Tag Archives: Good Book

Day of Judgment

Day of Judgment: (n) Judgment Day.

I was recently accosted by a religious fanatic.

He explained to me the error of my thinking.

For I personally favor believing in God without needing a devil, enjoying Earth, not worried about heaven, and dying without expecting too much.

This particular advocate for the Good Book was completely frustrated by my ignorance and heresy.

Here’s what he told me:

“You can’t have God without the devil. You can’t have heaven without hell. And you certainly don’t have redemption without sin.”

He was pretty sure he was right. He was more than willing to offer me many examples to prove his point.

He reminded me of a man I once met at a shopping mall, who wanted to sell me a magical pan. He knew everything that pan did and was even willing to demonstrate its uniqueness.

But at the end of the whole experience, since I really didn’t need a pan and wasn’t planning on using it, I walked away as he spoke to my retreating form. “You just don’t know what you’re losing!”

When I think of the possibility of a Judgment Day, I consider that judging, which I have been taught to avoid, will apparently, in that last hour, be levied against me.

And what will God judge?

My motivations?

My energy?

My persistence?

My intentions?

My results?

My Biblical prowess?

Or my church attendance?

Then I asked myself, what kind of individual would be interested in that kind of stuff?

Also, what kind of heaven would that individual really have to offer?

So I set it to the side.

If there is going to be a Day of Judgment, when I arrive, there won’t be any time to cram for the test or make up credits.

I will be who I will be.

I will know what I know.

And I will be evaluated on what I held dear.

 

Cultivate

Cultivate: (v) to promote or improve growth by labor and attention.

It is unfortunate that most religious individuals are so busy toeing the line—seeking God, criticizing sin and thinking of heaven—that they miss out on much of the beautiful poetry and insight contained in the Bible.

The Bible is like every other book I’ve read: there are parts I like, characters I enjoy, story lines I follow and truths I garner.

Within the Good Book, there is the parable of the farmer who plants seed in the ground. Then he sleeps—but he rises night and day to discover that the seeds have grown, but he does not really know how.

In the midst of that parable, this line appears:

“The Earth produces by itself.”

It’s so true.

We, as humans, actually rebel against the obvious, which steers us toward being kind and generous.

We have to be bratty to not see that the Earth itself teaches us to recognize one another in fairness and justice.

And we have to be total ignoramuses to resist the inclination to love rather than kill and destroy.

Our job is to plant seed.

After this, the Earth itself will show us how these efforts need to be cultivated:

  • What needs to be done to become an entrepreneur
  • What is required to be an excellent parent.
  • And the next steps needed to cultivate any venture and take it to a new level of growth.

Sometimes in America we forget to cultivate the way the Earth tells us. Then the weeds start showing up, and we begin believing that the weeds are in control.

Too bad. It’s a simple little system.

Plant your seeds.

Rise up and be astounded over the growth.

Then let the Earth itself tell you what to do next.

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crawl

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crawl: (v) to move on the hands and knees

It is a story found in the Good Book. What makes that book good are the tales that enlighten us, inspire us and cause us to question our mediocre choices instead of covering them with the doctrine of grace.

She was a woman.

This particular lady in this specific story had been crippled for eighteen years. The passage has a detailed description of her problem—she was bowed over, couldn’t walk, and basically found herself uncomfortably situated in some sort of heap, lying on the ground.

Jesus comes upon her. She is some distance away from him, and the assumption is made by everyone in the room that he would walk over, talk to her for a few minutes, and then do some of his jim-dandy magic and heal her. But that’s not what he does.

He calls her to him.

Yes, he requests of this disabled, disheartened woman, that she make the journey across the room, pulling herself along on her arms, elbows and thighs—inch-by-inch making her way to his side.

Can you can imagine the reaction of the room? “This is gross. He’s making her crawl.”

The woman does not complain.

The prospect of being made whole, improved, or even just included was worth it.

She crawled to Jesus.

He did not make her do this because he was a son-of-a-bitch. He wasn’t trying to showcase his authority.

He was giving her a chance to be an intricate part of her own miracle. “Crawl over here and get your blessing.”

Even though each one of us may feel it is cruel or unusual, there are times that we cannot heal the psychological burden of our pain unless we feel as if we are making the crawl to our solution.

I have crawled.

I have made the crawl in joy.

I have crawled, knowing that without the crawl, I would not be able to overcome the anxiety in my soul.

After the crawl came the miracle.

Now…imagine that.

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Cower

Cower: (v) to crouch as in fear or shame.

Sometimes a story is just a story.

It is told to make a point, hoping that the lesson can be learned more easily with the introduction of characters, props and surroundings.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

When we begin to believe that every story is a commandment or that every tale placed in a holy book is intended to be the immutable word of God, we not only threaten the world around us with our piety, but we drastically miss the point.

