| The Gospel, as Jesus taught it, is predicated on a
relationship. The Son of Man did not present this relationship as
one between creature and creator. Neither did the Son of God
portray Our Father as a distant relative such as a Great, to some
power of ten, Grandfather.
The great truth that Jesus went about preaching and teaching is
that God is your Father. He is not just some Supreme, Absolute,
Ultimate, Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent Deity as
impressive as that might be. He is the person with whom you can
enjoy the most intimate, loving relationship possible, because His
Spirit dwells at the nucleus of your mind.
From the universe perspective the Trinity is The Nuclear
Family. Our triune God of three separate and distinct
personalities is further revealed through a sevenfold
manifestation that includes the Trinity as a whole, each of the
separate individuals and every combination of two. This is the
creative original, the family pattern whereby the "Only Begotten
Son" is the divine offspring.
There are still those on Earth who somehow maintain that social
issues are peripheral to the Gospel. We maintain that the Gospel
and everything of true value has its roots in the family. We ask,
how is the Gospel to be understood by human beings who depend upon
analogy to human relationships and institutions if those very
relationships and institutions are so sick that they are no longer
even minimally attractive or illustrative?
Societal attitudes about the family are not likely to change
until society overcomes its ignorance concerning the value of
family relationships. Despite the dysfunctionality of some, the
family is unrivaled in its ability to produce healthy, balanced
persons who maintain high standards of conduct and who respect the
integrity of relationships. It is true that only upon the conquest
of self can one reasonably set about to cure, in a meaningful way,
the larger social ills. But it is also true that the family is the
first great civilizer and the greatest hope of human kind. As
such, we must never miss an opportunity to help strengthen and
protect it.
The human family is like the rock tumbler grinding away our
rough edges, and the gem polisher producing a luster through its
mildly abrasive action. Individuals learn to adjust antagonisms
and tensions by means of the family dynamic. The family teaches
cosmic perspective hand in hand with the art of compromise. It is
within this context that the child is impressed with our most
sincerely held values. It is by this experience-based spirituality
that we help to create character, and through which we fulfill
that most sacred trust, child rearing.
A loving family provides the momentum that thrusts us ever
God-ward. It is therefore the greatest single threat to the plans
of Lucifer and his followers. From their point of view, if the
primacy of the parent/child relationship can be somehow minimized,
marginalized or eulogized, then the Gospel message can be
effectively neutralized. If a Schutzstaffel can no longer remove
parents from the home as the routine part of a failed "final
solution" then something much more subtle can be employed.
In either case the process maps directly to Lucifer's
manifesto. First, attack the parent/child relationship through
matrimonial, societal, legal and political disease thereby
depriving the child of balance in nurture and more. Second, defame
fatherhood and motherhood thereby minimizing and breeding
suspicion about all parents including the First Person of Deity.
Third, and finally, destroy the family. Put it asunder, thereby
making our place within the family of God that much more
difficult, if not impossible to fully comprehend.
To the human child the family provides the nurturing
infrastructure that favors meaningful growth. Through the
exploitation of certain fundamental differences between men and
women, the forces of darkness have displaced complementary
relationships in favor of competitive ones and have brought
instability to all that a child deems to be real. As their support
environments collapse, children give up on life itself at twice
the rate of children from intact families.
Children from broken homes often emerge severely out of
balance, often unwilling to accept the vulnerabilities associated
with love. To them, love is not a verb but seen rather as
happenstance, ethereal and something in and out of which one
occasionally falls. There is no rhyme or reason, just the fickle
finger of fate.
Love and hate must be understood in the context of their inward
or outward focus. Love that is both internalized and directed
towards others finds resonance with all that is divine. Divinity
is the characteristic unifying and coordinating quality of Deity.
And Deity, the Creator, Controller and Upholder, is the source of
all reality.
Sustained self-loathing and outwardly manifest hatred is always
accompanied by an array of cognitive distortions that cycle the
range of negative emotions. Hatred is spirit poison. When it
reaches a level that exceeds human tolerance, it invariably yields
suicide or murder.
Of course, I'm telling you nothing new. You already know about
hatred. But here we will examine various cognitive distortions to
understand how they serve to selectively amplify the negative
emotions and attenuate positive ones in direct support of
Lucifer's cause.
Human science has identified certain perceptual patterns that,
to some degree, accompany an affective disorder known to its
sufferers as depression. Much research has been conducted in an
effort to identify precisely why persons thus afflicted tend to
disqualify anything positive that happens to them
Friends and relatives close to those with the disease are often
at a loss to explain why a good thing happening is internally
processed to support a bleak outlook and low self-esteem. This
mental filtering is quite the opposite of the legendary
rose-colored glasses. It is rather a seemingly impenetrable shroud
of doom and gloom. No clinical approach to correcting the problem
has consistently produced lasting results. Where and whenever the
spark of life has not been fully extinguished, there remains a
faint flicker of faith that contains the only true antidote. But,
within the circumscribed realm of those depressed, there is also a
wide variety of forces arrayed in opposition to anything positive.
To understand this on an academic level is one thing. But to
feel what a depressed person feels is quite another. A seasonal or
situational depression may affect anyone. For example, the cycle
of grief associated with the loss of a loved one usually includes
a depression phase. Now imagine extending that phase to the point
where you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel and you can
begin to understand the feeling of hopelessness experienced by
those who suffer from chronic depression.
Now add this twist, suppose the "dearly departed" is alive and
well following the failure of a relationship. And suppose there
are children in the mix to insure that the other's departure is
never really complete. How exactly does one ever "get on with
life" in situations such as this? How does one overcome?
While there are many noble compensations and variations on the
human family, disintegrating families often fail to teach the
essential curriculum. For at the latter's core is an unrecognized
action word. Love is a verb! The isolated love of a domineering
parent, aside from being less than ideal is, if possessive, also
less than altruistic. Possessive parenting is selfish parenting.
The admonition to love one another was not conditional. Feeling
the love was never a prerequisite. And expecting something in
return for love betrays the motive and debases the act. The
children of disintegrating families are often made to feel
disloyal to each parent simply for loving them both. This loyalty
bind has a direct and adverse bearing on the child's attitude
towards love and faith.
The extent to which a supposedly loving parent would deny a
child equal access to, opportunity with and the enjoyment of the
other parent is more often a measure of self-indulgence rather
than protective parenting. Whether by possession in the guise of
protection, or retribution in the form of familial substitutions,
these are the games people play at the expense of children. These
are just a few of the ways that children are routinely deprived of
a continuing, meaningful relationship with one of their parents.
If you truly love the children, love both of their parents. The
earliest societies of Earth taught children to honor father and
mother. Since those times, civilizations characterizing themselves
as advanced have perverted this simple precept into honor thy
mother or father. This is not to say that divorcing parents cannot
be genuinely supportive of their children's relationship with the
"other" parent. But, in light of the prevailing culture and the
attitude towards religion, it takes uncommon benevolence and
maturity. And, it takes something else… |
