals tumbled down in ruins. It’s strange how little we have heard about this after the spin we were fed for years!

 

What does this mean? It means we must not take postulates as facts!

That bone sequences without proof of the “evolution” migration from one species to another is conjecture! The fact is that just as easily we could have had these species created at different times (NOT that this is what I am saying happened. I am merely pointing out postulates are not facts, and that Evolutionism is not scientific. I use the word Evolutionism to depict those who extend past science to making non-scientific statements by extending past scientific facts).

 

The biggest problem, one I have alluded to previously is that we cannot find any means of generating life in the first place. People are clutching at straws now! I have heard arguments to say that life came to Earth on meteorites.  What a lot of nonsense! (At least that is my opinion). A meteorite hitting our atmosphere heats up due to air resistance. In the initial stages with heavier gases, the heat would have been even higher than nowadays. These get real hot, to about 1600 C or 3000 F. That’s why we see them as shooting stars! They glow white hot! Who wants to believe the drivel some people put out now days?

Let’s get it straight, truth is important, making up stuff isn’t! It’s hugely unlikely life came from a meteorite.

 

Life didn’t come from any known process on Earth either as far as any science can tell. There is postulated ideas, but not agreed to mechanisms up to today!

This week a good friend of mine was suspended from school for fighting!
 
 When I asked him if he was right to have fought, his answer was no!
 
We often make this mistake don’t we? Maybe we don’t use fists and physical force, but we sure use manipulation and verbal force!

 Why?

 James in our sacred writings (James 1:1-4) says it’s often because of our selfish, ignorant and nasty longings! We want to have something! It can be respect (and you can’t get that by beating up a person), or our way(selfish), or to see someone else in pain(nasty), or we want to protect something that we see as ours (sometimes this is okay, but sometimes we are simply being selfish).

 As guys we know that we have aggressive tendencies. As girls we often don’t get it because we use their mind and words to battle each other more than our fists. (okay! It is true that biting and scratching is not really boy thing so as girls we have our own problems right?)

 However, both sexes get angry and resort to violence it times. I have heard that women beat up men almost as much as men beat up women. (The guys are just not willing to admit it and so often allow it for fear of reprisals from law if they strike back). It can be a mean world!

 Even winning a fight can often mean we loose the battle!

I am hoping that terrorism will reduce as a result of the latest slew of American wars, but I don’t think it will! We don’t win a war with force, but with changing attitudes. We don’t force attitudes to change! That’s why in the old days they wiped out the entire nation or city they captured. They knew that if anyone was left, then trouble would start again. [I am NOT advocating genocide! Just want everyone to be real clear about that!]

 Jesus came into this world without machine guns and high explosives!

 It is great entertainment to see Arnold Swartzenager beating up baddies on the movie screen, but in real life love conquers violent men, not force! Force can limit their ability to impact others, but in the end, people turn to true love and caring. They turn away from violence when they are shown the truth of true love and are given respect they feel is due to them!

 We are to fight! It’s just that our fight should be against evil and not people! As Paul says “Our fight is not against human beings. It is against the rulers, the authorities and the powers of this dark world. It is against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly world.”[1]

 I am not a pacifist! I believe we need to protect the innocent, poor and helpless. But most of all, I believe we need to live a solid loving life towards those around us! Inside ourselves we need to know we are doing right, we are not over-reacting, we are finding smart ways to get out of difficult situations (like it says Jesus did in Matt 22:15-22). Evil is out to get us! That is true! To conquer it we need to take the stand of truth and good.
 

 We cannot destroy evil with evil!

 

If fighting comes from urges that come from anger, then we must reduce anger. That’s another subject and you can find help at How do I get rid of my ANGER BOMB? and the influence of media in  Rage, Anger, and Violence consume me. Help! and how to react when treated unfairly Fair play? Are we allowed to get angry? at my this blog site.

 These all show how to overcome our anger and get success out of nasty circumstances!

 Let’s fight the good fight[2] for the right reasons[3]!

 That’s my objective for today, what’s yours?