SONG OF GOD. Lecture Seven: The Trauma of Divine Love

[Rebbe]

The Song of God

A Fresh Appraisal of the Christian Doctrine of the Ultimate Destiny of Humankind:
IMCF Lectures on God's Universal Salvation

by

Les Aron Gosling, Messianic Rebbe



Copyright © BRI, 1996
Lecture Format © 2016
All Rights Reserved Worldwide

Originally Produced as a BRI Study Manual



LECTURE SEVEN

THE TRAUMA OF DIVINE LOVE

All humankind desires, indeed seeks, eternal life. This powerful urge to live forever has produced some of the great teachers, philosophers and mystics who have claimed in their own lifetimes to have been the recipients of a higher revelation from an Infinite Intelligence. This source of probing Infinite Intelligence they simply called, in one form or another, "God." According to all the Scriptures that were produced by these men, or by their immediate followers, God wishes to communicate with humankind. And he has attempted to do so since the dawn of recorded time. Great names as Mahavira, Prince Siddhartha Gautama, Confucius, Lao-tze and Zoroaster and others have left us with writings of an inspirational nature that are called (by the adherents of the religions which these men founded) by the term "Scripture."

The Jewish people were no exception.

From very early times the Chosen People of God recognised that certain of their fellow men had peculiar "giftings" in relation to THAT which they deemed, inadequately, "God." Not only did these particular men have specific "giftings" (prophetic utterances, predictive dreams, and visions) they also (like the founders of religions in areas surrounding the nation of Israel) authored manuscripts purporting to inform the people of the Lord of his intentions of blessing (or cursing) toward them. These Jewish Scriptures are contained in the book Christians call the "Holy Bible." But the contents of one division of the Christian Church differ remarkably from other sections of the same church. Suffice to say in this present series of lectures the contents of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox "canons" differ remarkably from what is considered by the majority of Protestant theologians to be the appropriate biblical inclusions. Many believers today are ignorant of the history of their own Scriptures (including the Brit Chadashah or "New Covenant" revelation -- often spoken of as the "New Testament") pertaining to the canon. Indeed Protestants possess a book terribly deficient as far as Scripture is concerned.

There is even evidence within the pages of "NT" writ itself which do more than suggest that tampering with certain texts and the suppression of particular books has most certainly taken place, and that within the first four centuries of the rise of the Church. Be this as it may, Gentile believers today are striving to discover eternal verities and the ultimate answers to the age-old questions asked since the beginning of man's creation: Who am I? What am I doing here? Where am I going? Why is the universe the way it is? What is the actual explanation of our existence in this awesome complex, but intimately integrated cosmic system of reality? Why was I born? Some of us would even dare to ask, is there even an ultimate explanation? Certainly the church today does not have the answers! It is spiritually bankrupt, having disgorged itself completely from its Jewish-Messianic roots.

Of course, the only true answers to these agonising dilemmas are to be found in That Other which we label as "God." Even the ancient Hindu Hymn of Creation puts it wisely (and we should give these utterances the due contemplation they richly deserve):  

"Ah, vain are words and weak all mortal thought!
Who is there truly knows,
and who can say,
Whence this unfathomed world,
and from what cause?
Nay, even the gods were not!
Who, then, can know?
The source from which this universe hath sprung,
That source and that alone can bear it up,
None else: THAT, THAT alone, lord of the worlds,
In its own Self contained, immaculate
As are the heavens above, THAT alone knows
The truth of what itself hath made -- none else!"

The answers are finally discovered in God. And in those to whom God has revealed this truth.

Christian theology is above all else a theology of revelation. As such our theology of revelation must look to the revealed God, the God who is revealed by virtue of his communication, his dialogue with humankind. Christian theology understands the revealed God reveals himself only in and through Yeshua the Messiah, his Logos.

