Water Gives Life

Judging by the responses I heard regarding my last blog entry, I realize that I didn't do a great job of explaining the overall point. Most of you got lost in my "New Orleans is sinking" metaphor... ;)

In any case, this blog entry should hopefully clear up the confusion, because both last entry and this entry are essentially driving towards the same key point, which is that contradictions, unless solved, will ultimately affect your life in ways that are both poisonous and camouflaged.

Teacher Jeong talked this week about the parable of water, which is found all throughout the Bible. Its pretty basic, especially if you've studied the 30 Lessons. Water cleans stains, physically speaking. Spiritual water (the word of God) cleans spiritual stains. Most everyone can understand this fairly simple parable. An extended teaching of this concept leads into the parable of 'clouds', which is where many Christians start to get upset. Generally speaking (from my own experience in teaching Christians) they want Jesus to descend upon real actual literal clouds because they want to see it with their physical eyes. There's usually a bit of an attitude of "see you heathens, I told you so!" mixed in there too. ;)

Water is necessary to sustaining life. You can go weeks, even months (some say) without food. But without water for even a couple of days and your body will begin to shutdown vital organs, starting with your kidneys. So Teacher Jeong obviously stresses the need for water in order to sustain life. But he's not talking physically, of course. This is where most of Jesus' disciples got lost. Jesus was talking about 'bread' ("beware the yeast of the Pharisees"), but not physical bread. Meanwhile the disciples were all anxious cause no one brought any along. Imagine how frustrated Jesus must have been that his own disciples were so physically minded. Now imagine how frustrated he must be in 2008 when much of the Christian church still listens to his words in the Bible while thinking in physical terms. His disciples only had 3 years with him, while the Christian church has had 2 millennia!

One of the introductory lessons one receives in Providence is the lesson on Parables. Its crucial, because without it you cannot solve the 'contradictions' of the Bible, most of which are embodied within the Christian faith deeply. So, the reason why the Christian faith is contradictory is two-fold. First, it is because Christians fail to properly interpret the Bible, and as such, they assume ridiculous things just like Jesus' disciples did when he spoke to them about bread. Science (reason) and religion (spirituality) will never agree unless Christianity solves its contradictions.

Second, those contradictions bear themselves out in how Christians live their life. This is because if you are confronted with contradiction at the most intimate level (such as religion/spirituality) then you cannot simply ignore it. Instead, you have to bury it, or sweep it under the rug. In this way, Christian theologians have all sorts of elaborate explanations to deal with the contradictions they find in the Bible. Walk through a Christian bookstore and you'll find that the vast majority of the books are written on this topic in varying forms.

The problem is that you can 'deal' with the contraction in many different ways, but it won't go away until you solve it. If you don't solve it, it will have drastic and far-reaching ramifications on how you live your life (in ways you are oblivious to). This is essentially the point Teacher Jeong is getting at. Essentially he is telling us to use the word of God (spiritual water) to clean our bodies and clothes (spiritually speaking). Bodies and clothes are both parables as well--ask someone in Providence if you don't know what they mean (or just read the Bible carefully). What I realized from all this is that one could define sin as an instance in life where contradiction is accepted as a viable solution to an issue.

Let me explain: its not always a sin to lie. If you lie in order to save someone's life, well then it is good that you lied, right? Okay, so when is lying a sin then? How can someone judge whether the circumstances were sufficient? Here's the test: does the lie contradict you? That is, if you lied in order to save life, well then a good person has done a good thing. But if your lie (which is in of itself a contradiction) betrays your life of righteousness, then its obvious that you are sinning through the use of that lie/contradiction.

And what is the number one complaint that non-Christians throw at Christians? "You don't practice what you preach." "You're hypocrites." "You say one thing, but do another." On and on it goes. Why is this?

It is because at the fundamental level, Christianity has not solved its contradictions. As such, broadly speaking, their words do not line up with their actions and vice versa.

Still there are many, many, many positive things about Christianity. This week Teacher Jeong broadly defined evangelism as turning hearts towards God. He said that if people hear bad things about him and therefore won't go to a Providence church, we should encourage them to attend another Christian church. The main point being to get people to turn to God.

This leads me to my last point about the negative reports about Teacher Jeong on the Internet. I can appreciate that it's difficult to determine which are true and which are false if you don't have anyone to talk to who is familiar with Teacher Jeong. Again however, contradictions cannot persist. When you come across them re-check your assumptions. If you do, you're on the right path to solving them, even if it takes longer than anticipated. If you don't, if you merely try to sweep them under the rug, you'll find them infecting the way you live your life in hidden and harmful ways...