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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Thank you so very much for well reasoned reply, djf! I always enjoy your posts.

Whatever the truth is, we cannot use it to agrandize ourselves. We must fit into the ebb and flow, I sincerely believe that charity and faith have a major role, but they must be unconditional, and not for personal profit.

I strongly agree. This is why I do not feel I am overreaching by summarizing the Great Commandments spoken by Christ in Matthew 22:37-40 as follows: "to love God absolutely and our fellow man, unconditionally."

It is difficult to love someone who wishes to destroy you, but that is the culmination of Matthew 5 (Sermon on the Mount.)

I am also drawn to another remark you made at post 165. You said:

Sad that I have found it necessary to view evil as evidence of God!

Truly, I believe we cannot know God is unless we know what is not Him. Just like we cannot know courage with fear, health without sickness, love without hate, etc. Following is an excerpt from an article I wrote:

Did God have a beginning?

Some people assert that God must have created Himself.

Others (I am one) say that God the Creator exists outside of space and time and thus there is no beginning for God, i.e. the creation is not something in which the Creator exists. There is no "before" the big bang or any multi-verse or dimensional parallel in ekpyrotic cosmology.

This is another area wherein each person must work out his own understanding. Mine is somewhat unique but is based on the Word, Jewish tradition and science:

One of the words used to describe God at creation is Ayn Sof which roughly translated from Hebrew means infinite and nothing. The scientific term for such a state at the beginning of this universe, is singularity - in which there are no physical laws, no space, no time, no particles, no geometry, no energy, nothing - and yet everything. It has a parallel in math as well, the number zero - nothing can be divided by it, anything multiplied by it is it, it is in between all positive and negative numbers. Infinite and not at the same time.

I pondered on this state at length and deduced that God must have wanted to reveal Himself and thus there was a beginning.

Then I pondered how God would go about revealing Himself. I deduced He would create beings who could think to whom He would reveal Himself and would commune. I further deduced how He would go about communicating Himself to these beings, i.e. that He is good and truth and so forth.

These attributes would have no meaning in any language unless they were set in contrast to what they are not. (How would you know if you are happy if you have never been sad?) Thus, I pondered that He would create good and evil, love and hate, et al so that a language could be formed, the Word.

I then pondered He would communicate His will to the thinking beings so they would know Him. I also pondered that, for the words to have meaning, He would give them numerous manifestations of all these contrasts - space/time, geometry, particles, energy, matter, creatures.

One of the ideas of the Jewish Kabbalah that rings true to my spirit is that the Scriptures are another name for God, i.e. it reveals who He is. So I see all of creation - spiritual and material - and the Word as God revealing Himself.

In sum, I believe that Adamic man was made to be a spectator of the natural realm to know God and commune with Him - but was banished to become part of the story itself as punishment for his vanity. Jesus Christ, who is the Word made flesh (John 1), is our Way to return home (or not if one so chooses.)