Yeshua the Messiah is not merely a logos, not simply the logos. He is THE Logos, not separate and differentiated from the Lord God, but one with God. Logos is a Greek word with the meaning of Creative Idea, Original Thought, Communicative Expression. According to John's Gospel (John 1.1) Yeshua the Messiah was the embodiment of the Thoughtforms of Infinite Intelligence Itself -- the composite whole and ultimate revealed presence of the very Nature of God's creative mind. John tells us that this WORD became a flesh and blood human being (anthropos -- John 1.14). This Creative Idea of God was sent from the far reaches beyond the horizon of light on a mission to reveal to humankind the One who was unknown, whom he referred to as "the Father" (Luke 10.22). This secret God possessed a secret Name, known only to him. Certainly, Yeshua spoke of his "Father" at least 114 times in the Gospel of John, and yet Christians today show a staggering ignorance of him. Some might say that my insistent utilisation of the term "ignorant" as pertaining to the Christian church is an Achilles heel in my argument, but this lecturer is not about scoring "brownie points" or crassly boasting if he can piss further than others. It is his intention to discuss the nature of Deity and the purpose of humankind in relation to that Deity.  

The Christian Community, of which I am a member, professes loudly enough its authoritative role in communicating the revelation of the resurrected Lord to whom all must become subject. It has proclaimed itself loud and long to be "the only door" into heaven, the "only route" to eternal life. It has stated emphatically through church councils and via its creeds and reinforces on a continual weekly basis to its faithful congregations, that "Christ is the answer." But as far as the world is concerned the church has entirely lost cognisance of its own equation for it has forgotten what the questions are. I repeat, the Lord Yeshua came to reveal "the Father" but today a too rigidly Christocentric church, on the one hand, and an emotionally charged Spirit-oriented church, on the other, stand blissfully ignorant concerning him. He is as unknown, if not forgotten, as he ever was.  

The Jewish people previously lost a cognition of even the Name of God. The pronunciation of the Sacred Name was suppressed by the Jews themselves long before the days of Yeshua. We no longer know how haShem [the Name] is to be articulated correctly. Nevertheless, the Tetragrammaton "YHWH" or "JHVH" actually means in its final sense "the Eternal." (There is another Name, a secret Name, which Yeshua knew and it has surfaced periodically through the centuries, mainly among rabbis with a mystical "bent" attuned to God's Self-Realisation.) In any event, Yeshua did reveal the Father. He openly revealed him in the day to day manifestation of his own humility and humanity, in his own acts of self-emptying and sacrifice.

None of us can comprehend the Lord God, the Absolute Incomprehensible Creator. And none of us can love him. When we talk of loving God we are only loving God as he reveals himself, and his love toward his creatures, in and through Yeshua the Messiah. "Herein is love," wrote the apostle John, "not that we loved God, but that he loved us" (1 John 4.10). This is love devoid of power, devoid of Almightiness. If we love the power of God, and the Almightiness of God, we are merely loving his attributes, not God. "God is love," continues John. And that love was manifested toward the humanity of our world "because that God sent his uniquely begotten Son into the world that we might live through him" (1 John 4.9).

It was God, not wielding despotic power over his creation that we loved when he sent his Son into the world. It was God emptied of his divinity, emptied of his eternality, emptied of his very limitlessness, emptied of his Omnipotence and freely entering into Oneness, not with himself, but with his struggling, sinful, evil, disadvantaged, suffering creations that we loved. It was Yeshua insulted, rejected by his own, that we loved. It was this Yeshua "who is the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1.15), "the express image of his person" (Hebrews 1.3), and "the exact reproduction of his essence" (Hebrews 1.3 Wuest), that we loved and love. It is this same humble, poor and dejected carpenter of 1st century Judaea who had his origin in God's eternity, this same Yeshua who, for the great apostle Paul, was "the power of God and the Wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1.24) who existed eternally "in the bosom of the Father" (John 1.18) and who became a corpse, for us, that we love. It is the LORD GOD in human flesh (John 1.14) with whom we can identify, and so love. It is Mashiach crucified that we love. It is Messiah in his Passion, in his rejection, that we love. It is the Messiah in trauma that we love -- Mashiach, the very Thought-form of God. And it is this same express image of the Creator from whom we hide our face, because we do not want to voluntarily enter his sufferings and his trauma. He invites us to take up our cross and to follow him. But we flee his solicitation of us.