It doesn’t take long to discover this if you ever read the Good Book.

The story of Adam and Eve is not placed in the pages to warn of the danger of eating too much fruit or to suggest that blindly following the commandments of the Almighty is the best way to achieve a good human life.

The purpose of the story is to let us know what we should do when we inevitably fail. For let me tell you, there are only two pieces of ignorance on the Earth:

1. “I never make mistakes.”

2. “I always make mistakes and am not worthy.”

Both of these paths make you dangerous to the people around you and cripple you in your pursuit of living an abundant life.

The story says that Adam and Eve were not supposed to eat some piece of fruit in the Garden. Truthfully, I do not know what in the hell that means, for heaven’s sakes.

Nor do you. You can feel free to speculate on what the fruit might have been, the danger it offered, or parallel it with some action in our world today. But certainly the Creator who tinkered with our brain to form a psyche He called human was fully cognizant that saying “no” to such beings as us was an invitation to rebellion.

People do not like to be told not to do something.

“Thou shalt not” is the best way to set in motion “thou wilt.”

So the story of Eden is not about learning discipline, but rather, learning what to do when personal discipline breaks down.

Having eaten the goddamn fruit, Adam and Eve plotted, becoming liars, deceivers, cover-up artists and hiders.

They cowered.

Feeling that God was more interested in His rules and regulations than He was in them, they ran away in fear of His judgment.

They completely misunderstood.

Had they walked out together, naked as jaybirds, with their half-eaten apple in hand and presented it to God with a repentant heart, we might still be living in Paradise.

God was not trying to build a Paradise that was perfect, but rather, one where imperfection could be revealed without fear.

If your situation, your religion, your politics, your family, your spouse, your school or any other mortal man or woman causes you to cower, it can’t possibly be borne of goodness.

We were not meant to cower, just as we are not meant to be sin-free.

We were meant to boldly live, to boldly fail and to boldly repent.

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Contagious

Contagious: (adj) ability to spread from one person or organism to another by direct or indirect contact.

“Don’t forget to wash your hands. It’s flu season.”

“I don’t know if I want to go to church–so many sick people.”funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

“Seems like everybody’s got the bug.”

“Wash down those counters.”

“Clean off that toilet sink.”

“Don’t forget to pick up some more hand sanitizer–maybe we should start buying it by the case.”

All of these statements seem rational to the average consumer, because we feel it is our right to be the sole individual who does not get sick–never aware that we will be more susceptible to that sickness if we’re never exposed to it, developing the protective antibodies within us.

I personally do not see anything wrong with trying to keep oneself healthy. But once we begin to think that human beings are germ carriers, it is a slippery slope to proclaiming them dangerous, infected, criminal, rapists or even worthless.

If you are afraid of the flu, that is absolutely fine with me. If you’re using your fear of the flu to establish your superiority over other people because you are so important that you shouldn’t ever get sick, then I begin to have a problem.

I see no case in the Good Book when Jesus embraced a leper to prove he was not afraid of the contagion. But I do see that when that leper wanted to be healed, Jesus risked touching him.

 

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Conditional

Conditional: (adj) subject to one or more conditions or requirements being met

There are certain things you cannot do in America:

You cannot be mean to your puppy on Main Street.

You certainly cannot suggest that the red, white and blue color scheme of the flag clashes.

And you risk life and limb if you even whisper that the phrase “unconditional love” was invented in the office of a pop psychologist and immediately adopted by Hallmark Cards.

Any mortal who wears skin, pumps blood and allows that circulation to reach his or her brain, is fully aware that we need love to have some conditions.

When left to ourselves and told that we’re “fine the way we are”–that the affection offered in our direction is not contingent on some facets of our behavior–we become tyrants.

Especially comical is the notion that our Creator–God–would extend such a gift to His creation, considering that He is fully aware of both our heavenly potential funny wisdom on words that begin with a C
and our notorious naughtiness.

That is why the Good Book is full of “if and then’s.”

“If you do this, then you will get this…”

  • If you have faith, you can move mountains.
  • If you believe, you will be saved.
  • If you are generous, it will be measured back to you.
  • If you judge, it will be metered at you with the same intensity.

Though we want to convey the depth of our emotion and appreciation for one another, it is certainly devious to suggest that our human feelings are not conditional. If they were not conditional, we couldn’t be of help to one another.

After all, sometimes a certain amount of intervention is necessary to get our mate out of bed to go to work. At that point, he or she might insist that we do not love them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We just know that if they go to work, we can go out to dinner on Friday night and actually afford an appetizer.

