On Pain

Pain numbs our senses, when trying to fight the pain we try to stop feeling. Trying to lock out the pain, we lock out people.

Pain devides, we thicken our skins, we build walls to protect ourselves, & so the world becomes devided with walls... everywhere.

Pain destroys, by locking out others we are left alone with ourselves & our pain, & it grows sharper.

But if we don't try to stop feeling, if we built no walls & didn't lock ourselves inside ourselves...

We see other people's walls, we find out that everybody else is hurting as well.

And because we hadn't dulled out our senses, our hearts go out to them.

Now, what happens after that is outside the scope of this blog entry...

But the point is this,
Pain is universal.

And so, Pain Unites.

God knows that, too. And used it -among other things- to unite Himself with us, humans.

On Faith (i) - Seeing

I refuse to think of Faith as the blind, flat belief in a dogma.
This isn't really useful by itself, & has often caused more harm than good to the world.
Faith is belief... but I believe there is also more to it.
A part of the following I have learnt from this, it is a sermon in arabic (egyptian dialect).

Christian Scripture establishes that Faith is required from people, & without it there can be no Salvation, but it also says that Faith is a gift, & is also a result of the work of The Holy Spirit.

To reconcile the two apparent opposites, we may see Faith as an ongoing interaction between Man & God.

God gives Man Faith as a gift, we'll call this Revelation. He shows Man a little of Himself.
This happens in so many different ways (& depends on the level of Faith already attained), but it is most often characterized by a sudden realization derived from something that had previously passed unnoticed.

Then Man has to accept this,
he has to take it into his heart & mind,
believe it,
then integrate it into his thoughts & feelings & it becomes part of him.
Through that bit, he can now See (with his heart, as we say) an aspect of God.

God then reveals to him some more of himself, & Man accepts that & so on... this ongoing Revelation-Seeing is what we call Faith, & it is by this that we See God & know Him, & the closer we get to Him & the more we become part of Him, & we go home.

That is what I believe Christianity is all about.

On Sin

We believe sin to cause a schism between us & God, we also think of it as the act of refusing God.

Does that amount to anything other than a theoretical definition?

I usually thought that by sinning, God leaves us (for he is Holy & can't stand us this dirty) & so the schism occurs, & therefore in sinning we implicitly refuse God because we know that when we sin He'll leave...
This makes it look like you have to choose between God & sin ( sometimes in a pros & cons sort of way).
I believe this is incorrect & is a harmful view to one's spirituality & therefore I'd like to think this fits differently.

If we think of God as Love, & of His works in men as such,
I see that every sin is either the deliberate opposition of love or the deliberate deformation of it, & is at the same time a result of its lack or deformation.

Deliberate Opposition of Love is Hatred, in hating you directly refuse to love, hence practically rejecting God's work (love) & choosing the opposite path. & it is the core of every sin that relates to harming another person (most sins are the harming of another person). Even the self-righteous-he-deserved-it sort of harm.

Deliberate deformation of Love (or its physical expression; Sex) is Lust & the related sins. This is a point that is glossed over, & it resulted in societies that refuse murder but approve of sex outside marriage (& more often outside love). & lots of it, & in a variety of creative ways for deformation... the dirtier, the more intense & better, or so they claim! Society sees it as a normal & healthy thing, but of course that same society is filled with individuals who are broken, hurt, insecure & are constantly hungry for love & are crying for it, so it's meaningless how they can still claim they know what they're doing.

Results of lack or deformation of Love (mostly falling under Pride) would encompass all sins, we hate because we lack the Love inside us & therefore have no capacity to love others, we hurt others as a reaction because we ourselves are hurt, we do sex like we do drugs, deforming it & deforming love to attempt to compensate for our hunger but fail & lead ourselves to more hunger, we lie to hide our insecurities & steal to compensate for our fears & insecurities & we resort to pride to compensate for how worthless we really feel. Most of these are defence mechanisms, & most of them resort to offence, harming another person who in their turn return the harm to defend themselves, & the circle widens & the corruption spreads & we get a fallen world.
This is where we live...

In this view of the world, The Law is:
1- an attempt to control the spread of this corruption.
2- a means of showing the people they are wrong, which also serves to disarm Pride with humility.
In this view, this Law cannot solve anything, really... because it didn't give people back the bits of themselves that they lost & it compensated for nothing.
In this view, what you really need is real, sound Love.