We are hypocrites, all.

We are therefore told that our hostile natures must be conformed to the divine nature (2 Peter 1.4). Our human minds must be renewed by Christ's Spirit (Ephesians 4.23). We must have the very mind of the Mashiach indwelling us (Philippians 2.5). We must be ultimately changed in bodily composition from transitory flesh, to glorious spirit (1 Corinthians 15.42-44,49,53). And this takes suffering, this brooks a severity and austerity in trial and tribulation, this takes an accumulation of painful affliction, this takes trauma (Acts 14.22; Romans 5.3; 8.17; 1 Thessalonians 3.4; 2 Timothy 2.12). This takes evil unleashed upon us. As Christians we are not called by Mashiach, the Suffering Servant, to a life of sweet melody and the luxury of comfort. We are called to trauma. We are called to the cross (Matthew 16.24,25). We are expected to be crucified in order to live at peace with God, indeed, to even enter that peace -- that Shalom. In other words the authentic Christian life-style develops the very nature and the character of GOD.

When our businesses fail, and our health recedes, and our children are taken from us, unexpectedly and at an early age, and horror strikes us at various levels beyond our control, it may be that God as trauma is entering our habitation, and that his call to us is exacting, without his repentance. Pentecostalism hates this side of the Gospel. But it is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. When overwhelmed in pain, we ought to stand with the righteous Job, not defiantly but in faith, knowing that the LORD has sovereignly decreed this moment for us, and that with us he enters the same pain. Rather than seek to throw the harassment off, we should open ourselves to it, in an attitude of complete resignation, letting God have his Work perfected in us.

This is not a call to overthrow the completed Work of Christ on the bloodied tree of Golgoleth. It is merely our recognition that God desires us to exemplify the character-pattern Image of his first-born Son. For we must bear the image of the heavenly Man (1 Corinthians 15.49). To absorb trauma, rather than flee from it, to bow our head to all that we have suffered in life, is the primary stress of biblical teaching (James 1.2-4). When God, as trauma, enters our domain we are experiencing the Nature of nature Itself. To seek to be saved from our overwhelming emotional, physical or psychological trauma, rather than to positively and eagerly enter the negative (and thus go through the tunnel of gloom and out into the sparkle of light at the other end), is a false message of salvation. It is a message based, not on Scripture, but on a theology of escapism ("rapture"). We may question our plight, like the patriarch Job before us, and to do so is quite acceptable in the sight of God. Heaven knows we possess enough in the way of Scripture so to testify. And we know by faith that he both hears and will satisfy our questioning. It would appear, however, that many Christians may need salvation from the very concept of salvation itself.

On the other hand, it is intriguing how many people will, through tragedy, always and invariably point the fickle finger of accusatory blasphemy at heaven screaming "Why did God do this to me!?!"

The plan, intent and purpose of God is to create a race of beings transformed from this fallen, sinful existence (with all its mortality, barriers, restraints and limitations) into the perfect character-image of Our Lord Yeshua the Messiah, the heavenly Man (1 John 3.1-3).

