What Can Man Know About God?

      Even as a committed Christian I have problems with organized religion and church services, not Christian theology.  So much of what so many ministers or priests say about God, His mind and purposes, presented as absolute truth, must be specualation or interpretation.  I am convinced that they claim to know, and doubtless believe that they know, much more than they do and that God is considerably more mysterious and inexplicable than they think He is.  Given the difficulty of understanding how television works, let alone Einstein's theory of relativity, it seems very unlikely that any human being, smart as the species is, can really know very much about God  on his own initiative.

     When a sailor in the mid-Pacific or the wayfarer in the Sahara or a tenement-dweller in New York, looks up at the sky and exclaims 'how great is God' he probably has come close to stating about all he can really know on his own, except for a few ideas originated by philosophers, about God being omnipotent, omnipresent, and all  that.  "Oh God, How great is thy sea and how small is my boat", the sailor's prayer, just about does it though we can embellish it a bit with the child's prayer;  "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so", which is a simple affirmation of all that may really matter in the end.  How He reacts with someone else is something I probably can never know, or know completely, and may be something I couldn't understand anyway. 

      We can know some things about Jesus because He was here and was written about by persons in a position to know.  But I submit that God the Father, the Great Spirit, the Emperor over the Sea, the ineffable Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, is beyond our intellectual capacity to know or ferret out.  Didn't Jesus Himself suggest as much to Nicodemas?  Speculation is all right I suppose (anyway, we will continue to do it) but it is very adviseable to recognize its limited value.  Yet we can know a fair amout about Jesus Christ, His life and work, His promises and expectations.  And the belief that God chose to limit Himself temporarily in order to take the form of  that same Jesus, in part so that He could cause mankind to understand some things he needs to know is both reasonable and supportable by a very high level of evidence.  Added to the 'leap  of Faith, we begin to see the way to Salvation. 
        

    

The Danger of Love

     This is about being 'in love' and is addressed specifically to heterosexual males, of which I am one, though the principles apply to females as well.  The subject is important and practical, because most people have had or will have the experience, or think they have.  All but an infinitesimal fraction of the population can do anything to settle matters between Israel and the jihadists but a great many people will experience the circumstances discussed here.  So the Middle East is important but this subject is important and practical as well and one fraught with deadly consequences literally and figuratively.

     When a man falls in love with a girl (and all women are 'girls' when you're in love with them) what is it like and how is it distinguished from lust?  It is like this; a consuming obsession with the object.  You think about her all the time.  You can't think very long about anything else.  You want her so much you can hardly stand it and you think "I would rather be miserable with her than happy without her".  And you really mean it.  It is an experience which I believe some men never have, though they may think they have.  It is not lust.  In fact, it excludes lust, and that is one very odd thing about it.  At your peak powers of male performance you lust after every attractive girl who walks by, particularly in a bikini.  If you are wise you control the emotion but the emotion pressures you at every turn.  For that matter, you can lust at any age, though your ability to do anything about it may abate.  Your motto is something like this:  "If I'm not near the girl I love I love the girl I'm near". 

     The test is this; ironically, if you are 'in love' you think very little if at all about sex.  That's not what you want.  You want the girl, not something she can give you or withhold from you.  You want her on any terms you can get her. 

     And here's the danger.  If the object of your affection is married to someone else, or if you are, you are likely to think that there's something almost spiritual about falling in love with her.  That's when you hear such nonsense as "We didn't want it to happen.  We didn't plan it.  We were just 'good friends' and just wanted to have lunch together and reminisce about old times" --- and all that garbage, for that's what it is.  'It' is not something that happens to someone.  You cannot separate 'it' from 'you' and thus absolve yourself from  blame.  Even if the situation never evolves into a physical affair --- thought the danger that it will is ever-present --- a mental affair is likely to be just as bad and almost as damaging. 
     There is only one possible answer, or solution, to this if the temptation arrives, an eventuality which is hardly unlikely, as it probably besets more people at one time or another than it leaves alone.  Only one course is decent and civilized, rational and moral.  Drop the matter.  Leave it alone. Do not fall for any of that just-good-friends nonsense.  Don't make the date for lunch, for it would in fact be a "date" whatever you think it is and whatever you call it.  If you have already made the date, cancel it.  Extra-marital affairs ruin lives, families, careers and friendships.  They corrupt character and cause a wide swathe of misery and despair which probably can never be repaired.  Don't think it's innocent because it seems so civilised when it starts.  It is not innocent and you are to blame if you encourage it or do not stop it --- at once and completely.  And if you see the girl in the supermarket, go the other way.
     Of course, if you are both single and unattached pursue your dreams.  If you encounter problems write to Dear Abby.