God's Nature

Knowledge of the Universal God can be perceived only by common sense, science & logic; audacious deceivers and beguiled disciples would return America to the Middle Age if permitted.

"In God's Country" Courtesy: static.desktopnexus.com

(PASO ROBLES, Calif.) - The confusion surrounding the nature of God is due to the difference between the Universal concept of an unknowable God vs. the nature of man’s “Institutional God.”

Judaism speaks for Jehovah suggesting that Jews are God’s chosen people but lacks an objective symbol, such as Jesus or Mohammad of Christianity and Islam fame. All claim to believe in the One God, but each is a construct to serve a particular political purpose.

Christianity evolved out of Judaism as a cult within the Judaic tradition. Christians hoped to elevate the “One God of the Jewish Nation” to the level of “One God of All Nations,” a concept Jewish elders rejected.

So, Christians formed a coterie and devised a plan to supersede Judaism with a more universal religion; the Catholic Church. Isaiah was the prophet of The New Testament, and Jesus [when he agreed to die for the cause] was anointed the Christ, symbol of Christianity from whom the coterie took its name.

Islam, the last of the three Religions of the Book [Judaism’s Talmud, The Christian New Testament and Islam’s Koran] did not emerge until the 6th Century when, taking a page from the Christian script, it produced Mohammed as God’s last Prophet and final word on matters pertaining to God’s will on earth.

All reflect the ambition and design of leaders concerned with the existence of a deity of their prescription whose divine involvement in human affairs disciples are expected to accept as devoted believers in the values and attitudes consistent with the obsession and opinions of the founders, rather than fact.

The Republican [Party of God] and the Evangelists who control it, pretend to speak for Jesus [Christianity] in a manner that objects to anything or anyone who does not conform to its persuasion, and rudely denounces all that might prevent it from regaining control of the national government.

The Books of Isaiah and the Gospels, logically considered, reveal truths quite unlike what generally is believed to be true, but on which Republicans lean to justify a faith they bend to conform to its desire for supremacy.

Rod Parsley’s Ohio-Commandment that, “American Christians have a duty to defeat Islam,” justified the war against Iraq and Islam to further the Christian cause, a political-theology Republicans eagerly supported.

President George W. Bush was less the decider he claimed to be than a puppet during his Administrations until Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans opened his eyes to the fact that - “Jesus is in Heaven, all’s right with the world” - is not the cure-all his “Holy See” believes it to be, but which Party leaders imply is true when they argue against Global Warming and Healthcare Reform with their “let go, and let Jesus” philosophy.

The Gospels of Matthew: 21; 1-11 and Mark: 11; 1-10, speak of the untamed ass Jesus rode into Jerusalem as a “worthy bearer of Divinity.” Today, disciples who accept on faith the opinions of pretenders are also worthy-bearers no more aware of what they are supporting than was the ass Jesus rode.

If God has a plan, what we know from History, Science and common-sense, ought to convince us that having provided man with a brain, the Universal-God [whose domain extends millions of light-years from earth] He intended it to be used intelligently. I cannot believe it was provided to conform to the precept of earthlings who pretend to speak in His name and of His will which obviously is beyond human understanding.

God’s incredible “force” seems more a progression of a normal-curve-of-distribution along a moving track into an indefinite future. The curve is of every known element and moves to the evolutionary but undeniable force of God’s Universal plan, not the smallness of man’s earthly political schemes.

I love a mystery as much as does anyone, but I also enjoy the thrill of discovering what once I believed to be mysterious truly isn't. For there are mysteries we believe only because we have been told they are.

But what we believe determines our intellectual affinity to God, or man if it is founded on the ulterior motives of politicians of the Republican Party and its Evangels, and well meaning elders who pass their “givens” to later generations, ad infinitum, for that matter.

The Conservative-base of the Republican Party holds to its Christian-givens and dutifully accepts what it is told by Party and Evangelists who consider themselves part of an homogenized whole subject to Christianity’s Apostolic Oneness that existed in the Late Middle Age when Catholicism was dominate.

Democrats tend more toward the Age of Enlightenment, and being more open minded accommodate, rather than commit, to political circumstance. Most Democrats respect new ideas and truths and try to live by them. Yet Politics and Religion were synonymous for centuries and made for strange bedfellows, but the Reformation changed most of that.

In 1598 Juan de Oñate established the first Spanish colonies in New Mexico and was successful in converting the Pueblos to Catholicism. But in the 1670s unfavorable natural events occurred that shook the faith of the Indians in the Church and enticed Popé to attempt to return his people to their native Kivah-religion.

Spaniards accused him of witchcraft [the exercise of magical anti-Catholic influence] and jailed him for awhile which did not improve his disposition. On August 10th 1680 he led a revolt that killed many Spaniards and drove the remaining colonists to sanctuary in El Paso del Norte below the Rio Grande. Popé’s “reformation” seemed complete.

But in 1692 Diego de Vargas began the re-conquest of New Mexico, and by 1696,Spain was again in control, but only by allowing the Indians to practice their Kivah- religion. Today, Kivas and the Catholic Church are found in all New Mexico Pueblos in much the same way as Catholicism and Protestantism co-exit.

But in the Zuñi Village pagan deities are painted on the interior walls of its Catholic Church; how many others we can only guess, Ácoma did not let me enter its Church.

I used to read to a blind Mexican lady [una ciega] who, when she learned I was going to Mexico, asked me to purchase a “missa” in her behalf at “La Villa” [common name for The Shrine of “Guadalupe” - Patron Saint of Mexico - in the city of the same name].

In an antechamber to the right of the sanctuary, nuns were selling masses as fast as they could issue a receipt showing the time the mass was to be said; fifteen minutes was allowed for each. When I got home, I gave the receipt to “la ciega,” but the result of her hope I never learned. Faith logically affects just the psyche, but who can deny the psychological benefit of belief as supportive even if it fails to cure completely?

Penitents at the shrine in Mexico often walk on their knees across pavement to the Sanctuary where, adding to the physical manifestation of regret, the final act of contrition is performed by a priest.

The passage is agonizing and the attempt alone must earn them some measure of absolution, far more deserved than that of wayward Evangelists and Politicians who preach one thing but practice another and who, when caught, ask for and presume to obtain forgiveness from their Institutional God.

So-called miracles are products of belief, and belief the result of the power of persuasion. People become what they are taught to believe is true, whereas knowledge of the Universal God can be perceived only by common sense, science and logic [light years is a formidable barrier to the true God’s incomprehensible nature] but audacious deceivers and beguiled disciples would return America to the Middle Age if permitted.

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Kenneth G. Ramey was a 79-year old "writer without a Website" who is generating excellent, provocative articles on the subject of religion and world affairs. We are pleased that Ken's "lone wolf" presence as a writer in the world has been replaced by a spot on our team of writers at Salem-News.com. Raised in Minnesota and California during the dark years of the Great American Depression, Ken is well suited to talk about the powerful forces in the world that give all of us hope and tragedy and everything in between. You can write to Ken at: darken1@sbcglobal.net