There was a time in the life of the apostle Paul when he addressed learned, eloquent philosophers in the highest court of Athens, the Areopagus (Mars Hill) (Acts 17.22-29). The ancient Greeks worshipped many gods and goddesses. All historians and biblical scholars readily state their character was a testimony against them. Now there came a time when the younger race of gods who controlled Mt Olympus had risen up against the older race of gods, and in violent collusion had murdered them all. But one god had remained. They knew him as the "Creator." But they had forgotten who he was. They simply referred to him as "The Unknown God." But in this dissertation Rav Shaul tells us that God "made" the ordered universe (Acts 17.24). The word is an interesting one. It is from a Greek word which in turn is related to a Hebrew word that in turn is often used in a linked sense with the trauma of childbirth, or in a similarly traumatic activity that brings forth or ushers in a profound and propitious result. So God creates traumatically.

And then Paul says, "in him [God] we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17.28). He is addressing pagans, and he says "we." Both pagans and Christians "live and move and have our being in him." Further, Paul quotes from Gentile poets to bolster the authenticity of his argument, "for we are also his offspring." He is quoting Aratus of Cilicia. This line also occurs in the beautiful Hymn of Cleanthes to Jove. Thus Paul has in mind both poets, and uses the plural in his case (Acts 17.28). Yes, "we are also his offspring." In other words we humans will of necessity reflect in our experiences the nature of the God in whom the creation dwells.  

We have said earlier that to properly understand our role in God's redemption in Messiah, we must first apprehend God's creation in Messiah. We reiterate that Paul, who sat at the feet of Rabban Gamaliel (Acts 22.3), reflected Jewish teaching when he said that "all things are of God" (Isaiah 45.7; Romans 11.36; 1 Corinthians 8.6). All creation, noted John, found its origin and its existence in the Messiah, Yeshua (John 1.3,10). And Catholic scholar Hans Kung well recognised "absolutely everything has its continued existence in him... Even the damned sinner will have a continued existence in Jesus Christ."

As all creation finds its origin and material expression in the Mashiach (or better, the Logos) through whom God creates all things in the universe, so the Messiah forms the actual heavenly Pattern of God's ultimate design -- spirit beings made (created) in his character-image. This absolute purpose of God is discovered in the Genesis account of humankind's creation "in the image of God." So also at Mashiach's second advent, God's true Man (the Christian or Messianic Community -- the Matronit, the mystical Body of Christ -- the corpus Christi) will rise from the dead into immortality, bearing "the image and likeness" of the Archetypal Man -- Yeshua the Messiah (1 John 3.1-3). So in the old Jewish Midrash we read, "Thou hast formed me behind and before (Ps 139.5) is to be explained as "before the first and after the last day of Creation." For it is said, And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him (Genesis Rabbah, viii, 1). God's great plan of the aeons is for man to not merely be in Mashiach materially, but to become SPIRIT as he is Spirit (John 3.6). Not only so, but man is destined to be a partaker of Mashiach's very own nature and character. This is the plan, purpose and intent of the Lord God (2 Peter 1.4). To gain everlasting life, eternal life, eternality, salvation is to partake of and actually enter into Eternity itself, that which we inadequately refer to as "God."  

To experience salvation is to experience God's eternity, the never-ending Moment in which we live. Time ceases in God's presence. None of us can weigh eternal life in the sense of grasping the quantity thereof for by its very definition eternity is that quality of existence beyond the physical senses of SpaceTime. We cannot therefore appreciably quantify even the concept of "eternal." It lies quite beyond the finite. But Rav Shaul says we are "in Mashiach," "in him," and "in the Lord" a total of 164 times in his letters. To be given "Life" is to be in Messiah in both a material and spiritual way. The concept of eternal life or life in eternity has a sense of dramatic permanency about it. But it cannot be gained unless we are made aware of the travail that is associated with it. "Let him that would follow me," said Yeshua, "take up his cross." The life of eternity is the life of self-emptying. This is ever and always the specific of Mashiach's Gospel, a Gospel the materialistic church has lost. The kernel of the cross is the fact that we are spiritual beings having a human experience.  

So, the message of the cross is irresistibly attractive. (I am expressing not only my own but the sentiments also of an ignored voice of Christian concern for the lost doctrine of the sovereignty of God, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.) To be nailed to the cross is to be made at one with the crucified Man. Crucified, and yet still Lord of all. Not a victim led to the torture tree was he, but that only by his own choice, pleasure and discretion.