 

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Conceive

Conceive: (v) to form or devise a plan

“The imaginations of a man’s heart are evil continually from his youth.”

Rather than considering this a degrading statement from the Good Book, we should understand that it is the working climate and funny wisdom on words that begin with a C
environment that exists in the interactions of human beings, as we attempt to move forward beyond our jungle roots to a lifestyle with a higher sensitivity.

What we’re working on is how we conceive things.

If every woman is just a storage house for a pair of breasts and a vagina, and every man has to be concerned about the length of his penis, as every country contends that it is the first and the best, and all religions struggle for supernal supremacy, it is a good idea to slow down and realize that since we normally conceive things in wickedness, it might be healthy to saturate ourselves in contentment and find deeper and purer motives for our actions.

We don’t have to.

We can become defensive and think that since everybody else is so rudely constructed, we must maintain our lack of civility if we want to survive.

Yet in a rock fight, the only people who escape injury are those who refuse to throw rocks, but instead, retreat to contemplate richer and more enlightened solutions.

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Compartment

Compartment: (n) a separate container

My life makes me giggle.

I have had enough spirituality to satisfy the Pope in Rome, enough emotion to make a twelve-year-old girl cry for hours, enough mental stimulus that I’ve fooled some people into thinking I was smart, and in my earlier years, enough exercise to play tennis at a standard that people didn’t laugh when they saw me on the court.

Mine is a blessed existence.

During one of those times of spiritual investigation, I discovered that a verse from the Good Book–where Jesus told his disciples that he was going to heaven tofunny wisdom on words that begin with a C “prepare a place for them,” and that in his Father’s house were “many mansions”–that the use of the word “mansion” did not really mean a huge house with multiple bathrooms and servants. Actually, there are those who feel that the closest translation would be the word “compartment.”

You see, that just makes me laugh.

God is so on point.

The idea that all of us human beings would be able to be anywhere together–even if we were in a glorified state–and have it resemble heaven, is nearly preposterous.

So I think God, in His infinite wisdom, is going to find a space for each one of us that just suits our fancy, while we simultaneously believe we’re interacting with everybody.

I don’t need a mansion–but I would favor a compartment decorated and suited to my personality and whim.

Of course, that’s working on the supposition that such an afterlife exists, and that if it does…some puny soul like me would ever be welcome.

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Cleave

Cleave: (v) to either split or join

“A man shall leave his mother and a woman will leave her home, and they will cleave together and the twain shall be one flesh.”

A paraphrase from the Good Book. I think it’s very fascinating that the King James translators used the word “cleave.” Because as you can
see, it has a double meaning. It can refer to cutting apart–as in when it is associated with a cleaver. Or it can refer to enjoining, a fanciful term for clinging.

Isn’t that fascinating? Because that pretty well describes marriage.

A bad marriage can tear people apart. It can take a hatchet to their confidence and self-worth, leaving them childish and vengeful.

A good marriage, on the other hand, is when two intelligent people realize the power they have together, and mingle their energies into one solid human-life effort.

I guess what the Good Book fails to communicate is, what makes the difference? What distinguishes a bad marriage from a good marriage?

It’s actually the same thing that separates friendships, partnerships and family relationships. Somewhere along the line, people who love each other stop competing. It’s usually not planned–it’s probably not the by-product of a long conversation or hours of counseling.

Confident of the love of another person, we no longer feel the need to be superior. We are satisfied with a joint project. We don’t insist on separate minds, separate practices, separate ways or separate fears.

We blend. We relax. We realize that if love doesn’t work, then we’ve just used up our last chance.

How shall we cleave?

Shall we cut one another apart in an attempt to make our portion seem more valuable?

Or shall we blur the differences and congeal into a sense of oneness?

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Clandestine

Clandestine: (adj) done secretively

Although clandestine can refer to any practice or situation we may attempt to hide, normally it harkens to romance or sexuality.

It is difficult to admit that on the issue of faithfulness each one of us is as slippery as a greased hog.

We don’t like to talk about it.

Especially we don’t like to talk about it in front of people to whom we’re committed. After all, we don’t want to hurt their feelings or stir up trouble.

So there’s a certain amount of awareness that has to constantly prod our minds in order for us to make quality choices.

That’s why the Good Book tells us that no one else can tempt us–not people, devil or God. We are drawn away by our own lusts, and even if we try to curtail that aching iniquity by using pornography, we are still dealing with the same problem.

Clandestine ideas just seem more fun.

Strange flesh appears to be better flesh.

And new encounters glisten and gleam instead of just sitting there waiting for us at home.

What can we do about this? Develop an inner candor filled with a nasty bit of personal honesty.

It will keep us on the” strait and narrow” of relationship instead of crashing our ship on the rocky choices of temporary gratification.

 

 

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