Category Archives: Commandments and Beatitudes
We Cannot Expect Women Without Faith to Face Death or the Likely hood of Life in Dire Poverty for Both Themselves and their Child
Since there really is no point where we can be sure a soul begins, abortion is not a simple issue. I chose to risk death rather than abort, but after being an agnostic I had found faith. During my fifth C section from a pregnancy that happened even though we were using birth control, I began to hemorrhage, and chaos was going on with shouting and someone knocking over the glass IV which broke leaving me hearing feet crunching on it and feeling life going out of me. My faith was new and strong enough to accept dying and to trust God to give my children a good mother. But without that faith, I could not have done that. Christians cannot make decisions for women who are still children themselves, who have other children that need them, or are risking death without that faith. Many miscarriages happen through no fault of anyone. No loving God is going to keep those souls separate from their mother in heaven. That is a stupid belief made up by men who have never had a wife or children, never the less carried them in their body. Today’s attitude toward sex is as a toy for pleasure , rather than a help in bonding with another person enough to grow in love for them until you can love them more than yourself. In today’s world casual sex is in movies, books, magazines, music, advertising all around us. The freedom teens have now makes it incredibly difficult to wait for the one you are willing to live with all your life. Our whole culture shouts “pleasure is what life is about.” Christians should be loving others enough to make them want the faith and love we have. We should be helping those unwed mothers and their child survive in a culture that promises happiness through pleasure, but doesn’t support those who are paying a price for that. Our love should help them find Jesus.
The Evolution from Law to Love: The Commandments to the Beatitudes.
I’m pretty sure that law and the concept of sin and consequences were created to try to help us live in the groups we need to survive and prosper. Society is a two-edged sword. It keeps us from having to do everything for ourselves from fighting off wildlife, planting, harvesting, to creating clothes and shelter, thus giving us time to think, create, explore, and ask questions about the why, not just the how. But, since humanity is a work in progress the old adage, that there’s both a goody and a baddy to everything, holds true for society. Society helps us survive physically, but it also challenges us to learn to love.
The commandments were first of all, simply practical. The laws were aimed at keeping us alive, both as individuals and humanity, long enough to become loving. Whatever the Intelligence called God is, that created and nourishes life, it lives within each of us. It is a source of grace to become more loving, than competitive and combative. And we are like cells in a body. Each of us not only affects those closest to us, we affect the whole for better or worse, even the generations following us.
Self-honesty and understanding, rather than guilt, are the beginning of learning to love. And those take courage and grace. The divorce rate makes it obvious we haven’t become enough like Jesus to even love those closest to us, never-the-less those different from us or even “against” us. The commandments are the basic tools of survival for society. But Jesus showed us the next level through teaching and living the spirituality of the Beatitudes. They call us beyond the fundamentals of the Commandments and just survival. They call us to freedom, the freedom to love others.
Caring is prayer. Prayer is in the intention, whether expressed in words, thoughts, feelings, candles, symbols, acts of kindness, or forgiveness. There is power in prayer. But both wisdom and love are needed to use the power for others, to understand that all creation, without exception, is one.
Jesus is a turning point in humanity’s journey. He fleshed out a love that sacrifices for not only the weakest physically, but the weakest spiritually. This is not survival of the fittest.
His resurrection also illustrated that this life span isn’t all there is. Jesus is the living example of the potential of God’s grace even within our own humanity.
His resurrection shows us death is simply a door to eternity. When we believe this, it gives us a very different value system than death as the finish line. And His openness and love for all show us the way to overcome the finality of death.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 