Precisely because of the power of control Yeshua had over his own destiny, the most evil accursed deed in history became the heart of God's redemptive purposes for humankind, and indeed, for the entire universe. The curse of the cross became the supreme source of blessing to a lost humanity.

For, the cross expresses as nothing else can the essence of the divine Mind. It demonstrates the divine love. The cross reveals the pain of God's self-emptying nature. The cross argues the divine estimate of human sin as well as exhibiting the satisfaction of divine justice. The drama of the bloodied tree of Golgoleth does all this on a frail, human platform so that we can appreciate the mystery of God's divine will. Only in the cross is our greatest need dealt with, and God's provision of himself offered. Yeshua said, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all unto me" (John 12.32 Gk).

It appears that God often works in what we would perceive to be a negative way in order to produce a totally contrary result. Clay mixed up together with saliva should put a man's eyes out, but Mashiach uses this admixture to give sight to the already blind. Water is extremely useful in extinguishing fire, but the prophet of God, Elijah, pours water on a sacrifice until its completely drenched filling a trench with it in order to make a sacrifice burn. Gideon's army is systematically reduced until only a core of warriors are available to route hosts too innumerable to number. It is Yeshua who takes a few fishes and loaves and subtracts in order to multiply. The Messiah was an accountant's nightmare! In the parable of John 15 it is the vinedresser who cuts back the branches of the vine, not that he intends to thus destroy them, but rather to induce good growth. Evil in the projects of God is essential, for without it we would not appreciate the contrast of the good. In other words, were it not for the cross, the greatest evil of all, we would not experience the joy of the crown.

O Felix Culpa! went the Roman prayer. O Blessed Fault! (Adam's sin) without which we would not have known God's Grace.

We must always view our theology from the standpoint of the cross. When Mashiach died all men died. At the same time the joy of the Gospel does not end there, with a blood smeared cross. Our religious tradition-worn prejudices should not let us overlook that the resurrection faith is offered as the proleptic triumph for a lost humanity, rather than the mere possibility of victory, over the powers of the grave.

In the ancient book of Job we find an account of a servant of the living God who was a righteous man, yet overwhelmed with troubles. Job is literally stripped of his family, his wealth, his health. Yet despite his personal tragedies, and his torturous, prolonged agonies, he stays loyal and true to God. Against the full frontal fury of Satan the Dark Lord on the one hand, and the insistent agitation of his wife on the other, Job laments but does not cry out in anger at God his Maker.

"I was at ease, and He broke me asunder;
He seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces;
He set me up as His target, His archers surround me.
He slashes open my kidneys, and does not spare;
He pours out my gall on the ground.
He breaks me with breach upon breach;
He runs upon me like a warrior.
I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin,
And have laid my strength in the dust.
My face is red with weeping
And on my eyelids is deep darkness;
Although there is no violence in my hands,
And my prayer is pure" -- Job 16.12-17

Under what circumstances does the LORD God answer his tormented and suffering servant, Job? Not in a divine, quiet whisper within. Not the "still small voice" vibrating as it did in the heart of a herdsman, like that experienced by Amos the prophet. Only when Job is entering mental torment, tottering on the razor's edge between sanity and insanity, does God answer him: out of the centre of a whirlwind, out of a storm. A psychoanalyst writes, "In order to survive [trauma] we enter into the route of that which afflicts us and allow ourselves to be recreated by it... As piously as the phobic patient propitiates the eliciting stimulus of his phobia, we propitiate the overwhelming event which has transcended us, acknowledging its holiness" (Greg Mogenson, God is a Trauma: Vicarious Religion and Soul Making, 1989, 21,22).

It is a writhing, tortured, sobbing Christ mentally afflicted in a gross and fiery hell nailed to a gnarled tree, a Christ traumatised beyond belief, representing us to his Father that we love. It is Eternal, Unchangeable, Unconditional Love suffering in trauma and pain and hell that we love, an eternal God who, through the Divine Love displayed in the cross, is now and presently conciliated to the world is, by virtue of his essential and unchangeable character of eternality, ever and always conciliated to the human race. This has been often overlooked by the advocates of everlasting torment. It goes well beyond even human reason to appreciate or fathom a God who expects all men to "come to him" when he alone by virtue of his irresistible Grace compels only some men so to do at this time and yet those whom he does not compel (and who thus remain dead as a cadaver in their sins) are at the same time somehow to find it within themselves (apart from God's spiritual Life-giving intervention and inward accomplishment of Grace) to "work up" a positive response to the lack of a heavenly calling!

If eternal hell is a reality, then eternal love is eternally frustrated unless somehow eternal love sent them there in the first place out of a motivation of love. But if eternal love is eternally frustrated we are then condemned to the living hell of worshipping forever a God who has eternally calculated in detailed planning the grotesque mental torture of those whom he has eternally locked out of his Divine consciousness. As some would venture to proffer, God has no plan for those who reject his Son. Therefore the Lord has condemned himself to a similar hell which would be, in the words of Robinson, "the final mockery of his nature."

Certainly all trials, both experienced in the world and in the Christian Community, are our outworking of the original tragedy of the garden in Eden. We have all inherited the consequences of our first parent's decision to partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We are all Adam and Eve (Genesis 5.1,2). The "tragedy" of a fallen race, when reconsidered in the light of God's sovereign Salvific will is not really, in the light of the Gospel of Messiah, a "tragedy" in the ultimate sense of the word. For, to accept the notion of a divine accident in Eden is to charge the awesome terrible God with gross ineptitude. God is not the proverbial absent minded professor caught off guard when the Enchanter seduced Eve. In the words of another, did the plan of an almighty God and the ultimate fate of the vast universe hinge on the appetite of a proto-female for fresh fruit?  

What we see about us is the plan, purpose and intent of God. Any other scheme, and any less dogmatic view, casts the mold for a theology of rank dualism. And, indeed, such theories of dualism have been cancerous warts on the physical, material church for well over 1700 years.  

Until we as a universal church can arrive at a proper grasp of the doctrine, and the reality, of the Sovereign, Gracious, Salvific will of God and see the Lord as not merely the Ground of All Being (which is awesome enough) but in fact Being in Itself -- the majestic First Cause of All things (and not just good things: Isaiah 45.7) which is at One with his creation (all of it) -- our sorry misunderstanding of the plan of salvation and our continued misconstruing of the potency of the Genesis story of the garden in Eden will continue to be perpetuated.

Needless to say, such perpetuation of dogmatic church fables would certainly be a monumental affront to the glory of God. It would be nothing less a miserable loss to a world that silently groans awaiting the manifestation of the promised Redemption given to Eve, by the God she loved, in the consequence of her sin.

QUESTIONS & ANALYSIS OF LECTURE SEVEN

The Messianic Rebbe wrote: "Many believers today are ignorant of the history of their own Scriptures (including the Brit Chadashah or "New Covenant" revelation -- often spoken of as the "New Testament")..."

When Jewish people are given a "New Testament" they open it to find that their sacred Scriptures are referred to as the "Old Testament" and thus are given the distinct impression that they are "done away" as obsolete -- and are no longer of any relevance. I well recall one-time rock star Helen Shapiro's testimony when she converted to Christianity. She went into an old second-hand Jewish book store which was run by an elderly Jewish man. Walking up to the counter she requested a copy of an "Old Testament." "Sure," replied the Jew, with a twinkle in his eye. "How old do you want it?"

Furthermore, when a Jew skips through the pages of the "NT" he is confronted by names which are not Jewish either: Jesus, and an unfamiliar Peter, John, Mary, Joseph, Stephen, Matthew, Paul, James. It appears to him that the Christian church was founded and run by a bunch of Brits and Scots, not Jews. How are Jews to identify with any of this garbage? In Judaism, moreover, there is no hint of an eternal hell for sinners. A hell might exist but it is never understood as being eternal. Jewish sources inform ignorant Gentiles that it lasts twelve months and abundant biblical proof is given.

"Testament" in the "New Testament" ought to be more properly referred to as a Covenant. A "testament" is a legal document concerning a will. The writings of the early Messianic believers in Yeshua are better called "The New Covenant Scriptures" -- the Brit Chadashah.

The Messianic Rebbe wrote: "On the other hand, it is intriguing how many people will, through tragedy, always and invariably point the fickle finger of accusatory blasphemy at heaven screaming "Why did God do this to me!?!""

Many years ago when I was just a strapling (an Aussie term for someone quite young and inexperienced when it comes to the ways of the world) I was obsessively inquisitive. Younger still, I would spend a great deal of my spare time sitting in the grass in the quite extensive backyard of our home observing ants -- how busily engaged they all were working enmasse in a silent common purpose to build and construct their own world according to an overpowering driving instinct to perpetuate their species.

I was utterly captivated by Nature, and my nature-loving father purposely fostered my avidly studious curiosity about life.

One of my earliest memories was of my Dad lifting me up in his arms in the thick black of night, and pointing out to me the awesome Milky Way Galaxy and asking me if I could see the smiling face of "Gawd" as he pronounced the Name. I couldn't, of course, for all I could see were stars -- millions of glittering, shining, bright lights in the heavens over-spreading the Great South Land in our part of the woods. But I dutifully nodded in enthusiastic appreciation at having seen God. I had no doubt that Dad knew what he was talking about, but I was hurt and saddened that really I had seen nothing at all but stars.

I also well recall as a very little boy (Grade 1 or 2) a class lesson in which our school teacher described in exciting detail the Australian bush habitat, and the ferocity of, our venomous spiders -- Trapdoors, Funnel Webs, and particularly Red-Backs. The Red-Back spider is a cousin of the American Black Widow.

Our teacher stressed that as most of our homes in that vicinity were weather-board we needed to steer clear of rubbish piles, old tyres, and planks of stacked timber. He also cautioned us children to not sit astride brick fences as Red-Backs often could be located in their webbed houses in the brickwork that often framed our suburban yards.

Well, we lived at a distance of 3-miles from our school and I would walk from school to home each afternoon (rain or fine) along a route that was dominated by hundreds of brick-fenced homes lining the streets. And I had in my school-case my brown paper bag in which I carried my lunch that my Mum had made for me. My parents were thrifty as many parents were in the 1950's, and our brown paper bags that held our school lunches were reused a number of times. In fact, my Mum would take time out each evening before retiring to bed to ensure that she had ironed the creases out of my paper bag so it would look brand new, and entirely unused, the following day. Oh, that brown paper bag was the beginning of sorrows for me.

Why? Because on one afternoon I proudly presented her with my brown paper bag filled to the brim with Red-Back spiders replete with their cobwebs which I had retrieved with my bare fingers from beneath those brick fences! I am not talking about one or two spiders -- I'm talking of over two dozen of them! When Mum opened the paper bag to see what I was soooo excited about she turned deathly pale and threw the bag with instant alarm into the kitchen sink and turned the hot water tap on full blast shaking like a leaf. Man, was I scolded! Needless to say when Dad arrived home later in the evening he gave me more than a mere "talking to." That I remained unbitten and alive was temporarily overlooked. Certainly, there MUST have been a guardian angel hovering over me in those reckless childhood days.

Still, my entire life has been consumed with questions, with very few answers forthcoming. The more questions I have asked of those in "authority" the more questions I had. I have questions concerning the universe/universes, creation, evolution, the nature of existence in general, sexuality, the ecosystem, the wild kingdom, the human mind, and the gastrointestinal tract. I've got questions that generate even more questions. My life has been one lengthy serpent trail of questions. I have questions about myself. I have questions about God. I have doubt about God -- not the existence or character of God -- but the way He/She/It administers His/Her/Its Superintendence over His/Her/Its creation. My doubt ever remains faithful doubt.

My questions eventually led me to an astonishing conclusion which extracted me out of Judaism and the Hallowed Halls of Non-Think: the spiritually bankrupt churches of this world-system. In 1981 my life changed forever. There was this Damascus Road... but the questions keep coming...

Some have ventured to wonder "why it is that some people fail to live out their full lives." Its a good question. One might also ask why it is that some people fail to reach their own awesome human potential which their own life offers them? Why is it that most people DON'T THINK that deeply about THEIR OWN LIFE and CIRCUMSTANCES and FUTURE? Why do most folk live their life as if there were no tomorrow? Why do most folk not realise that there is a cause to every effect, and if their choices in life have created disaster why can they not reason that it was their own stupidity that brought about that same miserable disaster?

I am reminded of a great statement of loving concern made by HaShem the God of Israel when He addressed the Jewish nation. "Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, that you and your descendants might live!" (Deuteronomy 30.19).

God wants us all to live life fully, to the "max," and to enjoy the many blessings which He is eager to lavishly and wastefully HEAP upon us. But God expects us to live life deliberately, not accidentally, and with purpose, and with an intensity of rich enjoyment IN Him. So He gave us laws that would enable us (if we followed them as free moral agents) to be the recipients of all that He has to offer us. And I mean us ALL, not just Jewish people.

But when we live our lives accidentally, and we follow our own decisions not based on God's revealed will for us, tending to ignore the ways which He lovingly takes time out to reveal to us for our own good, then we cannot help but "reap what we sow." And, oftentimes, that sowing is sadly detrimental for it ushers forth in sorrow, accidents, criminality, divorce, drunken behaviour, and a host of other negatives including disease and finally, all too often, death. Some of us human beings made in the Image of God are walking, talking tragedies.

In the Scriptures God agonises over the decisions His own people make and He cries aloud, "Throw away all your sins you have committed and fashion yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Oh! Why will you DIE, O house of Israel?" (Ezekiel 18.31). And again, "As surely as I live, says the Sovereign HaShem, I take no pleasure in the death of those who do not obey me, but much prefer that they change their behaviour and live. Turn back, turn back from your stupid deeds, for why should you die, O house of Israel?" (Ezekiel 33.11).

I well recall some neighbours we had many decades ago. They were really not the kind of people with whom you'd want your kids to mix. The husband was a drunk, a wife-basher, irreligious. His wife's tongue never waggled without a curse on her lips. She drank as well to an extreme, and her cigarette-induced spluttering and coughing could be heard by everyone late at night as she puffed on her cancer-stick while watching her little black and white TV. Her little son, a dear little chap (despite his nightmare parents), was a picture of terrible neglect.

Then one day he crossed the road during peak-hour traffic and was killed outright by a car which was not doing the appropriate speed limit. His head was cracked right open and the blood just pumped out in awful ejaculations. What did the mother scream out when she rushed from her gate to his lifeless body?

"GOD!!!! Why have YOU done this to me?"

I still hear the cries of that poor dissolute woman to this day. Sometimes as I sleep I awake in the wee-small hours of the morning while it is still quite dark and think I can hear those same pitiful sobbing utterances echoing all over the world in every country, in every province. The cries are those of millions of hapless human beings made in God's Image, originating from all over the earth. My sleep becomes fitful as the cries become overwhelmingly deafening.

But that's just the way I am. You may not be so hypersensitive, as I am, to human need.

THUS CONCLUDES LECTURE SEVEN